*Starch, or the Decline and Fall of the AS Organism!*

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I read something about that too. I definitely feel particularly alive/awake/"able" when I eat lots of lettuce, and carrot, cucumber, chicory, and celery sticks with avocado mush, or tuna-mayonnaise, and watercress and parsley sprigs, and not much else!

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A new study, ( Campbell et al ), published in the March issue of the journal "Pediatrics", has established that there is a genetic link between autism and gastrointestinal disorders/problems.

Brief article about it at:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... bellyaches

Abstract from the study at:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c ... 123/3/1018

Anyone interested in reading an absolutely brilliant overview of the field of autism research from a systemic perspective might want to look at Martha Herbert's paper, " Autism; A Brain Disorder, or a Disorder Affecting the Brain?", publ. in "Clinical Neuropsychiatry" last year, available at:

http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/herbert1.pdf

Solinoure, she talks about the recent and important study by Vargas, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, inflammatory cytokine and chemokine profiles, among other things.

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A quick Google search suggests the lifespan of Innuit's in Canada is actually about 65 for males and 70 for females. i.e. about 10 years less than the average Canadian.

The difference is probably due to the virtually non-existant health care of the Innuit. If the average Westerner had minimal health care, no organ transplants, no chemotherapy etc etc, with our current diets, our life expectancy would be much, much less than 65!

All other things in consideration, I have little doubt that our diet is far more unhealthy than the typical hunter-gatherer diet. Their is only one problem with the typical diet promoted by the food industry: it's designed to make money, not healthy human beings. Our huge health industry then makes more money patching up the damage caused by our unhealthy lifestyles.

In fact you could say that it, ( the pharmaceutical and physical and mental health service industry ), is like our immune-system, which has become inflamed/swollen/out-of-control largely as a result of our unnatural eating habits.

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Wondering whether, ( like phenylketonuria ), the only real, ( non-socially-constructed ), "disability" that many/most AS are born with might be genetically determined dysfunctions/disruptions of a few metabolic pathways which make certain environmental factors, particularly some foods, difficult to deal with, and which if not noticed early enough result in increasingly impaired cognitive function and mood.

This would fit with the fact that what is currently diagnosed as/understood to "be" AS tends not to "show" itself until the second year of life, or later.

Perhaps if the genes responsible for such malfunctioning metabolic pathways were identified, and screening was carried out on all babies in the same way as for PKU, it might be possible, ( through diet, as with PKU ), to prevent the effects on mood and cognitive functioning, which are increasingly common, and which may also be the most disabling aspects, and to re(dis)cover the strength and creativity and capacities of "well" AS.

If this happened, if it was officially established that the presence of "a gene" ( or two or three ) , resulted in an incapacity to metabolise certain foods without suffering serious mental dysfunction, ( by which I mean the often "associated" depression, anxiety, mood-disorder, brain-fog, poor memory, inertia, etc, not AS itself ), would the govt have to provide the financial aid necessary to provide the special diets? Do people with phenylketonuria receive such support?

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Was just reading that "Carbohydrate-rich diets exacerbate post-prandial lipaemia", which is associated with Alzheimers and some other things.

Will hunt out the study referred to, for more info, but I read somewhere else that the cognitive impairment; poor memory, confusion, etc experienced ( to some degree ) by some/many people on the spectrum resembles that of alzheimers.

I think what is making AS increasingly "visible" is not only socially constructed disability, but vulnerability to certain environmental factors which have become more widespread, and what society sees as AS is in fact "AS ill-health", which is as spectacular/noticeable as their achievements when well/reasonably "together".

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No, there is more than just a vague theory here. This is an AS individual who has taken on the subject as a 'special interest' and obviously has been systemizing and constructing a coherent analytical framework. Never underestimate the quality of an AS's special interest analytical framework.

The ideas in this thread are actually brilliant. ouinon has constructed a system of related ideas that are quite consistent with the latest research. The notion, for example, that there is distributed intelligence in our bodies, including in the form of our "gut" reactions and feelings, is a pretty good way to explain the independent nervous system looping that occurs in our digestive system, and how the digestive system signaling is connected to our endocrine and brain function. A lot of electrochemical wiring, from our tastebuds's brain signaling to the intestines signaling the stomach, makes the digestive system a separate part of a distributed nervous system. I.e. all of our ideas and behavior does not unfold in our brains, but a lot of it comes from our digestive system. This is also true of skin, as ouinon has also pointed out. Our most tightly wired neurological behavior is connected to the outside world via the sensory net distributed over our bodies in our skin and the digestive system which processes the external input of food that we need to on and that we have to successfully find and eat every day. The skin supports our sensory net and drives our reaction/sensing behavior to the external physical world, and the digestive system drives most of our eating and much of our other basic survival minds and thinking.

