Episode 245 — EVIDENCE-BASED Treatments FIRST
Guest: Dr. Frye • Date: February 27, 2025
Episode Overview
Dr. Richard Frye shares key medical insights on autism, including mitochondrial dysfunction and immune dysregulation, plus evidence-based strategies to help kids thrive. The secret this week is… EVIDENCE-BASED Treatments FIRST
About Dr. Frye
Dr Frye is a Child Neurologist with expertise in neurodevelopmental and neurometabolic disorders. He received an MD and PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from Georgetown University. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the University of Miami, Residency in Child Neurology and Fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Learning Disabilities at Harvard University/Children’s Hospital Boston, and Fellowship in Psychology at Boston University. He also received a Master’s in Biomedical Science and Biostatistics from Drexel University. He holds board certifications in Pediatrics and Neurology with Special Competence in Child Neurology. He has authored over 300 publications and book chapters and serves on several editorial boards.
Dr. Frye is a national leader in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research. He is President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Autism Discovery and Treatment Foundation, Chief Medical Officer of the Neurological Health Foundation, Director of Research and Neurologist at the Rossignol Medical Center, and Principal Investigator at the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center.
He has led several clinical studies on children with ASD, including studies focusing on defining the clinical, behavioral, cognitive, genetic, and metabolic characteristics of children with ASD and mitochondrial disease and several clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of safe and novel treatments that target underlying physiological abnormalities in children with ASD, including studies on leucovorin, cobalamin and tetrahydrobiopterin and has an ongoing multicenter controlled clinical trial on leucovorin, neuroimmune modulators and photobiomodulation.
You’ll Discover
Two Connected Challenges to Tackle Early in the Journey (4:15)
Signs of Poor Gut Health (11:29)
Three Key Issues You Can Measure and Treat (19:58)
Why Mitochondria Matter So Much (22:49)
The Importance of Folate Metabolism (25:35)
Why Less Is MORE (34:43)
Referenced in This Episode
Full Transcript
Dr. Richard Frye [00:00:00]:
It's a marathon, not a sprint. A lot of parents are looking for that one cure that's going to solve their child's autism. And for the most part, there is no one cure. There's some treatments that work very well for certain children, but for most children, you know, there's many things going on, so we have to approach them with many different treatments, and those treatments need to work together. So many times you have to have multiple treatments that are working on different aspects of some of the abnormalities that are going on with the child's body. So the idea of just seeking that one treatment that's going to solve everything is usually not a fruitful path.
Cass Arcuri [00:00:41]:
Want to truly be the best parent you can be and help your child thrive after their autism diagnosis? This podcast is for all in parents like you who know more is possible for your child.
Len Arcuri [00:00:52]:
With each episode, we reveal a secret that empowers you to be the parent your child needs now, saving you time, energy and money and helping you focus on what truly matters most, your child.
Cass Arcuri [00:01:03]:
I'm Cass.
Len Arcuri [00:01:04]:
And I'm Len.
Cass Arcuri [00:01:05]:
Welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets.
Len Arcuri [00:01:19]:
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. It's Len, and this week we're uncovering key medical insights that can help children with autism thrive with one of the most sought after experts, Dr. Richard Fry. Dr. Fry is a leading child neurologist specializing in neurodevelopmental disorders. His research has revealed critical factors affecting autism, from mitochondrial dysfunction to immune system dysregulation. He's also led groundbreaking clinical trials on treatments that go beyond conventional approaches. He'll share what parents need to know about these underlying medical issues, why some treatments work better than others, and which emerging interventions hold the most promise.
Len Arcuri [00:02:02]:
Finding the right doctor, one who looks deeper and considers the full picture is one of the most important decisions you will make for your child. The right guidance of what to do and in what order can change everything. The secret this week is evidence based treatments. First. Welcome, Dr. Fry.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:02:21]:
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Len Arcuri [00:02:24]:
It's absolutely a gift to have your voice for our audience. And I touched on your experience a bit, but you've been at this for quite a long time. I know you have a lot of key insights. And maybe the best place to start off with is if you're giving just general guidance to a parent who's just received a diagnosis. Diagnosis. What would you recommend to them?
