<<Disclaimer:  Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

I have adult Attention Deficit Disorder and recently became involved in
a thread on food allergies on the ADD discussion group.  My post went
something like...

I have ADD and have had the following problems all of my life.  I lived
with periodic fever, vomiting, chills - night spells/seizures
throughout my children (several times a week) for a decade.  After
repeated hospitalization, the cause was finally traced to
chocolate/caffeine in my diet at age 14, no problems since diet
restriction.

I had daily headaches and frequent major migraine headaches throughout
life.  On several occasions, my vision slowly callasped (tunneled) and
then I lost consciousness.  This was usually followed by an ER visit,
morphene injection, vomiting, and then an onslaught of blood tests,
EEGs, Catscans, etc. Eventually, I learned to lay down when my vision
started going and I would avoid the consciousness problem.  Following
vomiting, I usually spent the following three day in bed.  In one week,
I had two of these attacks and they were both within thirty minutes of
eating at Godfathers pizza for lunch.  I then traced two of the
previous attacks to lunch at the same place (four times after eating
there). I used this clue to carefully evaluate my eating and migraine
relationship.  Wheat quickly same to the surface.  I had never heard of
this and thought it was unique to me, so I self regulated my diet.
Many doctors were fascinated by my claims to linkage between the
problem and wheat, none suggested ever having heard of it before.  A
close friend and physician suggested that it was the gluten in the
wheat that was the problem.  After removing wheat from my diet at age
23, all headaches subsided (bleached wheat did not cause headaches for
me).

A problem that still remained in my life was occassional diarrhea.
After the big 'oat bran helps cholestral' thing, I started eating oat
bran cereal.  The diarrhea became unimaginably savere.  I quickly
tracked it to the cereal and recalled occassions between the two from
events in my past.  At age 29 is cut all forms of oats out of my diet
and the diarrhea subsided.

Vomiting always helped relieve the symptoms from all of these problems.

>The degree of each symptom was closely linked to the amount consumed.
>I lived with these health problems throughout childhood and beyond.
>Despite repeated hospitalization, testing and medications, nothing
>helped and no cause could be found.  I discovered most of them on my
>own.  My health was been very good since these adjustments.  They have
>had no discernable affect on my ADD symptoms, however.  Hope this
>helps.

I received the following response to my post...

John, You are an undiagnosed celiac. Everything you state is a classic
symptom of celiac disease. The reason it has not helped your ADD
symptoms is that you have only eliminated the obvious sources.
[snip]...
[log in to unmask]

I was referred here, so here I am.  I have read all of the posts from
the past couple of days.  Don provided me with additional resources.  I
have visited a gluten-free food store here in Kansas City and am
visiting a CSA support group meeting tomorrow.

I know that a formal diagnosis was needed for medication for my ADD.  I
have read of links between ADD and Celiac.  It probably shows my
ignorance of the disease, but what are the benefits of receiving an
official Celiac diagnosis when I already know that gluten is my
problem?

Thanks, John Tisdale