The surprising body part that could be causing Autism

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Believe me, I still had sensory sensitivities, special interests, and a lack of a grasp on social interaction back when I didn't consume as much dairy. I felt healthier, but I was still definitely an aspie. I know this from life experience.

You have stumbled onto the an idea that is of much more importance then you realize. Confirmation of gut cause of Autism would mean Autism Speaks and even the anti vaccine people in a certain sense would be correct in that Autistics would be "diseased" or "poisoned" instead of our belief that we were "born this way"(As Goldfish pointed out to me earlier it would still be possible Autistics are born this way because the poison/disease was being passed on). The cure would certainly be mandated if this turns out to be the the case. Why would it not be? The central tenant of ASAN type argument that the neuromainstream world needs to accept the social "deficits" they hate in us because we are born different would be debunked. Which if you are conspiracy theorist you might just conclude that is why Autism Speaks is throwing tons of money at it. http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/sci ... n-research http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/sci ... cteria-asd http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/sci ... trong-link One of the earlier posters noted that while gut theory is now mainstream science the theory has been around along time. A year ago gut theory was around but considered an outlier. For a scientific theory to go from being considered a debunked outlier to mainstream in less then a year is astounding to me. Scientific process is usually very slow. I could be wrong about this, but I can't remember a very outlier scientific theory becoming mainstream in anything that closely resembles this speed. On the other hand one must consider that Autism Speaks would not throw this amount of money at something that is likely to be debunked.

While impossible for me to throw out the emotion it has to be noted that being a 2% minority in ways society considers most important is damm stressful and stressful almost 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Now I am being asked to believe that the belief throughout my life that GI's are often result of stress s not true, it is has been mostly the other way around all this time.

Some of gut theories as well as vaccine done it beliefs is belief in big pharma conspiracy theories. I proposed an Autism Speaks conspiracy theory. The idea that these conspiracy theories could seem in the realm of plausible is based on the reality of the really bad conspiracies by business and government that have been proven. A very sad state of affairs.

If this is the cure or treatment, and my Autism goes away and I get rich my first order of business will be to hire Goldfish to advise me on timing.

Its actually quite normal for a theory to go from apparently on the outskirts and laughed at to accepted wisdom very quickly, because the tipping point is reached and the medical and scientific communities go from ridicule to acceptance seemingly overnight. Its an acknowledged pattern with new information. And scientific progress very much isnt a slow linear process today.

I think something thats being missed here is that the gut-brain stuff ISNT exclusive to autism and, partly because of the resistance of the autistic community, most of the research and knowledge gains have happened in regards to other disabilities and illness. This isnt an anti autism theory and the "debunking" of it by people who feel its a threat to autistic identity is fear based not science based. I understand the fear of being wiped out but improving symptoms that in turn improve an individuals life is not a new idea either, and is again not exclusive to this community but does already happen in autism like with stuff like sensory processing therapys, speech therapys, use of assistive technologies etc, so treating symptoms through medicinal diet isnt really different than taking your autistic child to OT.

haha my special interest for a while was cooking and nutrition too. you're being super binary. rigid diet and thinking is are ASD traits yea? also, there is plenty of research that parasites are (probably) good for you....

personally, i find it valuable and fun to do experiments on myself in terms of what i eat. i've tried all the different supplements and diets. low carb worked for me, but it seems more likely that the fact that every adult male on both sides of my family has diabetes type 2 means that i have crap insulin sensitivity. looking at what other cultures, especially pre-capitalism valued as highly nutritious i found useful too. and yes i've found the western diet was lacking in many foods that aided my digestion. did any diets help my ASD traits? no. if anything, rigidly following a diet made the traits more noticeable and caused more social and interpersonal problems.

it's not an either or. food effects gene expression. gene expression changes your brain and body. gut microbes produce hormones. hormones change and influence your body and brain. but if that's all it was the gut microbes wouldn't allow people to get to a state where they need help preparing or eating food because it'd kill them too. it's all part of bigger systems within systems.

currently, i'm thinking "high functioning" ASD is genetic, because it's not that bad and can even be good, while "low functioning" is due to different expression of that based on environmental factors. people with ASD traits display extra sensitivity and it would follow that it's a bottom up process. either way, it wouldn't be a bad thing if society offered more resources to support pregnant women and mothers to get good nutrition and provide it to their kids.

i wouldn't want to cure any of my problems related to ASD. like hearing sensitivity helps with music. if i was able to get a regular job i wouldn't have any time to work on my own stuff. there are more real problems, but i've seen that most people that have never had any problems in their life aren't the kind of people i would want to be. who knows maybe if i had been born differently i would've been a more excitable baby and been dropped on my head. maybe i'd have kids that i'd have to support, which would be way more difficult in the grand scheme of things. i would be an entirely different person, so it wouldn't be that i was different, i wouldn't even exist.

