Autism

You exit the womb and are exposed to your first batch of microbes. Some time thereafter “immunization” is performed on you. Minimal breast-feeding (e.g. no more than three months; dairy substitutions included; etc) and a poor diet are your sources of nutrition. During this time your brain is developing significantly, at a rate of 1% a day for the first three months, and 0.4% thereafter.¹ Because of your inability to properly communicate, no one is the wiser as to how you are developing. During this time, endotoxins produced by the gut microbiome have been entering the blood stream, negatively impacting brain development.

The years pass, your lifestyle remains the same, and your gut microbiome has been established. You’re now at the age where certain problems are observable. Your parents start to take notice. They seek medical help and you are now diagnosed with autism. You’re placed on medication, none of which seem to reverse your diagnosis. Your parents start to look for alternatives.

Antibiotics are experimented with. Some improvement is observed, but not enough to reverse your diagnosis. Ketogenic diet is experimented with, and some improvement is observed. But, again, not enough to reverse your diagnosis. Yet, it is evident that this condition is treatable and reversible. Your parents remain hopeful, as they search for a cure.

While children are generally the ones to be diagnosed with autism, gut dysbiosis and damage to the brain as a result of the dysbiosis can occur at any point in life. As such, it is not surprising to see more and more adults being diagnosed with autism.

Treatment

There is a reason why antibiotics and ketogenic diets can cause some improvements to be observed: they both significantly alter the gut microbiome and they can help reduce the production of endotoxins. The reasons why these things never seem to be enough to reverse the diagnosis are many. But what you need to understand is this: the gut microbiome is incredibly resilient. Diet and antibiotics are unlikely to reverse gut dysbiosis because these things tend to have little impact on the foundation. Neither of which are capable of introducing new microbes.

There’s only one known treatment that is capable of impacting the gut’s microbiome foundation: fecal microbiota transplant. But addressing gut dysbiosis is only half the battle. The next step is introducing nutrition that helps the brain repair from all the damage received from endotoxins. Depending on the severity and how effective the fecal microbiota transplant is, this could take years to reverse. Your stool donor will have to be willing to put in equal effort and fight alongside you.

Nutritionally, you’ll want all kinds of nutrients, especially those involved in protein synthesis. Any nutrients that assist in the production of CoQ10 are useful here. Omega-3 is also very desirable, so fatty fish up to three times a week is recommended. Supplementation may be useful in the beginning days of treatment, but are not to be depended on.