An Aberdeenshire mother's claim that a wartime diet can help treat the incurable condition autism is being taken seriously by doctors. Caroline Traa says her severly autistic daughter improved radically when she changed the girl's diet to help with a bowel problem.

Now a conference she and other mothers with stories like hers have arranged has been given approval by the Royal College of Physicans.  

Until recently, 11-year-old Arbuthnott schoolgirl Rebecca Traa lived in a world of silence. Even at six years old, she could not  speak and pointed at pictures to communicate.

Then her mum changed her diet, and Rebecca found her voice.

Caroline Traa said: "When we started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, combined with her anti-inflammatory medication, that was the most enormous change that we had ever seen. 

"She wanted to be with us as a family, and everything improved, her sleep improved, her appetite improved, and she just looked a whole lot healthier"

Rebecca's new diet followed her diagnosis for a bowel problem, and was nothing to do with autism.

But her parents have discovered many austistic children have similar bowel issues and in all cases when their diets changed, their autism either improved or disappeared.

Caroline Traa added: "There could have been some kind of imbalance that has managed to be sorted quite quickly.

"I think the gut can heal, and I think that's a big part of it for a lot of children. We know, we have seen that for a lot of children, their bowel may be overloaded and when it's cleared out for the first time they start to speak.

"It's pretty concrete things that are difficult to imagine could just have happened".

Caroline has helped organise a conference in Bournemouth for doctors which has been approved by the Royal College of Physicians.

No-one is claiming there is a cure for autism, but it is possible there may be a treatment.