Gut health/antibiotics /ASD

What's your supplement, Catlover?

I take a gut supplement everyday and I feel it’s benefits. It aids my sleep. I rarely get virus’s. My motions are regular. My head feels clearer. Also, without it, my IBS will flare up, and I’ll suffer the effects. I would have to adjust my diet and eliminate specific foods. 

I am not surprised if it turns out that there is a link, But like others have said here, I would think it more likely that autism affects the gut, rather than the gut being a cause.

I have pro-biotics daily (can't say that I actually notice the difference, but still have them) and after many years have found a diet that agrees with me. I still break it sometimes, but then accept that I may not sleep for a few nights.

I did have operations as a baby, so probably did have lots of antibiotics, but I've just looked up links between autism and what I had and there isn't anything outstanding.

I don't believe antibiotics cause ASD. I was given quite a few courses of antibiotics during my school years (due to recurring tonsilitis) but had none as a baby or toddler.

Eating natural yogurt for breakfast every day has helped my gut.

Interesting stuff. In fact I have been doing some interesting reading on pyridoxine dependent epilepsy. Pyridoxine is what creates GABA it is one of the building blocks of it. People who are deficient in pyridoxine can get what’s called convulsions and seizures. Autism and seizures go hand in hand a lot of the time.

Gut problems and autism seem to be linked, but I suspect it is mostly in the direction of autism tending to cause gut problems rather than the other way round, The gut is highly innervated and genetic alleles affecting neuronal development in the brain (causal to autism) are quite likely to affect the development of the gut's nervous system too. This is not to say that things, such as probiotics or anti-inflammatories, that alleviate gut problems might not also have a knock-on effect on the expression of autistic traits. This is certainly possible.

Thanks, I tried an elimination diet for a while it it was pretty inconclusive. I think the closest I ever got was when I went on a low carb diet, I almost exclusively ate meat and fish with a few green vegetables to break up the monotony. 

It's not a diet I could do for too long as it's not great for your body long term.

It's very effective if you want to lose weight and not feel hungry.

I might give it another go at some point.

Highly unlikely in my view. It seems like some of the same genes that cause autism can effect the immune system. And the gut microbiome can be effected by and effect the immune system. I don't think adjusting the gut microbiom is going to affect autism. Maybe in some supper rare cases it may reduce brain inflamation if brain inflamation is present. But that won't make autism go away because the underlining genes are still there. Posibly it might improve cognative function in general. Maybe in some very neich cases adjusting gut bacteria could make people, including potentially autistic people, more inteligent. If they have a cognative disability.

But that's just my opinion on the reserch btw. Not saying anything about your sons case.

I've also done a colonoscopy, and the prep was a lot more challenging than the actual procedure itself. 

For my entire life, I've had anxiety, depression, and physical health issues, but once I eliminate inflammatory foods, like gluten from my diet, those symptoms cleared up as well, and in a week's time. After decades of struggling, for once in my life, my energy levels were high, and I've never felt better. But when I reintroduced gluten to my diet, those negative symptoms re-emerged, and my body went haywire, anxiety returned, and I felt low energy levels again. 

I think that during the prep, you're on a strict diet, so you're not consuming the foods that were causing inflammation to your system. Gut health is so important. Everything in the body is connected. 

The most common inflammatory foods are gluten, dairy, and sugar. If you just took one of them and tried not eating it for a week, and see how you felt, I think that would be helpful. If you see no difference, you could always reintroduce the food back to your diet. 

Thanks, I'm also ND. I once had a colonoscopy and "endured" the prep, which certainly wasn't pleasant. Afterwards many or my anxiety/fogginess etc symptoms disappeared for about a week and then gradually came back. I've often wondered if this was related. I've asked various medics and they say it's likely to be incidental.

As far as I know, there is a lot of evidence about the gut/brain relationship and the impact of gut health on autism symptoms. I don't think there is anything very conclusive though, and certainly no cure. Some people anecdotally claim that probiotics attenuate some of the symptoms of autism.

It can be contentious because back in the 90s Andrew Wakefield's research was linking vaccines to autism because of the gut inflammation or dysbiosis they could cause. It's a complex topic. It would not surprise me if there was some impact of the gut on how the brain develops.

Even if the gut is implicated in some way, it's so difficult to actually do anything since your gut is an entire world or universe inhabited by 100 trillion organism, hundreds of thousands of different species, which battle and eat and consume and infect each other and their by-products in their own ecosystems and produce chemicals which can be beneficial or harmful and which can reach the brain. Plus your own immune system's response to them changes what happens. It's more unique than a finger print. Probiotics which in one person improve health, in another can make them worse. A poo transplant from an relaxed extrovert can lower anxiety and make an introvert more outgoing.