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Autism Diet: Helpful?

Navigating your life and a family is tough enough. When your child is hurting, the perfect life you were striving for is turned upside down. Today’s podcast deals with several aspects of dietary considerations in ASD, particularly tactics to help you get over the initial shock and on to creating solutions for your child and family.

Diets in General

Aside from his dedication in research and participation in the medical community, Dr. Bogner has a specific approach to console and help families take charge of a diagnosis. His ability to talk through the scientific jargon and create a plan for your child far surpasses the traditional approach any recovery center can provide.


EP4 – Diet & General Health in Autism – Dr. Bogner Health Podcast

English Transcript | Spanish Transcript | Arabic Transcript

 

Dwight:

Episode four. This is about diet specifically. It could be a very long… oh my goodness, could probably break this into a dozen episodes. Get into specifics of it, because you talk about diet related to your health and today’s society, no matter really where you are at in the world and what makes up all those things.

 

So lots of marketing that comes to you in the form of low fat, in the form of low carb, nutrient dense, and then all the guise of everything… well, if you’re in America, what the FDA determines is the minimal daily amount or what statements you have to put in there because you can’t promise anything because it’ll go against big pharma on what they’re regulating and different things. But specifically, I guess when you do have health ailments with yourself, with your child or a loved one, one of the things you do have to consider is consumption and exercise.

 

Someone’s ability to actually have movement like normal people so that they’re burning calories, that they’re keeping functionality, and with moving your body, your joints, there’s a lot of chemicals and interactions that are going on that mother nature created balance and all these things. So sitting on an iPad on the couch all day long or just sitting at home and shoving the latest, what is the ribbed dill pickle chips into your mouth with the sour cream dip while you’re watching American Idol or whatever, it’s probably not going to do you so well. And you know this. So we have to look a little bit deeper with testing in what diet comes into. So let’s talk about some of those specifics. We’ve gone through the consult, and you talked about some of the testing that would be going on. And now let’s look at how you look overall at diet.
 
Dr. Bogner:
Yeah, I think it’s important to learn from the family about the current diet of the individual in question, get an idea of what they like, what affinities they have for which foods, how much, kind of get a rough estimate of how much sugar they take in. And if there are certain food sensitivities that they have, if they’ve done testing for food sensitivities, and if they react negatively to certain foods also.
 
Dwight:
Culturally, I mean let’s just talk about that, because you have people all over the world, but culturally, what is in that diet?
 
Dr. Bogner:
Correct. Yeah.
 
Dwight:
Is someone making food? Or is it a rush lifestyle, to both parents are working, the kids are getting processed things. I mean, I’ve joked over the years where I’ve stopped at a convenience store or a gas station in the morning to get a cup of coffee, and then I see a parent walking in, and they’ve got the sweatpants on and the messed up hair and they’re buying a Lunchable and a juice box, and you know they’re packing the lunch for the kid because they didn’t have time. And you know that’s complete shit that’s going into the kid’s mouth that day. But also in other countries, I spend a lot of time down south, and source product that you have, regulations with growing and other things, but then are people making food rather than just buying food? Convenience of those things. So that would play a lot into diet as well.
 
Dr. Bogner:

Yeah. And it’s a big sea of information. I mean, you look up the perfect diet, you find a thousand books on Amazon that you can buy, a thousand articles, different opinions, ketogenic, the carnivore diet, Mediterranean diet. Gluten free, soy free, everything free. What is the best for your child? And that’s not even I think the most important thing at the beginning. First you have to learn about the child, see what they like, see what they don’t like, see what they react to, and look at their genes and then start.

 

But I think the real hard part is to implement that plan. How do you go gluten free? How do you go dairy free? That’s a huge lifestyle change. Is the whole family going to pull along with it, or is your child the only one who’s restricted of these foods? While he’s watching you eat them, and he loves it and he’s frustrated. So yeah, it’s many aspects of that that you can look at from a genetic point, from an environmental, from a cultural point.

 

And I think overall, if you want to kind of cut to the chase, I think the problems are that there are issues in these children’s gastrointestinal system, leaky gut, inflammation of the gut, which allows a lot of these toxins and proteins from food to slip through the liver into the blood and cause problems.

