The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we just ended Autism Awareness Month, and we're lucky to talk to an expert when it comes to autism, get the latest info on how digestion affects autism plus later... We'll tell you what's going on around town. But first up, Tom Bahar is the chairman of enzymatic and founder of the autism Hope Alliance, and domenica is a number one enzyme company in the natural foods industry, and holds a degree in holistic nutrition and has authored two books, and we welcome him to the mother's market radio show, Tom, how are you?

Great, thank you.

For those of you in our audience that may not be familiar with your mission and work, why don't you fill the audience with today's topic... Today's topic is autism, and we've been very involved in autism for about 12 years now, and we're very proud of that fact, enzymatic is an enzyme company essentially, and it's our mission to educate and distribute high quality inside products internationally.

So they really go hand-in-hand, because many of the people suffering from autism have severe digestive issues, and so that's where the connection is.

Well, today we are talking about how digestion, of course, as you just said, it affects autism and according to the CDC, autism affects one in every 68 children. That's a high number. So how did you get involved in autism?

Well, in 2003, Karen de police, I wrote a book, she has two sons, formally diagnosed with autism, and she wrote a book called enzymes and autism and other neurological disorders, and unbeknown to us, Sanomat CA, she had put our products all over the book, and we started getting calls in 2003, 2004. and we followed up, we didn't know anything about the connection, we knew very little about autism, and so I was very eager to meet the author, and that's what I did, I flew out to a conference that she was speaking at, and I met with her for about an hour and was just enamored with her as an individual because she made it her really, life's work from the time her children were diagnosed to the time I met her, to educate other parents and other family members about what you can do about autism. And so we sponsored her for approximately four years, which simply means that anywhere she traveled, anywhere she spoke, we offset those expenses. And we didn't require that she talked about enzymatic, we didn't require she put up a sign for intimate, but that was our introduction to autism, and since then, we hired a young lady by the name of Kristen cell Vicenza, and she served as our Director of Education for autism, so enzymatic really got involved soon thereafter to educate as many as possible, not only about the disorder, but about the options and the role of enzymes in helping some of these individuals.

Wow, that's an incredible story. And on both ends, really, What is the prevalence of digestive issues in that spectrum?

Yeah, well, you mentioned at the outset that the CDC says 1-68 are being diagnosed with Autism Today. That's absolutely true. However, we know that the number is probably gonna change in the next few weeks, so the CDC is gonna be releasing a new number in about three to four weeks, the community expects it to become more prevalent, that number will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 and 50, possibly, even worse.

And those who suffer from autism have commonly digestive distress, so about 80% of the children that are diagnosed with autism have severe, severe digestive distress, sometimes there's a name that goes along with that digestive distress, but commonly, very poor digestion. Malabsorption is quite common, not just gas and bloating, but diarrhea and constipation, or frequent... So approximately 80% of those diagnosed to suffer and just... Does it happen, do they find this out right at birth, or does it often to... The diagnosis usually occurs between the ages of two and four, typically a child is developing normally, and at some point they begin to regress, what's very common is speech goes, and obviously the parents quickly notice there's a challenge and then usually months later they get a diagnosis and it seems like the digestive distress comes along with that, so these children aren't suffering severely in the beginning prior to the diagnosis, but certainly thereafter, there seems to be a connection.

We talked... Okay, so the symptoms would be that the digestive and then... Those are the most common symptoms. So when you think of a digestive distress and malabsorption, you know what to look for, and most parents can identify that relatively quickly, what a lot of parents don't recognize are the less obvious symptoms, so the less obvious symptoms include mood Ines behavioral challenges.

For example, if a child can't speak and they have a tummy ache, what do they do, they act out, sometimes they'll find pressure points, they'll lean over the arm rest of a couch, they'll roll their stomach on a ball, they'll be... Fits of anger, total frustration. Also a lack of sleep. These are the less obvious symptoms of these issues, the more obvious symptoms they identify very quickly, explain the difference between food allergies and intolerance.

