Episode 271 — Autism Is BIOMEDICAL
Guest: Dr. Christian Bogner • Date: September 4, 2025
Episode Overview
Autism is not simply a neurodevelopmental disorder—it’s biomedical. In this episode, Dr. Christian Bogner shares why parents don’t need to wait for years of studies to act, and how understanding the root causes opens up immediate and powerful ways to help your child.
About Dr. Christian Bogner
Christian Bogner, MD, FACOG, CFMNP
Dr. Christian Bogner’s journey into functional and integrative medicine began in 2007 when his eldest son was diagnosed with autism at just 2.5 years old. Since then, he has spoken at conferences worldwide, consulted with over 1,000 families, and dedicated his career to uncovering the genetic, biochemical, and environmental factors driving autism and other chronic conditions.
Board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology with additional certification in functional medicine, Dr. Bogner is passionate about the microbiome, plant-based nutrition, and innovative therapies that improve accessibility for families. He has helped develop software to translate stool data into personalized guidance, advanced cold laser technology for affordable photobiomodulation, and targeted nutraceuticals to support detoxification and inflammation resolution.
In 2024, he co-founded Autism Is Biomedical, Inc., a nonprofit committed to providing families with resources, counseling, and access to biomedical interventions. Working closely with visionary medical physicist Alex Zaharakis, Dr. Bogner continues to push the boundaries of science and care, helping families find hope, healing, and a clearer path forward.
You’ll Discover
Why the Current Definition of Autism Misses the Mark (2:32)
How Parents Can Prepare the Body Before Targeting the Gut (11:15)
Why Simple Stool Testing Provides a Powerful Starting Point (14:10)
The Power of a Gut Balancing Protocol (28:05)
How Environmental Toxins Like Glyphosate Disrupt Gut Health (34:36)
The Connection Between Gut-Derived Chemicals and Altered Consciousness (52:11)
Referenced In This Episode
Learn more about Dr. Bogner’s work:Bogner Health
Visit the nonprofit:Autism Is Biomedical
Full Transcript
Len Arcuri (00:03.135)
When it comes to helping your child, waiting is not an option. Welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets, it's Len. Joining me today is Dr. Christian Bogner. He's a physician and educator who has trained practitioners worldwide. And he's also a dad walking this journey himself. His son with autism continues to make meaningful improvements. And that journey fuels his mission to help parents everywhere.
Dr. Bogner's focus is finding the root causes of a child's struggles and showing parents practical steps they can take. The truth is families don't need to wait for years for more studies to be conducted. There's already plenty you can do right now to support your child. This conversation is about what's possible when parents lean in to those insights and make small intentional shifts that create real change for the child. The secret this week is...
Autism is biomedical. Welcome Dr. Bogner.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:04.238)
Thanks for having me on Len. You have an amazing show and it's a pleasure.
Len Arcuri (01:09.247)
Fantastic. Well, I'm excited to dive in and I'm going to just start it off with the single question that's always on my mind with you as a dad and a practitioner. What is, if you look back now when your son was diagnosed, what's the most important thing you think a parent needs to know earlier in this journey?
Christian Bogner, MD (01:32.024)
My answer would be that, you know, the definition of what they're telling us autism is, wrong. And that autism is actually a medical condition. You know, it's currently defined as a neurodevelopmental condition, that basically you just were born with it and that's what it is. And you can have speech therapy and ABA and behavioral therapy, but
God forbid you're looking into medical reasons why this occurred. That's what I was told. And I didn't know much about this 18 years ago when my son was diagnosed and I followed the recommendations, but I always was skeptical because my son was developing normal until about 18 months. You know, he had words, had eye contact, he was smiling.
and we didn't think much of it and then he had his MMR vaccine and he regressed clearly. know now looking back 18 years later I have my own practice I have about 1200 families that I've consulted with over the last eight years and you know I have
Len Arcuri (02:41.461)
We'll have to go back a little bit.
Christian Bogner, MD (02:47.47)
Okay.
Len Arcuri (02:47.982)
There was a lot of background noise that was louder. Yeah.
Christian Bogner, MD (02:52.942)
On my side? Okay, do want me to just keep going or? Oh, I'm so sorry, that's my wife.
Len Arcuri (02:58.786)
Or just go back a little bit. think heard there was a door slamming that just made it impossible to hear what you were saying.
No, problem.
Christian Bogner, MD (03:08.81)
And so, you know, when my son was diagnosed, I was told that he should just have ABA speech. Hold on. Let me...
Let me tell her. Okay, I think she's very frustrated. When my son was diagnosed, you know, I was told he was born with this, vaccines had nothing to do with it. It was a coincidence because, you know, he started to regress after his MMR. He lost everything, the eye contact, the words that he had and so forth. And, you know, I was told to take him to speech therapy, ABA.
Len Arcuri (03:27.441)
I think you take it.
Christian Bogner, MD (03:52.834)
But I knew inherently that there's something that was introduced into his system that caused him to regress. And it just happened to be the MMR vaccine. And so I knew it's not the definition that they're trying to tell us that it's a neurodevelopmental condition. It's actually, he was poisoned in one way or the other, no matter how you want to twist it. And from then on, I went into this kind of self exploration.
journey where she started to read, you know, what is autism? What do we know? What is being researched and what are others doing that maybe are not in the conventional realms and You know, there's a lot That was out there already, you know, maybe back then the biggest thing was the methyl p12 injections and so forth, but That's what I would really tell a parent right now Don't listen to what they're defining with autism
To give you an example, as a clinician or physician or hospitals subscribe to the service called UpToDate. UpToDate.com, it's a big library of the most up-to-date information of all sorts of medical conditions, even surgical procedures, the latest and greatest, coming from big people on different topics, on different conditions, from different universities that have published on this topic.
And so hospitals pay like $30,000 for this service to have it in their hospitals. So you can just type in autism. What's the latest and greatest, you know, what's the approach that's recommended by the American association of pediatrics and so forth. And when you look at autism, for example, and you see what's recommended to do, you know, they say, yeah, you have your pediatrician, have, you have a neurologist, you have a psychiatrist, you have speech, uh, occupational therapists.
