RE: Please Help...Looking for nutrition for Autistic Son...Using soy now...

[Guest guest]

>Conversely, mercury (and other metals) throw off the enzyme systems in the

>body and make it difficult to digest foods that a person would normally be

>able to digest if there were no mercury in their system. As well, mercury

>often causes candida overgrowth, which in turn causes digestion issues, as

>you know. I keep hearing reports from some of the authors/health

>professionals that deal with mercury poisoning, that their patients candida

>issues clear up after their amalgams have been removed. I've also read in a

>few places that candida is actually the body's " survival " response to

>mercury overload because it binds it.

>

>Also, I'm not sure what you mean by IgA allergies throwing off metal

>balances in the body, but I don't see how that's relevant to mercury

>toxicity. Mercury simply needs to be *removed* not rebalanced.

Well, mainly what I'm saying is it's a chicken and egg problem,

and probably not one that can be resolved without a whole lot of

studies. But in the Mad Cow writup by Purdey, he was saying that

lack of copper causes another metal (I forget which) to be used

in the nervous system, which causes prions (I'm probably misquoting

badly, but that was the general gist). When one metal is misused, it

tends to throw the others off.

Now, no one knows exactly why, but folks with IgA issues tend to do

weird things with calcium, magnesium, and other metals. Like, they get

calcium deposits in their brains but don't have enough in their bones.

I'm speculating that if those metals are thrown off, there will be empty spots

where the mercury can 'glom' where it shouldn't, plus the detox chemicals

that would normally remove it might not be functioning correctly.

>No doubt food is elemental in all this. But my question is what turns a

>*predisposition* into a reality?

I'm unclear exactly of what we are discussing. I see 4

possibilities:

1. Is mercury a necessary requirement for gluten intolerance?

2. Is mercury a sufficient requirement for gluten intolerance?

3. Is mercury a factor in gluten intolerance?

4. If you removed all the mercury from the world, would existing

gluten intolerance go away?

So, #3 first:

3. Is mercury a factor in gluten intolerance?

I've read about 20 candidates (all well thought out and with good

evidence!) for what turns a " predisposition " into a reality. Mercury

would be the 21st. I'm not sure there is " one " factor in most of these

things. But I can easily see it might be a factor.

1. Is mercury a necessary requirement for gluten intolerance?

My bottom line are still the paleo studies and Price's work.

In ALL of Price's studies, tribes started degenerating after about 20

years of exposure to " modern food " . In many of those cases, you

have to assume that they didn't eat JUST modern food ... it was imported

and so probably more expensive than the local food, I doubt it

displaced everything (and it still hasn't in most of the world). Obviously

we don't know that his natives had IgA intolerance to wheat, but

given some modern studies it is likely that this was at least one

of the factors that caused their health to degenerate.

So, if you are arguing that mercury causes people to become reactive

to wheat, then either:

1. The " modern food " they were getting contained mercury.

2. Their local food contained mercury and the modern food

stopped them from processing the mercury.

3. The " modern food " triggered something independently of

anything else.

Now, since the genes that are involved in IgA wheat intolerance

die out consistently when a culture eats wheat, then again,

if mercury is required for the allergy to develop, then in every

culture where that gene died out, there must have been high

mercury exposure. I find that unlikely.

As to the question of " CAN mercury cause the allergy to

develop " ... sure. And so can about 20 other factors, like

I said. One biggie seems to be breastfeeding ... probably

probiotic exposure in infants too, which mercury can

affect (and so do a lot of other things).

2. Is mercury a sufficient requirement for gluten intolerance?

I'd say again, clearly not, because in some places there is

a high overall dosage of mercury but people seem to

tolerate it or excrete it. There seems to be a highly

variable tolerance to mercury, as you noted. Also because

IgA gluten intolerance is highly genetically linked.

4. If you removed all the mercury from the world, would existing

gluten intolerance go away?

Again, since there is no reason to believe the mercury was a factor

in a lot of the gluten intolerance, there is no reason to believe that

if mercury miraculously disappeared that the gluten intolerance

would go away.

