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Rare Form of Autism Could Be Curable With Protein Supplements
ananyo writes "A rare, hereditary form of autism has been found — and it may be treatable with protein supplements. Genome sequencing of six children with autism has revealed mutations in a gene that stops several essential amino acids being depleted. Mice lacking this gene developed neurological problems related to autism that were reversed by dietary changes (abstract). According to Joseph Gleeson, a child neurologist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study, 'This might represent the first treatable form of autism.' It is possible that some other forms of autism may also be linked to uncommon metabolic disorders — and so treatable through dietary changes, according to the scientists quoted in the piece."
Red meat is highest in BCAAs. Dairy products also are good protein sources and contain high amounts of BCAAs. Some healthy choices in dairy include low-fat or nonfat milk, low-fat cottage cheese, low-fat yogurt, frozen yogurt, sour cream and low-fat cheeses. MayoClinic.com recommends reducing the amount of saturated fats in your diet.
Additional dairy options include butter, cheese, cream, crème fraiche, eggnog, ghee and half-and-half. Some dairy products, such as ice cream, contain whey protein, which is loaded with BCAAs
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/286637-foods-high-in-branched-chain-amino-acids/#ixzz25kJBtIEO
Any potential treatment is lightyears beyond what is available currently. This is awesome news!
We already knew about some forms of autism where a genetic disposition causes the lack of dipeptyl-peptidase IV, the enzyme responsible for breaking proline bonds during digestion. Proline needs a very special enzyme because the amine is tertiary, while it is secondary on other amino acids.
Gluten and casein contain sequences with a lot of proline, and this class of autists never digest them completely. They are left with short proline-rich peptides known as gliadomorphine and caseomorphine. As the name suggests, theses peptides are able to bind morphine receptors in the brain. And for this class of autism, symptoms disapear with a diet without casein and gluten.
And now we have autists with another genetic disposition related to protein digestion, this time with valine, leucine and isoleucine not being digested, and missing in the brain because they are essential amino acids. I wonder if we are going to discover more autism forms as being protein digestion issues
No, you need the autism vaccine for that.
Learn to love Alaska
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions/autism/
It sounds from those two sources like many cases of autism could be prevented by higher vitamin D levels of pregnant women and better diet, but in the first few years of life after birth, some aspects of autism can be reversed with vitamin D supplements and good diet. How far and for how many kids is still an open question.
Also of general interest on eating healthier:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/food-industry_b_1559920.html
https://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I have a metaphorical way of making sense of autistic behaviors. Let's say the brain has some kind of sensory input buffer. Defects in that buffer might lead the brain to be overstimulated with sensory input and become preoccupied with them. The other thing the buffer might do...and this is where it gets more metaphorical and maybe less factual...is serve as a feedback path for brain-generated inputs, to sort of test things. Like when someone says "Imagine what it feels like when..." or even when you just think about real experiences you had. I think of dreams as maybe working like that too: brain generated inputs get cycled back through the buffer to serve as virtual experiences for...whatever dreams are for. That way of thinking about it leads to a way of understanding stimming behaviours: they can be thought of as dream-related movement that we don't do during sleep dreams because of sleep paralysis.
I find having a (metaphorical and maybe not correct) mechanistic way of understanding autistic bahaviours makes it a lot easier to deal with them.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I knew it!
People who don't eat meat are weird.
(Brought to you by the American beef council)
In related news:
Cannibalistic ancestors help against prion diseases.
(Brought to you by the American flesh council)
If you RTFA, you'll see that all of the children they identified had those characteristics because it made them easier to identify. It doesn't say only children of middle eastern descent whose parents are 1st cousins can be treated with supplementation. It says the children identified by those traits had a form of autism that is also linked with the inability to transport those amino acids. Because their bodies are not able to process those amino acids it is theorized that supplementation may assist treatment. But more than anything, if you were a parent or caregiver of an autistic child then why wouldn't you try protein/BCAA supplements? These supplements are widely studied and concerned safe as far as I have ever read. They are readily available, just go to your local GNC. Or any supplement website.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism
http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/
BTW, eating more veggies can help with the some of the disease you mentioned:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"Fibromyalgia is a disease highlighted by discomfort, pain and tenderness all over the body. The cause is unknown. Typical treatments involve pain medication and anti-depressants used to aid sleep. Better sleep has been shown to be of benefit.
