*Starch, or the Decline and Fall of the AS Organism!*

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Interestingly the gut/Enteric Nervous System corresponds with one of the 7 Chakra in oriental teachings. It is the third from the bottom and is called "manipura".

It is the chakra concerned with "personal power, fear, anxiety, opinion-formation, introversion, and transition from simple/basic emotions to complex ones. Physically it governs digestion, emotionally it governs "expansiveness", and spiritually it governs all matters of growth.

What if many of the problems which we experience, the things which disable us, were because our chakra for dealing with anxiety, opinion-formation, and introversion were out of whack as a result of gut overload? What if our tendency to contraction and retreat were because our chakra for expansiveness is exhausted by continual gut-overload? And isn't one of the signs of AS a delay in growth, in development?

If we paid as much attention to limiting overload to the ( 300 square meters of ) gut as many currently do to limiting exposure to noise, crowds, chemical smells, touch, etc, I believe that we might gain strength in all the above areas which restrict so many of us now. We would still be AS, but strong and able to use our often extraordinary capacities to the full.

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It's as if people on WP didn't have any guts/Enteric Nervous System at all, ( not even a few square meters, let alone the normal 300 ).

No interest in reducing overload whatsoever ... "Not if it means that I have to give up my toast/pizza/hi-fibre lunch-sandwich".

I suppose most people's ENS is half asleep like Old Man Willow, which would have a soporific effect on anyone.

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My gut is currently bloated from starch. Sugar in high quantities can also do it. And, interestingly, I find fibre even harder to digest. Also, I have problems with anything more than small amounts of vitamin C (it's an acid and can be very hard on the gut if the gut is in bad shape).

Obviously everyone is different. But many people do have problems with an agricultural diet, especially when taken to extremes, and it is frequently blamed for the diseases of civilization (arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, obesity . . . ).

Reference: Neanderthin, by Ray Audette with Troy Gilchrist.
I wish there were more information out there on the Stone Age diet, but this book is a good start.

I have eaten low/no starch in the past, but there is a limit to how many years you can eat eggs 3 meals/day before you never want to see them again. My gut doesn't have problems with them, but my tastebuds sure do. And because I'm on welfare, I can't afford to eat a wider variety of animal proteins. So now I eat starch and my gut pays the price. It won't be forever. Then I go back to stone age. Yes!

I don't believe that going starch-free cures autism, based on my own experience. I do think it is possible, though, that an agricultural diet on the part of the mother can trigger the development of an autistic brain in utero for those with the right set of genes. Who knows?

Btw: protein + starch works, for those who are fine with starch.
Protein + fat works, for those who are carb free (but this diet doesn't work for everyone either).
Protein all by itself can lead to protein deprivation. You need to eat it with either fat or carbohydrate (or both) in order to metabolize it properly.

Nor do I .

But I think that gut overload may be responsible for a great many of the difficulties that we think of as AS as "discovered" in 1941/3.

I think that at previous times in history AS was not such a disability, not only because society was quieter, slower, etc etc, but because AS guts were not so weakened/comatose/numbed. I think that it may explain why AS has become seen as a disorder rather than a difference, because our sensitive systems are seriously disturbed by modern diets, and a great many of us are actually "unwell aspies/auties".

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Anemone, fiber is undigestiblle. That's what defines dietary fiber as fiber.

That's because fruits are produced for reproductive purposes, if they are eaten before the seed matures, then the plant's reproductive success will be limited accordingly. Plants that defend their fruits (for instance by producing toxins that are destroyed/broken down as the fruit ripens) will have greater reproductive success and come to outnumber plants that do not defend their fruits. The result is that most plants defend their fruits from being eaten before the seed has matured, by preventing the fruit from being palatable until the seeds have matured.


Good grief, potatoes poor in nutrients?
Er, no potatoes are an exceptionally rich source of nutrients.


I find this a much less compelling explanation than Mary Douglas's "matter out of place" paradigm.

Where does this information come from? Why would the root vegetables have exclusively been those without starch?


I doubt it. The reason is because the plants produce toxins in their fruit. Not starch, but things recognized widely as toxins. Evidently some primates (particularly among Old World cercopithecines) can break down these toxins and include unripened fruit in their diets accordingly.

We can digest starch more readily than we can dietary fiber. That is why we (humans) cannot extract nutrients from plant materials that other animals can extract nutrients from.

No, this is what you think, without any proof what so ever.


No, if you would present some hard evidence or even some refernce that these "overloads" happens, I would be considering your theory.


You just lost all hope of ever convinceing me. But it does explain your argumentation techniquc.


A voice of reason, finaly!


Besides, our "human evolution" took place in the savannah (?), our diet most likley where more similar to the baboons than chimps.

I didn't catch the reason why these starches and such, of the modern era, are negatively effecting us with AS, while NT's are perfectly fine.

I am curious; how long did you eat a no starch diet for? What differences did you notice in general functioning, not just digestive? How long have you been eating starch for again, and what differences have you noticed since then?

Tinned fish is a fairly cheap and good source of protein too. And I find that without starch in my diet I don't have to eat as much, so it actually works out cheaper, especially as I don't get cravings for things, ( which can work out pretty expensive if can't control them).
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Last edited by ouinon on 20 Feb 2009, 8:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

How do we know that starch is not one of these "defences/deterrents", especially as certain bacteria use starch for their protective/defensive cell walls?


