← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
The Dr. Josh Axe Show
What's REALLY Causing This American Epidemic...
00:47:20
Autism rates have skyrocketed from 1 in 10,000 children in the 1970s to nearly 1 in 31 today — and the question everyone’s asking is: WHY?
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According to the CDC, about 1 in 31American children are now diagnosed with autism. That's nearly five times more than in 2000, when it was 1 in 150 that were diagnosed. And if we go all the way back even further into the 1970s, it was 1 in 10,000. Globally, rates hover around 1 in 100. So our US rates are much higher. What I'm going to do in today's episode is dive into what are the root causes of autism? So what actually causes it. I'll be quoting people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Joel Warsh and many other scientists about what they've seen. Also, I'll share about what I've seen in clinical practice and go through how to start and heal and improve the root cause of Asperger's and autism and so much more. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. So growing up, I was exposed to a lot of children with autism because my mom was a special ed teacher. And so every day my mom would go into work, she would work with special ed kids. I would go and sometimes visit my mom at her school. This was when I was in elementary and even high school and see what my mom, you know, meet the kids that my mom was teaching and working with. And so I had a lot of exposure even as a kid. And then later on when I opened up my clinical practice in Nashville, Tennessee, started doing functional medicine, I started working with a lot of kids on the autistic spectrum, helping them out with diet and holistic treatments to help improve. And by the way, I was able to see some really incredible improvements with children with autism. In fact, the first child I took care of, I remember his name was Ben, he came in at four years of age, could only say two words. And after a short period of time, he was up to 40 words. I'm talking about in one month, went from around two to four words to about 40 words in that short a period of time. And so one thing I want to let you know is there are some really great things you can do for improving it. But one of the questions I had early on was what is at the root in causing autism. And I quickly found out via my own clinical practice some of the things that I saw that could be influencing children developing autism. Now I want to jump back into statistics quick and then I'll get into the first five root causes of autism and what you can do to start to improve the root cause. And in some states, like California, listen to this. In California, up to 5.3% of children, this is all children now are diagnosed with some form of autism. And boys are three times more likely to be diagnosed than girls in the United States. And there are many factors that make a child more likely to have autism, including environmental and genetic factors, which we'll dive into. Now, I do want to say I, I do think we need to make a change with how we diagnose with autism today. And I think really there should be two categories. Okay, so to say that there are now one in 31 children that have autism, that may be accurate in the way we're diagnosing it today. But when my mom was teaching special ed and we took care of kids with autism, these were kids that had very delayed speech or were nonverbal altogether. There were a lot of things there that they were just not able to do. And then later on, the diagnosis of Asperger's on that autistic spectrum started to really grow. But I do want to say this. When we say 1 in 31, I don't think that we should lump together high functioning autism and low functioning. I think we should have two categories of ones that are more Asperger related and people that would fall in that category who have self diagnosed themselves. People like Elon Musk that are obviously very high functioning, that are obviously very brilliant, they fall into one category and another one is low functioning autism. And I want to sort of go through, if you're diagnosing high functioning versus low functioning, what that difference should be. I think most of you would probably agree with me, right, that there is a pretty massive chasm, indifference between somebody like Elon Musk, who his self diagnosed himself with Asperger's or maybe a doctor has done that with him, and some of the kids that my mom was taking care of growing up who had no speech even into their teenage years are very, very few. And really they couldn't take care of themselves versus obviously someone like Elon Musk or many other people who are on that Asperger's diagnosis. They're completely high functioning. They, they're maybe just socially awkward. I'm thinking about if anyone ever watched the TV show the Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper would be that self diagnosed or diagnosed via doctor that Asperger's in that same way. But here's the difference. Okay. High functioning autism or Asperger's in a lot of cases or the classic autism. Number one difference is speech. High functioning is going to be very fluent in speech, maybe overly formal or pedantic, a little bit sort of again, socially awkward in speech, but overall completely fluent, sometimes even more fluent and more and have a higher level of vocabulary than others. Okay. Versus low functioning autism is delayed speech and sometimes nonverbal and a more limited vocabulary.