As an organism, our intelligence is directed not only by our brains and nerve tissues, our skin and our digestive system. If you look at how the embryo develops its first major shape and what kinds of cells form what parts of the body, the same tissue folds and grows in such a way to grow our brains, nervous system, skin and digestive system. Other cells give rise to all the other tissues in our body.

Everything ouinon is saying is consistent with the latest good science, insightfully woven together in a coherent framework that connects diet to function.

I'm also interested in this topic. What ouinon is saying and the framework of ouinon's ideas are applicable to everyone, not just AS. But it's particularly relevant to AS, given the sensorimotor and sensory integration differences in neurological makeup.

I agree that human food culture is completely broken in America right now. Corporate farms and food processing industry players have pretty much taken control of the FDA and USDA, and they make big business out of transforming cheap staples into overpriced, processed, artificially flavored and nutritionally depleted refined starch and sugar foods that Americans are addicted to like drugs. There's some talk in DC right now about merging and reorganizing the FDA and USDA because those federal agencies have gotten so broken they can't even keep foodborne pathogens like e. coli and salmonella under control anymore. There are a lot of infectious and industrial contamination problems with the U.S. food supply right now. And that's on top of the fact that Americans have been conditioned to live off nutritionally depleted white flour, white rice, white pasta and sugar-heavy diets. There's actually some scientific inquiry going on right now trying to investigate why Americans are ignoring the scientific research into nutrition and diet, and why they're continuing to eat the same ignorant, unhealthy food that doctors have been telling them is creating these type II diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and cancer epidemics in the U.S. in this generation. These are not natural foods, not even refined sugar, and our bodies react to these empty calorie foods like any other drugs -- with inflammation, infection, allergic reactions and mental deterioration.

This is good stuff! I'll bookmark this thread for my journal! Thanks for sharing this very relevant, important and leading-edge special interest into a health topic that affects us all, but particularly AS people with sensory integration dysfunction and sensitivity issues.

One of the wonderful things about this website is coming across these gifted AS systemizers and the great work they do in the area of their special interests, all on their own, and that they post here to share with other AS.

Well, I googled for Eskimo, so I guess it was people on green land. I belive they don't have quite the same lifestyle.


(Last post here in this thread.)
And this might as well be as simple as that the lack of sertain neutritions increase moodswings. So that this will only work on Auties becouse they are Auties, is something I'm very sceptical towards.


It reduces all behaviours for everyone! The simple purose of a fewer is to stop people from meeting other people and infect them too.


Tell me please, what does these bacterias do after they die? And why do we have them in our guts?


A study here in sweden (i think it was here, whatever) showed that you'll get cancer by eating fried foods.
Of course you had to eat about twice your bodyweight every day for decades, but that's just details...


They compared 36 with 319? This is NOT a valid studie.
One Autie is ~3% and one NT was ~0,3% of the result. You can't rule out the chance of coincidences on such small base.


Either of two conclutions:
1. Not a vaild argument here, unless stress completly "cuts" the nerve.
2. No one with AS eating starshes ever has a fewer. (False, I can vow for that.)


Strange, this should (by all logic) make all Autise extremly depressed and suicidal whenever they have a fewer. Never noticed anything like that.

Could you please reply on everything (in one post) if you're going to do that, not just the things you feel like answering.

And they had a very different diet.



The thing is that all people have many dietary responses, but AS people are much more sensitive to shifts in their cognitive function. It's not that easy for AS people to block out their moods and pretend to be normal, on days when they're feeling poorly. In general, biochemical and sensory disruptions can affect AS peoples' behavior and functioning much more than normal people. Finally, there's the whole subject of genetics: genetic expression can change depending on environment. That opens up a whole new world of possibility.



Well that's an unusual theory of fevers. And one that isn't quite relevant to her point.



That sounds like a question for the bacteria philosophers.



You don't have to eat twice your body weight in fried foods every day for decades to get cancer from a bad diet. I'm sure you can find studies that explain how easy it is to get cancer from a bad diet, with a single Google search.