Well, many of these young ones, and my specialty in autism happens to be with children, but every time I say young ones, I really mean anybody with autism, and many of these with autism are diagnosed with specific food allergies, and a food allergy is easiest to define in the sense that it is an immune response to a food that should be good for them, that they should be able to eat, but their immune system identifies it for some reason is harmful and rejects it, and then there are all kinds of symptoms that go along with... That immune response, but an intolerance is not an immune response, and this often gets overlooked with millions of people, and specifically with children with autism.

So think intolerance, the most common, of course, is lactose intolerance, and when we define lactose intolerance quite simply, we say that it is a deficiency in the enzyme lactase, so people that don't make or manufacturing of lactase, the enzyme that breaks down the dairy sugar, lactose are intolerant to lactose or dairy.

Well, there's a lot of other intolerance out there, the most common nowadays that we're hearing about is gluten.

For many years, there was a movement to deny that there was ever a gluten intolerance, everybody... A lot of people felt that you either had celiac disease or you didn't know... Such thing is being intolerant to gluten. Well, we've come around and we realize that millions perhaps are intolerant to gluten, and so quite simply, the way I would define the differences, one is a simply an inability to manufacture enough of an enzyme to break down a specific food group that would be an intolerance. The other, which is an allergy, is an immune response to something in the food, and the two should not be confused, and by the way, the intolerance is much harder to diagnose, there could be delayed responses, it's not nearly as obvious, there aren't any real... What I would consider commonly known tests for it, where your family practice physician would say, Hey, let's run an intolerance task, it's just not going to happen, it's not like an allergy test, it's not... Yeah, so it's much harder to really identify...

Oh wow, I didn't know that. So thank you for explaining that.

Are there any specific enzymes that can address food intolerance?

Absolutely, so the one people are aware of is lactase, which is the enzyme, the breakdown, lactose, which we spoke about earlier, and there are lots of different products on the market that have it, so that people can enjoy some dairy in their life and what they don't know about or these other enzymes that address these other... In tolerances, for example, we mentioned gluten intolerance, and with gluten, which is a protein, there is a protease, an enzyme that breaks down proteins called DPP-4, which very efficiently breaks down that peptide, and so people that are intolerant to gluten have the ability to take this enzyme with these gluten-containing foods and not experience the same symptoms that they would have without taking the enzyme, on top of that, there are enzymes like Silanis which helps with phenols, finals exist in nearly every preserved food and in lots of fruits, and some are intolerant to that. And the list goes on, but absolutely, enzymes are available, they're on the market and they can help with these intolerance.

So what about the benefits of elimination diets?

Well, elimination diets are commonly used for people with food allergies, so they have to eliminate certain foods... If we talk about extremes, if you have a peanut allergy, there's an elimination diet, there will be no peanuts in that individual's diet, but when there is these other allergies, whether it's a gluten, decaying to dairy to other things, commonly and most effectively what an individual can do including a child or a family member with autism is completely removed that food group from their diet, it is clearly the most effective thing anyone can do for both intolerance and for food allergies, and so there are lots of diets, there's a gluten-free casein-free diet, there's the specific carbohydrate diet and many others, and they are extremely beneficial, in fact, not only do they help with the common symptoms of food intolerance or food allergy, but all of those symptoms we mentioned earlier that aren't so obvious, the ones that include behavioral challenges with children, those seem to be affected. One study, which I saw yesterday, I heard about yesterday at another event, one group found that nearly 30% of the children that removed certain foods, primarily gluten and casing from their diet, showed a behavioral improvement. Other studies have indicated even higher numbers, so there's clearly a benefit to eliminating foods that these children are sensitive to.

Can you talk about what I enzyme is?

Oh, absolutely, sure. So an enzyme is technically a protein, a protein is a combination of amino acids, what's so amazing though about enzymes is that this combination of amino acids somehow forms energy or what scientists call biological activity, and every enzyme has what is called an active site and that energy is focused at that point.

