Boundless Body Radio
Boundless Body Radio explores the wide range of health and fitness! We will be speaking with our amazing guests about the lifestyle factors that keep them at the top- low carbohydrate, ketogenic, and carnivore nutrition, movement, stress management, and so much more! Please rate and review us, and subscribe to get all the latest content! Let us show you how to create your BOUNDLESS life!
Boundless Body Radio
Decoding Autism Management through Dietary Intervention with Dr. John Ferrera! 551
In an enlightening conversation with our esteemed guest, John Ferrera, PhD, a seasoned neuropsychologist and certified Chris Kresser Foundation Medicine Practitioner, we delve into this intriguing confluence of neuropsychology, diet, and health. John opens up about his personal health journey, sharing how he discovered his sensitivity to gluten and occasional psoriasis flare-ups, leading him to his current specialties in integrative and functional medicine.
As John elaborates on the profound impact of diet on these conditions, this episode takes you on an insightful journey into low-carb and high-protein diets and their significant role in reducing autism symptoms. We also touch upon the influence of environmental toxins on our bodies and the potential implications of the CDC's lengthy immunization schedule.
Imagine a world where a few dietary tweaks could transform your child's life forever. In this episode, we share an inspiring success story of a parent who experienced a significant improvement in their child's autism symptoms through a gluten-free, sugar-free diet.
Join us in this enlightening conversation, and let's together uncover the transformative power of diet in managing chronic conditions, including autism!
Find Dr. John Fererra at-
https://www.inpnyc.com/
TW- @JohnFerreraPHD
Documentary on Autism- https://www.restoringbalanceautism.com/the-movie
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you. Now, john Ferrara, phd is a neuropsychologist who specializes in psychological and neuropsychological assessment. He has a PhD from the clinical neuropsychology subprogram of the CUNY Graduate Center and has been an NYS licensed psychologist since 2010. I'm just going to warn the listener right now I'm going to stumble through this introduction. There's a lot of big words in here. As a young neuropsychologist in his early 30s, which was around 2011, he serendipitously learned that he had a sensitivity to gluten and was experiencing occasional flare-ups of psoriasis. Currently, dr Ferrara is the owner and operator of Integrative Neuropsychological Services PLLC, founded in 2012. His specialties include, but are not limited to, autism, including high-functioning autism, dyslexia, a reading disability, non-verbal learning disability and other complex presentations. In addition to his work as a neuropsychologist, he specializes in integrative and functional medicine and offers integrative or metabolic health coaching for families and individuals. Dr Ferrara is also a certified Chris Kresser Foundation Medicine Practitioner and has also completed an ADHD fellowship through the psychiatry redefined platform of James Greenblatt MD.
Speaker 1:John Ferrara, phd, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, casey. It is such an honor to have you. I had assumed, based on your last name and knowing already that you had a place in Portugal, I'd assumed that you'd already been fluent in Portuguese and that was not the case. So all morning I've been preparing to introduce you using the Portuguese version of your last name rather than the way it would be read in America. So I had to make a pivot there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. No, I'm not Portuguese but people mistake. They think that especially when I'm in Portugal. People think that all the time.
Speaker 1:So why did you decide to get a place there?
Speaker 2:A couple of years ago probably, but I love to surf. I live in New York City but I live out in a Rockway Beach and I moved here a few years ago just to be close to the beach and I love surfing and Portugal is kind of like just takes it to the next level. It's a much better surfing cleaner ocean, and so it's part of the reason why I'm moving over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But also Southern Portugal. It's just. Yeah, it's a great place In the Algarve region. They have really great laws against pesticides, so all of the produce is clean and the food is great. There's so much fresh seafood and big shrimps that seem like they're like you know that we can't get here, and other things, so there's a lot of reasons, a lot of things. I love about Portugal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. I actually just heard recently that there was surfing options in New York. I did not know that that there was even a place to go. It sounds like it's okay, but Portugal is an absolute mecca for surfing, Isn't that where they have the massive wave, like the biggest wave in the world generally?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, Now, as I read, Portugal is like we're like currently like kind of like the spot for big wave surfing. That's definitely not the kind of surfing that I'm doing. There's a little bit of something for everyone in Portugal. The whole country is basically surrounded by, you know, on the coast, and there are so many different surf spots for all different levels.
Speaker 1:You could have just lied to us and said that you were owning that wave, that you made that wave your bitch, like nobody would know the difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, you can't lie about that. I think those are different human beings who were able to surf those waves, able to, you know, maintain calmness in that ocean. That's definitely not something I'm cut out, for, yeah they look pretty insane.
Speaker 1:Those videos are kind of fun to watch. But definitely thanks. But no thanks. You'll never be attempting that for sure. And the place I lived in Brazil further down in the South, we had tons of people that had moved from Portugal, so the language was just a little bit different. But some of the nicest people they were awesome. They talk really fast, but they were really great people all around. So cool spot. It sounds like you might make a transition and move there full time in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, in a few years. Yeah, I have to figure out. You know exactly, you know some, some details, but definitely within the next few years I have a sudden 10th grade. So once he moves on to college, then I really start.
Speaker 1:You know, I have to wait till he at least finishes high school. Wow. Well, you definitely don't look old enough to have a 10th grader, so congratulations on that. Before we get into your history you're welcome. Before we get into your history and your interests with autism, you also have a very interesting health story. We kind of alluded to it a little bit in the introduction, but it sounds like you were dealing with some health issues yourself. When did that start?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, I guess really back in, you know, 2001 is when I graduated college and you know, prior to that I was dealing with, you know, I started started feeling, you know, dealing with like some anxiety and stuff, social anxiety did it about with antidepressants back then. That was unsuccessful, you know. Then it wasn't until nine years later I was in, you know, in graduate school, maybe I was after graduate school and I cut out gluten and all of a sudden my you know, brain fog went away and that was kind of it was pretty immediate. It was almost like two days after I stopped eating it and I noticed, you know, I just started feeling much better.
