My husband is the music director of a symphony in Northwest Arkansas. Recently, my girls and I joined him for one of his week-long trips to the area. While at a cocktail party for symphony donors, I had an utterly fascinating, albeit brief, conversation with one of the potential donors, Dr. Houston of Houston Nutriceuticals.
In short, there's a theory floating around in the scientific/medical community that the body's inability to process gluten and casein (from dairy) might in fact be an environmental culprit when it comes to autism. You can read more about it here:
So while many parents put their children on gluten/casein-free diets, the reality in these days of pizza parties and cupcakes is that this kind of diet is incredibly difficult to maintain. Thus, the enzymes. Admittedly, my mind went into panic mode when he started describing the science behind the enzymes (curse my pea-sized brain!), but the basic gist of what he was saying was that these enzymes aid the body's digestion of gluten and casein. Because he doesn't want to tangle with the FDA, he's not allowed to market these enzymes as an aid for autism, but he tells me that the anecdotal feedback he's received has been striking. (You can read some of the comments on Amazon, if you were so inclined: http://www.amazon.com/TriEnza-DPP-Activity-Houston-Nutraceuticals/dp/B0026QTVVK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335285673&sr=8-1) One of his earliest stories about the enzymes involved a woman who called him up, crying, to tell him that her autistic five-year-old son had one day, out of the blue, told her that he loved her. To put this seemingly inconsequential story into perspective, this woman and her husband had no idea that their boy even knew how to talk. Makes me misty-eyed just thinking about it!
Yikes, this post is getting long, but feel free to comment/rebut/supplement/share this post if you think it worthwhile...