Len Arcuri (05:33.575)
Interesting.
Christian Bogner, MD (05:50.895)
and maybe even physical therapy. And then there's a little section about alternative medicine. And it says that, alternative medicine is not, they're not against alternative medicine, but please talk to your physician about alternative medicine. And so if that physician is not familiar with it and say no, then there you have it. You know, that's why I think going to a pediatrician that's not familiar with any of this material, it's...
waste of your time. But what's more interesting is that when in that section up to date that says, you know, what about, you know, yeast, example, contributing to autism or other toxicities. And they're clearly right in there that that has been disproven. And then you go to the little link that is, you know, justifying that statement that they have made. And it's what it's from a study.
that made that statement in 1996. So that's about, you know, almost 30 years back and they haven't updated that.
Len Arcuri (06:51.315)
Wow.
Len Arcuri (06:59.557)
Just rewind to where you say a study in 1996.
Christian Bogner, MD (07:04.366)
Um, so that study that up to date is quoting that there's no evidence of biochemical markers, you know, causing or contributing to autism, uh, was published in 1996 and since then has not been updated yet. So basically saying none of this stuff has been proven, but now it's 30 years later, we have better, more sophisticated testing. have genetic testing, we have sequencers, we have, you know, stool testing and
They haven't updated it and so we remain to be literally 30 years back with where we are right now with the science because there is a lot of other publications that unfortunately these organizations are not adapting to and who knows why but that's the whole problem that we see is that they don't want to look into that for some reason and I don't know is it because of the incentives that the pediatricians are getting from
a pharmaceutical industry for vaccinating their patients. don't know. it's, yeah. So those are the things that I would have loved to know. And I would tell every parent that autism is a medical condition. Autism, the word doesn't mean anything. Just like heart attack. Oh, it's the heart. Colitis, it's an inflammation of your bowel. Or autism is just nothing. There's no reason for it. So what we are after is treating
autism, sure, but we're actually treating the symptoms that we find biochemically and symptomatically with the patients. So we're treating symptoms. So if somebody says, Dr. Wagner wants to cure autism and that's stupid and it's bad, I tell them, no, we're treating symptoms. We're treating biochemical abnormalities that we find that are verifiable rather than saying I treat autism because it doesn't mean anything.
Because I disagree with the definition of autism that it's a neurodevelopmental disorder. It's ludicrous.
Len Arcuri (09:06.453)
So, I appreciate you sharing all that. So effectively biomedical, as you're saying, it's not treating autism. It's treating the symptoms, yes, but you'd also share it's not just about treating the symptoms, right? It's actually getting to the root cause of what might be happening with your child that's resulting in those symptoms. So when you help parents, they're not necessarily aiming at the symptom. The better approach is to aim at what's at the root.
Christian Bogner, MD (09:17.294)
Yeah.
Len Arcuri (09:36.147)
of what might be going on that ultimately is resulting in your child having this label of autism.
Christian Bogner, MD (09:39.438)
Thanks
Right, and you what I meant by that is more like, you know, many of the severely autistic patients that we're seeing, they can't tell us what's wrong with them. They can't tell us, I have a headache, or I feel nauseous, or, you know, I have bizarre thoughts in my head, or I can't control my body. And so the only thing that we have is really just to listen to the parent about what they're telling us about the child, and also,
You know, by looking at the symptoms that the child has to correlate what could cause this symptom to appear in the first place. For example, if a child with autism is giggling or laughing and explain it, you know, without explanation, it's inappropriate. We often correlate it to ammonia access, you know, which is produced by the gut, by yeast and by bacteria, sometimes by parasites. And if the liver doesn't properly break it down, the ammonia breaks.
into, you know, gets metabolized into nitric oxide, which is laughing at us and causes uncontrollable laughter. Or when, you know, individuals with autism grab their privates or have bedwetting at night, or they poke their eyes, we've correlated that to oxalates, you know, which are released also by the microbiome by yeast and bacteria. And so we, that's why I'm saying we started to treat symptoms this more that we have correlated symptoms with certain biochemical abnormalities and
You know, we want to address those kind of right off the bat before we go to the core reason, you know, as we will maybe discuss a little bit deeper if, you know, we believe the core reason, the primary core reason of ASD is that there's severe imbalances of the bacteria in the gut. You don't really want to go straight into that right away. It's like, you know, you see that there's a hornet's nest in your tree.
Christian Bogner, MD (11:40.911)
You don't want to just run out there with a baseball bat and hit it, you know, even though that would, you know, get down the hornet's nest. But if you don't prepare for that and gear up first, you're going to get your butt stung. Right. And so we want to prepare for this detox because when the bacteria are being addressed and you correct them and the very high level comes down, they will release toxins. And you often see that the child is doing worse and we don't want the parents to throw in the towel too early.
You know, even though they are in the right path, we want to make sure that we treat some of these symptoms first, by improving their behavior. And then we go to the core. It's like a, good example would be a patient that has leukemia and they need a bone marrow transplant. You don't just give the bone marrow transplant. You want to prep them to get as strong as you can get them into the best health possible.
to accept the bone marrow donation so they don't have complications. And so we want to prep them before we target the microbiome. We respect it that there is a lot of bacteria that are not happy if you mess with them. And that's what we do, basically, the approach with the microbiome.
Len Arcuri (13:00.415)
Fantastic. No, that's very clear to me. And yes, it makes logical sense that you'd want to ensure that the body's set up for success for doing perhaps some other interventions that might get at the root. So why not get a stronger foundation, address the low hanging fruit, right? That what might be going on in order to have a protocol and a plan that has the best chance for success. So obviously it's not as...
It's not as simple as conventional medicine where it's like, okay, well, what's the symptom? And here's the exact thing to do immediately. And that's going to suppress the symptom. This is a bit more involved and there's a sequencing to it. But it's a much more powerful approach than if you just went in all guns blazing.