Speaker 2:You know, doing neuropsych evaluations I have to write these long neuropsych reports and so it's. You know it was common for me to just, you know, get get stuck and just not want to do anything and all of a sudden that experience just changed and it went away. And you know, I stuck with that for a couple of years and I had developed psoriasis and you know wasn't connecting it to my diet at all. At the time, you know, I saw a dermatologist and he put me on some, some medication that was helping with the psoriasis. Didn't tell me anything about diet. I actually told him about the diet, how I was like gluten free.
Speaker 2:And he said oh, that's great, you know that sounds awesome, but you know didn't really make any connection between that and my symptoms. But then, for whatever reason, I cut out refined sugar and my psoriasis went away. So it was the gluten for a couple of years for me, and then cutting out the refined sugar and my psoriasis went away, you know completely. And so that was kind of like what set me on my path and what made me realize, you know, the importance of diet, not just for, you know, mental health, because that was my first, the first benefit that I had, but also, for you know, for physical health.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we may be giving away the ending just a little bit here, but eventually you found your way to carnivore and I'm wondering what you mentioned earlier as far as like anxiety what did you notice mentally when you made a further step by going into carnivore diet? Did that help even even more with your mental state?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I mean it just kind of like helped, kind of like get rid of like a lot of the baggage that I was carrying and just kind of like a lot of like the spinning of my wheels and the inefficient thinking I would you know, prior to cutting out gluten, I would wake up every morning. I just have a negative cloud over my thought pattern and I would you know tell myself, okay, just ignore your thoughts for the first you know hour of the day, don't even like you know, don't even consider them, and that was just kind of like what I thought was normal and that is.
Speaker 2:you know, that's kind of like one of the most noticeable things you know is just that that's not there anymore?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Did you realize it was there while you were going through it? Or was it only retroactive when you changed the diet and you were like holy smokes, like my brain was going crazy?
Speaker 2:It was retroactive right. I didn't realize that I even had, I didn't realize that it was even there until until I made the changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, so April 19 or April 2019 is when I started carnivore, and it was about 10 days, 12 days, 14 days in when my anxiety dropped out and same same thing. It's the reason why I'm asking you. The question is like wow, like this is calm and peaceful and like I didn't realize I had anxiety. But I totally did, and anytime I've cheated on it and especially with something like sugar, I eat way too much of it I go way past the point that I can stop and that anxiety comes back, and that's the primary reason I'm on carnivore. There's lots of different benefits that I love, but that is the reason that I do it and it sounds like that's very similar to you in your case.
Speaker 2:Very similar to me. Yeah, yeah, I'm a kind of person where, like, I'm better at restricting foods. You know, if I have a little bit that I tend to overeat and have too much of them, I'm looking for them again the next day and so, yeah, I do much better with discipline and restricting foods, restricting whole categories of food, but but not just restricting, I think, you know, also focusing on, you know, the delicious foods that you know that I do get to eat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not really suffering eating. You know eggs cooked in butter and steak every day. It's pretty great. Love that part. Well, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we're already starting off really controversial with a meat heavy diet, totally against the guidelines. Why don't we continue with the seemingly controversial? It's so interesting that this is, you know, even like adjacent to controversy, and I understand because there's a lot of, I guess, like a motion wrapped up in this and we might be talking. Obviously we're talking about autism. There seems to be a movement going around that, like, if you are trying to treat autism or make autism a little bit better in a child, that's like. It's like judging them for being autistic, which I don't really see it that way.
Speaker 1:We might even talk about things like vaccines and their impact on this kind of thing, and so I always just wish we could have open communications and people couldn't choose whatever they liked. That was the frustrating thing about COVID vaccines to me. I don't know whether I made the right choice or not, but I would have liked to have everybody's opinion and be able to talk about it. I didn't feel like we were ever able to do that. So let's, let's start with your story getting wrapped up with autism. When did you become interested and know that this was the career path you were going to go down?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, so I was interested in neuropsychology. I was interested in graduate school and brain imaging. I wanted to just learn more about the brain. So I did FMRI research. We were taking pictures of the brain as it was working and it was great. But at the time there weren't many clinical applications for that. Still today it's hard to clinically to use FMRI.
Speaker 2:Brain imaging is more of a research tool and so I was pushed in the clinical direction and as a neuropsychologist I started working with kids and just being in the time and place, I just was confronted with autism so much time and time again and so partly I began to develop a specialty in some of the cases that I get. But also those are the cases that are there. When you hear about the increasing prevalence, it's real Like it really is like a seriously increasing prevalence that's happening, and I've kind of been in the middle of it. In the beginning of my career I started to kind of look into, well, what's going on. It's got to be environmental, there's something in the environment. But at that point in time when I looked into it, my head just started to spin, because you hear about air pollution, you hear about parental nutrient deficiencies in parents or viruses during pregnancy, and there are so many factors that are involved, and so it just seemed impossible to come to the solution of what's causing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And then for me it was in 2021, I heard Chris Kenabe give a low-carb down-and-under talk about seed oils and diseases of civilization and it was at that point, I knew about Western price. But I didn't know the scope of it. I didn't realize that heart disease really didn't exist before the 1900s and that it's been the leading cause of death and still has been the leading cause of death since the mid-1930s.
