Yeast overgrowth.....treatment, PLEASE help ! !!

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Okay....I have noticed that my son has sypmtoms of yeast overgrowth (giggling for no apparant reason, making unusual noises, IBS, bloated tummy, sugar cravings etc. , and have started a yeat free / sugar free diet. I have also introduced a live probiotic.

After a few days I am noticing my ds stools (sorry tmi ! !) are more 'normal'. But what I am noticing is that my son is not ! !! ! I guess its like an extinction burst type reaction?! !! I hope.

My ds looks as though he has regressed in his ASD, he is all over the place. Running about, making noises constantly, not wanting to be held much, not wanting to make eye contact much etc etc. etc. all in just a couple of days.

I guess its related to the yeast dying off. The symptoms of yeast die off are brain fog, headaches etc. but the websites dont mention what symptoms might look like in a child with AS. He is 4.5yrs and wouldnt have language good enough to explain how he is feeling.

Did any of you try yeast eliminaion diet, and how did it affect you or your child?

Oh yeah, the only other recent change is he had the chickenpox vaccine two weeks ago, and I know the incubation period is about two weeks, would that bring such a dramatic change to his behaviour?

I was reduced to tears tonight, as my son for the first time told me to "go away". He always loves to sit with me, and have a cuddle. I am tempted to abandon the diet, but I know it might be working really well and to stick with it.

I feel like Im loosing him, he regressed when he was 2yrs....... I cant loose him again.

Can anyone shed some light on any of this for me?, thanks for taking the time to read xx

Have you considered getting a professional opinion, like from a doctor?

Frist off take a deeeeeeeeeeeeppppp breath and remeber that regresstion often happends before growth. Think of it like growing pains. Second see a doctor to test if it realy is a yeast thing and you haven't just changed the kids diet and that just pissed him off. Sorry but I'm not great to live with ethier when someone takes my cookies even if now that someone is me. I've got my kids drink Keffer for the probics because it helps cut back on the colds and stomach troubles that all kids have when they go to puplic schools. So far only one sick day for the year for my older son and a much fewer for my younger but thats harder to avoid at his school because some of the kids come to school no matter how sick they are chickenpoxs even walked in that door this summer. I wouldn't stress about the shot just remeber he'll need a boster so it works my kids got it when they only gave itto them once and they still got chickenpoxs. I don't think the Keffer would work in to your suger free plan because it's got cane sugar in it but if you end up moving off that it works well for my kids and they like drinking it so bounse there. Giggling and nosies are just part and parcel to the austism allot of times , with my Jake I've noticed that one at frist sounds like nosie if you listen hard is a word or words. He saids T for Teen because he's trying to talk me in to a video game he wants or is play with his action figures in a rough "T for Teen" sort of way. We just don't always live in the same world as our kids and have to try our best to understand them. Best of luck I hope your little guy feels better soon.

Hi, As CRD said, take a deep breath. Are you doing this under the advice of a doctor (DAN!) or a nutritionist, or are you doing this based on your own readings? It is possible to have a very scary die-off reaction if the child does in fact have a yeast overgrowth, or have a withdrawl type reaction if the child is in fact sensitive to one of the foods eliminated. It is also possible that it is "Leaky Gut" which is what our first neurologist diagnosed our daughter with. When we first took my daughter off gluten she had cold night sweats and full body shakes for 2 nights in a row. It was very scary. We made sure to go and see any and every doctor, from the pediatrician, DAN! neurologist, DAN! nutritionist, to whatever specialist we could get a referral for. All our doctors were more than willing to respond to email. If you are worried about your child's health, call or email a doctor.

In all likelihood I doubt that your son could have built up enough yeast in 4.5 years (at least some of that time being only on milk and babyfood products) to pose any significant risks.

The Yeast-Free anti-candida diets are great cleansers but they're no the most safe things to try on children.

Make sure that you're doing this under direct medical supervision.

While its good to track potential cause and reaction relationships, remember that kids bounce around in moods and temperament and that periods of perceived regression are also perfectly normal for AS kids. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly. Sit back, check in with your instincts. Don't let fear drive you.

Remember that AS kids can have major reactions to things we don't even notice. This time of year the heating system may be going on, when it didn't a few weeks ago. All kinds of things can cause a reaction like you've seen. It isn't always diet or anything similar.

We haven't done yeast elimination so that I can't answer. We haven't done much beyond paying attention to the situations and environments that my son gets upset by so they can be mitigated or avoided, and figuring out which stims are self-calming and giving free reign to them. That has worked for us, and goes a long way with most AS kids. But there is growing evidence that some food issues can definitely be involved, just take care to follow sound science with it, and not someone else's advice. We have pulled soy from our son's diet, btw, but that isn't a common problem as far as I can tell.

That's actually a smart idea. I read somewhere that it's bad for boys and men to eat a lot of soy products (this includes tofu and soymilk), because soy raises estrogen levels in the body. Limited amounts should be OK, though, because of the useful nutrients in soybeans.

I'm not sure I understood the whole yeast elimination thing. Does that mean you can't eat anything that's been fermented? If so, it sounds a lot like a preparation for Passover, when you can't have bread, pasta, and most alcoholic beverages in your home, and matza is the only grain product you're allowed to eat. Am I understanding this correctly?