Dr. Richard Frye [00:02:45]:
So one of the things I tell parents when they come to my clinic, one of the first things is that it's a marathon Not a sprint. Okay. A lot of parents are looking for that one cure that's going to solve their child's autism. And for the most part, you know, there is no one cure. There's some treatments that work very well for certain children, but for most children, there's many things going on, and we have to approach them with many different treatments, and those treatments need to work together. So many times you have to have multiple treatments that are working on different aspects of some of the abnormalities that are going on with the child's body. So the idea of just seeking that one treatment that's going to solve everything is usually not a fruitful path. So what we like to say is that we want to start out by trying to solve some of the problems that will make the most impact on the child.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:03:53]:
And for most children with autism, that tends to be some of the basic things such as sleep and GI problems. You know, many children have sleep disorders, and they don't sleep well. They get up in the middle of the night, they can't get to sleep. And sometimes they have GI issues, which may or may not be obvious. Sleep is very important. I think it's underappreciated. There's a reason why we sleep for a third of our life. It's not just because our body is tired during the nighttime.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:04:29]:
Everything we learn during the day gets integrated into our brain. And there's studies that. Lots of studies that have looked at this, and it shows that you do not learn if you do not sleep. So any child that's not getting sleep, anything they learn during the day is not going to be integrated into their brain, and they'll forget it the next day. In addition, not getting sleep not makes you feel pretty bad. Anybody knows if they don't get a good night's sleep, they feel terrible in the morning. Now, you can imagine a child who can't communicate, who's already frustrated having poor sleep. Their frustration is magnified significantly, and we see a lot of disruptive behaviors because of that.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:05:14]:
So fixing sleep is one of the first things that we do, and that is somewhat related to GI disorders. One of the reasons why children wake up at night, one of the primary reasons, is because of GI discomfort that wakes them up at nighttime. So many children have GI issues. That may not be that obvious, that a parent may think is just something that's kind of run of the mill. But we can say things as simple as constipation can cause a lot of discomfort. And also, we know that the nerves in the gut for some children with autism, magnify the feelings in there so that it's more painful for them than it would be for somebody else. So we have to solve that problem. For example, I have patients that we can predict when a disruptive behavior is going to happen because they have constipation before time.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:06:14]:
This even happens with seizures that actually the constipation predates the seizures. It may be something else that's causing the two things. But we do find if you solve the constipation, that behavior gets better. And a lot of other things get better. There's other aspects, too. There's dysbiosis or imbalance of the gut bacteria. There's poor digestion of food that causes issues which can easily be fixed with something like digestive enzymes. So these are some of the first things that we look at that are going to make a big difference.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:06:57]:
Of course, behavioral therapy is also very important. It's one of the first things that parents start. And I'd like to make a comment about that because many parents are a little discouraged by behavioral therapies like ABA Day and such. And, you know, it's one of these things. It's like if you go to the doctor and you don't, you know, get a. You don't feel comfortable with the doctor. Right. Many people say, I don't know what to do.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:07:29]:
Get another doctor. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people are just comfortable with some other people, you know, and you have to find the person that you're comfortable with. And it's the same thing with kiddos. Sometimes they're just not comfortable with that therapist or the way that therapist is doing, or if it's a male or a female. Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason to it. And it is very frustrating because it takes a lot of time to get behavioral therapy, many times to get it approved by insurance and such. And then to go in to a therapy and find that your child isn't doing well in it is very frustrating to think that you have to find another place.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:08:07]:
But you really have to do a lot of work to find the best place and the best treatments that match with your child. And many times it's not really predictable. So you have to know your child. And usually the parents are the ones that know their child best.
Len Arcuri [00:08:23]:
Sure. And it's unlikely that the first therapist or the first therapy will be a perfect fit. Right. Will be a really good fit. So there is always fine tuning and tweaking, whether it's with therapy or even again, with a practitioner like yourself, the key is finding what's a fit, and that does take some effort. Just like the two things that you mentioned that parents can start off with. They don't sound very exciting to focus on the gut and sleep, But I think your point is those are so foundational that unless those are in a good place, all the other interventions or therapies or diets may be kind of pointless unless you really do help promote better GI health. And for both the child and the parent to be getting restorative sleep.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:09:15]:
Right, that's right. And that's a great point, is that if the child isn't sleeping, the parent isn't sleeping, and so they're not feeling all that well in the morning and not able to tolerate a lot of things. That's just the way we're built. And, you know, and that could be a reason that therapy fails, too. If a child's always irritable, it doesn't matter what therapist you go to, you know, they may not fit very well. So you want to be able to fix those things first so things can come along and things will work together.
