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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-food-allergies-children-autism-spectrum.html
A new study from the University of Iowa finds that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more than twice as likely to suffer from a food allergy than children who do not have ASD.
Wei Bao, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health and the study's corresponding author, says the finding adds to a growing body of research that suggests immunological dysfunction as a possible risk factor for the development of ASD.
"It is possible that the immunologic disruptions may have processes beginning early in life, which then influence brain development and social functioning, leading to the development of ASD," says Bao.
[...] The study found that 11.25 percent of children reportedly diagnosed with ASD have a food allergy, significantly higher than the 4.25 percent of children who are not diagnosed with ASD and have a food allergy.
Bao says his study could not determine the causality of this relationship given its observational nature. But previous studies have suggested possible links—increased production of antibodies, immune system overreactions causing impaired brain function, neurodevelopmental abnormalities, and alterations in the gut biome. He says those connections warrant further investigation. [emphasis Gaaark's]
"We don't know which comes first, food allergy or ASD," says Bao
#Personal Observations:
Gaaark's personal observation of his son and his self is that at the very least, foods that cause allergic 'reactions' DO INDEED intensify autistic behaviours.
When we fed our son products with gluten (Kraft macaroni and cheese was his favourite), he was much more self involved and much less externally observant. He also regurgitated the macaroni (we think THIS behaviour was linked to the dairy in the cheese) hours afterwards and would often laugh oddly while staring into space (his doctor said this was due to the 'bugs' in his stomach turning the gluten into an opioid: he was 'high').
Off the gluten and dairy, he is much more observant of external things, enjoys and gives hugs and is much more 'normal'.
*End Personal Observation
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:12AM (14 children)
My son, who is quite autistic, responded very well to removing milk from his diet. He started school with no verbal skills and enough anger that sometimes it took 2 grown men to handle him. This continued into grade 1 when we completely cut milk out of his diet. Not long after he started talking and mellowed out. Part of his anger was caused by the inability to communicate so it's hard to say how much effect the milk had on that. The odd time my wife took him somewhere and he came home and acted out, I was always correct in pointing out that he had had milk while out. While he is still not the most functional person, he is no longer considered retarded and can communicate well enough, if a little hard to understand.
I wish we'd been in a position to also remove gluten from his diet to see how that helped. Personally, I've removed gluten from my diet, mostly due to always having the runs though my wife says it really helped my mood. I'm probably autistic as well though when I got evaluated back in the '60's, I was diagnosed with oxygen starvation at birth. Never liked milk and stayed away from it most of my life. My sons symptoms were very similar to mine though more extreme.
Another note, first we switched him to soy based milk replacements, which made him very gassy, then switched him to rice based and that seemed to agree the best.
All personal anecdotes, but does agree with the study
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:15AM (5 children)
Wnat about yogurt made with milk?
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:22AM (4 children)
Yogurt and cheese seem to be fine, at least in small doses. At that he can now have the occasional small bowl of ice cream without negative affects. He's now 6'7'' so less of a ratio to body mass.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:24AM (3 children)
That sounds like a lactose sensitivity then. IIRC cheese and yoghurt have the lactose fermented...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:29AM
Yes, I should also mention that my wife is native and also lactose intolerant, though not with the symptons of my son.
Seems that most of the worlds population is lactose intolerant to some degree and the dairy industry has really done a disservice to a lot of people with their marketing.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:32AM (1 child)
It's worth noting that different cheeses remove lactose to differing degrees. Some cheeses add more milk late in the process. There may also be other reasons. So different cheeses, and even different brands of the same cheese, may act differently.
For me the problem isn't lactose, but carbohydrates, but the same process should generalize to lactose.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:52AM
Even the "lactose free" cheeses seem to affect me unless I eat only tiny amounts. I fucking love cheese and God hates me, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:48AM (7 children)
Yes, I think communication is a big part of anger issues especially with autistic people: my son used to sit in the living room and point in the direction of the kitchen, expecting us to know that meant "I'm thirsty". He knew he was thirsty and that drinks came from the kitchen, so why couldn't we figure out that pointing at the kitchen meant get me a drink...so obvious to him.
