Autism & Special Diets - info that may help others too. / Sulfur metabolism and over-acidity.

Dietary principles - rules of good health? Or inflexible and risking longterm limitations?

Part of the reason I fell while carrying my new laptop was my intense focus on a new course I signed up for.

This post was started last week but it has been some rough days. My mother's health has deteriorated sadly, instead of continuing to improve as it had seemed to be doing. So I have had to move around furniture and changed the company providing Hospice services. That is possible and easy but I had to ask questions and make it happen.

Good news and bad news about my toe escapades - the good news my lost phone turned up . . . in my purse. Second time, different purse though. When I am stressed I don't function well, oversight errors…. Moving too fast errors….

The bad news, I broke my second toe, and not just a fracture. It is broken off and did need to be taped. It had gotten out of alignment. 6-8 weeks limping means my thigh muscles and back are unhappy with me too, I have learned. Walking backwards works better or very slow walking meditation half steps.

The rest of this post got long and was written in two parts or so last week.

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The course I am taking is about special diets that are being used successfully for some autistic or colitis/Crohn’s disease patients. The underlying issues are likely involved in Alzheimer’s dementia and other chronic conditions of neurologic/psychiatric origin or chronic degeneration. Hyperinflamation for any reason can have similar damaging effects on the hippocampus and can increase pain and chemical sensitivity and autoimmune reactions.

My initial reaction to the very restricted diets was a bit “Oh, my, ….. how can anyone eat like that or recommend eating like that?”

Pot/kettle - I am currently following a very restricted diet which would look bizarre to most people….

Old saying ~ Don't be the pot calling the kettle black!

*The kettle will get ash on your hands from being over a smokey fire, but so will the pot, which is also blackened with soot from the fire.

As I re-listened to the lectures, took notes, and looked closer at the handouts and workbook, I realized that we are looking at very unique individuals. Autism is known now to be an extremely ‘heterogenous’ condition → with extremely varied symptoms and issues, making it much more complex than ‘one’ condition. If the commonality is that significant gene changes had occurred - that is a similarity, but then the heterogeneity shows up in the huge range of gene changes that might be present.

If life is randomly knocking out genes, but knocking out varied genes, then we would get a lot of metabolic dysfunction symptoms, but the dysfunction might be occurring due to a wide range of possible gene changes. There would be subgroups with similar gene changes and similar symptoms of metabolic dysfunction.

Genetic screening can help identify some issues but can also be confusing or not helpful. Not all gene changes cause dysfunction. Some may reduce function, or reduce function at hotter temperatures (I have one of those, I do not like hot sunny beaches, I stop methylating well.).

Varied changes in genes may be additive, working together to make a bigger problem, or they may cancel each other out and leave only a minor disruption in function. Reading a genetic screening can help as changes may point out what nutrient needs to be taken at doses greater than the diet can provide, or which might need to be restricted because the body is accumulating too much of that chemical compared to normal function.

Also the gene differences can leave nutrient deficiencies and a leaky gut membrane that increases risk of autoimmune antibodies also developing.

Lack of vitamin D plus leaky gut problems can add up to molecular mimicry antibodies forming against food proteins that are similar to our body proteins. Then white blood cells will attack the body proteins. Removing the similar dietary protein and strengthening the integrity of the intestinal lining are the two main strategies for helping the body clear the autoimmune antibodies and to stop making more. Nutrient deficiencies of magnesium and B vitamins can be caused by stress, hyperinflammation, or modern life’s questionable foods, meds, and infant formulas add to vitamin D and other nutrient deficiencies.

The wonderful part about the odd diets is when it does help a person or parent figure out what is making the body unwell, removing the problem foods can lead to a huge improvement in symptoms, if not a complete reversal. » What would it be worth to you to be able to stop having brain fog, reckless weird behavior, or crying fits, or suicidal urges, or angry outbursts? Or to help your child to stop having those problems? What would that be worth to you?

It can seem like a miracle to add back a needed nutrient and it can seem like a miracle to remove a substance that was causing dysfunction.

One special diet would never be a good fit for all of the people on the autism spectrum, AND, the standard diet recommendations are only designated for ‘normal’ health, and are not really that good for people of normal health either. With that reframing, and re-listening, I realized that the extreme diets that are in use may indeed be necessary for recovery stages, or for some people with gene changes - for lifelong use, depending on gene variations.

