Big Autism News

Autism is what we call a “syndrome”, rather than a disease. A syndrome is a pattern of symptoms. Of course, diseases have patterns of symptoms too, but diseases have identified causes or specific abnormal biological patterns. In other words, not only don’t we know what causes autism, we can’t confidently describe a single specific biological abnormality. At least on the biological pattern, I think we are getting close (glutamates and cytokines). No one likes uncertainty. The fear of uncertainty grows when the victims are our children. Even worse is the present circumstance. The rising rate of autism has us all concerned. For generations, the medical community has blamed parents. Doctors used to blame emotionally cold “refrigerator mothers” for their children’s problems. Observations that autistic tendencies ran in families has also led experts to blame parents, but for their bad genes, not their personalities or parenting styles. I have never felt comfortable with any of these explanations. In truth, these explanations instead seemed idiotic and demeaning. The most violently dysfunctional or neglectful households certainly produce children with emotional problems, but they don’t create autistic children. If it is simply that genetics are to blame, why is the rate soaring? The answers have to be more complex. A new study has given us some very important information, supporting my common sense opinion. Researchers analyzed the entire genome of 340 people in 85 families where at least two children had autism. The presumption of the autism-is-genetic school of thought was that the children in these autism prone families would share the genes causing their autism. To clarify, I don’t mean children from different families would share the same genes. That would be too simple. I mean the assumption was that the autistic children in the same family would share the same autism-associated genes. The results shocked many. The autistic children of the same two parents seldom shared any genes linked to autism (31%). What does that mean? It means that, although the genes of a certain individual might make that child more likely to develop autism, something else has to be the trigger. My money is on an environmental factor. The leading candidates are organochlorine pesticides, phthalates, glyphosate (ROUNDUP) and heavy metals like mercury. A large study conducted by Harvard and the MIND Institute at UC Davis found a correlation between prenatal toxin exposures and autism. Autism was identified by Dr. Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins in 1943. There is evidence suggesting that many of his patients had mercury poisoning. This important study adds to...

Probiotic News - Colic and Weight Loss

Probiotics are good for you. Of course that’s what the name “probiotic” means and far from newsworthy. In the past couple of decades we’ve been learning more and more and more. A couple of new findings about probiotics are especially interesting. Many years ago when I was offered a job at the University of Texas Medical Branch, I proposed several studies. One of those was to administer probiotics to newborn babies to see if we could reduce the rate of colic. A similarly designed trial of nearly 600 Italian infants was recently published. The probiotic (Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938) cut episodes of inconsolable crying by about half. The same was true of the frequency of regurgitation (spitting up/vomiting). It also reduced constipation in the newborns. Add that to previous studies showing probiotics reduce allergies and lower the rate of one of the most serious problems newborns suffer (necrotizing enter colitis). My decades-long advice to parents, advising them to start probiotics in pregnancy and give them to their newborn babies, seems better and better. Another of my probiotic predictions seems to be coming true. Taking a certain probiotic (lactobacillus rhamnosus) has been linked to weight loss. A range of studies and scientific evidence about why so many people are getting fat have been building towards this. Undoubtedly the problem is far more complicated and many of the factors, like environmental contamination with endocrine disrupting chemicals, we can’t change easily or quickly. Just as certainly, these findings demonstrate that there are actions we can take in addition to the vitally important diet and exercise improvements most people should make. The principle attention regarding specific probiotic species and weight loss is focused on the relative balance of two species (firmicutes and bacteroidetes). When firmicutes predominate, people tend to acquire and maintain more body fat. Animals, including humans, that live in colder climates tend to be larger, with higher levels of body fat. As the cold environment demands burning calories to keep warm, and fat is a rich source of calories, this would seem to be a good adaptation. Also, with the plethora of food sources available in tropical environments, animals do not need to store calories. A worldwide study of 1,200 people found that the balance of firmicutes and bacteroidetes paralleled those long-established observations. The closer people lived to the equator, the greater the predominance of bacteroidetes in their digestive tract. Observing a pattern does not establish causation, nor does it prove that changing the bacteria in our intestines will cause weight...