I have been utilizing a high antioxidant, acrlyamide-free diet for many years with marked success. Acrylamides are toxic substances produced by baking and frying carbohydrates. The diet-style I recommend for fibromylagia patients is rich in natural plant foods especially organic berries and green vegetables and restricted in animal products and baked grains. Vegetable soups and steamed vegetables are encouraged. Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly.
Studies in the medical literature support this method of treatment.[ii] Though the researchers do not seem to have the experience and understanding of why what they are doing works, the effects are dramatic.
Similar to the nutritional treatment of most diseases, it is not one photochemical compound or the removal of one toxic habit that works; it is the symphonic combination of removing multiple nutritional stresses along with the addition of multiple beneficial nutritional compounds that results in consistent and sustained results. The high intake of polyphenolic compounds such as quercetin, myricetin and kaempherol, and the high intake of lignans and bioflavonoids are just a few of the hundreds of nutrients with unpronounceable names that can only be obtained in large amounts from a diet rich in natural plant foods."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
BTW, eating more veggies can help with the some of the disease you mentioned:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
The only study (one study) quoted from that Timecubey article of yours is in
BMC Complement Altern Med 2001
I don't have access to the study (unless I brain farted and couldn't find the free access link) and the hell if I'm paying money to get a paper from a third-rate journal, but I can tell you what I can find from the abstract.
The study was conducted on 32 people; 15 were switched to a vegan diet, and 18 were kept on their preexisting omnivorous diet. The groups differed from one-another at the beginning of the study in terms of pain and urine sodium, which is a significant red flag considering that many of they tout are directly related to one or the other. There is no comparison to other diets. There is no comparison to healthier omnivorous diets. The abstract states that many of the patients in the study were overweight, implying that the preexisting diets in many cases may have been unhealthy in general and that generally improving the quality of the diets may have been more important than the fact the new diet was vegan.
And hell, that's just what I got from the abstract. At best this is one of those "more research is required" papers, it's certainly not enough to suggest that such a radical dietary switch is a reasonable treatment plan. Moreover, it's so oddly specific in switching from an omnivorous over to a raw vegan diet, and being published in an alt-med journal, that it sounds like it was intended to be (as the article you quoted did) treated as more than it is. And the alt-med crowd (pretends to) wonder why people call them pseudoscientists.
Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, acts like a duck....
"Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly."
OK, Dr. Fuhrman, care to do some even observational studies? Case controls? Publish said studies in some sort of reputable journal?
(BTW, I certainly would not advocate a diet high in acrylamides, that's why all lab personnel are told never to eat their sequencing gels when they're finished with the experiment.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Being autistic, there are some limitations in my world from the viewpoint of other people. In my view, they are limited more than I am. I can understand what people are talking about even when I can't directly relate to it through personal experience or don't give the emotional response that others might give. I, however, can see past what they're talking about in ways that they cannot because of the limitations that they have in having information filtered out that I still receive. Yes, it can be an overload at times and there are situations that I don't deal well in (like crowded rooms, loud environments, or very bright environments), but I find that my particular form of autism is a huge benefit to me. I can conceptualize things that most people can't imagine exist. I can find solutions to problems from disparate sources that other people don't see as relevant to each other.
If I had a "cure" available to me, I would refuse it. Why should I give up my giftings just to be like everybody else? Why can't I simply be accepted as me, just how I am?
I have worked with many children with Ausitm.
Not the gentle, "my kid is a bit different and doesnt learn well" type, the "this child will spend
life in a wheelchair, with a head brace, except when 2-3 adults are physically helping them,
is likely to die from swallowing their own tongue/vomit/saliva, and if not could possibly live until
a good solid 15 years old, they cannot communicate in any way with those around then except
in the very most basic anger/peaceful/other level, and fights for basic existance" type
- I can assure you they would like a cure.
Count yourself lucky if your child is not in that group, and dont talk such rubbish.
By that logic, your anti-social behaviour and lack of empathy are an equally big burden to society. Die in a fire, please.
Well hello there, nice to meet you.
I'm autistic -- yup, a very real high-functioning autist complete with medical diagnosis and jazz. You know, based on science and medicine and modern psychology and not wish-washy nonsense like bloodletting.
