Chemist says omitting MSG cured daughter's autism 
 
 (03-19) 10:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- 
 
 Katherine Reid, a Bay Area biochemist with a daughter who was autistic, believes she may have found an antidote to the neurodevelopment disorder - and it's as simple as changing a person's diet. 
 
 Well, actually, more like blowing it up. 
 
 Because there is no Food and Drug Administration-approved medical treatment for the core symptoms of autism, people have turned to homeopathic remedies, probiotics, invasive therapies and alternative diets. 
 
 It has become increasingly popular for parents of children with autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to turn to gluten- and casein-free, or dairy-free, diets in hopes that it will make a difference. 
 
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 But Reid's diet is different. She thinks what it comes down to, at least for some people with autism, is permanently eliminating just a single chemical compound known as monosodium glutamate, or MSG - an ingredient many people associate with Chinese food. 
 
 Actually, Reid said, the chemical is in nearly every processed food imaginable, but it only appears on food labels as MSG about 1 percent of the time. Instead, MSG is sometimes labeled as flavor or flavoring, soy protein, barley malt, pectin, corn starch or yeast extract, Reid said. 
 
 "We're getting an abundance of MSG," she said. "It's in 95 percent of processed food. And we don't need it in our diet - ever." 
 
 While there is no science to back up many of her claims, Reid said the most convincing evidence to her is the results she saw in her daughter. At age 7, Brooke is completely cured, Reid said. And from all outward appearances that seems to be true. 
 
 Research is sparse 
 
 Dr. Robin Hansen, professor of pediatrics at UC Davis and a developmental behavior pediatrician who recently led a study for the university's Mind Institute, said it's fairly common for parents to seek out alternative treatments for their children with autism. Nearly 7 percent of the children with autism they studied were on gluten- and casein-free diets. 
 
 "We don't have a lot of diet research to look at, because these studies are difficult to do," she said, describing the trickiness of monitoring a child's food intake in a double-blind study. "And no one has done an MSG study. But what we do have doesn't show a marked difference even with children with gastrointestinal problems." 
 
 Still, she wouldn't dissuade parents from trying as long as they make sure the diet is balanced and to keep in mind that it's a big undertaking. 
 
 For Reid, the journey was long, difficult and often heartbreaking, but ultimately a victory that persuaded her to quit her high-paying job and help other parents with what she learned, establishing the Fremont nonprofit foundation Unblind My Mind. 
 
 It started when Brooke was 2. Reid and her husband noticed that their daughter, the youngest of five, couldn't make human connections, had severe communication problems and threw tantrums that lasted for hours. She also had digestive issues and constipation - all hallmark signs of autism. 
 
 Reid told herself Brooke would grow out of it. Her husband, Paul Sauer, wasn't so sure. A cellular biologist, he began plugging Brooke's issues into search engines and perusing websites. One night he came home with information he had printed off the Internet about autism. 
 
 "Brooke displayed every characteristic on the list," Reid said. "I could check every box." 
 
 Looking for answers 
 
 They went through all the traditional channels, starting with their pediatrician. Their doctor agreed that something was wrong but didn't know where to direct them. So they hired a psychologist to test Brooke, and the results showed that she was moderately autistic with some severe learning disabilities, Reid said. 
 
 "She was in her own world," Reid said. "Her actions were repetitive, like doing a puzzle over and over again for hours. And she exhibited signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. She couldn't stand going home in the stroller on a different route without having a screaming tantrum." 
 
 They enrolled her in a special-education preschool and tried to come to terms with the fact that their daughter would probably never function normally. 
 
 Reid began reading autism blogs and going onto online bulletin boards, gathering as much information as possible on what more she could do. What she found was that some parents were having success with diet, specifically cutting out gluten and dairy. 
 
 The MSG factor 
 
 She tried it with her daughter for six months and Brooke improved - a little. Then she saw something about how one parent was cutting out foods with MSG. It seemed odd to Reid. 
 
 "I remember thinking, MSG?" she said. "Who uses that anymore?" 
 
 Quickly she determined that it was in more foods than she could count. Desperate for results, she told her husband she wanted to try the diet. He was dubious. Already their household had been divided on the gluten-free, dairy-free diet - with most of the family opting to eat more conventionally. 
 
 But the more Reid researched, the more it made sense. She said she found plenty of studies that showed that many Americans suffer from glutamate imbalance. Glutamate is a chemical messenger that transmits signals between neurons and other cells in the body. Glutamate is needed for learning and functioning. 
 
