Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Going Lactose Free..Diet Gluten, Food Stuff


I tend to spend a fair amount of time reading other Aspie blogs, scanning the internet for Aspie articles and lately, reading a book all about Aspergers. Geez, one would think I had it..or at least a well-formed obsession with the subject.
Anyway, one of those reoccurring themes has been diet. I read about intestinal rumblings and grumblings and autism and I tend to agree...there is disharmony. So, in my ever striving to become a healthier alien, I have decided to go lactose, dairy free. I had done this rather half-heartily a few times before but what I was lacking was a decent, palatable milk substitute. I had even gone so far as to try a bit of Edensoy, until I realized that I have a rather quick and altogether unpleasant allergic reaction to soy, which startled and surprized me as I am most allergic, in the same sense of symptoms to sulfates. I never would have thought that soy had any of those offensive qualities in quantities enough to make me so ill. I have to avoid all soy.
I even purchased some other milk substitute a few months back, but never even got around to opening it before the expiration date. So that went in the garbage.
My latest venture to the local health food store found me picking up some Rice Milk. Hmm, sounds strange but I am feeling willing to actually try new things these days so I gave it a go. I most carefully read the entire outer package for ingredients and insight...looks doable. I picked out the smallest of our drinking glasses and poured a bit in. Hmmm, not bad and most importantly, no bad reaction. I can do this.
Later on, I went so far as to drink a whole small glass along with my pop tarts (ok, Pop T's probably aren't the healthiest of choices but, hey, I'm not perfect :) It has a very non-offensive taste, slightly sweet..there is an absence of..thickness and something else I can't quite catch. It is really a very good substitute for milk.
I have also given up the cheese thing. While not a huge cheese fan, I do tend to put a little bit on salads and ham sandwiches...I can let that go. Now pizza...hmmm, tough one there because that is in my favorite food group. I may still indulge once in a while, just with much less frequency. You have got to have cheese on pizza, c'mon...I Am Part Human you know...LOL
So, I'll be blogging about how this latest endeavour goes.
Gluten is another area that I want to try diminishing. I say diminish because I have less confidence in my ability to find suitable substitutes in that arena. I have a piece of toast with peanut butter every morning and that will be a challenge to alter.
I will work around the edges though as I picked up some gluten-free oatmeal to replace my nightly ritual. I tried it last night for the first time and it works. Omg, I made corn muffins with half gluten free flour and it was really quite horrid. I'll keep looking.
Its time to make some potential positive attempts at a healthier lifestyle...thus I stumble and roll...Later