Starting Enzymes

We've been having trouble with M grabbing food off the counter or running around at dinner time and stealing food off of other people's plates. It was getting difficult bringing her anywhere because invariably gluten, casein or soy-containing foods would be within her reach and we would have to constantly police her. She would be starting preschool soon and during snack time she would be seeing other little kids eating cheese, crackers, pretzels and bagels. All this plus her behavior has been constantly worse... hyperactive!

So I looked up digestive enzymes and found the book, Enzymes for Autism and Other Neurological Conditions, by Karen DeFelice.
Great book!

I started M on Trienza and No-Fenol digestive enzymes from Houston Pharmaceuticals. Sometimes it's a struggle getting her to eat the chewables. I also use the capsules and mix them with sorbet or freeze the powder into fruit juice ice cubes.

The first few weeks M was sucking her thumb and humming/clicking quite a bit. That has now stopped and we've been on the enzymes for a little over a month now. What I have seen is that she seems to be more aware of her environment. Her eye contact appears to be better. And she is less stimmy. After a couple of weeks on the enzymes with the GFCFSF diet, I slowly started introducing gluten or casein or soy back into her diet. She can now eat a handful of wheat pancakes made with milk, no problem. I haven't seen any behavior issues, except for her getting really goofy after eating a huge bowl of popcorn. It could be the case that corn has been bothering her and now the enzymes are helping her with that. She is now less grabby with food on the counter. She still wants to raid people's plates at dinner if they contain her favorites. We're trying to teach her to say 'more'.

The best part about using the enzymes is that we had dinner at a friend's house the other night and I didn't have to give them the third-degree on all the ingredients in their dinner. We gave M her enzymes and presented her with a full plate of food. What a relief!

(Of course, she snacked on so many rice chips beforehand that she didn't eat much of the dinner -- ha ha!)