As to whether an individual could be " cured " ... that is one of

those really, really controversial issues. Mainly because in the

past it was commonly thought that celiac could be cured, and it

turned out that it just went underground to cause problems

later. Since there is NO definitive test to prove a person is NOT

gluten intolerant, it would be impossible at this point to prove

a person is " cured " . All you can show is that a person is

asymptomatic. Which, for some people, might be enough. For

me, the downside risk is too high ... once a person develops

one of the associated autoimmune diseases, getting full

functionality back might not happen (Does my pancreas

work as well as it would have if I had STAYED GF when I

was 25 and thought I was cured? Probably not).

>I agree, although they may be interrelated in ways we're not aware of. I

>wonder if mercury or IgA allergies interfere with the parents' gene

>expression?

Absolutely I think they do. If not directly, then it seems to be clear

that lack of absorption (of, say, zinc) does effect progeny for multiple

generations. The problem with these things is that they affect so many

of the body systems that it's hard to figure out the chain of causality.

IgA intolerance doesn't cause many problems *directly* ... it's the lack

of absorption and the formation of autoimmune antibodies and the

dysbiosis that cause problems.

>But it already is among those who remove mercury from their kids! Parents

>are removing mercury from their_kids and some of these kids are no longer

>being classified as autistic. The whole mercury-autism connection is not

>simply theoretical - mercury removal to cure autism is already being done

>successfully. Again, I don't know what percent of kids are being " cured " by

>mercury removal, but some are. In fact, I believe there are many people -

>children AND adults whose chronic and degenerative diseases have disappeared

>after mercury removal (I keep reading about it anyways, and it's the reason

>I'm having my amalgams removed). I'm reading a book by Tom Warren now for

>example, " Reversing Chronic Disease " , and he cured his Alzheimer's disease

>by removing his amalgams and other sources of mercury in his environment

But they are being " cured " by multiple other cures too. Again, it's not

clear what is going on. A lot of people are taking a shotgun approach

to getting themselves well ... for good reasons ... and it works in a lot

of cases, but there isn't enough info to say exactly WHY it works. Like

I " cured " myself once by going on a Cliff Sheats diet, then I cured myself

by going on another diet, and I cured myself by taking probiotics ... they

all WORKED but without knowing why I couldn't STAY cured for more

than a few years.

For some people, the amalgams may be " the " issue. And I've certainly

read of enough cures where people cured themselves by removing

some one other thing (meat, going macrobiotic, going on Atkins, moving

out from under power lines). But when that happens, you can only

guess as to what is going on without a lot of rigorous studies.

People have to do what they can to get healthy, and eventually

the sum of all the people experimenting is a sort of computer that

churns out an answer that changes culture ... a new paradigm emerges.

Amalgams are likely on their way out anyway, for cosmetic reasons

if nothing else. (It really is interesting that when vanity comes into

play, people REALLY change fast, where they will often shrug off health

benefits).

>

>>IgA immune reactions ONLY happen if you have the genes for it, is

>>my understanding.

>

>Really? Then what type of allergy is it if a person with the NON gluten

>sensitive genes develops anti-gliadin antibodies?

IgE or IgG. There are also IgM and IgH, I think, but I don't know anything

about them. None of them are well studied. At the turn of the century,

ALL allergic reactions were thought to be " hysteric " ... i.e. mental problems.

So if you died from anaphalactic shock it was your mother's fault for

raising you to be too nervous. Most of what is called an " allergy " now

refers to IgE reactions, which are your inhalant and skin prick allergies,

they happen really fast. IgG allergies are in the blood, and are called

" delayed " allergies, and were just discovered in the '70s. The IgA allergies

were discovered about then too, but until recently I don't think they

were taken very seriously. IgE and IgG allergies are easy to test for,

and they seem to come and go. IgA antibodies are mainly in the gut, and

are difficult to measure without putting a tube down the gut (except

for Dr. Fines stool test, which is a great idea) because they don't

generally get into the blood until the person is very sick.

