Autism and Food? Is there a connection?
Is there a link between Autism and Food? This would be one of the most frequent questions I get asked when people ask what I do and who I work with.
HUGE! And fundamental to the success of any treatment and therapy!
In essence though, the treatment encompasses all aspects, nutrition, biochemistry, genetics, microbiome, lifestyle and environment to enable the best outcomes for your child…. And this is “Nutritional Medicine”. As you can see Autism and Food is just the beginning.
All Autisms are different… which is why the link between autism and food is not as straight forward as it seems it should be.
All children in the spectrum have different outcomes, different underlying reasons for the outcome and all then need to be treated as individuals and all aspects considered and addressed according to their needs and that of their family and support network.
“Let Food be thy Medicine and Medicine be thy Food” …. Hippocrates
“Health begins in the Gut” …. the baseline of initial treatment is always addressing the diet.
While…. Then also testing and screening for the underlying biochemistry, microbiome health and genetics as they get us a much clearer picture of your child’s underlying needs that may need to be addressed.
Why ….
We find that many (and at times all) symptoms lessen (or even disappear) simply by dietary changes alone. This also enables us to gain a clearer picture of what was simply diet related and what still needs to be addressed which for you means less cost, less invasive tests and more simplicity in your life and that of your child moving forward.
It is important to get the best outcomes for the best life possible both for the child and the family ….
And we recognise that often we need more testing and to get other therapies and other practitioners involved to get those outcomes and we seek out the best options with you.
Why Microbiome?
With the modern world, many of us now have a very disrupted microbiome, which as research develops we are understanding more and more the impact of. The western diet and lifestyle has been clearly shown not to make a friendly ecosystem in the gut.
Not only is it important to have many and varied organisms and bacteria in the gut, the balance and ratios of the various forms is also fundamentally relevant to our outcomes. This being the case not just for Autism, but for all health outcomes.
Why Pathology?
To understand what is going on in the underlying biochemistry and why certain systems may not be working effectively we need to know where deficiencies and excesses lie and where we ideally should target our treatment to gain the best outcomes.
Why DNA/Genetic testing?
To gain the information, in regards to the processes within the body which may be fundamentally impaired due to genetics snps / polymorphisms. While we may not be able to change the genes we can as we know change the expression of our genes …. The human body is amazing in healing itself when given the right environment and tools to work with.
Nutritional Medicine ….. you gotta love it !