 Reid believes that when there is too much glutamate in the body, it causes neurological disfunction. This theory is shared by many scientists. But Reid takes it a step further, believing that a diet filled with MSG can add to the imbalance, or make it much worse. 
 
 Dr. Sanford Newmark, who practices integrative medicine at UCSF's Osher Center and specializes in treating autistic children, says there are no scientific studies to back up her hypothesis. But he would be willing to try it because he has seen results from gluten- and casein-free diets. 
 
 "There is so much we don't know about autism," he said. "And there is no way to know who will respond and who won't." 
 
 Results from diet 
 
 Newmark said that a third of his patients respond significantly to diet and another third see mild improvement. For some reason some people can't break down gluten or casein in the gut and it winds up going into the bloodstream, he said. 
 
 "There's a huge connection between the gut and the brain," he said, adding that autistic children who suffer from gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation, often see the best results from the diet. 
 
 As far as the MSG-free diet, other than Reid's experience Newmark said he has seen no evidence that it works. 
 
 "While it's not normal for kids with moderate autism to be cured by 7, it's not unheard of," he said. 
 
 But there is no harm in trying, he said. "If you actually ate just fruit, meat, vegetables, beans and whole grains and not processed food, it's a more healthful diet." 
 
 Dr. Antonio Hardan, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and an expert on the neurology of autism, said, "I believe that we have to be open-minded about new approaches to treating autism." 
 
 But he too echoes Newmark's words that Reid's diet is not scientifically tested and warns that changing an autistic child's diet could have serious consequences. One of the traits of autism is picky eating, he said. Doctors believe it may be related to sensory issues such as texture, smell and taste. 
 
 "By limiting something they like, you could be making life in that household impossible," he said. 
 
 Just timing? 
 
 He also wonders if Brooke Reid's recovery might have been a coincidence to the diet. 
 
 "For 100 years we didn't have processed food, but we did have autism," he said. "But despite the lack of scientific support, it might be worth considering in light of the good response of some types of seizures to the ketogenic diet." 
 
 The ketogenic diet - a high-fat, low-carbohydrate regime - has successfully been used to treat epilepsy in children. 
 
 But Reid said she has her own proof. She sees it every day with her Unblind My Mind foundation. 
 
 "Out of the 75 cases of diagnosed autism I've worked on, 74 drastically improved within five weeks," she said. 
 
 And then there is Brooke. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Dr. Katherine Reid with her daughter, Brooke. Photo by Chip Scheuer. 
 
 What’s a mother to do when her three-year-old daughter is diagnosed with autism? Well, if you’re a biochemist like Dr. Katherine Reid, Ph.D, you’ll probably end up researching everything you can about the developmental disorder, and maybe even beginning your therapy in the aisles of the grocery store. 
 
 By asking the question what are we eating?, Reid claims she’s been able to completely manage her daughter Brooke’s autism. What we put into our bodies, she says, can have profound effects on our brains. 
 
 “Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder, which means that there are so many different areas of the brain that it hits, and how it manifests itself in each child is different,” says Reid. 
 
 
 
 Some of the overarching characteristics of the disorder, though, include communication and social impairments, seizure-like behavior, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Brooke, diagnosed at age three as “moderate” on the spectrum, suffered from all of the above. 
 
 “It was difficult to integrate her into any mainstream setting,” says Reid. “Even like going to a park, because you just didn’t know if this seizure-like behavior was going to flare up and it was really hard to explain.” 
 
 Three years later, Brooke has improved so much that she was taken out of special needs school, and she’s functioning well in mainstream kindergarten. “She’s now the most social kid out of the five children,” says Reid, who credits the success to a total reinvention of her daughter’s diet, and the removal of one ubiquitous ingredient: monosodium glutamate. 
 
 The journey to the MSG discovery began with the addition of nutritional supplements like magnesium, Vitamin D3, Omega 3 Fish oil and B-Complex vitamins. “I observed eye contact coming back, and minor improvements, but still autistic, still special needs, not functioning very well in the mainstream environment,” says Reid. 
 
 Her next step was an approach popular among parents of autistic children, but with unreliably mixed results: a diet free of gluten and casein, a milk protein added to many foods. Again, Brooke showed slight improvements. But it wasn’t until she took it one step further that Brooke’s seizures and sensory distortions, or extreme sensitivity to light and sound, were completely alleviated. 
 
