Light in the darkness

On October 11th, 2019

For years, we as a society have largely refused to deal with a very basic question: why is the rate of autism skyrocketing in the West, up 200 per cent in less than two decades, with one in every 68 children diagnosed on the autistic spectrum?

What the authorities have vehemently concentrated on is what they don’t believe may be causing it. It can’t be caused by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, says the medical profession and mainstream media. It can’t be caused by wheat or dairy intolerances, or heavy metal, say the Big Food and dental industries.

To try to explain this sudden epidemic, we’ve reverted to two old chestnuts. The first is there’s no actual increase in the incidence of autism; we’re just better at diagnosing it.

We also lay the blame on a bad genetic toss of the dice, some sort of (increasingly common) genetic aberration.

While we may be a bit better at recognizing the spectrum of autism than we might have been decade ago, that cannot account for the sheer percentage of modern children showing up with severe symptoms of physical, mental and emotional abnormalities compared to a few generations ago.

And the facile explanation blaming genes ignores the fact that some 80 percent of children on the spectrum have a normal genome.

Clearly something else is going on here.

One mom’s journey

In 1998, Karen, a massage and cranial-sacral holistic therapist living in San Luis Obispo, California, watched helplessly as Jacob, her happy, outgoing two-year-old, regressed in development, turned introverted and became highly oppositional virtually overnight.

For years, Karen tried and failed to find experts on the subject, until she realized that she would have to become expert herself. It took her a decade to discover that her child had ASD.

What she eventually found is that autism isn’t caused by a single insult, but by multiple environmental assaults on an immature brain. She believes that Jacob’s condition was kicked off by the hepatitis B vaccine, administered when Jacob was two, but that there were other potential factors creating a perfect storm.

During her pregnancy she’d had several amalgam fillings placed, and indeed Jacob was eventually found to have high levels of mercury.

She also suspected some sort of infection, and Jacob was eventually found to have Lyme disease, as well as certain food intolerances and a number of chemicals or refined foods that were upsetting his gut.

After 14 long years of refusing to give up, Karen reversed her Jacob’s autism. He is now a normal teenager, attending college. Karen herself gone on to become a holistic autism ‘recovery’ expert, helping many children and teens live normal lives (see:

In her own determination to get her son well, Karen has highlighted what many autism experts have been saying for years: that autism can be caused by many environment factors in our modern, polluted, chemically laden lives.

Not a single cause

Some two decades ago, after studying some 1200 children with ASD over 11 years, the Autism Research Unit at the University of Sunderland, concluded that one cause of autism is the action of peptides outside the brain and central nervous system.

These peptides result in effects that either cause opioid activity or help to break down the opioid peptides that occur naturally within the central nervous system. Natural opioid peptides affect all high cognitive functions, and when they are at an abnormal level, can completely disrupt most higher processes within brain, including emotion, perception, cognition, mood and behavior.

Back in those days, the ARU concluded that the culprit was the gut and a lack of certain enzymes needed to break down foods like gluten and dairy. Since then, other environmental insults, such as heavy metals, parasites or bacteria have been shown to also cause gut abnormalities, allowing these peptides to make it through to the brain.

Pesticides, repeated administration of antibiotics, antidepressants and epilepsy drugs given to the mother during pregnancy—all appear to damage the gut of developing babies and children, making them susceptible to ASD.

The latest research from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health shows that children with persistent gastro-intestinal (GI) symptoms such as regular constipation, food intolerance or diarrhea are more than twice as likely to be autistic.

So long as we focus attention on defending the MMR or seeking out a single culprit, we fail to shed any further light on all the aspects of modern industrialized life that are damaging our children.

As Karen Thomas showed, autism can be cured with a multi-pronged approach.  It’s time to stop debating and follow where the light is shining.



5 responses to “Light in the darkness”

  1. Karen says:

    Yes, I so agree!!!’

  2. Bruce Friedman says:

    April 2, 2019By Juliette Baumann
    Dr. Zach Bush MD is known for his breakthrough science which focuses on modern disease epidemics in addition to human health and longevity. He is one of the few triple board-certified physicians in the country. He and his colleagues are committed to bringing radical change to our countries big farming, big pharma and Western medicine industries.

    One epidemic that Dr. Zach Bush MD has committed much of his practice to is autism. In the year 2000, 1 in 50 children with the birth year of 1995 identified with autism spectrum disorder. As of 2014, 1 in 59 children with the birth year of 2006 identified with autism spectrum disorder according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.

