This was something out of Kerri Rivera’s quack brain. Bleach is not enough to cure them, but cutting all carbs out of the child’s diet along with bleach, will cure them.
This is not an original idea. Since the ketogenic diet was originally developed to aid in the control of uncontrolled epilepsy and epilepsy is often comorbid with autism, it must work for autistic behavior too. This is a very unscientific conclusion but when it comes to autism, the “gold” standard of ABA isn’t scientific either but that’s what everyone uses.
The origin of the Ketogenic Diet
Fasting and other dietary treatments have been used to treat epilepsy since at least 500 BCE.
Fasting Was the Precursor to the Ketogenic Diet
The starvation, or fasting diet came first. It was recorded by a pair of Parisian doctors, Guelph and Marie in 1911. They treated 20 children and adults with epilepsy and reported that epilepsy symptoms have improved but there were no specific details.
There were recorded accounts of the fasting diet in the United States in the early 20th century. The first report was from an osteopathic doctor named Dr. Hugh Conklin from Battle Creek, Michigan.
Quack Touting the Fasting Diet
There was a second account recorded. That was Bernarr McFadden. He was a physical fitness guru/publishing genius/cultist/quack of the 20th century. He told his readers how to develop themselves physically, how to maintain their health, and how to cope with illness. No medical qualifications. Each issue of his magazine Physical Culture, featured sickly people who then miraculously became cured due to McFadden’s guidance.
By the end of World War I, his magazine was circulated to 500,000 people. McFadden claimed if people fasted 3 days to 3 weeks, it could cure any disease, including epilepsy.
He had become nationally recognized. In 1931, he tried to ingratiate himself with FDR when he was a presidential candidate. This was a part of a strategy to become the first Secretary of Health.
Conklin Uses McFadden’s Method and It Becomes a Domino Effect
Dr. Conklin started as McFadden’s assistant. He adopted McFadden’s method of fasting to treat ailments. Because Conklin’s practice of fasting to treat epilepsy and the results, caught attention,
Dr. Conklin’s work caught the eye of H. Rawle Geyelin, an endocrinologist at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Geyelin first reported at the American Medical Association Convention in 1921 about his experience with fasting as a treatment for epilepsy. He was the first to document cognitive improvement that could happen with fasting.
Caught the Interest of Harvard Doctors
Drs Stanely Cobb and W.G. Lennox of Harvard University were at his talk. Because of the success of Conklin’s results with fasting, it spread. By 1941, it had been prominent in the textbook of Penfield and Erickson on epilepsy from the Montreal Neurologic Insitute.
In the early 1920’s Drs. Cobb and Lennox at Harvard Medical School began studying the effects of starvation as a treatment for epilepsy. They noted that seizure improvement typically occurred after 2-3 days. Lennox documented that the control of seizures occurred through a change of body metabolism and that the simple absence of food or carbohydrates in the body forced the body to burd acid-forming fat.
The Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic or keto diet was introduced in the 1920s to mimic fasting to aid in the treatment of uncontrolled epilepsy.
For 40 years, this therapy was available but when a new anticonvulsant medication was developed, there was a dramatic decline in the diet’s use.
By the end of the 20th century, there were only a few hospitals that used the diet as a treatment.
In 1921, two pivotal observations were made. Dr. Woodayatt noted that acetone and beta-hydroxybutyric acid appeared in a normal subject by starving or a diet containing a very low amount of carbohydrates and too high proportion of fat.
At the same time, Dr, Wilder at the Mayo Clinic proposed that the benefits of fasting could be obtained if ketonemia was produced another way. Wilder said that a ketogenic diet (KD) should be tried with epileptic patients. He suggested that the diet should be as effective as fasting and could be maintained for a much longer period of time. Wilder did report that his patients that were treated with the ketone-producing diet at the Mayo Clinic and coined the term “ketogenic diet.”
Peterman at the Mayo Clinic reported the calculation of KD similar to that is used today.
Formula is:
- 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight in children
- 10-15 grams of carbohydrates per day and the remainder of calories in fat.
Peterman documented the importance of teaching parents and carers how to manage the diet before they were discharged from the clinic. They each got an individualized diet and a close follow-up.
He also noted improvements in behavior and cognitive effects that accompanied the KD.
The use of the KD was recorded in almost every textbook on epilepsy in children that was published between 1941 and 1980. Most of these textbooks had full chapters explaining the diet and how to start it. It also showed how to calculate meal plans.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the KD was widely used. Dr. Livingston at Johns Hopkins Hospital, reported on the results in his textbook. The results of the diet in over 1,000 children with epilepsy that he had followed over the previous decades were that 52% had complete control of seizures and 27% had improved control.
When anticonvulsant medication was discovered in 1938, the attention of physicians and researchers shifted focus from the mechanism of action and efficacy of the KD to the new drugs. It became something of the past.
Modern Use of the Ketogenic Diet
The use of KD decreased dramatically and PubMed only listed 2-8 publications per year from 1970-2000. This changed when KD was on international media. It was featured on Dateline aired a program on the diet. There was a large spike in PubMed articles published averaging over 40 per year since this aired. It was about the story of Charlie, a two-year-old boy who had uncontrollable seizures. He was brought to Johns Hopkins Hospital out of desperation, for help.
He was seen by Dr. Freeman and Ms. Millicent Kelly, a dietitian who worked with Dr. Livingston. They initiated the KD with this little boy. He quickly became seizure free and The Charlie Foundation was founded by the boy’s father.
