I have been a practicing vegan author and coach since 1996. My other career as a speech and language pathologist has spanned four decades of working with children who have communication disorders. I find that my two careers are very much in sync with each other, as diet and lifestyle transformation contribute powerful changes needed to heal autism and other communication challenges.
In 1977, when I began my first job as a speech therapist, I don’t recall observing many children displaying the symptoms of autism. In fact, it’s been reported that 40 years ago, the autism incidence rate was 1 in 10,000 children, whereas today in my home state of New Jersey, the rate is 1 in 49 children. Among boys, the prevalence is almost five times greater than girls, and I am referred many more boys than girls. The autism epidemic rate is expected to continue to increase so that by 2030, half of American children will fall on the autism spectrum.
I have seen clearly how autism can devastate family life and the potential of the individual on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.
What is mind-boggling is that Big Pharma does not acknowledge that as antibiotic and drug usage grows, so do the rates of autism.
Antibiotics kill bacteria but not yeast. The yeast then grows to fill in the space left by the removal of the bacteria. The chemical compounds formed by the yeast can spread to any organ of the body and up at the brain. These chemicals can cause mental symptoms. Slowing of the brain can also happen in speech areas. I have found in my practice that half the children on the autism spectrum are nonverbal.
Every year for the past eight years, I teach a class on plant-based nutrition, how to increase living plant foods and the benefits of a gluten- and dairy-free lifestyle focused on fresh whole foods. Some of the parents have started a gluten and casein-free diet, which involves no glutinous grains or dairy products. These parents have explained the excellent benefits from the removal of these food products, resulting in improved communication, speech, attention and behaviors.
I recommend going even further, to a lifestyle of all whole plant foods.
Many children on the autism spectrum have a strong reaction to the aflatoxin in peanuts, so it’s eliminated. Corn and chicken are contaminated with mold as well.
Once parents know this, they are often willing to start making dietary adjustments.
Studies in mainstream journals are now linking the autism epidemic in the United States to the standard American diet. Severe mineral deficiencies are the result of processed and refined foods that contain such toxic ingredients as HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup), which can play a huge role in how the body gets rid of toxic chemicals such as mercury and pesticides.
It is coming out in scientific papers and books over the past decade, that autism is the culmination of toxic load factors…chemical exposures, poor diet, use of formula instead of breastfeeding, the important skin-to-skin contact for brain development so crucial especially in the first year of life (See pages 393 through 402 of my book Creating Healthy Children: Through Attachment Parenting and Raw Foods).
My second child, my son, had asthma, chronic ear infections and multiple allergies the first three years of his life. We adopted a healthful plant-based lifestyle of green juicing and whole plant foods when he turned 3 years old. Before that time, we were eating a lot of processed food. Ten months after adopting a healthful vegan lifestyle, he was completely healed of this autoimmune disease.
Although I see clearly how toxic load factors can lead to autism, I look at the healing of the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders in a positive light. As a speech-language-feeding therapist, I work with families who are ready to take the necessary steps toward healing through diet and other lifestyle factors.
This is a step-by-step approach to eliminating harmful food sources and replacing them with regenerative foods, which are also known to detoxify heavy metals and chemicals. These heavy metals and chemicals can be the cause of autism. Many families today are experiencing success through a lifestyle approach catered to their specific needs.
