Off Diet - Regression?

[Guest guest]

OK, I feel like a traitor writing this, but I need to know if anybody

else has been through this...

We started my son on the GFCF diet on Feb 1, 2 days before his 3rd

birthday. It took us about 2 weeks to get ourselves into total

compliance, but we saw quite a few positive results. Brett was much

more verbal, stopped hand flapping, and generally seemed more alert

and focused. I was thrilled!

Last Thursday, we took Brett to see a GI doctor, because Brett has

not had a normal stool in his entire life. He was terribly

constipated before we took him off dairy a year ago; since then he

has had chronic diarrhea. I was hoping the diet would help, but so

far no luck in that department.

Anyway, the GI doc (who has lots of autism experience) wanted to run

some stool analysis, RAST/IgE testing, and a test for celiac disease

to see what he could find. He told us Brett needed to go off the

diet for a few days so that the tests could show reactions to gluten

& casein. Then we were told to bring in a stool sample and get

Brett's blood tests done on Monday.

I was terrified that we would have a horrible weekend, but we started

feeding Brett " normal " food Thursday night with plans of putting him

back on the diet Monday. However, we have seen NO regression! No

hand flapping, no spacey-ness, he's not less verbal, nothing. I

still haven't put him back on the diet, and if anything, he is

continuing to gradually improve like he has for the last 6 weeks.

My questions:

*How long does it take for a regression reaction to hit?

*Could it be that going on the diet jump-started his brain? (Maybe

we should go on it every few months for another jump start?)

*Could the " effects " of the diet just have been coincidence?

I'm really not sure where to go from here! If anybody has any advice

for me, I'd love to hear it!

Thanks so much,

Sue