Stop Hating Autism Treatments

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Stop Hating Autism Treatments

The name “Autism Awareness Month” is popular with those who want to use medical or psychological interventions to improve the autistic experience, but also with some who discriminate against autistic people. “Autism Acceptance Month” is popular with those who encourage the acceptance of autistic people as they are, without forcing them to conform to the norms of a neurotypical society, but some of the same tolerant people also discourage autistics from taking health measures that could improve their lives. There are good things and bad things about both kinds of Autism Month. Supporters of Autism Awareness include people who engage in the harmful practice of pretending to have cured autistic people of autism, as if it were a disease. They’re less likely to be actual autistic people and are often accused by autistic people of being ableist. Autism Acceptance is more popular with autistic people themselves.

I’m autistic, and I’m worried about the attacks on “Autism Awareness Month.” Some who call April “Autism Awareness Month” view autism as a physical condition that affects the entire body, and that corresponds with my experience of it. Autism isn’t always like that, and it’s important to respect the desire of autistic people without co-occurring physical conditions to not be bothered about something that doesn’t apply to them, but it’s just as important for those who do have physical symptoms to not be denied necessary health care. Too many neurodiversity advocates who claim to speak for autistic people are suspicious of medical research into how autism works, and I want to push back against that suspicion.

Some ableist doctors and scientists want to erase us and our autism, but others are discovering therapies that could improve our mental and physical health. We shouldn’t let suspicion of the medical community prevent autistics from seeking necessary health care. Many of us need it, and we must be careful not to be swayed by uninformed skeptics who reflexively shoot down anything new and unfamiliar.

For much of my life, I had unexplained health issues that seemingly had no cause and no cure. These included constipation and hemorrhoids in fifth grade, and gradually worsening nausea beginning in my early teens, when I threw up almost every day. I had trouble understanding the other kids at school. After a psychologist at the University of Virginia diagnosed me with Asperger’s at the age of fifteen, my parents took me to the UNC Autism Research Center for a second opinion, where my diagnosis was confirmed. I was not surprised that there was officially something odd about me. In kindergarten, I had had to wear plaster casts on my feet to keep me from walking on my tiptoes, a behavior common in autistic children. The kindergarten teacher had to talk to me through a microphone that was wirelessly connected to headphones I wore, since that was the only way I would pay attention to her instructions to the class. That was pretty hi-tech back then in 1985. One of the things my kindergarten graded on was “social skills,” which I failed every week. When I was older I gradually developed a constant feeling of numbness around my skull, like it was encased in rubber.

My gastrointestinal problems continued to worsen. I often threw up after meals. One day in my early twenties my sister noticed me burping a lot and suggested I see a doctor. The doctor recommended I see a gastroenterologist, and the gastroenterologist diagnosed me with acid reflux and told me to eat no fruit, no vegetables other than boiled spinach, and no meat other than veal. He also put me on a drug that loosened my throat muscles, which I was to take before eating to help the food go down. It was a strange experience, more like dropping the food into a hole than eating it.
At the same time, I felt out of it, like I was constantly becoming stupider. I was spaced out. I sometimes said terrible things without realizing it.

When I was 22, after I had finished college and moved back to my hometown, my mom suggested that I call a doctor she had met in her counseling career, Dr. Charles Moseley, who had said there was a link between autism and the kinds of gastrointestinal symptoms I experienced. I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t interested in much, spending my days moping around the house, feeling more distant every day. My perception was slowing down little by little, and I was gradually becoming weaker and slower.