Now, we can understand a lot of what he wants (waving his hand, usually in the direction of a known bathroom means "I have to go") and says ("rink" means drink) and we have to force him to say a sentence, "I. Wan. Rink" to get him using his words, but he communicates well with his laptop and software (his sentences are odd, but understandable, and one mother's Day he typed that he loved his mom because she feeds him meat, lol)
But before we took him off the gluten he didn't 'get' communication and was VERY frustrated and angry: the software helped alleviate that a lot.
As an aside, we've talked to other parents who said they tried doing the 'gluten free thing' but it didn't work, but that they only did it a couple weeks: we did it for six months but saw no change, so we decided to go another few months. After nine months we thought that maybe there was a tiny change. It took a FULL YEAR before we went "WOW, he's a completely different kid".
A full year and suddenly something clicked. Unbelievable. The gut heals slowly.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:53PM (2 children)
We've got two, aged 14 and 16 now, the older one is on the severe end of the scale, the younger one considered alone would still be called severe, very restricted conversational skill, but is nowhere near the older one.
We started gluten-free for the older one when he was 3 and it helped a lot, better understanding of what people want from him, less total meltdown for no reason that anyone else understands. He's always been an up and down performer, better some days than others. When he was 3 we had a kitchen gate. One day he came to the gate and we just casually asked him "what do you want" and he responded "milk." We prompted him a little and pretty quickly got a "milk, please" and gave him milk. The next day he came to the gate and just stared. We tried "what do you want" prompting for 15 minutes, and he just didn't have any words to give that day - even when we finally said "do you want milk?" he couldn't even echo the word. Yes, we also tried casein free for a couple of years, but it wasn't so dramatic or obvious as the gluten - I think at the time of the gate incident we were casein free and the milk was soy (another hard choice for me: soy is full of copper, displaces zinc, and is a strong source of phytoestrogen...) For years afterwards, the older was highly gluten sensitive - a single graham cracker would cause huge negative effects for weeks. Getting diet compliance at school was virtually impossible. One odd observation we have repeated several times over the years. In times when we would have several months of gluten-free compliance, things would be relatively good and sometimes, for one reason or another the gluten free rule would be knowingly broken. One time in about 2008 we were travelling in Alabama and there just wasn't a choice, so we gave him normal pancakes. For a period of a few hours after initial gluten exposure (onset maybe 30-90 minutes after eating), he had dramatically increased clarity of understanding and ability to communicate - normal-ish requests and spontaneous observations. Then it went to shit, for over a week. We have observed similar brief windows of clarity when he gets a fever.
Just to try to stay on-point here, the younger one is more communicative, but nowhere near conversational - to get anything on a topic you are interested in is an extraction process, but... he's not gluten sensitive, it just doesn't seem to make a difference for him. The older one is less gluten sensitive these days, it still makes a difference, but it's less "light switch" dramatic than it used to be. Hyperbaric therapy makes some observable, but temporary, improvements in the older one, and the reduction in gluten sensitivity came around the time we started doing that. Connected? Who the hell knows. What does the hyperbaric therapy really do? Again, who the hell knows. We tried it because: A) it seemed like a "do no harm" thing to try, B) a (small, performed by researcher with vested interests) blinded placebo controlled study demonstrated significant results, C) when we tried a session in his clinic we seemed to get positive results, D) the kids were 5 and 7 years old, school was a slow motion train wreck, and we were fucking desperate. We've more or less duplicated the results of the study in our older child, the younger one doesn't like the chamber experience and hasn't done more than a handful of sessions. More eye contact, calmer, as a result slightly better communication and markedly better overall behavior. I built a storage shed with an attic about the same dimensions (and temperature/humidity) as the hyperbaric chamber and tried doing 60 minute "sessions" in that space, didn't see the same results as going to 4psi (normal air) for 60 minutes. In my mind, it does "something" - but what that something is is too complex to even begin to draw conclusions about from a sample of one with just behavioral data to go from, and even if we were inclined to go bio-chemical research mode with him, he's not compliant with people who do things like drawing blood. I feel like I've lost the thread again, so: hyperbaric therapy seems to have blunted the gluten response in our gluten sensitive child.
