The gut-autism connection
We’ve all heard the old adage about trusting our gut, but I don’t think most people realize just how much our gut does for us and how it’s literally connected to our feelings and mental states.
I recently heard an interview with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, who has a thriving medical practice in Cambridge, England. Unfortunately, she is thriving due to the drastic increase in autism, ADHD, dyslexia, depression, schizophrenia, and other ailments that she addresses. What launched her into this area of expertise was when her own son was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. She admits that her medical training left her with no solutions and so she went back to school to earn a doctorate in nutrition and that is the foundation of her success today.
He explained in the interview and in his book Gut and Psychology Syndrome that the gut is the foundation of all body health. She is not the only doctor advocating for this these days, but there is still a lot of awareness to be developed in traditional medicine in this area. In fact, the practice of medicine in Western industrialized countries has contributed greatly to the disappearance of this fundamental part of health. As she explains, it was the introduction of broad-spectrum antibiotics around the time of World War II, which were overprescribed for every sore throat or earache, that began to upset the balance of beneficial microorganisms in the gut. Additional contributors to the depletion of beneficial microorganisms are the high percentage of sugar and starchy processed foods, as well as other foods grown with pesticides and animals raised with hormones and antibiotics. Oral contraceptives and chemical pharmaceuticals, both prescription and over-the-counter, also wreak havoc on beneficial organisms. Another factor that set the stage for a rapid decline in health was the trend to stop breastfeeding between the 1950s and 1970s. This weakened the babies’ immune systems, 80% of which are in the intestinal wall, because they never received the good intestinal flora that is introduced through breast milk. On top of all this, the increased number of vaccinations, which can help those with healthy gut flora, can be devastating for babies with already compromised systems. The upshot of all this is that twenty years ago the incidence of diagnosed autism was approximately 1 in 10,000. Today in western industrialized countries it is about 1 in 150 and in some places in the UK and US it is as high as 1 in 66!
So the bottom line is that if we don’t start trusting our guts more and educating ourselves about what it takes to restore the important balance of microorganism species in there, we’re in big trouble. A good start would be to read her book, which she says many people are using with success in a self-guided program.
I appreciated the analogy you used that our bodies are a planet inhabited by hundreds of species (about 500 different species in the gut) and that when the body becomes compromised, out of balance, and toxic, opportunistic pathogens take over and well-being. decreases. He also said that you can’t kill all the bad microorganisms and the best approach is to focus on creating a supportive environment for the good ones and getting more of them into the system. The “good guys” will keep the “bad guys” at bay and when the system is tilted in favor of the good guys, the “bad guys” actually have a beneficial and synergistic role to play.
Sound familiar on another level? So let’s get healthy! Everything is connected.