The Importance of Detox in Autism Treatment

Pointing the finger to mercury’s central role in the creation of autism spectrum disorders does not discount other possible causes of autism, or a general theory that includes a multitude of causes, which over the long run weaken children to the point where the toxic overload from chemicals in vaccines is just too much to handle.

Doctors have consistently found in autism a combination of conditions including severe intestinal dysbiosis, systemic fungal and viral infections, mineral deficiencies, abnormal serotonin levels and an abundance of toxic materials including pesticides other chemicals, mercury and other heavy metals. Autistic children are suffering from a heavy metal instigated gut and brain infections that create neurological dysfunctions. A fungal infection in the body of an expecting mother can become more acute as blood sugar levels naturally go up. All infections in the mother’s blood are passed to her baby.

From a parents perspective, with neurological and learning disorders affecting almost one in five children today, it is safe to say there is nothing more important than opening awareness to all the possible factors that are impacting so strongly to affect so many children in this way. The price of oblivion or medical ignorance is just too high when you think of all the suffering and lost opportunity through lost neurological potential. And with the medical profession so ready to step in and force us to drug and further poison our children if they are not hitting benchmark learning and behavior levels, literally we have an emergency situation that no parent can afford to ignore.

Autism is upon us because it’s the outcome of the 50-year experiment of dousing every living being with an overload of toxic substances, including vaccines.– Dr. Gregory Ellis

Dr. Charles Parker says, “If we do any work with Autism Spectrum Disorder, we really must know gut physiology. The leaky gut syndrome is the name given to a very common health disorder in which the basic organic defect (lesion) is an intestinal lining which is more permeable (porous) than normal. The abnormally large spaces present between the cells of the gut wall allow the entry of toxic material into the bloodstream that would, in healthier circumstances, be repelled and eliminated. The gut becomes leaky in the sense that bacteria, fungi, parasites and their toxins, undigested protein, fat and waste normally not absorbed into the bloodstream in the healthy state, pass through a damaged, hyperpermeable, porous or “leaky gut.” You can be leaky with leaking fecal material into your peritoneal cavity. Constipation or diarrhea, it doesn’t matter, that bowel, the first line sewage treatment plant, is rusty if not broken.”

When fungi become systemic from gut inflammation and the overuse of antibiotics, you can see how the whole body–again, the eyes, liver, gallbladder, muscles and joints, kidneys, and skin–becomes involved in inflammatory bowel disease.– Dr. Dave Holland

This is why babies are being born today with systemic fungal infection. When this happens, yeast is in the baby’s gut. Studies show that yeast in the amniotic fluid can paralyze the gut wall, so babies are in turn constipated at birth. This can be serious because the baby won’t have the ability to eliminate inherited toxins – including metals, like mercury. It is difficult to decide what comes first the mercury or the fungal infection but these fungal infections lead to more difficulties with elimination of heavy metals like lead and mercury. Many children are born at risk for autism because they lack a healthy inner ecosystem at birth, lack the glutathione which removes the poisons from the cells.

The number of children in Britain with autism is higher than previously thought.  An unpublished study, carried out by researchers at Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, found that one in 58 children may have some form of the condition.[1]

Medical scientists at Arizona State University tell us that antibiotic use is known to almost completely inhibit excretion of mercury in rats due to alteration of gut flora. Thus, higher use of oral antibiotics in the children with autism may have reduced their ability to excrete mercury. Higher usage of oral antibiotics in infancy may also partially explain the high incidence of chronic gastrointestinal problems in individuals with autism. Many physicians are unaware of lasting adverse effects caused by routinely prescribed medications such as antibiotics. Antibiotic therapy for minor colds and runny noses is a common practice. People routinely receive multiple courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics throughout life or are injected with long-acting corticosteroid medicine for joint or muscle pain. Once established, sub-clinical colonization with yeast in the body may persist unrecognized for many years. Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, can greatly increase yeast in the colon after only a few days.

The extensive use of antibiotics will make the condition of Candida much worse because it reduces heavy metal excretion, which is a food source for the yeast like organism and also killing the beneficial bacteria at the same time.

