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

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Eating badly, ( ignoring your gut's needs ) is even more "expensive" and inconvenient.

AS have difficulty "digesting" noise, flashing/flickering lights, etc. Our, AS, guts have difficulty digesting starch, etc. I say love your "second brain" as you love yourself, and take its needs into account as many AS here wish NTs would theirs.

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Ah well, there's your mistake. You don't know your body as well as The Experts know it
(remember the child birth scene in "The Meaning Of Life"? A woman can't possibly know how to give birth, only the Expert doctors know. And the machine that goes Ping. Same for diet.)

The lack of empiricism about nutrition really frustrates me. Name *almost* any food, and you can find some Expert who has 'proof' that it's bad for you. I don't trust the research because their os just SO much money at stake now. Research has shown that research can prove anything. Especially when funded by Big Corporations. For a long time, the tobacco companies had research backed up by plenty of Experts who could prove that smoking was NOT bad for your health. Somewhere, there probably still are people who can prove that smoking has been demonized, that lung cancer is caused by carrots or something....

I've tried a few diet regimes. The only one that I really noticed any difference in my being was when I cut gluten out for a week or so. The difference was psychological, I felt much calmer, clear headed, just better than normal. But now Ouinon, I think you're saying that just cutting out gluten isn't enough? That gluten free pasta and flour is not enough! Oh my, what does that leave me to eat but .....raw plants, nuts and meat. Coincidentally what our ancestors ate for about 90% of our species time on earth.

To me there is nothing crazy about suggesting we are best off eating what we as a species have always eaten. And that isn't processed food with the additives from hell added to get us addicted to the junk and to increase shelf life. BTW I agree that when eating less processed food, and more raw, untampered food, I eat *less* in general. I think at least some of the additives in food are addictive and are responsible for the obesity problem.

Ounon, have you heard about research where they changed the diet of young male offenders in prison? Primarily, they cut the processed junk out and replaced with fresh veg, fruit etc. And found that the behavior of the inmates improved measurably. And these were people with serious behavioural problems. Surely that's significant? Yet we still fillour children up with crisps, fizzy drinks, fast food and then complain about the increase in behavioural problems, Doh!! !! !

If processed food is sending us mad, the problem is that we're all to mad to realise it!

Anemone, you mentioned about what it was like to be "Vegetarian before it was cool". As a vegetarian for many years, although not one now, I know what you mean. I have noticed that the 'free from' section of the supermarkets is growing all the time. At one city supermarket I go to, it is a whole aisle now!

<EDIT> Some links on the prison inmate diet research:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2764165.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/ ... odanddrink

Duh. But I'm on welfare = not enough money for basics (food, shelter) + free healthcare for when I (inevitably) get sick. My housing is run down enough to be hurting me, too.

I don't know what it's like in France, but here, if you're on the dole, you're on half rations.

I suspect that may be one reason why the British Prison Service has not officially accepted the results of the study which ManErg referred to.



If the Prisons accepted such findings officially the government would be practically forced, in the interests of law and order, to provide more money or vitamin, mineral, and essential oil supplements to people on a low income.

And require both public/govt and private run residential institutions to meet those standards.

It's true, I remember that living on the dole/welfare made it difficult to eat anything but tuna salad and egg when I was trying to avoid carbohydrates in general at one point.

But I felt a lot better on that, ( a big bowl a day of lettuce, raw chopped carrot, cucumber, fresh parsley, tinned tuna, garlic, and egg ), than I did on toast, pizza, big pans of chilli beans, or rice and lentils according to macrobiotic principles.

Imagine the ( glorious ) revolution if the Prison Service admitted that food made a significant difference to people's behaviour. No wonder they have opted for "further studies", ( the very least that they could get away with seeing the results of the study ). That will take a few more years, and perhaps they hope people will forget about it.

A school in London banned sugar from its premises for a year and saw dramatic improvements in both academic results and pupils' behaviour.

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I have just found out that an increasingly influential approach already exists which advises AS to cut out starch, aswell as the more difficult di-saccharides.

It is called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, ( SCD ), and is based on research into the effect of toxins produced by pathogenic bacteria living off undigested starch ( polysaccharides ), ( and difficult di-saccharides ), in the gut.

Apparently studies of AS children have found that they have, on average, 10,000 times more of these bacteria living in their guts than NT children, and that the chemicals these bacteria produce, lipo-polysaccharides, are endotoxins, whose negative effects on mental and physical health have already been widely documented.

