 Harvard neurologist Martha Herbert in a keynote address at an autism conference said, we need to conduct research as if we know this is an emergency. Already up to one and a half percent of American children have autism, and it appears to be on the rise. Well, what about fever's dramatic effect? This dramatic relief of autistic behavior during a fever continues to tantalize parents and practitioners. From a research standpoint, what could be more revealing than a common event that virtually normalizes autistic behavior for a time? There's so much going on during fever, though. Where do you even begin? Well, once it became understood that one cause of autism may reside in these synapses, the so-called soul of the brain, the nerve-to-nerve junctions where information is transmitted, attention turned to HSP's heat shock proteins released by the brain when you have a fever that can improve synaptic transmission and thus may be capable of improving long-range brain connectivity, which is depressed in autism. ASD stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder. And there's this compound sulforaphane that upregulates those heat shock proteins so you could potentially get the benefits without the fever. What drug company makes it? What do I ask for at the pharmacy? Nope, wrong aisle. Sulforaphane is not made in a chemical plant. It's made by a plant. Sulforaphane is made by broccoli, kale, cabbage, collards, and cauliflower. In other words, cruciferous vegetables. So maybe if we give some broccoli to those with autism, it will make things better by boosting the heat shock proteins. But synaptic dysfunction is not the only contributing cause of autism. There's also oxidative stress. The brain is particularly vulnerable to oxidative stress because lots of free radicals are forged in the brain, which has few antioxidant defense capacities, and indeed there's a long history of study showing that autism is associated with oxidative stress and diminished antioxidant capacity. NERF 2 levels cut nearly in half, which is what triggers our body's antioxidant response. If only there was a way we could boost NERF 2 with foods. Boom! There it is! Sulforaphane just so happens to be perhaps the most potent natural inducer of NERF 2 on the planet. What's this NERF 2 thing again? It's considered to be a master regulator of our body's response to environmental stressors. Under any kind of stress, oxidative stress, inflammatory stress, NERF 2 triggers our antioxidant response elements, activating all sorts of cell protective genes that balance out and detoxify the free radicals and facilitates protein and DNA repair. So maybe if we give some broccoli to those with autism, it will also make things better by triggering NERF 2, which activates those antioxidant response elements. And then there's the mitochondrial dysfunction. Even with autism, we're more likely to suffer from dysfunctional mitochondria, the little power plants within our cells where metabolism takes place. If only there were some food that could improve mitochondrial function, and there is. Diet-rich and cruciferous vegetables effectively retunes our metabolism by restoring metabolic balance. Power plants for our cellular power plants. Not only can sulfane boost the gene expression of heat shock proteins as much as six-fold within six hours, it can double the mass of mitochondria in human cells growing in a Petri dish. So maybe if we give some broccoli to those with autism, it will also make things better by relieving some of that mitochondrial dysfunction that's creating even more free radicals. OK, so can we try giving some kids some broccoli already? Just one final factor, neuro-inflammation, brain inflammation. Another causal factor in autism. If at autopsy you look at brain tissue of those with autism, you can see inflammation throughout the white matter. And if you do a spinal tap up to 200 times the levels of inflammatory mediators like interferon bathing their brains, what's causing all that inflammation? Well, the master regulator of the inflammatory cascading is a protein called NF-kappa-beta, which induces inflammation. And if overexpressed, like in autism, can lead to chronic or excessive inflammation. If only there was a food. Wait, broccoli does that too? In fact, it's the major anti-inflammatory mechanisms for sulforaphane inhibiting NF-kappa-beta. Well then that completes the picture. Give some with autism broccoli, heat shock proteins are released to boost synaptic transmission, nerf 2 is activated to wipe out the free radicals, mitochondrial function is restored, and we suppress the inflammation triggered by NF-kappa-beta. One food to rule them all. One food to counter all four purported causal factors. That's one of the differences between foods and drugs. Tests tend to have single effects. But autism spectrum disorder, ASD, is multifactorial. No