So unlike any other protein known to science, these proteins are able to serve as catalysts in the body, which simply means that 99% of the time, they are speeding up chemical reactions in the cells, but also in the digestive system and elsewhere. The fact of the matter is, is that every cell is dependent on enzyme activity, probably thousands of enzymes per second, and their energy factors are necessary to drive every function of the cell, so they're amazing, they really are. And very few people really understand the true benefit and necessity of enzymes in human health, and obviously, well, we all have them, but we all need them, and so I can have a... We're talking about an example of a sample of an enzyme, so your company in domenica. So what are those... How you provide those in the super... We break it down essentially into two categories, and enzymatic, so the most obvious, of course, are the digestive issues, digestive enzymes essentially make the foods we eat smaller, okay, so we choose our food, we swallow our food and it's pretty small there, but they need to be much much smaller, the amino acids needed to be broken down, or excuse the proteins need to be broken down to amino acids and peptides, the carbohydrates need to be broken down into sugars, the fats need to be broken down into essential fatty acids, all of this has to take place for the cells to benefit from the nutrition... Well, digestive enzymes are essential to not only efficient digestion but to a healthy life, and so what we make are enzyme products that a person can take with meals that speeds up that reaction on much like the definition of an enzyme. They can take it at the beginning of the meal. And many of the symptoms they often suffer from simply go away.

Okay, well, this is a very interesting information time, and right now we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show.

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And now back to our interview with enzymatic as Bo Hager, and we're talking about autism, and this is very interesting information, and so we're talking about should enzymes be used instead of the elimination diet? A great question, and the reason people ask that is, there are some individuals that believe that if... Especially if you have a food intolerance or if the child has a food intolerance, that they can simply give them an enzyme product and then the child can eat whatever they want, and the fact is is that's not accurate.

We don't ever advise anyone, especially children with autism, to use enzymes in place of elimination diets, especially if there's an allergy, so that's never the case. When there's an intolerance, we believe that the greater good is to truly eliminate the foods that the children are intolerant to and obviously allergic to, however, there is often the risk of getting these molecules, whether they be gluten or casein or lactose in foods that may be labeled gluten-free or dairy-free. And there's where enzymes truly come in, in fact, gluten can be found in Plato and they can absorb it, it can be found in bath soap, so these children are so sensitive that often taking enzymes in conjunction with an elimination diet is the best approach, and that way if there is any contamination, sometimes it's cross-contamination from cooking, sometimes it's just environmental exposure, there's enzymes in the system to handle that, and we see the greatest benefit in combining both elimination diets and enzymes.

So it's just extra support.Extra support. extra protection. Yeah, for sure.

What is the best way to take the enzymes... Well, the best way for digestive enzymes are to take the beginning of the meal, unfortunately, many of these children have challenges swallowing capsules, and so we do not provide these in a great tasting table yet, we're working on that, but what I suggest for especially young children is about half of an adult does mixed usually with apple sauce or added to their smoothie, or sometimes the simplest way is to take a little dropper and use a little juice and mask, there is a taste to the powder, it's kind of the easy taste, but if they mix it with juice and they just shoot it into the back of the mouth of the young one before the child eats because you want those enzymes in the system before the food gets there, that's usually the best way to deliver the enzyme products and can enzymes help in other ways.

Yes, absolutely. So the second category of enzymes that enzymatic makes, we call therapeutic, we've got digestive and we've got therapeutic, and to the therapeutic enzymes you don't take with food, in fact, it's the exact opposite, you take it away from food on an empty stomach, and we consider empty stomach as about an hour before you eat or about two hours after you eat, and the goal there is to get the enzymes in the blood stream to absorb these enzymes so that they have a systemic effect, which simply means that the enzymes will positively affect other systems of the body beyond the digestive system, so there can be a cardiovascular benefit, for example, there's an enzyme called naticidae, which has over 20 studies on the cardiovascular benefit of that enzyme, I'm dating back 10 years and more, which is fascinating, there can be an immune benefit, there's no benefit to supporting healthy inflammation, there's benefits to overcoming candida overgrowth, so these therapeutic enzymes can be very useful when taken on an empty stomach.

That's interesting as well. Can you be more specific about the immune function? Absolutely, so the enzyme protease is the enzyme that breaks down protein, and just about everything that makes us sick is in some way connected to protein, without going into great detail, what I can simply say is, is that for us to overcome just about everything that makes us sick, we need to be able to digest protein in an immune kind of way, so the white blood cells, as an example, are full of proteases, the enzymes to break down protein. And when a white blood cell comes in contact with something that doesn't belong, something that is harmful, it primarily digests that something, whether that be bacteria or anything else, and the white blood cell then becomes dependent on proteases, the fewer proteases that we produce systemically in the immune system, the less responsive our immune system is, so you can supplement with proteases and you can flood the system with proteases when you take it on an empty stomach, and literally the immune system benefits from it.