Speaker 2:I didn't know about that I didn't know about age-related macular degeneration, how that is a new disease, how that didn't exist, and the way that he linked everything to not just the seed oils but one of the major driving factors just kind of like in my head kind of made everything click and I just realized, ok, this really can be significant. That was two years ago and it took me a while to really see the connection with autism, just because there's this added layer of, I guess, challenge and difficulty in autism, where some of what you mentioned, where it is sometimes frowned upon if you're trying to cure autism because what's wrong, you're saying that there's something wrong with them if you want to cure them. So that's part of it. But also it just seemed like it was just well. There's so much negativity put towards people who are trying to go against the grain in that space and the mainstream dogma is that diet doesn't really. If you're changing diet, it's not going to really help so much, it's not really worth the trouble.
Speaker 2:And I just started seeing more and more people who were making amazing transformations and when I looked at how or what they were doing, it's the same thing. They're following the same principles that we hear about from these other approaches, whether it's Dale Bredesen talking about Alzheimer's disease, or Terry Walls and multiple sclerosis, or Phil Ovedia, ken Berry, and it's all the same principles. Whether it's low carb, keto, carnivore, but also avoiding processed foods, avoiding environmental toxins, eating nutrient-dense food, paying attention to stress and sleep and also getting things like sunlight. I think that it all. There is one solution. I think that at least the same principles that you can apply for all the problems, including autism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you see it all the time. It feels like you're going a little nuts when you're telling people this one thing can fix all of these different problems and it just seems like it really can. And kudos to Chris Kenobi, he's just such an amazing person. Would you ever guess that by his claim is that it was about eight years ago. He was the worst public speaker on the planet and taught himself how to do public speaking so that he could then go out and share his message and do presentations. Would you ever believe he was not like a total natural at public speaking?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, no, he's great, yeah, I love it. I've seen so many of his presentations by now and, yeah, he's great. And I just, yeah, recently learned too that he's not even he does it all pro bono. He's not getting, he's not working anymore and he's, yeah, he's just doing this all just to give back and spread the message.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, on that note, as of the time of this recording, he and Suzanne Alexander, the co-author of his book the Ancestral Diet Revolution, flew on their own dime into the South Pacific and they're traveling around to all these different islands literally like modern day Weston A Price style to go to some of these indigenous cultures and really check out what they've been eating. They have to take these crazy long flights and these really tiny planes to get these really remote islands. The cost must be so high. But yeah, they're doing it because they love the research and they want to share the message. Super cool.
Speaker 2:All right, well, I didn't know that. Yeah, I can't wait to see what he comes up with. That's great that he's doing it Should be amazing.
Speaker 1:We should be able to host them in a few weeks when they get back to check out their adventures and see what it was like. But yeah, he does amazing work. Their claim is in the book it's more of the seed oils than it is the sugar and or the carbohydrates, and I have to say I'm not fully convinced one way or another. I just know both of them are a really big problem. Do you have, like I don't know, a way you lean whether it's the carbohydrates and sugar or whether it's the seed oils, or it doesn't really matter? If you go low carb or low seed oil, you're going to be low in both.
Speaker 2:Well, I avoid them both. So, and as far as, like I don't know which is worse than the other, I think that they're both bad. I think having like high eating a high carbohydrate diet is, and keeping your sugars up high in your blood is bad, and I think eating the seed oils is going to contribute to that, and so I think it's best to avoid both. But I guess I'll leave it to some of the other folks like Tucker, goodrich and Lane I forget his last name, lane Norton to have those debates.
Speaker 1:Exactly. We'll leave it to them. We'll stay out of it too. That sounds great.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry when I do see those debates, though I really am one that looks at the history and looks at all of the converging evidence, and it means a lot to me when I look at Chris Canabi's graphs and when he sees and looks at, well, what's changed, what are the factors that have changed in the diet and when did they change, or when these diseases start to pop up, and so I definitely lean on the side of seed oils being more toxic and not being harmless, like I definitely don't think that seed oils are harmless.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you. I'm glad you added that in. That's a perfect segue. So you mentioned the rising prevalence of autism. I think anybody should be able to look out there and see, like anecdotally, that certainly seems like that's the case. I don't remember a lot of that when I was growing up. It was a few kids, but not many, and now it seems a lot, a lot more. So is this a diagnosis kind of a thing? Are we getting better at the technology to diagnose these kinds of things, or is this problem really truly getting worse?
Speaker 2:The problem is really truly getting worse. Like, definitely we're getting better at diagnosing it, there are more services available, so that, by function, more people are gonna wanna have that label. So there's some of it is due to increasing diagnosis, but most of it is real. Like, most of the cases are low functioning cases, kids who have autism, intellectual disability, and there's no question of whether or not they have, you know, autism or not in these cases, and it's also, I think, the fact that it is something that is being reported in multiple places. There are good studies out of, you know, dublin and then recently there was a recent study that came out of Italy recently and they are showing that there's increases in multiple places and similar data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so you have talked about a documentary that covers this kind of thing and I haven't watched the documentary. I was able to watch the trailer. I just got done watching it and it's just. It's so interesting how parallel this runs to everything we know about health recommendations and nutrition recommendations. Like it's not new that they're saying like we put all our money into the genetic thing and that's really the wrong place. That sounds like cancer research Like and the studies that they were talking about. Again, they're not like that new. Like it's been around for quite a while that the environment is a big deal and is huge for autism.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I'm happy to see that there are there's so much more momentum and movement in the you know autism and diet field, like even you know, even since I did.
Speaker 2:You know I was on you know Ovedia's podcast and talked about it there's. You know I was at a autism research institute lecture on diet and they were talking. You know the autism diet is very similar to you know the same diet. You know the diet that you know that you hear about for diabetes and fatty liver. And you know you hear David Unwin and you know.
