A Starting Place

First of all I just want to say that over the past year we have been greatly blessed by God with great workers, friends, family and professionals. A few years ago I had no idea what autism was and now I can't remember life without it. All the children and their families we have met along the way touched us and we are so proud to be where we are today. Now some people wonder where we started. Let me tell you:



(Just as a side note- we did not do any chiropractic treatment until February 2009. I would encourage people to evaluate the structure of the spine first as it is crucial to helping the body heal itself. I am thankful that we have met a great chiropractor here in Des Moines that is passionate to heal children with autism and I wonder where we would be today if we had started out in the beginging with having the body completely aligned and working properly. So really the first thing I would tell people to do is see a good chiropractor who believes in treating autism biomedically and make sure that the body is properly aligned so it can work most efficiently. However...)


The first decision I made was to improve the boys' diet. I did lots of research and it just seemed to me like the easiest thing to start with. No possible side effects and we'd all be eating better.

Also the body will not absorb properly unless it is healed! So how do you heal it? Our children (especially those more suseptable to damage-premies, other birth complications, GI issues the list goes on and on), their bodies have been fighting from the beginging. Environmental toxins, vaccine toxins, drug toxins (either passed from mother or prescripton drugs given to baby) these all tax the body and when the body is busy fighting off toxins and virus' it has a hard time doing the job it was made to do-grow and learn. So first step is to clean up diet- if there are GI issues (diarrehea or constipation, ear infection, skin rash or lack of eye contact) my first suggestion is to go completely off dairy (casein). It takes about 48 hours to really get it out of their system but you should results at least within 3-4 days. If there are no significant results then it becomes a personal choice to either stay off and see what happens as more time goes by or add it back in and watch for negative symptoms. Either way no harm done. I will warn you- my kids too had a very limited diet and it was scary as they would only eat things with dairy in it. So when we went off dairy they had to eat totally new foods. Amazingly they did and they learned to like new things, unfortunatly they still have somewhat limited diets but at least there is no dairy and their diets are improving. Next eliminate all food dyes, high fructose corn syrup, enriched foods and any genetically engineered foods. This will help with mood and sensory issues. Finally limit sugars and any other processed foods and keep a food diary so you can figure out what foods are problem areas. Also keep in mind that if a food is craved obsessively than it is probably not good for their bodies and is acting more like a drug.


Second of all you have to remove other toxins that could be damaging or occupying the bodies energy such as prescription drugs, chemicals in lotions, soaps, and so on. This can be tricky and its nearly impossible to rid your environment of all but making a conciencous effort really helps and doing it little by little. I started by changing laundry and bath soaps then moved on to shampoos and lotions and then look at what you cook with and what you use in the microwave. Keep in mind that traditional medicine has a place in the world just be aware that everytime antibiotics are given #1 the good bacteria is also killed off and #2 Yeast thrive. So if antibiotics are necessary make sure you take precautionary measures and increase probiotics.

Third- add in vitamins and supplements. I know every kid is different and what worked for us may not work for you. Sooo, here is a starting place.
1. Probiotics- EVERYONE needs probiotics. Good bacteria is necessary to keep the balance.
2. Enzymes- Help with digestion. I know that I feel much better when I take enzymes-my body doesn't need to work so hard. Our bodies today for some reason just do not have all the enzymes needed or get enough enzymes from food for digesition and adding in enzymes is very helpful. (just make sure that you start with a broad spectrum enzyme-for children- as some are very strong (enzymedica- Digest Gold) was too strong for my small son and was just too much. You can tell by their stools too.
3. Cod liver oil- this too everyone can benefit from and our kiddos especially need help with focus, attending and brian function.
4. Multi-vitamin- Kirkman's has a great multi-vitamin/wafer for kids
5. Antioxidants- these we no longer get from our food and are necessary to minimize free radical damage to the brain. We use Soloray mutli-mega antioxidant with very berry.
6. Aloe vera juice- very healing to gut and also normalizes Ph in stomach and aids in absorbtion.
7. Inositol -very effective for OCD symptoms and anxiety.

Lastly- Chiropractic care, Occupational therapy, speech therapy and ABA are also important. We found that no matter what the therapy the best chance of success is if the body is healthy so that is where we started. The body needs to function properly in order to develop.

(We also consult a DAN! Dr. and had some labs run as well but these supplements above are completely natural and things that all people would benefit from. There are links throughout my blog with research and data on most of the suppelments we give. If you can afford a DAN! dr. they are great but I found that most things are trial and error anyway and so we do minimal consulting. We choose to do nothing that can further damage the boys so we do only no risk supplements so worst case scenario we are wasting our money. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. )

Supplements and Progress

This year 2009 has been incredibly awesome! We finally jumped through enough hoops with the state and both boys are recieving waiver benefits and we are finally able to afford therapy, clinics and the visits to the psychologist for both boys! A huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders and it feels so good to be able to get all the help for them that they need without having all the financial burden or weighing which one is more important at this time.

Also this year Lochlan continues to make tremendous gains with ABA and Speech therapy. He is a totally different kid and to see him emerge more and more each day is breathtaking. I never knew if we would ever get ahead of the autism or damage done to his body (immune, neurological and gastrointestinal systems) but I feel like we are head to head with it now. Lochlan's speech therapist told me that she had started an evaluation and that in some areas he was scoring WITHIN HIS AGE RANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Taking into consideration that less than 9 months ago they could not even evaluate him because he had barely any language skills and now he is in his age range in some areas. What a miracle!!! I truly believe that God is at work here and that this is a testament that He can do anything! For Lochlan to gain that much development in only 9 months is impossible by human standards. And what is so amazing is that everyday we can see him gaining more and more ground.

Sully is also making huge strides. He amazes us as his intelligence surpasses mine daily! He is getting taller and is begining to learn how to deal with his sensory issues. One of our more recent issues is that he had started pulling up and at his pants obsessively all day. It became such a problem that it impaired his daily function and just walking down the hall was an ordeal. I kept thinking that this has to be sensory. Of course sensory is the most difficult kind of problem to figure out. We had also been dealing with him stomping around the house. For 35 pounds he sounded like a 3 ton elephant!!! No matter how many reminders, it was as if he couldn't help himself. I keep racking my brain for possible culprits... diet, supplements, sensory overloads. The only thing that made any sense was that my hypersensitive son was have trouble feeling his pants on his waist or his feet on the ground. So I pulled out some old undies(training pants that I made for him while we were potty training) and we gave them a shot. At first he complained that they were too tight. I kept telling him that we have to be scientists and give it a few days to collect data. He was more receptive to the idea as long as we were only doing a trial. The first day I can count on one hand how many times I saw him pulling on his pants!!! It was amazing. He no longer fights me about them and the problem is currently non existent! To handle his stomping we discovered that about 10 minutes on the trampoline would help the heavy footedness for about an hour or two. (one of our respite workers who is also a family friend suggested this)

As for supplements:
Our current supplement schedule is as follows.
Lunch: (I mix the following in a banana puree with a bit of apple/orange juice and then administer with a syringe)
1 scoop of ASD plex (millinium nutritionals)
1 cap EnZym-Complete/DPP-IV II with Isogest (kirkmans)
1 cap mega-mulit antioxidant w/ very Berry (Solaray)
1/2 500mg cap Insotiol (solaray)
1/2 tsp Nordic Naturals Cod liver oil for kids
1 cap bio-defense probriotic (kirkmans)
2mls Aloe Vera Juice (Akins Brand)-for absorbtion

Supper:
The same as above without the ASD plex.