Most AS studies are quite small in number for a reason. You just don't see MRI and physical sample work on huge numbers of AS children. You probably won't be seeing any "10,000 autistic children" blood test studies any time soon.



Both of your conclusions are fallacies.



I think that it's pretty widely known that immune system activity drags down cognitive function. In fact, if someone comes in complaining of mental fog and depression is one of the things the doctor will do is test for infection or allergic response (for example, checking for white blood cells).

When pathogenic bacteria die their cell walls break up, releasing lipopolysaccharides into the gut. Lipopolysaccharides are endotoxins and trigger immune-system activity.

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Wow! thank you very much.


It is very weird, how people carry on eating total junk in such vast amounts. If it turns out that advertising, marketing and manufacturing methods really are to blame, ( for this sleep-walking/hypnotised behaviour ), then perhaps one day they will have to stop, and not only will food advertising will be made illegal, or severely restricted, as cigarette and alcohol ads are now, but processed/refined foods will be taxed, at least as heavily as cigarettes.

I tried that atkins diet turned me into a really moody, irritable foul mouthed, SOB but when I got off it I was in a much better mood. So really the whole starch is bad for autistic people is in my opinion false and only helps when it causes GI problems which cause discomfort, pain, constipation, etc.

How long did you do it for?

If you only tried it for a couple of weeks what you experienced is exactly what is supposed to happen if your gut is full of bacteria living on undigested starch; massive die-off, huge amounts of endotoxins being released into your gut and correspondingly bad mood, increased irritability, etc a kind of "withdrawal", ( especially if you exposed a previously hidden intolerance to gluten by cutting out wheat, because food intolerances often produce "addiction" to the problem food ).

In fact those symptoms were more than likely a sign that a starch-free diet might make a big difference to you.

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It occurs to me, as studies have shown that many/most AS have metabolic differences which make digestion of starch, and consequently of certain proteins, more difficult for them, etc, etc, and that this may well be causing a number of "sickness behaviour" symptoms, ranging from fatigue/lethargy/inertia, through depression, anxiety and mood-disorder, to cognitive impairment/brain-fog, ( incl poor memory ), that diet could be for many AS as contraception was for women.

Women have certain metabolic "peculiarities" , pregnancy in particular. Until contraception was widely available women's behaviour was not just circumscribed/restricted by society/social pressures but by the real risk of falling pregnant. It is a physical fact about most women.

So for AS diet could be an important part of resistance/freedom, a way to protect oneself. Because there is no doubt that diet has a huge effect on mental health and ability, and it is more than likely that AS may be more susceptible/vulnerable to this effect than the general population.

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Five weeks starch-free, ( except for a couple of accidental exposures ), though not entirely disaccharide-free, because although have been excluding dairy, ( the lactose disaccharide ), I keep succumbing to sugar/sucrose.

Increased sense of connection, of being part of an immense complex web of totally interconnected elements. Everything, is, connected. ( Had already felt this since cutting out gluten 18 months ago, but it is more and more noticeable ). A huge part of the depression, and the anxiety, that I used to suffer from repeatedly, almost chronically for years, was how disconnected/alienated from the world I felt/was, until I began cutting out gluten, dairy, other things, from time to time.

The saddest thing is that I didn't even realise how alienated/disconnected I felt/was until I began to change my diet.

Anemone, when you cut out starch, what else did you cut out? How did you feel, how/what did you "think"? How long have you been eating most anything again, and have you noticed an effect on your mental/emotional state?

The recent study, ( Campbell, link on previous page ) established that there was a genetic connection between AS and Gastro-intestinal-disorders in 56% of the AS-cases they studied. This suggests, as increasing numbers of people/scientists are saying, that AS is a very unscientific grouping, of many different kinds of people, with several/many different metabolic particularities/susceptibilities, which just happen to create/produce some similar "symptoms".

Although healthier diet, ( more raw/fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, fish, etc, less starch, sugar, etc ), would be of benefit to everyone, a diet which excluded complex-carbos and or other problem foods, might "only" revolutionalise the lives of 56% of those currently diagnosed with AS.
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Last edited by ouinon on 15 Mar 2009, 3:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

I tried it for six months, and each day I got a tad more pissy until I stopped then suddenly I wasn't even 1/20 as moody.

Also you shouldn't forget we need bacteria in our gut that are essential for our health and for immune system to work properly.