Autism

Megan said:

Chris Kresser has had quite a bit to say about helminth trichura infections. They may be important for conditioning our immune systems, and eliminating such infections may have been one of the more stupid things humans have done in recent times. The infections need to occur during childhood, though.

The ketogenic diet has done wonders for my blood sugar and weight regulation, but I can't really say that it has helped with the gut issues. What has helped my gut is eating high quality foods rather than toxic, processed foods. Most of that improvement occurred long ago, though, when I switched from the "standard American diet," and the keto diet has not had a huge effect on my gut. It aggravated my problems with eczema, however, which suggests that it might have negatively affected my gut. I still have not resolved that problem.

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Megan said:

I have a lot of trouble with anxiety when my life is in flux and, as it happens, my life is in flux right now so I have a great opportunity to observe what goes on. I am convinced that the amygdala is involved -- it seems obvious.

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Megan said:

Chris Kresser has had quite a bit to say about helminth trichura infections. They may be important for conditioning our immune systems, and eliminating such infections may have been one of the more stupid things humans have done in recent times. The infections need to occur during childhood, though.

The ketogenic diet has done wonders for my blood sugar and weight regulation, but I can't really say that it has helped with the gut issues. What has helped my gut is eating high quality foods rather than toxic, processed foods. Most of that improvement occurred long ago, though, when I switched from the "standard American diet," and the keto diet has not had a huge effect on my gut. It aggravated my problems with eczema, however, which suggests that it might have negatively affected my gut. I still have not resolved that problem.

I experimented with very low fiber intake for several months and ended up with severe dysbiosis. (I'm not going to go into detail. Suffice it to say that it caught up with me in early November and it was awful.) There is a range of fiber intake that works for me. More or less than that is trouble, and by far the bigger problem occurs when I don't consume enough. Eating just a small amount of prebiotic foods and no other fiber is definitely not enough; for me it is dangerous.

I have a lot of trouble with anxiety when my life is in flux and, as it happens, my life is in flux right now so I have a great opportunity to observe what goes on. I am convinced that the amygdala is involved -- it seems obvious.

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H-kqge said:

There's also an association of less mirror neuronal activity with greater social impairments, that said, earlier studies have suggested that the mirror neuron system works normally in those with ASDs a so I guess more in-depth studies (as always) need to be taken.

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Research linking autism symptoms to gut microbes called 'groundbreaking'

A new study showing that feeding mice a beneficial type of bacteria can ameliorate autism-like symptoms is "groundbreaking," according to University of Colorado Boulder Professor Rob Knight, who co-authored a commentary piece about the research appearing in the current issue of the journal Cell.

The autism study, published today in the same issue of Cell, strengthens the recent scientific understanding that the microbes that live in your gut may affect what goes on in your brain. It is also the first to show that a specific probiotic may be capable of reversing autism-like behaviors in mice.

"The broader potential of this research is obviously an analogous probiotic that could treat subsets of individuals with autism spectrum disorder," wrote the commentary authors, who also included CU-Boulder Research Associate Dorota Porazinska and doctoral student Sophie Weiss.

The study underscores the importance of the work being undertaken by the newly formed Autism Microbiome Consortium, which includes Knight as well as commentary co-authors Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown of Arizona State University. The interdisciplinary consortium—which taps experts in a range of disciplines from psychology to epidemiology—is investigating the autism-gut microbiome link.

For the new Cell study, led by Elaine Hsiao of the California Institute of Technology, the researchers used a technique called maternal immune activation in pregnant mice to induce autism-like behavior and neurology in their offspring. The researchers found that the gut microbial community of the offspring differed markedly compared with a control group of mice. When the mice with autism-like symptoms were fed Bacteriodes fragilis, a microbe known to bolster the immune system, the aberrant behaviors were reduced.

Scientific evidence is mounting that the trillions of microbes that call the human body home can influence our gut-linked health, affecting our risk of obesity, diabetes and colon cancer, for example. But more recently, researchers are discovering that gut microbes also may affect neurology—possibly impacting a person's cognition, emotions and mental health, said Knight, also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist and an investigator at CU-Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute.