If you can’t break down a certain type of chemical, then even if it is not ‘toxic’ to people of normal/average metabolism, it could certainly become a problem in larger quantities for someone who isn’t clearing it normally. Poor clearance of a chemical can also impact other functions that should be occurring if the body wasn’t having to focus all of its energy and chemical enzyme pathways on clearance of excess things. Most any nutrient can become ‘toxic’, and cause a health problem when it is in excess.

Sulfation pathways are part of the interconnected methylation cycles and are involved in detoxifying drugs and phenols and amines from our diet, medications, or chemicals we make internally. The enzymes needed for the detox of so many different things, are the same enzymes, which get backed up. Salicylate sensitivity in part is a ‘too much’ problem for people whose sulfation enzymes are slower than average. This article covers the topic in detail: Sulfation, (youarethehealer.org) The solution can be two part - improve whatever is holding up the chemical pathways would help and reduce intake of the dietary and medication sources of the phenols and amines.

Other chemicals within our normal foods (antinutrients) aren’t really good for any of us and none of us can ‘detox’ them well. Cereal grains, pseudo grains/seeds and beans have negative proteins and enzymes that can be a negative for most people and really bad for some people. Phytic acid prevents seeds from growing until they are in a moist place for a couple days and it chelates minerals we need for our health. Plant lectins or saponins can clump blood cells and may also be able to damage cell membranes or block membrane receptors.

If the chemical enzyme pathways are functioning okay and the gut microbiome is helping instead of adding to problems, then most average people won’t experience bad physical or mental symptoms from dietary substances like lectins and phytic acid if the food is eaten in a sensible amount instead of overeating it or eating it as a primary food every single day (due to poverty maybe).

Knowing and using traditional food preparation methods is very important because they made the food more digestible, but modern food processing frequently does not do the ancient preparations methods.

Saponins in soy beans are extremely high, but fairly low in the fermented tofu. Saponins are bad for everyone because they add to leaky membrane risk - puncture or emulsify the intestinal lining so the whole protein can enter the blood stream - and puncture holes there too. (The Paleo Answer, Loren Cordain)

Gut dysbiosis can add to food sensitivities or intolerances because helpful species can eat negative chemicals from the diet for us, and negative species may be making more negative chemicals or actual bacterial toxins that make us sicker.

In thinking how to simplify this point - a standard diet for an average human may be indigestible to someone with gene differences from autism, Down’s syndrome, or other congenital/birth issues. Also, someone with impaired health, at any stage of life, may no longer be able to digest and absorb nutrients or to use them as easily. Special diets that totally restrict or greatly restrict certain foods or groups of foods can help bypass chemical processing needs which are more difficult for any of us to do, or that the special needs person seems to not be doing well.

My breakthrough thought last night is that when thinking about the odd diets with multiple restrictions - we are not comparing apples and oranges when thinking about people with autism versus people with no obvious diagnosis of any sort. It is a bit more like we are comparing mammals with marsupials - these critters can seem similar but internally, they really aren’t quite the same - and therefore, they may have some basic needs that are also quite different.

There is an old saying regarding diagnosing about seeing zebras instead of horses - looking for the unique in something that is more of a standard problem; or seeing horses when it is zebras - it is a more unique problem. Zebras and horses are a lot alike though - both graze on pasture land. The average human and an autistic child can be far more different due to multiple, but variable, gene changes causing dysfunction in important metabolic pathways. That means the body won’t work right.

Imagine a chemical pathway as an automated car wash. What if the car wash system was spewing lots of soap, but the rinse at the end was broken? Your car would be covered with soap and you wouldn’t be able to see to drive out of the dysfunctional automated carwash.

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This previous post wandered from my initial point and contains info about the course that I bought. The post was supposed to be about Carnicom Institute suggesting that we need healthcare professionals to develop a protocol for clearing hydrogel and other synthetic biotech from our bodies. The course I signed up for is by the person whose book I mentioned and I had copied some AI info about it within this post: We have a need for a Detox/prevention protocol for acid-producing Cross Domain Bacteria & Hydrogel. (Substack).

