Autism and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet
You all know that I am always a stickler for clearing up any intestinal hyper permeability before addressing other biomedical issues. It is most important that you deal with the leaky gut and any dysbiosis and/or yeast as a primary focus when addressing autism spectrum disorders from a functional medicine perspective. There are many diets that are commonly used in order to treat children with autism spectrum disorders. The most common of course being the gluten free/casein free diet. Other types of diets such as the elimination diet, Feingold diet and specific carbohydrate diet among others have been found to provide beneficial results for autistic children. The specific carbohydrate diet is one that is modeled to address dysbiosi(bad bacterial overgrowth in the gastrointestinal system) and yeast overgrowth. At times, I write articles to explain areas of treatment for autistic children that I feel have not been well addressed. I also like to write and comment about newer research that has been published. But many times, I find somewhat has written on a particular subject in such a clear way that to write a new article would be redundant. For this reason, I just provide the link, when I find such a situation. In this case, I found a beautiful explanation between the interplay between leaky gut, dysbiosis, yeast and the specific carbohydrate diet. In general, the specific carbohydrate diet attempts to combat bacterial overgrowth by limiting their food source. For a child that has had recurrent yeast infections and/or is constantly on antifungal medication, this may be a good tool to consider when developing a treatment plan along with natural antifungals and probiotics. Remember to space out the natural antimicrobials and the probiotics when using both tools to treat the yeast and bacteria.I will try to write about this in more detail perhaps in combination with a particular patient case. Here is a the link http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/autism/autism_and_gi_problems.htm