What Is Metabolism?
In today’s modern world, our understanding of children’s health must evolve beyond simply managing symptoms. For children with chronic health conditions and developmental challenges—including those on the autism spectrum—it is especially important to consider the deeper systems that influence behavior, energy, mood, immunity, and growth. One of the most overlooked yet essential foundations is metabolism.
Metabolism isn’t just about how fast someone burns calories. It’s the sum total of all the biochemical processes that keep the body alive and functioning—converting food into energy, clearing toxins, building the brain, repairing tissues, and powering every cell.
Why Metabolism Matters in Children
In children, the metabolic system must work overtime to support rapid growth, learning, immune development, and neurological wiring. Children who are chronically ill or meet the criteria for autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have one or more underlying metabolic imbalances. These might include:
- Mitochondrial dysfunction: This means that the cellular engines aren’t producing energy efficiently
- Impaired detoxification: This leads to buildup of toxins that affect behavior and cognition
- Nutrient deficiencies: Because of this, vital vitamins and minerals are not being absorbed, used, or are rapidly depleted
- Blood-sugar instability: This can impacting mood, attention, and self-regulation
When metabolism is disrupted, a child may appear fatigued, hyperactive, irritable, foggy, or emotionally dysregulated—not because of “behavioral problems,” but because their biology is struggling to keep up.
Blood-Sugar Swings
When we eat too many simple carbohydrates, too frequently, without enough protein, fat and fiber, we tend to send our metabolic processes into a tailspin. Blood glucose levels are supposed to stay relatively even, with small rises and falls throughout the day. To learn more about optimizing blood sugar, click here.
When you consume too much sugar or carbohydrates without fat, fiber and protein, it can cause massive swings in blood sugar that use up critical nutrients (like magnesium), can cause oxidative stress, insulin resistance, and damage cells. Our food is supposed to be fueling our cells, not damaging them.
It is important to understand that your child’s unique metabolic needs may be different from other children, and there is no one-size-fits all approach to nutrition. However, there are some general strategies that will help most people establish healthy metabolism.
Whole-Child, Lifespan Thinking
A truly integrative approach considers metabolism from preconception through adulthood:
- Prenatal factors such as maternal nutrient status, environmental exposures, and stress levels affect how a child’s metabolism is wired from the start.
- Early childhood development requires efficient metabolism to fuel learning, immune resilience, and detoxification during key developmental windows.
- Adolescence and beyond is shaped by how well a body continues to regulate energy, inflammation, and repair systems—all of which can be influenced by early metabolic function, experiences/exposures that collectively impact a body’s ability to “bioregulate.”
Rather than waiting for symptoms to worsen or relying solely on external behavioral interventions, supporting metabolism early helps build resilience from the inside out.
Ways You Can Support a Healthy Metabolic Process
Protein
Eat healthy protein each time you eat. Examples of healthy protein include pastured, wild caught, organic animal proteins such as bison, beef, fish, chicken, pork, venison, game birds, turkey, and more.
Healthy Fats
Eat healthy fats each time you eat. Examples of healthy fats include avocados, nuts, seeds, coconut oil, olive oil, clean animal fats, butter and ghee.
Fiber
Eat healthy fiber each time you eat. Examples of healthy fiber include vegetables and fibrous fruits, nuts and seeds, and occasionally legumes if properly prepared.
Carbohydrates
Limit simple carbs and sugars. If your child does eat them, try to make sure to include healthy fat, fiber and protein at the same time.
Movement
Incorporate regular movement or exercise into your child’s day. Movement and burning of calories is as important to metabolic health as the food going in. It is helpful for reducing the excess blood sugar (glucose).
A Modern Call to Action
In our fast-paced, toxin-loaded, nutrient-depleted modern environment, it is no longer enough to assume metabolism “just works.” Children today face more environmental stressors and dietary challenges than ever before.
Understanding and supporting a child’s metabolism—through nutrition, targeted supplementation, detox support, movement, and stress regulation—is one of the most powerful things we can do to improve outcomes in autism and other chronic health conditions.
This approach honors the bioindividuality and bioregulation of each child and helps parents and practitioners truly see the child as a whole person—not just a diagnosis. By focusing on the underlying engine of life—metabolism—we can help children thrive, not just survive, all the way from the womb into adulthood.
About Heather Tallman Ruhm MD
Heather Tallman Ruhm MD is the Medical Director of the Documenting Hope Project. She is a Board Certified Family Physician whose primary focus is whole-person health and patient education. She draws on her conventional western training along with insights and skills from functional, integrative, bioregulatory and energy medicine. She believes in the healing capacities of the human frame and supports the power of self-regulation to help her patients recover and access vitality.
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