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The next year difference is iq. High functioning autism or Asperger's can have an average or in many cases above average IQ versus low functioning autism is almost always below average iq. Social awareness, okay. When we look at high functioning there might be socially awkward, okay, aware but socially awkward where you have a level of unawareness or disinterested in others of low functioning autism independence. Again, high functioning Asperger's live completely independently, work independently. There's just a little bit of social awkwardness there. Versus classic autism may require a full time lifelong support. And then we have cognition focused interest, right. Thinking detail oriented versus global development delays and limited flexibility. And then comorbidities. These are maybe some other things that, that go along with it. Oftentimes with Asperger's you're going to see maybe a level of anxiety. Adhd, OCD is very common there, whereas low functioning autism is intellectual disability and sometimes even correlated with certain conditions like epilepsy. Okay, So I do think one thing we need here in the future is we need to have two categories that are completely distinguished. And when we give rates of autism, like saying 1 in 31, I think we might want to say something Instead like, okay, one in 60 children have classic autism and one in 90 have Asperger's or vice versa. Again, those numbers aren't accurate. But my point there is. Quote them separately. But here's the reality. Both of those conditions, even if we separate them, Asperger's and classic autism, both of them have grown and increased dramatically. And it's not just because of us getting better at diagnosing things or diagnosing things more. I think we know that there generally has been an increase across the board. Now, I want to dive into five factors that potentially contribute to autism. And this is based off of scientific literature and my own clinical practice of seeing tens of thousands of patients.
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I ran a family practice. I did in the past. I still take care of families and patients today via my team of practitioners that I work with in counseling them. So I still see a lot of people answer, obviously, a lot of health questions. And so I've seen this. So number one potentially contributing factor to autism, again, potentially. And I want to share an experience that I had that completely changed my life and my view around autism and vaccines. I was in practice, this is my first year of practice, and I was taking care of a child who was 1 years old, and the father was bringing them in. And in my clinic, we did a combination of things. We did blood work, we did nutritional counseling, we did chiropractic care, we did physical therapy, exercise, nutritional consultation. We did a lot of things. But the child was coming in regularly. We were seeing him 1 years old, and they just adopted him through the foster care system. And he was adopted. And it was just after he was 1 years old. They went in, they got one of their first rounds of vaccines. And one of the shots, I believe, was mmr. And I saw him one week and then I saw him the next. And the father came in really concerned. And I looked at the child and there was a glaze on the child's eyes. And he was very nonreactive. Before, if you would do anything, the kid was laughing, he was giggling, he was aware, you know, the kid was looking deep into your eyes, and there was an awareness. One week later, the awareness was gone or greatly diminished. And afterwards, about a year later, the child was then diagnosed with autism. And the parents said to me, we saw a distinct and complete difference before and after he got those shots. And so that, to me, was a real eye opener of seeing that firsthand, actually seeing the changes in a child. And that's something today that a pharmaceutical company or somebody who's very ingrained in mainstream medicine to where it's their religion, that's something they can't write off. And by the way, that was one experience I had. I had that again years later. And then I had many, many parents come in and share with me. I've had hundreds of parents say this to me. I have seen that change in my child, and my child now has autism. So I do want to say, I think that we have far too many people, doctors, especially in pharmaceutical companies, have completely written off those parents who have experienced that. And I'm curious for you if you know anybody who has a child with autism and they experience that same thing, because there are actually at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of parents that have discovered that with their child. And mainstream institutions say that vaccines are safe and effective. But researchers and advocates like medical doctor Joel Gaider and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Have raised serious concerns about the lack of high quality long term safety studies, particularly regarding their neurological effects and potential links to autism. And they argue that many vaccine safety studies are industry funded. They're also short in duration, and they fail to use proper placebo controls like saline placebos. And the rapid increase in childhood vaccine schedule has paralleled the rise in autism diagnosis, A correlation that deserves open and rigorous scientific inquiry. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Pointed out, the science isn't settled, it's silenced. And the vaccine autism debate is far from closed due to censorship, potential conflicts of interest, and a lack of truly independent research. Many, including myself, believe there should be far greater clarity, transparency and scientific openness. And I don't believe every child should automatically follow the same vaccine schedule. Instead, families deserve unbiased information and the freedom to make informed decisions that are right for their individual child. We see this in countries like Japan. Listen, Japan is the healthiest country in the world. They now have 95,000 centurions. Did you know that? Think about this. Japan has 95,000 people that are over 100 years old living in their country. Based on their population size, that's mind boggling. What are they doing there? We should try and do that. They have the best health in the world. They give everyone the absolute freedom of choice. And even when they do get vaccines, they are later in life and they're spaced out more.
