Facebook Group for Natural ASD Treatment

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I've just come to the conclusion about autism that its a very effective and possibly superior way of thinking, but in this world, with it's toxic food and cultural norms that stand in the way, it doesn't function very well. So be eating the right food, and learning to navigate the world in a way that's still true to ourselves, we can fully realise the potential of autism as our superpower. Which ultimately is what I'm trying to do with the group, empower people.

I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the role of food. It is to provide energy and the various chemicals the body needs to survive. Unless you eat a really toxic diet, perhaps for instance entirely composed of hamburgers, it is not going to change the way your brain works, not is it going to influence behavior.
What is 'natural' is in any case your value judgment. Others will have different definitions. If you subsist entirely on a diet of alcohol, clearly switching to not doing so will help you think clearly. But there are no 'super' foods, only dietary fads.

To the contrary, it is you who misunderstands the role of food. Yes, food is fuel - chemical energy. But it is also medicine. Nearly every food/plant has medicinal properties. It's the reason Hypocrates so wisely stated "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

Foods most certainly do influence behaviour, beyond being medicine. Personal example: When I was 12yo our family doctor instructed us to do a food allergy elimination diet. Eat a basic diet for 4-5 days, then overload on one single food type to see how you react to it. Breads/grains/gluten (who knows which exact chemical compounds?) profoundly affected my temperament and behaviour for the worse.

Some foods make people feel happy and energized, others lethargic and depressed, others aroused as an aphrodisiac. Food affects us more so than just refilling our chemical energy reserves.

I'm going to disregard the notion of 'natural remedies' here; a common complaint of people with ASD is some form of gastrointestinal issue (cramps, gas, upset stomach etc.). This could in some way be linked to the limited diet which is also common, in one form or another, in people with ASD.

Especially for children, I'm not sure if overall appearence of ASD is reduced directly through a change in diet, or because the family is together in a daily 'meal ritual', with a defined time and people present:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573255/

Effectively:

Diet quality was poor among children 3-11 years, regardless of ASD status. Among children with ASD, lack of a significant correlation between HEI (healthy eating index) score and mealtime structure suggests other factors such as food selectivity and problematic mealtime behaviors may be associated with mealtime environments.

The main thing here is to consider what you might consider a 'good' (or 'good enough') diet. Certain micronutrients can be neglected, or in massive surplus, in certain diets, and it can be good to change. Also,the impact of things like probiotics in association with behaviour, at least on children, is a real thing that is currently undergoing clinical trial:

https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-016-0887-5


While I'm sure you mean this as an extreme over-simplification, I'm unclear what you mean when talking about an altered diet in the context of what you've written above. For example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24789114

"A Casein/gluten free diet has limited/weak evidence supporting it's use as a treatment for symptoms of ASD..."

It is important to note that most (if not all) such studies are conducted on people with severe autism, so the impact on people with high functioning autism is more difficult to gauge. It is also important to note that just because something is undergoing clinical trial does not mean that it is effective.

Why disregard natural remedies?

As for gastrointestinal issues in ASD people; it's far from just me who's made the direct correlation. There have been several articles about studies out over the last few years discussing the link and current research into it. Eventually, hard factual science will explain everything I've experienced and shared here on these forums. There's an intestinal/enteric nervous system component to ASD and it's treatable via diet, supplements, and probiotics. I know for certain because I've been treating myself in this way for more than 4 years now and am living a much happier, healthier, ASD-symptom minimized life for it.

Yes, obviously a poor diet & eating habits will result in a less healthy person whether they're autistic or not. Clearly.

Yes, just because something is undergoing clinical trials doesn't necessarily mean it's effective.. but also, clinical trials aren't conducted if there's no reason to believe it may be effective in the first place. No, that doesn't mean a predetermined outcome and the trials are a sham to prove it, but rather that the time & money invested in clinical trials is allotted based on a reasonable hypothesis that it will work. Further to that, I've been treating my own symptoms for long enough to Know what works regardless of the outcome of current or future clinical trials, so I'm not someone who's sitting around waiting for results of said trials before deciding to treat myself. I am happy to see that trials are being done and the information will eventually reach those who are of the mindset that only the results of clinical trials can tell them whether something works or doesn't work - ok, fine, wait for results, make decisions and take action afterwords if that's what works for you.

Of course that's an oversimplification for brevity's sake. I'm not quite sure what your question is, though? Are you asking what my diet was/is that I've used to treat myself?

I believe ASD symptoms are caused by a chemical imbalance. Any differences in brain wiring are adaptations to the chemical imbalance. So ASD symptoms are a combination of chemical imbalances and your brain adapting to it.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I believe that those chemical imbalances are caused by digestive tract bacteria/(something? bacteria, fungus, scoby, something else?) inherited from one's mother at birth. Then whatever it is that grows in our guts emits some sort of neurotoxin or other chemical imbalance that ends up affecting brain growth, structure, and connective patterns as the brain "trips out," on said chemical imbalance not unlike an ingested drug trip. That's how I think some sort of imbalance occurs and affects the wiring of our brains.

