In this episode, I’m speaking with Julie Matthews, a Certified Nutrition Consultant and published researcher specializing in personalized nutrition for complex neurological conditions, particularly autism spectrum disorder and ADHD.
Julie has a new book that just came out a few days ago called The Personalized Autism Nutrition Plan. It’s a wonderful book if you’re the parent of a child struggling with neurodevelopmental conditions of any kind, including autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, or mood disorders.
If you have children, particularly children dealing with neurodevelopmental issues, I think you’re going to get a lot of value from this episode. Julie and I had a wonderful conversation, and she’s doing absolutely brilliant work.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Julie and I discuss:
- The highly contentious topic of the causes of autism spectrum disorders and whether they’re truly disorders or simply a range of neurological function
- Are rates of autism going up? Or is the condition more widely recognized because of increased awareness and diagnosis?
- What research tells us about the connection between where pregnant women live and autism rates in their children
- How Julie’s new book addresses the underlying causes of autism, along with ADHD, anxiety, and autoimmune diagnoses
- How a personalized diet can address genetics along with gut health, the microbiome, and mitochondrial function
- 3 factors Julie considers as she determines the best diet for an individual with autism
- Julie explains her research, including exciting findings on the effectiveness of diet and supplements compared to prescription medications
- The role of sulfation in autism and why some people with autism feel better on a low-salicylate diet
- The drawbacks of dietary restrictions, both physical and situational
- Tips on how to navigate elimination diets and food changes with very picky eaters
- The top foods that might be problematic for people with autism or ADHD
- Julie explores the biggest misconceptions about autism spectrum disorder
- The two diets Julie finds to be most beneficial to many of her clients with autism
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Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint podcast. With me in this episode is Julie Matthews, who is a certified nutrition consultant and published researcher specializing in personalized nutrition for complex neurological conditions, particularly autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. She’s been doing this for the last 20 years. She received her master’s degree in medical nutrition with distinction from Arizona State University, and she’s co-author of two research studies demonstrating the efficacy of nutrition and therapeutic diet interventions for autism spectrum disorder.
She has a brand new book that just came out a few days ago called The Personalized Autism Nutrition Plan. It’s this one right here, and it’s a wonderful book if you are the parent of a child struggling with neurodevelopmental conditions of any kind. I think you’ll get a lot of value from this, and particularly for autism spectrum disorder, but also for ADHD, for anxiety, and other neurodevelopmental conditions. Probably a lot of this, maybe less so some of the more extreme treatment diets, but more a lot of the general principles, is just great nutrition advice for raising kids in general.
If you have children, and particularly children who are dealing with neurodevelopmental issues, I think you’re going to get a lot of value from this. It’s a wonderful conversation, and Julie is doing absolutely wonderful and brilliant work. With no further ado, enjoy this conversation with Julie Matthews. Julie, welcome to the show.
Julie Matthews: Thank you so much.
The role of nutrition in autism spectrum disorder
Ari: I want to ask you, first and foremost, a very contentious, almost radioactive question, which is– We’re going to jump straight into this, no beating around the bush. In talking about your work here, and the role of nutrition in autism, and in neurodevelopmental disorders, before we can get there, there’s some groundwork that has to be laid, some foundation that has to be laid, in terms of understanding the paradigm of what even causes autism spectrum disorder. How do people get this?
There’s another layer to this story, which is, some people don’t even want to conceptualize it as a medical disorder, or as some type of dysfunction, but as part of the normal range of how human brains can operate, and therefore are resistant to the idea of even trying to treat it with anything, with nutrition, with drugs, with whatever. How do you navigate that, again, somewhat radioactive territory of discussing the causes and the role of different types of treatments in helping people with these neurodevelopmental wirings?
Julie: There’s a couple things. I do think there is a concept of neurodiversity, and there are some people that their brains work a little differently, and they function fine in the world. What I’m talking about is a higher level of more significant autism, where they have chronic diarrhea, where they might still be in diapers at 16 years old, where they are in such pain that they’re banging their head on the furniture, where there’s significant suffering, and an inability to really have a good quality of life.
That’s more of what I’m thinking. If you function well in the world, and everything is going pretty well, and you just think a little differently, there still might be wonderful things you can do. We all can take care of our health with better nutrition. What I’m really wanting to help are the people that are inflamed, like you said, underlying causes. They might have inflammation that’s affecting their gut or their brain, that’s affecting their mitochondria and their ability to just think, have energy, and move through the world in a way that’s productive and positive for them. That’s really what I think is behind it and what I’m talking about with this.
