Aspergers or Gluten Intolerance?

Post Reply New Topic

Hey guys, I just posted a video on youtube describing my experience with Asperger Syndrome and my interolance with gluten. Please watch if you have time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_NQFxDo ... annel_page

Here is the best youtube video I have come across on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vVjyVLh ... annel_page

I'm afraid I can't bear watching videos presenting info like that.

I think that there is definitely a connection between gluten intolerance and the spectrum, though not as simple as that "excluding gluten will cure AS". It doesn't; I have tried, on and off over 16 years, ( though it can cure depression, panic/anxiety, hypo-mania, feelings of unreality, insomnia/poor sleep, and other things ). It is much more complex, in my opinion.

However I can't watch your video, ( it just does my head in ), so I don't know what you think is the connection. I would love to discuss the relationship between the two, if you could post quotes/text instead.

.

ouinon, Aperger Syndrome is a condition or some may say difference in the frontal lobe portion of the brain. There may be a great deal of people who have gluten intolerance who actually don't have AS at all. The gluten effects the person's frontal lobe functioning giving them Aspie like symptoms. So some may really have AS, but some people might be experiencing gluten senstivity symptoms, like I pray is in my case.
Or maybe all together there is no such thing as AS, and everyone with these gluten sensitivity have the same symptoms of course, and it is labeled AS.
There is a connection between gluten sensitivity and Autism, there is no denying that. But why? Why would an allergic reaction to some food be linked to a brain condition? There just seems to be too much of a coincidence.

Is there any scientific evidence to suggest that gluten causes AS symptoms?


There isn't? Is it causation or is it effect?


It only seems to be too much of a coincidence if you made up your mind that gluten causes AS from the start. Some might say it's because gut disorders and brain tissue come from the same grouping of stem cells and hence are very "attached." But hey... no scientific proof for that, either.

No offense, but do you really think it is that simple? Experts have been searching for decades and decades for "the" cause of autism and haven't found one that holds up to scientific scrutiny (including this one, from the little I've read on it).

I agree. Sometimes I think that Dr. Karl/Kalle Reichelt has it right when he says that gluten, or gluten intolerance, has an effect on the development of the growing brain.

And sometimes I think that gluten intolerance just has a particularly strong effect on certain kinds of brain, some/many of them on the spectrum, .. but there is some evidence that autoimmune disorders relating to the gut are somewhat correlated with the spectrum, ( two thirds of a group of 200 + autistic children were discovered to have the same gene as produces a chronic gastro-intestinal disorder for instance, and people on the spectrum apparently produce lower levels of complex-carbohydrate-digesting enzymes than the general population, something which could have an effect on gut-wall permeability ).

Whatever the connection I think that for many people on the spectrum, ( those who do not seem to experience gastrointestinal distress most of all, oddly enough ), cutting out gluten can have a dramatically positive effect on mental health, ( aswell as physical ), but is unlikely to have an effect on their fundamentally AS/Spectrum functioning, which as far as I'm concerned is ok, because it is not the underlying AS/Spectrum aspects which are the biggest problem, but the co-morbids ( depression, panic/anxiety, hyper-sensitivities, poor sleep/insomnia, feelings of unreality/disconnection, alienation, fatigue/lethargy, mood-disorders/hypo-mania, etc ).

Sometimes I hypothesise that gluten intolerance could cause a range of profound psychological reactions, impacting on many areas of life, like sexuality, for instance, not because of its food-opioid-peptide qualities so much as because of the brain's reaction to constant/unremitting, and apparently unavoidable, ( therefore "useless" as signal ) gastrointestinal pain/distress in infancy, for example, ( ... the brain perhaps "coping"/cutting load by repressing signals from the Vagus nerve and the Enteric nervous system ). I wish more people on WP had tried a gluten-free diet for a serious amount of time, so we could compare notes.

I think that it is possible that gluten intolerance does in fact impact on brain construction in early infancy, ( and there are at least a couple of different ways this could happen ), producing behaviour which is now labelled AS/Autist, but the only thing which is certain at this point is that gluten-free diets are worth trying if suffer from depression, or any one of the various mental health problems which so many people on the spectrum seem to suffer from so frequently.

... The idea that gluten intolerance might actually have influenced how some/many people's brains developed is so ooo weird and wonderful though. Does make me think of the apple in the garden of eden!! !

.

I have a weird, but fairly dramatic gluten insensitivity - still waiting for a biopsy to determine if it could be celiac - but a biopsy 5 years ago was clear...

It sends my metabolism haywire and cause blistering and lesions on my skin (including inside my mouth if I eat it, even in tiny quantities).

I am now totally gluten free for about a year, almost gluten free for 3 years...and it hasn't made a blessed bit of mental difference to me.

M.

gluten intolerance is mostly called celiacs,
my mum has it, and no i dont think that autism is related to it.