The Autism Microbiome Consortium hopes to broaden this understanding by further studying the microbial community of autistic people, who tend to suffer from more gastrointestinal problems than the general public.

People with autism spectrum disorder who would like to have their gut microbes sequenced can do so now through the American Gut Project, a crowdfunded research effort led by Knight.

The consortium also includes Catherine Lozupone and Kimberly Johnson of CU-Boulder, James Adams of Arizona State University, Mady Hornig of Columbia University, Sarkis Mazmanian of the California Institute of Technology, John Alverdy of the University of Chicago and Janet Jansson of Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

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For more information on the American Gut Project visit http://americangut.org.

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SMM said:

Megan said:

...The ketogenic diet has done wonders for my blood sugar and weight regulation, but I can't really say that it has helped with the gut issues. What has helped my gut is eating high quality foods rather than toxic, processed foods. Most of that improvement occurred long ago, though, when I switched from the "standard American diet," and the keto diet has not had a huge effect on my gut. It aggravated my problems with eczema, however, which suggests that it might have negatively affected my gut. I still have not resolved that problem.

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I had a similar issue. How are you with coconut oil or fermented sauerkraut?

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Megan said:

SMM said:

Megan said:

...The ketogenic diet has done wonders for my blood sugar and weight regulation, but I can't really say that it has helped with the gut issues. What has helped my gut is eating high quality foods rather than toxic, processed foods. Most of that improvement occurred long ago, though, when I switched from the "standard American diet," and the keto diet has not had a huge effect on my gut. It aggravated my problems with eczema, however, which suggests that it might have negatively affected my gut. I still have not resolved that problem.

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I had a similar issue. How are you with coconut oil or fermented sauerkraut?

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I seem to be doing fairly well now with coconut oil. I also use ghee and (when available) duck fat, as well as a little butter (but not to cook in), to help limit the total amount of coconut oil. It's really hard to tell if large amounts of coconut oil cause problems or not (since I have so many symptoms anyway, whether or not I include it), so that's mostly just a precaution.

Sauerkraut seemed to help for a while, and then I didn't notice anything more. I suspect that it is another one of those things where "more is not necessarily better," at least for me. I just have it every now and then. I don't make it myself, but I buy brands that ferment it properly. My guess is that the probiotic content can be helpful up to a point, but that the extra vegetable material that it provides is not helpful for me.

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The behavior that results is not due to cognitive deficits—the prevailing view in autism research circles today—but the opposite, they say. Rather than being oblivious, autistic people take in too much and learn too fast. While they may appear bereft of emotion, the Markrams insist they are actually overwhelmed not only by their own emotions, but by the emotions of others.

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This apparent social indifference was viewed as central to the condition. Unfortunately, the theory also seemed to imply that autistic people are uncaring because they don’t easily recognize that other people exist as intentional agents who can be loved, thwarted or hurt. But while the Sally-Anne experiment shows that autistic people have difficulty knowing that other people have different perspectives—what researchers call cognitive empathy or “theory of mind”—it doesn’t show that they don’t care when someone is hurt or feeling pain, whether emotional or physical. In terms of caring—technically called affective empathy—autistic people aren’t necessarily impaired.

Sadly, however, the two different kinds of empathy are combined in one English word. And so, since the 1980s, this idea that autistic people “lack empathy” has taken hold.

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Steve Silberman, who is writing a history of autism titled NeuroTribes: Thinking Smarter About People Who Think Differently, says, “We had 70 years of autism research [based] on the notion that autistic people have brain deficits. Instead, the intense world postulates that autistic people feel too much and sense too much. That’s valuable, because I think the deficit model did tremendous injury to autistic people and their families, and also misled science.”

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• Epidemic Answers, founded by Beth Lambert in 2009, is a research organization focused on helping children with autism and other chronic diseases
• In her 2010 book, “A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children,” Lambert reviewed not only the epidemic of autism but also other childhood epidemics, such as autoimmune diseases, and their environmental root cause
• Epidemic Answers’ research project, “Documenting Hope,” is analyzing the environmental causes behind chronic conditions and what we can do to reverse them
• Autism and most other chronic childhood diseases are caused by a constellation of factors that contribute to the total toxic load of modern living