Christian Bogner, MD (13:48.847)
Yeah, absolutely. and we've learned this over the years, you know, when I started about eight years ago to consult with, with parents, we kind of threw the kitchen sink of testing at them and, you know, lots of money spent, lots of different types of tests from genetics to old tests to, you know, stool testing and everything came back up normal. And we're like, yes, but.
I just found out then, you know, over the years doing this, that the results weren't the best. That it's actually just a lot of money and time put into the sand because we clearly didn't see what the root of it all was, which we now clearly believe is the microbiome. But, you know, you do and you learn and...
I can certainly say that right now we're being very conservative what we recommend to parents. It doesn't have to be expensive. It's a simple test of the stool, maybe some blood testing to make sure we're not missing a booting fruit, but it doesn't have to be very expensive and you can get to work right away and you can see significant improvements in the quality of life relatively quickly usually. And if you keep going and you know.
Give it some time and your patient. Sorry, if you give it some time.
Len Arcuri (15:19.221)
You might want to just rewind a little bit and then.
Christian Bogner, MD (15:23.499)
Give me one second.
Christian Bogner, MD (15:34.913)
you
Christian Bogner, MD (15:38.638)
I'm sorry I locked the door. Unbelievable.
Len Arcuri (15:40.181)
Ha
Christian Bogner, MD (15:44.558)
All right, where was I?
Len Arcuri (15:45.877)
Well, I think at one point you were starting to say it doesn't have to be expensive.
Christian Bogner, MD (15:50.543)
Okay, let me start from there. So what I would tell a parent right now is, you know, this is not that complicated and you don't have to spend a whole bunch of money to appreciate meaningful improvements in the quality of life, you know, and there are often biochemical abnormalities that are easily addressable. just kind of have to
find what it is and oftentimes that does involve a discussion with a practitioner that understands the biomedical approach. And you know, right now all that I really just recommend to parents, the parents at the beginning usually is just the stool test, which is very affordable. It's $130, gives a lot of information and that's a great starting point because you don't have to wait very long for it and
You can go to work right away. And, yeah, it's much different than what I used to do eight years ago. was much more, costly and really just much more frustrating because right now we do see a lot of success. have hundreds of testimonials. do parent interviews on our website, that you can see, you know, we don't solicit really, we don't advertise a lot.
We simply go by word of mouth and we interview parents and let them tell their story. think that's the most powerful way, the most honest way to promote what we do. You know, I'm just a dad myself and you know, I used to have a much better paying job before I went into functional medicine. So for me, this is not for profit or anything. I want to help these children. I want to help my own child and
you know, don't want this. I don't want autism to be around anymore, to be honest. I want to help these children. If, you know, I told you earlier, before we started this, I already had three consults today and the horrific stories and living situations of certain families that I see are absolutely horrifying. You know, the stories that you don't see on social media. There's.
Christian Bogner, MD (18:16.578)
know, families living like in a prison. can't leave their house. You know, their house is being destroyed by their child. The child is harming, biting skin off their arm and eating their own poop and they're up all night. The whole family's not sleeping. The siblings are scared and have traumatized from all of this as well. It is a big problem, obviously.
a lot of families, but you know, I absorb all of this energy and I have to start with these families from scratch. know, let's start here. What have you done? What's the situation? And let's move forward. And you have to kind of give these families hope. but it, you know, it's difficult and we need a lot more practitioners to step in here because these families are really, really struggling and they can't be helped.
That's the big thing. They can be helped very significantly. You know, for a family to not sleep at night because, you know, the child is up screaming or just up, you know, trying to maybe escape from the house. Imagine that stress every day of your life. And if you can just change that, how much the quality of life for the entire family can already improve. If you get him or her to sleep through the night.
is profound and you don't need to do any expensive testing for that. You just need to talk to see what's going on and get a little bit of a history. And then you could already maybe determine, it's probably a problem with ammonia. We know that ammonia causes night wakings. So if we support the liver with the proper acids to break down ammonia and you give that in the evening before the child goes to sleep, then they often sleep through the night. And
that's just an example. I'm not saying that you have to treat ammonia now for, for, for sleepless nights, but, that those are the things that we have found over years and years of experience with, know, trial and error. And, yeah, we arrived at the kind of end station of the microbiome is really driving all of this behavior. And it's the reason for this big umbrella of autism where on one side you have.
Christian Bogner, MD (20:41.742)
child bouncing off the walls and on the other side you have a child playing the piano and doing fairly well but they're both autistic so how can that be? And we believe that has to do with certain differences in the imbalances of which bacteria and also of course the genetic susceptibility. How well can they handle what's coming at them in all of these toxins that the...
microbiome releases, know, from ammonia, histamine oxalates to bacterial toxins like LPS or neurotransmitters like serotonin, tryptamines, and some very other interesting chemicals that we're actually studying right now with a very reputable university that we're looking at. So there's a lot, but there's, you know, a lot is good. If we have a lot of things that can help, that means most likely
your child can be helped as well. And so to go with the notion that, hey, there's nothing that can be done. It's just the autism, go get speech therapy is almost sounding like a slap in the face. If you hear that at this point, you know, when we see children that start speaking again, when we start seeing these improvements in these children's from hundreds and hundreds of parents, you really start to get disgusted with the Western medical system of what they're telling you.
clearly see the lies and the fraud that occurs. It's sickening. And that's why I have very strong opinions about this. you know, it's a crime against humanity that they keep pushing these vaccines and just leave our kids in the ditch afterwards saying, it's not related. 90 % of my patients of 1200 clients that I have over the last eight years in their questionnaire answered that they do believe that vaccines
played a role in the development of their child's condition. And so I don't need a study to tell me that vaccines don't cause autism. I have it right there. Who knows better about their child that something changed after the vaccine than a parent who gave birth to that child. It's absolutely ridiculous that people say that this is not valid. It's like, show me something that's more valid than that. A study where you can twist the numbers, which is funded by pharma.
