When you’re detoxifying, and your child suddenly goes into extreme anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, fearfulness, clinginess, panic attacks, skin rashes that itch severely or even burn or blister in sunlight then this post will give you the common reasons why and some things you can do about it. They can also be why you might be getting derailed in the autism recovery process.

The very first stage in autism recovery begins with gut healing. The first step in stage one begins with diet changes. You must remove the bad foods that contribute to inflammation, and injured gut lining, and feed the pathogenic bacteria overgrowth in your child’s gut such as candida. When you do this the bad bacteria will begin to die off and detoxification begins. You must support this process with binders to help sop up the toxins. You can get your free guide to the top 7 foods to eliminate and learn more about why they are so harmful to eat. 

This podcast episode, #96, will offer you guidance on two common issues that come up during detoxification that are crucial to know about, PANS, or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, and KPU, or Kryptopyrroles Porphyrins.

Binders are just that, they bind to toxins and assist the body in getting them out. If the toxins back up you’ll see significant changes in the, both physical and behavioral. This can trigger other health issues that show their symptoms largely in behaviors.

What most parents don’t know when detoxifying their child with autism

Troubleshooting during detoxification is critical. This is something that took me years to find when I was on my son’s recovery journey. Had I known about it I would have saved myself a lot of time, financial expense, and reduced the stress and even panic that both my son and I lived in for so long. Not knowing what to do is the worst. You know, that helpless feeling of knowing something needs to be done but you don’t know what that something is. The doctor says they can see you in a week or a month but you need answers now. This can be extremely stressful. 

Detoxification, even the initial phase when you’re changing the diet can cause some toxic “backlog” in your child’s body. Since kids with autism have poor detoxification pathways we need to support them and you may notice some very heightened symptoms in this process. This is what we’re going to talk about today.

There are a couple of very common very significant issues that can come up during detoxification and they must be dealt with immediately. The two most extreme and quite common, but commonly missed, are PANS and KPU. 

PANS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome)

First and most commonly it is a sign of what is referred to as PANS. This acronym stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. You can read the full details on it and listen to my interview with specialist, Dr. Madeleine Cunningham here, but in a nutshell, the symptoms are caused by the immune system attacking the brain. As you can imagine, the symptoms are severe. 

Some symptoms of PANS include, Strep throat, flu-like symptoms, tiks, a reduction in language and speech, aggression, or a sudden onset of OCD, or anxiety, sleep problems, hyper-focus, clinginess and fearful behaviors. Infections that are known to trigger PANS can be Lyme disease, and mold biotoxins due to the chronic inflammation and stress on the systems of the body.

KPU, or Kryptopyrroles Porphyrins(Kryptopylouria)

The technical name is Kryptopyrroles Porphyrins, also referred to as Kryptopyrroluria (KPU). This also triggers mast cell activation. It is a build up of toxins in the blood due to a heem pathway dysregulation. Porphyria are iron-containing heme which permits hemoglobin oxygen transportation in the blood. It is triggered by many things including fasting, genetics, nutrient imbalance, rapid detoxification, candida, Lyme, viruses, mold, heavy metals, glyphosate and other toxic insult. It is also commonly triggered by PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome Associated with Strep), or Streptococcal infections. The toxin release may also trigger an autoimmune response of PANS/PANDAS, since a Staphylococcus infection contributes to a build up of porphyrins. There is an accumulation of porphyrins and pyrrole pigments by Staphylococcus. Detoxifying for people with KPU must be done VERY slowly.

Some symptoms of Kryptopyrroles Porphyrins (KPU)

• Rapid triggered extreme anxiety from the removal of sugars and carbs
• heightened skin sensitivity, especially to sunlight
• cannot tolerate fasting or intermittent fasting
• panic attacks
• bowel issues of either constipation or diarrhea
• hallucinations
• chronic pain
• cannot tolerate low carbohydrate or low sugar diet/candida diet (until heem pathways are balanced)
• very low zinc levels. A common copper to zinc ratio imbalance.
• sleep disruption
• abdominal pain
• back pain

How to assist your child now during a heightened detoxification episodes:

1. To help the KPU to calm, the blood is needing some glucose, so a piece of fruit (for the sugar) should help. Since this situation is so delicate, it is alright to add in just a little carbohydrate too, temporarily, as it will help calm. In some extreme cases people are given a dextrose or glucose IV which slows the response in 10-60 minutes. A tablespoon or two of tapioca/dextrose can help calm by helping the sugar imbalance, but be sure there are no latex allergies (in the tapioca) or corn allergies (from the dextrose). This is only for severe cases. Try fruit first.
2. Activated charcoal is a binder that “binds” to toxins and helps the body remove the excess it is having difficult removing on its own. Taking this for 1-4 days or so will usually help reduce symptoms quite a bit, and it supports their body in detoxification. Take away from food.
3. CBD oil is very helpful in calming and supports the immune system. By using this link and code “healthy5” you can receive 5% off of your first order.
4. Take Quinton trace minerals and a mega mineral supplement that includes zinc. Among many things they help to open detoxification pathways.
5. Eat heem sourced foods. Heem is iron based but plant sources of heem are not usually enough. Animal based heem foods are needed now. Some really good “heem” protein is unaged grass fed beef, or organic beef liver. You can also use organic poultry, shellfish such as clams, oysters and mussels, or line caught fresh fish such as halibut, haddock, perch, salmon or tuna. Avoid tuna due to high mercury levels. Note: Iron supplements can make it worse because they increase inflammation and feed pathogens. Iron gets stuck in an inflammatory state so you may show either very high ferritin or very low.
6. Avoid sunlight with KPU. The UV rays will make the skin burn from the porphyrins that are built up there now. Skin may even blister in sunlight.
7. See the porphyria foundation’s drug data base to find the drug interaction of specific drugs in patients with Porphyria.

Testing

Also have your child tested with the 24 hour KPU urine test, Symptoms may be your best guide. Some testing will not find it so subclinical KPU often gets ruled out by the practitioner, however, if symptoms are severe, then get tested from a reputable lab. The test to ask your practitioner for is a 24 hour urine collection from Labcorp: Porphyrins, Quantitative, Random Urine, TEST: 120980, CPT: 84120. Keep urine refrigerated during this test.