Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article touches on a much lesser-known treatment for autism, or at least autistic suffering.
It's becoming known more widely, in recent years, that our guts (which is to say, mainly our intestinal tracts) have a huge impact on how our brains function. There are neurons around our guts that pass information to our brain via our spinal cord. So if you put junk food into your gut, you get bad signals sent back to your brain. Your mood, ability to plan, and ability to remember information can all be affected.
I've actually been experiencing this firsthand for the last week or so. It's been a hard week, and I'm prone to emotional snacking, so I've consumed a greater amount of junk food than normal. By the end of the work day, I find myself depressed, easily-frustrated, and far less productive than I would've been if I'd fed myself properly. Which, naturally, leads to more emotional snacking, thus creating a negative spiral.
It's not even just a question of what you put in your body, though, when it comes to autistic people. It's a question of what's already there, too. It hasn't been studied in as much depth as it should be, but what research we have tells us that autistic peoples' guts tend to be much simpler and more prone to overgrowth of candida (a class of harmful gut bacteria). Where most people have thousands of species of gut bacteria, many autistic people only have hundreds.
Without the checks and balances from all that diversity in the gut, autistic peoples' guts simply don't perform as well as they should... which means we don't absorb nutrients from our food as well, digest foods as much as we should, or break down toxins as quickly and effectively as someone with a healthy gut.
Which is why I'm on the wait list to be a subject for a fecal transplant experiment. It's also why I routinely take two hospital grade probiotics. Trying to keep my gut in balance is extremely important to managing my mental health and ability to function in neurotypical society. When my gut is properly functioning, I'm able to communicate more clearly, express myself better, and understand others better. When it's out of balance, I do worse in every aspect of my life. It's honestly that simple.
I'm glad to see this research, and I hope people are paying attention. This is one of many options parents and fellow autistics can look into when trying to improve our lives. In a world where most doctors throw pharmaceuticals at a problem and then say "there's nothing more we can do" if they don't work, we need more of this research to show people there's always something more to try.
On a personal note, Arizona State University and Richard Harth (the article's writer) in particular: Autism is not a disease. Calling it (and autistic people) that is insulting at best, along with being dehumanizing. It hasn't been okay to refer to autism in that manner for over a decade, so I'm not really sure how this happened... but it did. If I remember, I'll @ y'all on Twitter about it. Politely, as best I can.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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