It took me about a year to decide I really did need to see Dr. Moseley. I was in denial, refusing to accept I had a problem. When I finally saw him, I asked whether he thought I was autistic. Dr. Moseley said he would observe me over the next several months before reaching a conclusion. He was not anti-autism. He recommended books by autistic authors and introduced me to an online autism community. But he still wanted to improve my experience with autism. First he focused on my nutrition, putting me on a diet of organic food with no refined sugar, oranges, bananas, dried fruit, coffee, tea, soda, nuts, nitrates, nitrites, concentrated fruit juice, mushrooms, or alcohol. Some other foods I can’t remember were probably cut out too. Even though some of those foods were nutritious, they also were prone to fungi and bacteria that could have been harmful to my damaged digestive system. He also had me take selenium, taurine, and buffered vitamin C. The results were immediate, giving me a sudden boost in energy to levels I hadn’t had in years, even with no caffeine. The day after starting the new diet and supplements, I didn’t nod off at my computer at work once, which was unusual for me. I was typing twice as fast as usual, following conversations more easily, and having an easier time of everything I did. Dr. Moseley later diagnosed and treated my Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a form a hypothyroidism, which greatly improved my health, and added gluten and casein to the list of forbidden foods.

Then Dr. Moseley diagnosed me with intestinal candidiasis, based on a urine test, and prescribed the antifungal medicine Diflucan. My first few days on Diflucan, I began to feel more closely connected with my surroundings. It was a mild improvement in my mood and perception but impossible to ignore. Within a week or so, I switched to another antifungal, nystatin. It seems counterintuitive, since nystatin is milder than Diflucan, but I found the nystatin’s effects more dramatic. Within minutes of taking the first nystatin pill, I felt something like a static electricity charge in the middle of my head, accompanied by a soft crackling sound like a plastic shopping bag being crushed. That was around 2003, and thinking back to it now reminds me of reading about the sensations John Elder Robison would later describe getting from treating his autism with transcranial magnetic stimulation in his 2016 book Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening,

“If you’ve ever stuck your finger in a wall outlet, you know exactly how it felt…. that pop of electrical energy is unmistakable. You feel the energy level rise, and you feel it fall. It’s a sensation akin to what it might feel like to pluck a harp string inside your head.…¹”

Robison felt “an awareness of energy being fired into my head…. I’m sure I felt the TMS pulse…. But I also felt something deeper — a stirring as energy flowed into my brain,” later adding, “I could feel a twitch in my head.”¹
My head became more sensitive than it had been in my entire adult life, with an immediate sense of heightened perception. Every thought became clearer. The feeling of having my skull encased in rubber was gone. In the most physical way, my brain was functioning better. I felt more awake and alert than ever.

The nystatin also gave me the immediate need to defecate. I rushed to the bathroom and a large amount of a clear, jelly-like substance came out of me, followed by a larger bowel movement than I had ever remembered having before. Either because the candida had been blocking my intestines, or had been interfering with them in another way, I had had this waste stuck in my body for far too long. I felt lighter afterwards. I no longer felt a tightness pressing against my spine or got tired walking up stairs. I was literally no longer weighed down. At the time, I assumed the jelly-like substance coming out of me was the candida, although it might have been something else associated with candida. Regardless, the candida and its effects were greatly diminished.

I stayed on nystatin for a couple years to finish off any remaining candida overgrowth in my system. The benefits are still with me. I have never again regressed to feeling as bad as I did before I had taken those antifungal medications.
I can only guess why I’m autistic, but I do wonder about certain possible connections. When I was five or six years old my family didn’t allow candy in the house, but I liked the strawberry flavor of the liquid antibiotic I was sometimes prescribed when I got sick. I would sneak into the kitchen and chug it from the bottle. Around that same time, I became sullen and moody. I remember stomping around alone and having my parents and other adults approach and ask what was wrong, and I wasn’t aware of there being anything wrong, only that I felt disconnected from everyone and wasn’t interested in their questions. I’m no doctor. I’m not educated enough to draw conclusions, but some say excessive use of antibiotics can increase the risk of intestinal candidiasis.

After about a year of seeing Dr. Moseley, he diagnosed me with pervasive developmental disorder, a form of autism. Two of the three psychiatrists I had seen agreed that I was autistic and the research team at UNC Chapel Hill had too.
Dr. Moseley recommended that I try triacetyluridine, a more easily absorbed form of uridine, which exists naturally in certain foods, to manage what I considered to be negative effects of my autism. He had been researching triacetyluridine as a possible treatment for autism. I had recently started grad school in Louisiana, something I never would have been able to handle before being treated by Dr. Moseley, and I tried triacetyluridine for the first time while driving back there from my family’s home in Virginia after a school break. As with the antifungals, I felt dramatic physical changes in my head. It felt more physically stable. Before I had taken the triacelyuridine, it had often felt like heavy balls were rolling around in the back of my skull. When I got back to school, I felt more comfortable around the other people in my program. I felt more at ease around people generally, and less anxious.

