Feingold and GFCF Diets Reduce Symptoms For Some Children With Failure To Thrive And Not For Others

There are some diet approaches which have been distributed repeatedly for children with developmental issues such as Failure To Thrive. The Gluten Free and Feingold Diets are among the most admired for this context.

Modifying The Paradigm

I want to compliment the developers of these diets for modifying the paradigm about what might be the root of the world-wide growth in the occurrence of developmental difficulties for children. For a long time our modern medical practitioners could not believe that the things a person consumed could upset that person's developmental health. These diets are very popular in the communities involved with ASD, as well as other developmental difficulties and these diets are showing that they are dramatically affecting the futures of many of these children.

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

Isabel and I have been working with children with developmental problems for decades. We are now concentrating in this area of re-energizing the developmental process and getting it back on track. One of our findings has been an acceptance of the relationship between sensitivities and intolerances and developmental difficulties.

Sensitivities and Intolerances

Each of us has some elements around us to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not like an allergy where we have a strong and immediate immunological response to something. This is much more like a subtle defensive response we have to some environmental factors over time.

If a person is allergic to bee stings, they have an strong and immediate response to being stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even enter life-threatening anaphylactic shock. But, consider the possibility that a person has a sensitivity to, or an intolerance of, a deodorant soap bar. They may not have a response to it until they use it for many days, and then they may develop a minor rash as the result of that sensitivity or intolerance. If you determine that this 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 recognized that children with developmental difficulties, such as Failure To Thrive, have mixed environmental factors to which they have these defensive responses. And, it is the compounding of these multiple responses which seems to be at the root of these developmental difficulties. The stacking of these defensive responses results in the body shutting down functions which are non-essential for immediate survival.

This defensive response process was developed in a less contaminated time 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 out of range. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed while getting away from the offending thing, it would not affect the long-term survival of the person.

Shutting Down The Developmental Process

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

One of the functions commonly shut down in these stacked defensive reactions 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 get to develop.

Feingold and GFCF Diets

Here is where the Feingold and GFCF 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 difficulties who have an intolerance of the items restricted by the diet will show some dramatic results. The children who have an individual menu of intolerances which is aligned with the diet will benefit from it. For those children who try the diet, but whose set of intolerances are not aligned well with the restrictions of the diet, there will be little help.

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

These diets are on the right track, but there is an assumption that some particular things in the environment are causing the developmental difficulties. The difficulty in this assumption is that the defensive reactions 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 program which is specifically tailored to their own individual list of intolerances.

Sensitivity and Intolerance Testing Is The Key To Success

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 may (or may not) have the items a specific child needs to avoid, we give each parent a precise list of things their child needs to avoid.

Much More Than A Diet Plan

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

What Happens When The Child Stops These Defensive Responses?

There are many different developmental difficulties in children. Each of them have their own set of symptoms which are identified as the set of signals of that particular diagnosis. Many children have so many symptoms that they have many diagnoses, because their own set of symptoms cross boundaries from one diagnosis to another.

Because of this symptomatic and diagnostic complexity, we cannot predict which symptoms a child will develop out of first 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 begins to move them forward through their missed or next developmental stages. You know this approach is working when you see your child start moving through developmental steps.

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

By tracking the child's developmental movement, parents can see that their child has re-engaged the developmental process. This movement means that the child is developing past the symptoms which were the basis of the child's diagnosis.

Sensitivity and Intolerance Re-Testing For The Long Term

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

It Is Time For Your Child To Re-Engage The Developmental Process

If your child has developmental difficulties such as Failure To Thrive, 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 take control of this problem and get your child back on track.