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Far less than we get in the United States. They get around between 8 and 12. We get closer to the recommendations, I think by 18 or around 90. I mean, think about that difference. And so it is very, very different in our country today. And again, just so you know, there's really not good research on this topic. They say the case is closed. There really isn't good research. So there's not a lot of evidence for or necessarily against in terms of what we know as of today. But I do think we're gonna see more and more coming out here in the near future. And by the way, I don't think that vaccines are the only contributing factor. I just think and believe from what I've seen clinically, they are one of the things that could add to and contribute to a dysfunctional immune system and gut microbiome, but that can then contribute to this ongoing inflammation on the brain that then contributes to symptoms of autism. Number two potentially contributing thing for autism is genetics and maternal autoimmune risks. Autism has a strong hereditary component. Twin studies show heritability estimates between 50% and 90%. And so when one identical twin has autism, the other has a 60 to 90% chance of also being diagnosed, compared to only 10 to 30% in fraternal twins. So absolutely, maybe the biggest contributing factor or one of the primary 2 or 3 of autism is your genetics and maternal autoimmune risk. There are studies on this. In fact, over 100 genes have been associated with autism spectrum disorders. Many involved in synapse formations in the brain, neuronal development and immune function. Examples are SHANK3, NRXN1 and CHD8. Most autism cases are polygenic, meaning they are caused by multiple gene variants, not just one mutation. And new mutations in sperm or egg are also thought to be common in non familial asd. Now let's talk about the maternal, the mom's immune system and how much it matters. Epigenetic and immune related triggers during pregnancy can heighten autism risk, especially in genetically susceptible children. Think about this. If you're familiar with the MTHFR gene, right, you're susceptible. Now that doesn't mean that you can't create enough methyl folate yourself, okay? If you're completely healthy, you're not going to turn on those gene variants or those gene variants are not going to work against you. And you will methylate just fine if you have low stress, a nutrient dense diet, if you're, if you're healthy. But if you're not healthy, if you have a lot of stress, if you're eating a diet higher in sugar, if you have environmental toxins you're exposed to now, your methylation, these genes get turned on, these variants you might have. And so now you become ill. Think about it the same way. And the reality is this. Moms being sick from environmental factors like having chronic infections, that's a big one. Could be viral infections or parasites or Lyme toxin exposure, Emotional stress like we talked about, poor diet during pregnancy can influence these epigenetics. And children with autism show certain epigenetic patterns, including altered methylation in genes like MECP2, which is linked to Rett syndrome. Now there was a Taiwanese study on 20,000 children and they found a 33% higher autism risk when moms had autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis or Sjogren's disease. And the thing they have in common is leaky gut syndrome. Okay, so when you have autoimmune disease, almost all autoimmune disease is caused by leaky gut syndrome. Okay, that's the, that's the common they have. And when that happens, the gut microbiome is unhealthy. That'll turn on genetic, these epigenetic switches you don't want on. And then when that happens, that unhealthy gut microbiome from the mom that's also passed down to the child, that turns on some of those epigenetic signals, and then that can increase the risk. That's what we're saying in terms of the medical literature. There was also a large Danish study of over 2 million births. So again, 2 million births. This is an incredibly large study. And they found that maternal autoimmune diseases were associated with a 16% increased risk of autism in offspring. There's another study, this is called the Charge study. And the findings suggest that a mom's immune system can play a small role in whether a child develops autism or developmental conditions. This study compared 560 ASD cases to about 400 in your typically developing controls. Moms with autoimmune diseases were about 46% more likely to have a child with some type of developmental issue, but not specifically autism alone. And so again, the thing we're seeing here is that if a mom has autoimmune disease or turns on a lot of these epigenetic switches, the chance of their child having those turned on is very high. Again, so what we're seeing here, one of the greatest determining factors and a child having autism is genetic and maternal autoimmune risk. Hey, Dr. Axe here. I want to let you know about an absolutely incredible and cutting edge line of skin care called Clear Stem. That stands for clear skin and also helping stem cell production. You know, I am a big fan of stem cells because they've helped me heal and regenerate my body. And