Len Arcuri (22:42.773)
Mm-hmm.
Christian Bogner, MD (23:03.98)
which gets censored, God forbid you find some signal. So, you know, it's running through every fiber of my body that this is, and I guess we'll find out next month from the secretary, you know.
Len Arcuri (23:22.261)
Yeah. RFK Jr. will come out with something about autism, which again, hopefully will be meaningful in terms of what is learned and what can be done. So I'm very optimistic about what might happen there. But what you're painting though, and our journeys are pretty similar in terms of the number of years we've been at this. So my son was diagnosed about 17 years ago. I think what's interesting is that that message that you were talking about, where you're basically given very little
You're not talked, nothing's explained that there are things that you can do. That message is what I received, you received almost two decades ago. And as you're saying now in what pediatricians are seeing online, like what in terms of the search autism, it hasn't changed at all. And it's amazing that in two decades, parents aren't given more information. So the secret of this or the title of this episode, the secret that autism is actually a biomedical.
condition opens up so many possibilities. And I think in the examples you gave Dr. Bogner, yeah, the root cause behind how your child's presenting is going to be very unique for each family. There's no one size fits all. There's no standard protocol. There's a lot of similarities with what might be driving what's happening with these kids. But that's what makes it very challenging is it's so individualistic. And perhaps a parent like me, if I even
became aware of biomedical and working with a practitioner like you, I might be hesitant to doing it because it sounds complicated and it sounds expensive. So the fact that you're finding a way of simplifying it, making it easier, more affordable for parents, I think is a fantastic thing. So would you mind talking a little bit about the not-for-profit that you created?
Christian Bogner, MD (25:10.862)
Yeah, good question. So we have a lot of autism nonprofit organizations, as you know, not to mention anyone in particular, but, you know, there are certain foundations that have been around since the early 2000s, even before that. And, you know, they reap in millions of dollars. Just to you an example, Autism Speaks, I think it was in 2015, 16, they made about $44 million.
a year at their peak. And you know, the question is, well, that's more than 20 years ago, back then, you know, the autism rates, I don't know, it was like one in
1 in 500 in the 90s, I don't have the exact numbers now, but maybe 1 in 280 in the early 2000s, but now it's 1 in 36. So you're making all of this money. And if I go to your website to find solutions for my child right now, what I can do, you don't find anything. In fact, they have flip-flopped completely. And on the beginning, they were very bold, Autism Speaks. They're like, we have a suspicion that vaccines cause autism.
Here are some examples. And that was the mission statement. And then you keep going and the money's pouring in. And then around the 2016-17 timeframe, they changed. They flip-flopped. They have a new CEO, more business-oriented, and clearly saying, we hereby say that vaccines do not cause autism. And of course, a little bit of the funding went down, but still, they're making millions and millions every year. Other foundations, it's the same story. And we reached out to every single one of them.
trust me and every single one of them has a very interesting story of what happened and at the end of the day it was just disappointment after disappointment of collaboration or there were organizations that refused for Alex and I to donate money to that organization because they wanted to have nothing to do with what we were doing isn't that interesting and and so we said listen this all sucks we don't have anything for our kids
Christian Bogner, MD (27:20.622)
You know, with all of these foundations that claim that they're the greatest research foundation for autism, or that they're planning to do some trial to find a biomarker that's going to be released in six, seven years, and then you have the biomarker and still no solutions of what to do about it. What can you do right now? And that's what we wanted to represent, you know, a foundation that brings solutions. And so we found that autism is biomedical. We went as bold as we could.
And we basically want to disseminate information to provide to parents of what can be done. And we also sponsor families that can't afford biomedical consultation, the testing and the then resulting treatment, know, with often supplements, nutraceuticals and so forth. That we sponsor them through it in exchange for letting us
narrate that journey of that individual that we're sponsoring. So we do interviews, know, video interviews like this, where we kind of show a before and after so you can see for yourself what happened, you know, with biomedical intervention for this individual. And so we want to create this platform where we have just, you know, hopefully hundreds and hundreds of families where we have interviews where we see the before and after of biomedical intervention.
We want to be very transparent with everything that we do You know, where do you see case reports? Where do you see testimonials? You know right now we do have hundreds of testimonials in email and voice you can find that on our website and messages But what's kind of missing is videos and we have more and more we currently sponsoring seven families To go through this and we have already accumulated Good videos. It's very compelling
stories how in one individual stop the seizures and another one I have within three months significant progress positively in the child. So that's what we want to do. We want to be kind of a beacon and go to a place for parents to go get actionable solutions that are feasible and that are effective.
Christian Bogner, MD (29:44.559)
You know, with, with the system, you know, um, we, with this protocol, especially with the gut balancing protocol that my colleague Alex has developed, um, over the last four years, there were about, a little bit about 219 families that went through that program and, uh, answered questions, you know, kind of before, after. And so we include a lot of data in regards to not only the changes in the microbiome,
with the intervention that Alex has suggested, but also with how the child has improved. And we wrote a paper about this in 50 page paper, very detailed. And overall, was of these 219 families, about 93 % of the families mentioned that they saw improvements in their child. So this is really something groundbreaking in my practice as well, before I was...
you know, kind of focusing on the gut, didn't even come close to these numbers in my practice. And now it's like, we see more kids improve than not. And it used to be the other way around. And so right now, if we have a patient that doesn't respond, we're like, wait a minute, what's going on here? That's unusual. And so we get emails every day with improvement messages and, you know, we share them openly. We redact, of course, the names and
but yeah, that's our foundation. are very much in need obviously of funding. haven't made much, money at all. again, Alex and, and I were not business people. We're just two dads trying to raise awareness. And, I mean, yeah, I think we have something really good and got the attention of
an Ivy League university to do a study with us, which is incredible. And, you know, we'll see where this goes. But yeah, we had no rush to, you know, kind of reap in the revenue that other organizations make. We want to help one family at a time. And eventually it will prove itself. You know, it already is. I mean, one parent tells the next parent and...