Studies about lipo-polysaccharides and their implications are presented/discussed at:

http://www.microbialinfluence.com/

The name of this site, ( microbial influence ), reminded me of Richard Dawkins saying, in "The Blind Watchmaker", that animal behaviour, including ours, could be manipulated by viruses and bacteria. The pathogenic bacteria need polysaccharides to survive, and they create cravings for carbohydrates, ( among other things ), in people whose guts are sufficiently colonised by them.

There is also a site devoted to explaining the Specific Carbohydrate diet and the bacterial background, including research references, at:

http://www.pecanbread.com/new/research1.html

There is an excerpt of Elaine Gottschall's book, " Breaking the Vicious Cycle" ( about the diet etc ); a chapter on the body-brain connection and AS, at:

http://www.pecanbread.com/new/btvc1.html

( ignore the very short reference to Wakefield somewhere in the middle. It is not crucial to the argument. )

My almost 10 year old AS/PDD son, ( gluten-free since age 2, but still very thin, pale, and with dark circles under his eyes, and continuing difficulties with social contact and language use, though nowhere near as bad as it used to be ), has already said he will go on the diet, with me, as soon as he has finished the ( almost empty ) packets of cornflakes and coco-pops. ( I think we'll miss potatoes most )

I want us to both be well/healthy aspies/AS.
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Last edited by ouinon on 22 Feb 2009, 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I already feel more energetic, capable, confident, and positive after 14 days simply starch-free.

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Have fun with that placebo effect. It's a real, measurable effect and it's nice that you're taking advantage of it, but I wouldn't go connecting it to anything more than your belief that your diet's causing an improvement.

Unless you had problems--actual problems, not theoretical "my gut is causing all this trouble" without so much as constant diarrhea or constipation or cramps--then I betcha it's doing absolutely nothing for you.

Important difference: Processing.
Your brain's sensory processing is spent about 95% on sensations coming from the skin and muscles, especially hands, feet, and face, and only 5% or so processing space coming from internal organs. Only part of that is from the digestive system.

http://www.alinenewton.com/images/homunculus.jpg

Granted: A sore ankle, even though it's only a small part of your body, can cause a lot of stress. However, a messed-up digestive system doesn't cause more sensation to come in than a sore ankle or even a sprained finger. Sure, you may have digestive problems; but chances are, if you have them, you know about them, and you're doing something to alleviate them.

The starch thing is just ridiculous. Many of us find it much easier to digest than most other things. For example, my little sister does very well on bread and milk, but has problems when she tries to digest red meat.

Here is a very useful table showing which foods are ok and which are not:

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info ... al_a-c.htm

It is a comprehensive check-list so you can look foods up by name to see if they contain a polysaccharide or disaccharide. There are a few other things excluded on the basis that they are hard for a battered gut to handle, but I think the best approach is simplicity, no complicated recipes. Think stone-age and it will probably be more or less alright.

And Spring is coming, ( for most of us! ), it's a good time for a springcleaning!

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Does she have this problem when she eats red meat on its own, or when she eats it with chips or rice or other carbohydrate?

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The brain/CNS requires feedback from the gut/Enteric Nervous System to establish what "we" are feeling about a situation. It is an automatic mechanism. The brain sees/hears/receives some data and its processes connect this data with memories/conditioning/other data already laid down, and then it "waits" for feedback from the gut, in order to evaluate what "we" feel about the situation/data.

When the gut/Enteric Nervous System is functioning well this information arrives quickly, and is generally reliable. The CNS/brain then "knows" if "we" are angry/afraid/anxious etc, and acts accordingly.

When the gut is overloaded/disturbed, not only is the feedback slower but it is also confused by other information. The gut is already, in a sense, in a state of anxiety, ( high acid, and/or colonisation by pathogenic bacteria, and presence of endotoxins; look them up; it is sound and repeated/replicated research !)

This leads the CNS to "think" that we are in danger, and to order a retreat, or react aggressively ...

... Or perhaps the most important effect, if the feedback is slow in coming, it simply doesn't "know" what we are feeling ... ... until a lot later!

It is not our brain which is responsible for processing the majority of the information about our digestion. It is the immensely complex second brain of our ENS which is, and which when overloaded, by bacterial toxins for instance, is unable to correctly carry out its role of "emotion" feedback to the brain.
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Last edited by ouinon on 23 Feb 2009, 4:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think you've got it the other way around--the digestive system responds to the brain. Anxiety causes indigestion; but you can have indigestion and have no more anxiety than is caused directly by the indigestion. It's possible to have anxiety or stress and no GI symptoms at all.

