Dr. Jeremy Baptist - Finding a Cure for Autism
Over the last 20 years, Dr. Baptist has developed a system for the successful treatment of autism and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD or ADHD). His discoveries are due to his investigative approach. Dr. Baptist is not only a practicing physician, but an outstanding scholar. He believes in searching out the real source of his patients’ problems even in difficult cases. His method of practice is to look for treatable causes. This approach is due to his rigorous training. In addition to an M.D., Dr. Baptist earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Chicago. By treating the causes, Dr. Baptist is able to alleviate the problems. In his private practice in Overland Park, Kansas, he has had remarkable success working with his patients and their parents to treat autism and ADHD.
Body1.com: I understand you’ve had considerable success with autistic patients. Could you tell me about one or two cases?
Dr. Baptist: One of the more complex cases I’ve had started working with me when he was four years old. When he started school, he was so hard to handle that he would have to be one on one with the teacher. He wouldn’t respond to anyone but his parents and would scream and throw a fit any time he was in a strange environment. The school would have to hire someone just to watch him, and they didn’t want to pay for it, so they refused to admit him. His parents had to hire a lawyer to force the school to accept him. Now he is 7 years old, and he has improved so much that on his last assessment the school wanted to declare him normal and mainstream him completely.
Most cases are more straightforward. There was one child who had autistic tendencies and a rash from the time she was born. She was very withdrawn and wouldn’t look at people. When she was a month old, her mother brought her in. From history and experience we were able to determine the child was allergic to milk. When we took her off milk (by telling the nursing mother not to eat any milk products), the child improved. Now she is 10 months old, happy and outgoing, and developing normally.
Body1.com: How is it you get such good results? How is your approach to autism different?
Dr. Baptist: The conventional wisdom is that autism happens when something goes wrong in a child’s development. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that autism is basically a toxic encephalopathy—a toxin damaging the brain. Those toxins can come from any number of things. Common causes of autism include food allergy, yeast infections, other bacterial infections and metabolic imbalance.
Body1.com: How did you discover these causes of autism?
Dr. Baptist: It was actually serendipitous that I got into the treatment of autism. I found when I treated hayfever in autistic adults, their autism improved. So that’s how I discovered the connection between allergy and autism.
At that point I began to research autism. Although all the medical journals treated it as a pervasive developmental disorder, there was mention of some cases in which teenagers or even a 30-year-old man developed autism. So that made me wonder if it might be something else, not a developmental disorder. Whatever the cause, it might be more common in young children simply because they are more susceptible.
Body1.com: But how could allergy or infection cause autism?
Dr. Baptist: As I said, the basic cause of autism is toxins damaging the brain. So where do those toxins come from?
Some come from food. Some of the common allergies in autistic children are to milk and grain. Dr. Reichelt in Norway and Dr. Cady in Florida found peptides in the urine of autistic children. These peptides were digestive by-products of milk and grain. What they found is that many of these peptides had opiod (drug-like) properties. So that explained why eating milk or grain would “space out” autistic children.
Food allergy can also contribute to the other causes of autism. Some of the common symptoms of allergy are a stuffy nose and blocked ears. This congestion creates a breeding ground for infection. Many normal children become autistic after a series of infections. One common example is the child who has a chronic ear infection and develops autism. The infection is almost always treated with antibiotics. If the child is on antibiotics for a long time, it kills the normal bacteria in the gut and creates the right environment for other opportunistic infections which put off toxins.
For example, a yeast infection often develops. I have found that many patients with autism are also sensitive to yeast. A colleague, Dr. William Shaw, developed a test for detecting yeast organic acids. This test shows that the levels of yeast organic acids in my autistic patients are often significantly higher than normal. These organic acids are toxic. So I realized this was another likely cause of autism.
Under the same circumstances, unusual bacteria may also grow in the gut. Clostridia bacteria is often one of the culprits for bacterial infection in autistic patients. Clostridia is a family of anaerobic bacteria that have some of the most poisonous toxins known to man. Dr. Shaw has also developed a test for the organic acids these clostridia put out. Some autistic patients have very high levels of this organic acid—about 2-3 times the normal level. This means they have a clostridia infection putting off toxins which then interfere with their nervous system and immune function.
So essentially, allergy and chronic infections weaken the body’s natural defenses and set the stage for more serious infections that produce the toxins that cause autism.
Body1.com: You’ve worked with thousands of patients over the years. How does knowing the causes help patients with autism?
Dr. Baptist: The point is all these are treatable causes. Treat the food allergies. Treat the infection. Vitamins and other supplements are also helpful in most patients. The hardest thing to treat right now is still viral infection, but Secretin helps in some patients.
Secretin is a hormone which affects the pancreas and the brain that helps in about 75% of autism cases. It is a chicken and egg question right now whether the pancreatic function in autistic children is low originally and that is why these toxins develop, or whether the toxins lower pancreatic function. What hormones that affect the pancreas do is help the gut break down foods better. If the gut breaks down foods better, it cuts down the amount of the peptides which “drug” the kids. It also cuts down the allergens. Studies have shown that when molecules are very small, they cannot cause an allergic reaction. So if the gut can break food down well enough, it won’t be allergenic.
Body1.com: What kind of outcome can parents expect?
Dr. Baptist: The amount of improvement depends on the severity of the case and the length of time the child has been autistic, in other words, the amount of damage already done. The younger the child, the better the outcome is likely to be.
This doesn’t mean nothing can be done for older patients. I have seen improvements in 20 and 30 year old autistic adults, to the point that they could live in their own apartments instead of an assisted-living facility.
Still, the earlier autism is caught and stopped, the more complete the resolution will be.
Body1.com: What can the parents do?
Dr. Baptist: The key to beating autism is for the parents to work with their doctor toward a solution. First they need to find a doctor who will work on the source of the problem, not just the symptoms. Then it is crucial to follow the program outlined carefully. The parents’ efforts will make or break the child’s progress. Eliminating the causes of autism may require changes in eating habits, activities, or other lifestyle issues. This is a challenge. It requires a real effort, but the proof of the program is the child’s improvement. If the program isn’t followed carefully, the child can’t get well.