 

Sugar is probably one of the best examples. We all know sugar, a daily amount of sugar recommended for a child or adolescence is about 25 grams. And 25 grams, I mean that adds up quick. You drink eight ounces of apple juice, you already exceeded that, and that kind of stacks up throughout day. I had a child that was on 200 grams of sugars. He drank four cans of Mountain Dew every day, and other carb rich snacks and foods. And they were wondering why the child has ADHD.

 

I mean, sugar feeds yeast. Yeast produces ammonia. Ammonia squeezes your adrenals to produce more adrenaline and you’re hyper, can’t focus, you’re wired up, your mind is somewhere else. You have ADHD all of a sudden, then we prescribe medications. And so yeah, from many angles, I think we have to look at this, and then just come up with simple solutions for the parents. Because as you know, Dwight, over the what last 10 years that I know you, you’re like a master of good diet, juices, juicing, and that’s just half the rent. How do you get it into your child is kind of the magic, and I think one of the most important things. How do you make it palpable and palatable even if you have the solution? So that’s a whole different problem.
 
Dwight:

Well, I’m a good example of the determination to get it done, but also falling off the wagon. And I guess I’m here to say that diet is going to matter in a big way. A lot of the things that he just talked about, changing the family dynamics and what people are going to do and how everybody’s going to participate is very, very tough. But it can be done. It’s perseverance. That’s what ends up happening. And you have to go through the points of the pain.

 

We’ve gone through so much with gluten free, dairy free, eliminating pretty much as many carbs and sugar as possible and doing full cold pressed juicing to get all of the nutrients in the cleanest form, in the most nutrient dense, vitamin dense form, which is going to be cold pressing, and sourcing all of those, and the costs associated with and the time associated with it. Even going to the point of trying to… all these different types of flours that are out there, and then looking deeper into how are the flours being manufactured? How clean are those flours? Where are they coming from? To leaching from the pans that you’re baking some type of bread in, let’s say or something.
 
Dr. Bogner:
Wait a minute, what kind of flours are you juicing?
 
Dwight:
We’re not juicing flours.
 
Dr. Bogner:
I get your point.
 
Dwight:

But kind of segueing and talking about all these things. And then you run into planning, having to put together your meals and lunches and snacks, and replacing all of those things when there’s a continuous bombardment of all of these simple realistic parts of unhealthy snacking and food options that are just littered in your everyday life, everywhere that people are exposed to, that your child’s exposed to, and when they can or can’t have those things. So it’s a big part of participation that is going to have to happen on the parents in order to make those things change.

 

Now, as an example with genetically, and I think just in our makeup, my son is very prone to carbs and sugars. And so you’re going to get a lot of complex carbs are going to turn into sugar and glucose in your system, and that’s what they’re kind of thriving after to get. There’s tapioca, there’s almond, there’s rice, there’s a number of different factors of where you can replace traditional flours with cleaner flours to still make what you need to have. And then flavorings. So now you talk about mio or some type of water flavoring, truvia, some of the replacement chemicals.
 
Dr. Bogner:
Monk fruit, yeah.
 
Dwight:

That would be going in regards to that there. Cane sugar is going to be the closest thing to a naturalized sugar you can use. That’s going to be the cleanest because it hasn’t been processed, which is going to be good to supplement and use. It’s not going to be cheap to get good clean cane sugar either and source that. But there are stevia, there’s liquified stevia that has a various amount of natural flavors. It’s very, very potent.

 

And adding that into some dough would give it some different flavorings of vanilla and whatnot. And that will, it’s not going to be everything we’re used to. It’s not going to be the replacement, it’s going to be the knockoff brand Coca-Cola from the store, right? Doesn’t taste exactly the same, but it’s a cola flavor. But after a while, they’re going to get used to it and they’re going to realize those things. But it’s going to be diet changes that has to parallel to the tactical plan that like a doctor like Mr. Bogner here is going to lay out for you and your family on how you should do and change those things.

 

There’s going to be seepage in a lot of everyday foods and fruits and vegetables. We learned through rigorous testing and doing cold pressed juicing that after doing some from Roundup testing… Roundup, just so figures that I say Roundup, but some regular testing to check benchmarks. But my son was very high in copper and we’re trying to figure out where this is all coming from. And because we were using all organic produce, leafy greens and whatnot, organic as a brand, but one of the things that they use as a pesticide is copper sulfate to use on crops.