Dr. Elmer Cranton says that, “Yeast overgrowth is partly iatrogenic (caused by the medical profession) and can be caused by antibiotics and cortisone medications. A diet high in sugar also promotes overgrowth of yeast. A highly refined and chemicalized diet now common in industrialized nations not only promotes growth of yeast, but is also deficient in many of the essential vitamins and minerals needed by the immune system. Chemical colorings, flavorings, preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, etc., add more to stress on the immune system.”

Children with autism had significantly (2.1-fold) higher levels of mercury in their baby teeth but similar levels of lead and similar levels of zinc. Children with autism also had significantly higher usage of oral antibiotics during their first 12 to 36 months of life. [2]

Reporting in the July 11, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers say the use of antibiotics as prevention boosts risks for drug resistance while doing nothing to shield kids from future urinary tract infections (UTIs). Giving antibiotics to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections in small children not only will not help but will hurt these children. Prior use of antibiotics to prevent infection did boost the likelihood of developing a drug-resistant infection by nearly 7.5 times. Indeed, 61 percent of recurrent urinary tract infections were caused by a pathogen with antibiotic resistance, the researchers pointed out. The American Academy of Pediatrics hopefully will pay attention to these findings and begin to push their physicians away from their obsession with antibiotics.

In 2005 a study the antibiotic Augmentin TM has been implicated in the formation of autism. The study strongly suggests the possibility of ammonia poisoning as a result of young children taking Augmentin. Augmentin has been given to children since the late 1980?s for bacterial infections.[3]

Many physicians seem to be unaware that both pregnancy and birth control pills comprised of the hormones estrogen and progesterone can also make the body more susceptible to fungal infections.  If antibiotics are prescribed it acts as a double whammy to ensuring a fungal infection will take hold by diminishing the protective bacteria in the intestines. Many pregnant women seek medical treatment for minor problems and are indiscriminately given antibiotics, since doctors today have little care or equipment to identify proper causative agents.

Microforms poison us with their waste products. The waste products are acetylaldehyde, uric acid, alloxin, alcohols, lactic acid, etc.

Antibiotics may be to blame for hundreds of children developing autism after having the controversial MMR jab. More than two-thirds of youngsters with the condition received four or more antibiotics in their first year, a British survey has revealed. It is thought the drugs weakened their immune systems, leaving them unable to withstand the impact of the triple jab. Allopathic medicine has been stubborn and slow to look at the almost suicidal use of antibiotics. With last-line-of-defence antibiotics failing on increasingly drug-resistant superbugs and young childrens systems being destroyed by them you would think they would wake up and find some alternatives.

Dr. Jill James of the University of Arkansas School of Medicine has documented a unique metabolic profile in 95 autistic children with regressive autism.[4] Regressive autism is a form of the disease in which children develop normally for a certain period before losing previously acquired language or behaviors and being diagnosed with autism. The metabolic profile in the James study children manifests as a severe imbalance in the ratio of active to inactive glutathione in autistic children, compared to a group of healthy control children. Glutathione, a potent antioxidant, is the body’s most important tool for detoxifying and excreting metals and its production in the body is dependent on good nutrition.

The James study shows that children with regressive autism have consistently elevated levels of oxidative stress as compared to normal healthy children. Individuals with reduced glutathione antioxidant capacity will be under chronic oxidative stress and will be more vulnerable to toxic compounds that act primarily through oxidative damage, including mercury.

Autistic children and children with other autistic spectrum disorders had significantly lower plasma concentrations of Mg than normal subjects.[5]– Dr. M. Strambi

A case can easily be made that substitutes what allopathic medicine considers background genetic disposition for nutritional deficiencies. According to Dr. Ellen Grant, nearly all the autistic children tested at Biolab had zinc, copper, SODase and magnesium deficiencies. We know that mercury displaces essential elements like magnesium, selenium, zinc and copper from cells causing disruptions of enzyme systems in the process. So we can expect, when we correct nutritional deficiencies, that we will see a reversal in symptoms. So for instance a double-blind administration of 200 mg elemental magnesium per day to 25 children produced measurable decrease in hyperactivity over 6 months compared to control.[6]

Magnesium deficiency measured in 95% of 116 Polish children with ADHD: 78% low hair, 59% low RBC’s, 34% low serum.[7]

Serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies weaken the immune system and lead to developmental problems independently of other factors. This is a crucial point that was made after the deaths from encephalopathy of two Israeli infants who were exclusively fed a soya formula made in Germany that lacked vitamin B1 (thiamin).[8] A recent documentary on these children show the most seriously disabled staring into space and barely able to move. While some babies being treated are improving, others seem to be irreversibly damaged with several of them feeling no pain and never able to cry. Complete nutrition is crucial for neurological development and function and any kind of nutritional deficiency will weaken children leaving them more vulnerable to diseases of all kinds.