The information about chimpanzee diet is widely available, and it is generally accepted that humans probably ate similarly to other primates for a very long time. We would probably have stuck to the non-starchy roots for the same reason that monkeys do. It is unpalatable when uncooked, and harder to digest.


That is not saying much. Dietary fibre is completely undigestible. That means that starch could be pretty undigestible, a lot of work for our digestive systems, to be eaten only when absolutely necessary.

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Why do flourescent lights, bleach cleaners, noise, big groups, and certain kinds of touch, ( among many other things ), bother AS, and not NTs?

Our guts have a surface area of 300 square meters. If it is anything like as sensitive as the rest of us then there is every reason to think that it will be overloaded by things which NT guts are perfectly able to handle.

And am just wondering; our central nervous system, the brain, is wired differently to that of NTs. What evidence do we have that the almost independent nervous system of the gut, ( the Enteric Nervous System ), is not also?

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I just found an article on connections between the Enteric Nervous System and epilepsy, migraine, and autism, at:

http://www.meridianinstitute.com/ceu/ceu12abd.html

The title of the article is "The Abdominal Brain and the Enteric Nervous System", by McMillin, Richards, Mein, and Nelson.

The Autism Centre ( uk ) has a page on Eating Disorders, at:

http://www.theautismcentre.co.uk/2007/0 ... rders.html ... which says;

"Within the ENS lies a complex collection of microcircuitry driven by more neurotransmitters and neuromodulators than found anywhere in the peripheral nervous system. Inside the ENS is nearly every chemical needed for brain function." 95% of the body's serotonin is produced there.

Many, if not most, AS suffer from some kind of bowel disorder/disturbance/dysfunction.

For anyone interested in the subject Judy Salmon presented a paper at the ARMS conference on autism in 2008 about "Autism and the ENS". And Michael Gershon wrote a book called "The Second Brain" about the ENS.

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By identifying and measuring the compositions of various rejected and accepted foods and correlating the results to make useful deductions.

Which primates, marmosets? Or perhaps chimpanzees (since you mention them, although you also mention monkeys too...)?


Probably? So this is just speculation on your part?

I expect many foods seem unpalatable in their uncooked state to us, it's not necessarily the case that our ancestors found them much less palatable than the alternatives contemporaneously available to them. After all, I find raw meat unpalatable, but I understand there are primates other than myself who are quite happy to consume raw meat.

Evidently, non-human primates do eat fruit containing starch. Non-human primates do usually eat fruits lower in starch than those we human primates often include in our diets.

However, in considering digestion, it is sensible to start with the mouth (not the intestine).

Primates produce an enzyme (salivary amylase) in their saliva that breaks down and (so) begins digestion of starches. Human primates produce this enzyme in a greater amount than non-human primates. Humans have more copies of the gene coding for it than other primates.

Considering we produce more of a particular enzyme (than other primates) that makes starches more readily digestible, does it make good sense to extrapolate from non-human primate diets to our own (in regards to starch)? We are differently equipped to better digest starch, so their diets are not necessarily good predictors of our own in this specific area.



Dietary fiber is very healthy for us. You wish to claim that starch is bad for us because it is difficult to digest while conceding something that is good for us is impossible to digest. Do you not consider this to be hopelessly muddled thinking?

Last edited by pandd on 20 Feb 2009, 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you for pointing that out.

I have found out something very interesting about amylase production in Autists/AS. Sulphation processes are different/disturbed/dysfunctional in Autists, and this impacts on our ability to produce pancreatic amylase. Wow!

"Sulphation and Autism", by Rosemary Waring, ( School of Biosciences. Birmingham University ), in "The Autism File", at:

http://www.autismfile.com/papers/Rosema ... hation.asp




Imagine having a mouth that says you can eat something that your gut can't handle. ... Oh yes, I don't need to imagine it; I'm AS and I've suffering from and/or been struggling with this problem for most of my life!
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Last edited by ouinon on 20 Feb 2009, 12:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, there's indigestible and there's indigestible. Most people seem to require some amount of dietery fibre as bulk, otherwise they get constipated. For me, fibre is the opposite. It leaves me cramped, bloated, and in pain.

We may not break it down into nutrients, but we can still eat it if it doesn't make us sick. That's what I meant by digestible/indigestible.

I ate mostly low/no starch for many years (probably close to ten years low to moderate starch, wobbling back and forth), then went completely stone age for 9 months, until my savings ran out (couldn't get it to work on welfare budget), now eating whatever I can bring myself to swallow. When completely stone age my indigestion cleared up completely, so did my skin (I wasn't expecting that, but bad skin is a sign of poor diet), and I lost weight I didn't know I could lose. I'm now much heavier than I was when I started, because my diet is that much worse. But I know it comes off quickly when the food is right, so it's mostly my dignity that's a problem right now. And the bloating and pain.

Fish, eggs, hamburger, lamb - I'm sick of them all. What I really want is steak. Thick, juicy steak. In general, food needs to be high fat to taste edible for me, which is adaptive if I'm going carb-free, since I'll need the fat to metabolize the protein.

Most fish isn't high fat enough, and pink salmon is also vetoed by my taste buds these days. Another thing I overdid at one point. (I'm also dreaming of prawns.)