Ask AI Mark explores what dementia and autism share from a functional medicine angle, using patient stories to examine underlying causes like nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, and detoxification problems.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this month, we're talking about the brain, specifically brain disorders. Now, the title of this week's house call is, what Do Dementia and Autism have in Common? Well, a lot more than you might think. You see, conventional medicine likes to label disorders. but labels are really meaningless. They tell us what disease we have, but they don't tell us why we have that disease, or even more importantly, how we can really treat it other than prescribing a pill for every ill. The emphasis on naming diseases is so pervasive throughout medicine, and it's the single biggest obstacle to changing the way we do things and finding the answers to our health problems. The truth is that two brain disorders, with two completely different names, actually might have a lot more in common than you think. To explain this, let me tell you why by telling you about two of my patients, Sam and Christine. You see, Sam was diagnosed with autism at 22 months of age. He became disconnected, he was withdrawn, his family really wanted to get him help. We found that Sam had high levels of antibodies to gluten. He was allergic also to dairy and eggs and yeast and soy and over 20 other foods. He also had what we call leaky and inflamed gut and was suffering from so many different nutritional deficiencies like zinc, magnesium, A, B12, D, omega-3 fats. Like many children with autism, he had trouble making energy in his cells or what we call mitochondria. His amino acids, which are really necessary for normal brain functioning and for detoxification, were very depleted. And his body showed high levels of heavy metals including aluminum, lead in arsenic. His sulfur and his glutathione levels were really low, which is necessary for detox, and he also had trouble with key biochemical functional systems called methylation, which is required to make normal neurotransmitters and brain chemicals, and also critical for detoxification. On top of all that, he had very high levels of free radicals or oxidative stress, including markers that showed that his brain was inflamed. His brain and his body were on fire. Now after almost a year of treating these issues and working really close with Sam and his family, he made remarkable improvement. He was verbally fluent where he wasn't talking before. His body was functioning normally again and it was quite extraordinary. Now he's mainstreamed and his autism diagnosis is gone. Now I want to tell you about my patient named Christine. Christine was 80 years old and was experiencing severe memory loss and cognitive decline. Her family was pretty concerned so she She was tested with hours and hours of neuropsychological testing and was found to have dementia, which is just a label. It doesn't tell you why. It just tells you what, right? So the question is why. The neurologist did her best effort to comfort her, but told her and her family, there's no treatment really. There's no effective therapies. There's no way to stop or reverse the progression of dementia, which is when her daughter brought her to see me. Now, we discovered a lot of subtle changes in her health that on their own couldn't explain dementia, but when added together, they put a strain on her brain function. And we corrected those problems, which included low thyroid function, mercury toxicity, inflammation, deficiencies in B6 and vitamin D and folate and CoQ10, as well as omega-3 fats, and we improved her overall diet. Now, six months later, she had the extensive memory test again, and her psychologist was surprised to say her scores actually got better, which never happens. Now, did you notice any similarities between Sam and Christine? When we dug deep, we found many of the same insults that can lead to autism can also contribute to dementia. Things like nutritional deficiencies, heavy metal toxicity, inflammation, gut issues, and more. There are just a few of the challenges that can lead to a broken brain and many other health conditions. So we have to look at all these things as the underlying causes. But rarely will you find a conventional doc actually talking about the role of leaky gut. or heavy metal toxicity or nutritional deficiencies in regard to brain disorders. We need to revolutionize the way we treat these brain disorders. This is why my team and I created the eight-part Broken Brain docu-series. Now this docu-series goes through the major brain disorders such as dementia and autism and depression and lots more. And it offers a different way to approach disease. You're gonna hear from over 50 experts who will share the truth about how our brains work and how we can achieve optimal brain health. I'm going to guide you through the seven steps to an UltraMind. Now, these are the steps that I used with both Sam and Christine during their treatment, and now I want to share them with you. We'll talk about how to tackle nutritional deficiencies, stress, gut imbalances, we'll also talk about how to boost your detoxification systems and how the quality of your relationships can impact your brain health. We're going to dive deep into a brain healthy diet, and our experts will share the best tips for achieving a calm mind. You don't have to suffer with a broken brain anymore. Let's fix this problem together. Join our movement by signing up for this free docu-series and spread the word to your friends so we can all take back control of our brain health together. And if you have questions about the brain, tweet me and use the hashtag HouseCallWithDrHyman. Maybe next week I'll make a house call to you. Thanks for watching.