    Dr. Zach Bush MD finds these new estimates alarming considering the United States is spending more money on health research than ever. The US spends more than $9,9523 / year per US citizen, yet the U.S life expectancy has fallen below Costa Rica, Estonia, and Poland. Dr. Zach Bush MD has his own explanations for the U.S being sicker than ever.

    Dr. Zach Bush MD believes the autism epidemic is just one element of our country’s chronic inflammation, manifesting in a range of diseases and conditions in all ages, from asthma to allergies. He believes the root cause of an increase in diseases, such as autism, is due to the intersection of human health and the global ecosystem and the bacterial within our soil that nourishes the plants and animals that we humans put into our bodies.

    Taking a look back into history, the last time our country faced a massive disease epidemic was during World War II. During this time big oil, big agriculture and big pharma companies came together in negative way. These companies worked together to produce a fertilizer which resulted in a significant decline in our nation’s health. This deadly fertilizer contained glyphosate, commonly known as RoundUp. This herbicide kills weeds and nutrients in our soil which made our nation sick. The contaminated soil deliberated the lack of diversity of bacteria in our gut which is necessary to absorb the nourishing properties of food we consume. These facts have lead Dr. Zach Bush MD on his mission to decrease our nations disease levels through the food we consume and how is it grown. He firmly believes that “we are pathetic in our health outcomes…running a tally of 3 trillion dollars per year of money wasted and seeing more epidemics than ever.”

    His look into the past lead him to his “aha” moment. The similarities in the past and today’s phenomenon lead him to realize that our food causes chronic inflammation and a loss of cell-cell communication. During the past decade, he and his team of scientists have identified the intestinal barrier between food and the immune system as the root of health and disease.

    The permeability of soil, food and our cells correlate with our overall health. Permeability is the measure of the soil’s ability to permit water to flow through its voids. The tight junctions in soil hold the billions of intestinal cells together that is responsible for keeping out unwanted nutrients and toxins, and let in insoluble fibers, large proteins, and carbs… These cell functions are the same ones that control the permeability of our blood vessels, kidney tubes and the blood-brain barrier.

    Zonulin is the human protein that solely regulates tight junction permeability. When the bodies Zonulin levels are low the cells cannot properly release white blood cells which go to the tissues to fight infection. This is known as a “leaky gut,” meaning smart cellular membranes have lost their autonomy and intelligence. According to Dr. Zach Bush, MD the loss of intelligence between cells is causing an increase in epidemics such as autism.

    To take charge of the epidemic, it starts with the gut. We have lost eco-diversity in our gut and probiotics are one solution to create a monoculture in our gut. Garden Life, his favorite brand recently brought a 24 species probiotic onto the shelf, yet it is not enough to have optimal cell function. To him, nature is the overall solution. Nature determines the impact of what we eat. Rich nature results in rich food. The community of fungi and bacteria in the food we eat promote better health which Dr. Zach Bush MD sees as the roof of our country’s inflammation issues, which result in a loss of microbiome and increased intestinal leak and the body’s ability to process the food we eat and adequately absorb the nutrients necessary to fight disease.

    With his finding Dr. Zach Bush MD’s new startup uBiome, focuses on ‘SmartGut™’ – the world’s first sequencing-based clinical screening test. This test helps users understand their gut health. A new era of gut and brain health has the potential to decrease the rise of autism in individuals along with other common issues such as anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.

  3. Judit says:

    I got this article from a friend who read my book on Autism. My case was similar to the one mentioned in this article, I truly believe autism is 'reversible' as well.
    My book can be found on Amazon as a kindle version:

    I found your article very very interesting indeed. Thank you for sharing.

  4. Check out Field Control Therapy, developed by Dr Yurkovsky.

    Different people can develop different "diseases" from the same Causes and the same "disease from different causes.
    He has a method of detecting which causes are affecting which organs/ systems.

  5. Judy-Anne Alexander says:

    When I was a child, (I am now 62) my father sold the house in town, moved us to a farm, grew our own organic vegetables, we had milk from our cows and eggs from the chicken coop. I did much better than in town, yet am still very much who I am, an autistic person. Good health is to be recommended for everyone, but physical health is just one of my challenges. Our society is an assault on everyone in it. Addiction, crime and mental illness are also the effects of modern culture, and the demand that I be normal is constant and absurd. There is nothing normal about a system that hurts everyone in it.

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