now I want to do that not just internally, but via my skin. If you've dealt with breakouts, you know that typical acne products, they dry you out, they damage your skin. While traditional anti aging products tend to be all oily and clog your pores. Well, Clear Stem is really different. It's comprehensive. Also, it's backed with rigorous scientific study studies and evidence. And unlike other skincare brands, Clear Stem is dedicated to both product safety and and efficacy. I want to encourage you to discover Clear Stem, what I believe is the most powerful skin care line for helping acne and stem cells helping you look younger. You can go to clearstem.com d r a x e and use the code Dr. Axe for 15% off so the number three root cause of autism, based on the evidence we have today, is maternal gift, gut microbiome and immune activation. One of the things that I've seen in pretty much every I've taken care of 1000 children plus with autism and all of them have gut and digestive issues, almost all of them. Okay, it's very rare. I will find one that has a healthy digestive system or doesn't have major dysbiosis and gut issues that's then affecting the immune system. And so we see that in the parents often and then sometimes we see that or we always see that in the children. There was a study at the University of Virginia, this was in 2018, this was an animal study, and they found that changes in the mom's microbiome through immune molecules can trigger autism like behavior in their offspring. So we see this in animal studies. There is a direct correlation in causing just that. There's a 2019 Chinese study and they found that moms of autistic children often had more proteobacteria and acinobacteria in their gut compared to mothers of neurotypical kids having a healthier gut microbiome and healthier levels of certain short chain fatty acids like butyric acid. Okay, so again, I think the one thing we want to go to is say, okay, we want to fix the gut, we want to havewe want to help moms get their gut microbiome healthy. We want this with kids. This is why one of the number one supplements I recommend for children with autism is our high dose probiotics, probiotics that can really start to change and alter the gut microbiome. That is the path to healing and improvement. If you're going to focus on one thing, the number four contributing factor to autism based on medical studies, and there's some really good science around this, is our medications like acetaminophen and antibiotic drugs. There are several studies, including Data from a 20 year Johns Hopkins study, that found that acetaminophen or Tylenol, when it's used during pregnancy, especially long term, can potentially increase autism and ADHD risk later in life by up to get this, over 300 times over 300% increased risk if a mom is using acetaminophen in NSAID drugs during pregnancy. I mean that alone. And so again, the studies around acetaminophen and autism are really compelling. There's a quote from a professor in John Hopkins Bloomberg School and their Department of Population and Family and Reproductive Health. Here's what he Says our study further supports that concerns raised by previous studies that there is a link between Tylenol use during pregnancy and an increased risk of both autism and adhd. Here's another study, and this is now on antibiotic drugs. Early life antibiotic use has been associated with a higher risk of autism. The mechanism, though is still in is still being researched. A study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases found that antibiotic exposure before the age of two years was positively associated with increased risk of asthma, food allergies, hay fever, and intellectual and disability. Like autism, multiple courses of antibiotics posed a much greater risk. So the hypothesis is that neurological conditions might develop because of the way that antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome. They kill off the good bacteria, and you have increased growth of bad bacteria. And this really is connected toit's, this gut brain connection, and this causes leaky gut. So when you have this dysbiosis, which means a dis imbalance, an imbalance between good and bad bacteria in the gut, it starts to create holes in your gut. Imagine you have a net and you get a rip in it. Well, that's your protective barrier between youryour intestines and your bloodstream. When you have leaky gut, things that should never get into your bloodstream get in there, like undigested proteins like gluten and casein, heavy metals, toxins, like pesticides, they start to get in the bloodstream. They then circulate. Well, in children, their blood brain barrier isn't fully developed, so they cross the blood brain barrier, heavy metals, proteins, all these things, and it causes inflammation of the brain. When you have constant inflammation of an area, it can't heal or it can't develop. Think about this. If you have an open wound on your hand, and every day you go and scratch it and reinjure it, it will never heal. It'll stay the way it is. Think about the same thing, damage happening over and over and over again to the brain. Development, growth, healing, can't take place. That's what's happening with leaky gut and with autism.
