Are doctors to blame: Did years of antibiotics contribute to my son’s autism?

And could it be helped by probiotics?

The link between food and autism is unclear, with practitioners in the US more likely to make diet recommendations to parents of autistic kids, often suggesting a ban on dairy and wheat, with lactose and casein considered triggers for gut problems that are a feature of people with ASD. Yet UK doctors, in my experience, are much less likely to recommend diet changes in autism cases despite overwhelming evidence that links diet to behaviour.

This article establishes the link between ASD symptoms in mice and gut bacteria. It may take a leap to believe that a probiotic yoghurt drinks or supplements may help alter your ASD child’s behaviour (and I’m not convinced helping kids on the autism spectrum is that simple) But it certainly ties into theories that link microbiology and gut bacteria with a range of health conditions, including autism. So it’s got to be worth a go.

The fact is, what Jonah eats has a pronounced effect on his behaviour. 

Watching him eat his homemade birthday cake at his party on Saturday brought on mixed emotions. The Pokeball that Tom had lovingly constructed from sponge and icing brought Jonah out in a heart melting smile, although both Tom and I noticed noticed his teeth have begun to discolour – a disturbing reminder that I was taking tetracycline antibiotics for the first weeks of his pregnancy, and for years prior to his birth.

As he began to eat it, a noticeable change occurred, one that we’ve noticed time and time again after whenever he eats a concentration of sugar: he began to short circuit. It’s the only way to describe the behavioural shift the accompanies certain high GI food groups: his eyes went vacant, as if he’d just had a shot of morphine. He began to make less and less sense, gibbering wildly, looping around, his body mal-coordinated and floppy.

We do limit his sugar intake, without wishing to fuel a contraband habit, and have attempted a wheat and dairy ban but the results were mixed, and hard to keep up with as a school meal eater, so we abandoned the experiment at a pizza party, although to this day, Jonah chooses not to eat cheese or drink milk. But the real trigger for him seems to be sugar. It zombifies him, yet he craves it, whippet thin, and constantly hungry, almost like an addict.

A friend of mine who became a nutritionist made the connection years ago. Autism starts in the gut, she said.  And although I’m open to alternative approaches to medicine, I struggled to believe her. Jonah’s never had a bad gut, like many ASD sufferers, but the dietary affect on his behaviour has been noticeable since toddlerhood.

Around the same time we started to seriously consider and investigate the fact the that Jonah is on the autism spectrum, I began suffering with a mystery ailment. It started with skin rashes. Round my eyes, and in places normally reserved for thrush. My hair began to shed and I began to get tired, constantly. Eating would prompt a literal food coma, where I would have to stagger of the bed for unrefreshing sleep. The doctor’s prescribed anti-fungals, but the rashes never went.

My own internet research suggested Candida, a medically spurious gut based fungal infection often diagnosed vaguely by natropaths and one which my friend the nutritionist, had hinted to me about over the years much to my scepticism – basically thrush, but an internal imbalance responsible for a myriad health problems due to fermenting yeast in your guts)  But now, sick as a dog in a myriad vaguely symptomatic ways – the lethargy, the skin problems which got worse rather than better, the eczema like rashes, the food comas, it all started to make sense. The years of antibiotics I’d taken for acne had in all likelihood destroyed my microbiology. Although I stopped taking them the instant I knew I was pregnant, the damage to my internal flora was already done.

Ten weeks into the pregnancy I went to China on a journalism assignment and morning sickness hit. Unable to stomach the unidentified detritus swimming in a garlicky liquor that seems to be on the menu in every Shanghai hotel, I all but fasted on jasmine tea and watermelon. Three days of little by mouth, pink gunge started flooding out of me. In a panic, assuming miscarriage, I was rushed into hospital to be told what was coming out of me was thrush. Grim. I flew home after a long weekend in the land of the rising sun, relieved that it was nothing serious, and ashamed of the fuss I had made.

Later, my white-witchy private midwives warned of the danger of giving birth vaginally if you were suffering from thrush. Read here to find out how bacteria passed from a mother while giving birth vaginally can steer the health of your child.

Then, I was symptomless – after all, I’d done a course of Canesten combi, so I assumed all was well. The pregnancy progressed without a hitch. The only indicator that something was amiss was my ragged placenta which the midwives after delivery told me was as fibrous as if I’d smoked forty a day.