Len Arcuri [00:09:44]:
Right. And sleep and gut, too. Big issues and lots of times maybe not that difficult to improve. Right. So it's. The complexity of how you improve those two things isn't so high. It's just that I was the exact parent that you described where I wanted to know as soon as I could what was the one thing to do that was going to basically help my child, my son Ry, go from where he was to neurotypical. Right.
Len Arcuri [00:10:12]:
And which is why diet sounded hard, sleep sounded, you know, maybe a little bit challenging. I wanted the cutting edge thing that seemed to hold so much promise. And of course, I learned the hard way. Okay, that is unrealistic, and that's not how it works, as you've said, which is why almost parents have to kind of restrain themselves a bit to say, hey, listen, I know I want fast progress for my child, I want them to thrive. But I can't skip these fundamental building blocks of good health where sleep truly is arguably, but perhaps the most important thing with the gut and movement and all that coming later. But proper gut health is, I think, a. A concept that a lot of our listeners are familiar with, and maybe you can shed some more light in terms of. You mentioned dysbiosis, and there's a lot of potential things that could be disrupting gut health, you know, so.
Len Arcuri [00:11:12]:
So what do you look for when you first start working with a child? What indicates other than maybe lack of Constipation, more, you know, daily bowel movements. What do you. What are you looking for to try to help improve the gut?
Dr. Richard Frye [00:11:26]:
Yeah, there's so many different aspects to gut health. And so poor eating, you know, not having an appetite is one thing that is a sign. Coughing, chronic cough sometimes, and even sleeping, you can have gastroesophageal reflux. You know, pushing on the belly can show that there's actually pain in the belly. Undigested food in the stool, you know, variable stools. These are certain things that we can look at. And then we also do tests so we can look at the stool to see what's the balance of the bacteria there, if there's inflammatory markers there, if there's poor digestion, we can look at all those things and then try a number of treatments. And then again, sometimes those treatments, we can tell you what the best treatments we think they are and the best quality treatments, but sometimes they're not the best quality for that particular child.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:12:33]:
And we find that with probiotics particularly. I can tell you what I think the best probiotics are, and that should work, but many times it doesn't jive with their digestive system, and it's just the way it is. And so sometimes you have to try many different ones to see what the answer is.
Len Arcuri [00:12:54]:
Right. And I'm guessing that's been a big learning of yours, right, where you probably also had this concept that, hey, there's probably a sequence of things that can benefit all children. And as you started working with child after child, it's so incredibly unique to that individual in terms of how they're presenting and what the root cause might be for them. That truly, just like there's no single thing to do, there's no standard protocol that's going to help each child.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:13:24]:
Right, exactly, exactly. So, and this goes with a lot of different treatments. One treatment, one child will probably take off and do fantastic. And that same treatment could, you know, cause irritability in another child. I try and warn the parents about it and have them tell me, I have some say, tell them, message me in a few weeks, or if you have any concerns or if the child becomes irritable, because then we'll just change things up a little bit. And that happens. I definitely, you know, we use the things. And this kind of gets into the evidence based, you know, when we go for other treatments, we use the things that have the most evidence and then we move on to things that have lesser evidence.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:14:12]:
I can tell you which treatments work for a lot of kids, you know, generally. But for your specific child, you have to be very careful and observe because that treatment might work for your child specifically.
Len Arcuri [00:14:31]:
Great. Yeah. No, I think that that can be a little unnerving and comforting at the same time for a parent. Right. Where to let go that, hey, there's a standard protocol, I just got to find it versus, oh, you know something, my child is unique. I don't want the practitioner who's going to say, do this. This is what I tell every child I meet to do this. So while the specifics of the interventions and specifics for that child will absolutely vary, I think there's something to be said about a sequence that does make sense across the board.