 “I found that gluten and casein weren’t the only thing that I needed to remove,” says Reid, who read in a blog that she also needed to be careful with MSG. “And at that point I was like who is feeding their kids MSG?” 
 
 As it turns out: everybody. 
 
 “I was shocked. It’s all over the place in our foods, and it’s not being labeled as monosodium glutamate, it’s being labeled as almost healthy things, as natural flavors, for instance. So you can have a food labeled 100% organic, all natural, no MSG added and still, that food item contain a significant amount of MSG,” says Reid. 
 
 It’s the “free glutamate” in MSG, produced when gluten, casein and other proteins are processed, that are slipping into almost every processed food out there, including juices, flavored teas, and even toothpaste. It appears in “natural foods” as protein powders, yeast extract, hydrolyzed proteins, extracted proteins and other forms, and it’s added not as a preservative, says Reid, but to make us think that food tastes better. 
 
 “It actually doesn’t have any taste in and of itself, but it’s a chemical that’s causing a brain reaction that’s making us think it tastes good,” says Reid. “It’s binding to the glutamate receptor, and it’s exciting our neurons.” 
 
 And for the autistic brain, which is already hyper-stimulated, it can wreak havoc, says Reid. 
 
 “Once we became aware of the marketing gimmick going on here and the disguise, and removing it really ended up removing a lot of processed foods, she was a new kid,” says Reid, whose shopping list is now made up of primarily fruits, vegetables, organic meats, and raw nuts and seeds. 
 
 “It just reduced the noise, the light was no longer an issue, any room sound that was going on didn’t bother her, and she was able to absorb like a sponge,” says Reid. 
 
 Interestingly enough, pharmaceutical drugs currently in clinical trial for treating autism and other brain disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease, block the glutamate receptors in the brain. ||||| We believe every healing journey begins 
 
 with a closer look at what we are eating! As a PhD biochemist and a mom determined to help my daughter with autism, I discovered that our foods have many hidden ingredients. These ingredients, like free glutamate (MSG), are common triggers to many of the symptoms that we associate with disorders like autism and other inflammatory/neurological disorders. Does this sound like you or someone you know? Join Our Community and Download My List of Foods to Avoid 
 
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 “We are what we eat, but most of us don’t know what we are eating!” 
 
 My daughter is no longer considered on the autism spectrum, which is managed 100% through diet! After helping others restore their health through foods, I started Unblind My Mind, a 501(c)3 non profit to further spread the word and create a community of people passionate about restoring truly healthy foods to our food supply. 
 
 Unblind My Mind wants to help you with your healing journey through the REID (reduced excitatory inflammation diet) program (for more on the REID program, click here) . We have investigated food patents, ingredient labels, supplements, and many food/beverage products and can help guide your unblinding, healing process.
– A Bay Area biochemist thinks she's found a sort of autism smoking gun: monosodium glutamate, or MSG. It's a chemical compound almost exclusively connoted with Chinese food, but Katherine Reid points out that it's found in all but 5% of processed food, largely unbeknownst to us: It appears on the food label only about 1% of the time. But if things like flavor or flavoring, soy protein, whey protein, pectin, corn starch, or stock make an appearance (many, many more listed on this pdf), you're consuming MSG, she says, needlessly. The San Francisco Chronicle points out there "is no science to back up many of her claims," with two doctors confirming to the paper that no MSG studies of the sort have been carried out. But then there's Reid and her 7-year-old daughter. As the Chronicle explains, Reid's youngest child, Brooke, began showing signs of autism at 2: wild tantrums, repetitive behavior, communication issues, digestive problems. Tests revealed the girl was moderately autistic. Reid began researching diet options, first eliminating gluten and dairy; then she read about MSG, and the role glutamate plays in the body: It's essential for learning and function, but she came to believe that too much of it interferes with neural function—and that the glutamine in MSG can exacerbate the imbalance. She wiped MSG from Brooke's diet (SantaCruz.com notes it's even found in toothpaste), and says the autism symptoms have been "completely removed." One doctor who treats kids with autism says he'd try the diet, but cautions that "while it's not normal for kids with moderate autism to be cured by 7, it's not unheard of." Still, Reid says 99% of the 75 autistic children she has worked with at her Unblind My Mind foundation "drastically improved within five weeks."