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And so this gut brain connection is the most crucial thing you want to protect and heal when it comes to autism. And they also found that children with autism often showed gut dysbiosis, increased leaky gut, and elevated levels of Candida and clostridia. That's a type of bad bacteria. They've seen these in these clinical studies. Now, listen, there are parents and mothers who take drugs when they're pregnant, and there are kids who took antibiotics before they were two and they never develop autism.
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And that happens in most cases. However, there are a significant amount of cases where we've seen, based on the studies, where those could be major contributing factors, especially when it comes to acetaminophen and antibiotic drugs. Now, I also believe that there are possibly some other drugs like immunosuppressants and some others that could also be contributing. But in what we see with a lot of these drugs, by the way, they damage the gut lining. We know this with acetaminophen, by the way, it causes GI bleeding. So we know it damages the gut. We know it harms the liver and disrupts detoxification. We know it throws off the inflammatory balance in the body. And so it makes sense, philosophically or scientifically speaking, why those drugs in particular could increase the likelihood of leaky gut microbiome issues, brain issues, and then contribute to autism and other learning disorders. The number five, and this is the last one, and then we're going to get into the exact ways to start to improve if a child has autism or any sort of gut brain connection issue. But number five here is this. Environmental and chemical exposures. Exposures to certain chemicals and toxins in the womb and early in life matter for cognitive development as well. Air pollution. Multiple studies have shown an association between prenatal exposure to air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and fine particle matter, and increasing the risk of autism. Smoking. Okay, we see this with cigarette smoke. Let me get into one study here. One population based study on 132,000 births found that maternal exposure to nitric oxide during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders in their offspring. No nitric oxide and no nitrogen dioxide, both mostly come from traffic pollution. And during pregnancy, these were linked to small but an actual increase. And for every moderate increase in no exposure, the odds of autism went up by about 7%. Okay, so we see increases there. And here's another one. Endocrine disruptors like bisphenol A, that's bpa, have been shown to increase the risk of autism in boys. In fact, there was a 3.5 times higher likelihood when boys had higher levels of BPA in their system. And so again, all these plastics and Teflon pans and chemicals, they've been shown to contribute as well. Heavy metals, that's another one we see with. On average, when you do blood work and testing or urine analysis on children with autism, you see higher levels of mercury, lead and arsenic there as well.
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And especially mercury. We know that all of these heavy metals are Neurotoxins and the last one here are pesticides. Pesticide exposure, especially organophosphates like Roundup or glyphosate have been linked to an increased risk of autism. This is likely due to the chemical's effect on the fetal brain development and on damaging again the gut microbiome and harming that gut brain connection is what we start to see here with autism. Now, there are a few other factors here I just want to mention quickly. One is C section deliveries. Cesarean bursts may alter the baby's initial microbiome colonization, which plays a role in immune and brain development. In fact, a JAMA study using data from 20 million bursts found that a cesarean section delivery is associated with autism and attention deficit disorders. They also found that maternal health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and even certain conditions like Hashimoto's thyroiditis can increase the risk, mitochondrial dysfunctions can increase the risk, and then certain nutrient deficiencies like vitamin D and folate, those two in particular were showed a higher risk of autism and then also if the mother has a chronic infection. So there are many, many contributors. So I want to say this. I think my belief, my opinion about autism is there's not one cause. There are many causes that are contributing to this. But knowing that and knowing some of the potential causes allows us now to say we are as parents going to do everything we can to raise our children as healthy as possible and to avoid some of these root causes. And my big hope from this is that we can just have an open discussion and find the truth. Listen, I believe we already, for the most part know generally the truth and the biggest contributing factors. We just maybe need more evidence to know maybe the degree to which they are contributing. And I'd love to hear from you if you believe that any of these things, everything from vaccinations to antibiotics to acetaminophen to glyphosate to, you know, autoimmune disease. Which of these you believe are contributing factors? But again, I think the science shows and anecdotal evidence from doctors and parents show all of these are contributing factors. Now, I want to walk you through what I have done in my clinical practice in helping patients heal, helping children heal and improve symptoms of autism. And while you can't in many cases completely reverse an autism diagnosis, you can sometimes, and at the very least, you can see great improvements. And I also want to say this. The earlier you can treat a child, the better, typically, the better improvements you've seen. So if a child gets diagnosed with autism at 2 years old, you tend to see better results with them than if they're. If you start treating it at 12 years old. Right. I think that's obvious because the earlier you can do it in development, typically the better.