I breastfed Jonah on demand, and while a terrible sleeper – I blamed myself for not getting him into a routine, for having him in my bed as the midwives had suggested. Yet he hit his milestones and my fears about his pregnancy melted away. He was the first of our anti-natal group to sit up, walk, and then count, with a dedication that impressed, then disturbed me. Observers would comment on his seriousness, and then, as toddlerdom hit, Jonah began to smack, greeting other toddlers with a cheerful blow as a form of greeting and social call to arms.  He was late to potty train. His early fascination with words became wordplay and tangential remarks about scaffolding or traffic lights. His sorting play became obsessive lining up. I began to have my concerns.

But it wasn’t until Ava was born that I really became ill.

Stress and depression were triggered by Tom’s job loss towards the end of my pregnancy, and as much as Ava was an easy baby, Jonah took a turn for the worse. Amid little sleep, and nigh-on constant tantrums from Jonah, I hit a brick wall and entered therapy. My health – mental and physical – failed.

Months later, and tearing my hair out at my lack of energy and eczema that failed to heal despite numerous trips to a myriad doctors, my nutritionist friend suggested various diets and supplements to help me – I went on a zero sugar anti-Candida diet  –  sugar  feeds the fungus that depleted gut bacteria allows to grow, giving off toxins as the yeast ferments (the cause of my ragged placenta?)  My fatigue improved almost immediately and I promptly lost the ten extra pounds I’d carried since going on the pill at puberty – another failed measure to help my skin, but which would have upset my internal flora

Around the same time, I began looking into ways to help Jonah, who was in the process of being assessed for Asperger’s. Feeding him fish oils and yoghurt drinks and cutting back on sugar seemed an easy enough way to help redress whatever was going on with our microbiology, as I now suspected, at least in part, was to blame for whatever was ailing us.

For me, there are too many coincidences at play given my long-term antibiotic use, subsequent ill health and Jonah’s autism for the microbiology theory not make sense, but getting a health professional to listen to your concerns about diet and the effect of licensed medicines is akin to bashing one’s head against a brick wall. However, if you’re still sceptical, read this medical report into the effect of gastrointestinal microflora on late onset autism.

So, for those going it alone, this is my nutritionist friend’s recommended reading for anyone considering the effects of diet on their ASD children. The historic and holistic look at the effects of diet and medicine over the past half century are convincing enough for me. However, a word of warning: I do feel there is a whole industry dedicated to playing on people’s fears and selling snake oil for what is essentially an incurable genetic condition, so try not to be led by false hope, and pick your supplements wisely, if you choose to go down that route.

For anyone considering unpicking the damage, the GAPS diet eating plan may be hard to stick to for the recommended  two or so years it may take to get a damaged gut on an even keel, but as a rule of thumb, this nourishing diet of high quality protein and the typical anti-Candida fare low in grains and sugar is one to be referred back to whenever you feel your health, mental or physical may be bearing the strain of modern life, and one on which to base your child’s diet.

However, modern life makes it’s hard to keep all the checks and balances in place that keeps our fragile microbiology on an even keel. My recurrent thrush over a Christmas marked by excess has stiffened my resolved to cut back on sugar again, which has been creeping in in the form of alcohol, bread and the odd Christmas truffle. My daily Yakult (itself full of sugar, or sweeteners if you go for the ‘lite’ version, not to mention dairy) has been replaced by a shot of the considerably more wholesome though retch-inducing keffir, which is noticeably lacking in the noxious sweet stuff.

With Jonah, it’s more difficult. I try not to dictate his diet too much – it’s impossible anyway given his stubbornness, but try rather to sneak in the good stuff and keep tabs on the bad, but even then, he tends to wheedle out my attempts at hiding anything ‘good’ in his diet.

Making homemade meals means at least I can cut a lot of the crap out, but god knows what passes for breakfast at the school breakfast club – I baulk at the toast, spread and jam he no doubt guzzles, no doubt leading to a morning of inattention, but getting to work on time is the price I pay for loosening my grip on my insistence of almond milk porridge. But if the worst I can do is give him a Yakult before school, at least I know he might have a hope in hell of getting through the morning without flying off the handle or going into a post jam-on-toast sugar whitey.

We can but do our best, given the knowledge we have. It’s only by thinking like this I control the anger I harbour towards the medical community whose reckless prescription of antibiotics over many years has only made my skin worse, and have caused me years of worry, heartbreak and ill health, or so it seems.