And so that gets into the products. And if you are a slow detoxer, then you’re going to retain a lot of those minerals. So his copper was super high. And then you go back to the chelation route, okay, so where do I go from here? How do you change this around? You’re going to continue to hit different roadblocks, but I guess overall you’re going to have to see how the person, the child is feeling, how they’re reacting to these aspects and what other things that you can change to increase those positive responses. As a family, you’re going to have to also make the decisions on how you want to change lifestyle and eating habits. And it’s going to be participation by a lot of people.
 
Dr. Bogner:
Yeah, and I agree with that. And I mean, I went to Costco last week and I saw an autistic child.
 
Dwight:
Which is very common nowadays, to see them everywhere.
 
Dr. Bogner:
I went to the mall last month, I saw a child with autism there. Do you remember seeing that when we were younger? I didn’t even know what autism was. It wasn’t really there. And so what changed in our world, and I think that’s fundamental, is that in the 1990s when the autism rate was about one in 1000, something happened because now it’s one in 44, 1 in 28 boys, and what one in six children have a learning disability? What happened? Could it be our food?
And I do believe that’s the case. Because there are independent organizations that exist that examine the crops around the world. And in a recent report that I read, in North America, it appears, and they labeled North America as extreme danger of crops contaminated with mold toxins, for example, they found that 92% of corn samples contained more than one mold toxin in it. That means nine out of 10 boxes in your supermarket, in the cereal aisle have mold toxins in them. And even the EPA agrees that there are guidelines of how many toxins can be in the corn. And I spoke to a…
 
Dwight:
So there’s a minimal amount that’s okay.
 
Dr. Bogner:
Yeah, the minimal amount, it’s a little bit higher for animal feed, but it’s there. And the question you have to ask yourself, you think there’s a farmer that all year long, they work on their corn fields and they harvest it and it comes back as two parts per million when the cutoff is one part per million, what are they going to do? They’re going to throw the crops away? They would close shop tomorrow.
 
Dwight:
Yeah, they’d go bankrupt.
 
Dr. Bogner:

So I asked recently, it was a dad, his dad was a pig farmer, and he is very well aware of what’s going on in that industry, in the agricultural industry. And he said, when that occurs, and it’s very frequent, that there’s too much mold there, just like this organization claims, what they do, they take their crops, their corn, and they mix it with corn known to have none of these toxins in it, then dilute it until it’s hitting the guidelines. And they unfortunately have to sell that for cheaper.

 

But it’s a problem. It’s a worldwide problem, and we know what these toxins do to the immune system. So they’re very toxic to the GI system. The glyphosate in the same crop will kill some of your good bacteria, leave inflammation. And then all of a sudden, it depends even more of what you put in your mouth. All of a sudden the gluten that Jimmy eats all day, but he has no issues, for Johnny who has an inflamed gut, that gluten will slip into the blood and cause inflammation and he has symptoms from that.

 

So I think a problem is, in gluten and in dairy, that they’re just very, very high in these mold toxins. I didn’t have a problem with milk when I was young, or gluten. Why is this a problem now? And so I think intricately that these factors, the crops in the world are all having an unintended consequence of the genetic manipulation, that they’re all infested with mold. These crops don’t have an immune system to fight them off.
 
Dwight:

And chemically that’s being broken down. So you’re listening to this podcast because you’re interested, you’re on a journey, and now you’re going to go through many different levels of shock and awe and new ways of thinking. And certain things are going to start to make you raise an eyebrow and make you look a little deeper into them. And you’re going to second and third and five check some of the things you’re hearing and being told, and start to look at it more. And you’re going to start to find little breadcrumbs all over the place. Not necessarily just on this podcast, it’s not all going to originate from here, but it’s going to help to develop more and more questions. So I think a common theme you’ll hear from a podcast like this and other places, even well before this, is there’s a lot of critical thinkers that are out there and there’s a lot of voices that are out there pointing out these things, like he was just going deep into the mold aspect on crops.

 

So corn’s used for corn flakes. And do you think during the manufacturing process of using corn to make corn flakes, what percentage of that’s actually corn anymore? But what type of cleaning process does it go through? And it’s meeting regulatory guidelines which are still going to have some type of fault. That some organization that’s being lobbied and being paid for is deeming that it has to meet this criteria, this plateau, and anything at that deems to be safe enough. What’s safe enough? And then more importantly, what’s that car you’re driving? Meaning the body, meaning your genetics, makeup. So what’s the condition of your foundation, of the chassis of your vehicle? Can it go on this ride? Is it made for this?

