Biohacking Autism with Nadia Elkhatib.

What’s driving inflammation in autism? In this Biohacking Autism Essentials edition, Dr. Richard Horowitz walks through the core ideas from his 16-point MSIDS framework and explains how multiple biological systems may contribute to chronic inflammation and symptoms in autism. This shorter, focused edition covers: • The 16-point MSIDS framework • The six “rivers of inflammation” • Neuroinflammation...

Autism inflammation is often discussed as if it were one problem with one cause. In this episode, Dr. Richard Horowitz joins Nadia to walk through his 16-point MSIDS framework for complex chronic illness and discuss how he applies it to questions families and clinicians raise around autism. The conversation covers what Dr. Horowitz calls the six “rivers of inflammation”: infections, environmental...

This is the 29-minute Essentials edition of my conversation with Dr. Dayan Goodenowe. The full episode, with more on testing, maternal health and where his research is headed, is here: https://biohackautism.com/podcast/dayan-goodenowe-autism-brain-development-plasmalogens/ What does the brain need to build itself, and why does the answer matter for a child with autism and for the parent caring for...

What does the brain need to build itself, and why does the answer matter for a child with autism and for the aging brain? In this episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib talks with Dr. Dayan Goodenowe, PhD, neuroscientist, biochemist and founder of Prodrome Sciences, about autism brain development, white matter and myelination, mitochondrial dysfunction and brain inflammation in autism, and t...

More than 600 companies are building autism technology, yet most families have never heard of them. This 20-MIN ESSENTIALS edition condenses my conversation with Dan Feshbach, founder of Multiple and co-founder of TeachTown, into the core ideas families need most. Dan and I explore AI for autism, AAC, assistive technology, communication tools, sensory technology, and what it will take for useful t...

More than 600 companies are building autism technology, yet most families have never heard of them. What could change if AI, communication tools, sensory technology, and future neurotechnology reached the people who need them? Dan Feshbach, founder of Multiple and co-founder of TeachTown, joins Nadia Elkhatib to explore the hidden world of autism technology. They discuss what families actually nee...

A shorter, focused edition of our full John Slattery conversation. Leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, has become one of the most discussed topics in autism research. John Slattery, co-author of the 2018 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of folinic acid in children with autism and language impairment, joins Nadia Elkhatib to explain the essential findings in about 24 minutes. Th...

Leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, has become one of the most discussed topics in autism research. John Slattery, co-author of the 2018 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of folinic acid in children with autism and language impairment, joins Nadia Elkhatib to separate the research from the noise. They unpack what the trial actually measured and found; why folate receptor alpha a...

When a child or adult with autism has multiple overlapping health concerns, where do you start, what comes next, and what may need to wait? Scott Forsgren, founder of BetterHealthGuy, joins Nadia to walk through the 16-step roadmap he developed from nearly three decades of navigating complex chronic illness, and to explore what autism families may be able to learn from that framework. The conversa...

Why can some peptides work orally while others struggle to survive the gut? In this episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib talks with Kyal Van Der Leest, CEO, founder, and formulator of LVLUP Health, about autism gut health, peptide signaling, inflammation, oral bioavailability, and what formulation changes when peptides have to travel through the digestive system. Kyal starts with one of th...

Autism gut issues, the gut-brain axis, and bioregulators come together in this conversation with Dr. Grace Liu, PharmD. Grace explains why she approaches the gut and the brain as one interconnected system rather than working through them in sequence, what peptide bioregulators are and how they differ from signaling peptides, what the research actually shows, and why highly reactive children need a...

Autism blood work rarely comes first. In this solo episode Nadia Elkhatib explains why she now starts with baseline biology before choosing the next specialty treatment for her son Jimmy. For twenty years she worked on Lyme, mold, gut, mast cells and detoxification, and that work helped. What she skipped was the foundation underneath it: thyroid function, sex hormones, insulin and metabolic health...

Ryan Lundy was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability as a child and with autism at 40. In between, he got through school with a 504 plan, a resource teacher, a private tutor, and a lot of family support. Today he teaches physical education at a school for students with special needs, coaches adaptive tennis, and has just been accepted into the Autism Speaks Advocacy Academy. He has sat on...