Anxiety, both social and otherwise, is a common issue for autistic people, and was something I had always struggled with. I had previously tried the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin, but even at low doses Klonopin made me feel inebriated so I stopped taking it. Triacetyluridine did not have that problem. Triacetyluridine made me feel relaxed and aware at the same time.

I have run low on triacetylrudine twice since starting to take it in 2005. The first time, I was visiting people for a few days and kept having to cut my dose until it was less than half of normal. I had increasing difficulty communicating and spent more and more time alone, regressing to the behavior I had typically had before I started taking triacetyluridine. The second time, I had entirely run out before going to a party. I tensed up as I met new people there. It was a nighttime pool party, so I found a spot in the dark to sit by myself. When I run out of triacetylrudine, I am an unpleasant, antisocial man. I need it to have a healthy life, and others might need it too, people who don’t have access to it and aren’t being told about it.

Dr. Moseley also prescribed oxytocin, a hormone that makes people feel more socially engaged. The first time I took oxytocin was a few hours before going to a concert. I went alone, but had an unusually easy time talking and meeting new people there. The oxytocin was working. That was a fun night, full of dancing and talking, but over the next few weeks I also started noticing unpleasant things. Sometimes people I had known for years appeared to be mocking me. I noticed little things like facial expressions and eye movements I had missed before, and wondered if certain people had always had the unpleasant attitude toward me that I now saw signs of. I also noticed how close some of the people around me seemed to each other emotionally, and how distant I was from them in comparison. Nevertheless, it was good to be more aware of my social situation.

I started exercising more and meditating, and began using more vitamins and supplements, many of which I still use. I eat foods high in omega-3 fatty acids. I take undenatured whey protein. These improve my overall mental and physical health, although the strict diet I initially followed only lasted two years and I now again consume coffee and most of the other foods it didn’t allow.

I continue finding ways to manage my autism. A couple years ago I began taking a probiotic called Neuralli, made by Bened Life Inc., which contains L. plantarum PS128. The occasional nausea I had still been experiencing rapidly diminished, and my anxiety did too. It may be one reason I’m now comfortable revealing this story with all its embarrassing details.

Growing up, I had trouble getting along with people. I had a few friends in high school and college, but each of them had other friend groups, multiple circles of friends, to a far greater extent than I did. With my foggy consciousness, all those people were too hard to keep up with. One night in my freshman year of college, when I was sitting in my dorm suite’s common room vacantly staring at the wall, one of my dorm mates told the rest of us he wanted to get out of our suite on his own that night and meet new people. Everyone else in the suite agreed that we would split up and only talk to new people that night so we could meet other students. I sat on the couch while the rest of them went out, too scared of meeting new people to even try.

I also missed out on a lot of communication with my dad. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1999, when I was 21. On the last international trip our family took together, to France, he said after dinner one night that I was staring off into space. I hadn’t realized I was, but with bread at every meal, my body was burdened with gluten it couldn’t process. The French food was also loaded with milk, whose casein protein often made me nauseous and groggy. This kind of food sensitivity had affected me all my life. As a child, I had started each morning with a bowl of wheat-based cereal and milk and then been half asleep at school all day. In my teens I also put milk in my coffee, counteracting its intended effect.

I knew so little then, and even though I’m grateful for what I know now, it’s frustrating that so few others know about the biomedical autism treatments I’ve used. I don’t know of anyone else using triacetyluridine to treat autism. Gluten and casein free diets have been attacked and their benefits denied. Neurodiversity advocates attack doctors who want to help autistic people. The company that made one supplement I used, Maxam Nutraceutics, was shut down by the FDA because it made some foolish marketing claims. After it became unavailable, I was tired and groggy for months before readjusting to life without it. One sobbing mother who testified for Maxam Nutraceutics during its founder’s trial said her son with Williams syndrome began speaking for the first time after using Maxam Nutraceutic’s products². I can’t imagine the despair that family felt after the government took their hope away. It’s true that Maxam Nutraceutics made some mistakes, and one of their mistakes was not being able to come up with tens of millions of dollars to buy a chance at FDA approval. Many other small, independent companies are prevented from helping people for the same reason.

