The different gut bacteria in autistic individuals may be...

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -bacteria/

Doesn't appear to be any brand new info that hasn't been published in recent months - but it's interesting to see that it's been published by National Geographic now.

http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/05/19/why- ... ent-787624


Check this one out.

That is, in a nutshell, pretty much exactly what I've done for myself over the last couple of years. I shared my story here on WP last January and the response was that I was either lying or it was a hoax or I was trying to sell people something - nope, none of the above. I've managed to reduce my symptoms by ~95% & get back to work and life in a big way. I'm living a second life.

There's probably something to this. I've had huge GI isues over the years - had to cut my casien (dairy) intact to a very low level in my teens on the order of my doctor - and a couple of years ago ordered to go gluten free by my GI specialist.

These were because of GI related health problems I was having that were quite severe. The idea that my autism may be related as well doesn't surprise me - the human body is one very complicated, integrated system.

That's great for you. I think it's easy to overgeneralize from such an experience though. Even Dr Hyman is careful to note:


You have found a better way of living for yourself. The problems you have successfully treated in yourself may or may not be autism, but they were hard for you and now things are much better. That's good.

Since you were not diagnosed with autism and you were not then found to have had a dramatic improvement in symptoms by an external observer, it is only natural that people will be reluctant to make too much of your reports on this. To accept your experience as a major breakthrough in autism treatment without some kind of independent verification would require an unhealthy level of credulity in your audience. But it's great that life is better for you now.

I've heard this from you & this forum for almost a year.

I've been entirely transparent about the fact that I am self diagnosed via reading books/online the entire time. I'm not stupid. I know what my lifetime's worth of experiences & symptoms add up to. It's a textbook match to Tony Attwood's "The Complete Guide To Asperger's Syndrome." I've also shared why I never sought an official diagnosis. (stigma, future career etc) The ONLY difference is not having an official diagnosis on paper, not that I didn't/don't have symptoms nor that they did not improve so dramatically that I referred to the results as miraculous.

As for external observers - everyone in my life has been able to see the differences. Family, friends, my GP, my ND friend etc. I'm not the only one who's noticed my own improvements.

I've also said time and time again, don't take my word for it - simply try it for yourselves and see if you experience similar results. It really is that simple.

Anyone here can feel free to pm me about any of this at any time.

Try it for yourself makes sense if you want to know if it will help you personally.

If you want to know if the ideas behind the treatments are accurate, then the sample size in such a trial is too small.

I don't mean to belittle your experience or you as a person in any way.

I take my direction in this from my early exposure to Carl Sagan:

But also:


Maybe this is such a case. If so, we will find out through the methods of science.

In either case, I wish you well and I am glad that you have found something that works for you.

I believe you've already posted that post yourself.

Regardless, here's a debunking. http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/ ... cience-on/

Yeah, it sounded weird to me too. Now I get it.

I think I'll pass on the cure of eliminating "gut bacteria" (and anti-vaccination, homeopathy, faith healing, and silverfish acupuncture or whatever is hot right now) and go with stuff that's been scientifically proven. I find these alternative treatments disturbing. People are free to pursue whatever cure they want as rational adults making their own decisions, but I don't like the idea of desperate parents trying out stuff like this on their autistic child who has no choice in the matter, possibly with serious side effects.

You're free to ignore any new information you want to.. but it's not just myself & Dr. Mark Hyman making these statements. There have been several articles over the last year all pointing to the Autism gut-brain connection & success with probiotic treatments in mice as well as mention of other studies done using diet. It's not just my belief, but my experience, that ASD symptoms are either caused or exacerbated by digestive issues. Treat the digestive, heal the neurological/behavioural. Sure, there's more to it than that - i.e. the salicylate acid sensitivity I told you of here, too - but even that is said to be caused by digestive issues.

It's been interesting to see the massive resistance to what I shared here 10 or 11 months ago fade away a bit as more and more information comes out about the latest ASD treatment R&D and people begin to accept that there might just be something to it. I'm curious to see how much attitudes may change about this over the course of the next year, as surely there will be more and more related information published. And of course, I hope that people do begin to take it seriously and are able to give it a go and achieve the life changing positive results I have for myself. That's why I continue to share my story.

edit: I just read the "debunking," which doesn't actually debunk anything. It points out a lack of statistical evidence, but does not outright disprove any of the claims or statements in the article. It seems to have been written by someone as skeptical as some of you here on this forum, not by someone using science to disprove bad science.

Of course I'm biased. I'm not a child that outgrew ASD symptoms. I'm 32 years old and have successfully treated my symptoms using very similar methods as described in that piece. I know it works & hope it works for others who are open to trying it for themselves.

A few short years ago when my now closest friend first introduced me to the idea of natural medicine being able to heal various things I literally had to stop myself from laughing out loud. I was beginning to, but even though I didn't know him very well yet, I liked and respected him enough not to laugh at what he was saying. I kept my composure & tried to keep just a little bit of an open mind. Over time I learned many things from him and his father, as well as from my own reading - books/online, once I was more open minded about such things. I began to accept the possibility that all of this stuff was just as real as any other form of medicine or healing. Since then I've been my own guinea pig & have experienced highly successful results and am no longer skeptical AT ALL about natural medicine and healing. Perhaps over time as more and more people do as I've done and share their stories online more of you will come around to the idea that we're not "quacks," or out of our minds in any sense and that these things can and will help many people. Only time will tell.

I hear you & appreciate your respectful and real response.