Allow me to confront you on this, because I feel like everyone needs to hear this from someone who has it. I find it terribly inhumane and malicious of you to spread this sort of attitude. Because that was the consensus, for a long time. A century ago, I would have been put in a mental hospital. And a lot of good people have fought long and hard to show the world we are people. Living, breathing people.
For one, you advocate corporal punishment, so I must conclude that you are grossly uneducated on the matter about which you speak. The APA (undoubtedly more qualified than you on this subject), abhors it, and you're free to read their research should you disagree. And that's in "normal" children.
Perhaps you weren't aware, Mr. Anon, that Isaac Newton had Asperger's Syndrome, which falls into the category of ASD. And I should not have to mention Temple Grandin, who had to fight against a system hellbent on doing on just what you said to succeed and paved the way for the rest of us.
---
Don't speak so ignorantly. You don't know what it's like to always feel uncomfortable around people. You don't know what it's like being unable to communicate; your thoughts being constantly misinterpreted by those around you. Working as hard as you can and still failing at some of the most basic abilities like writing or reading.
You're the spoiled one; spoiled in the bliss of your own ignorance, unwilling to educate yourself or to understand. Shame on you.
I know you're trolling, but there are autistic kids. Really, they are. They simply do not interact with the real world. Their brain appears unable to deal with the mess of details and they obsess instead over much simpler, more ordered things.
The distinguishing abilities of a non-autistic are just one component of intelligence, so in archaic (i.e. politically incorrect terms) an autistic is just in some ways "retarded". These days we like to ignore that there are actually innately smart and less smart people because that would cast a shadow over meritocracy and make the angry, exploiting elite less justified in suggesting, "If you're poor, it's because you didn't work hard enough!" So we like to find labels to distinguish the "disabled" from the "stupid". But nature doesn't recognise these differences.
I am glad for all these labels, though, because people who are "stupid" are cruelly dismissed whereas people with another label tend to be treated with more sensitivity. I want every reason, genetic or environmental, for not being a healthy genius to be identified and labelled.
Having said this, I have no doubt that there are some misdiagnoses of autism - and I don't just mean Internet self-diagnoses. And the problem with a spectrum condition is that everyone has some aspects of it, so the "very high functioning autistic" is mostly "some guy with a few mild autistic traits". These are the guys who are both capable and often willing to be LOUD about their condition, giving a very wrong impression of what autism (in the non-mild form) actually is and how much it disables a person. It would be like an amputee who has lost one foot setting up expectations wrt/ a quadruple amputee who has no limbs whatever.
For some reason there is little discussion on actually a balanced diet.
Instead of proposing a prohibition of some sort of food, try to encourage the right portion percentage in your diet. Americans tend to eat too much meat. But meat isn't bad but it needs to be in the right portion, it shouldn't be our main meal but a side dish. We should eat more vegetables, but we should also take in grains and starch... We tend to eat to much salt and sugar, but we don't need to cut it out of our diet.
For the most part vegans don't seem to suffer the health effects of obesity, but they suffer other health effects from not having a proper diet. I mean if you look at many long time vegans they look years older then their peers. (I could be due to all natural drugs err ummm "inhaled herbs" use too, or just a life of being a judgmental prick building up the negativity in their body)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I feel you're making some errors which harm your cause:
I find it terribly inhumane and malicious of you to spread this sort of attitude.
It is trolling. Trolls want to hear you tell them how inhumane and malicious they are. You don't buy from spammers and you don't feed the trolls.
undoubtedly more qualified than you on this subject
I have come to call this "academic Top Trumps". Appeal to authority would have harmed you for the majority of history, so I wouldn't start appealing to it now. Link to evidence produced by respected authorities, sure, but make sure the argument rests in the evidence.
Isaac Newton had Asperger's Syndrome
One simply cannot perform a diagnosis based on reading the (edited) writings of some individual and third party accounts of his behaviour. Don't do it. It's not scientific and it makes a mockery of proper autism diagnoses.
You don't know what it's like to always feel uncomfortable around people.
There are a lot more people who "always feel uncomfortable around people" and who aren't autistic.
your thoughts being constantly misinterpreted by those around you.
Thoughts cannot be misinterpreted - only the expressions of those thoughts. It is more accurate to say that the autistic person has difficulty communicating effectively. Those who are not autistic can of course try to accommodate for this difficulty, but the problem is not necessarily "misinterpretation".