Poor Mum cant have anything with wheat and gluten in it because she gets very very very sick.

hope i helped.

I have to admit that I've been pondering putting my family on a trial run of a GF/CF diet. Is there anything at all that I could look for to determine if whether or not any of us would benefit from the diet before beginning it? It just seems like an awful lot of money, and work to spend on it if we don't need it.

Serenity its not going to cost your family anymore money than a diet with gluten, it might cost a little less. You guys will be less likely to eat out on a gluten free diet and you'll avoid buying extras that contain sweets.
What signs to look for? Well do you have any obesity or people in your family that are overweight? Do any of them get a high or seem hyper after a meal that has bread? Do they seem to crash or get exhaused about an hour later or do they get deep brain fog about an hour later? Does anyone have problem with acid reflux, indegestion, diahreah, etc.

The only way to logically find an answer to this ridiculous question is to avoid gluten for a week or so and see, do you still have AS?

Of course you will, but for those unconvinced, try it. I did try it, three years ago. It did nothing for me.

Then, I read research that said that avoiding gluten was good for autistic children, but did nothing for adults.

I have gluten intolerance. Gluten causes GI issues (irregular stool, bloating, etc...) and skin issues (acne, blister-like nodules, flakey scalp, and itchy rash). It is an auto-immune response. Google for details if you are curious.

Gluten can also cause short term depression and suicidal thoughts. That happens only in people that are gluten intolerant. I don't think there's any reason to go gluten free diet unless you are symptomatic.

I do not agree with Central's last post. Gluten free diet is much more expensive than regular diet. Gluten is in EVERYTHING, even in foods that are not normally derived from wheat, barley or rye. Gluten is often used as a filler or thickening agent in foods that one would never think to look for gluten in. For example ice cream or chocolate. And also food can be cross-contaminated with gluten at the processing plant. To remain gluten free one needs to eat foods that are certified gluten-free. Those can typically only be found at specialty stores such as Whole Foods.

None of those are concrete symptoms of gluten intolerance with the exception of diarrhea. Even that can be a symptom, but it doesn't necessarily have to be present.

Edit: oh yeah, staying gluten free does not affect AS one way or the other.

I tried it. It was very hard to get gluten-free food in my small town. I'm not much of a cook so I didn't buy gluten-free or casein free ingredients to make my own food, so it was very expensive for me.
It took some time to get used to the food, especially gf-free bread.

It did help me sleep better and I wasn't as impatient. And yeah I lost heaps of weight. It didn't do much for my social life and I couldn't drink alcohol, so it made my social life worse.

I've heard it helps people with Autism/AS but I don't think it cures them.

I say enough with this curing nonsense. The diet would make people feel better because it's probably cutting out fatty or refined sugar foods that aren't good for our body anyway. When you eat healthy you feel a whole lot better. And you won't feel like crap from alcohol because you wouldn't be drinking it.
Yes, the diet is good and can make life for some people with ASD/ADHD/Celiac's a lot better, but for those born with ASD they got it for life. It's better to just learn coping strategies than trying to exorcise it out of your body.

I don't eat the "obvious" suspects - bread, pasta, pastry etc - and don't use any highly processed stuff, but I'm not so sure about other things. Ouinon, you seem to know a lot on the subject - could you give me a link where I could find in more detail what classes of food contain gluten?

Also, keep in mind that many children that are called "autistic" nowadays actually fit the profile of mitochondrial disease better than what was typically called autism.

For example, many children who have "drastically improved" by a GFCF diet follow the:

Vaccine -> Fever -> Seizure -> "Autism"

pattern. The reason why they had severe reactions to the vaccines was due to their compromised immune systems. If you have a compromised immune system, then there is an increased risk of allergies to items that other people have no negative reaction to (exe. gluten). It's certainly not impossible for a person with inborn ASD to have similar allergies, but the rate is much higher in people with existing immuno-deficiencies.

That is very interesting. Thank you very much for posting about that.

I had heard of the mitochondrial factor, but hadn't realised that it, ( or the fragility of oxidative, and other related, processes ), was now taken so seriously as the trigger for a significant percentage, ( between 20% and 65%, I discover on looking quickly at a couple of papers, depending on how many aspects of mitochondrial functioning take into account ), of autism/spectrum cases, nor that it was so closely connected to autoimmune system dysfunction/overactivity etc.

Very useful information. It may explain the curious way in which some elements in the mix seemed to be simultaneously both cause and effect. I had read Martha Herbert on the subject of oxidative stress, and other metabolic pathways, being implicated in what is known as Autism/the Autism spectrum, but hadn't really taken in how these might be involved in creating a "vicious" circle of increasingly "different" neurological functioning, ( exacerbated, in a significant number of cases, by the effects of food intolerances, themselves the result of the metabolic differences ).
.

Last edited by ouinon on 10 Jun 2009, 6:04 am, edited 2 times in total.