After treating my candidiasis, I searched online to see what others had to say about the cooccurrence of candidiasis and autism and found only one website with anything to say about it. It warned autistic people and their families against using antifungal medications to treat candidiasis. Although now, in 2025, a possible link between autism and candida is widely accepted, back then, in the aughts, that link wasn’t understood, and people who claimed to experience such a link were not taken seriously. I also found a YouTube video of a woman saying the treatment of intestinal candidiasis had helped her autistic sister. She cried throughout the video, saying no one would believe her or her sister’s doctor. I can’t find her video now. I wish I had liked or commented on it then so I could find it now, but having used biomedical interventions on my own autism, I often felt like if I openly expressed encouragement for them I would be treated as a pariah. Things have improved, but back then it seemed to me like society’s hatred of biomedical autism interventions extended to those of us who used them.

In an April 20th interview with NPR, Colin Killick, the director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, criticized a recent speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in which Kennedy pledged to find the cause of autism.³ He was right about Kennedy exaggerating some things, overgeneralizing about autistic people and setting an unrealistic September deadline. It was sadly ironic to see someone from the polluter-friendly Trump administration pledge to root out environmental toxins. Kennedy also attacked genetic research, which should be protected, and his apparent plan to create a list of autistic people using private medical data is troubling, but searching for environmental contributors to autism is still a worthy cause. Killick accused Kennedy of “giving families false hope³,” but that hope needn’t be false. In 2003 I initially thought Dr. Moseley was giving me false hope when he said he could help with my autism, but environmental toxins are real. I had negative responses to certain foods, and investigating those responses helped improve my experience with autism. Many autistic people have the same food sensitivities I had. The hope that addressing such concerns could help autistic people should not be dismissed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may not be the best person to address such hopes, but the reasons for hope are real.

Over the past few years, some developments in the public understanding of autism have given me hope. The connection between autism and the gut microbiome has become more widely accepted. A 2019 article in Nature⁴ confirms a possible link between autism and “dysbiotic blood microbiota⁴”, including candida, a 2018 study at the University of Virginia suggests a child’s chances of being autistic can be influenced by the mother’s gut bacteria⁵, and a 2019 study at Arizona State University reduced symptoms of autism using fecal transplants that influenced participants’ gut bacteria⁶. The Arizona State study was favorably covered by Smithsonian Magazine⁷, and another study about the gut microbiome’s possible effects on autism written about in Nature⁸ was glowingly covered in The New York Times⁹, which in the aughts had branded any doctor who claimed to treat autism a quack.

Unfortunately, many still say autistic people are better off without biomedical intervention. They get offended by the idea that anyone would be unhappy with being autistic. Social media is full of reminders of how precious people think our autism is. If people enjoy being autistic, I’m happy for them, but any physical symptoms someone’s autism is linked to should be treated. If treating the physical symptoms changes the patient psychologically, too, I understand that that could be a double-edged sword. Many autistic people claim the condition has benefited them. It’s their own experience. Only they can judge that. Some worry about treatments being forced on children. They worry that biomedical interventions could alter an autistic child’s psychology and personality when the child is too young to make decisions about such important matters. They say autism is an identity. There is some truth to that, and it’s also true that we need to create a more accepting society that doesn’t pressure autistic people to conform to neurotypical social norms, but when I hear arguments against treating autism medically, I think of the misery I could have avoided if I had begun my treatment as a child. Would these people object to other health decisions children are too young to understand? Would they object to a healthy diet when a child would rather eat junk food?

I only became aware of biomedical interventions for autism as an adult. I don’t know how I would have felt about them as a child, but I know that I was willing to try antidepressants like Wellbutrin and Prozac as a teenager. I took Flintstones vitamins in elementary school. Changing my diet or trying supplements under a doctor’s supervision would have been fine with my family and me. It might be fine with other families too. People should know these interventions are an option.

