If you have been following Aaron’s progress, you know that I am a big believer in the gluten-free diet, which, for him, revealed a whole new set of abilities and changed his disposition.

 

Here’s the deal.  I thought that the gluten-free diet was some sort of hippie/new-agey thing, that meant I would be searching health-food stores for expensive, obscure ingredients that taste like cardboard. 

 

Nope.

 

What I have discovered, is that you can maintain a gluten-free diet much more easily if you stop looking for gluten-free substitutes for everything, and just find more things that are inherently gluten-free.

 

What the heck does gluten-free mean?  Basically, no wheat.  And you find what in some of the strangest places…  soy sauce, coated french fries… lots of stuff.  You will do lots of label-reading. But then, you will discover that you can eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and, if you are a competent cook, there are plenty of things you can make with other types of flour.  Brown rice flour, tapioca flour, etc.  If you love pasta, try some rice noodles instead…

In our case, we started Aaron on a gluten free diet last summer.  The change was immediate and obvious.  Earlier this year, we visited an endocrinologist to get some further clues on why Aaron might be rejecting so many foods.  It seems that the food rejection mostly has to do with textures he doesn’t like, so we have to keep trying new things.  After a full battery of tests for metabolic issues and related problems, the endocrinologist told us that he would practically bet his life that our son has Celiac Disease.  All for his test results were normal, but that’s probably because the treatment to manage the symptoms of Celiac Disease is….

 

Guess what…

A gluten-free diet!

 

So he can’t prove that Aaron has Celiac, but that is his educated theory.  If a small child has the disease, and you switch to a gluten-free diet, you will see drastic results in as little as 24 hours.  Wow…