I have four children, all of whom have been seeing Dr. George McAnelly here in the Dallas area since birth.  Dr. Mac is also an allergy specialist.  My youngest went to see him yesterday and I tagged along, hoping to get an opportunity to discuss diet with him.  Well, I did and he was to my great surprise more than a little interested.  So he asked me for more info.  Here's an exerpt from the email I just sent him:

"I wanted to get your thoughts on the theory that ADD is an autoimmune disease caused by gluten and casein.  I got this idea after adopting a "paleolithic" diet five years ago, a way of eating which attempts to model what our hunter gatherer forbears consumed in the million or two years of existence pre-agriculture (See http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/J%20Nutr%20Environ%20Med%202003.pdf )  And I've found other research, most notably the work being done by Dr. Karl Ludwig Reichelt in Norway, the results of which seem to support this idea about ADD.

Not just causing my lifelong ADD symptoms to disappear, the other results of this diet have been little short of miraculous.  Frequent and maddening apthous ulcers gone.  Allergies, including severe seasonal hay fever, absolutely and utterly gone.  Aching joints, gassiness, bruxism gone.  Depression gone.  Weight went from 174 to current 155.  Though I only work out two or three times a week, my endurance is off the chart.  And from my most recent blood test:

Triglycerides:          60
HDL Cholesterol:        90
LDL Cholesterol:        107
Chol Ratio:             2.3

So from my reading I found that autoimmune diseases are molecular mimickry whereby the body confuses ingested foreign proteins -- peptides of which gain access to the blood via leaks in gut membranes -- for self tissues.  For the overwhelming majority of our 1.5 to 2 million year history -- except perhaps in times of great famine -- we did not consume grass seeds and were unable to obtain the milk of wild animals.  Only within the last 10,000 years at the most, depending upon your ancestry, have we been farmers and ranchers.  And only in that time period have we seen the such levels of the "diseases of civilization": cancer, heart disease, tooth decay, autoimmune disease.  Cancer followed corn as it made its way north from South America and followed the spread of agriculture as it creeped outwards from the Fertile Crescent.  This diet is a simple idea which has led to amazing results for me.

One other ADD-related thought before I leave you.  It's a well known fact that, while not the cause of the disorder,  sugar causes ADD symptoms to worsen.  The day before yesterday, I found what seems to me a plausible reason.  According to Pappenheimer and Madara, glucose enhances the paracellular uptake of gluten and casien peptides.  (Ref: Pappenheimer JR and Madara JL (1993) Role of active transport in regulation of junctional permeability and paracellular absorption of nutrients in leaky Epithelia, Munksgaard, Copenhagen: pp 221-232).  So what's bad is made worse by sugar."
--
_______________________________________________
Get your free Verizonmail at www.verizonmail.com