In the post I introduced the book by Julie Matthews, a Certified Nutrition Consultant, because her history of helping kids with autism to improve would be similar to what we need to do to reverse the hyperinflammation and gut dysbiosis that is caused by the synthetic biotech of varied sorts (chimeric spike, hydrogel, Morgellon’s fibers…varied sorts). Autism and Alzheimer’s dementia has many similarities, which means that similar therapeutic approaches may also help both.

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The course by Julie Matthews was more expensive than I can afford, but seemed pertinent to my own health troubles and those of my mother who has Alzheimer’s dementia. And it is. I will have more to say regarding how. My initial point here is that I have learned a lot from it and my first reaction of OMG! what bizarre diets, has changed into “Odd diets may be the best thing for some people.”

I say that from a perspective of having worked with a lot of babies and toddlers needing special formulas while on the US WIC program. As their dietitian I had to work with their doctor to get medical approval set up for the more expensive formulas. The formulas tended to taste really bad….REALLY BAD…. but the babies and toddlers who truly needed them drank them just fine, or even better than the formulas that probably left a belly ache.

If your food is hurting you, then your gut pain can be very intense and debilitating. Like a migraine, internal gut pain can leave you not wanting to move because movement makes the pain so much worse.

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On the older post I had linked to, a comment was shared by Bee Gee about how he and his wife use oral EDTA chelation to help cope with the unknowns of synthetic biotech - Bee Gee, May 2· Intravenous chelation is the method that Dr. Ana Mihalcea uses clinically. Caution is needed with chelation to not disrupt normal function and the minerals that we do need for health.

“I have adapted a protocol based off what others have found before me, such as Clifford Carnicom and Dr Ana. Oral EDTA, ALA, Bromelain, Vitamin C, D, E and natural/sodium citrate.

My wife and I also fast for 3 days every month or so while taking the supplements to be sure they are effective, since EDTA binds with so many things that most people just waste it due to ineffective dosing. Also EDTA makes it very easy to fast as you do not get hungry when taking it.” Read more: May 2·

I will be sharing more about what I have been learning from the special diet course. It requires that I read a few specific diet books and encourages reviewing all of the discussed diets in more detail - I love books, so that is like encouraging a sugar addict to eat more candy. The deeper discussion of ‘dietary principles’ - basic rules to try to follow that might be providing more general guidance in addition to food lists of what to use more of and what to restrict, and menu plans or recipe examples.

After reading a variety of personality typing methods - I do tend towards rule breaker at times but also can be good at getting things done within guidelines. Julie Matthews course suggests there are many people who like specific rules to follow regarding their diet, or maybe, regarding what to make for their child. Julie does encourage family meals and making special diet switches for everyone rather than having the trouble of preparing multiple dishes and avoiding making anyone feel penalized by having to eat the special food, or maybe for a sibling, feeling excluded from the special foods and maybe extra attention that a challenging child might be getting.

I went to the library to see if the required books might be available and one is as an ebook. I checked out a variety of others and also stopped at a thrift store and picked up a pile of diet focused books there (and three personal training college texts).

One of the thrift store books combines the best of both worlds for me - a personality typing system and diets geared towards the types. ‘The Brain Chemistry Diet’, was developed by a nutrition focused doctor interested in mental health. Michael Lesser, MD, was inspired by the orthomolecular work of Linus Pauling, and started incorporating nutrition support for his own patients. The higher dose niacin used by Dr. Hoffer is included in the book. Some overarching dietary principles for all of his ‘types’ include avoiding refined grains, sugar, and stabilizing blood sugar.

He also recommends avoiding trans fats and limiting saturated fats. He mentions that schizophrenia was unheard of in a primitive culture that eats mainly vegetables and fruits and very little sayurated fat or total fat. Less grains and carbs is a recommendation for his ‘Warrior’ type, and more animal protein. He shares a little of the reasons underlying his recommendations but the book is not cited with academic references. It is a layreader guide.

Background: If the diet in total has over ten percent of total calories from saturated fat, then mitochondria will not use the more efficient and less waste producing aerobic methylation cycles. That doesn’t seem to be a standard recommendation among the Keto/Paleo/Low carb circles of modern day ‘diets’.

