Autism: Getting To The Root Cause With Functional Medicine

a lot of their behaviors become the focus but those behaviors are really in response to the neural inflammation that the child is experiencing [Music] welcome to the doctor's pharmacy i'm dr mark hyman that's pharmacy with an f f a or macy a place for conversations that matter and today we're gonna have a very difficult conversation about autism which is a diagnosis that is increasing at dramatic rates uh from one in 1500 or more to you know up to one in 35 boys i mean it's just it's staggering and the question is why and today we're going to talk about autism with none other than our favorite doctor at the ultra wellness center george papa nicolao he's an extraordinary doc one of my favorites and he's just such a good man and i've come to really respect him and honor him and and learn more about him every day not only is he a great doctor but he's a good human being and i'm just happy to be able to work with him so welcome george thank you mark now this is a tough this is a tough topic autism has uh been increasing it's a topic of great controversy there are all sorts of debates about what causes it uh vaccinations not vaccinations we're not going to get into that today but it's it's a hot topic and and there's no arguing with the fact that it is increasing it is really increasing and some say oh it's just better counting and better assessments but you know not at the scale we're seeing it so why are we seeing such a rapid increase in autism well that's the controversy we're we're not entirely sure why we're seeing it i mean there are some thoughts about you know that one of the things i read is the major way of thinking about it in science today is that it's 80 percent genetic and 20 environmental which which really really when i read that statistic i was really shocked because okay but but um and so there's definitely a genetic component to it but i i it's clear that the thing that changes the thing that can improve the thing that can even lead to a child coming off the spectrum diagnosis is changing those environmental inputs so yeah so science may say it's only twenty percent but it's a hundred percent of what works and that's what you can just just to stop you there because if you look at the data it's pretty striking in the 60s and 70s the rates of autism were about one in five thousand kids one in five thousand kids now it's one one in 54 kids and boys at a much higher rate 135 and girls one and 145. it's terrifying yeah and i can't keep up every year it's getting worse and boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed so you know i get going from one in five thousand to 1 in 2 000 or 101 000 but not one in 5 000 to 135 boys that doesn't make any sense as a genetic problem no because our genes don't change that fast absolutely you know what's changed our environment so what what are the real drivers uh and causes of autism number one of mine it's not a random event no it's not random at all and i think that as you just brought out and there's just something more going on i i think pretty clear we're suffering the effects of very modern society and and one of the things we have in our society that is is really dangerous is our the food that we feed ourselves so it really starts with food that in many ways is toxic from the you know the glyphosate that's in it and the gmo seeds that are used our food supply damages us it's information as you've said so many times and not only does it have direct impact on our gut microbiome but it has information actually changes and can impact our genes and so from one generation to the next you can actually turn genes on that will impact the next generation and the generation after that so food has a direct impact on a gut microbiome has an inflammatory autoimmune impact and it has a genetic impact so i would start with food followed by toxins heavy metals absolutely heavy metals pesticides chemicals you know dr phil anderson who's an incredible scientist has really documented how the increase in toxic load in our society has really affected these kids and they're like the yellow canary in the coal mine you know the canary was put in the coal mine with the coal miners so when the canary drops dead you know the air was bad and you had to get out of there well these kids are genetically susceptible and we always say the genes load the gun the environment pulls the trigger yes and what's changed dramatically is our food supply not only have we added all these agrochemicals pesticides herbicides glyphosate is a microbiome destroyer and now it's on 70 of all crops and it not only destroys the microbiome of the soil but it destroys our own human microbiome which is critical for our health and 95 percent of autistic kids have gut issues have real gut issues not only that we've we've changed the kind of food we're eating for example the gluten that we're eating now is not the wheat that we ate that our ancestors ate no it's it's a hybridized form of wheat that has much higher levels of gliding proteins much more likely to cause issues with kids we are born by c-sections we give antibiotics we're not breastfed all these things tend to get these kids immune systems regulated and one of the things we know about autism is that it's an immune disorder if you if you do an autopsy on these kids brains they're just riddled with inflammation riddled with inflammation they actually done brain scans and they see these brains are