Naturally some children would be better mercury eliminators than others, and some kids just can stand higher levels of toxicity without falling apart. Most of medicine and science is geared to examining toxic influences and not deficiency disorders. Deficiencies in basic minerals like magnesium and selenium can make all the difference between health and disease, between being able to withstand chemical attack and not. Constant low level mercury stress in the body will diminish selenium because of the high affinity between these two elements and this is a big problem because of diminished glutathione production when selenium is not available.

Magnesium permits calcium to enter a nerve cell to allow electrical transmission along the nerves to and from the brain. Even our thoughts, via brain neurons, are dependent on magnesium.– Dr. Carolyn Dean

There are over 200 published clinical studies[9] documenting the need for magnesium and many examples of miraculous “cures” from the use of this common mineral. Yet DAN (Defeat Autism Now) doctors underestimate autistic children’s needs recommending only 50 mgs twice a day in oral form even though children with gut problems can absorb only small percentages through their intestines. The entire autism community needs to be acutely aware that its present dependency on oral magnesium supplementation is responsible for a sizable cause of less then excellent results from chelation. A complete changeover to transdermal/topical approaches to magnesium supplementation is called for.

When dealing with autism spectrum and other neurological disorders in children it is important to know the signs of low magnesium: restless, can’t keep still, body rocking, grinding teeth, hiccups, noise sensitive, poor attention span, poor concentration, irritable, aggressive, ready to explode, easily stressed. When it comes to children today we need to assume a large magnesium deficiency for several reasons. 1) The foods they are eating are stripped of magnesium because foods in general, as we shall see below are declining in mineral content in an alarming way. 2) The foods many children eat are highly processed junk foods that do not provide real nutrition to the body. 3) Because most children on the spectrum are not absorbing the minerals they need even when present in the gut. Magnesium absorption is dependent on intestinal health, which is compromised totally in leaky gut syndromes and other intestinal problems that the majority of autism syndrome disorders. 4) Because the oral supplements doctors rely on are not easily absorbed, because they are not in the right form and because magnesium in general is not administered easily orally.

Evidence is mounting that low levels of magnesium contribute to the heavy metal deposition in the brain that precedes Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s. Many of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can be overcome with high magnesium supplementation. In a trial with 30 epileptics 450 mg of magnesium supplied daily successfully controlled seizures. Another study found that the lower the magnesium blood levels the more severe was the epilepsy. In most cases magnesium works best in combination with vitamin B6 and zinc.

Because of its nerve and muscle support, magnesium is helpful for nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, depression, and muscle cramps. Thus magnesium is also given as part of a treatment for autism or hyperactivity in kids. Dr. Bernard Rimland, of the Autism Research Institute, did extensive research on vitamin B6 and magnesium many years ago and found, through double-blind placebo-controlled crossover experiments with 16 autistic children, statistically significant results. For most children dosage levels of B6 ranged between 300 mg and 500 mg per day. Children and adults tend to sleep better when taking magnesium before bed.

The involvement of free radicals in tissue injury induced by Mg deficiency[10] causes an accumulation of oxidative products in heart, liver, kidney, skeletal muscle tissues and in red blood cells.[11] Magnesium is a crucial factor in the natural self-cleansing and detoxification responses of the body. It stimulates the sodium potassium pump on the cell wall and this initiates the cleansing process in part because the sodium-potassium-ATPase pump regulates intracellular and extracellular potassium levels. Cell membranes contain a sodium/potassium ATPase, a protein that uses the energy of ATP to pump sodium ions out of the cell, and potassium ions into the cell. The pump works all of the time, like a bilge pump in a leaky boat, pumping K+ and Na+ in and out, respectively.