Christian Bogner, MD (32:11.598)
You know, and so the word of mouth is powerful. That's where we get most of our new inquiries from is that they heard from somebody that had success that worked for their child and they want to do for their own child. Um, and that's how we do it right now. We don't have, you know, money to advertise or, uh, anything like that yet, but we're relatively new to, so we have to be patient.
Len Arcuri (32:36.895)
Yeah. It's new, it's got momentum. And yeah, for anyone listening, go to autismisbiomedical.com. And if also as a parent, you can go there for resources that Dr. Bogner mentioned. If you would like to help provide donations, I'm sure you guys would welcome that as well as you get more and more testimonials and case studies on there. So that's where people can go for that. And you mentioned about Alex, who I know
is who somebody that you're partnering with. So Alex Zaharykis will be on the podcast in a few weeks. He can talk more specifically about this opportunity of gut rebalancing, right? And really without stealing the thunder from Alex when he comes on, can you just talk high level about the concept of if autism quote unquote is a brain issue, which most people think that's all it is, how does focusing on the gut improve?
brain function, neurological functioning.
Christian Bogner, MD (33:38.425)
Right, great question. And I was thinking the same thing. Let's look at the brain. Let's look at the brain. Well, if you look at the brain in a child with autism, you don't find anything. Let's say you do an MRI. There's no structural abnormalities necessarily, or lesions, or inflammation that you can see. So it's not really that. What it is, however, is that the soup that the brain has emerged and the chemistry.
around the brain is what's wrong. And that chemistry is not necessarily produced by the brain and chemistry is coming from elsewhere. Um, you know, it's a good example is, you know, Thanksgiving, eat your Turkey. Why are you so tired afterwards? You know, because of the tryptophan and the Turkey causing elevations in serotonin, which can get you, get you tired. Um, and so the gut inherently.
is connected to the brain, you know, the gut brain access that you mentioned, directly via the vagus nerve or indirectly through its metabolites, you know, through the molecules that come from the microbiome. And we have to, realize that, you know, we have a hundred trillion bacteria, you know, which contain more DNA within them than we have in our human tissue. And
You know, there thousands of different types of bacteria that make up our microbiome, you know, from top to bottom. And these thousands of different species live in this ecosystem and they coexist with each other. The problem is however, that, you know, certain bacteria that are beneficial, you know, for example, lactobacillus bifida bacteria.
are these foundational bacteria that we have that they were there from the beginning. Like if a newborn baby is born, 80 % of all of the bacteria in the gut, because they're born without bacteria in the gut, right? It's a sterile environment. But once they go through a canal and they get born, about 80 % of all bacteria are bifidobacteria. And the function in a newborn baby of these bifidobacteria is to keep the stomach.
Christian Bogner, MD (35:59.265)
and the lining of the intestines, very acidic to keep the pH down. And the purpose of that is to prevent that other bacteria will start just go nuts in there and infecting you, right? Or causing inflammation. So the bifidol keeps it acidic along with the lactobacillus. And the problem is, you know, that we are bombarded with
environmental factors that challenge these types of bacteria, such as antibiotics during labor already, right? Or we see, you know, breast milk, there's glyphosate in there. Glyphosate is known to destroy these types of bacteria. Give me one second.
Christian Bogner, MD (36:53.038)
Glyphosate, as you know, is ubiquitous. It's been found in vaccines. It's been found in breast milk. It's been found in formula. It's been found in your organic red wine. It's everywhere. It's in rainwater. It can be in tap water. Until we get rid of glyphosate, it's going to be around. I've seen not one patient in the last eight years that didn't have glyphosate in the urine when we tested for it, including myself. And glyphosate is just such a tricky molecule because
Even parts per billion can have a very profound effect on killing those good bacteria, especially in a newborn, very susceptible. And what does that mean? That means that if you breastfeed and you have high glyphosate in you, or you do some soy formula or dairy formula, know, milk is one of the largest carriers of glyphosate, child's microbiome is already being compromised, these beneficial bacteria. And what happens?
The pH is not kept down so much anymore. pH goes up and it's just like the temperature in your fridge. Temperature goes up, you have more bacteria growing. All of these other bacteria that are part of us, they grow out of hand. And that's what we have been testing. And that's what Alex has been testing over the last four years. But the very sophisticated test, it's like a 23andMe for the gut in comparison, you know.
check the genetic signatures of these bacteria that go through sequencers in a tiny stool sample. And it's very different than other stool tests that are more culture-based. It's running through sequencers. So we have a picture of the entire ecosystem of bacteria, and we see what's too high and what's too low. And interestingly, what we find, just to give you an example, we do a stool test of a severely autistic individual.
What we find is that these good bacteria, lactobacillus and bifido, when they should be, let's say up to 5%, which would be normal and, and on older child now, um, that we see it at 0.01%. So literally not there almost undetectable when it should be 5%. And then we see things like Bacteroides or Prevotella or Clostridium when they should be
Christian Bogner, MD (39:20.492)
between 2 and 5%, we see them at 60%. And you don't have to be an expert in the microbiome to understand that this is not normal. Even though these bacteria are part of us, if they are oftentimes a thousand percent increase of what it should be, you can realize that this is a big signal that should be investigated. And then you look at these bacteria like...
Bacteroidy so Prevotella and you realize that they can release toxins, you know and part of these bacterial cell walls and grand negative there is this protein called LPS, lipopolysaccharide and when these bacteria are breathing and they're going down they release, you know, it's the end of their life cycle, they release this protein into the gut and it's been associated with leaky gut because it punches a hole
into the mucosa and the protective lining. It's like you're having a flame thrower in the inside of your gut, destroying all of the protective mechanisms that prevent all of the stuff to leak into your blood because you should poop it out. And now that you have leaky gut, have everything that should be digested and move on and go out have to leak into the system.