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Like I have someone I'm close friends with, actually many people I'm thinking of now, and they had low children who had speech delays, low functioning autism. And now their children are. A few of them are completely normal. Some of them are more in that sort of Asperger's diagnosis, but completely full functioning by doing the right things to start to heal the root of the issues, which again, most of it, so much of it starts with healing that gut brain barrier. That's really where you want to start. So I want to go through the top natural treatments for improving the root cause of autism. Number one is therapeutic diet and nutritional intervention. Now let me go back before that. Here's number avoidance, okay? Do everything you can to avoid the root cause of autism. Right? So you want to do all the things we talked about before. Avoid those things as much as possible or be wise in the way you go about them.
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To diminish the risk. Okay. So then number one though, in terms of treatments is therapeutic diet and nutritional intervention. It's diet. It's nutrition. This is gonna help heal the gut brain barrier.
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Diet is the single most foundational and accessible therapy. I remember when I started having kids come in my first year of clinical practice, I put them on a gluten free and casein free diet.
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So no wheat, no dairy. And we saw big improvements. In fact, with my patient Ben, who went from about, I forget, it was like two words or four words to 40 words over the matter of a few weeks. That's what we did. We went on a gluten free and casein free diet. The next year, as I started reading books and started learning more and more about autism, I started doing a diet with my patients called the GAPS diet. The GAPS diet. And that diet worked very well. And then later on I started using more of what we'd call a Chinese medicine diet, sort of combined with ideas around a GAPS diet. And this was the diet. It was a lot of cooked meat, a lot of certain types of steamed vegetables, a lot of fruit, and in some cases rice, okay, like white rice. And that was the primary diet. Now I know one of the biggest challenges that we had in practice and working with parents and all you can do is your best is oftentimes children with ASD disorders have they're picky eaters.
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That's the battle. Like, I remember one of my first patients as well. The only thing he would eat without throwing a fit was chicken nuggets. I mean, literally. And it was only one brand of chicken nuggets. If the mom wanted to do a different one or the dad, it was. There was a big tantrum. And so listen, this is so hard, but I really tried to coach my parents on this as saying, well, then it's okay if they don't eat for a few days, if they don't eat for one meal or a day, and that breaks the mom's heart, makes it so hard. But oftentimes the kids would start eating and trying other things. And so. But generally what we would try and do is find what are the vegetables that they hate the least. Okay. They hate peas, they hate spinach. They'll eat green beans. Okay, well, let's do a lot of cooked green beans. What do they like for meat? They will do plain chicken. They don't like the texture of ground beef. Okay. So we're gonna do a lot of chicken. Almost every meal we're gonna do green beans.
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And.
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And they like applesauce. Boom. Okay, well, some. In some patients, we almost only ate that because those are the foods that wouldn't harm them and what would help them heal. Okay. So. But going with a diet and a few other things we found too, going low oxalates, so no tomatoes and eggplants. You know, staying away from oxalates and nightshades was helpful. Of course, going more anti inflammatory, sometimes staying away from foods that could cause histamine reactions. But generally the diet for most kids is soups are the ideal thing if they'll do soup. But it's meat, it's well cooked vegetables, it's fruits that are easy to digest. That typically is baked pears, it's applesauce, it's blueberries. So it's those sort of things. And then some healthy fats. We would try and do maybe some avocado. You would use coconut oil. We do extra virgin olive oil. We would use these things. And then the grain that I found that the kids did the best with was just white rice.
