Your World and You: Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health – Issue 8 (Premium)
Environmental and Nutritional Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health
This feature highlights reports, studies, and feedback from readers on efforts that can make a positive impact in the quest for health. We invite you to share material with us that you think would be of interest to our readers.
Topics featured in this article:
- Kids with autism have more gastrointestinal complaints
- Tourette syndrome and leaky gut
- Antidepressants during pregnancy are linked to preterm birth
- Baking soda: not just for refrigerators!
1) Kids with autism have more gastrointestinal complaints
Many parents dealing with autism won’t find this to be news—but children with autism have more gastrointestinal complaints than peers who are developing normally.
New research published in Pediatrics (see abstract) indicate greater prevalence of GI symptoms among children with ASD compared with control children including abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation.
Advice from the Autism Reseach Institute has long included looking at the child with autism from a holistic angle, with interventions aimed to address biological imbalances. Much of the focus has been on the gastrointestinal system.
It is unfortunate that it has taken research many years to catch up, but this should lead to greater progress in treating autism.
2) Tourette syndrome and leaky gut
Our 8-year-old son was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. He is also being treated for leaky gut syndrome. I’m wondering about a connection between the two and also realize how counterproductive it would be for us to use a pharmacological approach to control the Tourette symptoms. He is not using drugs at this time.
