Sunday, April 09, 2006

Food and Stuttering

Stuttering has been linked to many different factors. Here is another one, from the post on the STUTT-L mailing list by Melinda Poland-Kayira, Graduate Student in Speech Pathology:

"When doing some research online, I came across a suggestion that sensitivity to certain foods affects stuttering, and if those foods are identified and eliminated, stuttering will reduce. The source of this suggestion was the blog of a woman who states that her son was a severe stutterer, and after eliminating problem foods from his diet, he no longer stuttered. She stated that food sensitivities can interfere with language processing.
(http://www.stopstutterdiet.blogspot.com/)

I am familiar with gluten-free, casein-free diets recommended for children with autism; however, I was not aware of a diet to reduce stuttering. My question is: is anyone aware of any research that has been done to evaluate a correlation between diet and stuttering?"


It is possible that special diets influence the severity of stuttering by changing the general fitness of the brain, hormonal levels or neurotransmitter levels. Not sure by how much. But if such a diet existed, a medication could probably do the same.

But for the moment, I'll stick to my daily cholocate hit to ease the terrible suffering caused by stuttering... :-)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not keen on spending $7 - sounds like a scam for $$. I do recall hearing about a diet to lower dopamine but so far, y internet searches have not revealed much.

I'm on the open label phase of pagoclone now -high dosage...effects...hard to say.

Anonymous said...

Hello Lloyd,
Many stuttering people expect with great tension the results of the pagoclone clinical trial. Please keep us in progress.

regards

Holger
holger-stenzel@t-online.de

Anonymous said...

Here is a report of another participant of the study:
http://www.stutteringforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2633#post2633

Anonymous said...

Dietary intake and metabolism have the potential to affect neurotransmitters. The goals are to decrease uptake of dopamine and increase serotonin uptake. Gluten free/ casein free diets may help those stutterers with food sensitivities.

For our son, it became evident that eating certain foods increased his disfluency. Keeping a food and disfluency diary (rating daytime, evening on 1-10 scale, just 2x/day) diary for a two week period and watching for correlations may be helpful for some individuals with disfluency.

It makes sense that the autism/gluten connection applies to stutterers, also. They are just at opposite ends of the scale in response to dopamine.

I'll try to find some fuctional brain imaging studies to post here. Increased dopamine is linked to schizophrenia, Tourettes, Stuttering, and decreased dopamine uptake is linked to Asperger's and Autism.

Don't pay $ to find a diet, there are plenty of gluten/casein free diets and recipes online to try. It takes a committment and some time to see changes. Much quicker to be tested for sensitivities first, but it is pricey.

Hope this helps someone. I do have a medical background and have been working on various therapies with our son for years.

The Lidcombe Program shows great numbers for preschool aged stutterers. Early speech therapy is key for this age group. The window of opportunity is narrow (by age 6).

Good luck to all.

Anonymous said...

My daughter is 3 years old and just developed a stutter out of nowhere right after Thanksgiving. So, It's been going on for a month and a half now. She also has a secondary characteristic (putting her chin to her shoulder when she gets stuck). She's been to a speech therapist and a neurology appointment is pending as well. I am taking her to an allergist in hopes of finding out, or ruling out a possible food allergy. Am I going to the right place? Will the allergist be able to identify a sensitivity? I took her off gluten and she didn't stutter for a week. I gave the gluten back one night and she was stuttering within ten minutes of eating the pb&j sandwich. But now it's off and on and I'm not sure if the gluten is the problem anymore. Is an allergist the way to go with this? I just feel like they'll tell me I'm out of my mind for thinking it has anything to do with her stuttering.

Anonymous said...

And I'm not going to the allergist because she's vomitting, having a skin rash, swelling or stomach problems- it's not GI. It's purely about the chemicals in foods reacting with her brain activity. Will a BLOOD test be able to determine if there's a sensitivy there?

Anonymous said...

from my experience you can test from blood/injects/probes but a NMD or OMD are your best dr resourses, remember general MDs are trained different than naturalpathic mds.

Anonymous said...

My 9 year old son was having terrible stomach pains for several months and we tried many things. In the end, the Genova food sensitivity test (several vials of blood) revealed he a gluten sensitivity. When we cut out the gluten he stopped stuttering. So for him I know there is a direct correlation. Please understand how important diet is for all areas of health and try elimination diets or testing.

Anonymous said...

My stuttering is greatly affected by my food intake. Gluten is by far the worst culprit. Egg whites also cause it to flare up.

Unknown said...

My son is almost suffer from stammering not by birth.He is 6 yrs old .From few months he suffer from stammering and increasingly day by day . Help?

Unknown said...

I went on the gluten free diet 4 years ago at the age of 65.
I had stuttered for 25 years.
Just a few weeks into the diet I stopped stuttering.
A gluten free diet has been a miracle for me!

cyrick said...

That’s amazing.Can you elaborate on specific foods that you eliminated?