What I don't get is why you/others would prefer to wait for science to tell you it's ok to do something along the lines of what I've done in order to receive the benefits I have. It's still a little beyond me how so many scientifically minded people can be so reluctant to want to be active participants in their own science experiment of sorts by trying some of these things for yourselves. That part still seems strange to me.

^At one point in time the greatest scientific minds thought you would fall off the edge of the earth if you went too far,until some challenged the idea and helped proved it.

Sounds like you're still doing good.
Dont give up.

Overall, I'm doing great - thanks! Sure, I still stumble here and there.. i.e. several weeks ago I took some antibiotics that threw off my digestive balance & ASD symptoms began creeping back up and I've been working hard to rebalance things - trying to find the right balance of probiotics etc. Too little and there's anxiety/nervousness/ASD symptoms creeping up, but too much at once and I find it can cause nervousness, too. I guess it's just got to be a gradual improvement thing. Obviously I still have more to learn about maintaining all of this long term.. but I'll never give up on myself or my goals, so I'll persevere and keep learning & doing.

I also have some big goals I'm finally able to work towards in terms of finances/career. I have no intentions of ever giving up on those, either.

As far as all of this digestive treatment stuff goes, I'm an open book about it an will help whoever cares to learn - but at the moment I'm too busy with my own life to really spend a lot of time and energy promoting it to others to try for themselves. Most people on these forums are aware of what I've done and they can pm me if they've come around to the idea of wanting to learn/do any of it for themselves. I hope to see others share similar stories to my own in the future, and with them others yet accepting that I'm not some complete anomaly and that this stuff may help them, too. All in due time, I suppose.

Well, actually, it does.

It is a scientific fact that a lot of children's autism symptoms improve on their own. If Hyman wants to show that his "treatments" provide benefits, he needs to show that children are more likely to improve after being treated by him than they otherwise would. He hasn't shown that, therefore his claims are not supported by the data and we cannot reject the null hypothesis ("there is no difference between the effect of treatments proposed by Mark Hyman and the effect of placebo treatments"). In other words, it is bad science.

There's no need to disprove anything, because, as always, the onus is on the person making the claim to show that they are right.


Ah, the Galileo gambit... that's an association fallacy.

Firstly, intelligent people have known from observation that the world is round since long before Columbus. There was evidence for it, and people believed it. There was no concern that he was going to fall off the world.

OK, not Columbus then. I just mentioned Galileo - he was persecuted, right? Well, yes... but he was persecuted by the Church, who didn't like that the evidence proved them wrong.

"Galileo was mocked and turned out to be right. I'm being mocked. Therefore I must be right."

That does not follow. People also mock George Bush's view on global warming, but that doesn't mean he's right. Generally, if lots of people think you are wrong... you're very probably wrong.


If there are benefits then there must also be risks. Until the benefits and risks have been thoroughly studied then it doesn't make sense to volunteer to try it. I'm not going to die if I keep living my life like I am (of course I do not mean to imply your treatment would kill me), so as I'm not desperate there's little reason to risk it.

The problem is amplified because 1) the mechanism of action you propose is implausible, and 2) similar (but less dramatic) treatments haven't been shown to have an effect in the past (e.g. GFCF).

The most likely risk is that I eat the foul tasting foods you advocate for, sacrificing the foods that make eating enjoyable, and experience no improvement. But that's just "no effect", and no medical treatment is ever free of side effects.

I knew this article was a piece of garbage the second they described a boy as "suffering" with Asperger Syndrome. Aspergers is NOT a disease! When are these nitwit NTs going to get that message through their thick skulls?!

What risks might there be associated with eating organic foods & herbs/oils? The only one I can think of is anaphylaxis.. otherwise what could possibly go wrong by doing even exactly what I've done? IMO, that's a huge benefit to natural medicine - there aren't laundry lists of side effects on pill bottle labels that may outweigh the benefits like there are with pharmaceuticals.

Sounds more like you're afraid of positive change than you are of negative risks - the whole identifying with AS traits thing so strongly that you're reluctant to want to change in any way for fear that you may no longer feel like yourself if you do. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's what it sounds like to me.. and IMO that sort of fear isn't worth the time nor energy because I've experienced the positive changes myself and I feel more like a better version of myself than like a different person who has lost familiar and comfortable traits of ASD.

I do understand, though, that many people are unwilling to try anything different because their ASD symptoms and lives aren't so bad so they can't be bothered to make such an effort as I have. I do get that. And as I've shared, my symptoms & clinical depression were so horrendously bad a couple of years ago that I would have done ANYTHING to improve them. I gave myself no other choice. I had no other choice. I needed to figure it out and improve as I didn't know how long I could live like that. I recognize that others haven't hit that "rock bottom" & thus don't have the same motivation to heal themselves as I did.

What is implausible? I'm curious what you think is implausible considering I've already proven otherwise to myself.

Many people (even here on WP) have reported benefits of GFCF diets. How can you say that has no effect?

IMO sacrificing comfort foods for healthy medicinal foods for the chance they may help is well worth while. The only side effects of any of this that I ever experienced was vomiting twice, accompanied by a herxheimer reaction of some minor skin rashes & cold sweats. As reported here, this was only when I overdid the concentration of garlic & ACV in some early high volume enemas and killed off bacteria at too fast a rate - a very survivable error in my trial and error learning process. Otherwise it's been entirely side effect free, really. Not sure what side effects one might expect from herbs & spices and chicken soup.