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And that we would make into what we'd call congee. Typically like more like a mush or a cream of rice. And that's what we would try and do. And that's the best diet for most of them.
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Is in healing that leaky gut and the gut microbiome the same as an adult, very similar way. Cancer, dementia, heart disease, they're coming for so many people. And it's not just because of what most people think, which is that it's bad luck or bad genetics. The truth is your daily choices are either creating health or setting the stage for disease. And your doctor is probably reading your blood work all wrong. They're missing the cellular issues behind the symptoms. I'm currently offering a simple at home blood test that actually tests for the right things. And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of the results. This new test flips the script. The future of interpreting test results is here. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. All right. The second thing that can help you see great improvements is proper supplementation. There are some major nutritional deficiencies that we see and the ones that I saw the most with kids. Zinc was very high up there. Zinc is a mineral that's responsible for repairing a damaged gut microbiome.
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So certain minerals, zinc, magnesium, There tends to be a great deficiency of vitamin D is very high up there. Probiotics are probably my number one. And then sometimes digestive enzymes, methylated B vitamins, especially methyl B12 and methylfolate, omega 3 fatty acids high in EPA and DHA. And sometimes mitochondrial support is also beneficial. But those are some of the biggest ones. I would oftentimes do something called L glutamine powder. That would be very good. And doing certain herbals, you can doi would do a lot of Chinese medicine diagnosis on these children. I still do today. And we'll see something called a spleen qi deficiency. That's also called a digestive deficiency. It means the digestive system isn't strong enough. And, and so we would try once they were old enough or they would, they were willing to take it. A little bit of ginger, chamomile, cardamom, cinnamon. Getting some of these herbals in small amounts in their diet as well would also be very helpful. Slippery elm was very good as well to help repair and heal that gut. Microbiome was also very, very powerful. The number three type of treatment that I would recommend for children on the ASD spectrum is applied behavioral analysis along with speech therapy.
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Verbal development, social interaction, emotional regulation while doing the diet. And the supplementation had tremendous benefits as well. And there's a lot of great science backed studies on teaching language and these daily skills that also help the development there. And so that is something I would highly recommend there as well. Number four, functional medicine therapy.
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Reversing hidden medical drivers like gut Issues, toxicity, inflammation. Many children with autism suffer from immune dysregulation, heavy metal toxicity, mitochondrial impairment. We want to take care of those head on. One of the greatest things to do in those cases is do some lab testing, do a stool test to see if there's unhealthy clostridium or E. Coli or candida overgrowth in the body. So the first and foremost test I like to do is something I call a GI map, okay, Testing for gut pathogens. You might also do a heavy metal test. You might also test for food sensitivities, methylation. So a methylation test. And then I also like a test that's actually by trudiagnostics. It's called TRU Health. And that's looking for vitamin deficiencies, mineral deficiencies and amino acid deficiencies. So it's like a micronutrient test looking for or an OAT test looking for some common nutritional deficiencies. Those doing some medical testing can be very, very valuable. So you know exactly what supplements to take. And then once you know some of this, you can do certain treatments. Let's say there's fungal overgrowth. You can recommend herbs that are antifungals, herbs that act as natural antibiotics, you know, maybe what probiotics to take. Now generally I found the best probiotics to take to start are soil based organisms in really high doses, like a trillion probiotics, really high dose, and then alternating that with a food based probiotic that's more bifidobacterium, those sort of probiotics that you often need at birth. Okay, so alternating to, to good quality probax or doing it as something called fmt, fecal matter transplant therapy. FMT therapy, where you're taking the stool of a healthy individual in capsules or you're doing it as a suppository, I believe has tremendous, tremendous benefits as well. So those are some other things that can be considered there. But doing again the lab testing and certain other treatments is very, very helpful in this way. My number five treatment I really like with autism is HBOT therapy. That's hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I have seen amazing improvements in language and focus and neuroinflammation. Mitochondrial function healing with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Oftentimes now you tend to want to try and do. You can do a soft