I know of at least one book written by and for autistic people who advocates for a gluten free diet. They claim in the book that this significantly reduces their symptoms.
I don’t know if I believe it or not, but the notion of gut-brain axis seems to imply that a good diet should help a bit, right?
Anecdotal, but we grow a heritage strain of wheat here in PHX (Sonoran White).
Its appearance gives me pause. Common commercial wheat is very short in comparison.
I have a friend who can’t eat “common” wheat products from the grocery store, having been diagnosed with severe gluten intolerance, but can eat Sonoran White without symptoms.
You can follow the same exact recipe but substitute Sonoran White flour for standard flower, and they can eat the final product.
I have absolutely no research to support my stance here. But given gluten intolerance is, from my understanding, a microbiome disorder. And Sonoran White grows tall and requires less pesticide/herbicide/fungicide, while common commercial wheat grows low to the ground and the head of wheat sits stewing in a bath of herbicide/pesticide/fungicide - I suspect the difference between the two strains’ impact on the microbiome is less genetic and more environmental.
ADHD research is showing similar early correlation between a mothers’ diet and the rate of ADHD (particularly caffeine consumption). I have a similar belief here that ADHD correlates with caffeine consumption because caffeine is often consumed in liquids containing additives that disrupt the mother’s microbiome.
I strongly suspect that, over the next 100 years, we are going to find that we’ve been waging war on the human biome through food preservatives and environmental contaminants. And that many common chronic disorders/illnesses (including ADHD, Autism, weight gain, etc) in our generation are actually attributable to a disfunctioning microbiome.
> I strongly suspect that, over the next 100 years, we are going to find that we’ve been waging war on the human biome through food preservatives and environmental contaminants. And that many common chronic disorders/illnesses (including ADHD, Autism, weight gain, etc) in our generation are actually attributable to a disfunctioning microbiome.
I suspect you're very right, and I further suspect that there's already research proving this that has been shelved and hidden behind NDAs by the people profiting from this, just as with big tobacco and big oil and big agri etc.
There is a very strong inverse correlation between obesity and elevation above sea level, the higher you go the thinner the people. One of the thoughts is that environmental contaminates are in higher concentrations the further down the water cycle you go, and these contaminants cause obesity.
I’m not sure it’s so simple. Socioeconomic studies indicate that the worse shape you’re in, the less social mobility you are likely to have. Moving on a whim might not be possible for many of these people.
On the other hand, contaminants concentrating further down stream is a known phenomenon and we known we’ve inundated many places with hormone disrupting substances. It doesn’t seem all that complicated or far fetched.
Both could be factors, and I’m not aiming to be contrarian so much as investigate the possibilities a bit. It’s an interesting topic
> And that many common chronic disorders/illnesses (including ADHD, Autism, weight gain, etc) in our generation are actually attributable to a disfunctioning microbiome
That's absolutely not true. Diabetes for instance used to be extremely rare and limited to the elites.
And, for instance, ADHD probably isn't a disorder if you live a very simple life and do manual labor all day. No hyperactivity, no DMV appointments, and your life is decided for you. Remember, all the lines are drawn arbitrarily and something is labeled a disorder when it doesn't work with our (very strange) modern world.
Can't comment on autism though, and this is not directly about micro biome obviously.
A lot of exercise increases focus and reduces fidgetiness. Also, if there's fewer things to keep track of and less everyday choices to make, it's easier.
I have ADHD bad but it virtually goes away while backpacking for reasons I described.
In the 1960s you had to learn to mask your differences or you would suffer violence directed at you. We used to beat kids for not behaving in the ways we expect.
Get enough beatings, you learn to hide the thing that gets you beat.
I'm not at all convinced it was less common back then, just more hidden.
Another confounding variable is that we got so much better at testing many things that we have people living long enough to clearly manifest problems that may not have decades or centuries ago.
Sort of like how a big part of the increase in cancer deaths are people living long enough to die of cancer.
What is referred to cuisine today is partly preserving food in bacteria killing chemicals. Do you mean to hypothesize people ingesting more (traditonal) bactericide are sicker?
The short answer is: No, there isn’t a simple treatment for Autism based on simple diet, lifestyle, or supplement changes. There are countless books, blogs, and social media influencers claiming to have unlocked something, but it never translates to something broadly useful.
There’s a long history of these claimed fixes. They follow popular trends that come and go. They’ve been attached to everything from eliminating dyes and food colorings to every possible alternate diet out there.
Placebo effect is a large part of it. People feel better when they feel like they have some control over their condition. They buy into the popular narrative and then they really do feel better, even if nothing has actually changed physically.
It’s also common for people with major medical diagnoses like Autism to start thinking that every one of their symptoms is attributable to Autism. Some of these people might have gluten intolerance as a separate issue, so going gluten free improves a number of issues for them. Instead of attributing the improvement to improving their gut problem, they assume they have treated their Autism.
And it might also help for reasons that have nothing to do with gluten. Almost any major dietary restriction tends to cause broader changes in diet than just the thing that is restricted.
That’s what I thought too. It seems that the only general lesson we have in dieting which js reliable is “refined sugar bad” and that intermittent fasting works for getting blood sugar under control.
Nah. Most "nutritionists" are clowns. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist with no formal training or certification. The whole field is mostly filled with frauds and grifters.