Some medical researchers claim to have eliminated signs of autism in children. To tell autistic children they’re no longer autistic is abusive, and I suspect too much of that is going on with parents who falsely believe they’ve gotten rid of their children’s autism, but it still might be possible to eliminate autistic traits in children if parents start treatment when the child’s brain is in the early stages of development. The biomedical treatments I’ve used would have a stronger effect on a child. Biology is a powerful factor and biology can be changed. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with being autistic but there’s nothing wrong with being neurotypical either.

Before I began my biomedical interventions I was a skeptic. When I finally made an appointment with Dr. Moseley and he recommended that I try expensive supplements and organic food, I was lucky to have enough money for them. Many Americans wouldn’t have been able to afford that stuff and couldn’t have tried the treatments I’ve benefitted from. Those treatments were misunderstood and inaccessible then, and still are today. Attacking them is not going to make them more accessible. Stop attacking them. Let families make their own decisions. These treatments need to be made available. Organizations that study them should be applauded. Doctors and scientists who shed light on how the various forms of autism work are bringing us knowledge. They’re helping us autistic people better understand ourselves, giving us more power and control over our minds and bodies. Even though biomedical intervention isn’t right for all autistic people, and what has worked for me is only my own anecdotal experience and might not work for others, people should still know about these treatments. We can’t have acceptance if we don’t have awareness.

Footnotes

¹Robison, John Elder. Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening. Random House, 2016, pp 61–62

²KOIN 6. (2013, Nov 13). Maxam Nutraceutics loses FDA suit [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/KOINLOCAL6

³Rascoe, A. (2025, April 20). RFK Jr.’s comments on autism spark outrage among researchers [Radio broadcast transcript]. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-53 ... esearchers

⁴Markova, N. (2019). Dysbiotic microbiota in autistic children and their mothers: persistence of fungal and bacterial wall-deficient L-form variants in blood. Scientific Reports, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49768-9

⁵Barney, J. (2018, October 19). Autism risk determined by health of mom’s gut, UVA research reveals. UVA Today. https://news.virginia.edu/content/autis ... 20suggests.

⁶Price, D. (2019, April 9). Autism symptoms reduced nearly 50% 2 years after fecal transplant. ASU News. https://news.asu.edu/20190409-discoveri ... transplant

⁷Roehr, B. (2019, June 14). How the Gut Microbiome Could Provide a New Tool to Treat Autism. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 180972416/

⁸Su, Q., Wong, O. W. H., Lu, W., Wan, Y., Zhang, L., Xu, W., Li, M. K. T., Liu, C., Cheung, C. P., Ching, J. Y. L., Cheong, P. K., Leung, T. F., Chan, S., Leung, P., Chan, F. K. L., & Ng, S. C. (2024). Multikingdom and functional gut microbiota markers for autism spectrum disorder. Nature Microbiology, 9(9), 2344–2355. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-024-01739-1
⁹Rosunbluth, T. (2024, July . Children With Autism Carry Unique Gut Flora, Study Finds. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/heal ... biome.html
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I do not hate autism treatments.

What I hate was that I have conditions that had nothing to do with autism, but blames autism for it.

Then dismissed that I need an attitude change because "everyone suffers" or offer me antipsychotics because that's the first assumption in "treating autism".

I myself have neglected conditions since childhood.
Nothing fatal, but it is very disruptive and could've been preventable.
It could've prevented so many foolish decisions of my day to day living.

I'm trapped in this body.
Sure, I don't have physical and cognitive impairments; but I have this unexplainable intolerance, easily burnout despite that everything in my life felt easy except for just existing.
And somewhat "degenerating"... People just think it's aging or some crap.

I never focused on 'treating autism' myself.
Only whatever it interacts it negatively as possessing this damnable body.

When I said I felt very, very irritable and frustrated -- basically for most of my life...