We've had a couple of those "suddenly something clicked" moments, potty training was a big one, also around age 5 and 7 maybe 6 months before we started the hyperbaric stuff. Sometimes you think it's something you've done, but I think it's more often just developmental, not really the result of any specific thing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @06:04PM (1 child)
Now that my sons school got rid of his old teacher, he is doing better and they are actually (sort of ) trying to give him an education instead of the edumacation he was getting before, but his teacher was away on Friday and he was given regular fucking pizza:
:he was up, last night, until 3am and he has been loud (he mostly just makes repetitive noises) loud, loud with some moments of anger (he dug his nails into my back which he has never done before).
Yeah, it's a trial at times.
One day when my son was about 3, we were outside and a butterfly landed near us. I said, "look at the butterfly!" His head whipped up to look at me and i said "butterfly... butt-er-fly...butterfly"
His mouth started working, he screwed his face up and said, clearly, "BUTTERFLY". Well i fucking almost shit myself because he'd started losing so many of the few words he DID have.
I praised him up and down: "YES, BUTTERFLY" etc. He kept watching my mouth but NEVER EVER has he said it again.
Sigh.
We started looking at things like the hyperbaric chamber, etc, after we started him on the GF diet but once we got that 'FINALLY' moment at the year point, we stopped (one, it ended a loooong period of him only getting 2-4 hours sleep per night....we were just completely exhausted and off our rockers (I believe i was at the point where my boss reluctantly started the process of firing me (i got one write-up) because she was trying to fire another woman and couldn't do that without also doing the same to me...luckily at that year-ish point we got one night of sleep, then another and another...but my long term memory has never really returned to normal), and two because we thought maybe he would just keep progressing and doing better, which he did but only up to a point.
He's doing pretty well now with his communication software, but my wife is now wishing we'd kept him in public school the whole time instead of having him graduate to high school: he was doing amazingly there, learning english, math, science. In high school (under the old teacher especially) they weren't using his software, we finally discovered, and when they started to use it, they couldn't get him to spell CAT.
Glad your kids are doing 'well' with a great parent/parents. The parents loving advocating and pushing make all the difference.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @08:53PM
Our oldest was in public 8th grade this year (oldest they've had at that school), and they did a good job with him. In the old days we really pushed to give them the opportunity to learn how to pass as normal, and there were times it paid off big. We got the oldest included for 1st grade in a K-2 room and he really made huge progress, started reading out loud, showed big signs of self esteem, had some challenges but was 200% better off than he was in the "special" room we moved him from. The following year the Principal got him a new "appropriate" 1:1 aide (read: low salary, low ambition) and problems started, at which point the principal started pushing to move him to the special room, which he clearly resisted, and the whole thing turned into a major shitshow including a pre-firing meeting for me (not really deserved, the company was on greased skids to bankruptcy anyway and I had more than successfully finished the job they needed done, so clearly getting rid of my salary extended their runway...) My wife has been SAHM the whole time, so there is a bit of stress involved when my work gets sketchy...
Communication software, PECS cards, etc. have never really helped us much. Communication is majorly lacking with both of them, but it's not because they can't speak or understand spoken words. There is a processing time issue: say something, then wait, and wait, and wait maybe 10x as much as you normally would and if he's really paying attention / focused, he'll usually understand what you said and respond accordingly (no small challenge that extended period of focus...) He will fool you by anticipating situations, when there's a familiar routine going on he will wait for trigger/cues and respond to them instantly with words, actions, whatever, but if you throw him a curve then he's back on the slow processing time. It reminds me of when I hung out with Germans for a summer, they'd say something in German and I wouldn't get it at the moment, but many times 20 seconds to 10 minutes later it would dawn on me what was said.
