*Starch, or the Decline and Fall of the AS Organism!*
I have not been quoting "parent's tales of success on this diet", but my idea illustrated/supported by studies/research/papers which show/explain that:
1) The sulphation pathway, necessary for production of pancreatic amylase which is essential for starch digestion, is disrupted/dysfunctional in AS
2) AS children have 10,000 times more pathogenic bacteria, ( living on that undigested starch ), in their guts than NT children
3) These bacteria produce endotoxins, lipopolysacccharides, which have a serious effect on mental and physical health, effects which have been well documented
4) Large numbers of people do say that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to eliminate these bacteria has a positive effect, but that, like your post, is anecdotal, and has no statistical significance.
Nor have I said that a starch-free diet "cures" AS. Except in so far as aspies/AS might get well, from all the many problems of depression, anxiety, panic feelings, overload, chronic fatigue/low energy, brain-fog/confusion, loss of initiative/capacity, etc which plague so many of us.
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Last edited by ouinon on 23 Feb 2009, 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
I didn't imagine you were seeing this it as a cure and I agree that a healthy diet and exercise can help - especially with low energy levels and depression. Although I am very happy with the diet and it has obvious advantages for me, I was a bit surprised to hear it might also help with AS. Honestly, I expected it to have o good impact on my sleep related issues, but I guess I'm just not a success story .
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"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)
Perhaps if you cut out starch completely, especially glutenous ones, ( wheat in pizza and pasta ), and the dairy/cheese that goes with it, your sleep might improve?
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I can't stand pizza and I only eat pasta once every two or three months. Exercise or sleeping pills had no effect on my sleeping patterns either. I think this is more about the difficulties I have turning my over-analytic mind off and the fact that I feel much more effective and energetic at night. Fortunately, I usually manage to find the kind of job that allows me this lifestyle.
_________________
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)
You're lucky. Yes, I get that wakeful thing too sometimes. Last night for instance. But it isn't a problem if as you say can sleep/rest at other times. Though last night I am pretty sure had something to do with having eaten some chocolate, ( sucrose and/or the cocoa affecting me ), for the first time in almost 2 weeks.
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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 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.
Marijuana brings our ( lipopolysaccharide coated ) guts alive! ( I am not advocating its use just remarking that this may be a factor in why so many AS describe being better able to socialise with it )
Protect our forests ( guts/Enteric Nervous Systems ), and awaken/revive the ENT ( who will help us deal with life )!
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Last edited by ouinon on 23 Feb 2009, 5:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
I have a rather particular way of compensating - after getting on with 4 to 6 hours of sleep for long periods of time, I sleep between 15 to 20 hours in a row and wake up as good as new. Hubby is green with envy
I'm afraid marijuana doesn't have a very good effect on me, although it seems to help a lot of people.
_________________
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)
The theory is that the pathogenic bacteria and their endotoxins cause our guts to develop many of the intolerances to certain foods, particularly proteins, which the overloaded gut begins to confuse with its own cells, or allow to pass through the gut walls as if they were its own cells, and so clearing the gut of those bacteria helps deal with the rest of one's diet, the red meat or gluten, etc.
Keep us posted about the effect it has if you do.
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I think that the more original, creative/intelligent horror films, ( those which are the most frightening and successful when they are first released too ), are very often expressions of society's darkest deepest, and unadmitted, fears at that epoch.
I suggest that the Alien quadrilogy contains two films in particular which expressed society's unconscious knowledge that what it was putting in its mouth was putting it in danger. And that the alien emerging from the stomach represents the destructiveness unleashed by bacteria, etc in our guts.
I think that the astonishing and brilliant decor used is very significant. It looks like the inside of the body.
Not only do the structures on the crashed alien ship in the first film, Alien, look like ligaments, tendons, bones, etc, but in the second film, Aliens, the "nest" of hundreds of aliens is situated in the "bowels" of the warm/hot nuclear reactor, and the corridors of the building have been transformed by their secretions, and look very like the folded, lipped, rolling and sinuous walls of an intestine, minus the villi. Stuck to the walls are people serving as living meals for young aliens, and in the heart of the complex are eggs, thousands of them.
The aliens also spray highly corrosive acid when injured, which makes holes in walls and floors. And aliens emerging from their eggs and seeking a host just have to make you open your mouth.
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Oookay then....
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Reports from a Resident Alien:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com
Autism Memorial:
http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com
But what about a diet that has plenty of carbs, but not starch? Fresh fruits. It's not a given that low starch has to mean low carb. While I see no reason to drop starchy foods from my diet, I see no reason why we need them.