I definitely feel tripped out or high on drugs sometimes. So I see a lot of my weird ASD quirks as me reacting to drugs rather than some intrinsic part of my personality. You wouldn't call someone who struggles to drive when they're drunk a bad driver.

Ding ding ding!

Over 4 years ago when I shared my experience of being hypersensitive to salicylate acids in foods & then also to the effects of other foods I described the symptoms of sensory overload/sensitivities, philosophical thinking, depression/anxiety, and a multitude of other things as essentially being like being under the influence of various drugs! That's EXACTLY the parallel I drew more than 4 years ago and stand by today. Our experiences of altered mood, altered thinking, different perspectives, changes in hearing, vision, pain thresholds and other sensory experiences can be directly compared to experiences of being high/intoxicated on various pharmaceutical or recreational drugs because they are one in the same! The various chemicals we ingest through food, medicine, and environment trip our brains out in various ways that are not unlike being under the influence. Perhaps we're hypersensitive to certain chemicals (I KNOW I was) & more susceptible to these effects than the NT brain, but yeah, I am definitely on the same page as you in this regard.

Sorry, no, the means by which people can become intoxicated or damaged in some way by ingested substances are well known. Psychoactive substances are well known and quite frankly we Aspies would have to be a completely different species to be adversely affected by entirely different substances than people who are not on the spectrum. We are not that different. We are more sensitive to some sensory input, but to mundane foods, no, I think not. This is all about looking for simple answers to a difficult question. A modern variant on the miracle cure sellers of the past. If I could lessen my symptoms that easily, I would. We ALL would. Unfortunately, life is not like that.

Then how do you explain anyone having chemical sensitivities that are stronger than others'? Whether to food, or scent, components of food, reactions to medications etc? Even amongst "regular" people there's a broad range of sensitivity levels to various foods, drugs, and environmental chemicals. Fact.

I've shared my story here on these forums about being hypersensitive to salicylate acids in foods in the past, what the effects were, how I managed to detox them etc.

Please, do feel free to explain how you know that we're not sensitive to certain foods.

That's great that you have a positive attitude towards lessening your symptoms! Now who's to say, but you, that you cannot try to do so by some of the methods that have worked for myself and others? (hint: only you.)

Goldfish, serious question? Well that's really encouraging as more often than not, people who ask things like that are closed-minded to genuine answers and only want to continue maintaining their belief. If you do mean this as a genuine question then I commend you for being willing to listen and I have several answers for you.

1) I don't think people who buy into 'alternative medicine' such as yourself are waiting for some kind of financial benefit, but that does not mean there are not other reasons why you might be highly motivated to believe in something which isn't true.

2) We are all capable of wishful thinking and it would be nice to have simple answers to complex issues rather than ones that seem impenetrable unless you have a deep understanding of things like neuroscience and chemistry. That motivates us to want to believe the easier explanation (regardless of if it is the accurate one).

3) There is a strong salacious desire towards having some kind of secret knowledge or conspiracy-theory thinking. We are drawn to the idea that we have the inside track on something exciting and dramatic and others don't. This makes us drawn to the exciting thought of the pharmaceutical industry doing things like conspiratorially hiding cures in favor of pushing more expensive treatments. They are greedy, that's right, in fact, so greedy they wouldn't miss an opportunity to wipe out the competition by bringing a cure to market (while charging a lot more maybe) and rendering their competitor's treatment pharmaceuticals worthless.

4) The more often we passionately repeat something, the stronger we associate it with our own identity and with our ego. Even without meaning to, we become extremely reluctant to entertain the possibility that we are incorrect as that would potentially make us look foolish or mean that we have wasted time and money on things which were not effective.

5) There is often a lack of understanding of what science is. It's essentially just the most effective method humans have developed of assessing if something happens or not. We decide what we want to test, we design the best test, we carry it out and then see what the results were. There is not a science-based medicine and an alternative-medicine ...only medicine which passed the does-it-work test and that which doesn't.

There is much more but my main point was to try and illustrate that there are all sorts of perfectly innocent and understandable reasons why people will continue to believe something despite it not being true. I've been guilty of this in the past too but (as you can probably tell) I started reading quite a lot about things like critical thinking.

Si

5 attempts and you didn't answer my question. What's my incentive, or motivation, to make false claims about my ability to treat my ASD symptoms with medicine*? What would I get out of fabricating such a thing over 4 years ago & reporting here that my symptoms are minimized and life is much better for it? I'm waiting.

*I've only used the term "natural medicine," to differentiate from the modern accepted convention of Western Medicine's pharmaceuticals. You are 100% correct in that medicine is medicine.

What Si_82 said is absolutely on the money. It is too easy to be taken in by snake oil salesmen.

Ok.. and please, do tell, what is it I've been offering for sale on these forums for more than 4 years? What product or service have I made any attempt to sell anyone in exchange for money? (Hint: None.)

Goldfish, I am not saying you are the salesmen, but there is huge market in 'Natural' remedies, homeopathy and other nonsense. Treatments like this are easy to make and tend to be expensive. Even the smart can be taken in. Steve Jobs, for example, is reckoned to have delayed the conventional treatment of his cancer and tried 'alternative' therapies, until it was too late.