repost: The Nut Diet vs The Real SCD/ IMPORTANT

[Guest guest]

There is a diet that is pretending to be SCD and fooling many

parents.

Many parents think that they are doing SCD and are not aware that

they

are actually implementing the Nut Diet instead of SCD,confusing the

Nut

Diet with the real SCD.

Many parents begin SCD by replacing the breads

and cookies of other diets with nut flours They also feed their

children any food that is SCD legal without first going through the

introductory diet and making sure that their child can tolerate that

food. This is done because most parents think that the rules of

SCD

and GFCF are the same. When parents start out with GFCF,they are

allowed to use all the GFCF legal foods. It is important for parents

to

realize that the rules for SCD are different. While the goal of

GFCF is

the elimination of foods that contain gluten and casein,the goal of

SCD

is to avoid foods that cannot be digested. A certain food can be OK

for

one

child but not for another. Also,a food can be difficult to digest

for a

child during

the first months on SCD but fine at a later time when more gut

healing

has happened.

The important idea behind SCD is that " We must never forget that

what

the patient takes beyond his ability to digest does harm. "

Undigested

foods become great nourishment for the gut microorganisms that have

an

excellent ability to digest carbohydrates. These parasites then emit

toxins that destroy our children's gut and brains.

Certain foods that are fine for advanced SCDers are not OK for

beginners

and might harm them. The most famous example is the nut flour. Many

children cannot tolerate nut flours in the beginning stages of the

diet.

It is advised to start out with the intro diet and gradually

introduce

new foods. The " stages section " on www.pecanbread provide

inspiration

but there are no hard rules

because our children are all different. The idea is to introduce new

foods gradually and watch carefully for reactions.That is how you

implement the " Real SCD " . If you just feed your child any food that

is

legal SCD food without taking into consideration that some foods

might

be difficult to digest during the first months then

you are doing the " Nut Diet " .

As we see,there are two different ways to implement the legal SCD

food

list:the nut diet and the real SCD.

Is the Nut Diet better than GFCF? Of course! Despite its

shortcomings,it

is a lot easier to digest than the starches that are allowed in GFCF

and

other diets. I will give examples that might clarify this confusion

and

show us that our children are unique and have different outcomes

with

the Nut Diet.

Sue R-F had a 2 year old child who was extremely picky. only

ate

goat yogurt,banana,meat and nut muffins. She had constipation but

recovered with SCD and almost no other intervention (just a few

sessions of Tomatis and a couple of hours a week of speech therapy).

While this nut diet was not optimal,it did recover a child from

autism.

Another mother,ST, had 2 children,she started with the nut diet and

got improvements for both children. After about half a year

later,she

went back to the intro diet and introducing foods gradually. She

reported that she got EVEN better results after reintroducing the

foods

gradually.

Jen Young reported that her child was only able to eat a few foods

during his first months of SCD. He could not tolerate nuts during

his

first 3 months on SCD. After starting the goat yogurt,Jen was able

to

feed her child more foods and enable him to recover from Autism. Jen

was only able to get results if she gave foods that were tolerated.

If

Jen had just followed the legal/illegal list,then her son would have

made no progress.

L is a brilliant man who is very talented in science. He has

written that SCD,supplements, and enzymes have helped his autism

spectrum issues. He

has stated that he does better without any nuts,despite the fact

that he

has been doing SCD for over a year.

The advantage of the Real SCD is that it allows the parent to design

a

diet that is custom made for that child and just right for each

particular child. The Nut Diet is not optimal for a child who might

have

difficulties digesting nuts and other SCD legal foods during the

first

months( or with extreme cases,during the first year) of the diet.

I have read on other lists the posts of parents who assert with

great

authority that SCD did not help their child's GI issues. In their

post,they list the foods that they gave their child;there is always

an

advanced food on that list. I want to shout: " you cannot feed

lentils to

a child who has constipation,your kid's gut was not ready to digest

this

food and the undigested food fed the gut bugs. "

I completely understand that it is hard for parents to do the real

SCD,many children see other kids eating junk foods and feel

deprived...some children are very picky.... I understand these

difficulties and that is why we started a special list for children

and

SCD to help parents with these issues. What I ask of you is that you

be

fair to other parents when you are evaluating your child's outcome

with

our diet. If you cannot do the real SCD but are doing the nut diet

and

not getting results,then please explain it to other parents. It is

not

fair to discourage other parents from doing SCD if one did not do

it

correctly.

Before reporting about your child's SCD experience on other autism

lists, please make sure

that you implemented the diet correctly. When I used to do SCD

counseling for free some time ago (I no longer have the time to do

that), I found out that some parents asserted that they were

following

the diet 100% and not getting results. After talking to me,the

parents

quickly became aware that they were not implementing SCD correctly.

After the mistakes were corrected, the child progressed with SCD. I

no

longer have the time to do SCD counseling but there are excellent

ways to transform failures into

success with this wonderful diet.

If you are not happy with your SCD results,then please seek the help

of the list,websites,SCD pals and

SCD counselors. It will be the best investment for your child :you

will

save lots of money because doing SCD correctly will shorten

dramatically

the amount of time that your child need to do ABA or other ASD

interventions.

Most parents of ASD children understand that a parent who

implemented

ABA,VB or RDI without the supervision of an expert might not get

good

results. ABA,VB and RDI are powerful tools for improving our

children

but they are complex and mistakes can easily be made by an untrained

parent. We need to understand that this situation might also occur

with

SCD for children with extremely difficult GI systems.

We have been very lucky that we have been able to help so many

children

without private counseling but some children did fall

betweeen the cracks when their parents stopped SCD without getting

private counseling. This is a tragedy because a few sessions of SCD

counseling can usually fix the problem and are so much more

economical

than other ASD interventions.

Please do not give up on this wonderful diet without seeking help

from this list,SCD counselors or experienced parents!!

All the best,Mimi

For information on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, please read the book

_Breaking the Vicious Cycle_ by Elaine Gottschall and read the following

websites:

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info

and

http://www.pecanbread.com