Autism affects day-to-day functioning on a long-term basis. It is a disability. Civilisation tries to accommodate for those with disabilities rather than mocking them or locking them away. Ultimately, the height of civilisation involves respecting everyone well-meaning who is not a 100% healthy genius.
Wouldn't it be ironic to find out all theses parents and their modern fad diets of all organic/vegetarian/whatever... are whats causing their children to be autistic and not the very "chemicals" they are trying to avoid.
I guess you missed: The researchers found that the supplements restore the children's blood levels of amino acids to normal. As for their autism symptoms, Gleeson says, the “patients did not get any worse and their parents say they got better, but it’s anecdotal”. Doesn't sound promising. Since normal brain development is a process that starts in utero, these amino acids are something that might require treatment to start immediately after birth to have any effect at all. Somehow with all the folk experimentation that's gone on with autistic kids, which is not always a bad thing, I'd be very surprised if every possible combination of amino-acids hasn't already been tried out there by someone. Anyhow, moral of the story: don't marry your cousins, or anyone else you may be closely related to.
Exactly. By the time that symptoms are showing it is too late. You can't 'cure' Autism once the developmental damage is done.
Anyway, autistics provide a useful social and economic function. Someone has to do computer programming, and at least this way it's voluntary.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And if it turns out that autism as a whole is effected by diet, is anyone here REALLY gonna be surprised? i mean you can test newborns and find plastic in their blood, everything we eat is artificial, pumped full of hormones and preservatives and wrapped in leaking plastic, is it any wonder we have so many problems?
Every time I see an article like this all I can do is think of my great grandma, who lived to 102 while eating everything cooked in pure lard and who made her sweet tea so strong you could see two teaspoons of sugar in the bottom of the thing. But everything she ate was fresh, the pigs and chickens were grown by her, so were the vegetables, and what beef she ate came from a local farmer who would swap her part of a cow for some pork. I seriously doubt that woman had even a teaspoonful of artificial anything in her entire life!
And while I know anecdotes are just that, I can't help but compare that little town where I grew up to the way things are now, now everyone I know has allergies, everyone I know is fighting off a bug here and a bug there, and damned near everyone is on meds. Then I didn't know of anybody that was taking more than an aspirin for a headache and if somebody got sick enough to need the doc it was the talk of the town because that almost never happened.
So I have to wonder like how in the 50s they had "radiation is your friend" if people 50 years from now are gonna look back and go "WTF were they thinking?" when it comes to us and what we put in our bodies.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm raising little Joey here on a vegan macrobiotic diet. Did I also mention he has autism, peanut allergies, and fibromyalgia?
I think it would be a trivially simple thing to show a correlation between autism and vegetarianism wouldn't it? If it existed.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm gluten intolerant, and removing gluten from my food tremendously improved my life
Well, yes, it would wouldn't it? That's like saying that someone who would die of anaphylactic shock if stung by a bee has improved their quality of life remarkably by avoiding getting stung by bees.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
My socially awkward and geeky personality led to pretty much every pre-med I met in college trying to diagnose me with autism. One of the diagnosis criteria that I remember them mentioning was food acceptance or preference issues (eating the same thing all the time, refusing to try new things, etc.). It's since been removed from the diagnostic criteria (it's not nearly selective enough), but it still occurs in a significant majority of cases. I'm curious if there could be a link here. The mice in the study were treated with a diet high in branched chain amino acids. According to livestrong, those foods are... well, I'd generally call those "kids food": red meat, chicken, nuts and cheese. I wonder if food acceptance issues in autism have a biological underpinning and kids are, essentially, trying to self-medicate with chicken fingers.
"It is trolling. Trolls want to hear you tell them how inhumane and malicious they are. You don't buy from spammers and you don't feed the trolls."
False. People are reading it, and peope buy into it so it needs to be addressed. Not for the troll, but for the other readers.
"I have come to call this "academic Top Trumps".
He pointed out that they are more qualified then the poster probably is; which is a safe bet.
He also pointed out that you can get the information for yourself. So no Appeal to Authority.
"Thoughts cannot be misinterpreted - only the expressions of those thoughts."
really? no shit. He is just using common dialog.
"but the problem is not necessarily "misinterpretation"."
It almost always is.
I watch and help my daughter deal with autism. You have no idea what it's like to have a daughter who is kind, smart, and wants to be friends with her peer. But her peers always misinterpret her and shy way from her. A lonely 12 year old is a very sad thing to watch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on