Potassium regulation is of course crucial because potassium acts as a counter flow for sodium’s role in nerve transmission. The body must put a high priority on regulating the potassium of the blood serum and this becomes difficult when magnesium levels become deficient.[12] Because of these crucial relationships, when magnesium levels become dramatically deficient we see symptoms such as convulsions, gross muscular tremor, atheloid movements, muscular weakness, vertigo, auditory hyperacusis, aggressiveness, excessive irritability, hallucinations, confusion, and semicomma. A magnesium deficiency can cause the body to lose potassium and this our bodies cannot afford. Within the cell wall is a sodium pump to provide a high internal potassium and a low internal sodium. Magnesium and potassium inside the cell assist oxidation, and sodium and calcium outside the cell wall help transmit the energy produced. The healthy cell wall favors intake of nutrients and elimination of waste products.

Magnesium protects cells from aluminum, mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium and nickel, which explains why re-mineralization is so essential for heavy metal detoxification and chelation. Magnesium protects the cell against oxyradical damage and assists in the absorption and metabolism of B vitamins, vitamin C and E, which are anti-oxidants important in cell protection. Recent evidence suggests that vitamin E enhances glutathione levels and may play a protective role in magnesium deficiency-induced cardiac lesions.[13] Magnesium in general is essential for the survival of our cells but takes on further importance in the age of toxicity where our bodies are being bombarded on a daily basis with heavy metals. Magnesium protects the brain from toxic effects of chemicals. It is highly likely that low total body magnesium contributes to heavy metal toxicity in children and is a strong participant in the etiology of learning disorders.

Without sufficient magnesium, the body accumulates toxins and acid residues, degenerates rapidly, and ages prematurely. Recent research has pointed to low glutathione levels being responsible for children’s vulnerability to mercury poisoning from vaccines.[14] It seems more than reasonable to assume that low levels of magnesium would also render a child vulnerable. And in fact we find out that glutathione requires magnesium for its synthesis.[15] Glutathione synthetase requires ?-glutamyl cysteine, glycine, ATP, and magnesium ions to form glutathione.[16] In magnesium deficiency, the enzyme y-glutamyl transpeptidase is lowered.[17] Data demonstrates a direct action of glutathione both in vivo and in vitro to enhance intracellular magnesium and a clinical linkage between cellular magnesium, GSH/GSSG ratios, and tissue glucose metabolism.[18] Magnesium deficiency causes glutathione loss, which is not affordable because glutathione helps to defend the body against damage from cigarette smoking, exposure to radiation, cancer chemotherapy, and toxins such as alcohol and just about everything else.

Impaired antioxidant production provides a common rationale for many disparate features of autistic disorders.

According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, low magnesium is associated with dramatic increases in free radical generation as well as glutathione depletion and this is vital since glutathione is one of the few antioxidant molecules known to neutralize mercury.[19] Thus, sadly, children receiving thimerosal containing vaccines are sitting ducks to mercury when both magnesium and glutathione levels are low. Also under the shadow of magnesium deficiency too much Nitric Oxide (NO) is produced which in turn may react with superoxide to form a very damaging compound peroxynitrite. Low magnesium levels can induce such excessive NO production that even the glutathione in the red blood cells is damaged. These could provide some possible explanations for why magnesium seems to protect the arteries.[20]

“For every molecule of pesticide that your body’ detoxifies, you throw away or use up forever, a molecule of glutathione, magnesium and more,” says Dr. Sherry Rogers who goes on to say that, “Your body uses nutrients to make this glutathione and it uses up energy as well. Every time we detoxify a chemical, we use up, lose, throw away forever, a certain amount of nutrients.”

Magnesium permits calcium to enter a nerve cell to allow electrical transmission along the nerves to and from the brain. Even our thoughts, via brain neurons, are dependent on magnesium.– Dr. Carolyn Dean

“Magnesium deficiency in children is characterized by excessive fidgeting, anxious restlessness, psychomotor instability and learning difficulties in the presence of normal IQ,” said Dr. Mildred Seelig. Magnesium is an essential mineral that plays a major role in the functioning of the musculoskeletal system. Magnesium allows the muscles to relax and decreases the discomforts associated with muscle cramping. Magnesium provides a calming effect that allows for deeper relaxation and better sleep. Magnesium is considered the “antistress” mineral. It is a natural tranquilizer which functions to relax skeletal muscles as well as the smooth muscles of blood vessels and the gastrointestinal tract.