chamber. You can even buy these at home on places like Facebook, Marketplace or ebay. So you can get a soft chamber at home that goes up to 1.3 ATA. I think it's ideal to try and do one that's 2.0 or higher. And the parents can even get in with the child if you go to a place that has a really good hard chamber. Hyperbaric. The problem is, you know, hospitals tend to not want to, they tend to have the hard chambers. But there are some really high level functional medicine clinics that may have these hyperbaric chambers. What hyperbaric chamber does is it takes oxygen, gives you extra oxygen and then drives it deep into the cells and tissues. And when you can do that, drive it deep into the cells and tissues, it allows it to heal at a greater level. So you heal the gut, you heal the brain. In fact, there's great research on it being great for people that have had strokes and seeing improvements there, people who have ptsd, people who have had brain trauma. So overall, hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a actual treatment is maybe the most effective or one of the most effective natural treatments. Typically around 40 to 80 sessions. At around that 1.5 to 2.0 ATA is ideal. Along with all the right nutritional support, you can see some really amazing things. A therapy that is on the rise. And there's a clinic I work with in Cancun, Mexico. And by the way, you got to go to Mexico because they don't allow you to do it in the US because the pharmaceutical companies have banned it. But it's stem cell therapy via umbilical cord derived stem cells. This is best for moderate to severe autism, for neurodegeneration, for major developmental delays. Stem cells can help repair the gut, the gut, leaky gut. It also can help build up and strengthen the blood brain barrier and generally just help heal damage. It really is amazing. And I've had some children go down to. It's called rehealth in Cancun, Mexico and see some really amazing results down there as part of that clinic down there in doing stem cell therapy. And there's still research emerging there. But I have seen, I've also seen a lot of even adults go down with inflammatory bowel disease. But it's really effective against immune issues and gut issues, which then of course for autism is very, very powerful in healing. And a few other things to consider. Occupational therapy to improve sensory integration and motor skills. There's some great studies around that and improving detoxification and methylation support. There's some great research around that as well, such as taking N acetylcysteine glutathione, certain binders like zeolites, chlorella or clay, Epsom salts bath. Some of these things are also very helpful. As part of a full on healing and treatment protocol for improving symptoms of autism. And so know this, there isn't likely one single cause of autism. It's multifactorial, it's partly genetic, it's prenatal immune signals, it's environmental exposures, it's medication, it's potentially injections. We aren't 100% certain, but we believe that all of these can damage the gut brain connection and harm the immune system that can contribute to autism. And my best piece of advice is listen, a lot of times we don't want to sort of enter, even know what's going on here. I mean, that's one of the things I think that I have had, that I've seen oftentimes is maybe a parent's already made the decision on what to do and they don't want to know in case they're wrong, right? Maybe they didn't do vaccines or they did, or they have an autoimmune disease and they're like, well, I don't even want to know because then I don't want to feel bad about it. Well, of course you should never feel bad about it because you didn't know and now you know. And I think that's what God calls us to, is when you know, now you can make the wise choice, now you can do the right things. And also, you know, here's something else I've found in my life is that if you yourself or a child or a relative or a family friend has been diagnosed with autism or other conditions and you've learned from it, we'll use that for good. There's a Bible verse, God uses all things for good for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purposes. I truly believe that my experience, my own health issues, my mom going through cancer, me going through a life threatening illness and battling that for years and not walking, I learned so much now that I can use to help other people. So my pain, using that for purpose. And so as you learn today about some of these things, I would encourage you continue to educate, learn more, but share, tell other people because the world needs to know the truth about autism, the contributing factors and some of the amazing therapies and things that can be done to see improvements in healing as well. So I want to encourage you to help share this. And by the way, one of the top, the top two things you can do to support this podcast, Number one, subscribed. If you're not subscribed, you're missing out. We have got so many incredible interviews and game changers coming up on the podcast and a lot of great episodes here in the future and also sharing this. So thank you all of you that are on board with me on mission helping share this. Get the word out here about the Dr. Josh Axe show, where every week we dive deep into the science and the principles of how you can heal physically, mentally and spiritually. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode.