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A nutritional consultant, Sandra Desorgher, helped her adopted daughter, Sara, overcome autism through diet intervention. She tells PANG HIN YUE why the disorder is a treatable condition.
WHEN her 12-year-old daughter refused to go on a family outing and repeatedly told her, “You don’t care”, Dr Chung Yee Choong actually rejoiced. Not because she is a perverse mother, but because her daughter, who is autistic, spoke spontaneously and emotionally for the first time in years.
It is a breakthrough considering speech, emotions and social skills – the very survival tools that parents of normal children take for granted – are autists’ worst enemies.
“I’m very happy,” declares Dr Chung, because in seven years of trying to do something, anything, to improve her daughter’s condition, she feels she is finally doing something sensible for her daughter.
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Sandra and Max ... use local resources to implement
Sara's Diet.
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A general physician who gave up her practice recently to focus on her three children, Dr Chung believes that her autistic daughter’s new milestones in communication and learning have to do with her changing diet: a diet free from foods that are highly allergenic to autists but are considered “good” for the general population.
One would think that it is her medical training that had helped her. But as she admits, “there was nothing much on autism in our medical textbooks.” As a parent, she had to go beyond mainstream medicine. “Until and unless you are personally affected,” she says, “the idea that diet intervention can help alleviate autism remains an ambivalent subject in the medical profession.”
This is because since it was first reported in the 1940s, autism has long been regarded as more of a “psychiatric disorder”. The interventions that have been prescribed thus far are within the confines of psychology which addresses the symptoms – the challenging behaviours – rather than the causes.
In addressing autism, time is of the essence. And like other parents of special needs children, it is through the Internet that Dr Chung found her answer.
In the world of autism, the buzzword is Sara’s Diet, a nutritional protocol developed by Sandra Desorgher for her adopted autistic daughter, Sara, who subsequently recovered at age 15.
When she came into Sandra’s life at six, Sara already had a gloomy prognosis of autism that came with severe developmental delay, epilepsy, low muscle tone and hyperactivity. To compound the problems, Sara suffered the traumas of a sexually abused child.
But with love, perseverance and her credentials as a nurse with double Masters in Food Science and Nutrition as well as Behavioural Psychology, Sandra started Sara on a special diet – which has since become known as “Sara’s Diet”– after noticing her adopted daughter’s strong reactions to certain foods.
Today, Sara is a sociable and smart young lady of 19. Having seen what the diet has done for her child, Sandra left the United States to travel all over the world with her husband, Max – sacrificing time, money and material comforts – to spread their message of hope: “autism is a treatable condition”.
Sara’s Diet is about getting a balanced diet even as the offending foods are removed. The Desorghers, who recently came to Malaysia to conduct a seminar at Selayang Hospital and to provide nutritional consultation to over 70 families – believe that in order to heal the mind, one has to nourish and detoxify the body first with the right nutrients as the brain and the immune system are mutually dependent.
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The book that explains the theory behind Sara's
Diet.
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The errors arise from the immune system mistaking vital nutrients – the good guys – as pathogens, the bad guys. This in turn, they say, puts the immune system in a constant state of, “fright, fight, flight”.
The primary “pathogen” that is eliminated in Sara’s Diet is lutein. It is derived from “chlorophyll” – the substance that makes plant foods green and which can be converted to a yellow, orange or red pigment as the fruit or vegetable ripens. They include broccoli, carrots, papayas, strawberries and mangoes. With the exception of lard, lutein or “macular yellow” is also found in egg yolk, chicken skin, chicken fat and other fats of grass-eating animals.
But how did lutein become the “bad guy” in autists? The Desoghers contend that it has to do with the introduction of vaccines 80 years ago that were cultured in a lutein-containing medium. The immune system not only developed antibodies towards viruses that were in the vaccines, but also the lutein that came with them.
Under normal circumstances, lutein is used by the body to protect the eyes. But in the case of autists, the Desorghers in their book, The Power of Exile: Autism, a Journey to Recovery , postulate that the immune system’s selection of lutein pigment as a pathogen during foetal development results in a cascade of negative reactions.
They include the inability to convert beta-carotene to vitamin A, decreased capacity to produce essential long chain fatty acids, abnormal gut flora and the absence or low levels of enzymes that are critical for digestion, among others. These cause the autist to be highly susceptible to metabolic disorder, malnutrition, multiple food allergies, yeast overgrowth and heavy metal poisoning.
These troubles manifest themselves as odd behaviours and learning disabilities that are often present in autists, such as head banging, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit, uneven motor skills development, incoherent babbling, poor eye contact, crying and laughing for no apparent reasons.
Heredity has a part to play as well as most autists have a family history of food allergies, asthma, eczema, ear infection, gut disorder and abnormal pigmentation. All this makes the immune system more vulnerable, observes Sandra.
Sandra feels that the rise in autism over the years, with the ratio being 1:160, is exacerbated by the World Health Organisation’s push since 1967 for the use of beta-carotene (which is essential for brain development and vision) from fruits and vegetables as sources of vitamin A instead of animal sources like cod liver oil. “They (WHO) were wrong,” she argues.
Based on her consultations, she provides to over 2,000 families worldwide through the non-profit organisation, World Community Autism Programme, which she founded with Max in South Africa.
