Our son was diagnosed and has received intense IBT/ABA therapy (along with spech, OT and PT). It has been fantastic. Total turn around.
No low gluten diet, Jenny McCarthy BS, just Cognitive Behavioral Therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy .
Sadly as of the latest information I have, we don't know what causes Autism and CBT is one of the only effective means for treating it.
ABA was the only treatment recommended by the team that diagnosed our son (psychologist, psychiatrist, speech pathologist, OT).
There wasn't anything else in the literature that was compelling treatment for Autism (that I know of). I remain open to other treatments if they are safe and effective and doctor recommended.
However, a low gluten diet would be difficult for our son. He had so many sensory issues and eating was a major problem. I can't imagine trying to work in a low gluten diet at the same time.
ABA is some very interesting stuff. I had never heard of it before. Seems pretty simple and straight-forward too. From skimming the article it seems you simply keep some kind of log of behavior, try various techniques for changing said behavior, and track changes in the behavior over time to figure out what works.
I bet there's a good startup opportunity here. Hack your brain; shape your behavior. An app could aide the process of logging, measuring and tracking changes in behavior. It could suggest strategies and rank them by effectiveness. There could even be a web aspect for seeing what techniques work best for other people. Kind of like a more generalized version of RescueTime...
I agree with pragmatic, we need to look at real causes and remember that outside of clean water, vaccinations are the best thing for public health.
I wouldn't link a low gluten diet with "Jenny McCarthy BS". My wife teaches autistic children and she told me that all the children, not most, all children in the classroom have had improvement when put on low gluten diets.
I don't pretend to be as close to the issue as you, but you would be wise not to dump on an issue just because it didn't work for you:)
A carefully designed study,
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
rather than anecdotes, doesn't support a conclusion that gluten-free diets are helpful for autism. Nonetheless, the study reports,
http://www.asatonline.org/suggreading/reviews/elder.htm
"even after being informed of these disappointing results, some parents opted to keep their child on the GfCf diet."
Patient human interaction with autistic children does seem to be helpful, and my cheers to anyone who is providing that.
Second, reviews of the evidence show no evidence of a link, and suggest that the weird diets can actually be causing harm.
So feel free to dump on this issue.
It's ridiculous but it sure does teach you a lot about herd mentality.
The idea that there are two sides to the debate gives anti-vaccine activists more credibility than they are entitled to.
Vaccines work and are safe. They don't cause autism and anyone who says that they do is at best deluded.
Formaldehyde, Beta-Propiolactone, Neomycin Sulfate, Polymyxin B, Potassium Chloride, Sodium Taurodeoxycholate, Thimerosal
I am not making a case for linking vaccines to autism, nor for the idea that vaccines are not often crucial factors in preventing disease spread or pandemic. However, I would say blanket statements that vaccines are simply "safe" ...end of story, seems too simplistic and potentially dangerous.
Remember: chemicals are everywhere in nature. Just because they have complex-looking names doesn't automatically mean they're dangerous in themselves. And just because thimerosal is chemically related to the kind of mercury that is dangerous in larger doses doesn't mean that thimerosal is itself dangerous, especially in the tiny quantity that was once used in vaccines.
If you want to worry about your kids health make sure they eat right and get plenty of exercise. You'll do much more for their health than worrying about minuscule amounts of chemicals in vaccines.
It's used in "pet friendly" road salt, and sometimes even as a substitute for table salt. Sure in large doses it's lethal, but so is regular salt.
Consider that every crackpot thing the wingnuts say about vaccines is true. They cause autism in some children, allow government mind control, make the windshield wipers on your car to fly off, and cause family pets to lose all their hair. You job isn't actually to prove that vaccines may cause these things, your job is to prove that these things are worse for your kids than a polio epidemic.
Nothing at all is safe. Everything is potentially dangerous. Only a good understanding of statistics can tell you how dangerous. Only a rational grasp of reality can tell you how to behave with the knowledge those statistics impart.