Thanks so much for your replies guys. I guess I should see a DAN practitioner to guide me through this, if indeed I need to do this!!

When my son was born he was put on antibiotics immediately (I had group B strep), then after a few days he ended up in ICU without any known reason about his deteriation. He was on constant IV antibiotics for 10 days, with oral for a further week.

Long story short, he has had recurrant chest infections, with antibiotic after antibiotic every few weeks, during his first few years. When we got our AS diagnosis, It was suggested that the yeast may have played a strong environmental factor to my sons AS.

We went to an allergy clinic, (didnt know about DAN at the time), they identified an intolorance to dairy so we have cut that out with brilliant changes to his health (chestiness gone). He had follow up visits which identified some fruits and potatoes!! ! again cut those out and more dramatic changes to his health (sinus congestion gone).

They never picked up on a yeast problem, but it is alway something I have thought about as his stools are very inconsistant, and previous suggestions from the psychologist.

I just changed his bread to yeast free bread, and he loves rice crackers. He doesnt eat processed foods (not because I am 'Mom of the year', but because his diet is quite restricted!!) so the diet was very easy to change. He never had much sugar anyway, so treats are popcorn etc. I havnt been massively strict with the diet, maybe a small buiscuit if we were visiting someone etc, just the bread change for him was huge, he eats so much bread. I know thats unhealthy in itself, I always made sure it was wholemeal / wholegrain. But now its just yeast free.

I guess I need some guideance on this, his skin is also breaking out in dry pathes (like eczema) on his face, he never had this before, again another reaction to yeast dying off I guess.

As dw a mom said, I know this may be just one of those little 'setbacks' that he is likely to go through on and off throughout his life, I'm just not sure.

Thanks so much for all your advice everyone, I will seek professional guidance on this xx

I know you said on your other thread, re dyspraxia, that you had had allergy testing done, but this comment reads to me like a classic warning sign of gluten-intolerance. Many many people get allergy tests which tell them that they are not celiac and then find out that they are gluten-sensitive. The best way of finding out is to exclude bread and all gluten for at least a week.

The reason I mention it is that a yeast free diet means that he will be getting gluten in a different ( less "pre-metabolised" ) "state" to previously, a whole new gluten reaction is very likely if he has gluten-intolerance. I remember that when I began eating real brown/wholegrain bread at one point, ( the first time I started trying to eat more healthily as an adult ), it had a significant effect; far worse intolerance.

It is possible that it is "die-off" causing his "regression", but I think it's possible that it may ( also ) be the result of exposure to a different "form/preparation" of gluten.

And/or if he is suddenly eating significantly less gluten he may be experiencing part-withdrawal at the same time.

Good luck!

PS.
This is also a possible sign of gluten-intolerance.

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Being born and going straight onto antibiotics is certainly one way to cultivate a yeast infection in a young child.

I remembered after going to bed last night, and forgot again until now, but I suddenly realised that there was something about your description of the anti-candida/yeast-free diet which puzzled me.

I managed four weeks of an anti-candida diet 15 years ago. It was very tough; it did result in some die-off but was so hard to stick to that I gave up.

What I am wondering is what sort of anti-candida diet includes/allows wheat, ( however yeast-free ), rice crackers, and popcorn?

These are all carbohydrates, containing a lot of fructose ( especially the wheat and the corn ) and glucose, and candida absolutely thrives on sugars.

I can't imagine that much if any candida would die-off in the continued presence of so much carbohydrate ( the diet I followed involved zero-carbos, and is apparently the only way to really eliminate it ), and so I am even more convinced that the reactions your son is experiencing are more likely to be the result of an underlying gluten-intolerance/sensitivity, and the reaction to partial withdrawal or to a different form of gluten, than die-off.

Good luck with disentangling the various threads.

PS. I recently found out that gluten triggers the production of a chemical, zonulin, in everyone, which causes the intestinal cells to relax their otherwise tightly sealed intercellular junctions at the gut wall, thus allowing all sorts of things to pass which shouldn't/couldn't normally. This reaction is over quicker in people who do not have an autoimmune system response to gluten, but it happens in everyone to some extent, and it would obviously help candida to spread/establish itself beyond the gut. Gluten is something to cut out whether or not you are celiac/gluten intolerant, if you suspect candida.

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I feel compelled to throw a note of caution in this thread. Not long ago most members of communities like this one were pretty sure most doctors in DAN! were pure quacks, advocating things that had no science behind them, and basically taking advantage of parents to make money. Overtime, I'm hoping that is changing, but I just don't know, and I suspect that there is a lot of inconsistency right now in the quality and seriousness of the doctors. While many in the AS community are slowly coming to believe there is something to the diet positions (Ouinon, above, is AS herself, has tested on herself, and is researching on her own for herself and her son), caution remains warranted. I am sure the doctors are evolving and gaining real knowledge from experience, but the whole area remains largely supported by anecdotes, and not science. There are many things a parent can try that have few downsides, and I would never hold a parent back from any of those. Just stay in tune with your instincts, and don't put your child through something that you find upsetting, or that is about to bankrupt the family, based on what some supposed expert is telling you. What our kids need more than anything is our attention, patience, and understanding. Everything else is secondary.