The wonderful thing about that is you're not stimulating immune function, so it doesn't boost immune function, so if a person has an auto-immune disease, it's a safe way to overcome some common challenges, whether they be seasonal or other, and so proteases can be instrumental in benefiting the immune system, we make a product called enzyme defense, which many people use for that very reason.

Can you be more specific about Candida?

Sure.

Candida, again, a very common problem today, many people are walking around with it, they don't know they have it, you know it can be seen from either yeast infections in women or skin conditions and man fatigue, brain fog, etcetera. But interestingly, the Candida cell has a coating around it, and it's called kitten, and this kin closely resembles plant cellulose, and so plant cellulose is digested or broken down by an enzyme called CELLA, which is in every digestive I'm formally out there, ours and everybody else's. And we make a product that has an enormous amount of sales, and you take this on an empty stomach and it supports the body and breaking down this kitten, once you remove the sell-off from any cell, you even remove a small section of it, the cell dies and that's true of any cell in our bodies, so if you can break through that cell wall that kitten, then you're removing this candida because you're killing calls now, the beauty of enzymes is though, you're digesting it so you don't get the common die-off associated with... Let's say in herbal cleans or some other cleans because it's not releasing the toxins nearly as much, and we've got an enzyme in there called Proteus, which we've talked about extensively today, which helps detoxify the body at the same time, so Candida is definitely something that Tim's gonna help with... And our product is called Candida hands.

Yeah, is there a benefit in blending enzymes?

Absolutely, so enzymes are about potency, and when we're talking about potency in enzymes, it's not like buying a multi-mineral or a B-complex, you can't just look at the side of the bottle and say it's got more milligrams and product day than product, be therefore product day is more potent and times don't work like that, enzymes are all about how much can it break down of a protein or fat or a carbohydrate or a fiber, unfortunately, there's no real way to identify true potency on a label. And so what an America has done is created parables and these blends improve potency in a dramatic fashion. We've done research which indicates that compared to many other single enzyme products, they can work as well as six times better and much, much faster at the same time. So blends are critical. What I tell people to look for in an enzyme product is that all of the categories, the proteases, The Light Pass, the analyses and the SA-laces all have more than one within each category, and of course, in our digestive products like digest cold, you'll see on the label their blends, and that's what we're indicating that these products have been tested for potency and these are truly the most potent products available.

Thank you. That you explained that really well. And what would you suggest when choosing an enzyme product, so we talked about blends, that's critical, quite frankly, the other thing that I would suggest is that you look for a company that is specializing in enzymes because quite frankly, most of the enzyme products on the market today not that they're not good, they are... The beauty of enzymes is if it's got any enzymes in it, these enzymes are going to work at some level, they're gonna break down food proteins, fats or carbohydrates, but an enzyme product that is made by a company that... This is all they do. You're probably gonna get a better product, a more research product, and America has been doing this for 18 years, and we're in our fifth version of Tara blend, and we're very proud to say, as you mentioned at the outset, that we're the number one selling brand out there so you look for a product that's just an American, there you go, perfect.

And what is the most beneficial enzyme product for those with autism, it's going to be a high potency digestive enzyme blend that addresses the most common intolerance, enzymatic makes a product called digest spectrum, and it was designed specifically for food intolerance, and so the products we almost always recommend a four children with autism and digestive distress is diabetic, however, you also mentioned today, you asked about candida, you asked about immune support, many of these individuals with autism need that type of support as well. So diet spectrum, digestive ly therapeutically candidates and as an enzyme defense seemed to work really well with these young ones. Excellent. Well, this was very interesting information, Tom, thank you for your time. That's my pleasure.

And we look forward to having you on again. And in the meantime, you can learn more about Tom on his website and emetic dot com, and I'm gonna spell it out. It's E-N-Z-Y-M-E-D-I-C-A. endemic dot com and learn more about how you can stay healthy, and we look forward to your next visit. Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.