On Mon, 19 May 1997, Moira wrote:
> My son is 5 and was diagnosed as autistic/mentally retarded two years ago.
Hi Moira. My son is 6 and was diagnosed with PDD/NOS almost 3
years ago. No intelligence testing was done, but we were told to
"expect" mental retardation.
> We went gluten free about a year ago, roughly, the improvement has been
> absolutely unbelievable.
And we went gluten free a year and a half ago. The improvement
was immediate and unmistakable. When we have had gluten
accidents, the regression has also been unmistakable. And when
we had intelligence testing done, his IQ was slightly above
average.
> Now that he is off gluten, he is alert and focused, however, he is not cured.
Right.
> My question is, do you think some carbos are ok? He loves, craves, carbos.
> I am able to get everything else down by having the carbos there. I eat with
> him and direct him to take one bite meat, one bite vegetable, one bite
> carbo. If I do not watch him, he will gobble all the carbos and leave
> everything else. Not always, but he definitely craves carbos. He does love
> ground meat, like ground turkey.
We have exactly the same experience. Even though the gluten is
out of Dylan's diet, he is still eating a lot of starches. Note
that *all* vegetables have some carbo content, but it's the
starches and grains in which they are most concentrated.
I don't think anybody knows whether paleodiet is a good treatment
for autism/PDD. We can only try to figure out what seems likely
to help. I am on this list because of my own health and weight
issues, and because the more I learn about nutrition and
carbohydrates, the more I suspect a connection between all of
this and autism/PDD.
Here are some things that I have learned:
PDD, autism, and ADHD appear to be increasing in
frequency in the population, especially during the past
10 or 15 years.
During this same time period, people especially in the US
and UK have been urged to consume foods that are high in
"complex" carbohydrates and relatively low in protein and
fat: the so-called "heart-healthy" diet. (E.g., in the
US, consumption of pasta is up 115% in the last decade)
Many women are recommended to use this diet during
pregnancy, too.
Many kids with autism or ADHD (or both) are positively
addicted to starchy carbohydrates, often consuming little
else. Even when parents have successfully been able to
reduce or eliminate "sweeets" from their children's
diets, they often substitute starchy snacks, such as
pretzels. Pretzels actually cause a more rapid rise in
blood glucose levels than table sugar.
As consumption of carbohydrates has risen, so has
consumption of partially hydrogenated fats, in the form
of margarine and also in many processed foods (chips,
cookies, pastries, etc.), because they have a longer
shelf life.
All carbohydrates, complex or simple, are either
converted to glucose or stored as glycogen and body fat.
Starchy carbohydrates are converted to glucose very
rapidly. Bread, potatoes, and white rice, for example,
raise blood sugar levels faster than plain table sugar,
faster than candy bars. Puffed rice cakes raise blood
sugar faster than almost any other known food.
When blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas produces
insulin to trigger the process that creates glycogen and
body fat. This is the part that makes people like myself
fat, but insulin has many other effects.
One effect that insulin has is that it inhibits many
protein synthesis operations. Essentially, when insulin
levels are up, the body is in storage mode, not growth
mode. This includes synthesis of neurotransmitters.
And if the diet is very high in carbohydrates, it is
going to be relatively low in protein anyway, so there
won't be a lot of amino acids available for protein
synthesis.
Growth and repair of nerve tissue also requires an
adequate supply of lipids of the right sort. Partially
hydrogenated vegetable oils are useless for this; they
supply only empty calories. In contrast, the oils from
many nuts are monounsaturated and are useful for this.
But nut oils that are extracted from nuts are very
vulnerable to oxidation, both in the bottle and in the
body. As long as the oils stay in the nuts, however,
they are protected from oxidation by vitamin E.
Insulin also has dramatic effects on a class of hormones
called eicosanoids. These come in opposing pairs:
vasodilators and vasoconstrictors, protein synthesis
facilitators and inhibitors, anti-inflammation and
pro-inflammation. Insulin tends to suppress the activity
of the vasodilators, synthesis facilitators, and
anti-inflammation eicosanoids.
Therefore, a diet that causes insulin levels to be
chronically elevated will tend to cause frequent
vasoconstriction and inflammation, and will tend to
inhibit protein synthesis. It won't do these things
*absolutely*, but it will tend to push the balance of
metabolic operations in that direction.
At age 6, Dylan is doing far better than anyone gave us any cause
to expect, but he still has intermittent attention deficit
problems and a vulnerability to overstimulation. The
intermittent nature of these problems convinces me that they are
at least in part metabolic. I absolutely understand how
difficult it is to get the starches out of a kid's diet. We have
not been able to do it yet. So we are simply trying to work in
that direction, and we are especially trying to get more protein
in. We're using lots of nuts for snacks (but not peanuts; for
some reason lots of autistic/PDD kids have a poor reaction to
them), since these have plenty of fats for energy, and the
protein/carb content is generally quite balanced.
Todd Moody
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