Ari: Okay. How do you conceptualize the ideology of autism spectrum disorder? What do you think are the major factors that are causing or contributing to the rise in autism in recent decades? I know that’s even something that we could get into, is whether that rise is attributable to just increased awareness and diagnosis, or whether it is a genuine rise in the prevalence of the condition. That’s one issue. Then from there, once we get to the point if we establish that it is a genuine increase in prevalence, what’s driving that?
Julie: Research does show it’s a genuine increase. The latest research shows that even if there is better diagnostics, which there are, that it still can account for about 50% of the rise. There are other factors. Even researchers acknowledge that there is something going on. What my research shows is that it’s a combination of genetic predispositions and environmental assaults.
In the last number of decades, we’ve had a lot more toxins, a lot more environmental assaults. Those assaults not only affect us individually, but they affect our genetics. They can affect our ability to turn on or off genes and create an environment where we have even more difficulty handling those toxins. I think it’s really a combination of both of those factors.
Environmental toxicants known to be linked with autism
Ari: What are some of the specific lines of evidence around, let’s say, exposures to certain environmental toxicants that are linked with increased rates of autism?
Julie: There are certain things like pesticides that they’ve shown, particularly in pregnant moms. Again, this is not to blame anybody, but just to give us some of the evidence, as you’re saying. There is research showing that people that are more exposed in agricultural areas, their children likely have a higher risk of autism. We know pesticides are neurotoxic, so that makes a lot of sense. That’s just one example.
Heavy metals can also significantly affect the brain, so anywhere that people might be exposed to more heavy metals. Those are just a couple examples of how toxins can interfere with– that’s just the brain. If we think that the gut and the brain are connected, then we have all of those as well. We have glyphosate and the ability for it to affect the microbiome. We know the microbiome is significantly affected in autism. There’s lots of studies on that. There’s more and more coming out about that. Even things like glyphosate, that particular pesticide can not just affect the brain, but can affect the gut, then the gut affects the brain. Those are a few of them.
The Personalized Autism Nutrition Plan
Ari: I’m going to leave out a question on vaccines here, since that’s the most radioactive of this radioactive topic. Getting to your work here, your wonderful book, The Personalized Autism Nutrition Plan. First of all, in the subtitle, you also clarify, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, anxiety and neurodevelopmental delays. Is your work and this conversation we’re about to have relevant to only autism, or is it broader than that?
Julie: It’s broader than that. When we look at what underlies, let’s say, autism, as I mentioned a little, there’s an inflammatory component, there’s a gut component, a microbiome, immune system, detoxification. When these systems are not working optimally, they can affect the brain. They can affect autism. They can affect ADHD, hyperactivity, irritability, behavioral issues, anxiety, other neurodevelopmental delays and conditions.
When we’re talking about it, I really wanted to lay out the information for autism since that’s my research and that’s my specialty, but, really, it can affect many other people with other conditions. In fact, when we work with a child with autism, I find that not only does it help the child with autism, but it might help the sibling with anxiety and the, maybe, dad with a gastrointestinal condition, and maybe the mom with an autoimmune disorder or something like that. When we address the underlying factors, we can address multiple things. It really can help children and people with a variety of different conditions.
Ari: I think this discussion of the causal factors in autism spectrum disorder is really important because if we’re going to have a conversation about nutrition, part of the foundation that needs to be laid is, some people, for example, have been taught to think of autism spectrum disorder as purely genetic. It’s just a result of genes. One question relevant to that is what you already addressed as far as whether there’s a genuine increase in prevalence, because if it truly is genetic, that would not mesh with that fact. There’s no reason for a genetic problem to have a dramatic increase in prevalence in over a few decades’ span of time. The fact of increase in prevalence essentially proves that there is a strong, dominant environmental factor and that it is not purely genetic.
This also is relevant to a discussion of the role of nutrition in these conditions, because if it is a purely genetic condition, logically, we wouldn’t necessarily or intuitively think that nutrition is likely to play a big role in something that’s a genetic problem. All of those pieces fit together. I think at this point, the question is, given that we know it is environmental and that there is this relationship between the environment and our biology that’s resulting in certain changes that are leading to these neurodevelopmental issues, what is the role of nutrition in all of this?
Julie: Nutrition helps to address those factors. I might even say, even with genetics, if we know we have a certain gene, we might be able to- I don’t know if I would say bypass, but maybe use a different route to even support genetic things like a simple one is MTHFR and folate. We can add more folate if we have trouble converting it to the active form.
Let’s just say we’re looking at other things. We look at the gut and the microbiome. We can avoid foods that inflame the gut. We can avoid foods that we have difficult time digesting like gluten and dairy that can convert to opioid compounds when our digestion isn’t working well, fit in the opiate receptor and create all sorts of challenges with language and focus and all sorts of things.
We can add foods that are nourishing for the gut and the microbiome. We can make sure that we get a lot of nutrients in the diet so that we can fuel and feed our system, but also use maybe supplementation. Maybe we have something going on with our mitochondria and maybe we do a special diet for that. There are a variety of diets, the ketogenic diet, for one, being great for some people with mitochondrial dysfunction, not so well for– It all is individualized.
We can choose a diet that’s going to help support those underlying systems and provide the most nutrients we can to help, again, just nourish the systems and the cells. Even one condition, there isn’t only one diet. I mentioned the ketogenic diet could be great for some people, but for other people with a similar condition, it could be not great for them because we are individuals with complex makeup. It’s not so simple as narrowing it down to one thing.
Ari: It sounds like in your way of understanding this, there are maybe a few– I don’t know if it’s 3 or 5 or 10 different key types of internal physiological dysfunction, whether it’s mitochondrial dysfunction or whether it’s a gut issue or a gut-brain axis issue. I don’t know what else is on this list, but it sounds like, I’m guessing, maybe based on how you’re identifying that sort of core issue, then you’re going about personalizing the nutrition plan to address that. If you’re identifying a mitochondrial issue or a microbiome issue as the key area of dysfunction, then you do a targeted nutrition and supplementation approach that’s tailored to that. Is that accurate?
Julie: Yes, that’s pretty accurate. Now, the thing is that some of us don’t just have one thing going on. As you know, if you have challenges with your mitochondria, that can affect the energy in every cell, which means it could affect many different organs. You might have issues with your mitochondria and issues with digestion and the immune system, for example. It’s not so simple.
Ari: Such is the nature of an interconnected system.
Julie: Exactly. I look at what those components are and how we can use diet to help them. I also even look at more of the whole makeup of the individual and the multiple systems that might be affected to really personalize that. It’s not so much a protocol like you have this one underlying thing, you need this one diet. We look at all of them and I help to create a diet for as many things as we can that are going on.
Ari: Then how does the personalization aspect actually get done? Is it a matter of iteration, of trying different things and assessing the person’s response to it, or is it a matter of you use these key tests and the results of these tests to determine which is the appropriate diet?
Julie: Both, and more. I feel that looking at lab testing can help us figure out what’s going on. Dietary trials can help us figure out what’s going on, and then just looking at even things like symptoms. We did a study looking at 13 different therapeutic diets and we found out that while they were all beneficial, there were some symptoms that were more improved by different diets.
We looked at 24 different symptom improvements and found some diets were better at helping with certain ones. A very simple example is seizures. We’ve known for decades, the ketogenic diet helps seizures. Yes, in the study, we found that the number one diet for seizures, above all others, was the ketogenic diet. That’s just one example.
If you look at someone has hyperactivity or inattentiveness or anxiety, those can also help us figure out what diets might be helpful. Over the years, I’ve developed what I think of as symptom clusters. If you said you had fatigue, it would be hard to say what it was because it can be a symptom of so many things. If you said, well, you have fatigue and pain, and this or that, then that would help us narrow down that it might be this particular type of food compound that was bothering somebody. I look at a little bit of both sides of things, what might be underlying it, and what foods might be causing irritability or irritation or inflammation to the system, and try to put it together that way.
Julie’s studies on nutrition and autism
Ari: Tell me more about the research that you did, how the studies were designed and what some of the key findings were. I know you were alluding to it very quickly in passing there, but let’s dig a little deeper into that.
Julie: Yes. The most recent paper that we published last year was on 13 therapeutic diets for autism. It was a survey of 800 families. What was interesting in the survey is that we also looked at psychiatric and seizure medications and nutraceuticals, like various nutritional supplements. Therapeutic diets were significantly better at improving or having an overall benefit than actually both of those other categories.
With the case of psychiatric and seizure medications, both diets and nutritional supplements were statistically significantly less likely to create adverse effects. That was very exciting. There were three papers done. My paper was on the diet portion.
Ari: Just to clarify, so two dimensions, one is the positive dimension of creating a benefit, and the other one is the likelihood of creating a negative effect or a side effect, and they were superior in both categories?
Julie: Absolutely, yes. That was really great to see how beneficial diet can be. Then we looked at, as I said, 24 symptom improvements; diarrhea, constipation, so digestive issues. We looked at anxiety, irritability, hyperactivity, attention, cognition, all sorts of things, and found that firstly, the diets were helpful pretty much for all of them, but significantly more for some.
For example, for people that did a diet called the Feingold Diet, which is a low salicylate and additive-free diet, 45% of the individuals that did that diet improved in hyperactivity. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything out there that improves almost half of the people when they do it. Things like that. The ketogenic diet was very beneficial. The gluten-free, dairy-free diet was very beneficial.
Those three diets were some of the really beneficial diets, but even a healthy diet was found to improve symptoms. In fact, a healthy diet improved health. It was the number one diet for improving health, which I thought was great. We looked at both low-sugar diets and healthy diets, and then we looked at very therapeutic diets.
Ari: It sounds like healthy diet, you’re referring to something very specific that is being labeled a “healthy diet.” What is that?
Julie: We defined it as a diet that was higher in fruits and vegetables and protein and lower in refined junk food and sugar additives, things like that.
Ari: Are there any universals here that can be drawn from this other than, choose this diet or that diet? Let me ask this in a different way. Is it the case that most of the effect in each category is, let’s say, the result of– This is true, for example, in the context of weight loss, for example, and improving insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes. There are many different diets that can result in a benefit, and the diets can be radically different in macronutrient content and the specific foods you’re eating, and actually, the main thing driving the benefit. It can be a huge benefit.
There are studies that have shown that you can reverse full-blown type 2 diabetes in a matter of months through dietary change alone. Most of that benefit has very little to do with the macronutrient content or the specific foods. It is actually just a result of driving a calorie deficit such that you drive weight loss because excess adipose tissue is the main driver of insulin resistance.
Is it the case here that there is a universal underneath these different dietary permutations where the main thing driving the benefits is not necessarily this exact diet or that exact diet, or this category salicylates or oxalates, or whatever, gluten and dairy, but is actually the result of getting kids off of a standard American diet and all the processed junk and transitioning them to mostly whole foods, getting more fruits and vegetables, getting more protein, et cetera?
Julie: That’s a great question. I think we probably, to some extent, could do more research, but we found that the healthy diet was very beneficial. We found that the low-sugar diet was very beneficial, but, I’m just thinking this off the top of my head, not the most beneficial of all the diets. I think it plays a role.
We did conclude in our paper that a good therapeutic diet both removed all of the inflammatory things or problematic things and added all the healthy good things. I think that there’s, for some of them, more going on. Yes, a healthy diet is going to avoid all of the sugar and the bad stuff and add the good stuff. I’ll use the Feingold Diet or a low-salicylate diet. It needs sulfation. Sulfation or sulfate gets depleted in the presence of pathogenic microbes. We know that to be true in the case of autism, that they are low in sulfate.
Ari: Tell me again. What did you say needs sulfation?
Julie: The ability to process salicylates, which are these natural compounds that are found in good healthy foods and as well as artificial things. Because we need to be able to process those, some of us handle these wonderful foods, grapes, berries, things, they have great nutrients, but if we can’t process these compounds, then they can create irritability, aggression, sleep challenges for some individuals. Because kids with autism generally have poor sulfation and low sulfate, they might need, at least for a period of time, to remove that problematic food until they’re able to maybe boost up those pathways, or maybe it’s a microbiome issue and they need to address the microbiome.
I do feel it’s a little multifaceted that we want to get rid of the things they have a problem with, but then we want to address the underlying factors, which often diets don’t do. They often say, “Here’s the diet. It’s a wonderful diet. Go on the diet.” They never say, “Go off the diet,” and how you can heal to go off the diet later. That’s what I like to help people with. I think there are probably multiple reasons why kids with autism tend to have this particular sulfation challenge, but I find it in a majority of kids, and the diet can really be helpful.
Should you follow a strict diet? Potential tradeoffs
Ari: You said something interesting there about, on the diet and then transitioning off the diet. There’s an interesting thing, and this is also true again of weight loss diets, where the more extreme the diet is, as a generalization, painting with broad brushstrokes, the more benefit people will tend to derive from it, as opposed to, let’s say, on the other end of the spectrum, something that’s, “Hey, everything in moderation, everything in balance, yes, you can have a little of this, you can have a little of that. Be flexible, be moderate.”
The more extreme you are, the more strict you are, the more benefits you’ll tend to have, however, the more strict you are and the more extreme the diet, the less sustainable it tends to be in the long term, the less behavioral adherence you tend to get over a long period of time, the more people, in other words, start to break the rules of the diet.
In the context of weight loss, you have a problem of weight regain. You mentioned earlier, seizures, epilepsy, and the ketogenic diet, and behavioral adherence is one of the key problems there, especially with children with epilepsy, that, yes, ketogenic diets are extremely effective, but if you go talk to parents of epileptic children, you’ll find just this long list of people who are like, “Yes, it works, but it’s just so hard to do in the long term. My child wants to eat some carbs and eat this type of food and that type of food.” It’s very difficult to get the behavioral adherence part. How do you balance those two dimensions in the kids that you work with?
Julie: You’re right. Part of our study did show that the more strictly they followed the diet, the more benefit they had. You’re right with that, but you’re also right about– they did a study on gluten-free, dairy-free versus keto for autism, and they found a third of the people dropped out of the study, so while they did get a little bit better results in certain areas, a third of them don’t do it.
Ari: They dropped out of the keto group or the gluten-
Julie: Yes, the keto group. Yes, I agree that that is the fine balance to strike, and I’m always looking for ways to address that. What I usually teach practitioners to do is at the beginning, pull back what you need to do, make it more restrictive, number one, because you’ll figure out if you’ve got the right diet. If you’re a little bit here, a little bit there, you may not see the results, and it’s hard to know if you have what you need, and gives the body a chance to do some healing, gets rid of the problematic substances, gives you a chance to try to heal the underlying systems, and then allows for evolving the diet.
I always have “evolve the diet,” as one of the steps of the process because I think that a more wide, well-rounded diet, more robust diet is better for our health, but also, like you said, more sustainable. There are certain things you just can’t compromise on maybe. If you have celiac, you’re not going to have gluten, and that’s just likely how it’s going to be. Whereas other people, my goal is always to try to restrict as little as possible, so try to get as much flexibility back into the diet, which will make it more sustainable.
Ari: There’s another dimension here which is, again, contrasting it to like the context of people trying to lose weight with different weight loss diets. In that context, generally speaking, it’s adults doing it for themselves, and in this context, it’s, generally, adults imposing it on their children. Children with autism spectrum disorder are often notoriously picky eaters, and oftentimes, stick to one or two or three foods and refuse to eat anything. They have a lot of resistance to anything that’s novel. They throw tantrums, they can be angry and aggressive.
In contrast to adults doing diets for themselves, there is this whole other dimension of a relational issue here, and the stress between the parent and the child. How do you navigate that? How do you help moms and dads to implement these changes with their kids and get the kids to be open to trying a new approach in the first place and sticking with it?
Julie: For every parent that’s out there, it’s very common for children, as you said, to be picky eaters. You’re not alone in this struggle at all. What I try to do, it depends, I try to have parents be a bit of a detective on what might be going on for their own child. Do they like certain textures? Do they like everything crispy and crunchy? Are they eating a lot of potato chips and things? Try making carrot chips or, something else that’s got a similar texture but has a little nutrition.
I had one client that liked everything as a pancake with some sort of a spread on top. His mom literally would purée chicken into the pancake and vegetables into the spread, and he didn’t mind, he just wanted it to be a certain texture. Texture’s a big one. If you can work with texture, that really helps.
Some kids, it’s visual. Some kids, it’s having everything separated. Some kids, it’s smell. For some kids, there’s anxiety around it or something else, and sometimes feeding therapy can be really advantageous. Sometimes it’s addiction to the food. That actually is a big one. Gluten and dairy, as I mentioned, can convert to opiates. These opioid-like compounds can fit in the opiate receptor like morphine and heroin, and be very addictive.
I have countless clients and families tell me that once they got rid of the gluten and the dairy, suddenly their child started eating more protein and more vegetables. If you think about it, if I loved brownies, which I do, and I ate them all the time, I would not be– knowing what I know, if there was some broccoli there, I would eat the brownies. When there’s no brownies there, I’m going to eat the broccoli and explore other things. It makes sense that they could get this tunnel vision of like, “I want those foods that feed that, so I’m going to eat the breads, the milks.” When they get taken out, they think, “Oh, what else is in this world that I have not been looking at?”
I really can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen picky eating improve just by taking out those things that could be addictive for them.
Ari: I know you’ve mentioned many of these in passing, including gluten and dairy, but what’s maybe the full list of foods that are commonly problematic in neurodevelopmental disorders? That was a breath of like, “The list is too long to even start.” Maybe give me the top 5 or top 10.
Julie: Okay. We can start with the simple things. Sugar is really problematic. Artificial additives are one of the worst for most people. You said gluten, so wheat and dairy, as well as other gluten grains. Then in the therapeutic diets, we look at more compounds. We look at salicylates, as I mentioned earlier, but also things like amines and histamine or glutamate, oxalates, FODMAPs.
Those are just some of them. All of them can create either inflammation or challenges with the microbiome depending on that individual person. Those are some of them, and then other people have a problem with various types of carbohydrates. They don’t do well with grains. They don’t do well with high-carbohydrate diets, or they need a lower-carbohydrate diet. Those are just some of the different foods that people can be reactive to.
Does diet matter?
Ari: What are some of the biggest myths or misconceptions out there that you encounter among parents of children with autism or neurodevelopmental problems around nutrition and its role?
Julie: I think the biggest one is that diet doesn’t matter. “There’s no science behind it,” is another big common misconception that sometimes they will hear from people of high authority. What I will usually suggest is that they look at the research because there is a lot of research.
In our time, we only got into briefly one of the papers, just really briefly, we did a randomized control trial and found that a gluten-free, dairy-free diet that had a multivitamin, essential fatty acids, and several other things significantly improved the individuals. They had seven-point improvement in nonverbal IQ, four and a half times the developmental age improvement, improvements in symptoms, digestive, cognitive, language, all sorts of things.
There is research out there and we do know that diets can help. I think the biggest misconception for parents is, it’s not worth it, it doesn’t help, it’s too hard, don’t get your hopes up and don’t bother because there isn’t any science behind it. All of that’s untrue, and I like to really help parents to pursue this path.
Nutrition and its relationship with the cell danger response
Ari: I’m curious if you’re familiar with Dr. Robert Naviaux’s work and the cell danger response on purinergic signaling. This is relevant to chronic fatigue and there’s also been research done in the context of kids with autism. I remember having a conversation with- I think it was Eric Gordon, who was involved in that research and is good friends with Dr. Naviaux. Quick side note, I’ve actually been to Dr. Naviaux’s lab at UCSD and privileged to spend some time with him one-on-one and get a private tutoring session from him, which was really cool. Great guy, super wonderful, brilliant guy.
What they found in that study as you know, I’m telling listeners now, is this particular drug. I forget, it’s for African night blindness or some really rare condition. It’s called suramin, it’s a very old drug. They found that this drug blocks this pure anergic signaling. Without getting too detailed, it’s blocking ATP and ADP floating around in the bloodstream and then reaching cells where cells are detecting these molecules. This suramin is interrupting that process.
They found remarkable benefits by interrupting this pathway of the cell danger response. I don’t want to over-represent it because I forget the specifics of the study, but I know a lot of kids who were previously non-verbal became verbal or had dramatic improvements in that regard. Is there anything that can be taken from this work and applied in the context of nutrition? Do you see how the work that you do with nutrition feeds into these mechanisms and the model of the cell danger response?
Julie: Yes, I do remember that paper, and I have met him. He’s a wonderful person. When that paper came out, I thought, “Do we have any nutrients that can actually mimic that response?” I couldn’t find that. Even things that just help with the mitochondria. Carnitine and CoQ10 are things that a lot of practitioners use to help kids with mitochondrial dysfunction. It’s more complex than that and there’s other factors and aspects for some of them, for sure.
We’re always looking for how do we nourish the cell, the mitochondria, the microbiome? How do we nourish the body as much as possible? How do we add specific things or remove specific things that might be impeding the mitochondria? I don’t want to spend too much time on it, but even oxalates have been shown to disrupt or damage the mitochondria. Again, I don’t want to simplify it to, “Well, that means everybody needs this, that diet,” but yes, I’m always looking for what mechanisms can be harmful, and why maybe does the diet work? Which of these substances could be damaging and therefore the diet works when we remove them, or what things can we add to nourish and support those systems?
Optimizing nutrition – How to get started
Ari: I know you have a 12-step plan and you describe a lot of this in a book here, which people should get. Obviously, if they’re a parent of a child with neurodevelopmental disorders, anxiety, ADHD, any of these things, definitely go out and get this book right away. Can you give people an idea of the broader steps of the system that you work with and you take people through?
Julie: Yes. I laid out a system where people could start with what I think of as the lowest hanging fruit that gets some of the best quick results and for people that haven’t tried anything yet. Then it increases from there. For example, step 1 is get rid of the junk, get rid of the artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and the chemicals and things in your home. That can bog down and bother the system. Then step 2 is add healthy nourishing food.
From there, it increases to other things on getting more nutrients in the system, supporting picky eaters, and then it starts to look more at some of the therapeutic diets. This is where people are going to be more individual. Not everybody’s going to need every one of the diets, but I go through the different diets, the common symptoms associated with the compounds in those diets that are removed in those diets, and some of the foods that are high in those compounds and some of the ones that are low, so people can start to see like, “Oh, my child has five of these symptoms,” and, “Oh, wow, they eat a lot of these foods.” They can start to make those connections for themselves.
I take it through a very step-by-step process. If you started straight with a ketogenic diet, which can be a great diet for some people, and some people might jump there, but if we jumped to there, we wouldn’t know if the improvement was from less sugar, from gluten-free, from grain-free. I take it small step at a time so people can have the diet be as least restrictive as possible, but get to the things that are causing the problem.
Ari: Are there one or two diets that you have a personal preference for that you found really are, maybe, the best diets or the most effective diets for, let’s say, autism or a particular kind of problem?
Julie: Yes. The gluten-free, casein-free diet is one of the most popular diets, one of the most well-studied diets, and I find creates some of the best results. Pretty much all of my clients I suggest that diet. Almost all of them stay on it because they find it beneficial. That’s one of them.
The other diet is the low salicylate diet. Because this one is so helpful with irritability, aggression, hyperactivity, cognition, attention, sleep, and many of the symptoms we find very common, and because it helps address those underlying factors, that’s another one that I find really helps a lot of people. Actually, it was created in the ’70s by a doctor for ADHD and other types of learning disorders and things like that. It’s been used for a long time. Lots of kids with autism have those similar symptoms, so it can help address those symptoms.
Ari: Julie, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. It’s very succinct, very punchy. I like the way that you delivered your answers to all of my questions. Are there any final thoughts that you want to share with people and let people know, obviously, to get your book, where they should get it, and where they can work with you or get in contact with you, follow you, anything else you want to let them know about?
Julie: Thank you. I just want to thank you for this opportunity and just help parents let them know there are things that you can do and that I’m happy to help any way that I can. They can get the book at any major book reseller. Just go to, “Julie Matthews autism nutrition,” and they’ll find it. They can find me online. They can find me at the same place where the book is, which is personalizedautismnutritionplan.com, but it’s a bit of a long one.
If they Google me, you can find me too. I have nourishinghope.com, as well as, Bioindividual Nutrition for practitioners. There’s lots of places they can find me. I do consultations. I have programs and all sorts of things. If there’s any way that I can be of any help, I would be happy to.
Ari: Wonderful. Julie, thank you so much for the work you’re doing. I look forward to having another conversation with you in the future, hopefully sometime soon.
Julie: Thank you so much, Ari. I really appreciate it.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:54 – Guest intro: Julie Matthews
02:40 – The role of nutrition in autism spectrum disorder
07:01 – Environmental toxicants known to be linked with autism
08:43 – The Personalized Autism Nutrition Plan
17:49 – Julie’s studies on nutrition and autism
25:30 – Should you follow a strict diet? Potential tradeoffs
34:10 – Does diet matter?
35:39 – Nutrition and its relationship with the cell danger response
39:10 – Optimizing nutrition – How to get started
Links
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