GFCF And Feingold Diets

There are a series of diet programs which have been suggested many times for children with developmental issues. The Gluten Free Casein Free and Feingold Diets are among the most admired for this field.

Shifting The Paradigm

I want to congratulate the developers of these diets for changing the paradigm about what might be the root of the world-wide growth in the occurrence of developmental problems for children. For decades our modern doctors could not understand that what a person consumed could impact that person's developmental health. These diets are very popular in the communities involved with Failure To Thrive, as well as other developmental problems and these diets are displaying that they are dramatically and positively impacting the lives of many of these children.

These diets work well for some children with significant reductions in a range of measurable symptoms. For other children there are some minor improvements. And, for others there is no improvement at all. One of the unanswered questions is why are some children dramatically helped by these diets and others are not?

We have been working with children with developmental problems for decades. We are now concentrating in this area of restarting the developmental process and getting it back on track. One of our breakthroughs has been an realization of the relationship between sensitivities and intolerances and developmental problems.

Sensitivities and Intolerances

Each of us has some factors in our environment to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not like an allergy where we have a forceful and quick immunological response to some thing. This is much more a subtle defensive reaction we have to some environmental factors over time.

If someone is allergic to bee stings, they have an forceful and quick reaction to being stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even start to have a life-threatening anaphylactic shock. But, consider the possibility that someone has a sensitivity to, or an intolerance of, a deodorant soap bar. They may not have a reaction to it unless they use it for many days, and then they might develop a minor rash as the response because of that sensitivity or intolerance. If you discover that this skin rash is a reaction to the deodorant soap bar, you can eliminate the use of it and the rash will fade away.

Developmental Problems

We have recognized that children with developmental problems, such as Failure To Thrive, have many environmental factors to which they have these defensive reactions. And, it is the collections of these multiple reactions which seems to be at the root of these developmental problems. The compounding of these defensive reactions results in the body shutting down functions which are not necessary for survival today.

This defensive response process was developed in a less contaminated environment and the body only needed this defensive response to sustain itself for a few minutes or hours while the person walked or was carried away from the environmental factors to which the body was responding. A few minutes of a conservative, defensive response was usually enough for offending thing to be over the hill. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed for the process to get away from the offending thing, it would not have an impact on the long-term survival of the person.

Shutting Down The Developmental Process

The problem is that our world is much more contaminated now and children with developmental problems are much more sensitive to contaminants than when we evolved these reaction processes. If the child has these kinds of compounding defensive responses to something which is eaten at every meal, the defensive reactions will never stop. If the child has these compounding defensive responses to the laundry detergent or fabric softener used by the family, the child always has residue of those chemicals against the skin, so the reactions can never stop. Imagine if the child has an ongoing series of these kinds of sensitivities and responses and the child's body never has a chance to stop having these responses.

One of the functions commonly shut down in these stacked defensive responses is the developmental process. If a child's defensive response includes shutting down the developmental process, and the defensive response never stops, the developmental process never gets to move the child forward toward maturation. In this case, the child does not develop appropriately.

GFCF, Gluten Free Casein Free, and Feingold Diets

Here is where the GFCF, Gluten Free Casein Free, and Feingold Diets come in to play. These diets restrict a set of environmental factors to which many children with developmental problems are responding defensively. So, the children with developmental problems who have a sensitivity to the items restricted by the diet will show some dramatic results. The children who have an individual menu of sensitivities which is aligned with the diet will benefit from it. For those children who try the diet, but whose set of sensitivities are not aligned well with the restrictions of the diet, there will be little help.

For this reason we recognize the significant contributions the Gluten Free Casein Free and Feingold Diets have made in our understanding of developmental problems. They help us all understand that the children with developmental problems are responding to some things in the environment and we can help these children get back on track, if we eliminate their access to those things.

These diets are on the right track, but there is an assumption that some particular environmental factors are causing the developmental problems. The difficulty in this assumption is that the defensive responses these children have is to their own list of offending factors (not a generic list). Their own list might not include the restricted items of the generic diet. Each child should be using a diet which is specifically tailored to their own individual menu of sensitivities.

Sensitivity Testing Is The Key

We have developed an approach for testing each of our client children for their own specific menu of sensitivities and intolerances. This gives the parents a precise menu of things to eliminate from the child's environment. So, instead of a generic diet program which might (or might not) have the items a specific child needs to eliminate, we give each parent a precise list of things their child needs to eliminate.

This Is Much More Than A Diet Program

Our testing technique involves everything that the child eats, breathes, and touches. This involves more than what the child eats and drinks. It includes testing the child's responses to medications, household chemicals, and everything else in the child's environment. Our thorough testing approach will help you develop an appropriate plan to clean all of the offending environmental factors from your child's environment.

What Happens When The Child Stops Having These Defensive Responses?

There are many different types of developmental problems in children. Each has their own set of symptoms which are recognized as the set of symptoms of that specific diagnosis. Many children have so many symptoms that they have many diagnoses, because their own set of symptoms cross the boundaries from one diagnostic category to another.

Because of this diagnostic complexity, we cannot anticipate which symptoms a child will grow out of initially as a result of being in an environment free of their offending factors. But, our experience is clear that when children enter and stay in an environment free of their offending environmental factors, their developmental process restarts and their developmental process tries to move them forward through their missed or next developmental stages. You know this approach is being successful when you see your child start moving through developmental steps.

We encourage our clients to establish a developmental baseline with our Free Developmental Checklist before they start working with us. We encourage them to use this same checklist, monthly, to track their child's developmental progress as they continue.

By tracking the child's developmental forward progress, parents can see that their child has re-engaged the developmental process. This forward progress means that the child is losing the symptoms which were used as the basis of the child's diagnosis in the first place.

Sensitivity Re-Evaluations For The Long Term

After some months of developmental movement using our process, we encourage parents to re-test their child's sensitivities. Many of the offending environmental factors will produce defensive responses, and the child can slowly bring those things back into the environment. Many other things will still cause those defensive responses and they will need to stay on the list for this child. Which items can be brought back and which items need to stay restricted is individual for each child.

Is It Time For Your Child To Get Back On Track?

If your child has developmental problems, it is time to get that blocked developmental process re-engaged and encouraged to get back on track. With our proprietary testing process, you can manage this problem and get your child to catch up with peers.