100% doing this diet!

[KelVarQ]

O.K. I'm 100% on board with sticking to the GARD diet along with I guess some of the others. Here are some of the foods I will eat every day and perhaps as time goes on I will add to it, but I'm in a rush now and don't want too many options. PLEASE have a look at let me know your thoughts.

1. Smoothie (non-dairy fage yogurt, 1 tsp. coconut oil / 1tsp. flaxseed, 1 peach, blueberries / strawberries (mixed berries), raw broccoli, water).
2. Gluten Free Cereal with Organic Rice Milk.
3. All veggies except corn. (I like to steam my veggies or raw)
4. Fresh Meat (Should I go to the butcher for meat, health food store or is Shoprite meat O.K.?)
5. Fish (I order my fish, mostly Salmon, from a place called: Vital Choice "Wild Seafood and Organics" in the state of Washington which they have a website for. It comes vacuum sealed in dry ice)
6. Turkey Burgers - gluten free bread (again, is Shoprite Turkey burger meat and/or chopped meat O.K. or somewhere else?)
7. Baked Potato
8. Gluten Free pasta with garlic and oil.
9. Snacks: Apple, peach, plum or any snack in the Gluten Free section at the health food store.
10. Drinks: Water
11. I know I might be pushing this one : ) but how about Non-dairy Ice Cream?

Thumbs up or down for 1, 2, 3, etc.?

Also, continue the magnulvers (magnesium packets) before bed and vitamins.

THANK YOU!!!

[Rae1889]

I'd say butchers for the meat. I know that here in canada that they will salt me and add things to the ground meat to keep it "fresher." butchers do not

[Nakamova]

It's dinnertime here and I'm drooling now... The salmon sounds great!

I think the Shoprite is okay at least some of the time, though organic or the butcher's is probably better. You can ask at Shoprite if they or their wholesaler puts any additives or preservatives in their meats.

Non-dairy ice cream should be fine if you like the taste. Rice milk ice cream should do the trick. And I would add a tiny piece of dark chocolate from time to time, but that's just me

[Shelley]

http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Seafoo...lmon/Main.aspx

Be careful with the species. There is a possibility of mercury in the fish.
Please be careful.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/P.../ucm115644.htm

Your diet sounds good, however. Let us know how it goes.

[Meetz1064]

are this: It all sounds peachy. HOWEVER.......if you go for the ShopRite foods, be very specific about reading the labels. Do the labels say they're organic? Are there any additives added to the packaged meats? Do the labels say that the meat is free-range? I think you get the general idea.

As for the drinks--you could always make teas, too. Green teas, herbal teas, just to give you some variety.

[Bernard]

There are herbal teas that do not contain caffeine. If you want to sweeten them, I'd recommend using Stevia.

Flax seed must be ground up for your body to digest it. If you aren't grinding the seed in your smoothies, I'd suggest using chia seed as a replacement.

You might find Yams/Sweet Potato to be a good substitute/replacement for the baked potato every once in while for variety.

[Loudmouth]

MMmmmmmm yum, mashed sweet potato, me and the kids' favourite! I also use the ends of my homebaked GF bread ground up into crumbs and add some dill and a little ground turmeric, dip the salmon in beaten egg and cover with the crumb mix. Gorgeous when oven baked in foil...

[PhylisFeinerJohnson]

I would suggest you look at Bernard's page on alterative treatments. In it, he gives a guide to alternate epilepsy therapies. Here's what he says about the G.A.R.D. Diet (Glutamate Aspartate Restricted Diet)

"Developed by a veterinarian, DogtorJ, who treated cases of Canine epilepsy successfully with the diet.

According to DoctorJ:

The G.A.R.D. originally stood for the "glutamate-aspartate restricted diet" after its limitation of these two non-essential, neurostimulating amino acids that are also the parent compounds of MSG and aspartame (Nutrisweet) respectively. They are now termed "excitotoxins" and known triggers of seizures and inciters of some neurodegenerative diseases. However, the G.A.R.D. also stands for the "gut absorption recovery diet" due to its removal of the "big 4" foods (gluten, dairy, soy and corn), which are all capable of inducing the damage to the intestinal villi that characterizes celiac disease and the related food intolerances.

