Autism affects gut health, immune function, hormonal regulation, sleep and nutritional status, at any age. I assess these systems together rather than in isolation, working alongside existing paediatric or medical care rather than replacing it.
For adults, there’s real exhaustion in a lifetime of masking, and a particular kind of pain in being told you’re too sensitive, too rigid, too much, by people who never saw what it cost you to hold it together. For parents, there’s often guilt mixed with relief when a diagnosis finally explains what you’d been fighting to get taken seriously, and a real fear about what the future holds for your child. Both are heavy to carry alone.
What I Assess in Autistic Children
As an autism naturopath in London, I assess gut health, immune function, hormonal regulation, sleep and nutritional status together, in children and adults. Autistic children often have significantly restricted diets due to sensory sensitivities around texture, smell and taste. This commonly leads to gaps in iron, zinc, magnesium, B vitamins and essential fatty acids.
Gut symptoms such as bloating, constipation or irregular bowel habits are common in autistic children and are frequently dismissed as fussy eating rather than investigated directly.
Sleep disruption, difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or an unusual sleep pattern, is also common. Meltdowns and shutdowns are better understood as a nervous system reaching capacity than as behavioural problems. Autistic children also show higher rates of anxiety and, in some cases, signs of immune dysregulation or recurrent infection.
For parents, the difficulty is rarely the child’s presentation itself. It’s being told they’ll grow out of it, spending years without anyone assessing the whole picture, and managing school environments that don’t accommodate sensory needs. We assess the underlying biochemistry, communicate findings clearly enough to support you in advocating for your child, and work alongside your child’s existing care rather than adding to it.
What I Assess in Autistic Adults
Adult autism presentation is shaped heavily by masking, the conscious or unconscious suppression of autistic traits to fit in. Masking is exhausting, often invisible to others, and one of the main drivers of adult burnout.
Alexithymia, difficulty identifying or naming your own emotions, is common in autistic adults and makes it harder to notice something is wrong before it becomes a crisis. Burnout and shutdown in adults typically present as withdrawal, dissociation or chronic fatigue rather than an obvious meltdown, which means they’re frequently misattributed to something else.
Sensory overload builds cumulatively across a working day or week. Sleep difficulties have often been present since childhood without ever being connected to autism. Gut symptoms are common in autistic adults. Hormonal transitions, particularly perimenopause, are increasingly observed clinically as periods where masking becomes harder to sustain (this is an emerging clinical observation rather than settled evidence; I’d want to check current literature before this goes on the page as a firm claim). Anxiety, depression and autoimmune conditions also occur at higher rates in autistic adults.
Many adults are diagnosed late, often after recognising the pattern in their own child. Before that, they’ve typically spent years being told they’re too sensitive or too rigid, and often meet scepticism from healthcare providers when they raise autism themselves. We apply the same assessment here, but to a fully developed nervous system and years of existing coping strategies, building on what you already know about yourself.
Where I see people get this wrong
The first mistake is treating every sensory, behavioural or gut symptom as simply part of being autistic, rather than checking for a treatable driver underneath it. Restricted eating from sensory sensitivity is real, but the resulting nutrient gaps are still worth identifying and addressing directly.
The second, specific to adults, is missing burnout because it doesn’t look like a meltdown. Withdrawal, dissociation and chronic fatigue get misread as depression or low motivation, when the actual driver is accumulated masking and sensory load.
The third is applying a generic sensory-friendly diet or supplement protocol without testing what this particular person’s gaps actually are, restricted diets vary enormously between individuals, and so does what needs replacing.
My approach
I assess whether the driver behind a person’s presentation is nutritional, hormonal, immune or nervous system related, or a combination, and tailor recommendations accordingly. I refer out where necessary and flag anything that needs further investigation. My approach is trauma-informed and root cause-focused, recognising that neurodivergent people and their families have often had dismissive experiences with healthcare. That means clear communication, pitched to the person in front of me, at their pace. This is also personal for me. I’m neurodivergent myself, and this has had a huge impact on how I approach my work, I know what it’s like to be on the other side of the consultation room.