It's actually not as simple as that, ( "a no-brainer" ). In fact it took me until this morning to realise what the real explanation for her IBS-style reaction to meat on its own might be. I also remembered that I used to find mainly meat meals difficult to digest, before I started experimenting with exclusion diets.
People whose guts are colonised by abnormally vast numbers of pathogenic bacteria, as AS guts reportedly are, have a tendency to become auto-immune-sensitive to proteins anyway, but, more importantly, a regular supply of starch/complex carbos is necessary to keep the bacteria, ( and the person, in the short-term anyway ), flourishing.
I found out yesterday, while reading about all this, that the lipopolysaccharides, ( endotoxins produced by bacteria, which provoke the cytokine/auto-immune inflammatory reactions ), are actually bits of bacterial walls which are "shed" whenever the bacteria die.
Bacteria die off all the time. But if you suddenly interrupt their usual schedule of starch they will die off in even greater numbers, resulting in more lipopolysaccharides, and increased inflammation.
What your sister experienced when eating a meal of burgers alone only may not have been just a reaction to a protein "challenge", but also the consequences of an interruption in the normal supply of starch to the bacteria which survive on it. And this caused "classic IBS" symptoms. In that sense the experiment was very badly designed. Your mother should have fed her a starchy carbohydrate at the same time.
I also used to think that wheat and dairy were the easiest things to digest, apart from fruit, but that was because the starch, ( in the bread, etc), kept the bacteria happy, and the peptide-opioid in the gluten kept my brain "high"/dreamy/drifty, until the constant inflammation provoked by the endotoxins in my gut became too much for my body, ( in my mid-late twenties ).
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Last edited by ouinon on 24 Feb 2009, 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
No, not really; if that had been the case she would react the same way to any meal not including carbohydrates...
_________________
Reports from a Resident Alien:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com
Autism Memorial:
http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com
That would depend on the kind of meal not containing carbohydrates. Pure salad or non-starchy vegetables for instance would probably not provoke a reaction, because there would be very little digestion/breakdown involved.
Whereas if you mean egg and bacon or fish with green veg and nothing else then you're right. It's just that most "modern" meals include some form of carbohydrate so I am curious.
Beef is the most common meat to which many people are intolerant so if she can handle other protein meals with no carbohydrate I agree it looks as if my explanation for her reaction does not hold water, and that she is intolerant of beef.
But the example on its own was/is not enough to prove either beef-intolerance or a healthy gut/ability to handle starch.
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To recap:
2) AS children have 10,000 times more pathogenic bacteria, ( living on that undigested starch ), in their guts than NT children
3) These bacteria produce endotoxins, lipopolysacccharides, which have a serious effect on mental and physical health, effects which have been well documented
4) Large numbers of people do say that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to eliminate these bacteria has a positive effect, but that is anecdotal, and has no statistical significance.
Aswell as these fairly strong indicators for a connection between AS and gut problems and negative impacts on the mind aswell as the body, I have also discovered that the Vagus Nerve, ( and vagal signals in response to inflammation in the intestines, provoked by endotoxins for example ), is profoundly involved in determining behaviour aswell as general health.
"Bacterial Endotoxins induce immuno-reactivity in primary afferent neurons of the vagus nerve" by Gaykema, Goehler, et al. says:
If you're wondering what "sickness behaviour" is:
And other studies, eg: Ken et al, also found that "sickness behaviour" produces "impaired cognitive functioning".
An excellent article called "A Mind Under Seige" at: http://biopsychiatry.com/immunesystem/index.html , looks at the new findings which suggest that chronic immune system reactions/inflammation may cause various mental conditions:
And as AS have difficulty digesting starch, ( compared to NTs ) and abnormally large populations of pathogenic bacteria living in their guts as a consequence, ( producing inflammatory endotoxins ), that means that AS are likely to be suffering from far more mental health problems than the general population, ... so long as we carry on eating starch and other complex carbohydrates.
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Last edited by ouinon on 24 Feb 2009, 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
One reason why people may be intolerant of some meats (e.g. beef) and not others (e.g. lamb) may be the food the animal was eating. Some animals are fed commercial chow, or are loaded up on grains before slaughter, while others are only grazed on natural pasture. Lamb is usually problem-free because it's usually grazed only, whereas beef is usually fattened up on something before it goes to slaughter. However in some places, lamb is fattened up on grains too (why, I have no idea), so you have to be careful about this.
Optimal diet also depends on body type. People high in endomorphy have longer intestines than people low in endomorphy (especially low endomorphy/high ectomorphy), and do better with less heavy foods like red meat, more light foods like salad, since their guts, being longer, are more efficient at extracting nutrients.
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