Why current thinking about Autism is completely wrong

Autism is caused by poor mothering. That was the belief of the medical community until the late 1960s. Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman and we're going to talk about autism today. The main belief of doctors today in 2007 is that autism is a genetic brain disorder. I'm going to show you why this isn't true and why it's preventing us from getting to help so many kids who have autism and ADD. Now how could this be a genetic disorder if the rates of autism have increased from 1 in 3,000 or more to almost 1 in 150 children today? Now this could be from better detection rates or maybe wider criteria for diagnosis, but it can't account for the whole increase. It has to be something other than genetics. The dramatic discoveries over the last 10 to 20 years about the true causes of autism have turned our conventional thinking on its head. Now what if I told you that autism was really a systemic body disorder that affected the brain and that a toxic environment triggered susceptible genes that many of us have, then this led to the behavioral problems we see in these poor children. That's actually what the current science is telling us about autism, and yet hardly anybody who's treating autism is aware of this or believes this model. Now thankfully, a pioneering research and systems thinker, Martha Herbert, who's a pediatric neurologist from Harvard Medical School, has painted a picture of autism that not only helps us recognize that these core abnormalities in the body, things from immunity to gut function to detox, play a central role in causing the behavioral and mood problems in autism, but she's given us a new way of looking at mental disease and disease in general that is based on systems biology. This is what we call systems biology, functional medicine or ultra wellness. Now coming from the halls of the most conservative medical institution in the world is a call so loud and so clear that shatters our normal way of looking at things. Everything's connected, Dr. Herbert says. The fact that these kids have smelly poops or bloated bellies or frequent colds or ear infections or dry skin is not just a coincidence. It has nothing to do with their brain function, but it's actually central. It's central to why they're sick in the first place. Now, my friend and mentor, Sydney Baker, and a pioneer in the treatment of autism, as a body disorder that affects the brain. He often says, Do you see what you believe or do you believe what you see? The problem in medicine today is that we so often get stuck in seeing what we believe that we often ignore what's right in front of us because it doesn't fit our belief system. Nowhere is this true more than in autism. Now this is on the forefront of my mind because I see so many kids with ADD and autism and learning problems and I see the skyrocketing rates of medication, things like stimulants, antipsychotics, which are actually one of the fastest growing drug categories, seizure meds and more. Now, there is another way to approach this and I want to tell you a story about a little boy I saw recently. Last month his mother came to see me desperate because her two and a half year old son had just been diagnosed with autism. He was born bright and happy, he was breastfed, he had the best medical care available including all the vaccinations he could possibly have had. He talked, he walked, he loved, he played normally. That is until he was 22 months old and he had his measles, mumps and rubella vaccination. Now I don't want everybody to think that the vaccinations cause autism because I'm not sure that's true but there's a connection here. He also had every other possible vaccination. Diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, B, influenza, pneumonia, hemophilus, meningitis, All before he was two years old. And then he started to lose his language. He became detached and unable to relate in normal ways with his parents and other kids. He was withdrawn, less interactive. How could a normal boy be transformed so quickly? Well, he was taking to the best doctors in New York. He was pronounced as having autism, as if it were something you catch like a bug. And he was told that there was nothing to be done except arduously painful and barely effective behavioral and occupational therapy techniques. The progress will be slow, the doctor said, and you should keep your expectations low. Now is that the kind of advice that we should be giving people today? Devastated, the mother looked for other options. She came to see me and we started working together. And in only a few weeks, the results have been amazing. There's a lot still to do and peel away like layers of an onion, but by seeing autism as a body disorder, that affects the brain as opposed to a brain disorder, which really highlights the whole importance of this body-mind effect. There is so much that can be done. Children treated this way can often have dramatic and remarkable recoveries. So what did I find in this little boy that gave me the clues about how to treat him? Before I tell you, let me just remind you that the whole basis of functional and systems medicine of ultra wellness is the concept that we're all unique of biochemical individuality. And that means that if you take 100 kids with autism, each one may have unique genetics and each one may have unique causes and triggers for their autism that differs from the others. And they need different treatments to get better. So autism is just a name, it's just a label. The key is we have to dig into the layers and peel the onion of what's really happening. Now this is true of everything, not just autism. So we have to pay close attention to what we see and be ready to work with unexpected things that we find according to the basic principles of biology. That's what I framed as the seven keys to ultra wellness. So let's just briefly talk about what happened to Sam. Now when I first saw him he was deep in his wordless world of autism. We dug into his biochemistry and genetics. We found lots of things. He was allergic to gluten. He had 28 food allergies. His gut was inflamed. He had a leaky gut. He had yeast in his gut. He had high levels of bacteria overgrowing in his gut. He was deficient in zinc, magnesium, B12, vitamin A and omega-3 fats and vitamin D. And he had lots of trouble making energy. He had depletion of his amino acids. He had lots of metals like antimony and arsenic and lead. And he had lots of genes that made him not able to cope with all these stresses. Problems with his detox highways and his biochemistry that just gummed up when it was exposed to all these stresses. And what we did was very simple. What we did was simply apply these basic principles of ultra wellness, getting through the seven keys, and look at how everything was connected, and develop a plan to deal with all this biochemical and physiologic rubble that the basic underlying causes left along the road, things like mercury and yeast and metals and gluten and other food allergens. So what did I have to do? I basically used my roadmap, my new GPS system based on functional and systems medicine and ultra wellness, and I had a very straightforward approach. Take away what's bugging him, give his body what it's missing and needs in order to thrive, which is based on his genetics and his biochemical uniqueness, and then the body just takes care of everything else. so what do we do in particular? Well, we fixed his gut and cooled all the inflammation. We took away gluten and food allergies, we got rid of the yeast, we killed off the bad bacteria in his gut, we put back healthy bacteria, we gave him enzymes to help him digest his food, we put back missing nutrients like zinc and magnesium and folate B12 and B6 and vitamin A and D and gave him brain supporting omega-3 fats. And next we're going to help him detoxify, which we do after we get his biochemistry tuned up and we give him chelating medication and detoxifying nutrients to help boost his weak detox system. Now does this sound familiar? Right? Improve nutrition, reduce inflammation, heal the gut, detoxify. The reason is that no matter what the disease, the basic laws of biology are the same. We have to understand them. All the details of Sam's story fit into these laws. We just have to dig deep, peel back the layers, and understand what's going on. Now, after three weeks on a gluten-free diet and treating his gut, he showed dramatic and remarkable changes. He was getting back much of his speech, and he showed much more connection and interaction with his peers and with his parents. And we're just starting on the process. There's a lot more work to do, but we have a roadmap, and more importantly, we have a way of thinking about things they can help create miracles. Remember, every child with behavior problems or autism is a little bit different and each has to find their own path with a trained doctor. But the gates are open and the wide road of healing is in front of you. You simply have to take the first step.