Can You Reverse Autism and Other Chronic Health Conditions?

Dr MercolaStory at-a-glanceEpidemic Answers, founded by Beth Lambert in 2009, is a research organization focused on helping children with autism and other chronic diseasesIn her 2010 book, “A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children,” Lambert reviewed not only the epidemic of autism but also other childhood epidemics, such as autoimmune diseases, and their environmental root causeEpidemic Answers’ research project, “Documenting Hope,” is analyzing the environmental causes behind chronic conditions and what we can do to reverse themAutism and most other chronic childhood diseases are caused by a constellation of factors that contribute to the total toxic load of modern living

In the featured video, I interview Beth Lambert, who in 2009 founded Epidemic Answers, a research organization focused on helping children with autism and other chronic diseases.

When I graduated medical school, the incidence of autism was 1 in 10,000. For the first decade of my medical practice, I didn’t have a single autistic patient. By the mid- to late-1990s, I was treating hundreds of autistic children in my practice, and since then, autism has reached truly epidemic proportions.

In her 2010 book, “A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children,” Lambert reviewed not only the epidemic of autism but also other childhood epidemics, such as autoimmune diseases, and their environmental root causes.

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Studies Underway

Chris D’Adamo, who co-wrote my paper on linoleic acid (LA), published in the journal Nutrients, is the research director for the Epidemic Answer’s research project called “Documenting Hope,” which is looking at the environmental causes of chronic conditions and what we can do to reverse them.

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They’re also working on an intervention study in which they’re doing a deep dive into the health of a small group of children with chronic health conditions to identify the root causes. Each child is then placed on a customized 18-month program to reverse their condition and their progress is documented along the way.

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Lay of the Land

As explained by Lambert, in the 1980s, a movement of parents who suspected their child’s autism was not necessarily genetic and irreversible started gaining traction. Physicians also began asking questions, wondering whether it’s a systemic problem as opposed to just a brain-based one, and started opening to the possibility that it might be reversible.

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Unfortunately, many autism organizations have struggled to gain traction because the only autism treatments that are reimbursed by insurance are applied behavioral analysis (ABA), physical therapy (PT) and occupational therapy (OT).

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

The widely accepted form of treating autism, ABA, basically trains the child into expected or typical behaviors. Oftentimes, however, ABA is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. As explained by Lambert:

“They have brains and bodies that aren’t talking to each other, the communication’s out of whack. That needs to be addressed first.

 

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The Real Cause of Autism: The Toxic Load of Modern Living

Root causes contributing to the epidemic of chronic diseases in children include (but are not limited to) things like processed food loaded with sugar and harmful fats like linoleic acid, gut dysfunction, childhood vaccines, antibiotic overuse and mold.

But it’s almost never just one of those things, but rather a constellation of contributing factors. Genetics also plays a role. For example, your genes dictate how well your body can detoxify. But contrary to popular belief, genetics are rarely the sole or even primary cause, because genes are epigenetically regulated, meaning they’re influenced and modified by the environment.

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Multipronged Treatment Approach Is Required

Epidemic Answers is the only group currently conducting research to identify root causes and how to reverse chronic childhood diseases, and preliminary data confirm that the more stressors a child has, the worse their health outcomes.

They’re also one of the few groups looking at the impact of multiple interventions at once.

“These kids who have recovered from autism, they never did one thing at a time,” Lambert says. “The parents did everything all at once to support that child and get their body what it needed to course correct … You can’t just do one thing.

You have to address diet at the same time you’re addressing sleep, at the same time you’re addressing stooling, at the same time you’re addressing integrating the brain and the body with therapies that help correct those developmental problems that emerge.

By doing all of those things at once, we hypothesize that these kids can get better, that they can drop their diagnoses. That’s why we’re doing the research like this, because people don’t believe it. Anecdotes don’t carry weight.

We need to do the research in order to convince the medical community that this really is the way to go. Kids are developing these conditions because of the way we’re living, so we have to change the way they’re living in order to get them better.”

 

Basic Nutritional Considerations

I strongly suspect linoleic acid in processed food is a major contributor to ill health, so making sure you’re feeding your child whole food, ideally organic, is key. Sugar is frequently thought to be the primary culprit, but I believe linoleic acid is far more dangerous in the long term than sugar.

Now, that doesn’t mean carbohydrates are unfairly criticized. My first book, published in 2004, was “The No-Grain Diet.” Many autistic children put on a no-grain diet fared quite well. But while grains contain sugar, many also have high linoleic acid content.

Resistant starches can also cause problems, as the fiber, which your body cannot digest, ends up fueling gram-negative bacteria that produce endotoxin in your colon. Endotoxin causes loads of inflammation and increases your serotonin level.

Serotonin is probably another major contributing factor for these kids. Lowering their serotonin levels and increasing GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, would probably be quite helpful.

Other key strategies include spending more time outdoors in natural environments and minimizing your electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. These things don’t cost anything, and they not only can reduce your child’s risk for autism but also most chronic degenerative diseases.

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Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/08/27/reversing-chronic-diseases-in-children.aspx