And we're talking about heavy metals, mold toxins, food proteins like casein and gluten. That's why we see such high issues with gluten and casein, for example, on these diets and things like that. see oxalates, see histamine, we see neurotransmitters all starting to leak into the system, into the liver. And that's where we see kind of the difference between, you know, somebody who has got issues like this.
but doesn't develop autism and somebody with these issues that does develop autism is that there are then the genetic factors coming in. How can you deal with all of this stuff coming in? Do you have good detoxification genetics, including sulfation, example, or conjugation or glucuronidation, you know, these processes in the liver to keep all of these things coming in from entering the blood. Because if they do enter the blood, then, you know, it's
Christian Bogner, MD (41:43.817)
That's the first step of a chronic inflammatory condition because just like a mosquito that bites you on your arm, for example, causes, you know, histamine, redness, itchiness, very violent immune response. There's no liver. The body's trying to prevent that this toxin that the mosquito injected is circulating. And so wants to gang up around it and eliminate it before it causes problems. And the same happens if the liver lets things slip through into the blood.
casein, know, heavy metals or LPS, the toxin from the bacteria, oxalates or as you will discuss later, it's these neurotransmitters as well that come from the gut. You know, the immune system is going haywire and the mast cells release serotonin, they release histamine, cytokines, which are found in many, many studies to be elevated in autism and they then ultimately cause brain inflammation.
And, you know, and so that's kind of the basis of what happens with these bacterial imbalances and you won't be able to snap out of it. At least that's what we have found in most individuals that diet will not get you out of this. If you have such severe imbalances of bacteria missing and others overgrowing, we've got to, we've got to intervene more aggressively. And in my opinion, for example, the ones that are low.
We need to feed them. We feed them with very targeted prebiotics and probiotics. And the ones that are too high, there's a ton of literature out there. Basically, Alex searched the National Library of Medicine, all studies that are out there for particular bacteria that we find. And again, there's so many of them, but catalog them. What works for Clostridium? it's Saccharomyces boulderi.
for bacteroids, you can take some ginger, ginger root extract or green tea phytosomes. Who would have known, but there's studies out there. And so over the last four years, when Alex tests the stool, gets the sample back, is written a software to analyze the abundances, beautiful report, very accurate, and then make recommendations for the next six weeks of what that individual can do to feed the ones that are low, to bring down the ones that are too high.
Christian Bogner, MD (44:09.814)
And then after six weeks, retest the gut to see how this has affected, how the numbers have changed, and especially how the symptoms reported by the parent have improved or gotten worse. But like I said earlier, most see improvement. How has that changed? So over the years, Alex has really learned of what works and what doesn't and refined it and refined it and refined it.
And now I think we're in a very good spot where the recommendations that we make have relatively quick impact to bring the biome back into balance. And that's why we call it microbiome balancing or gut balancing. you can read more about this process on our website at Autism is Biomedical. That's the one thing that I wish I could have read in medical school already.
because it is really the foundation, not just for autism, Len, it is for every chronic disease, hands down, psychiatric diseases, depression, anxieties, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hormonal dysfunctions, autoimmune diseases, everything can be explained with this principle that the microbiome is responsible for all of it. Of course, there's susceptibility.
But susceptibility is just susceptibility. You can have a BRCA1 mutation in your gene that gives you a 50 % risk of breast cancer, but ask yourself, why would you get the cancer and why wouldn't you? What factors influence that you don't get breast cancer if you have that terrible mutation in the BRCA1? It's the environment.
Len Arcuri (45:51.231)
Thank
Christian Bogner, MD (46:00.845)
With all of that being said, hope this is not too confusing, but the microbiome is not really of any interest in regards to current, you know, National Institutes of or CDC or the universities or it's not mainstream, but it should be. And why is it not mainstream? Well, probably being suppressed by other interests, to be honest, but microbiome is the future.
There's no doubt in my mind. Nothing else makes really a lot of sense then because, you know, we see that patients get better and it's clear state for us that that needs to be the focus. And yeah, I mean, I could expand on some other concepts in regards to the microbiome, in regards to...
Len Arcuri (46:49.333)
Well, Dr. Bogner, I'd like to just hover here for a second. So I really appreciate that expansive take on exactly how that gut-brain connection works. think to bottom line it, basically taking what you said, is that overall with your child, the gut and to focus there, I think what you're sharing is that a way to look at this for parents is that
and especially if you're taking a root cause approach, is that the root cause very well may be this imbalance in the gut that ultimately through all the ways that you mentioned creates this state of chronic inflammation that within the body, some kids might have that and may not present with symptoms that put them on the spectrum or other symptoms. But particularly if your child may have some genetic vulnerabilities.
that it's then those children who may not be able to deal with that chronic inflammation and therefore it may manifest in symptoms like a lack of speech or extreme behaviors or whatever the case may be. So effectively it's this imbalance that if you're looking at it from a root cause perspective is an overarching root cause that if addressed, if you look and see what's going on in the microbiome,
That's where there's so many things that you can do to improve overall health. And I hear you where it should be mainstream. Of course, it will be at some point down the road, hopefully not decades down the road, hopefully sooner. But again, if you're waiting for conventional practices to recommend something, you're going to be missing a valuable time where you may be able to help your child balance their gut now.
And again, you're seeing in the majority, not just in a few, in the majority of the kids that you're supporting and helping their parents, you're seeing through addressing the gut issues, improvements in the vast majority.
Christian Bogner, MD (49:00.012)
Yes, that's correct. and yeah, there's, there's so much more to it. You know, still I wasn't satisfied that, you know, just certain toxins can, you know, give us the picture of autism. Cause the one thing that we have found, and I'm sure, I think when we talked about this before, and agreement, the very most fascinating thing about autism is that actually we found that
These children are actually exceptionally intelligent. And it's hard to believe because, you know, we look at the behaviors and the response and lack of response. And, you know, we tend to, we tend to judge intelligence by behavior, which actually we shouldn't do. and what we found is that, you know, autism rather is a motor sensory problem that simply these individuals have little control.
over bodily movements in a motor function, basically, speech is a fine motor skill, that there's a problem with the motor neurons and that they're basically locked in there and that the body doesn't listen to what they are doing. And I'm saying this is because one of the more revolutionary things or techniques that have been applied that I'm doing with my own son is spelling to communicate.