Do a bit of research on the limbic system. Trace the paths of the hormones between the different organs, and see what each function of each organ does. Especially check out how it hooks into the autonomic nervous system, and what happens when the autonomoic nervous system goes into "fight or flight" mode. That's how the connections happen--from brain (where sensory processing is located, and where the limbic system sits and controls the rest of the body) to autonomic nervous system, and from there to the rest of the body, including your enteric nervous system.

Obviously, communication takes place both ways; but you can easily see that there's no easy way for digestive problems to cause emotional or mental problems (other than through increasing pain and increasing stress level, as any physical discomfort will do); while there are plenty of ways for things to go from the brain to the GI tract.

Mom checked it out--gave the kid a couple of hamburger patties for lunch, and nothing else. I'll spare you the details, but classic IBS symptoms. She didn't even want to eat them (smart kid). That's the only way to know--you can't feed people a bunch of foods in combination and then assume it's got to be this food or the other because one sounds more suspicious. So she avoids red meat and she's doing just fine. It's pretty much a no-brainer, right? Something gives you indigestion, you avoid it.

People are sensitive to different things, and the only way to tell if it's anything at all, is to eat it and see if it causes problems.

I'm not saying "ignore GI symptoms", obviously. If you have 'em, take care of them. But they're no root cause. At most, they're a complicating factor.

There is one theory that we are the descendants of the Neanderthals and should be eating a lot more meat and a whole lot less of just what you said we should avoid, and the idea we can't look people in the eye because we are abusing our g uts is a good one, as is the idea that maybe we lack the gut feelings to guide us emotionally that Neurotypicals have because we are keeping our gut in pain and drugged up with stuff we should not be eating.


A very good theory and a very good observation. I do not eat gluten and I have found if I can stay away from MSg which isn't easy to do because it hides under 30 different names. (google it) I can avoid melt downs. (MSG is in every live virus shot). Milk does not seem to effect me but gluten does.

I may try cutting out most other starches and see if I do better. Thank you.

Cutting out starch altogether is a bad, bad idea. People have died of it. Too few carbohydrates, and your body goes into ketoacidosis.

You obviously haven't heard of the inuit indians/eskimos either, just like Silvervarg earlier in the thread hadn't.

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The brain is not capable of recognising that it is feeling anxious/angry whatever without the gut's reactions.

When the gut is colonised/"controlled" by pathogenic bacteria spilling out endotoxins/lipopolysaccharides etc the brain/CNS won't get those reactions for quite a while, or only in extreme situations. It would explain the often very long, and confusing/disabling, ( socially etc ) time lag between event and feelings/reactions that AS experience/describe so often. ( It may not be an inevitable part of being AS/aspie in fact ).

"Vagal Signalling Mechanisms" at: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/551794_2 ( if it won't link, because no access to Medscape on WP, just tap in the title on google and you'll get it )



I just found an interesting article about the effect that stimulating the cannabinoid receptors in the gut has on gastrointestinal contractility, depending on whether the gut is covered in lipopolysaccharides or not, ( those endotoxins produced by bacteria living off undigested starch in the gut and which are present in 10,000 times more numbers in AS), at:

http://ajpgi.physiology.org/cgi/content ... /295/1/G78

Apparently stimulating the cannabis/cannabinoid receptors will only cause changes to the gut when lipopolysaccharides are present.

I was thinking just last night, how cannabis made me very hungry/gave me the munchies, and wondering whether perhaps marijuana had an effect on the ENS. If it only does in the presence of lipopolysaccharides that might explain why so many AS find it helps them socialise, ( as it did me ), whereas most NTs that I know who have tried it don't notice much if any difference.
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Last edited by ouinon on 23 Feb 2009, 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

My diet for more than an year consisted mostly of fresh and oily fish, fresh vegetables and fruits and eggs. In the morning, I have a few fiber-rich crackers (although I found coconut to be a great source of fiber). I never eat canned foods (except for the fish) or frozen stuff. I don't like pizza and fast food. On weekends I cook more elaborately, but always with fresh ingredients ( this occasionally includes pasta or rice). I've been recommended oily fish in order to increase my vitamin A levels - the lack of it seems to cause or facilitate depression - and I did noticed an improvement.

While this is a very healthy diet and I'm very happy with it, I did not noticed any improvement whatsoever with my AS related issues.