bigger why because they're swollen and and why are they swollen it's all the same things we think about in functional medicine that cause inflammation it's food it's food sensitivities it's toxins it's leaky gut it's it's all these factors allergens microbes infections all these things are driving it and and we don't approach autism in that way in this country we don't treat it as a systemic disorder i always say that you know it's is it a brain disorder or is it a disorder that affects the brain is it a systemic disorder that affects the brain it is not a brain disorder in in in the manifestations or in the brain right but the actual causes are things we can do something about so when parents i mean i i see this all the time george it just makes me so heartbroken when these parents get a child with autism it gets diagnosed and essentially what they're told is your child has autism there's really not much treatment you can use what we call aba behavioral therapy and get ready for a difficult life get ready to get your put put your kid in an institution someday and we're sorry that just is unconscionable in my mind given the amount of science we now have about autism about the inflammation about how to treat these things and and it just it's just devastating to these families and yet they're not given any pathway to help these kids improve the quality of their health for their life they're given a pathway but it's a limit it's a limited pathway yeah i mean it's a pathway that you just mentioned it's using you know applied behavioral analytic therapy and that's just to change the behavior right which is just a symptom of the neural inflammation that the child is experiencing a lot of the behaviors become the focus but those behaviors are really in response to the neural inflammation that the child is experiencing and so one of the the latest ways of trying to treat children with autism is actually diagnose them sooner because data has shown that children with autism will do better socially if you treat them more intensively early on with these therapies speech therapy occupational therapy physical therapy and then applied behavioral analytics therapeutic model by itself doesn't work that's why i think it helps them adjust a little bit it can it's been so crude when i say it doesn't work it doesn't give the mother that child that she knows that her child can be a child that can interact a child that can feel a child that can fulfill all their neurologic capability that those behavioral changes aren't enough and that's why you know i as i've said to you before i think every every kid with autism should have a functional medicine workup because we do look at the systemic impacts the the systemic causes of this brain disorder and it's in doing so that we've been able to see as many changes as we do in the children um that we treat with autism here at the ultra wellness center it's really true i mean i i i hate to say this because it sounds terrible but i love seeing kids with autism because there are so many things absolutely they almost all have immune dysregulation they almost all have gut issues most of them have have toxin lows 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 you know i remember i met this one doctor who um who was an incredible physician and he told me this incredible story of his son who was autistic and i written this book years ago called the ultra mind solution which was about how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first by healing your body first because i 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 like you know when i talked about some of these cases of autism in the book this 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 kids started talking just started chatting and he heard he was learning a language he had receptive language but he had no expressive language and and he just literally started crying and when i hear these stories you know it's sometimes it's that simple now it's not always that simple but but but we know a methodology as a 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 and i think it's important to know that it's it's now been changed to the the terminology autism spectrum disorder because it's not autism it's autism it's it's a spectrum every child is different we have no protocol but we know where to look and every child is going to have it is going to have a puzzle a complex puzzle pieces of puzzles that we're going to have to put together that might be it is different for every kid one of the things that i i do first when a family comes to me is i let them talk and i let them tell me their story and i listen because they haven't been listened to for a long time most of the families that come to me have not been heard and they've been given tools that don't work and they come discouraged and disappointed and i can see the apprehension on their face of whether or not they're going to be heard and so the one of the most important things i do is i make that connection with with moms and dads and and help them understand that they've come to a place that they're going to be heard and that they're they're going to be helped and the the things that seem to be two of the really hot buttons for parents are sleep and behavior and gut issues diarrhea constipation and then the the behavior and the lack of sleep what i want to sort of underscore is that in traditional medicine when you get a diagnosis of autism it's a brain disease yeah and you