And on there was this wonderful documentary, Spellers, the movie, which I encourage every new parent to watch to show you that their children or young adults with severe profound autism that are nonverbal, know, having bizarre behaviors, wearing headphones, stimming are actually graduating from college, that they can write poems and that they can share their feelings through, you know, typed communication.
even though they have these strange behaviors. you wouldn't really believe that this is possible with your child until you do, including my own child, figured he's a math genius, he can do math that I wouldn't be able to do with a pen and paper. And I believe that is a huge signal that there's something really different going on that...
Christian Bogner, MD (51:23.266)
we've been chasing for the last 30 years. You know, there's always a talk about, is it pants? Is it autoimmune? Is it mold? Is it heavy metals? I'm not discrediting any of this. However, if you give a parasite or infect somebody with parasites or you, you, you, know, individuals who have heavy metal poisoning, they don't necessarily exhibit the same symptoms that somebody with autism has, you know, and,
I still believe of course that the vaccines were much involved, but I think it's a little bit dangerous to just put all of your eggs of heavy metals into one basket and say, this is the reason. Because believe it or not, I have patients in my practice that have never received a vaccine in their life, including the parent that was pregnant, the mom that was pregnant, and they still have autism. How could you explain that?
And oftentimes in these cases, actually we find that they had heavy courses of antibiotics, for example, which again has disturbed the microbiome. But is there possibly something else that could explain that the intellect is intact, but you know, that the motor system is just dysfunctional? What could possibly do that? And one of the interesting hypotheses that I
pitched to very reputable university that I want to mention at this point, was that the fact that the microbiome, besides all of these toxins that it produces and causing histamine issues and can cause brain inflammation, sure, but really a molecule that could explain
that there is higher intelligence, that we do find that in the brains there's hyperconnectivity, that there are denser neurons in the brains of autism, that there's not damage, but in fact it's the opposite, it's neuronal overgrowth, that the brains are actually more capable than ours to process information and maybe even beyond. There are kids that have incredible math abilities, I don't know if you've ever...
Christian Bogner, MD (53:49.699)
heard about the possibility of these kids that can read your mind. I mean, that's maybe going a little above and beyond, but I've seen it. And we are communicating with some of these children that have telepathic abilities and some children that have synesthesia experiences or precognition. and they tell us about their feelings and they tell us about their abilities. And I'm very convinced that it is a true thing.
You know, and what I'm talking about here is the hypothesis that the microbiome is also producing psychoactive neurotransmitters. as you know, Len, about 90 % of our serotonin in the body is produced in a microbiome. and only about, you know, five to 10 % in our brains and the production of serotonin is driven by bacteria.
in the gut, you know, with the help of some molecules, but it's mainly by bacteria. And, and so the bacteria produce lots of tryptamine and tryptamine forms serotonin and serotonin forms other things like melatonin and things like that. Right. But what's interesting is that the serotonin that gets produced from the gut, it's actually not crossing very readily into the brain. So it's kind of still separated. It's just high. And the
periphery and circulating. And, you know, what's interesting is that we know that serotonin creates mast cells to release histamine and more serotonin. So it's kind of like a reason for MCAS, know, mast cell activation syndrome. It causes vasoconstriction. Generally it's a vasoconstrictor serotonin, can give you cold hands, cold feet, hard palpitations, rapid breathing, rashes. But mostly it can also
cause you to have diarrhea intermittent with constipation. But the reason I'm telling you this is because here's what we came up with. I'm not sure, I'm gonna ask you, I don't think I've asked you that before, Lin, but have you ever heard of ayahuasca?
Christian Bogner, MD (56:06.37)
So ayahuasca for those that are listening and have no idea what this means is it's a shamanic drink that when consumed, have an out of body psychedelic spiritual experience, right? It takes about five, six hours. People are traveling actually to do this often in a controlled setting, for example, in the rainforest in Brazil or Peru. And they drink this, they have a ceremony and
Len Arcuri (56:29.717)
Peru, yep.
Christian Bogner, MD (56:35.978)
It can be life-changing for some individuals. It's not dangerous. However, it's a very tightly schedule one drugs. I'm not saying anybody should do this. I've never done this, but it's literally a substance that you consume. It's the most powerful psychedelic known to humans. And when you consume this, you literally disconnect from your body and you have very vivid imagery. you know, you're in a different, it's like you're in a dream and a very vivid dream. You know, some reports.
from people consuming this saying that they enter a realm that is beyond words, which cannot be described by words, but is more real than this reality that we are in right now. There was an individual that has written a book about it called DMT the spirit molecule. His name is Dr. Rick Strassman. He's in New Mexico. He's actually infused DMT into volunteers and studied this.
And so where I'm going with this is that, you know, DMT is simply when you have excess tryptamines in the gut that are produced by the bacteria, when you add two methyl groups to that tryptamine, you have DMT. And that's how easy it is that, you know, you have a psychedelic substance produced, you know, again, when you have a bacteria that's at 60%, that's able to do that, but it should be, the bacteria should be at 2%.
There's a lot of DMT being produced potentially. There's another substance like DMT, it's called bufotenin, which is basically methylated serotonin, also very powerful psychedelic. That has been found in 2010 in a study in Italy in the urine of patients with autism and schizophrenia to be three times more elevated than neurotypical controls.
And so that's where it gets interesting because as you know, ayahuasca is the mix of two plants, right? DMT and another plant that's actually an MAO inhibitor. Because MAO is the enzyme that breaks down all of these substances. So in general, if you just would orally consume DMT, nothing much would happen because your body very quickly would break it down. That's why in the plant, they give you an MAO inhibitor with it so it can cross into the brain.
Len Arcuri (58:59.05)
Yep.