"Attention, patience, and understanding" were secondary while I was eating gluten. I stopped eating gluten again when my son was 2 for his sake aswell as mine, because it impacted so seriously on my mental health and ability to function. I was unable to give him "attention, patience, and understanding" when eating gluten.

"Staying in tune with my instincts" ( especially the ones I was supposed to have straight after he was born ), is already hard enough as an aspie, but gluten made it much much more difficult ( as does sugar of all kinds ).

I have nowhere here suggested that gluten causes autism; it is not a DAN issue for me. In fact as far as I'm aware I have never even visited their site. The things that I have found out about diet might apply to anyone. Diet has an effect on the mental health/cognitive functioning and mood of many ( all ) people, irrespective of whether they are AS or not.

As Donna Williams repeats over and over again in her blog, books etc, it is not useful to view autism as some sort of monolithic lump of a disorder. It is more useful to look at anybody's behaviour, functioning, etc, and attempt to help alleviate individual problems. Dietary approaches are not an attack on autistic identity.


"Largely supported by anecdote"! !!

That may have been the case 20 years ago, but now? Perhaps in so far as proof of "curing autism" is concerned, but curing depression, anxiety, lethargy, manic-depression, frequent meltdowns, irritability, increasing and/or frequent overwhelm, sleep problems, brain fog, memory loss, aswell as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ataxia, various neuropathies, aswell as more purely physical problems like autoimmune thyroid disorder, diabetes, etc etc etc, with diet, is no longer in people's imaginations. It is real, substantiated, supported by hundreds, no, thousands, of scientific papers, and it is precisely because these discoveries risk seriously denting/demolishing the profits of the pharmaceutical and food and agriculture industries that we do not already see action everywhere in schools, hospitals, prisons, and in advertising, etc, to let people know.

PS. Obviously there are a lot of people prepared, even eager, to make money out of people's fears and hopes, by selling supplements, gluten-free replacement foods at scandalous prices, etc etc etc, but this does not invalidate the research that has been going on, increasingly, ever more thoroughly, ever more convincingly, ( since the 1930's ), into the connection between diet and mental health.

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If you've found something that works for you great, wonderful, good for you! BUT it does mean every one has a gutten allergy or celiac disease. These things can be tested for and should be if you think this is something that you or your child might have. It's dangerous to start a radical diet without any proof this is whats going on. It's dangerous to treat small children as experiments. 80 years ago the biggest newest mental cure all was a lobotomy, my great grandparents were told "we don't know why this works but it does". They had one done on my great uncle to cure him, who we all now know was an asspie from reading his records. I'm not saying the diet it as harmful as having part of someones brain removed.but we must becareful with our kids.

When you say a "radical diet" are you referring to a gluten-free diet or the anti-candida diet? A gluten-free diet is not dangerous. Glutenous grains contain nothing that you can't get from other foods.

About testing; the cheapest, and probably most reliable, test to use is the exclusion diet. After a couple of weeks, or less, of completely excluding something you will get some idea of whether it is a factor, whereas many of the tests provided by medical centres/labs etc are as unreliable as a GP is for getting an autism dx.

People spend almost as much time on gluten-free and similar forums discussing the places, labs, doctors/people, etc to go to/see for a reliable test/dx as they do on WP.

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Whoah ... Ouinon, I TOTALLY support the research you've done and the findings you've made. I KNOW they come from the heart, and I meant to cite your experience as PROOF that some of the ideas originally supported by the DAN! doctors actually seem to have some validity. But my point was that just because they may have found something that seems to help some, for reasons they've not really understood, does not mean DAN! is resting on sound science and out for the good of the children. THAT was my point. I think there is good there, in that system, but also a lot of profit motive and plain voodoo. So, one who goes that route, as has been suggested in this thread, needs to keep a skeptical eye. THAT was my point. I won't hold anyone back from talking to doctors who may have ideas that help their children be happier, but they should know that some controversy exists, so that they apply the right caution. DAN! doctors are still, by the name of the program, out to "cure" autism. I just want to bring back the history groups like ours have had with these organizations; not start new debates: we are all learning that one size never fits all, and nothing is black and white.

A few things you've written about gluten have struck a chord with me. My father was AS, and the biggest difference between my AS father and my AS son seems to be muscle tone. My son cannot write. Either physically, or from the mental multi-task perspective. Neither my AS father nor my AS husband had that issue, and that area strikes me as the most likely to include an environmental component. We've talked about it but with my son's lifestyle it is a major hurdle to make that change, and he needs to sign on (he's 12).

And all parents need to take care of themselves, first. I had to deal with certain of my own medical issues when my son was young because they kept me from being the mom he needed. Its easy enough to live with certain things when you are alone, but when you take on responsibility for someone else, you start to see them differently. I applaud the process you've gone through for yourself and your family.

I know spines can get up quickly when we discuss some of these less than clear ideas. We all have to be careful, because we are here to support each other, not sell our own viewpoints.