need to use psychological tools to fix it yep you use psychiatric drugs to suppress the symptoms which they give them antipsychotics and all kinds of things receive your meds antidepressants and and when these kids come in if you take a good history it'll be fine you find so many other physical problems with these kids like you said gut issues 95 percent have gut issues they have congestion runny nose they've had earaches and ear infections and taken lots of antibiotics they've had eczema they've had they have dry spots all over their skin they their hair and scalp they might have dandruff they have all these immune and gut issues and it's it's so well described in the science this is not stuff we're just hypothesizing this is really there they're they're documented and then the question is why are they ignored why do we ignore all these things which are clues they're like breadcrumbs that tell you what's going on right or if the kids you know it's shocking it's it's shocking to me it's shocking and and like you think i want to just underscore what you said which is so important george is that when you see someone with a disease like autism they're all treated uniformly okay you have these descriptive behaviors you know you're you have no expressive language you're you're socially disconnected you have sort of repetitive behaviors there's there's like if you look at the dsm-5 criteria which is a psychiatric manual these are the criteria that you have to meet to meet the definition of autism right but there are a hundred ways to get to those symptoms and there are a hundred different ways to treat these patients and if you've seen one kid with autism you've seen one kid with autism it doesn't mean you can uh i mean yes there are there are common themes and there are things that you will do but in each kid it's different some kid it's a mitochondrial issue sometimes it's a heavy metal issue some kid it's a gut issue it's so different some kids have severe methylation issues and b vitamin issues some kids you know have have uh um other issues that really are are related to infections that they that are untreated so toxins yeah toxins so so there's there's really a interesting level yeah yeah i mean we had a professor from you know was trained in harvard and oxford a pediatric neurologist who came to cleveland clinic they did ground rounds suzanne go who's done some incredibly nuanced research published in jama and major medical journals on mitochondrial dysfunction in in these kids their brain can't produce energy and they give them mitochondrial support which is basically supplements that we use to support the energy production and guess what happens they get better you start you start to see immediate improvements hey everybody it's dr hyman thanks for tuning in to the doctor's pharmacy i hope you're loving this podcast it's one of my favorite things to do and introducing all the experts that i know and i love and that i've learned so much from and i want to tell you about something else i'm doing which is called mark's picks it's my weekly newsletter and in it i share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health it's all the cool stuff that i use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health and i'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter i'll only send it to you once a week on fridays nothing else i promise and all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up that's drhyman.com forward slash picks p-i-c-k-s and sign up for the newsletter and i'll share with you my favorite stuff that i use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer now back to this week's episode so george let's take it let's go kind of deep in so you know if you have a kid comes in with autism you know what's the initial approach to evaluating these kids like how do you start to think about what's going you do a deep history right what are you looking for in the history so in the history i'm looking for you know any familial history um of of autism just to make that any neurodevelopment disorders um then i'm looking specifically at uh mom um what was her nutrition like when she went into pregnancy uh what was her you know what was her stress levels going into pregnancy getting a really good understanding of uh how she how she was in pregnancy because that has a big impact on yeah on the child she have fillings did she you know get vaccines with mercury in them like exactly did she get antibiotics you know prenatally um or antinatally uh which can impact the child's microbiome because a lot of these kids you know just as a quick aside they come out of the womb with gut issues they have diarrhea from day one then i want to know about what was the child's early days like did they have feeding issues were they hypo do they have hypotonia meaning that they were they didn't have the muscle tone that a baby should have um do they meet developmental milestones they have colic right whether they have ear infections and antibiotics anybody have c-section births did they get it did they get immunizations you know early in life you know hepatitis b vaccine can have some yeast proteins in it and that can maybe possibly sensitize a child to yeast uh and create some inflammatory processes early on yeah i want to be clear about vaccines i i don't think vaccines cause autism i do think that there's there's a whole field of vaccinomics yeah mayo clinic and others have departments of vaccine which looks at