wonder there's no drugs that work. But strategies using multifunctional phytochemicals like sulforaphane, or even better, the whole plants themselves, are highly attractive. In theory, but you don't know until you put it to the test, which I promise we'll cover next. You may remember my series of videos about the engine of aging enzyme TOR. Well kids with autism tend to have higher TOR activity in their bodies, and this hyperactive TOR signaling may actually play a role in causing autism, making TOR a potential target to treat autism, or even theoretically reverse it if we could target downstream TOR signaling, like between TOR and S6K1. Well that's actually one of the ways broccoli compounds kills off prostate cancer cells by inhibiting the signal transduction between TOR and S6K1. Breast cancer, too. Sulforaphane is a potent inhibitor of breast cancer cells because it targets downstream elements of the TOR pathway. So if we gave broccoli to those with autism, if it blocks TOR, maybe it would block some of the synaptic dysfunction that contributes to the features of autism, and that's in addition to blocking autism pathways for other ways. Oxidative stress and lower antioxidant capacity, the mitochondrial dysfunction, the brain inflammation. And not just in a Petri dish, Sulforaphane can cross the blood-brain barrier. You eat broccoli, and Sulforaphane quickly reaches your brain to exert its protective effects in theory, but you don't know until you put it to the test. And now you can understand why such a study could attract researchers from leading institutions—Harvard, Hopkins, get published in one of our most prestigious journals, Penis, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But what did they find? Well, first, what did they do? A placebo-controlled double-blind, randomized trial, young men ages 13 through 27, with moderate to severe autism received Sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts, or an indistinguishable sugar pill. They were dosed according to body weight. Those under 100 pounds got about a tablespoon of broccoli sprouts worth of Sulforaphane today, which is about a cup's worth of broccoli. Between 100 and 200 pounds got about two cups of broccoli's worth, or two tablespoons of fresh broccoli sprouts, and the big boys got three cups worth a day, or a little under a quarter cup of broccoli sprouts. Why didn't they just use actual broccoli or actual sprouts? Because then you couldn't have a blinded study. The patients, doctors, and parents would know who's getting the special treatment and who's not, and that could introduce bias just through the placebo effect. So instead, no one knew until the end who got the Sulforaphane and who just got nothing in a pill. They chose dietary Sulforaphane because of its capacity to reverse oxidation, dysfunction, and inflammation. Yeah, but when put to the test, did it actually work? Well, the placebo didn't give people with autism nothing, and nothing much happens, but effectively secretly sneak them some broccoli and substantial improvements in behavior, social interaction, and verbal communication, but it all disappeared once the broccoli stopped. Let me show you what it looks like. This is the ABC score, the aberrant behavior checklist, which includes things like repetitive behaviors. In the placebo group, no big change, which is what you'd expect, but the abnormal behaviors plunged in the Sulforaphane group, the group that got the Sulforaphane found in about 5 cents worth of broccoli sprouts a day. But the study ended on week 18, and a month later, findings were heading back to where they started. Similar findings for a social responsiveness scale, significant improvements until the treatment was stopped, and then caught right back up to how poorly those in the placebo group continued to function. And these weren't just scores on a page. The substantial improvements were conspicuous. The doctors could see it. Their parents and caregivers could see the improvements. No drug has ever been shown to have these kinds of effects. And look, these were young men starting age 13. One could imagine it working as well, or even better, for younger children, because their brain is still developing. And look, what's the downside? Broccoli sprouts are widely consumed all over the world without any reports of adverse effects. Now remember, we're talking about whole foods, not broccoli or Sulforaphane supplements. Remember I did videos about them? Broccoli sprouts work commercial broccoli sprouts supplements hardly at all. Broccoli has Sulforaphane, florets more than the stems. Broccoli sprouts as like 10 times more, but broccoli pills, powders, and supplements have little or none. So broccoli and cruciferous vegetables for all kids, autism or not, and hey, maybe pregnant women as well for potential prenatal prevention of autism in the first place.