Ask AI Mark explains how functional medicine addresses systemic issues in autistic children: immune dysregulation, gut problems, toxin loads, nutritional deficiencies, and mitochondrial dysfunction. The approach aims to improve quality of life and functioning rather than claim a cure.
I love seeing kids with autism because there's so many things you can't. Absolutely. They almost all have immune dysregulation. They almost all have gut issues. Most of them have toxin loads that are high. Most of them have nutritional deficiencies. Many of them have mitochondrial issues, which are energy production. And these are all things that we know how to approach with a functional medicine approach. And they're not that hard to figure out or find in testing. No, and I'm not saying we can cure autism, although I've had cases of complete reversal, which is dramatic, but we can improve the quality of life, we can improve their functioning, we can improve their speech. I remember I met this one doctor who was an incredible physician and he told me this incredible story of his son who was autistic. And I'd written this book years ago called the UltraMind Solution, which was about how to fix your broken brain. by fixing your body first, by healing your body first. Because it was very clear to me that most brain disorders were systemic issues, where there was imbalances in the body that affected the brain. And one of the simple things I, you know, when I talked about some of these cases of autism in the book, this doctor read the book and saw that I had recommended to get off of gluten and dairy, and we're going to talk about why that's important. and he said he just tried it with his son who was five years old and hadn't said a word his entire life. And he got him off gluten and dairy and a short while later the kid started talking, started chatting and he heard, he was learning a language. He had receptive language but he had no expressive language and he just literally started crying. And when I hear these stories, you know, sometimes it's that simple. Now it's not always that simple. No, no. But we know a methodology, really a system of evaluating patients using the model of functional medicine, understanding the body as a system, and being able to map out where the imbalances and dysfunctions are and fix those and get these patients to get better.