The IgA antibodies DO go away if a person avoids the allergen long

enough, or so it is said by the people who measure it in the blood. Dr.

Fine disagrees, and says you can't really avoid gluten enough to stop it

from being produced in low levels in the gut, but the levels DO drop

to the point where the IgA stops causing so many problems.

>

>>Exactly. Autistic and Asperger folks tend to have the IgA

>>intolerant HLA genes.

>

>The ones specific to gluten?

Right. Or so I believe I read somewhere, but I can't find it

now. If I had a kid with that issue though, I'd get the gene

test for them.

> >

>>But by " food allergies " do you mean IgA or IgG or IgE?

>

>I don't know. I'm still fairly new to this subject and only recall reading

>that it interferes with enzymes. So I'm guessing it may disrupt digestive

>enzymes, thus allowing intact or semi-intact proteins to go undigested. And

>it can cause candida overgrowth, all of which can lead to leaky gut, so

>maybe those intact proteins leak into the blood and are attacked as foreign

>proteins. I don't know WHICH type of allergy this is though - maybe you can

>comment? And again, this is my best guess based on what little reading I've

>done on the mercury-allergy connection to date.

I kind of doubt anyone knows at this point ... most of the testing currently

is skin prick (IgE) or ELISA testing (IgG). Both of which can be " fixed " , it

seems,

with better diet, probiotics etc. Personally I really, really doubt that the

IgA allergies will turn out to be fixable (tho everyone is hoping!) because

it seems to be the innate recognition system for virus/bacterial invasion.

To dampen them you have to dampen the entire immune system with

immune suppressors, which leads to other problems.

Getting the digestive system to DIGEST lectins or combining them with

foods that make them " unsticky " probably will help for most folks

though. My guess on wheat though it that eventually it will be

genetically modified to avoid the really problematic peptides, because

so many people want to eat it ...

>But how can an IgA allergy be " caused " by a gene, if 30% with that gene

>don't get the allergy? It would have to be 100% of the people having the

>gene also having the allergy for the gene to be the " cause " of the allergy.

>

>So mercury, or some other stressor has to come along for the predisposition

>to the allergy to actually *become* an allergy. I don't see it as chicken

>and egg then. you need both A (gene) plus B (stressor) to arrive at C (IgA

>allergy).

Well, the accepted chain of events is that you have a gene plus a trigger

that " turns on " the gene. As to the word " cause " ... now you get into

symantics that you can argue for weeks. In a quantum universe, there

is no such thing as " one cause " .

The " trigger " in the case of gluten intolerance is thought to be

exposure to gluten, or exposure to gluten WHILE the person has

an infection (bacteria or virus) or exposure to gluten while not

breast feeding. Anyway, if I had a kid who has the gene (which I

likely do!) my reaction would be to not expose them to gluten,

so that they don't get the super-reactive form of the disease

where they need to be so careful of everything for the rest

of their lives.

In genetics it gets really complicated anyway ... you do have one gene

that " causes " blue eyes, for instance, but most genes work interactively.

In the case of Autism they are thinking there are 15 or so genes

involved. In the case of T1 diabetes, it is clear that for a lot of kids,

it is probably " caused " by gluten in that if they never got gluten,

they wouldn't get T1 diabetes, but obviously the gene involved does

not cause T1 in ALL kids that have it. And the same train of events

goes for baby rats (where there are fewer " other factors " like immunizations

etc).

And some kids with T1 don't react to gluten at all. And not all baby

rats get T1 when exposed to gluten and casein. But removing gluten

from the diet of a person once they have T1 diabetes doesn't cure

them. Nor does it cure a rat once they've developed it (though lack

of exposure to gluten and casein prevents it).

There doesn't seem to be a strain of autism-prone rats though

to experiment on ... autism seems to be a really complicated

disease. A lot of people have had good results with lots of

different approaches ... I do know one kid who snapped out

of by learning sign language of all things (though I suspect he

grew up to be an Asperger kind of guy).

-- Heidi Jean