Julie Matthews approach is focused on moderate carb, low grains and beans, and fermented foods, bone broth and animal protein other than dairy. Most children with autism do seem to do better on a gluten, dairy and soy free diet in her experience. There may be an enzyme, DPP-IV, that is commonly dysfunctional, which in combination with a leaky gut, might make those foods lead to internal production of opiates - and craving for those foods, but also physical and mental symptoms of opiate excess.

• The Brain Chemistry Diet: The Personalized Prescription for Balancing Mood, Relieving Stress, and Conquering Depression, Based on Your Personality Type; Feb 4, 2002, by Michael Lesser (Author), Colleen J. Kapklein (Author) (Amazon)

• Dr. Lesser’s book has a foreword written by A. Hoffer, MD, PhD, FRCP (C).

• It is available to read online: (archive.org). It is an older book, 2002, and likely is available to buy used. Or The Brain Chemistry Plan seems to be a 2003 edition that had a larger printing: (alibris.com).

‘The Brain Chemistry Diet’ book seems to have useful information about the nutrients that are commonly lacking in the modern diet. It has example meal plans and food lists for the different types being described. It also has an extensive resources section for therapists, organizations and quality supplement companies.

When a clinician who has had many years helping people shares the patterns they have observed, it is worth paying attention. I don’t agree 100% with the approach Julie Matthews recommends, but from an additive perspective, her info helps my understanding of the complexities and I could help fill in a few puzzle pieces for her approach. If I complete the coursework and final test (not likely to be difficult), I would be certified in her method and added to her directory of practitioners. I would have more guidance to add to her method though.

Rhetorical question, or serious question: If I don’t fully endorse her recommendations, would being listed in her directory be suggesting that I do endorse it or simply that I am familiar with it? I would lean towards the latter.

What I learned as a clinician in public health, is that you can develop blinders when working exclusively with high risk clients, which hide normal health. It can become easy to think your special need population makes up a majority of people because it is the majority of people you are seeing. I gained a lot when budget cuts forced a massive change in my work load from only high risk appointments, to seeing high risk plus standard screening appointments. It helped me learn the routine habits of healthy families and to drop that sense of “Everyone is SO sick!”. I had only been seeing very sick people.

Polyphenols including salicylates can be a problem, in addition to carbs, for children with autism - but that doesn't make polyphenols bad for everyone.

Healing the gut is the goal of the special diets that might be recommendedfor parentsof children with autism. Ideally severe restrictions are only an introductory 3-6 weeks and gradually foods are retried and may be added back. But for some issues, gene dysfunction or autoimmune antibodies, restricting certain foods may be a life long need. Julie Matthews approach does encourage trying to increase variety as the gut health or other symptoms improve.

My concern is that gut health may not return without some changes to the basic approach of the varied special diets that make up the core of Julie Matthews recommendations.

What I would do differently is a topic for another post, but spoiler: colon cells, butyrate and resistant starches are involved.

The very limited carbohydrate diets are designed to wipe out the overgrowth of gut bacteria in SIBO or colitis, but aren't really rebuilding the gut. The meat or bone broth is supposed to be helping to do that, heal the gut lining, but it can't really do that alone. We need to support the colon cells with an anaerobic diet and that requires butyrate and other short chain fatty acids. ….More about that in another post.

Photo op - a basic dietary principle is that being overly acidic is harmful to health and may be cancer promoting. It is associated with dysfunctional mitochondria and lack of methylation cycle function needed to provide epigenetic regulation to the cell's DNA. Plant polyphenols are so important to our health too, because they can help provide gene regulation even if we are not able to, due to our having gene differences or poor methylation.

There are many reasons to avoid highly acidic beverages, and sulfation and detoxification of phenols including salicylates, serotonin and dopamine is a good one. When we are overly acidic, we can’t excrete salicylates as well and may have more oxalate too. Excess oxalate can negatively affect the gut microbiome and lead to reduced ATP and energy. ATP energy is needed by the kidneys to reabsorb/recycle sulfate. Lack of sulfate would be a direct factor for causing reduced detoxification utilizing sulfation pathways. . . . With no sulfate, there will be no sulfation of salicylate, serotonin, or dopamine. It is the sulfation that deactivates the chemicals, making them reusuable or excretable, but making them no longer able to activate any receptors or adding to an accumulation of salicylates which is toxic to the liver.