There are some legitimate people with a Registered Dietician credential who can work as part of a care team to treat medical conditions. But most of us don't need them either. We know what we're supposed to eat, we just don't do it.
There are studies showing positive health outcomes for ASD on a gluten free diet, as well as for epilepsy and schizophrenia. Here [1] is a comment with some links, the featured article might also be interesting.
I have a lot of food allergies and a restaurant in Maryland that specializes in restricted diets pointed some of the research out to me. You can find scores of families with ASD children who have found dietary interventions to be beneficial.
The studies I have seen talk about something called exorphins, it sounded like people with ASD's bodies treat gluten like an opiate.
Gut issues are a common comorbidity with autism, it could just be he had some kind of gluten sensitivity and treating it allowed more energy to compensate for autism.
The other really big comorbidity one is ADHD - I’ve seen claims that the rate is high as 80%, maybe even 100% if you allow for very mild cases that probably wouldn’t be independently diagnosable.
When “comorbidity” is used in this context, are we actually referring to people dying because of it? Or does it just mean “are found together when discussing this disease?”
In common use ("don't be morbid", "that's morbid") I agree that 'morbid' has a connotation of death, so I don't think your understanding is wrong. In this case, a 'co-morbidity' is a term of art in the medical literature with the specific meaning of "occurring with".
The Latin morbus is disease and mortis is [of] death but my experience - and perhaps yours too - is that when discussions of morbidity (i.e. using the word morbid/morbidity) arise, they are often in the context where someone is near death or has died so it is a natural linguistic connection to make.
Remarkably often I find my partner has a different understanding of English words from me - she was schooled in French and can communicate in Italian and Spanish, but is also fluent in English (though spoken with French mannerisms which seem odd to me as a native English speaker). We often find we descend into discussions of the most correct meaning of a word in English which has a Latin root. The dictionary agrees with her mostly but I have an occasional win.
Asperger here, who doesn’t eat gluten at all for almost 3 years now (due to allergy). I cant say it improved symptoms of autism but my life is divided between before/after stopping gluten consumption. I feel like I just started living for real.
I'm hardly an expert on autism but I've fought ADHD for years, and good diet/lifestyle is essential.
Not sure how certain you are of your autism diagnosis, and I'm still not even sure where the line of demarcation is, but it may actually be ADHD. Worth considering.
"Metabolism is the language that the brain, gut and immune system use to communicate, and autism occurs when the communication between these systems is changed"
So it's not unreasonable that for some people, dietary interventions can have some effect on this interplay between systems. Mostly a just a random "YMMV" shot in the dark at this point. But hopefully as this research advances, more targeted and predictable treatments will emerge.
Gluten-free only makes a difference for those with an intolerance. Source: I am HF-ASD, my wife is gluten intolerant so my gluten intake is sporadic but bingey, gluten does nothing at all to me.
The only food that is objectively bad for every single human is processed food. Gluten tends to be processed, so people who needlessly go gluten-free may be incorrectly attributing improvements to that.
Also: if you're not actually intolerant, there is a high chance you're eating gluten without knowing it. Treat yourself to fast food fries? How sure are you that gluten (crumbed chicken) wasn't fried in the oil?
I'll incidentally mention that gluten-free diets tend to incidentally be lower in FODMAPs which are another gut intervention, and autism has LONG correlated to digestive and dietary issues. Ketogenic/low-carb is also popular.
The gut-brain link I'm aware of three major theories. Gut issues could be causing a disorder of the brain. A disorder of the brain could be causing disordered lifestyle habits (Diet, exercise) causing digestive issues. A disorder of the brain could directly impacting digestive function.
I will however say, I would treat claims about the gut-brain axis and autism with the utmost scepticism as disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who popularised the link between the MMR vaccine and autism to personally financially benefit from an undisclosed patent on a measles vaccine using fraudulent research, was a gastroenterologist and later anti-vax influencer who ended up popularising the gut-brain link of autism particularly among those who distrust scientific institutions. He notably influenced Jenny McCarthy who became a noted alt-medicine momfluencer in the '00s/'10s pushing gluten-free and anti-vax. Which is to say, research on the gut-brain link is done quite a lot by legitimate scientific researchers, quacks, and frauds alike so you have to be discriminating.
Additionally there have been various scientific reviews of dietary interventions, gluten-free being one of the most researched, and the evidence hasn't been shown ANY dietary intervention or gut intervention like fecal transplants is a silver bullet.
This isn't to say that there isn't anything to the idea that some people we've diagnosed as autistic or believe they're autistic, cannot be helped by dietary interventions. I would dare speculate, that a significant portion of those called "autistic" could make autistic symptoms fall into the sub-clinical range through gut interventions (diet AND exercise), and that such people may even be clinically distinct from other people considered autistic other than through their similar behaviour.
I didn’t really know whether to believe it, but the effect that minerals have on the human body seems to suggest that the right mineral should help a bit, right?
As an autistic person, professionally diagnosed, this sounds like nonsense woo. Yes, gut bio can influence moods and managing your health can improve symptoms from autism (e.g. meditation might help manage anxiety).
But no amount of "don't eat bread" is going to help me understand faces or social cues. A good diet might help with self esteem, overall energy levels, and resilience to my symptoms (if I'm healthier, I shut down less). But that's it, it's not going to change the way I experience the world, just stretch my tolerance for it.
I don’t know if I believe it or not, but the notion of gut-brain axis seems to imply that a good diet should help a bit, right?