Len Arcuri [00:15:05]:
Which is why this is all about that first phase. Right. Do the evidence based treatments first again to help your child go from where they are to a better place. And then once that's done, then there's now a litany of options and roads that a parent can go down. But they'll want to do that in an informed way. Right, like which interventions or which other ways can I help my child? You know, what is the next best move? It's that sequencing. I think that's, that's very confusing for parents.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:15:42]:
And yeah, and I appreciate you saying the sequencing. So it's always good. You know, another mistake that parents make is they start everything at once, you know, and you need to start one thing at a time because you want to know what the positive effect of it is and any negative effects. So, you know, we can get into situations where the child's behavior gets worse and we say, well, which treatment was it? Then we have to start taking treatments off to see which it is. And you know, that's another thing that's very important. A lot of times we see that a child, the things just keep adding on and on and on and on and on and nothing is taken off. It's also important to once in a while challenge what you really need and do that with your doctor. Because some things are really needed, but they might not seem to have a wow effect.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:16:33]:
But it's always important to challenge that because when you have so many different things, it's very hard to get it into the child. And also these things may interact in certain ways. That is complicated. So we want to try and give as much as we need, but not more. And we want to go as fast as we can, but not faster. So a lot of it takes, you know, a lot of doctors visits because you want to follow up on a regular basis to See how the child's doing and see what the next step is and doing things systematically, one by one.
Len Arcuri [00:17:10]:
Right. So as much as it's key to have the right sequence and how you can move forward in the most effective way, it really does come down to constant pivoting, adjusting, tweaking. As you're seeing how your child's responding and their needs aren't fixed, their needs are going to be evolving over time. So there is no set it and forget it. Right. It's a matter of constant course correction.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:17:34]:
Yeah, yeah. Be wary of anybody that says they have a certain protocol that they use because the protocols don't fit for every kiddo. Some of them, you know, I mean, they probably came up with the protocol because it helps some kids, but, you know, but it's not going to help everybody.
Len Arcuri [00:17:53]:
That's right. And as much as parents, you know, it's really a great best practice for a parent to really ask great questions and to know what to anticipate, like how long it might take for something to perhaps have a, have a positive effect. So it's great for, for parents to want to know what they're getting into and to be really informed. But, you know, once you do that, it's also to let go of any expectation that something has to happen on a certain timeframe. Because as parents, we all want things rapidly and sometimes really the key is active patience to continue to take the actions, play the long game, but again, do that in a way where you are adjusting as needed. And that's really almost impossible to do a parent in isolation, which is. Right. Having a guide such as yourself.
Len Arcuri [00:18:43]:
And there's lots of practitioners out there who really do specialize in helping kids with these types of challenges. Maps doctors, we've had several on the show and have talked about that organization, but having that guide is just so indispensable.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:18:57]:
Yeah, most definitely. It's important to have a guide to guide you through it because there's a lot of nuances to it. You know, even. Even solving. Yes, like solving sleep is. There's lots of nuances to it and you have to, you know, all know, all the ins and outs to actually do it, do it.
Len Arcuri [00:19:16]:
Well, no doubt, no doubt. I think so. So with. With gut health and sleep, which we've talked about, if you're okay with it, let's move on to maybe a higher level issue which I know is something that you specialize in. So parents often hear the term mitochondrial dysfunction. Can you explain to parents 1, how do you identify whether a child has these mitochondrial issues. And generally speaking, how you can help a child with that type of dysfunction.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:19:46]:
Sure, yeah. The next layer, as you say, is that we start to look to intervene on things that we can measure, that is that we know there's certain abnormalities that we can measure and do something about. So that's the kind of the next layer. If you can measure something, find out it's abnormal, then you can target treatments to that rather than kind of randomly trying different treatments. And so we take a very broad approach. But mitochondrial disorders is within that group of what we call metabolic disorders. And metabolism is how you get your fuels, how you get rid of your wastes, and how you get the nutrients, how you use your nutrients in your body. And so we see many types of metabolic disorders.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:20:34]:
There's some that are very rare, but what we're finding is common in kiddos with autism are problems with the mitochondria, problems with folate metabolism, and problems with B12 metabolism. And so those are the first things that we look for. There's other things that we measure. Some kids have certain types of seizures during sleep, so we usually do an EEG to look for seizures during sleep. We also do genetic testing, because if we can find some genetic markers, it may give us some important information.