Christian Bogner, MD (58:59.862)
Now what's interesting is that in autism, when we do genetic studies, you know, the gene, the MAOA gene that makes that happen is an X-linked gene, which means boys only have one copy of this gene. And if you have that compromised in a boy, then literally you have no defenses against these neuroactive chemicals like DMT or bufotenin. And that then they would cause you, you know, the activate.
the receptors in the brain to cause these experiences. What's interesting is that all of these tryptamines, serotonin, Bifotenin DMT, but also LSD, psilocybin, which are magic mushrooms, and ketamine, all of them have tryptamine at its core. And they all work on the same receptor in the brain called the 5-HT2A receptor. It's the serotonin receptor. They all just grab that with a different affinity, right?
And what's interesting is that there are two approved medications for autism, apulify and resperidone for the management of difficult behaviors in autism spectrum disorders. Right. And I don't recommend them at all, but what, what did these medications do? They block exactly that receptor that is activated by these psychedelic substances. Isn't that just a coincidence that that is the case? And
And so, you know, when we're talking to these very smart guys at this university, you know, they're these chemicals, not in autism, but in general, how they behave with neurons. And they found that DMT has actually a nuclear receptor, meaning it's a molecule that doesn't act on the...
outside receptor of the neuron, actually diffuses into the neuron, which no other chemical or neurotransmitter that we know of, as far as I know, can do. And that it proliferates neuronal growth, that actually the neurons start to proliferate and, you know, start to shake hands with other neurons. And, you know, that's what explain that higher levels of this chemical could explain the hyperconnectivity that we see in autism in regards to the brain.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:01:18.488)
But most importantly is that if you have an individual and you hook them up to an EEG and you measure the brain frequency, you know, you and me talking right now, we might have alpha and beta frequencies, right? When we dream, we often see gamma frequencies, right? And you ask yourself, what is a dream? A dream is a type of hallucination. Now there's some studies that suggest that DMT is produced in the brain causing us to dream.
And when we dream, our brain has the gamma frequency. Now, if you have somebody that takes a big dose of LSD or DMT and you measure their brain frequency, it's also gamma. And then you look at the studies of autism, do neurofeedback or EEG measurements, they also have gamma frequency. So I'm not sure how much more evidence we need to kind of make that connection that it's not really that
impossible to believe that our children are just on a different level of consciousness. Because if I would give you LSD right now, Len, and I call you back in two hours and we have this conversation, you might look at me and you couldn't get a word out because you are tripping. That's where the word tripping is coming from, from tryptamine. These tryptamine, endotryptamines we call them, are
very powerful to disable your motor system. You have no perception of time. You have little ability to purposely modulate your motor response and what you want to do. You might be crawling on the floor moaning and certainly not being able to have a meaningful conversation with someone if you're in that state. And so that is the hypothesis and there's a very high interest
in this right now, we are having two very reputable universities looking at this and we're designing a trial to measure these levels in autism spectrum disorders, the entire psychedelic metabolome, their precursors, the psychedelic compounds themselves, and their metabolites in the urine and blood of patients affected and correlate them with the microbiome.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:03:42.615)
sequencing that Alex does to kind of start to pinpoint, you know, which bacteria are responsible so we can have, you know, this figured out once and for all. But that's what I believe is the Holy Grail at the end of the day that really explains this very strange phenomenon of autism, of strange behaviors with the intellect being attacked. In fact, these children's intelligence is beyond that I could have ever imagined.
And I talked to these individuals that are able to communicate, you know, with spelling and the things that they're telling you is just mind blowing. One example three years ago was Jake. And he told us about a chemical that made us found our company to produce supplements. And he told us about a chemical that helps with this genetic predisposition that I was talking earlier about to fix that, which we believe is a
Len Arcuri (01:04:17.013)
Sure, Yep.
Len Arcuri (01:04:22.261)
It's, it's, it's.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:04:41.582)
problem with glutathione recycling and it's sodium thiosulfate. So he told us about this. I've never heard about it. We developed it into a lotion and not to promote anything here. It's the thyroid lotion, but it had such a profound impact on our patients that we're like, my God, we need to explore this further. But long story short, you know, that's just one of the concepts. are others, you know, there's also
cyanide that can be elevated in autism, which has other implications, but that was a new finding that we had. yeah, autism is biomedical. I'm not sure how much more. We need to debate this. It needs to be funded. It needs to be studied. We need to shift our focus and help our kids.
Len Arcuri (01:05:31.829)
All right. Well, well said. appreciate it. Again, a lot of that was new for me in terms of in terms of the research and what these psychedelics can teach us in terms of what might be happening. so no, I appreciate you sharing all that. The research you mentioned, extremely exciting and interesting to see that these universities are are taking a closer look at this. And as you mentioned about spellers, I mean, we've had many episodes about the with the spelling community and the different
Christian Bogner, MD (01:05:55.874)
Thank
Len Arcuri (01:05:59.861)
Organizations that are there helping to unlock these these kids, which is just incredible. It's like the most underreported news story of the last decade and And and I also again you we've teed up I think nicely the next episode which will be with uh with alex to focus more a little bit deeper on the gut But dr. Bogner. No, I appreciate you, you know sharing a lot of this. I know it's the output of your you
Christian Bogner, MD (01:06:07.64)
It's a.
I think it's.
Len Arcuri (01:06:28.775)
many years working with these families and noticing what works and what doesn't. And again, autism is biomedical. There are many of you listening who may be like, well, that's obvious. But the reality is it is not obvious to so many people out there. And just having a deeper understanding that it is biomedical and there's always something you can do to help improve wherever your child is to help them make improvements, to gain skills, to...
defend against toxicity and these other root causes that you touched on. Long story short, there is so much you as a parent can do, especially if you're working with the right provider. So I'll include links in the show notes to Dr. Bogner's website, his company where he has developed a number of supplements that are very targeted and there'll be links to that as well. And again, Dr. Bogner, this was part one. I'm sure we'll have another conversation down the road, but I appreciate you taking the time today.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:07:07.598)
Thanks.
Christian Bogner, MD (01:07:24.75)
God bless you, thank you Len.
Len Arcuri (01:07:26.346)
Thank you.
