Episode #91 Interview with Dr. James Neuenschwander ( AKA Dr. Neu )

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
autism, kids, diet, listeners, parents, chicken mcnuggets, gut, disorders, work, figure, bio, encephalitis, great, treat, treatment, patients, histamine, problem, conference, eating

00:00
Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the autism and action podcast today, we have another very special guest for you. We've got Dr. New he is with bio energy Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Thank you so much for taking time to be here today.

00:19
It's such a pleasure to be here.

00:21
Well, I can't wait for our listeners to hear all about what it is that you are doing. You've got some amazing work for the autism community.

00:30
Yeah, we, you know, I got involved with all this stuff. I started my practice back in 1988. in Ann Arbor. And you know, at the time, the idea was to get to the underlying cause of whatever the patient has. So if somebody came in with high blood pressure, we would look at why they had high blood pressure and treat it from that perspective. So, you know, I started seeing autism patients, maybe in the 90s. But, you know, all through my training, I had never seen a kid on the spectrum. And it was something new to me, that got me involved in defeat Autism NOW, in the mid 2000s. And that was very eye opening, the idea that there was so much biochemistry and knowledge behind behavior, I thought psychiatry was psychiatry, it was its own little group of disorders were the only solution was medications or herbs that work like medications. And I found out that these kids all had individual disorders. And that got me involved with the subsequent organization called maps, which is Medical Academy of Pediatrics special needs. And that's the organization that I'm now one of the co chairs in the creating the conferences for map. So we've come a long way in our understanding of what causes autism. And sort of the message I want to get out to your listeners, or anybody in this entire world is autism is treatable. I mean, there are many pathways to lead to autism, some of them are much more treatable than others. But in all cases, there's much more than we can do for these kids, other than just offer ABA, speech therapy, occupational therapy, that sort of stuff. And that's really what I've been doing it my practice in Ann Arbor.

02:09
Now, when did you guys first go into business? When did you start bio energy Medical Center

02:15
1988. However long ago, that was that's many, many, many years ago. You know, there's definitely a steep learning curve in the integrative medicine world. You know, I think about what I know now versus what I knew then. And, you know, half the time, I want to go back and call up all those patients and give them their money back because I didn't know anything. And even five years ago, compared to what I know now, I mean, they the information has just been coming through like drinking from a firehose, and that's been great. I mean, they, you know, you got to remember, in 1988, there wasn't much of an internet, it's not like I could go on PubMed, through my internet and look up articles, I actually had to go to the library. And that's how long ago that was. So we've come a long way and our ability to share knowledge. And as a result of that, it's been this exponential growth in our ability to treat anything, I mean, not just autism, but treat all kinds of disorders that are kind of outside of the reach of mainstream medicine.

03:17
What is it that you feel parents really should know? You know, when they approach you come into the clinic, and you know, the medical center to seek your advice and seek out treatment? What's the number one thing you think that they should be aware of?

03:32
Well, I mean, the biggest thing that any parents should know is that nutrition and diet makes a huge difference in outcome for these kids. I mean, unfortunately, there is something I believe it should be like in a in a registry somewhere called the Autism Diet. And these kids get so restricted on what they're eating, you know, it's got to be Chicken McNuggets. From McDonald's, it can't be from anywhere else, it's got to be fruit roll ups, and maybe french fries, maybe pizza, maybe string cheese. I mean, you put together the five or six foods that these kids will eat, and there's almost no nutrition in it. So part of the challenge is how do you get nutrition into your child, and this is something any parent can do. I'm not saying it's easy, but this is something any parent can start working on, you know, how do I sneak some vegetables into this kid's diet? How do I get some fruit into this kid's diet? How do I get some nutrients into this kid's diet? Because that little change can start making a huge difference? You know, we read about some of these diets that are out there like gluten, casein free diet or the the low glycemic diet, you know, the, the the the specific carbohydrate diet or FODMAPs, or any of these things that are out there. I don't think you need to go that extreme to start, you know, start by just figuring out ways to get better nutrition into your kids diet. And yes, I think any kid on the spectrum should do at least a trial of a gluten casein free diet. You just have to figure out how to do it. All right, again, back to those Chicken McNuggets. What did your child like about chicken? McNuggets? Is it the texture? Is it the taste? Is it the smell? I know, there's cookbooks out there that have like 40 or 50 different recipes for chicken nuggets, depending on what your kid likes, right? But you have to figure that out. Because that's something you can do on your own, you don't have to go see a specialist like myself to do that. And that can start making a difference. I mean, parents have recovered their kids just with changing the diet. So diet is critical. That's the one take home message, you know, everybody's looking for that magic supplement, I don't think there is one, or that magic treatment, you know, we're going to do stem cells, we're gonna do fecal transplants, we're gonna do whatever the latest thing is, well, that's all fine and dandy. But if you don't have diet under control, none of that stuff's really going to work very well.

05:46
Very, very true. Our bodies and our brains new need those nutrients. And the only way that we're going to get him is if we're eating a balanced diet and having that intake of the correct foods. So that is great advice. What else would you like to share with our listeners today?

06:02
Well, you know, the big thing is, is to understand that, regardless of what you read about with autism, that there are many paths that lead to autism, right? So I mean, you'll read about autism, and it's like, oh, the gut, the gut, the gut. And yes, gut health is extremely important as autism. If you look at the numbers, you know, 80% of kids on the autism spectrum have an overgrowth of Clostridium, which is a fermenting bacteria, where they have some sort of imbalance in the bacteria 20 to 30% of kids on the spectrum have a problem with chronic yeast forever growing yeast in their gut. And if you treat it, they get better. But that doesn't mean 100% have those problems, right? So if you if you've got a kid on the spectrum, who doesn't have digestive problems, they don't have a bloated belly, they don't have constipation, or diarrhea are the kind of bowel movements that you know, clear out the room and you got to fumigate the house when they're done. If they don't have those kinds of problems. Maybe they don't have a gut problem, maybe they have some other type of issue. So you know, you also have the issue of the immune system, you know, about 70% of kids with autism have this encephalitis inflammation of their brain, and it's probably autoimmune encephalitis like it's coming from their own immune system. But again, it's 68 70%, still not 100%. So if you're going to go off on a tangent to say, Oh, my kid has one of these brain inflammation syndromes like pans or pandas? Well, that's great. Unless they don't have that problem, in which case, all the things things you're doing over here aren't going to work. You'll hear about a lot about environmental toxicity. And we can talk more in depth about that. But one of the half things that happens with environmental toxicity is kids will get problems with histamine, you know, we'll get rashes and itchy and swollen, congested and have the shiners under their eyes. Well, that's great, you can do all these anti histamine things for them. But if they don't have those symptoms, that's not going to work. So the important thing is there are many pathways that lead to autism. My job as a physician is to figure out which one of those pathways or which ones of those pathways got this kid to where they're at right now. Because the answers for treatment are going to be to to work on those pathways. So maybe we do need to work on the immune system. We need to work on the gut and, and maybe even hormones or auto immunity or whatever it is we need to deal with.

08:23
With that being said, Where can our listeners find more information about you and your work? Online?

08:30
Yes. So for me, personally, I have a website, it's bio energy, medical center.com. As much as I hate Google, I'll say if you Google my name, you'll pull me up. The other place to look for because you know, I'm just one doctor in the Midwest, is to look at med maps.org. That's the group I belong to. These are not just doctors, these are practitioners. So we have MDS DEOs, nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, chiropractors, nutritionists, just people that are involved in managing autism that belong to that group. So that's a decent resource to find people that have been through some training that have some knowledge of the biomedical approach to autism. And there's a lot of information there. There's also conferences. In one conference I love I always call it the wild west of autism is autism. One, they have that typically over Memorial Day in the spring now with with COVID, it's been shifted around and the last one was actually over Labor Day. Hopefully, when the dust settles from all this, they'll go back to having their conference in in over Memorial Day. The nice thing about that conference is that it's designed for parents and practitioners, and you'll kind of get the latest, greatest cutting edge information on autism, but you'll also get sort of the basics, the gut, the immune system, you know, some of the basic things that are out there for autism. So those are a few resources. for parents to look at.

10:01
Great, that is great insight. Thank you so much for sharing that everybody. Go check out bio energy, medical center.com. Is there anything at all that you would like our listeners to know today?

10:13
I just I want parents to know Don't lose hope. Don't give up on your kid. There are going to be answers out there. We can always make kids better. We can't recover everybody, but just remember autism is

10:25
treatable. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

10:30
It's my pleasure. Thanks so much.