 

You going to take a Corvette down a really washboard road at 80 miles per hour and turn take corners? Is that really going to be the best vehicle to do that? Is it the best terrain to drive that vehicle? And so you have to think about the genetic makeup of you as an individual, or your child, or your loved one, and then what are these different foods and what do they possess that’s possibly negatively interacting? And part of this journey that you’re going to be on, it may not be just one thing. It may not be that one key that doesn’t unlock the door. So we’re all looking for that one key that gets us into the door. It could be a series of doors and it could be a series of modifications and pieces of the key that you see start to play into the entire picture. And you have to peel back layers of this onion in order to get to some starting points. And what we consume on a daily basis is going to be a big part of it.

 

And I think a lot of people that are listening, you’ve been through a point of either forced or you’ve done some starvation of your own or you’ve done some fasting or you’ve just gone on vacation, didn’t have access to all this stuff, and you started eating cleaner and you started realizing, wow, in retrospect here, feel a little bit better. Had a lot of more bowel movements. I slept better. Man, I went through this day or two, I had a headache, and then man, I just feels so much better. And I took this cup of coffee, I had this piece of candy and wow, cannot believe the jitteryness I’m getting and everything else. And you start to see the action and counteraction to some of the things you’re consuming and how it plays into your body. So you need to ask yourself, and starting this journey is thinking about are you leveled off?

 

What really are you contributing to this as a whole? And then here’s the tough part that’s going to be really, really heavy on your shoulders. What is your responsibility in the participation financially, verbally, emotionally, physically, with the consumables your loved one’s having that’s having all these challenges? You’re the one that goes to the grocery store, you’re the one that does the preparation or doesn’t do the preparation. You’re the one that selects the vegetables, the fruits. You’re the ones that slice it up. You’re the one that deals with it. And that’s the tough part of being a parent and understanding what is my trade off here? I need to get some sleep, I need to get some stuff done. I have some other responsibilities. So that’s the balance and that’s the weight that you’re going to end up carrying around in regards to all this. But diet is going to be a big part of it.
 
Dr. Bogner:

Yeah, it certainly is. And I can tell you I was involved heavily with diet when I started to counsel or discuss with parents how to approach this. And that was my main focus for about two years. Just very strict, gluten-free, casein free. But honestly, I didn’t see the magic happen with that. So I think the thinking of gluten-free, casein free is I think a little bit outdated. I think it’s right now, I don’t even test for food sensitivities anymore. I just tell them, listen, this is the baseline. We know that milk, any dairy product, you shouldn’t give that to your child. It’s just bad. It contains glyphosate, it contains mold toxins. It’s basically cooked puss. Why did we pasteurize milk? because of cows giving us bad bacteria and it’s potentially dangerous. It’s actually illegal to have unpasteurized milk sold. And so I think the best approach is to just give the basics and follow the basics.

 

Because parents, they leave a meeting and they’re like, oh my God, this is amazing information and let’s do it. And then they wake up in the next morning and the routine kicks in and it’s just way too hard. It’s a lifestyle change. Nobody’s ready for this. And so I found the best approach is to, okay, let’s give some reasonable goals. Next time we meet, I want to kind of see that you have reduced the dairy or eliminated it and also reduced the sugar. And then you go to the next step. You see if the parent has done that, and if they’ve done that, you go to the next step. All right, let’s do some genetic modulation. Does your child need more fats? Can your child process fats really good? Do you need that digestive enzymes? Is it a Mediterranean diet or a more ketogenic diet that your genetics favor? Are there certain things like polyunsaturated fats that you shouldn’t take? Maybe coconut oil is causing a negative reaction to your child.

 

And that would be the next step, to kind of refine it. And then you can go even deeper. Then you start looking into the genetics of the bacteria. You do a sequencing analysis to see which bacteria are high, which one are low, and then we can modulate that microbiome. We call it microbiome balancing, where we, for example, feed the bacteria with certain prebiotics and fibers and minerals, which then potentially could offset some overgrowth bacteria too, instead of using antibiotics or anything like that for Clostridium and all of that nonsense. So I think just first dip your toes in with it, kind of get a glimpse of the possibilities of diet, and then really take a deep dive, if you can, to really see what it’s all about. That really the diet is not one size fits all, but rather is very much customized towards you as an individual based on everything about you, inside and out.