MORE FROM THE STACKS

Written By Helen Journal

EDITOR’S NOTE:  There are literally thousands of journals published around the world that relate to the disability community.  It is virtually impossible to capture even a fraction of them. HELEN receives "stacks" of journals and selectively earmarks what we feel are "must read" articles of interest for our readers. It's a HELEN perk!

NTG (National Task Group on Intellectual Disabilities and Dementia Practices)

GUIDE - A NEW PROGRAM THAT CAN OFFER SUPPORT TO FAMILIES

CARING FOR AN ADULT WITH AN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND

DEMENTIA

REGISTRATION REQUIRED. SCAN QR CODE (See image above) TO REGISTER.

Free Webinar for Family Caregivers

An informational webinar for families of people

with intellectual disabilities.

Monday, May 19 @ 7 PM EDT

APRIL IS STRESS-AWARENESS MONTH

April is Stress Awareness Month, a time to recognize the impact of stress on our health and well-being. Studies show that 55% of Americans experience stress daily, affecting both mental and physical health. But you don’t have to navigate stress alone—The American Institute of Stress (AIS) is here to help.

Since its founding in 1978 by Hans Seyle, MD, PhD and Paul J. Rosch, MD, MA, FACP, The American Institute of Stress has been at the forefront of stress education, providing valuable resources to help individuals and organizations manage stress effectively. They  offer:

FREE Monthly Podcast – Finding Contentment, featuring expert insights on stress management
FREE Quarterly Magazines – Contentment & Combat Stress, packed with practical tools and research
Assessments & Courses – Learn how stress affects you and develop personalized coping strategies
Webinars & Research – Access the latest science-backed techniques for building resilience

Stress Awareness Month is a powerful reminder to take control of your stress before it takes control of you. Start today with AIS’s free resources: stress.org

Advancing Research on Whole Person Health

By Helene M. Langevin, MD (NIH – 04/04/2025)

At the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), we have been working over the last half-decade to advance the concept of whole person health. From research to healthcare delivery, our health has historically been compartmentalized by individual conditions, organs, or other biologic systems. In the healthcare system, this means that co-occurring chronic diseases are usually treated separately. Once these diseases occur, the symptoms of disease progression are managed with medications or surgery, which carry the potential of side effects—too often, leaving important contributing factors unaddressed, such as poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress, and poor sleep. 

Whole person health inverts this traditional thinking, and instead of treating diseases one at a time, once they occur, it combines psychological, nutritional, and physical interventions and self-care to address the whole person proactively. We know that if lifestyle interventions are deployed at an early stage, there are opportunities to prevent and even reverse many chronic diseases. Yet, these interventions are not sufficiently supported in our current health care system and are rarely used in an integrated manner. The aim of research on whole person health is to provide the knowledge needed to most effectively prevent and treat disease, and to understand how to promote and restore health. 

I’m proud of the work that NIH is doing in collaboration with other Federal agencies to advance research on whole person health and deepen the evidence that can inform better care for all people—and lead to not only better health outcomes but also potentially significant cost savings for individuals and the health care system as a whole. Efforts include many critical accomplishments and milestones: 

Together, this work has helped to establish the infrastructure needed to support the inherently more complex studies necessary to understand whole person health. With the right methods, datasets, health models, and AI tools, we’re equipping researchers to chart new territory in understanding the causes of disease and drivers of health. And by fostering conversation on the whole person health framework at Institutes and Centers across NIH and other Federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the health care community will have the opportunity to benefit from the best that rigorous scientific analysis and thoughtful, interdisciplinary synthesis have to offer. 

As the whole person health framework continues to underpin our strategic plan and take root more deeply, the research community will be poised to contribute important scientific evidence on the benefits of using an integrative approach—especially combining diet, physical activity, and stress management—to address the needs of the whole person. In doing so, we will unlock new tools for addressing the burden of chronic disease to help mitigate the factors that drive declines in health and, instead, put people on the path to better health and resilience over a lifetime. 

Relationships Between Brain Activity, Tryptophan-related Gut Metabolites, and Autism Symptomatology

(Nature Communications – 04/13/2025)

Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Sofronia M. Ringold, Aditya Jayashankar, Emily Kilroy, Christiana Butera, Jonathan P. Jacobs, Skylar Tanartkit, Swapna Mahurkar-Joshi, Ravi R. Bhatt, Mirella Dapretto, Jennifer S. Labus & Emeran A. Mayer 

Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 3465 (2025) Cite this article

Link to the full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58459-1 Download PDF

Abstract

While it has been suggested that alterations in the composition of gut microbial metabolites may play a causative role in the pathophysiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it is not known how gut microbial metabolites are associated with ASD-specific brain alterations. In this cross-sectional, case-control observational study, (i) fecal metabolomics, (ii) task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and (iii) behavioral assessments were obtained from 43 ASD and 41 neurotypical (NT) children, aged 8–17. The fMRI tasks used socio-emotional and sensory paradigms that commonly reveal strong evoked brain differences in ASD participants. Our results show that fecal levels of specific tryptophan-related metabolites, including kynurenate, were significantly lower in ASD compared to NT, and were associated with: 1) alterations in insular and cingulate cortical activity previously implicated in ASD; and 2) ASD severity and symptoms (e.g., ADOS scores, disgust propensity, and sensory sensitivities). Moreover, activity in the mid-insula and mid-cingulate significantly mediated relationships between the microbial tryptophan metabolites (indolelactate and tryptophan betaine) and ASD severity and disgust sensitivity. Thus, we identify associations between gut microbial tryptophan metabolites, ASD symptoms, and brain activity in humans, particularly in brain regions associated with interoceptive processing.

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