When Did We Stop Talking About Heavy Metals?

I’ve been thinking about something lately.

When I first entered the biomedical autism world, we talked about heavy metals. A lot.

We talked about mercury. Lead. Aluminum. Arsenic. Hair tests. Porphyrins. Glutathione. Chelators. Environmental exposures. We argued about how to test for metals and, of course, we argued endlessly about the best way to remove them.

But we were at least asking the question.

Could retained toxic metals be contributing to what we were seeing in our kids, and if so, what were we going to do about it?

Somewhere along the way, that conversation changed.

Today we hear a lot about mitochondria. Folate. Inflammation. Mast cells. PANS/PANDAS. The microbiome. Methylation. Oxidative stress. Gut health. Cellular energy.

And listen, these things matter.

I’ve spent years helping parents address them.

But I keep coming back to one question:

Aren't most of these things downstream problems?

If heavy metals interfere with glutathione, damage mitochondria, disrupt enzymes, and increase oxidative stress, does supporting glutathione and mitochondria solve the problem?

Or are we supporting systems that continue to be affected by something we haven't removed?

That's an important distinction.

Because when I look back at the biomedical autism movement of the early 2000s, I remember something else.

Recovery stories.

Lots of them.

Parents weren't talking only about improving sleep, constipation, or anxiety. We were hearing about children making enormous developmental gains.

I think it's time we went back and looked at what happened.

Not nostalgically. Not conspiratorially.

Historically.

What were parents being told in 2005?

What changed?

When did it change?

And perhaps most importantly...

Why did we stop talking so much about actually removing heavy metals?