Autism & Other Disorders – More Info on GAPS: Gut & Psychology Syndrome from Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride

“Fifteen or twenty years ago, the majority of doctors never saw an autistic child. It was a rare disorder that most people had never heard of, afflicting about one child in 10,000. Today, on average in this country, one child in 150 is diagnosed with autism. With a 40-fold increase in newly diagnosed cases of autism, we have an absolute epidemic.

Autism is a serious disorder, yet it is perfectly curable. The younger the child when treatment begins, the better results I see. If you can catch the autistic child under the age of three, there is about a 60-70 percent chance of full recovery.”

The above is an excerpt from an article by Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD, in Wise Traditions, Winter 2007

photo by Shward

WHO IS DR. NATASHA CAMPBELL-MCBRIDE?

Dr. Campbell-McBride is a neurologist with a son who was diagnosed with severe autism. She went back to school and got her PhD in nutrition and now runs a nutrition clinic in the UK. She completely healed her son’s autism through diet. He is a teenager now and in a mainstream school and doing great, playing sports, etc.

MORE FROM THE ARTICLE IN WISE TRADITIONS, WINTER 2007

Dr. Campbell-McBride goes on to make many interesting points, some of which were in the original post I wrote about the GAPS Diet (from my notes on her talk at the Deidre Currie Festival), but some of the following is new – both posts have important information that could be life-changing for some family out there…

• Wait ’til you read about all the conditions that she says stem from, or go along with, various digestive disorders, which she calls Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) – because children (and adults) with these conditions fall into the gap of our medical knowledge: ADD, ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, asthma, bed wetting, thrush, finicky eaters, chronic ear infections, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type-1 diabetes, chronic cystitis (bladder infection), colic & eczema.
• “The trouble with our medicine is that most of our doctors are specialized…have you ever met a psychiatrist or neurologist who looked at your digestive system?“
• She explained in the article that she doesn’t believe vaccinations are solely to blame for autism. She said, “Vaccinations have been designed for children with healthy immune systems. We have a growing population of children who do not possess healthy immune systems. They are not fit to be vaccinated. In a child with a compromised immune system, vaccinations cause damage to that immune system, putting the child closer to disaster. In some children they provide the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. In my clinic, about 15 percent of the children started their autistic symptoms after MMR vaccinations and about the same number started after DPT vaccinations. But the majority of parents see no connection… Despite having no vaccinations, some children are still autistic. So vaccinations are not the cause of autism. They just bring the child closer to the problem.”
• “When children with autism and attention deficit problems grow up, unless something seriously is done to help them, they become GAPS adults – the symptoms don’t go away…psychiatric conditions, such as endogenous depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, manic-depression or bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, are typically GAPS conditions. Patients with these conditions do very well on the GAPS nutritional program. These conditions can be curable; in most cases they are caused by our environment and our diet.”
• This part may be controversial, especially to those who have had great success on the DAN (Defeat Autism Now) protocol, but I’m just putting it out there: “Autistic children are often put on a gluten-free/casein-free (GFCF) diet. It is a tragedy that this diet has been pronounced as “the” diet for autism and schizophrenia because removing grains and dairy foods only removes two toxic substances from the body – gluteomorphins and casomorphins. The GFCF diet doesn’t deal with all the other toxins, it doesn’t heal the gut and it doesn’t change the gut flora. In my clinic about 30 percent of children show initial improvement with a gluten- and casein-free diet. The majority do not show any improvement at all and those who show some improvement then plateau and the parents end up in a nightmare situation where if the child gets hold of even a crumb of bread or steals a cracker there is a huge regression. This happens because the gut is still damaged, the gut flora is still abnormal, the gut wall is still leaky and porous. All the toxins are still flowing into the body. The gluten-free/casein-free diet is inappropriate for GAPS patients. It is not enough.”
• I’ll touch on one more part of the article related to probiotics. First and foremost, Dr. Campbell-McBride says the digestive disorder must be treated. “One absolutely paramount way to do that is taking an effective probiotic in order to introduce beneficial bacteria into the digestive systems of these children.”
• “Eating fermented foods are an excellent source of probiotic bacteria. We used to consume trillions of good bacteria on a daily basis when we fermented our foods and these beneficial organisms got built into our psychology. We need them, we cannot live without them. Since we invented refrigeration we stopped eating fermented foods so we stopped providing our bodies with something vital. HOWEVER, in GAPS children and adults, just eating fermented foods is not enough. They have to have a strong, aggressive, therapeutic-strength probiotic that eats candida and clostridia, and eats the old, compacted putrefaction in the gut and removes it.”
• I am only touching on bits and pieces of the article, and she only touched on bits and pieces from her book, there is MUCH more to know about the GAPS Diet. So if you have a child struggling with anything mentioned in this post, please consider getting her book so you can see the big picture, and have the tools you need to move forward.



• Here is the link to buy the book or other GAPS resources, including the probiotics that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride formulated.
• Read how God led Mike & Amy to heal their son, Joe, and about all the resources they found helpful: Autism / ADHD / ADD / Behavioral problems – Ways to Help, Ways to Cure?
• Watch a video that will give you hope for healing! This is Amy’s sister, Joanne, talking about how their son was also healed of Autism. (Video from Corganic – a site written by Dan – the friend mentioned in the video who gave them nutritional advice.)
• More stories of HOPE and recovery (including one from Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride about her son.)
• GAPS Diet Testimonial: Asperger’s, Allergies and Asthma
• More GAPS Diet Testimonials
• YouTube videos on the Body Ecology Diet and GAPS diet – there are a total of 6 videos
• Podcast with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride
• Many more topics along the right in the sidebar
  

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