Len Arcuri [00:21:08]:
Is that true genetic testing, or would that be more functional genomic type work or both?
Dr. Richard Frye [00:21:14]:
Yeah, I mean, what we usually do is we do whole genome sequencing, which is more classic genetic testing. And most of the time, you know, those genetic tests tell you if there is some type of classic mutation that will cause a severe disease. But what I do, and some of my colleagues, is we're able to look through all the different variants that the company may not report to see if there's other variations in the genome that will help us with. With. With treatment. A lot of this, these variations haven't been studied all that much. So, you know, a lot of times it's a bit of a guessing game, but there is a certain testing that looks at things called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs, and these are not mutations. These are common changes in the genome that may make your body work better or worse in some particular pathway.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:22:17]:
And so that can be helpful, too, to see if there is any severe variation that may be blocking one or another pathways to improve how those systems work.
Len Arcuri [00:22:34]:
Got it.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:22:35]:
So there's many ways of skinning a cat, but what we want to do is we want to take that broad approach and get all the information possible. And as you say, one of the Things that's very successful is treating metabolic disorders. So there's mitochondrial disorders. And the mitochondria is known as the powerhouse of the cell. It makes all the energy. You have anywhere from 100 to tens of thousands of mitochondria in each cell of your body. So cells that don't need a lot of energy, like skin cells, may have 100 cells that need a lot of energy, like muscle cells may have tens of thousands. And so they're extremely important.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:23:14]:
One of the most important places that needs energy in your body is your brain. So your brain uses up 20% of the oxygen that comes into your body, despite the fact that it's only about 1% of the weight. Okay. So it tells you how important it is. So metabolically it's very active and the oxygen is what the mitochondria uses to make energy. One of the whole reasons you breathe actually is to give oxygen to the mitochondria. And so the mitochondria, if they're not working, your nerve cells aren't going to work. Other parts of your body might not work either.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:23:57]:
You'll have GI problems, immune problems, you can have a lot of fatigue, fatigue also. This is included in mitochondrial disorders. And so we find if we can identify them. And we usually use a combination of things. We first start and we do fasting, blood and urine labs, which give us markers of how the mitochondria are working. And it's important to get fasting labs because the biomarkers of mitochondrial dysfunction come out when the body is under stress. And so when you fast, you don't eat, you put your body under stress, and the longest time you fast all the time is overnight when you can't eat because you're sleeping. So we do that first thing in the morning.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:24:43]:
We also use something called the mito swab, where you swab the inside of your cheek, the child's cheek, to get some of those cells and send them to the lab where they can actually measuring how pieces of the mitochondria, little machines in the mitochondria are working. And that gives us more information if we need to. We can do other things like skin or muscle biopsies, but we tend try not to do that because you know that is an invasive procedure. And then there's treatments for mitochondrial disorders, including supplements and change in diet and other treatments that can improve mitochondrial function. And so that's really kind of low hanging fruit because we see a lot of kids have these abnormalities and many respond sometimes to just simple treatment. The second thing that is really, we've had a lot of success with, is problems with folate metabolism and folate getting into the brain. So we've discovered that there's this, what we call an autoantibody. So an antibody that usually attacks bacteria or viruses in your body has been made to attack the body itself.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:26:01]:
And it binds onto something called the folate receptor alpha, which is the machine that brings folate from the blood into the brain. And so what happens if that isn't working is that the levels of folate in the brain fall and the brain can't work. Of course, folate is one of those basic metabolites that's important for a number of different things, particularly in the brain. It's important for making neurotransmitters. So if you don't have folate, you won't make certain neurotransmitters. It's also important for mitochondrial function and something else called methylation. So if those things, if you don't have the right folate, those things are not going to work. We know that there's a treatment where we can get folate into the brain through a back door called the reduced folate carrier.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:26:51]:
If that block is there. And then we have B12 metabolism. We find that that is abnormal also. And B12 itself, a lot of times isn't so abnormal. But some of the Systems that use B12 are working on overdrive, so they need high levels of B12. And for little kids, we find the best way to do this is with subcutaneous injection. These B12 injections that many parents have heard. And a lot of parents ask, do I have to inject this? You know, And I can't say we exactly know the reason why B12 injections work so well, but it most probably is the fact that B12 is not well absorbed in the gut.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:27:41]:
It has a complicated process to absorb B12. So if you have gut problems, those things aren't going to work well. And even if your gut's working well, there's only an upper limit to how much B12 can be absorbed, because you need to use that mechanism. So by injecting it, you can get it into the body and without having to worry about the gut. Now, some patients come and they say, well, my child's B12 level is really high, so they must not need B12. So that's a very. A misnomer or, you know, not understanding the science. Right? Because the problem is that the B12 is in the blood.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:28:27]:
That's where you're measuring it's not in the cells, it's not getting absorbed into the cells. So you actually need higher levels to push it into the cells and into the brain. There seems to be, there may be another antibody that actually blocks B12 absorption into the brain too. We're finding out. So there's many reasons why. And so we need high levels of B12 for methylation and something else called redox metabolism and transulfuration, which, which makes glutathione, which is a major antioxidant of your body. And it's important to understand that we want the body to make glutathione. In most cases we don't want to replace it because we want to get the body to heal itself and learn how to make more glutathione rather than having it given to it.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:29:23]:
Right.
Len Arcuri [00:29:23]:
And you can make that statement across the board. Right. The goal is to help the body make what it needs to make. And, and sometimes maybe a supplement is needed to get levels up. But ultimately that's the long term play, is to help the body to do what it's been designed to do. But for some reason it's stuck. And I think all these specific approaches that you just outlined over the last five minutes to me, these are, what you're doing is you're sharing these potential root causes of why your child is perhaps has delayed speech or a lack of speech or the behaviors that you're seeing that you want to change. You know, all of how a child's presenting isn't a mystery.
Len Arcuri [00:30:05]:
There's something that's driving that behavior. And again, in 10 minutes you shared a number of different root causes that may be at play for your child.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:30:14]:
Exactly. So you know, we want to identify what those root causes are and if we can find them, then we can treat them directly, we can target our treatments at them. And that is going to make things find recovery faster. So that's one of the first things we want to do. The genetic testing, the metabolic abnormalities and then we look for seizures during sleep. So some kids can have seizures that only occur during sleep. So we may not know it, you may not have any symptoms during the day. So you know, those are the things that we start out with and we think those are some of the evidence based biomarkers, you know, for, for things that we can address.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:31:02]:
Then we can also go on to looking for inflammatory disorders. And so, and there's many of those, autoimmune encephalopathy, chronic infection infections and such are things that can be, you know, things that that affect kiddos. But, you know, one, you know, I found that the chronic infections are probably lesser than people talk about. And the inflammation, when we have it may actually be part of this vicious cycle between mitochondrial dysfunction, folate depletion, oxidative stress that isn't being controlled by glutathione. By treating those first many times, we can decrease the inflammation. And why that's important is because many treatments for inflammation are things that have a lot of side effects. So steroids, ivig, you know, they're things you could do, but you know, they do take a lot of effort. So there are things you can do with inflammatory disorders.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:32:14]:
Many times the medications have a lot of side effects, you know, so they're not as, not as good to use as some of the simple metabolic interventions with certain types of natural substances. Now for inflammation, also, you can use many herbs and other types of supplements too. So that's also possible. So there's other reasons to approach that. And then once you get done with looking at all of those things, then that's when you kind of get into the space where, okay, there's things that we know there's evidence that these things work, but we don't know who they work for. So it becomes a little bit of a guessing game. And when you're in that space, you definitely want to use the things that we have evidence that they work. So we know when to expect a response.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:33:17]:
As you said, you know, it's good to know when to respect a response, what that response is, and what the side effects may be. So really it's best to start out there with when you get into that space with things that we have evidence for. Because once you start using things you don't have evidence for, then it can be quite messy. So you want to start there.