Speaker 2:Henberry talk about, but it's you know, start with, like the gluten-free, casein-free, soy-free and also avoiding food dyes, and then now, you know, the evolution of it is now they've kind of moved towards talking about low-carb and keto. They emphasize high protein and they also emphasize looking, examining the vegetables that you're eating and making sure that you're not eating high-oxalate vegetables if you have trouble with those. And so it seems like there really is this convergence where, you know, I think the based on, you know, I guess, just clinical reports mostly it's not clinical research, it's more mostly like just clinical reports of and some research studies of just success. But you know, things are evolving towards, you know, lowering carbs and increasing protein, and I think there's a reason for that right, I think that the, you know, I think there's a reason why those things are the things that are helping.
Speaker 1:So it's more like case reports then. Right Like this is one person, it's an end of one. He did this, got a really good result. That's not, like you said, a randomized clinical control trial, but it's good evidence that must be stacking up at this point.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and the things that they're doing are the same things that are being done in these other studies that we're seeing. When we see David Unwin's recent type two diabetes study I think there was a British medical journal they're following those same protocols basically. So I think that gives more support to the claims that you see in these. Most of them are case case studies.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, when you start to add it up with all the other chronic diseases that you're talking about, all those case studies like dude, that's a lot of N of ones at this point, like it's going to be a sad day when a carnivore dies of a heart attack and that's going to still all the headlines everywhere forever that this diet causes this you know bad thing, which isn't the case, it's just there's there's a lot of really positive stories out there and a lot of people improving with so many of these conditions.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think it's yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think that the reason is multifactorial.
Speaker 2:I think one of the reasons is because of insulin resistance and the excess sugars and you know, and that kind of like, fertilizes the soil and sets the ground for a lot of these diseases to develop. But the other piece, the other you know, I think, component is like the, is the toxic load piece and that's the, you know the glyphosate, the pesticides, the plastics too, but these all interact right, because the, the, the pesticides on the soil and on the crops, are degrading the mineral content of those which are contributing to the nutrient deficient, the epidemic of nutrient deficiency in the population. And when you're nutrient deficiency, your less, your body is less able to deal with toxins that are in the environment. So you're kind of, you know, you're setting yourself up to be less, you know, protected against the environment.
Speaker 2:But then the other thing that glyphosate does is it allows heavy metals to travel to the brain, allows heavy metals to cross the blood brain barrier. So when you hear, you know, reports of heavy metals being in the brain, and there's one, you know one study that shows, you know it was a postmortem study five individuals with autism and they all had aluminum in their brain. And so you know the obvious, you know thing to think is that you know, the vaccines put the aluminum there and that very, that, very well may be true, but that's not the only case. Right, it is possible that the aluminum cutting from the environment and got into the brain somehow, and this you know having lots of glyphosate is going to increase the likelihood of that happening.
Speaker 2:So I think it's very, you know it's multifactorial.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think you know, and the connection between all you know.
Speaker 2:I guess the fact that we have things like Alzheimer's disease is also increasing, and you know similar rates as autism. I think that is more evidence to show that it's a multifactorial cause, because you know people who have Alzheimer's. They didn't follow the CDC schedule and so they didn't. You know they. You know they didn't have that same exposure and so there's something else that's at play that's leading to their disease process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, have you seen the CDC schedule? Like what they recommend now, like the number of shots that you're supposed to get before age, like three months or six months? I looked it up recently. I could not believe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't. Yeah, someone sent me a PDF of like a training manual for nurses and it was just how to like, how you could administer up to seven at a time. And it was like a picture of a baby and just like all the injection sites are all seven. You know all seven injections.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, that's crazy. Okay, we're going to come back to that. I really want to talk to you about some of those factors in what you call the multifactorial problem. Let's, let's, let's first tell us about traditional, the traditional system and autism itself. When is it diagnosed? You know it can happen anytime. Is it at birth? I know the parents can also be a factor. You know one of the factors that can contribute. And then what would be like the classic kind of traditional treatments if I were to go to a hospital, you know, for my kid, if they were diagnosed like what? What things would then happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so usually autism is diagnosed before a child is two years old, and from zero to two. If a child is like demonstrating delays in their speaking or walking, in their milestones, then you can go, and you can go to early intervention and you get an evaluation and oftentimes that's when it's diagnosed. If not, then sometimes it takes a little bit, a little bit longer for the diagnosis to be made. But, you know, once that diagnosis is made, the early intervention system is great at hooking children and families up with different services. So speech therapy, they get, you know, we'll get placement in a specialized school environment, like a specialized preschool that has, you know, extra teachers, teachers who have special training, and you know, and so they get access to all sorts of services and supports. Sometimes, you know, oftentimes I'll get recommended for ABA therapy and which, which is just like a structured therapeutic intervention. Oftentimes it's one on one, usually it's one on one, but it's just, you know, behavior, behavior therapy. So it's just like a reinforcement system. That's that's put in place and and they'll prescribe medication.
Speaker 2:If a child is, you know, unable to focus or sit still or if they're violent, they prescribe medication. They usually start with stimulants, like the ADHD type medication, but oftentimes that leads to problems with sleeping or problems slowing down at night. So they combine that with Guamphasine or Clonidine at night. So I'll see that that'll be the first, the first thing that that'll be tried, and then, if they're still dysregulated at that point, they'll add Ryspital on top of it. Ryspital is an antipsychotic medication that has all sorts of you know, negative side effects, including metabolic side effects. One of them is it causes insulin resistance. Oh good, so you're on Ryspital and you want to try to get on a low carb diet? Good luck, because you know your body is really going to be craving those carbohydrates. And so not only do they not, you know, address diet or recommend diet, the medications that they're prescribing in many cases are really, you know, counterproductive to you know. A lot of these dietary recommendations, yeah, shocker.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what is the effectiveness of any of those treatments? Like what would be an expectation, does the child generally improve by 10%, by 50%? Is it was one of those treatments more effective than another? Or is it just kind of a cropshoot?