This foundation released informational videos for parents and instructional videos for physicians and dietitians about the KD. The Charlie Foundation also funded The Epilepsy Diet Treatment: The Introduction to the Ketogenic Diet. This was a multicenter prospective study of the efficacy of the KD. In 1997, Charlie’s father directed the film, First Do No Harm, starring Meryl Streeep. It aired on national TV.
The KD has experienced a reemergence in recent years and modern clinical trials have established the treatment as effective. Now it is available in over 45 countries.
The perception of pediatric neurologists use this as a last-resort treatment.
Ketogenic Diet for Autism
It is true that 26% of autistic children are more likely to have epilepsy. One condition is neurological and genetic and the other is organic.
In order to do this safely, urinary ketones need to be monitored and bloodwork needs to be measured for beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB).
The one legitimate study available even acknowledges that the sample size was too small to even make a determination. This study was in China and was funded by the Foundation of 2018 Beijing Key Clinical Specialty Construction Project- Pediatrics.
They did say that KD did “improve” scores on the ATEC, ARI’s test. It is a checklist. It did not affect the “restricted and repetitive behavior scores.” One child “improved” social communication but they had only six children in the sample.
The researchers said, “Although a KD-induced decrease in seizures will lead to a better quality of life in patients with epilepsy, including ASD, it is not associated with improvements in behaviors in ASD patients. Antiepileptic drugs do not have a large effect on the behavioral symptoms in ASD.”
We can’t have nice things
Used by Kerri Rivera in Addition to Chlorine Dioxide in Autistic Children
Yes. Kerri Rivera, the bleach queen has parents who give their children industrial bleach enemas a ketogenic diet. She calls it the modified keto diet. She outlines the diet in a book called Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, second edition. She offers the supplements in her online store but it looks like her site is mostly taken down after the German authorities raided her home in Germany.
“The book outlines the basis for my protocol at the time it was written. Much of the ‘bones’ of the protocol are still the same, and this book provides the background and details many people look for when they are researching a health-promoting program for their families.”
On the same page, she had the disclaimer: “None of the product statements on this website have been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat cure, or prevent any disease or condition. If you suspect you may have a disease or condition, you should consult a licensed healthcare practitioner.”
The University of Hawaii Wants a Turn
The University of Hawaii received a $1,519,939 grant to research the ketogenic diet to see if it can help with “repetitive behaviors” when the study that was cited above said just that, even though the sample size was very small.
They want to eliminate rocking, toe-tapping, hand flapping, spinning objects, etc. They are trying to eliminate stimming. They know nothing about stimming and they say it’s due to stress or having carbohydrate-rich meals. We stim for many reasons, not just because of stress.
From personal experience, I can say I still stimmed when I was on the Ketogenic diet for insulin resistance for PCOS.
The University of Hawai’i at Manoa announced a public impact research project that will investigate the genetic and metabolic that would help them come up with a treatment to treat or eliminate stimming. It’s part of the autistic culture.
“Students or younger children who suffer from repetitive behaviors, they cannot focus during class time and also social activities between kids. If we can reduce the repetitive behaviors, without costing anything major and other side effects, that is our goal,” said Principal Investigator and School of Life Sciences Associate Professor Masato Yoshizawa. “Our project is trying to mitigate the difficulty as much as possible by at least invasive method, which is diet and nutritional treatment.”
UH researchers are collaborating with doctors at Shriners Hospitals for Children, who have discovered that ketosis can reduce repetitive behavior. Again, the above study proves them wrong.
The University of Hawai’i researchers studied two forms of Mexican Tetra fish. One lives in caves and the other lives in rivers/ponds. Living in caves promotes repetitive circling while living in rivers and ponds does not show repetitive circling. This includes stressful environments.
The researchers discovered that ketogenic diet feeding reduces the repetitive behavior in the Mexican tera fish living in caves resulting in two implications:
- The genomic changes from fish living on the surface to those living in caves induce repetitive behavior
- The metabolic change toward ketosis reduces repetitive behavior.
Using Fish as Models
The researchers do say that they do not consider human conditions and fish traits based on the same physiology because both species are different. They say it is fair to use the fish project to predict the possible genetic and molecular pathways because humans and fish share more than 90% of the gene and molecular pathways.
The researchers will generate sets of data from:
- 20,000 genes
- 300 serum metabolites (small molecules in serum)
- 1,000 gut microorganisms
- 3D images of active neurons in the brain
Out of this, they claim they can come up with treatments to reduce or eliminate stimming.
They plan on training undergraduate and graduate students to support future scientists and biomedical specialists.
We Are Not Fish
They obviously did not consult any autistic people when coming up with this study.
Humans are genetically similar to many species. Mammals have descended from ancestral species that lived about 100 million years ago. In our mammalian ancestry, an average base has changed at a slow rate of about one change per billion years.
Humans share 90% of DNA with mice, dogs cattle, and elephants. The DNA of humans is 98-99% identical to chimpanzees.
Human DNA is also very similar to reptiles, invertebrates, and plants.
We have similar DNA to a banana. Why did they use bananas as they do not see autistics as human beings.
Why did they choose fish? Is this the only animal that behaved the way they wanted so they could perform this study? If that is so, this is skewed research and invalid.
We stim due to different emotions. Excitement, happiness, sadness, depression, anger, etc. If this is being done to kids, they will know that is the goal and they will suppress it and it causes psychological issues. This is the same thing ABA does.
sources:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2008.01821.x
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8146910/
$1.5M to investigate causes of autism-related repetitive behaviors
https://web.archive.org/web/20230202123913/http://www.kerririvera.com/autism-protocol/
Aviva Seigler 