She notes that the majority of autists have restrictive self-selective diets. In an immune system that has gone awry, it is the autists’ defensive mechanism to avoid foods that cause them pain as well as distort their sight, hearing and sense of smell. As lutein is the main culprit, exerts Sandra, “autists are natural lutien avoiders.”
On the other hand, it is not uncommon for autists to crave foods that could elevate opioids – the chemical compounds that are similar to the painkiller drug, morphine. The main culprits are gluten found in wheat’s protein and casein in cow’s milk.
Food intolerance is another regular feature among autists owing to their low levels of vital enzymes to help with ingestion. For instance, in some of the children whom they saw in Kuala Lumpur, allergy tests reveal they could not handle cane sugar. This, notes Sandra, indicates that sialic acid, the basic enzyme found in saliva that break down simple sugars and kill bacteria in the mouth, is absent in them.
To overcome this problem, explains Sandra, foods containing acetylcholine precursors, which are the same as those found in sialic acid, must be provided in Sara’s Diet.
Acetylcholine, says Sandra, has many functions in the body as it is the only substance which can bind and remove toxins even as it regulates the production of enzymes. Foods such as brown rice, root vegetables and berries, peeled apple, safflower oil, blackcurrant and potato are good sources.
Sandra clarifies that while Sara’s Diet calls for complete elimination of lutein foods as the main criteria, the goal is to find ways to add non-allergenic foods that provide essential nutrients for the body that will help in enzyme production and removal of toxins.
The selection of foods, she says, depends on the degree of food sensitivity of the individuals, taking into account the cultural-genetic variables, metabolic differences, age, sex and the extent of gut dysbiosis.
Because no two autists are alike, not all benefit from a casein-free, gluten-free diet (CFGF) despite the many claims made about it, she says. Without proper understanding of the need to replace the nutrients that are taken out in CFGF diet, it could only spell trouble.
In fact, some autists develop intolerances to foods containing benzoates (chemical compounds present in fruits) after going on a strict CFGF diet simply because they have become deficient in molybdenum, a mineral which is found in wheat.
Ensuring an adequate supply of molybdenum through other food sources like lamb or pork or as a supplement is vital, she notes, because the mineral is also critical in aiding the body to manufacture enzymes for the breakdown of sulphur found in whole protein foods.
But substituting soy for wheat is a bad idea because she maintains soy protein is similar to that of wheat. But in its broken down form, like soy oil, it is okay. In fact, those who adhere to Sara’s Diet are encouraged to take soy oil because it is rich with vitamin K and lecithin. “When autists crave for chocoloate, it is not because of the cocoa, but the soy lecithin in it,” explains Sandra.
Depending on the situation, taking digestive enzyme pills to aid digestion may be warranted. Limiting the intake of meat to two to three ounces daily is encouraged. Cod liver oil and safflower oil are a must in Sara’s Diet.
That having said, the Desorghers caution parents that their autistic children may experience withdrawal symptoms when they begin Sara’s Diet. Autists may have to endure headache, sore-throat, runny nose, nausea, skin eruptions and other disturbances that could last up to three weeks or more. All in all, it takes four months for the immune system to settle down. After which, they say, the individual should feel better, have better eye contact and be more receptive for learning.
“We always advise parents,” stresses Max,” to get the nutrients as much as they can from foods that are available in their own local community.” On this, the Desorghers have nothing but praise for the diverse lutein-free foods that are abundant in Malaysia. For this reason, they say, many of the young autists whom they provided nutritional consultation, display mild forms of autism compared with those they saw in the United Kingdom. The Chinese diet, for instance, they add, has a rich variety of lutein-free foods.
Dr Chung has extended Sara’s Diet to her entire family. Her 10-year old son, who has Attention Deficit Disorder, has made such remarkable improvement in his behaviour that his schoolmates who once avoided him are now his friends. He surprised her and his teachers with his good grades just when they thought he was to fail.
Her husband, who is also a doctor, got over his skepticism after discovering his migraine attacks stopped when he ate lutein-free foods.
While critics may dismiss Sara’s Diet as another “experimental diet” or worse, “junk science”, Sandra is not perturbed at all. The evidence, she says, speaks for itself. Of the more than 2,000 families who follow the diet, 10% can expect to become symptom-free. Eighty per cent report significant and measurable improvements. Only about 20% report no changes.
For parents like Dr Chung, who had already exhausted all other avenues to help her children, she feels she cannot afford to sit around and wait for peer-reviewed medical research papers which could take years to produce to validate the works of scientists like the Desorghers.
Still, if it is of any cheer, there are doctors in Malaysia who are in a position to help autists who have started paying attention to the theory behind Sara’s Diet. This could well be the catalyst for holistic healthcare services for the autists in Malaysia.
Note: For more details on Sara’ Diet, visit http://www.saras-autism-diet.freeservers.com/. To buy ‘The Power of Exile: Autism – A Journey to Recovery’ book, contact Malaysian Care at 03-4149 8032. To locate Malaysian parents implementing Sara’s Diet, e-mail hinyue@hotmail.com.
For details on tests for allergies and other disorders, check www.greatplainslaboratory.com . To eat and buy casein-free, gluten-free and lutein free foods, contact Patricia of Green Gourmet Organic Café at 03-5621 2218. Add: 32, Jalan SS15/4, 46500 Subang Jaya, Selangor.