Speaker 2:You know it's really tough to say. I mean, you do see improvement, but more often than that, like I as a neuropsychologist, the way it works is especially New York. Every three years at least, I'll see a child and have to do a reassessment, and so I get to see them. You know, three years later than another three years later. Oftentimes the children have the same deficits. You know the same, you know same, even the same academic levels, and this is you know, this is you know three years later. But even still you know the same. You know behavioral, behavioral issues. So I see that you know most of the time and it's you know. Children are still significantly impaired when they're done with schooling, and so that can last until they're 21.
Speaker 2:They get a whole bunch of support because they're in a school, they have a one to one aid, there's three teachers in their building in the classroom. Then, all of a sudden, they turn 21 and there's no more school and that's it. You know it's very, very difficult. There's, oftentimes there's a lack of, you know, another, another option for these, for these, you know adults at this point, and so it's yeah, it's very tragic. You know, a lot of times you know families who you know really have to sacrifice their own lives really just to take care of their kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I mean the depression and suicide rate must be disproportional in that population, right?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess.
Speaker 2:So, yes, yeah, and especially, I know they the divorce rate in parents of children with autism and special needs is extremely high. Yes, depression, of course, but then the other thing is that you know they also, they have all of these other problems, right, they also have the obesity, the diabetes, the fatty liver disease, and so that's why. So, now that when they're coming into my office my evaluation now I almost always will have a conversation with them about diet and I sometimes will end up handing them Ovedia's book and I have his book there because I love the way he goes through the different ways that you can eat metabolically healthy. So it's not saying you have to be carnivore. You know, I want to tell everyone to be carnivore. I realize you can't, not going to work for them, but yeah, so they get. I've gotten such positive feedback from people that when, when I do have the diet conversation with them because they've, you know, heard from their friends and from social media things like if your diet doesn't the doctor doesn't actually about diet, then he's a bad doctor.
Speaker 2:or you know they've heard things like this that you know that saturated fat isn't really bad or meat isn't really bad, and everyone wants to believe that you know if you tell people that meat isn't bad they love to hear that you know, and so that's why it's it's. They're sometimes surprised when I hand them Ovedia's book with the picture of all the meat on the on the front of it, but surprised in a good way. So it's gotten great, great, great feedback so far.
Speaker 1:So you've noticed from the ground level that people are becoming more aware of this stuff. Absolutely, wow, great, oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even the seed oils, which I'm surprised about that. But when I talk to them like, everyone is like we have so many people like already are like you know, they, they, they're eating olive oil or at least what they think is olive oil. But at least they're buying olive oil from the store.
Speaker 1:It's a step, they know. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they at least know that, that the seed oils are not as good for you.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's very encouraging. And you mentioned, you know, the, the, the person with autism themselves having a higher likelihood of some of those other chronic diseases. I'm sure it's a tough question to answer because we know the numbers for America and it's a vast, vast majority of people are already metabolically unhealthy, but it must still be disproportionately higher, with a lot of those same chronic diseases in the families of people with autism. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:It must be. I don't have data on that, but but but I think so. I mean there is, I do. There are studies to suggest that mothers though all of the studies are on mothers there's no studies on fathers but mothers who have PCOS, mothers who are obese, mothers who have nutrient deficiencies, especially like iron I think P12 is where the research is but they're more likely to have children with either autism, adhd or intellectual disability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotcha, I've always wondered that too, like as as these generations of people going through bad health are going again, one generation to the next, to the next, it just seems like everything is getting so much worse. I mean the fatty liver diseases we're finding in kids dementia, alzheimer's happening earlier and earlier, kids with type two diabetes to the you know we can't call it childhood onset diabetes anymore, because kids get it now. You just wonder, like, how that is compounding all the way down, and to me all of the things that you've described seem really important, but nutrition sounds like the one that's the most controllable. It might not be easy, but it is simple if you can do it. So, yeah, what? What are your thoughts there? If you could choose like one thing, would diet be the major thing you'd try to focus on?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely. I think diet is like the like. I think that a lot. There's a lot of other things that you can do and a lot of people do do, but if you don't have diet as a, a solid diet as a foundation, a lot of these other things aren't aren't gonna work.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, I was, uh, no, I was just gonna say that.
Speaker 2:So you hear a lot of things about other treatments that people will do for, you know, for autism, like hyperbaric oxygen or stem cell treatments, um, b12 shots, uh, and these, these things. They can all be helpful and they can all be effective. However, if that's all you do, if you just do one of those things and everything else is the same and you don't pay attention to diet and you don't pay attention to sleep, or you know they're on the tablet, you know. You know 24 hours a day, you know, then it's not, you know it's not going to work, you know. So you have to have the foundation of diet, you know, in order for these other things to work. And and because it doesn't end, it's not just a one time exposure, it's like daily that we're being uh, you know we're ingesting this, whether we like it or not, we're breathing in the air, um, and you know it's uh, something that uh is. You know pretty much everyone is is being affected by.
Speaker 1:Okay. So with the work of like Verta Health and the work of the unwins in the UK and all the things that are coming out, I feel pretty confident and comfortable saying that we can reverse diabetes. I think we can do that. I think whatever damage has been done might be tricky and you might have to live with that, but you can at least reverse the type two diabetes. Are you comfortable saying that we can reverse autism?