Food Allergies in Infants

Twenty to thirty years ago we witnessed a massive rise in asthma rates among children. It came to be considered a public health emergency not only because asthma was becoming so very common, but more so due to the dramatic increases in hospitalization rates caused by asthma. Asthma, an allergic disease, was not just increasingly annoying, it was an increasingly serious health issue. There is good news. First, that asthma rates have stopped climbing so rapidly. Second, this wave of illness opened medical eyes to see greater complexity in the causation of asthma. The view that some exposure to bacteria and viral illnesses is an important part of healthy immunologic development, initially embraced by a few of us (especially me), is no longer considered radical. Medical science is increasingly accepting of the asthma-inducing influences of many factors, such as vitamin D and previously ignored environmental chemicals. There is also bad news. Food allergy rates are now rising with much the same ferocity we saw with the asthma epidemic. An especially disappointing story in the bad news is that many of our good efforts reduce food allergy rates have not helped. They actually back fired. What IS going on? Some of the reasons for increasing food allergy rates are the same. Living indoors makes us sick. Lower vitamin D, less exposure to the bacterial richness of soil, less physical activity, increased chemical exposures, too little animal contact at the beginning of life, etc., all appear to contribute to higher risk of food allergy as well as asthma. It might be that food allergies are slower to appear and we might then soon see an imminent plateauing of the disturbing food allergy numbers as we did with asthma. Although I just made up that sunnily hopeful theory, I have to shoot down my own optimism, or maybe blunt it (a lot). We have evidence that in many cases, food allergies develop much earlier in life than we thought. Australian researchers, entering patients into their studies at four to six months of age, found that 29% of children with eczema already had food allergies. As eczema is an allergic disease and I find dietary treatment highly successful, it is dismaying but not hugely surprising that so many had food allergies. In some their reactions where already so severe that they could even suffer lethal allergic reactions to foods. If allergic onset occurs in some individuals so very early in life, then one would expect that food allergy rates would plateau as rapidly...

Vitamin D Is Too Good Not To Be True

Several years ago when I attended the first medical conference on vitamin D designed for clinicians, the limited data we had were very exciting. There was also many reasons to be skeptical and many were. It all sounded too good to be true they thought. Maybe higher vitamin D levels just told us who was already healthy. Instead of being sick and house-bound, they spent more time outside. The high vitamin D was not the cause of being well, it was the result. More complicated, time-consuming and expensive studies would have to be done to sort out the truth. Since then we have accumulated a great deal of research data. What does it show? Simply, the data shows that our high expectations about vitamin D were wrong. The highest expectations about vitamin D were actually too modest! At this point just about the only health outcomes that we can’t prove are influenced by vitamin D are the ones we have not measured yet. Study after study links diseases, syndromes, development and well-being to vitamin D. A few very recent discoveries follow: As we broaden our view to hunt down foreseen connections, more and more comes to light. For example, we have long been aware of a rising rate of premature onset of menses in little girls. There were many explanations including hormones in the food, rising rates of obesity and environmental hormone disrupting chemicals. Now we can add low vitamin D to the list of contributors. Vitamin D lowers the risk of ischemic stroke and diabetes. Low vitamin D is closely linked to vitiligo (patchy white skin) whether or not there is an autoimmune disease contributing to the vitiligo. Patients with hepatitis C are more likely to respond to drug treatment and get better if their D levels are higher. Black people with high blood pressure can lower it taking vitamin D but a dose of at least 2,000 iu is necessary and 4,000 iu/day (the highest they tested) is better. A paltry dose of 1,200 iu of D3 markedly reduced the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease patients. Vitamin D appears to make prostate cancer cells less aggressive. Honestly, it is getting kind of boring. It is abundantly clear that optimizing everyone’s D level is a no-brainer, regardless of their health. Vitamin D is just plain GOOD. The end. I am interested in what we do not know and then, most importantly, what can be done about it. I want to help not just categorize. Diagnoses and labels...