When sulfation pathways are slower than normal, problems from dietary or medication and environmental chemicals can cause physical and mental health symptoms including irritability, aggression, and hyperactivity. These problem behaviors can be daily because the food sources of phenols are common and the person can crave those foods because of an initial or ongoing increase in dopamine.

People with autism spectrum disorder have been found to have low plasma levels of bioavailable sulfate. Topical sources of Epsom salt, magnesium sulfate, can improve the plasma levels but not normalize the problem. Sulfur transfer enzymes have a capacity that can be reached fairly rapidly, even more so if the person has dysfunctional genes affecting it or affecting needed nutrient cofactors. (Pagan, et al., 2021)

Discussion: “The present study reasserts that individuals with ASD present a low plasma inorganic sulfate content¹⁸. Previous studies showed that a vitamin/mineral supplement³⁷ or Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate)³⁸ were able to improve, but not normalize, free and total plasma sulfate in children with ASD.

However, whereas in the rat 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphosulfate (PAPS) and sulfate availability limit sulfation capacity, in mice and humans sulfotransferase activity limits the maximum rate of sulfoconjugation³⁹.”

The research team of Pagan, et al., 2021, also found that some of the people with autism who were studied had low levels of hydrogen sulfide (HS) in plasma, pineal, and ileum tissue samples and decreased activity of the Hydrogen sulfotransferase enzyme (HST).

“In addition, we reported, for the first time to our knowledge, that a subset of individuals with ASD presented, for the three investigated tissues (plasma, pineal, and ileum), reduced HS contents (Fig. 4b, c, e) as well as decreased HST activities (Fig. 4d, f). This finding is in line with the reported increased excretion of glycosaminoglycans (including HS) in the urine of patients with ASD⁴⁰ and with data from mouse models of autism suggesting a possible connection between autism and HS.”

Serotonin excess can result from poor sulfation as it is a phenol requiring the sulfation pathways for detoxification.

Abstract: “Hyperserotonemia is the most replicated biochemical abnormality associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, previous studies of serotonin synthesis, catabolism, and transport have not elucidated the mechanisms underlying this hyperserotonemia. Here we investigated serotonin sulfation by phenol sulfotransferases (PST) in blood samples from 97 individuals with ASD and their first-degree relatives (138 parents and 56 siblings), compared with 106 controls. We report a deficient activity of both PST isoforms (M and P) in platelets from individuals with ASD (35% and 78% of patients, respectively), confirmed in autoptic tissues (9 pineal gland samples from individuals with ASD—an important source of serotonin).” […]

The excess of serotonin seems related to the lack of breakdown rather than increased production. Gene alleles that might be involved include more than those observed for the MAO-A and SULT1A genes or CNV gene alleles.

Discussion: “As we previously proposed⁵, the origin(s) of hyperserotonemia in autism appear(s) to be of metabolic origin, i.e., a decreased catabolism and/or an increased biosynthesis of serotonin. An increased 5-HT synthesis has never been evidenced in ASD patients, see refs. ^56,57 for review. The main 5-HT catabolic pathway, leading to 5-HIAA, is oxidative deamination through MAO-A. Mice ko for MAO-A exhibited autistic-like behaviors which could be prevented by reducing serotonin levels at an early developmental age (P1–P7), see ref. ⁵⁸ for review.”

[Only 7.5% of patients with autism exhibited that MAO-A gene difference, so other reasons must exist. CNVs* or SULT1A gene alleles were also not common among a majority of people with autism who participated in gene studies.]

*“…CNVs in the GPC5/GPC6 gene cluster⁵⁰, which encodes the glypicans 5 and 6, two members of a family of glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored HS proteoglycans.” (Pagan, et al., 2021)

Disclaimer This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health guidance.

Reference List

(Pagan, et al., 2021) Pagan, C., Benabou, M., Leblond, C. et al. Decreased phenol sulfotransferase activities associated with hyperserotonemia in autism spectrum disorders. Transl Psychiatry 11, 23 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-020-01125-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-01125-5