the the variability in responses and we know that you know certain certain uh kids uh who are sick when often they get vaccines can have adverse immune responses and we know that autism is an inflammatory disorder so there is some something going on yeah but but it is not that vaccines caught up there are many things that can trigger an immune response right so i just think i want to be clear about that i think that we do we do have to look at these these bigger issues of what is driving the inflammation and so so you take that history and then we want to dive into the the testing right one of the first tests that we do is we we look at the gut microbiome and you know so that we're going to do a complete diagnostic stool evaluation and we're going to be looking for the things that you've mentioned uh candida which is a mold is one of the major things that we we typically will find in the gut but we're also looking for you know uh an imbalance of good and bad bacteria that can be caused by the nutrition that they had the nutrition that their mom had any antibiotic use uh we're gonna be looking for parasites you know kids can develop these parasites that can you know can be autoimmune triggers and that will need to be eradicated so the gut is the first place um and then we look at the immune markers i've seen kids who have really high markers of inflammatory really low like like you would see in someone with colitis yeah but you know it was sticky smelly mucusy weird stools that are pasty and weird yeah we see these awful yeah and and that's that's telling you that there's something's rotten down there and you have to deal with it yeah yeah yeah and that causes leaky gut right and leaky gut and so yeah we we're you know we leaky gut is just basically a part of almost every conversation when we're talking about you know people in the functional medicine world are coming off with any any um immune disorder or immune dysfunction um so we're that's the first place i look because that's one of the most commonly one of the most concerning areas for parents is you know they're just they have stinky smelly poops that i'm changing their diaper every day all day you know and and can can we do something about that i know that that has to be part of the problem yeah and they're right it is and sixty percent of the immune system's in the gut and the gut and the brain are connected and right and if you have a lot of toxic bugs in there those toxic bugs produce metabolites that are toxic to the brain right can interfere with brain function yeah and so we're you know so the next you know the next place that i'll look will be at mighty you know at the nutri you know looking at nutritional evaluation finding out specifically are they getting all the nutrients they need for the mitochondria to function as well as they should yeah because mitochondrial dysfunction has a huge role to play in how our brains are going to function um and so we we look there it's an energy deficit these kids can't make enough energy in their brains to work and and you can do testing like organic acids but you look at the mitochondrial function and you can look at the way you process energy and this is not test you normally see at your regulator and then we do heavy metal testing you know again because you know a lot of these children may have difficulties with detoxification genes they may not be able to detox as well that's right so so the normal toxins that we're all exposed to they can't process that's right so looking at their you know looking at their um their physiology of detoxification and also at their their single nucleotide polymorphisms there's variations in genes that impact how well a enzyme is going to function we look at those because if we can identify some of those genes that aren't working well that clues us in to what specific nutritional plan and targeted nutrients that they need yeah and these kids often have genetic variations in the also the b vitamin genes that affect b12 and folate and b6 and they might need really high doses of certain nutrients they might need special forms of these nutrients and so these are things you you really can understand by looking at their unique genetics absolutely the other thing obviously we look at is food sensitivities and food reactions and there's a couple in in in autism there are so gluten dairy so right off the bat right off the bat it's gluten and dairy and the reason why we focus so much on gluten and dairy because they can when they are broken down you know certain people will break them down into peptides called caseomorphins and gluteomorphins and peptides are just small proteins they're usually 50 amino acids or shorter and that these these can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and they can have a deleterious effect on how the brain will function they can actually impair cognition they can impair uh neurotransmitter um communication uh so these are like little molecules of like heroin running around your brain and they make you spaced out and one of these kids are they slow cognition focus you can't connect you have an opioid-like effect my mother say to me i can't take him off gluten because it makes everything worse yeah and you just have to really batten down the hatch just lock the cabinets lock it through yeah it's really it's it's true it's really true and and the gluten also causes a leaky gut too oh yeah so you get you get more inflammation more reactions and the dairy has