The GARD is an elimination diet. It specifies foods (and food products/ingredients) that should be avoided:

Gluten - commonly derived from wheat and grains
Casein - protein found in cow milk (and most dairy products)
Soy
Corn - including corn syrup and corn derivative products
MSG (mono-sodium glutamate) - this a very common food ingredient in processed foods even though it is rarely clearly labeled as such
Aspartame - commonly used as a sugar substitute
Glutamate - found in high concentrations in most beans/legumes
Hydrogenated oils

Efficacy

There aren't any published medical/clinical studies for the GARD diet that I can find. There is anecdotal evidence from first person reports in internet forums from people who tried the diet and claim it helped them with seizure control.

DogtorJ claims to have positive testimonials from people he assisted with advice on the diet. He also often claims a 100% success rate. However, Stacy tried the GARD diet for two and a half months and had poor results (see diary entries from January 2006 - April 2006).

It scores a zero for the chart until some large scale study on it is published.

Potential Adverse Events

There are no published studies addressing the long term safety of the GARD diet, so it gets a zero for the chart.

Cost

For the cost of a little research, you can pretty much try this diet on you own with just a little supervision from your doctors. I rated it a 10 for the chart because there isn't any real additional cost associated with trying the diet.

Type

This is a diet that likely needs to be adopted as a permanent lifestyle change. It requires continuous active participation to maintain seizure control (assuming it works).

Latency

Seizure control could start occurring within days to weeks of starting the diet.

Special Notes

This diet is the only "seizure control" diet that does not restrict carbohydrate consumption. In fact, it recommends potatoes (high glycemic and loaded with carbohydrates) as a staple food. Anyone who has a sensitivity to dietary sugars should consult with their doctors before/while trying the GARD.

Anyone diagnosed with MTLE (Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy) and atrophy of the hippocampus should strongly consider trying this diet (or a variant which eliminates dietary glutamate). See Human Herpesvirus-6B with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy for more information."

[Molly97]

Read this link for what Dogtor J actually recommends: http://dogtorj.tripod.com/id31.html

There are other essays that are of interest healthwise as well as thorough essays on the GARD. I've been on this diet for 1 1/2 years and it works for me because it controls dietary triggers that are critical for me.

[PhylisFeinerJohnson]

Hats off to you Molly! I did tons of research but obviously, having never actually BEEN on these diets, I don't have the wealth of knowledge that you need and have.

Now if you want to know anything about mammals and mammal by-products, I could give you an hour lecture, because I haven't been able to eat anything "4-legged" for 32 years! (Colitis.)

So I surely thank you for the heads-up and your insight. (We'd be a disaster together in a restaurant!)

[Molly97]

Hats off to you Molly! I did tons of research but obviously, having never actually BEEN on these diets, I don't have the wealth of knowledge that you need and have.

Now if you want to know anything about mammals and mammal by-products, I could give you an hour lecture, because I haven't been able to eat anything "4-legged" for 32 years! (Colitis.)

So I surely thank you for the heads-up and your insight. (We'd be a disaster together in a restaurant!)

Phylis,
My triggers are more the corn, soy, MSG, aspartame, dairy than gluten. Took me forever(or at least 6 months of journaling) to figure that out. Eating in a restaurant is like playing Russian roulette! Can't rely on what I ate without problem last time being a good choice this time!

This is the neat thing about this forum; everyone's experience is just different enough to be useful to someone sometime.

[PhylisFeinerJohnson]

Dear Molly,

First of all, I love Dianne Arbus.

Secondly, I can't tell you how many restaurant disasters I've had. Even after I ask if the dish is prepared with beef, pork, veal or lamb stock.

One night, I went to a wine dinner and I asked the server the deadly question. She said: "I dunno." My friend Mark then stood up and said: "You'd better know, because I'm her lawyer."

The chef/proprietor promptly came out and assured me that my dish would be made with vegetable stock.

I can't even drink red wine! And red is my favorite color...despite the fact that the only red things that cross my plate are fruits and veggies.

People don't know "how I do it." I don't know how YOU do it. But the answer is simple. We have no other choice!