Going Gluten-Free

Can I blame my lack of blog posts on my new hobby – finding gluten-free recipes…that don’t cost an arm and a leg…and are easy to make. Not an extremely easy task.

Our second oldest, Noah, was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7. For the last 3 years he’s been on Adderall XR and it has worked well. We started at 15 mg once a day and over time as he grows it has been adjusted until he was taking 35 mg. At first the side effects weren’t too bad. It suppresses his appetite so he doesn’t usually eat much for lunch. But by dinner the meds have worn off and he can really put the food down.

Unfortunately in the last few months we’ve started to see some other side effects pop up. While I was in Pittsburgh a couple months ago Mark apparently spent lots of time on Google and realized that they may be due to the dosage Noah was taking. He came to the determination that some changes to Noah’s diet were in order.

We started with eliminating dyes and all preservatives. We also discovered that one of his “triggers” is corn. So not only does that mean no corn at dinner but it means no corn based products – no cornbread, nothing with high fructose corn syrup. Now, I cook most of our dinners from scratch except the occasional frozen pizza, Hamburger Helper or freezer pasta meal but all of those handy grab-n-go snacks were now off limits.

Coincidentally while I was in Pittsburgh I read Kristen’s copy of Jenny McCarthy’s book, Louder Than Words. One of the things she talks about is diet. I will be the first to admit that over the years I have wondered if going gluten free would be beneficial to Noah, but honestly, the thought overwhelmed me. And the medication was working. So I buried my head in the sand.

Well, consider it unburied. In the last 5 weeks of no preservatives, no corn, very little sugar and no dyes, we have been able to cut Noah’s Adderall dosage by 10 mg which is huge. So we’ve decided to take the next step and go gluten-free as well. I don’t know if we’ll be able to take him completely of the meds. That would be nice, but any decrease is great too.

So I’ve spent countless hours reading, researching recipes, price comparing and figuring out how to do gluten-free in a way that Noah will eat and that won’t break the grocery budget. As I’ve been talking about it, I’m amazed at how many people around me are on gluten-free diets. They’ve been a huge help.

So today was Day 1 of gluten free. I made bagels tonight. I’m not sure how well they turned out (haven’t tasted them). Definitely different looking. We’ll see if they pass the taste test in the morning.