an interesting effect as well uh in in a subset of these autistic kids there is uh these folate receptor blocking antibodies that are caused by dairy so when you eat dairy your body creates an antibody against the dairy but it binds to the folate receptor now folate is one of the most important nutrients to create neurotransmitters and make your brain work and when you can't get folate working your entire cycle of what we call methylation which is the vitamin cycle is blocked and your entire cycle of detoxification is blocked because they're like cog wheels that will together won't work and they don't and they don't work and that's why these kids can't detoxify they can't make neurotransmitters they can't function it has a huge and has a huge impact on uh on energy production mitochondria as well yeah and getting these people off dairy and then boosting up this special form of folate called methylfolate these kids can really pop up and and come alert and so you know there's not like one treatment for right autism right this kid might do well with no dairy and a high dose of methyl folate another kid might need to fix their gut another kid might it might be agglutination another kid might be a mitochondrial problem right so you have to sort of dig into this and this is the beauty of functional medicine is we don't treat all patients the same we look at them as individuals we look at real personalized medicine personalized nutrition and we do very sophisticated diagnostics which allow us to really map out what's going on with these kids so you're like you go wait a minute if there is actually lab tests that help us identify and map out what's disordered in these kids biology like why aren't pediatric neurologists doing this why aren't pediatric psychiatrists doing this it's like it makes me crazy i am sorry it makes me crazy because after treating literally hundreds of these kids with everything from dyslexia to add to autism to behavioral issues it's all the same stuff at different you know different things are going on in different kids but it's all the same approach it creates a really deep dive to help these kids right so it is a deep dive and it's it's a comprehensive approach and so once we've looked at the gut once we looked at you know basic nutrition once we've looked at some of the more intricacies uh intricate nutrition uh and and deficiencies that might impact the mitochondria we look at toxins we look at genes we look specifically at genes of detoxification inflammation and those very important methylation genes that are responsible for so much including detoxification energy production in the in the um mitochondria um once we've looked at all of that um then we start you know and then we look at immune markers we do look at markers for immune function um that will you know help us understand um if a patient's immune system is in hyper vigilant or whether it's it's so tired it's depressed so as we said before uh we do the stool testing and and one and one of those markers in the gut that we look to to get a sense of what the immune system is doing is secretory iga or siga and uh and it's not uncommon for that's an antibodies made it's a first line of defense in our guts against infection right and yeah but sometimes by time i see these kids their immune systems have been working so hard for so long that they're not they're not able to produce this antibody and that is an indicator that they have a significant amount of immune dysfunction and that becomes a focal point for how we're going to treat them that's right and i think you know we also look at at nutrient levels because there's a lot of nutrient levels that are really low in these kids omega-3 fats and zinc and magnesium vitamin a and vitamin a and vitamin d and omega-3 fats and and b12 and vitamins and b6 and so so with often some really simple interventions you can make profound profound differences in these kids um we also treat the gut aggressively with lots of probiotics and things that really help the gut and enzymes so it's a lot of work uh and it's a lot of work for the parents uh it's it's often costly unfortunately insurance doesn't cover this yet although hopefully it will i mean you think of the cost up front of doing you know a few thousand dollars worth of diagnostics versus an entire lifetime of of of support services and it's an institutionalized care i mean it is really a bargain it's a no it's a bargain a no-brainer but it is a real cost and often families can't afford it which just breaks my heart yeah but you know there's a lot of stuff you can do on your own and i think i think a lot of these things we're talking about are lifestyle nutrition and and i i think you know i want to share maybe share a case or so and i'll share some of my sure um i have you know so there was a there's a a boy that came to me was uh like four and a half his name was johnny mom and dad brought him in to see me um he was actually delightful little boy but he had all the hallmarks of you know autism and he had lit very little progress working with his pediatrician and the mom had somehow come across functional medicine saw a video and they had not done too much to this point and so uh it was really exciting uh i remember reviewing the chart thinking i am so excited to be working with them because just by reading the chart there seems to be a lot that we can do so the main things that they brought him in with was that he had a lot of gut issues a lot of bloating