if you've cured anything as an adult i think all you've really demonstrated that the problem wasn't part of ASD, but perhaps how it presented is different in someone with ASD.

personally, i found diagnosis, support along with acceptance (which took time) of my ASD traits "cured" all my mental health issues, like anxiety and depression.

yeah it's funny that a lot of folk sayings have a basis in reality. makes me wonder if they did research into it and that got lost? was it a heightened sense of intuition? maybe it's just making the connection that if you're hungry and thirsty our brains will shift focus to meet those needs and it's our guts that are communicating that to the brain, more so than the brain popping in to check the "fuel" levels.

it's really interesting that you actually have "taste buds" all over you body. it seem likely that the brain is as much like a telephone switch board that receives and then sends a signal to the correct place as it is the one doing much of the "calling and answering" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 86S7a.html

yeah, i think science is long overdue for a reworking of it's basic assumptions and methodologies. when you have a system of inquiry based on breaking things down into smaller and smaller subsets you close yourself off to interactions that don't fit that model.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... uman-ones/

I've seen plenty of proposed "cures" for autism.

Everything from smoking pot to praying to Jesus. Sorry, but sans any actual evidence (actual evidence =/= anecdotes and personal testimony), I'm not willing to run out and try every single supposed "cure" for autism that someone suggests on the basis on it "might" work.

And, so far, you haven't presented me with any reason to take your "cure" any more seriously than the scads of other autism "cures" floating around.

I have asperger's, I have never had any gut problems, I have a stomach like lead. I constantly change my diet and it's never made any difference. My NT partner and family have gut problems but no autistic traits. Sounds like rubbish to me

I've consumed nearly zero dairy for the last 19 years. I've probably drank about 3-4 glasses of milk over that period. I've eaten a bit of cheese, yogurt, and ice cream here and there - but not much at all. Eliminating dairy completely did reduce mucus/phlegm as well as improve my skin, but it didn't notably change autism symptoms. I've never claimed that cutting out dairy alone changed my AS symptoms significantly.

Except I have posted links that reference others achieving the same thing I have, i.e.:

http://www.naturalnews.com/045148_autis ... ction.html



So it's certainly not just me and me alone who has done this. Chances are there are hundreds, if not thousands, more out there who have done similar things & achieved similar results.

That's because it would change everything for you.. as it has for me. And it's a good thing! As someone who's made these changes, I would NEVER go back. Ever. I'm happier, healthier & wealthier for it. I still have subtle traits as well as some I consider beneficial, but I don't have strong symptoms screwing with my ability to function in day to day life and work, socializing and so on.

It hasn't even been a year on these forums and the attitude towards all of this has definitely changed. Here we are in this thread having a pretty normal discussion about it, whereas just several short months ago in the link in my signature people weren't so willing to accept what I had stated and some were.. not so nice about it. It's pretty cool to see that change happening right here on WP. Not because I want to say "told ya so," or any other egotistical reason, but rather because it's pretty exciting to think that if people here become more open to what I've shared, some may try it, and it may change their lives for the better as it has mine.. and that's pretty cool.

You seem to be under the impression, Shadi, that the nervous system is 'wired' without chemicals. That is simply not the case, chemicals are what cause the nervous system to work in the first place. And depending on how one neuron reacts to another neuron it's interacting with, the first neuron will change how it works. There's hardly such thing as hard-wiring, and there is definitely no such thing as structural differences in the brain without there being chemical differences to go along with them. The brain structure itself changes in response to the neurotransmitters that are involved and with how the brain functions. To imply that someone can have autism without structural differences seems wrong, and to say that any sort of chemical change that will affect the brain but will not affect the sort of structural difference that autistics have is just plain out and out wrong. I personally wouldn't be surprised if there were some sort of constant, chemical interference that keep's autistic's brains different the way they do.




To the person who trusts pharmaceuticals because they've been scientifically tested, there's plenty of evidence of drug companies basically twisting findings to support their business. SSRI's for instance, were found to have been adopted because eli lily was doing things like running so many trials of a drug, then cherry-picking the ones that showed it was helpful, so that they can then sell the drug. But the reality is that if you look at all the studies that were done, we'd find that the drugs themselves wouldn't be deemed helpful enough to even exist had companies not basically lied.
(I am NOT out to refute anyone who improves on SSRIs, that would be utterly foolish and illogical of me to presume to know better than you how you react to something.)

