A unique biochemical theory behind autism

The vast majority of the reading and research I do is from electronic copies of full-text articles published in the medical literature. However, today I have been reading a book that was published for the general public that was written by a psychiatrist.

With the plethora of books that are being published which are similar to The Secret or (preferably, for myself) What the Bleep, it is nice to see a book for the general public that talks about how the anatomy and physiology of our brains can change even after full development. The fact that there is some plasticity or ability to change has been known for a long, long time. But this book links this concept to many modern day examples, including “positive thinking” books like The Secret.

There was a small section on autism that caught my interest.

“Because so many autistic children have language impairments, clinicians began to suggest the Fast ForWord program for them. They never anticipated what might happen. Parents of autistic children who did Fast ForWord told Merzenichthat their children became more connected socially. He began asking, were the children simply being trained to be more attentive listeners? And he was fascinated by the fact that with Fast ForWord both the language symptoms and the autistic symptoms seemed to be fading together. Could this mean that the language and autistic problems were different expressions of a common problem?”

To answer the last question, yes. Most naturopathic doctors who treat autism would agree to this, and so would doctors who follow the DAN protocol.  The focus has been on supported metabolic pathways such as detoxification, methylation, reducing inflammation, decreasing sensitivities etc.

This book came up with a new spin on autism and its underlying causes.

A researcher called Merzenich developed an animal model of autism by creating an environment in animals where there was a large excess of nerve growth factors such as BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) at development. Nerve growth factors are signals that allow children’s brains to “lock in” important developmental tasks, and when the nerve growth factors are not present in large amounts, the unimportant signals are faded out.

The excess of nerve growth factors turned off the ability of the brain to lock in developmental signals prematurely, thus the developmental delay. The “critical period” was turned off early.

The Fast ForWord program seemed to be able to help small groups of autistic children by activating this “critical period”.

I have not looked into the Fast ForWord program yet, but there are two webinairs scheduled soon which I plan on participating in. Further, the basic concepts presented in the above book make good sense to me. Even further, the interventional naturopathic approach to this involves the use of supporting the nerve growth factors, something I have done in the past with an animal derived neurotrophic called Cerebrolysin (email me if you’d like information on this treatment). I have done this for patients who are recovering from stroke, and who have other neurological diseases such as MS. The literature on cerebrolysin is right along the lines of plasticity, in that it stimulates further connections between neurons. Further, aside from research on stroke recovery, there is good research on Alzheimer’s disease, peripheral neuropathy (seems to help remyelinate nerve cells), and also another disease related to autism, called Asperger’s.

Using BDNF is not a possibility, but:

1. using Cerebrolysin is a possibility (email for information on use in developmental or neurological conditions)

2. Fast ForWord program may show promise

We’ll see what develops.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• 07/27/98 ONLINE ORIGINAL: A BLUEPRINT FOR REBUILDING BROKEN SPINAL CORDS