January 4, 2010

The Media Misrepresents Tim Buie on Dietary Intervention in Autism

Today there is a slew of stories in the media about a study by headed by Tim Buie of Harvard that claim that dietary interventions doesn't work for autism.

Except that I sat through Dr. Buie's lecture at the Maine CDC Autism conference last year while he talked about how dietary interventions do work for some with autism.

He emphasized that at least 30% of those with autism have GI issues, the GFCF diet was NOT appropriate for all people with autism, but was for some, that the SCD diet showed good promise for a small subset of those with autism, and that the principles of the Fiengold diet should be adopted by the society as a whole.

He belives that dietary intervention is appropriate in people with autism who are showing food sensitivities. But you wouldn't know that by reading the media reports.

So instead of taking the biased media's word for it, take an hour and find out what Dr. Buie really thinks about dietary intervention in autism:

Maine CDC Autism Conference 2009
Gastrointestinal and Nutritional Co-Morbidities in Autism, followed by Q&A
Tim Buie, MD
Pediatric Gastroenterologist
LADDERS Program, MassGeneral Hospital for Children
Harvard Medical School



Questions from the Audience



I strongly encourage you to also watch the two lectures that followed Dr. Buie's at the Maine CDC Conference:

Dr. Martha Herbert's lecture on the gene environment interaction in autism
and
Dr. Jon Poling's lecture on vaccines and autism.

2 comments:

Cath said...

We are fortunate enough to see Dr. Buie for my ASD son's GI issues. We have been GFCF for some time. We like Dr. Buie - he is caring and thorough and open minded. He certainly is not a flag waver for diets changing everything and he does get frustrated when people won't look beyond diet to heal a GI tract - but I would say he is the most mainstream open minded doc you can find...so I would take his comments to heart. He was saying that decreasing the inflammation and GI disease will go further to reduce food sensitivities faster than just removing food sensitivities - b/c new sensitivities always seem to spring up. I explained that not all patients with these issues (and ASD) have access to docs like him, who will look beyond the ASD diagnosis and the litany of puzzeling symptoms and test results to *really* find answers - therefore diet is all most families have access to... It took my family, who has full insurance and money for copays and lives within an hours drive to Buie, over a year to get in to see him that first time. And I think that only happened b/c we had TWO people advocating for him to take us on. It was a little "ah-ha" moment for both of us...

Mrs. Ed said...

My child really made a leap out of autism three weeks into the SCD. My rother is also autistic and My mom and I turned out to have Celiacs and I also turned out to have Crohn's, so there's a very logical reason why we got such a miraculous response with the diet. So it absolutuely drives me crazy that the media portrays diet as voodoo!!!!