I want to expand a little more about detoxification. Our bodies are designed to burn fuel for energy production and get rid of waste material through detoxification. We have a wide variety of biochemistry in our body to help us do that. Detoxification occurs through our kidney function, through our liver function and through our digestive tract. When our body is bogged down with toxins, like certain chemicals, those chemicals can be accumulated in our body and can prevent our body from functioning optimally and can hinder detoxification. That may impact our kidney function or our liver function and we can become chronically sick from it. If you are talking about kids on the spectrum we know that certain things like heavy metal toxins can create oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is when those anti toxin chemicals that our body uses to try and keep us healthy become depleted and don’t function properly anymore to aid in detoxification. That causes stress in the cells and stress in the organ systems and eventually our bodies start to breakdown.  We know that a lot of kids on the Autism spectrum have a deficiency in glutathione. Glutathione is a very powerful chemical in our cells that protects our cells from toxins and also aids in detoxification. Digestive function is huge.  We know that our digestive system is the main way of getting food into our system but it also is a major route of detoxification. It is like the physical window of our body, more things enter our body through our digestive system than any other route. So if our digestive tract if unhealthy due to chronic constipation or chronic overgrowth of yeast and bacteria then we may have a problem in detoxifying even our own waste products, let alone any environmental toxins. I always point out to parents that no matter what you are doing for example treating issues like yeast, methyl B-12 therapy, supplementation with B vitamins, probiotics, calcium, magnesium, etc., a gluten and casein free diet, or other special diets, all of those things support detoxification of your child’s body. You may not necessarily be doing something specific to detoxify chemicals or heavy metals but biomedicine in general through all of these treatments, diet, supplements, digestive support, methylation support, it all aids detoxification. That is the key, because detoxification is the foundation for health.  All of those things need to be looked at as far as a comprehensive biomedical approach to improve your child’s health and their wellness and to get them down the road of higher functioning and eventually with the hope of recovery.

In biomedicine for Autism we talk a lot about detoxification. There is some confusion around that term and what detoxification means. What exactly is detoxification? If you think about our body, its main function is to take in food and water for fuel. Our body is constantly using fuel from our food to create energy for the rest of our body to function. Our cells take in sugar, fat and protein and make energy out of those so the rest of the body can function appropriately. Whether that is your heart, your muscles, your digestive tract, your lungs, your brain, etc., that is a normal part of metabolism. Anytime you are metabolizing food to make energy, you are going to generate waste material. That waste material is like exhaust that must be detoxified. When you put gasoline into your car you get exhaust in the back end. What our body is designed to do is to burn fuel for energy but to also get rid of the waste material, or detoxifying, of the metabolic process. We detoxify through our lungs when we take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. We also detoxify through our skin where our body releases heat or moisture, and in some respects through things like sauna therapy we can get rid of chemical toxins through our skin. But the primary routes of detoxification are our kidneys, liver and digestive system. Our kidneys filter out toxins and our liver is like the oil filter of our body, which breaks down substances of metabolism, excretes it into the digestive tract and then we excrete it out in our fecal matter. That is the normal detox process of our body. Many kids on the spectrum have problems in their body’s ability to detox effectively. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have some type of liver or kidney disease but they either lack certain chemicals that help with detoxification or certain functions in the liver are not working optimally so they have a difficult time getting rid of toxins as compared to someone without impaired detoxification capabilities. What we are doing when we aid detoxification through good diet, through supplement therapy, through therapies like methyl B-12 or giving glutathione which is a very powerful antioxidant is we are improving their body’s ability to detox. This helps their overall medical condition. Detoxification is a normal part of our body and when you are providing a wide variety of substances in a biomedical treatment protocol, you are essentially aiding detox.