Speaker 2:In some cases, yes, yes, you can reverse autism. However, I guess um you can't um, oh you can't, um you can't fix intellectual disability.
Speaker 2:So if you have autism, plus intellectual disability, there's only so much improvement that you can make Um and and so, um. So that would be one condition. But, um, uh, if not reverse autism, you can greatly um, reduce its you know, level of, you know, uh, level of impairment in your life, right, like you can, um, you know, get to a point where it's not impairing you. If you do have autism and intellectual disability, you can get to a point where you're not reacting aggressively. And then maybe there's a day program that you can go to and your mom or dad can have a job and they don't have to, you know, give up their career. Yeah, and so it might be. In some cases it might be a big change and a complete transformation, but in other cases it might just be, you know, these little subtle differences, but that could make a big improvement in quality of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing, and you know again, when I'm watching that trailer um of the documentary, they, they, they know they're talking about inflammation in the body and in the brain. And so you look at a low carbohydrate, ketogenic or carnivore type diet. Not only are you providing all of the nutrients that you mentioned people can be deficient in, you're also eliminating all of that inflammation. So that makes a lot of sense. That diet would be super helpful for those people. Um, before we talk about like the positive stories and anecdotes that you've seen and and and all of that wonderful stuff, let's talk about some of those other risk factors that you mentioned. Why is it glyphosate specifically? That's such a high risk factor?
Speaker 2:Uh, yes, well, so glyphosate is, you know, because it's, you know, so prevalent in the, you know, in the environment and glyphosate is just one of the pesticides.
Speaker 2:you know it's used in a you know combination, um, but it's uh something that's uh really hard to avoid, uh, especially when you are following a plant-based, uh low fat uh diet like you know, basically following, like you know, standard American diet or conventional uh, medical, you know recommendations, because it's, you know, and all the bread is covered in glyphosate, canola oil is covered in glyphosate, all of the fruits and the vegetables is covered in glyphosate. Um, and the reason why it's so bad? Um, it's multifactorial. But in the body, um, it affects our microbiome directly, um, by you know uh, killing. You know some of some of our. You know the good bacteria through you know what's called the. You know the chikamate pathway.
Speaker 2:Um, so it affects the microbiome. Um, so it um lowers our bacterial diversity. Um, but then it also it allows metals to travel to our brain. So it's, it's part of the contributing factor for how these uh metals, whether it's aluminum or cobalt or whatever you know, these different metals that are in the environment, are able to travel to the brain. Yeah, um, I wonder, you know, if part of the reason why so many people are having so much success with glyphosate, with carnivore, is because they're avoiding glyphosate?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very interesting, and that to me is a cat that is far out of the bag. I don't think we're ever going to get a handle on that one ever again. I mean, you hear about like organic farms, and yeah, that's great, they're doing organic practices, but we've already depleted the soil by so much, so there's already way less nutrients in these foods, and if you're next door to a place that is conventional, all of that stuff's going to blow onto your farm anyway. It just seems like that that is one that's way too prevalent that we'll never be able to walk back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or. But I mean, like I said, in Southern Portugal there's no, no pesticides allowed, so it uh, you, you can be safe Like you know, that you know you're going to be, you can eat produce and have, have you know a lot more. You know, have more confidence that you're not getting any, any pesticides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so so I heard you mentioned that. I'm glad you brought this up. I wanted to ask you about this there are places in the world that do have less prevalence of autism, right, I think you mentioned in Portugal that's one of those places I think you mentioned. The Amish is one, Um. So so it is, yeah, those places, less prevalence of autism yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, there are no like really good studies to look at why, but there's lots of reports of the prevalence of autism being extremely low, if not non-existent, in the Amish community, um, and in Southern Portugal. Uh, that's just by your personal anecdotes, just in talking to people from being there, um, but just and then not knowing what autism is, and so it's something that I wonder in something that, um, yeah, I might pursue, I guess you know when I have some more time in the next few years and I'm living in there, but I might pursue doing some research just to, to, you know, measuring some, uh, some of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's fascinating. I mean, we talked about genetics and I do believe that brains are different. But you think about like the Amish and the way they raise their kids, like they don't have as much of like a formal school, like if a kid doesn't want to take a class and wants to go build barns with his dad, they let him do that and he gets to kind of do what he likes to do and pursue that. And you just wonder, like ADHD, autism, um, you know, migraine, brain, like these. These are probably genetic gifts that enhanced us in some certain way, but the environment is what triggers it to be something negative, do you do? You think that could be the case? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that you know ADHD. Like people with ADHD, they have, you know, so much energy. They can be so inspiring and once they get into you know the real world, in a career where they're, uh, where they're supposed to be, they thrive and oftentimes they become leaders in that in that area.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, depending on the environment, those, uh, you know what's a disability, you know, becomes an asset. And school has just become, and like it's gotten worse and worse, like, like, just in like, when I was in I was born in 79. Uh, I learned how to read in first grade. Now they're teaching kids you're supposed to know how to read by, like kindergarten, but you're learning in pre-kindergarten. You're starting to know your letters, but developmentally, that's, you're not supposed to yet and there's no benefit, like it doesn't mean like you're not going to you know, be a, you know, be more likely to go to Harvard if you learn how to read at three versus five.