Have you gone gluten free before though? Because if, for instance, you had something like Celiac Disease, I seriously doubt that whatever changes you'd made to your diet would have involved you being gluten free enough to not still have your immune system react. For instance, I had to buy a ton of new kitchen utensils and pans etc. when I was diagnosed, because the amount of gluten that will be caught in cuts and scrapes and porous things would be enough for my immune system to react.
It also took me months before really noticing a difference in my symptoms. It's been 2 years now since being gluten free and I'm still not feeling perfectly healthy, and that's not abnormal.
Also, I'd only experienced stomach issues after I tried going on birth control, which is I figure a good 7 or so years after I'd probably developed celiac disease, and even then they weren't bad. But that didn't change the fact that upon a scope and biopsy of the upper part of my small intestine, I had severe internal damage that would have likely existed for a decade or more, and my antibodies in my blood were literally off the charts high.
To note, I specifically have neurological symptoms when I eat gluten. I have brain fog, get tired, get moody, will have body temperature fluctuations, I have peripheral neuropathy...all because of a food I was eating.

I'm not saying you're a celiac, I'm saying that whatever dietary changes you've made have probably not been strict enough or long enough to actually figure out if something you eat may be making you sick.

My symptoms improved a lot with a better diet, and some disappeared. My brain is clearly very different when seen on a brain scan.

To Goldfish:

I will try to explain this one last time (I know my posts are often too long, I've been told it was tedious to read them sometimes, so I apologize in advance for that).

I am pretty certain that if you were cured by a diet your brain was likely perfectly normal (i.e. not autistic) to begin with, you only had symptoms of Autism, possibly caused by chemical reactions/imbalances to certain substances, for whatever reasons (including possibly this bacteria you mentioned). Similarly to people who are allergic to certain food and it causes them to feel drunk, spacey, dizzy, etc (bacterias - including Candida, a.k.a. yeast infection -, Lyme disease, and other diseases, can also cause this).

This is the diet I have heard about from parents who told me it had cured their child http://autism-diet.com/ , maybe yours is different, I don't know.

But I don't know why people are so surprised about the intestine being mentioned, because a lot happens in the intestines, for example "the primary function of the small intestine is the absorption of nutrients and minerals found in food". Of course it goes through your stomach and intestine, and then your bloodstream, before getting to your brain (and your body in general), unless you get the nutrients by injection, in which case it goes directly into your bloodstream.

"The absorbed substances are transported via the blood vessels to different organs of the body where they are used to build complex substances such as the proteins required by our body."

- Iron is absorbed in the duodenum.
- Vitamin B12 (Extrinsic factor) and bile salts are absorbed in the terminal ileum.
- Water and lipids are absorbed by passive diffusion throughout the small intestine.

Etc etc.

Gut flora also plays an important role.

And here is a brief explanation of what happens in your body when you drink alchool, and how it affects the circuits in your brain (similarly to everything else you eat, i.e. the brains needs nutrients to function, just like any other part of your body):

For a person who is actually autistic (i.e. who was actually born with an autistic brain, a brain that is actually wired differently than the "neurotypical" brain), medication can help alleviate certain issues, and the brain can "develop" new circuits overtime (as explained by Temple Grandin and others), and the person can learn from experiences just like anyone else, but I don't believe that it is treatable through a diet (anymore than you would be able to grow a finger, or make one disappear, with a diet), contrary to your symptoms that were treatable with a diet. (p.s. Mainly what bothers me with your statement, is the fact that you seem to believe that a diet will cure everyone because it cured you, and you don't seem to understand that a lot of people are born with a brain that is actually different, just like Temple Grandin and Daniel Tammet, some of the differences in their brains is actually observable through scans, among other differences, Temple has a very developed visual cortex, and Daniel has some circuits that link parts of his brain that are not usually linked, that's why he sees numbers with colors and sounds).

At this point, I am also curious about the specific symptoms of people who were diagnosed with Autism but were cured with a diet. In your case for example, which symptoms did you have (and got rid of after your diet), and what did the therapist tell you when you were diagnosed?

Maybe at some point science will be advanced enough to do all the tests necessary to identify those who have symptoms of Autism due to these chemical reactions/imbalances, and the ones who actually have an autistic brain, before making a diagnosis of Autism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__7_dqnTHC0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_intestine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora

Last edited by Shadi2 on 29 Jun 2014, 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And other people have posted links to their autism "cures."

Additionally, I didn't see any actual studies in that link, just a bunch of claims being made about studies.



And there are hundreds if not thousands of people who believe in ghosts.

Doesn't mean I take them seriously, either.

Was your brain actually different, or do you mean different areas were "enlightened" (not sure of the right word here) in brain scans? Because if so it doesn't necessarily means that you brain was actually different, with circuits actually different (like Temple who has a visibly very developped visual cortex, and Daniel who has circuits that are different than most people and these additional circuits are also visible on scans), but could simply mean that different areas of your brain were "working" more than others, for whatever reason, chemical imbalance, or the bacteria that goldfish mentioned that possibly causes a chemical imbalance.