a lot of distension a lot of diarrhea he also had eczema and he had all the behavioral characteristics of autism and he had difficulty with sleep those were the main characteristics uh he was not socializing well at four and a half um his re he was not at reading level a lot of difficulty with language social cueing um did not he was he was uh socially isolated withdrawing from kids often times and when he was around kids oftentimes he he would misread cues lose his temper hit hit and bite and so it was very difficult for the family to really engage socially with other families and go places so of course you know sitting with them the first time there's a lot of tears and just and there's a lot of listening and so i was so happy at the end of the visit when mom just said thank you she said thank you for listening because i really for the first time think we're gonna get help now he's he's like four and a half years old and they've been going to their docks for a long time so that was a really really good start to give them hope so after that first visit the things that we really have done is we've we've given them they're going to get that all that testing done but knowing that he had gut issues one of the first things i did was that we put them on a gluten-free dairy-free diet we're going to take out some of the other potential you know inflammatory products like eggs and soy i mean you know and yeast uh and we want no sugars no processed carbs that is a lot just starting there with an autistic child is giving a family like a huge task and so i don't want to do too much particularly these children have a lot of sensory issues so they will have texture issues they may have swallowing issues so giving them a huge number of supplements is not something that we can do but at the first visit they get a nutritional plan as i've outlined there and generally depending on what's going on i'll start a probiotic and i usually will start with like a you know a high potency probiotic and potentially a digestive enzyme to really start to help get that gut functioning in a way that will be helpful so nutrition and gut issues and i also put them on a multiple vitamin because generally these kids have very limited diets so their nutrients and their vitamin intake is going to be limited so we put them on a a robust multiple vitamin and some additional mitochondrial support and that's how we start how did he do so in eight weeks he came back and they had a hard time with the nutrition plan but they were able to take out you know most of his gluten and dairy and they noticed immediately that a lot of his bloating started to go away after meals and his diarrhea started to decrease they were very happy and his eczema began to clear up yeah so you know just there they were there they were thrilled so then when we went over all of his testing he did have genes that indicated that he had a folate receptor antibody that was positive so he's making folate receptor antibodies and he had genes that made it difficult for him to use folate um in the first place so we added we added methylfolate to his to his plan uh and uh we also added he was also very low in vitamin d so we added in vitamin d and vitamin a and three months later um it wasn't even three months was it three months yeah three months later mom indicated that his eczema was gone they were able to really expand he was almost totally dairy-free and gluten-free he was taking the vitamin d the vitamin a he was taking the additional um methylated folate and his eczema was gone his bloating had stopped with the high dose probiotics they noticed that his his diarrhea had almost completely resolved having more form movements but multiple in the day and his speech therapist indicated that he had made strides in his language uh um acquisition yeah pretty amazing i just reminds me and that was that was like it's six months mark yeah and we weren't even done and you keep working through the layers it's like layers you start with the simple stuff and the diet and the nutritional sport but there's some of those layers and i you know i it reminds me of a kid i saw you but he was 20 20 i mean he was you know two and a half years old right and he was diagnosed at 22 months with autism it was regressive autism and he was fine and then he got sick and and and and his mother was told you know nothing we can do just use behavioral therapy and his mother was not willing to take that at face value and came to see me and i'm like look this is her early on and i said look look i i can't promise you that i can do anything to help your son but we do know that this is a systemic disorder we do know that it's inflammation in the brain we do know there's issues around gut and toxins we know there's issues around mitochondria let's let's add nutritional factors let's just take a look and we looked under the hood and we saw an array of problems that were so easy to treat really i mean i mean he had he had the worst gut issues stinky smelly sticky poops he had severe um we call dysbiosis which is imbalances in the bacteria's gut he had 28 food sensitivities gluten and dairy antibodies were really high so he had severe leaky gut and he also had lots of nutritional deficiencies right he had magnesium zinc manganese vitamin a vitamin b12 vitamin d omega-3 fats all were very low we just tested them and these are all essential for brain function for immune function for so many things and he was loaded with toxins we did