Individuals with health issues ranging from autism to epilepsy are increasingly experimenting with dietary supplementation of gamma-amino-butyric acid (GABA), one of the body’s most important neurotransmitters.

Addressing autism is challenging owing to the disease’s diverse symptoms, uncertain causes, and disabling effects. Autistic individuals are commonly affected by a broad array of sensory issues, sociobehavioral difficulties, and gastrointestinal malfunction, all of which can severely diminish quality of life.

When parents of autistic children ask what causes the condition, the answers are never satisfying. Although therapy would be far easier if researchers could pinpoint a single causative factor, there is a wide range of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the characteristic symptoms of autism. 

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a tricky diagnosis to understand and an even tougher condition to address. Unlike inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which are relatively well-characterized based on the physiological processes that underpin their symptoms, IBS is a functional bowel disorder.

Patients and families have long known about the connection between Parkinson’s disease and the GI tract. That’s because gastrointestinal dysfunction is one of the most common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and like so many of these symptoms, it often goes unaddressed. 

In the United States, millions of patients and caregivers struggle endlessly with the multidimensional impact of autism. With diverse symptoms like social withdrawal, repetitive behavior, self-injury, stereotyped gestures, and gastrointestinal distress, therapies for autism must impact multiple neurobiological mechanisms to provide benefit to patients.

From major operations to minor outpatient procedures, surgery is ubiquitous in modern medicine. Unfortunately, even the least invasive surgeries are hard on the body.

Many patients who struggle with anxiety spend years (or even decades) trying to find an approach that truly works to address their symptoms, often without achieving durable relief. Indeed, studies show that the efficacy of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy options can vary considerably, depending on both the nature of the therapy and the individual patient’s response.

Autism is popularly considered a disorder of the brain that manifests itself via behavioral and social difficulties. Recently, however, researchers are realizing that profound gastrointestinal and metabolic abnormalities might be inextricably linked to patient behavioral symptoms.

Despite the best efforts of clinicians, certain diseases are difficult to diagnose. Many conditions share common symptoms like inflammation, diarrhea, nausea, headache, constipation, and more, leaving physicians to make educated guesses based on the probability of a given disease. Under this framework, physicians are more inclined to diagnose common, yet relatively less harmful diseases first, than correct their diagnosis to a more serious disease later if necessary.