Speaker 2:It's not going to, you know, benefit you in any way, um, but it's uh. I think that that you know definitely contributes If you have ADHD. Now, all of a sudden, your kindergarten is gone and you can't play anymore in kindergarten and you're, like you know, having to, like sit down and write your alphabet.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, learning to read in first grade, you still sound pretty fluent in English, so congratulations. Um, yeah, so. So you mentioned you mentioned glyphosate, and earlier in the conversation you mentioned pesticides, and this reminded me of a question that I've had, um, specifically with diet. So so we know that we add pesticides to our plants to keep insects from eating them, but you know, we've hosted Dr Chafee several times on our show and one of his main messages is like this is botany. The plants already have the pesticides in them. Is that part of the contributing factor? I know you mentioned, like oxalates and things like that, but what about the innate pesticides the plants have had for millions and millions of years? Is that contributing?
Speaker 2:I think so, absolutely 100%, and it took me a while to break the thinking that I was used to where plants are, where you get your vitamins and minerals from.
Speaker 2:That's kind of what the thinking was, and I think as long as we've been writing things down, ever since modern history, we've been in agricultural society and so we've been dependent on plants and bread and that's been keeping us from starvation. It's been helping us grow as a society, and so I think that's part of the reason why it seems so crazy to think that, oh wait, you don't need plants. But then when you listen to Dr Chafee and you listen to others, and then you just think about it logically and you realize, wow, like most of our evolutionary history, this is what we ate. And then you look at anthropological evidence and they look at some bones and you learn that they can determine if it's pre-agriculture or not based on the health of the bone, because pre-agriculture the bones are nice, big, thick and healthy, and so I do agree that the oxalates for sure are, and the abundance of plants that we eat. It makes me crazy when I hear, especially in relation to autism, when I hear an expert or health expert say you have to eat the rainbow.
Speaker 2:Because if you have autism and you have a picky eater, now all of a sudden you have to think about eating the rainbow of vegetables and produce, and also how expensive is that going to be or how crazy is that going to be, to make sure you have all the rainbow fresh and ready to go every single day, and so I think that it simplifies things a lot when you realize that and when you shed that thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a good point. And to think about it also, eating the rainbow 365 days out of the year. That's not possible. If you go back, even just a few hundred years ago, you couldn't do that and now we can. And it's like here in Salt Lake City it's the end of October at the time of recording. There has been food that has been growing. They'll have gardens, there's been apples that have been producing fruit, apple trees producing fruit, and, like just in this last week, you can't find any of those foods anymore. It's too cold. It got too cold. So, whatever apples and tomatoes you got, you got, and that's it. If, unless you have a way to preserve them, you're stuck without them for the rest of the year, until 11 months from now.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, yeah Now that's part of like living in. Today. We can eat whatever we want whenever we want. We can order a supplement from the other side of the world and we can have it, whereas, yeah, we were, you know, ancestrally yeah, we wouldn't, we're limited to what we have in our environment at that time of at that time of year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting. Okay, so let's go back to the vaccine thing. I understand this can be very triggering and again, very high emotions around this. I don't feel like I've got a dog in this fight. I like to learn about these kinds of things but I don't have kids and I don't know exactly what I would do. But I know that the CDC recommendations for vaccine sure looks like a whole lot of them, like a lot of them very early. That doesn't sound great to me and I know so many people that swear he was fine. Little Timmy was fine. He got some stacked vaccine all together to, you know, save time or how, why ever they do it. But they say it was that moment that he fundamentally changed. I've heard that story a lot. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I've heard it so many times too and it's pretty much like a standard question on my form, my intake form and other intake forms. Like, was there a regression in functioning? And in the literature it's known as like a subset of autism. That's like a regressive autism is what it's called in the literature. So it's definitely a phenomena that has been documented repeatedly. But the connection between that, you know, the autism and the vaccines is, you know, you're not, that hasn't been. That's the controversial part, obviously, that you know up until recently.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know some of the benefits I think of. You know the lunacy of the last, you know several years, I think, is that we're able to have this conversation now and people are starting to realize, but wait a second, you know, happy at birth, like why, why, why do we need that? You know parents are tested for hepatitis B. You know that the parents don't have it. Baby has no chance of exposure to it. Why would you, you know, introduce that and so it's and that's? You know, just just one of them. I mean, I think the thing that's most concerning for me is just that when, just when I learned how little research was actually done, how little research into the safety of the single vaccines were actually done, and let alone, you know, giving six, five or six at a time. And so I think that it's.
Speaker 2:I think, if you ask the question, like to do vaccines cause autism? I think there's a correct answer to that and the answer is sometimes. I think that sometimes they do, but I don't think they always do, and that's why I don't think vaccines are the only part of the picture, and I think that that's one of the dangers of kind of like latching onto just one one thing is being the cause, because then then all this other stuff doesn't matter, right, like it's just, it wasn't my poor diet, it wasn't, you know, my polycystic ovary, it wasn't any of that. It's not the environment, it's not the gluten, it's the vaccines, that's what it was, and I'm going to put all the blame on that. The other thing it does is it leads to kind of a simplicity of thought of how to address the problem, right, because if it's a toxin that's causing a problem, then I just have to remove the toxin and the problem will resolve itself.
Speaker 2:And what happened? When I first started my career in the early 90s, early 2000s? There were a lot of Dan doctors defeat autism now and they had a great philosophy. They recognized that it was environmental cause. But what they ended up doing? They ended up doing a lot of like chelation therapy straight off the bat. So people would go to these Dan doctors and they would start chelating these heavy metals and it would make the problems worse. And so now in Dan doctors they no longer exist. There's a lot of parents of older folks with autism older meaning like young 20s who have a negative memory of the Dan doctors. So when I talked to them about changing diet, they're like oh, we tried that, I had a Dan doctor and it didn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that's fascinating, okay, so how do parents know what questions to ask and do they generally receive a lot of pushback when it comes to deciding you know which vaccines to do, which ones to skip, like? Is there good information out there that parents can go to to be empowered about this?