levels of of toxins in his blood which had a high aluminum and and lead his hair had antimony and arsenic and he had low levels of the most important detoxifying compound in his body uh glutathione and he also had other things we talked about the mitochondrial issues testing and he had methylation problems it's easier these kids often don't have one thing it's just it's a biochemical train wreck right right and and using functional medicine you begin to tease it apart and you order the therapies to start with the simplest stuff you change the diet you fix the gut you get the nutrient levels up you start to deal with mitochondrial function you start then to deal with the toxic load you boost up the methylation and and we did all those things we helped you know we need you know we found just for example b12 shots which kind of uh overrode some of these biochemical pathways allowed him to start detoxifying he was starting to have eye contact started connecting started not being in his world i mean when i first met him he was just in the room like staring into space looked like he was on a heroin trip on a psychedelic adventure uh completely in his own world wordless no speech and and um and over time we worked through all these issues like peeling the onion and and this doesn't happen with every kid but we were really diligent and you know it took a lot of work the parents were really it's very diligent about doing the things that they need to do we took away the gluten and the food allergens we got rid of the the dysbiosis and the bad bugs and the fungus in his gut we we actually helped replenish his gut with probiotics and enzymes we gave him all the minerals and nutrients they needed the omega-3 fats we got his mitochondria working we started detoxifying him and over a number of years um he went from being completely locked in to a normal kid yeah now i'm not saying using this approach we can take care uh and cure all cases of autism but this was this was a miracle case but but honestly over many decades of doing this we can help whether it's a 50 improvement a 25 improvement a 75 improvement complete resolution we see all of it yeah and i would say i have i have not seen a child with autism that i was not able to help in some way and people are listening you know this this is we're in a we're in a crisis of our children's brains i mean one in six children today have some type of neurodevelopmental disorder one in six that's a lot of kids and it's dyslexia it's add it's learning difficulties it's autism spectrum issues i mean it's a lot of kids yeah and and we just are so in the dark ages in traditional medicine about this and we have really advanced this field in functional medicine and and see miracles all the time and it's heartbreaking for me that parents don't have access to this they don't know how to uh find their way to practitioners who can help and and that's really why we're here at the ultra wellness center why i established this 15 years ago and what why why it's so satisfying practicing this medicine because we do see real change we do you know we're in this moment where everything's changing you know where we're you know we're seeing we're seeing you know the the opening up of the mind around autism to understand that it really is a biological disorder it's not a mental disorder if we can't look at these numbers if we can't look at going from in 1970 it was estimated one in 10 000 kids would have autism to 1 in 54. if we can't look from 1970 to 2020 and and we can't say there is something significantly wrong with our environment today just based on looking at this number and the brain is the canary in the coal mine because you know we're talking about autism but the adult brain is under siege too yeah because we know that alzheimer's is not epidemic level and and so just i'm just saying this these numbers and looking at autism is is a is a really it's a wake-up call for all of us to understand we really need to pay attention to the toxicity of our environment and our food yeah absolutely and i i think what you're saying is so important uh these kids are the canary in the coal mine they're a warning sign for all of us to pay attention that that our food supply our environment and our our our way of life is has got to change yeah and i i'm just so grateful george for you being here at the ultra wanna center if you've been listening this podcast uh and you know someone with autism or on the spectrum are you struggling in your family with this or your friends please share this podcast with them because it'll help them understand that there is a way and we're here at the ultra wellness center we've got a great team of practitioners who've been doing this for a very long time and and we just love seeing these kids so uh please share this podcast with them and know that there is hope uh and of course uh leave a comment how you help your kids with using these approaches uh what what is work what hasn't worked and and of course subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you can listen to the doctor's pharmacy and we'll see you next week on the doctor's pharmacy you

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 94,308

Keywords: autism, getting to the root cause, george papanicolaou, asberger's, spectrum, mark hyman, the ultrawellness center, functional medicine, health podcast, the doctor's farmacy

Id: ju65N9VsnuE

Length: 40min 15sec (2415 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021