Len Arcuri [00:33:42]:
It can be very hit or miss. And even though it seems like the right thing to do from a parent's perspective, let's do more as rapidly as we can. Best case, maybe you just waste time, energy and money, but you could also wind up inadvertently making things worse and contributing to even higher state of chronic inflammation. Right, because that's, I mean, ultimately the goal. If you look at uber root causes, most of these kids have some state of chronic inflammation. And so the key is, how do you quell that in the right way? And just doing many things at once actually could make things worse. Even though that's not your intent.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:34:26]:
The more things you put on, the more complicated is. And then sometimes treatments start to have side effects and you want to Avoid those. And, you know, for example, I say, like steroids, you know, is something you can't sustain for a long period of time. So, you know, you want to find some alternative to that. The other big thing is antibiotics. You know, when we're trying to balance gut bacteria, many times we use antibiotics, but you have to be careful. You use too many, you know, for long periods of time, then you can change things from bad to worse. So you have to be very, very careful.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:35:02]:
Same thing with treating. If you think there's some type of chronic infection, you want to be careful about how you use antibiotics because you don't want to destroy the gut biome, and then you're going to be in worse shape.
Len Arcuri [00:35:14]:
Right? Yeah. So, like, with all these options where there may be a case for antibiotics for a child, clearly depending on what's happening, then again, how do you do that for how long? And as you said earlier, oftentimes this was the case for my son, and what my wife, Cass and I were doing, we just kept accumulating supplements or actions and things, and it kept accumulating and nothing ever came off. So that's where, again, if an antibiotic or something like that's needed, okay, for a certain period of time, but then you don't do more than what's needed. And the same thing can be said for just a simple supplement that maybe seems benign, but if you just keep adding and adding, again, the cumulative effect of that may not be something that's in your child's best interest. So, again, I'm no medical doctor, so I'm not suggesting any medical advice for anyone, but I just want to underscore, it's really key having a medical guide like Dr. Fry on your team to help advise you, because more is not necessarily better. And it really is about doing the few things really well that can help your child the most right now. And.
Len Arcuri [00:36:29]:
And that can change over time.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:36:30]:
For sure. Exactly. So things like antioxidants, people keep putting on more and more antioxidants. Well, there's only so many that you really can have. And at some point, you know, you. You've already treated that part, you want to go over and treat something else and find out what the other piece you know is. Yeah, so it's very important. You know, as they say, you know, if you're sitting on two tacks, it doesn't feel that much better if you take one out.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:37:01]:
So sometimes you have to find out where that second tack is.
Len Arcuri [00:37:04]:
Absolutely. Well, Dr. Fry, I appreciate this conversation. And really, the theme Here is restraint. Right. Of a parent who wants so much to help their child. The key thing here is really focusing on the right things early on, having restraint and again having more of a patience to do these things that maybe don't sound like they're going to move the needle the most. But if you focus on sleep, you focus on gut health and then you really look at what for your unique child is really driving that state of unease or chronic inflammation, you know, that is the sound approach.
Len Arcuri [00:37:44]:
And it's better to be effective and to make progress maybe slower than to try to accelerate by randomly putting the gas pedal to the floor. Again, that can burn you out, can burn your child out. And there's just such a smarter way after getting the diagnosis to move forward with a sequence that makes sense and again stacks the deck for that long term success.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:38:13]:
Yeah, Going for cures that are going to fix your child quickly. They usually don't exist. So you know, and it's one of those things where they say, you know, you know, seek the people that answer questions and run away from the ones that say they know all the answers.
Len Arcuri [00:38:29]:
Well, I think that's very, very sage advice and wish I would have heard that earlier on. So yeah, Dr. Fry, I'd love to continue talking with you. I'd love to have you on down the road to. We can dive deeper in some of these things. You touched on all very important concepts but I think this one concept is so important. I'm excited for our listeners to be able to benefit from your guidance. Focus on those evidence based treatments first and I really appreciate you taking the time today.
Dr. Richard Frye [00:38:55]:
It's really my pleasure and I hope it's useful for parents and I wish them the best.
Len Arcuri [00:39:01]:
Your child wants you to transfer form now and the fastest way to do that is with personalized support. To learn more, go to allinparentcoaching.com intensive.
