Supporting the Nervous System Through Diet and Supplementation

A mom’s account of her experience with biomedical intervention to improve her son’s autism symptoms.

When my son was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder at age three, I had no idea how to help him—even though I had been an autism behavioral intervention specialist before staying home with my own children. Luckily, I am the turn-over-every-rock kind of a mom, and my insatiable thirst for knowledge kept me seeking answers until I unearthed a gold mine… biomedical intervention!

The theory behind biomedical intervention is that neurological disorders are caused or exacerbated by genetic and environmental factors that can compromise the gastrointestinal, immunological, and neurological systems. You want me to restate that thought in plain English, right? The gut-immune-brain connection is real, and what we put into our children’s bodies can either help or hinder!

How are the gut and nervous system dysfunction connected?

There are some excellent resources like Dr. David Perlmutter’s book, Grain Brain, and Dr. Kenneth Bock’s book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders that explains the pivotal gut-brain connection in detail.

For my son, food allergies were the most prominent stumbling block. In time, I learned he was sensitive to gluten, dairy, and dyes, and those allergens wreaked havoc in his body (your child may be sensitive to other high-inflammation foods like sugar, nuts, soy, eggs, and more).

Do you ever wonder why so many autism advocates suggest a gluten- and casein-free (GF/CF) diet? Gluten basically glues our food together, but ironically, once digested, it unglues the gastrointestinal tract in some people. Imagine that your gut walls are built with mini bricks; gluten kicks bricks out of place, causing leaky gut, and then slips through the holes, hitching a ride in the blood up to the brain and across the blood-brain barrier. In neurotypical bodies it can make people feel tired and unfocused with brain fog in addition to belly troubles, but in neuro-compromised bodies, gluten is like opiates in the brain, often accompanied by violent stomach troubles.
What’s the connection to casein, a protein in dairy products, then? Casein is molecularly similar to gluten, so the body therefore reacts to both proteins the same way—telling the immune system to destroy the foreign molecules at all costs!

The immune and gastrointestinal systems are tied tightly together in functioning underneath the surface, and the tip of the iceberg we see is the third interdependent part—the nervous system/behavioral response. If someone eats foods their body is allergic or sensitive to, the gut responds, the immune system fills up like a kettle, and the inflammation spills into the nervous system as the body shrieks like a high-pitched whistle. This can manifest in low attention spans, hyperactivity, being unfocused or seemingly disconnected from reality, feeling agitated, and so much more.

What can be done to help?

In our case, I worked with a knowledgeable integrationist (a doctor who specializes in biomedical intervention). He not only identified my son’s food allergies (so I knew what to cut out of his diet), but he also discovered that my son was deficient in 14 out of 16 of the major vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants needed for a fully functioning nervous system. The integrationist was able to customize a natural, supplement vitamin regimen to bring my son’s body back in alignment and some amazing things started to happen.

In days, my son started making better eye contact and speaking in full sentences, and in months, many of his extreme sensory-seeker behaviors had calmed down considerably while focus and attention increased.

Nothing made me a believer in biomedical intervention more than seeing his highly inflamed nervous system cool off and finally function at its best! My son graduated from occupational therapy at age six, scores at or above his grade level in all subjects, and today, at 11 years old, he is considered to only have mild sensory differences and a touch of ADHD.

Moral of the story: rule it in or out in your own life

I firmly believe that removing the food allergies and getting biomedical treatment were the springboard for all subsequent healing for my son. What he learned in occupational therapy (which helped him recover the skills that hadn’t developed while he was in the throes of sensory processing disorder) wouldn’t have “stuck” nearly as well if his nervous system wasn’t functioning at its best.

Now, best-functioning is a relative term! Many children have far more special needs to handle, and everybody is different. You may not experience the same results through biomedical intervention that we did—but that doesn’t mean your results won’t be significant for your child. Anything we can do to support the nervous system, which is the base of all other functioning and learning, will yield gains in the right direction.