Speaker 2:Well, the best example of Dr Paul Alexander has a book. I forget the name of his book, but he kind of like has advice for how to navigate the CDC schedule. But the important thing is having a pediatrician who's on board. Many pediatricians won't take you as a client. If you want to avoid the schedule and so, or modify the schedule, I shouldn't say avoid the schedule and so. It's definitely important to do your research. You have to, like when you're pregnant, when you're thinking of pregnant, being pregnant, find that pediatrician, make the appointment and have that in place.
Speaker 1:That's great advice. I love that. Okay, time for some more good news. Tell us about a few stories that come to mind about people trying this, especially with the diet. Has it been challenging for them to implement? Is it that people can't implement it, or have you found a lot of success with people that could?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I've been focusing on the people that could. I mean, there's definitely, of course there's people who can't and there's always going to be people that can't for different reasons. But I've had, you know, there's so much success of people who are able to make the changes and all the time, you know, the most of the time, pretty much all the time, it's when they make the changes for the whole family. A 20-year-old parent from who actually lives in far Rockaway low-income family I didn't meet the dad because dad was working. Mom came, dad was 20. Mom was about 18.
Speaker 2:And dad, you know, found this Facebook group called Health and Hope for Autism on his own and the second he got this diagnosis.
Speaker 2:He started implementing a gluten-free, sugar-free diet and I, you know, tested the kid when he was four years old, diagnosed him with autism, recommended the specialized school, like I did, and, you know, got back in touch with them, you know, last year of I'm sorry, this September, and Childs in a Mainstream School, like he doesn't need the specialized school anymore, and you know, and they're still, you know, they're still, you know, on their path and you know, so Childs still has autism, but he, you know, this is an example. Usually in these cases, the child would still be in a specialized school. The Department of Education would be trying to put them into, you know, district 75 school, and everyone in New York City wants to avoid that, and so then it's they would be trying to get my help to get into a specialized school and they don't need it anymore. So it's, and this is great because, like I said, this is a. They're basically teen parents from a low income community and they were able to do it.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Do you know with the parents, did their health improve also? They must, excuse me, have also started like eating in this way. Have you noticed anything about their health?
Speaker 2:Well, not those parents in particular, but, yes, yes, so many other. You know families that I'm seeing. When you know, when I first introduced the recommendations to them, they're like oh yeah, well, I have fatty liver or I have polycystic ovary or I have I have diabetes, and so they, you know, they're happy to get, you know, they're motivated to make these positive changes for themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so cool. I love hearing that and just again, working with so many people over the years with low carbohydrate diets, you know exactly what to expect and you know how that's going to ripple out and affect other people with all kinds of different chronic diseases and whatever things they think are maybe like more minor, but are still really crappy, like the brain fog you mentioned or depression, anxiety, like that kind of thing. It's really wonderful. Do you think this will ever catch on and be like a mainstream therapy? I know you're optimistic at the direction that things are going and more people on the ground hearing about this, but do you have hope this might ever be part of the normal, I guess, like standard of care?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think it's ever going to become the standard of care, given the climate that we're in. The hope is that it's going to become an option and it's going to become something that doctors can no longer swipe under the rug. It's going to become something that doctors have to say like you can, you can take this WeGoB shot, and this is the easy way you can do this, or you can also do a low carb diet, and I would like for at least to you know for when a child gets diagnosed with autism that the specialist there presents it to the family as being you know one of the options of things that they should do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think anybody in this space that's. All they really truly want is just to be able to talk about it. It was, I think, a big win when the American Diabetes Association kind of decided that you could talk about low carbohydrate diets and didn't make that the primary recommendation, but at least made it possible for people to talk about. I think that's a great step in the right direction. I think that will be very, very helpful and in the meantime, I mean there's so many ways we're getting this message out by you know, certain podcasts and books and articles and websites like yours are just so wonderful, such a great resource for people to have, and so, yeah, I hope this gets out to a lot of people and can really help some people out there. You're doing amazing work, my friend. Can you tell us where you would like people to go to find you, to connect with you and your work?
Speaker 2:Yes yes. So my website is just INPNYCcom. Integrated neuropsychological services. And, yeah, I mostly do. You know neuropsychic evaluations. And at the moment I'm only, you know, taking select clients for, you know, the coaching, because I'm, you know, and I'm more going to spend time. You know I want to start interviewing you know people and other parents and just to hear more about, like, what they're doing and what kind of success they're having.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Do you think you would ever do something like a podcast in the future? Yeah, I am. I'm in talks. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:I don't know that. I'm looking to like to like a regular become a podcast and have a regular podcast, but at least a podcast series where I'm interviewing parents. And I'm going to start with that.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That would be amazing content Wherever that lives, either on podcast land or someplace like YouTube. That would be very cool and your website's awesome. Like I said, you do really good quality work, and so I imagine that would be amazing and another great resource for people out there. So thank you again, john, so very much for coming on to our show today. We really appreciate you and your work, and it's such an important message and I know you're very busy, so thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come on our show. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, casey. I'm so great, I'm so glad to be here. And yeah, if anybody, if you know anybody who has autism or if anybody listening wants to share their story, especially carnivores. There's a bunch of autistic carnivores who have found lots of success. I would love to talk to you and perhaps record some of those conversations.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So absolutely keep our eyes peeled and to send you people. But then again, thanks again, dr John, for head over. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, casey. Thank you.
Speaker 1:And this has been another episode of Boundless Body Radio. As always, thank you so very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really do mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and to watch it grow. Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020 and we started the podcast in October of 2020. So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable.
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