Mast cell activation syndrome, or MCAS, is being recognized in more and more people, and for families living with autism the pattern is often familiar before it has a name. When sleep falls apart, anxiety spikes, big emotions arrive out of nowhere, and foods, supplements, seasons, and smells all start to become triggers, most people have no language for what is happening. In this episode, Dr. Debb...

Hashimoto's symptoms get dismissed as "normal" every day, and women pay for it with years of fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, and hair loss. In this episode, Dr. Amie Hornaman, The Thyroid Fixer, explains why a "normal" TSH can hide real hypothyroidism, how the T4-to-T3 conversion breaks down, and why reverse T3 and low testosterone in women matter so much for metabolism, energy, and mood. Nadia s...

Most people think they understand progesterone. Most people, it turns out, get it completely wrong. In this episode, compounding pharmacist Carol Petersen, RPh, CNP, joins Nadia to unpack what this one hormone actually does in the body, for women and for men, and why hormone balance sits underneath so much of what caregivers and their children struggle with every day. Carol has spent more than thi...

What is Silicon Valley actually funding in longevity, and what can cutting-edge aging science teach us about autism and chronic illness? Nadia sits down with Dr. Ronjon Nag, OBE, an AI pioneer turned Stanford genetics professor and longevity investor behind the R42 fund. Ronjon built some of the earliest neural networks that modern AI rests on, shipped voice recognition and the first mobile app st...

Autism employment is one of the biggest questions parents carry: what happens when my child grows up, and will they find real work and purpose? In this episode on jobs for adults with autism, venture capitalist and autism dad Brian Jacobs shares what 15 years of investing in autism employment and raising a son on the spectrum taught him about preparing your child with autism for adulthood. We get...

What if the most powerful autism intervention is not a protocol but the parent? In this episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib sits down with Len Arcuri, host of Autism Parenting Secrets and founder of All In Parent Coaching. Len came to this work as a dad first. A former finance executive and Six Sigma Master Black Belt, he met his son's diagnosis the way many of us do, by going into fix-it...

For most of her adult life, Nadia believed weight loss was a math problem. Calories in, calories out. If the math was not working, the problem was her. In this solo episode she walks through what was actually happening: a body in metabolic distress, sending a signal for years that nobody, including her, was listening to. The short answer, "I am on a GLP," is true but incomplete. The real story is...

Modern ABA therapy for autism looks nothing like the rigid, table-and-clipboard version most parents picture. In this reunion episode, Nadia sits down with Veronica Glickman, a board certified behavior analyst who directed her son Jimmy's program over 15 years ago, to talk about how ABA has actually changed and what good practice looks like today. Veronica walks through what naturalistic, relation...

Description For every autism parent who has watched their kid crash on the very supplements that were supposed to help, this one is personal. In this solo episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib walks through Dr. Neil Nathan's six step healing sequence for sensitive patients and the shift that finally stopped Jimmy's reaction cycle. For a year, Nadia treated Jimmy's Lyme disease and co-infect...

For every autism mom, dad, grandma, and caregiver who has been told to "just reduce your stress" by a doctor who has clearly never watched their child have a meltdown at 2 a.m., this episode is for you. In this episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib sits down with Dr. Paul Nash, USC gerontologist and co-author of Critical Questions for Ageing Societies, on the biology of autism caregiving an...

Phospholipids may be the missing link in autism recovery. In this episode, Nadia Elkhatib sits down with Dr. Krishna Doniparthi, MD, founder of Functional Medicine Georgia, the Doniparthi Neurogen Academy, and Precision Nutrients, to unpack why autism support may need to start at the cell membrane and what that means for parents who feel like they have already tried everything. Dr. Doniparthi spen...

The autism urine test that detects 90% of cases with 100% specificity is here. In this episode of Biohacking Autism, Nadia Elkhatib sits down with Dr. Christina Flynn, the chemical engineer turned PhD researcher who designed the MDM System under Dr. James Adams at Arizona State University. Christina earned her PhD at ASU in December 2025 and now serves as Research Director at Autism Diagnostics La...