How many doctors relate the increased accumulation of mercury in the body to deficiencies in magnesium? The cause and cure of many physical illnesses can be as simple as correcting a magnesium deficiency and many of the problems with mercury chelation can be reduced when a person is given sufficient magnesium. Everyone knows that chelation wastes minerals yet few have investigated sufficiently the key mineral whose loss cannot be tolerated without unacceptable risk.

Pupils with mental handicap should be provided with magnesium preparations because their effects are highly positive.[21]

Magnesium is very important for phase one detoxification and it, along with other minerals like zinc, displaces toxic heavy metals from the body. Magnesium is a crucial factor in the natural self-cleansing and detoxification responses of the body. Thus it is reasonable to assume that low levels of magnesium would render a child vulnerable to mercury mobilization during chelation.

Dr. Frederica P. Perera, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) is a leader in the field of molecular epidemiology. Molecular epidemiology is a relatively new discipline, which merges highly sophisticated laboratory techniques with epidemiologic methods. This approach uses biomarkers in human tissue as indicators of potential risk of cancer and other diseases — hence as a tool in disease prevention. Susceptibility due to nutritional deficiencies is a primary interest of Dr. Perera. According to Dr. Sherry Rogers, Perera has indicated that there is as much as a 500-fold difference in the ability of individuals to detoxify the same chemical. One of the key markers of this difference is each individual’s magnesium level. Deficiencies in magnesium will wreck havoc with almost any detoxification and chelation program.

The therapeutic value of magnesium as a transdermal application reaches well beyond the potential of dietary magnesium. Transdermal therapy effetively saturates the tissues, delivering high amounts of magnesium to where we need it most, directly into circulation.

Inflammation is the missing link to explain the role of magnesium in many pathological conditions.

Increases in extracellular magnesium concentration cause a decrease in the inflammatory response while reduction in the extracellular magnesium results in cell activation. Inflammation causes endothelial dysfunction and activated endothelium facilitates adhesion and migration of cancer cells.[22] Dr. A. Mazur et al[23] have shown in experimentally induced magnesium deficiency in rats that after only a few days a clinical inflammatory syndrome develops and is characterized by leukocyte (white blood cell) and macrophage activation, release of inflammatory cytokines and excessive production of free radicals. “Magnesium deficiency induces a systemic stress response by activation of neuro endocrinological pathways,” writes Dr. Mazur. “Magnesium deficiency contributes to an exaggerated response to immune stress and oxidative stress is the consequence of the inflammatory response,” he continued.

There are many ways to calm a person, many healing and medical treatments that can reduce stress, reduce sensory overload, slow the heart and help a person center. The most beautiful forms of touch possible are actually healing techniques and this is what professional massage therapists’ true aim is, to heal through touch. Many studies have demonstrated that for all mammals, receiving touch that is pleasurable, safe and appropriate reduces sickness, depression and aggressive behaviors. Thus massage has its application in both therapy and medicine.

One powerful way we can take massage onto the level of medical treatment is combining massage techniques with transdermal magnesium chloride treatments.The skin provides the best avenue into the body for many drugs. When it comes to magnesium we have a method in our hands that is similar in effect to intravenous magnesium treatments that are used to save peoples’ lives in emergency rooms. We just use the magnesium oil like we would our massage oils, or create a special blend mixing them together.

What a few can do with intravenous magnesium injections everyone can do with transdermal magnesium.

Transdermal administration of magnesium bypasses processing by the liver and creates “tissue saturation”, the ability to get the nutrients where we want them, directly in the circulation, where they can reach body tissues at high doses, without loss. Combined with tissue manipulation that occurs during massage, the blood is also brought closer to the surface of the skin thus allowing faster absorption of magnesium chloride into the cells.

In the final analysis there is no single medicine or nutritional agent that has the power to both treat and prevent disease like magnesium. The proof is rock-solid and new studies are coming out every week to sustain this medical position. It behoves us all to bring up our magnesium to optimal levels and keep them there and to pay attention to the same in our children. Magnesium acts as a general cell tonic while it reduces inflammation and systemic stress. Equally it is important in overall energy (ATP) production, hormonal and enzyme production and function, and just about everything else in biological life.