That was not the autism.
That was the unmanageable chronic rhinitis since age 5, that for some reason antihistamines and nasal sprays do not work against.
Still some people persists it's also the autism, because the sensory element.

And only found what can make it manageable very recently. I went from 2-3 steps from melting down to a point that I have to accept the very fact that I'm a violent person -- to nonexistent signs for months now.


It is also not the autism, but unprocessed emotions.
They'd still persists that; oh, autistics are prone to trauma and their inability to process emotions. I did the usual mental health related practice like meditation...

Except I took the risker and painfully aggressive path against mental landscapes; because yes, I cannot rely on my head to automatically process crap so I will do it manually and alone.

I solved the whole thing myself without professional intervention.
Since then, I no longer had to fight my head and my behaviors from, whatever people perceives as me "obsessing" screentime and stories that not even burning out stops me from keep doing.


Not to mention the hormones...
Oh, I did asked an OB if I could have my hormones checked.
Turns out, I have more issues with stupid common assumptions and geographical inaccessibility. And, asked me to go to psych or something. Because apparently what I've been through is "normal" -- blame the autism! It's the reason why I cannot adjust.

Stupid.
So I took hormonal birth control pills unprescribed.
Everything went up hill for me really since. Also turned out a prerequisite for me to have certain medications be effective.
Also my gut issues...

Does this "count" as an "autism treatment" when it's so far the only thing that makes me tolerate way more interoceptive inputs? Because interoception is mostly my sensory issue, as opposed to external senses like hearing?

Yet my main goal is to solve this crap as a female, because I got worse since puberty in more ways than one, not merely as an autistic.


Me being intolerant to external environment, in my own case, is a sign of mental illness for me.

I had a form of anxiety and a long dragging burning out during pubescent years bad enough to quit school for a few years myself. Only got out when said anxiety was gone -- most of it consists of months long break and then confronting my perception and beliefs -- so does gone with the external sensory intolerance.

Kinda how I figured -- the so called comorbidities, is what makes my own autism "worse".

While everyone else is point with or against what is labeled as autism treatments, I ignore the label.

Like yeah, I'd take the oxygen therapy "for autism" -- but that's because I have a chronically clogged nose, no thanks to whatever upper respiratory system stupid sensitivity.
Now I'm taking COQ10 to wake me with whatever inhaler I'm taking that made chronic rhintis stops being chronic; for me it really works.

Instead I look at my family curses, my values and beliefs, circumstances that lead to whatever reactions...
Did not matter if it leads to need an 'autism treatment' or not, I already have a plan for myself and that I was right.

If I want to "treat autism" very specifically for myself, I'd need a speech pathologist. Words are more work for me.

No matter how healthy I am, language itself will always be unnatural to me.
And all I got against this so far is getting more internal space -- having to deal with less space stealing crap to make room for things that mattered more.

And if I want a biomedical intervention, I want one that could grant someone some form of alexithymia, make my interoception less distracting -- the very opposite of what John Elder Robinson ended up having.

Unfortunately, I don't think I often seen an autistic who wishes they have alexithymia, I kept seeing the complete opposite.
I've yet to see an autistic who claimed they're empath or HSP and wishes they're numb -- instead they cling to the idea that their sensitivity makes them human and just want to have 'less responsibilities' and 'less of knowing'. Their so called human inclination to be so called empathetic -- to me, that's just another internal crap to regulate.

Mostly, people feel they don't feel human enough or long to feel more human.
But I feel 'too human'. I want less, or something way more than just that.

So far, this recent years, I'm succeeding.
Been dramatically improving for the last 2 years.

People, tho -- they mistook it for growth.
Mistook that "because I'm more mature about my autism".
Mistook that I'm becoming a 'better person' -- those outcomes of relief wasn't a choice.

Precisely why people do not need to know if I'm autistic or not.

Personally, to me, I just want to be the healthiest neurodivergent that I can be.

Most people's idea of whole idea of being less autistic is to be less dysfunctional or associates less dysfunctional as less autistic-- yet, no one talks enough about being less dysfunctional as a result of being an even healthier autistic.

Doesn't help that most people's idea of what being healthier meant being more neurotypical.

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