Weston A Price Foundation – Gut Physiology and Syndrome 2010
The GAPS in our Medical Knowledge
Fifteen or twenty years ago, the majority of doctors never saw an autistic child. It was a rare disorder that most people had never heard of, afflicting about one child in 10,000. Today, on average in this country, one child in 150 is diagnosed with autism. With a 40-fold increase in newly diagnosed cases of autism, we have an absolute epidemic.
Autism is a devastating disorder. It not only ruins the life of the child, it ruins the life of the family. The siblings have to carry this cross for the rest of their lives and the parents and grandparents do also. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is another epidemic. One child in three in every classroom in this country, in Britain, in Australia and in Canada and many other countries is diagnosed with this condition. If there is a hyperactive child in the classroom, about 80 percent of the teacher’s time is spent on that child, meaning the rest of the class is losing out dramatically. These children are disruptive and fidgety; their attention span is short and their memory is poor. Teaching a child like that is very difficult.
We also have an epidemic of dyslexia and dyspraxia. Dyslexia is defined as a disorder when the child cannot read or write properly. However, when you start examining a dyslexic child, you find that there is much more to dyslexia than just reading and writing. These children are socially clumsy: they find it very difficult to fit into society, to make friends and to be adequate in various social situations. About 50 percent of children with dyslexia are also dyspraxic. Dyspraxia can be described as a physical clumsiness—poor gross motor skills and fine motor skills. These children are poor at sports: many of them take a long time to learn to catch a ball or to peddle a bike.
When you start looking at the children with so-called mental disorders, you find that they are physically ill. The majority of them suffer from allergies to foods, chemicals, animals, pollen, dust—to anything in the environment. They suffer from digestive disorders, asthma and eczema, frequent ear infections and chest infections. They cannot digest and absorb their food properly and have severe nutritional deficiencies. As a result they are unable to learn, unable to function in society, to play sports, to make friends, to fit in.