Keep up the advocacy, but also find a sustainable place for yourselves - having our eldest picked up at 8:30 and dropped off at 4:30 by the school bus every day was a huge work reduction for the rest of us, and it improved everybody's situation including his.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:52PM (3 children)
Side observation: friends of ours have gone the prescription drug route. They have all monkeyed around for months to years trying different meds "titrating the dose" etc. before they come to that "WOW, he's a completely different kid" moment. Personally, I've not encountered too many prescription behavior med side effects that I think are a good thing, especially long term. I _have_ observed nasty downturns when withdrawing prescription meds, and as long as you're on that ride you're a virtual slave to the pills. Gluten free diet is almost the same horse but with different coloring... violating the diet is like missing your meds - worse because it can take a lot longer to recover. Still, we choose to stick with it for our oldest, and I'm mostly GF as well - it clearly reduces joint inflammation for me.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:46PM (2 children)
One doctor we had recommended this liquid drug to 'calm him down' (forget what it was called: only used it once). One drop and he went into a frenzy, spinning and spinning around like a fucking top, running around like a fiend, etc. Did NOT calm him down, lol.
Yes, i'm a big believer in going the non-drug route as much as possible. I asked my doctor if there was a non-drug way to handle 'restless leg syndrome' and she (a young-ish doctor) told me that they've seen some results with tonic water because the quinine is a muscle relaxant (well, shit, why didn't i think of that): drank 2-3 cans before bed and voila, it worked. After that, i just kept drinking a can every night and it keeps it away.
WONDERFUL! So easy and without the killer side effects of the 'restless leg' drugs.
absolutely: at one time i was crawling up the stairs because my knees hurt so bad. Now, i can run up them. The problem is, the bread/etc manufacturers don't just leave the bread alone with it's own gluten: they actually add liquid gluten to the mix to make the bread lighter, and i don't think our bodies were made to take that huge increase in gluten.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @08:37PM (1 child)
My personal nutjob theory on "why gluten is bad" actually circles back around to the agro-chemical industry and "what are they putting on our wheat fields?" more than anything too specific about gluten. Gluten has been around and widely consumed for centuries, exotic glyco-phosphates with tailor-matched GMO crops? Not so much. I have definitely eaten high gluten content foods that had little to no effect, while small amounts of others have big effects. And, to further the nutjob conspiracy observation: some packaged foods like granola bars seem super-gluten-toxic, even affecting our younger son when he eats them.
As for the drugs, we tried one with our oldest: Risperdal I think - it sort of worked as intended, but also gave the twitchy-tick side effects hard (as advertised) and another side effect was reduced mental clarity, just what we need - right? After a few months, instead of tapering down we more or less quit that one cold turkey and apparently got through the withdrawal in a week or two (recommended taper down would have been months.) He still has some tics, but he had some before we started the Risperdal too, hard to say if there's any permanent change - they say there can be. Luckily he didn't grow any man-boobs, another possible side effect of that one.
We have been pretty happy with Marinol for occasional use with our eldest - maybe one pill every 2-3 weeks as needed. It "takes the edge off" and helps de-escalate when you see him getting wound up. We tried daily dose with that, too, but it just seemed to set a new baseline, again nasty when withdrawn, and not really effective at managing when you've got the baseline dose onboard. I just have to be careful to keep the content of the pills away from me - it can be absorbed through the skin, and though I've never been given a whiz-quiz at this job in 5 years, that's always a possibility and I'd rather not explain a positive THC result to my upper management.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:51PM
Well, maybe the antibiotics fucked up the gut flora and now it has become a factory for making brain toxins? The only problem with starches and sugars, like gluten, is that these bacteria love it. But then again, they are not the cause of the problem. They are just the end result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL82p9dHPLs [youtube.com]