Since I started this blog to keep track of what we are doing for monster's autism, the place to start should be what we have done to date. Maybe when I get around to dealing with the rest, I'll even blog about the beginning of the journey. Then again, maybe not.
Currently, we are looking into what is called bio-medical treatment. There seems to be as many theories as to the cause of autism as there are children who are diagnosed with it. Some say their brains are wired wrong; some say it is an autoimmune response triggered by vaccines; some say it is a response to our environment; or genetic or all of the above, or none of the above. These may be the next leap of human evolution or not (as rockmom so patiently explained to me).
My son can't wait for the experts to figure out the why part, which means we don't have a clear idea of what to do next. So rather than listen to, and follow, what the "experts" say, my husband and I have decided to take a cost/benefit approach to treatments.
Meaning, we look investigate any and all treatments out there in the world (both real, imaginary and internet), evaluate what the risks are to Monster (physically, mentally), the cost to us as a family (monetary, time, effort) compared to what the supposed treatment claims. We get a fair amount of flack for this approach, but we've never really cared that much about that; we are use to walking our own obscure, illogical, odd path.
To this end, we have tried gluten free/casein free diets (and are currently casein free), dye free diets (and still are dye free), hyperbaric oxygen therapy (may work, but at over $300 a pop, out of our price range), a variety of behavior strategies (RDI, floortime, ABA, all of which we still use), Sensory diet, massage and our current approach, bio medical.
The bio-medical approach is based on the idea that autism is the result (in whole or part) of our children's inability to breakdown and handle their physical environment (i.e. toxins, foods, etc). That their immune system is run amok because of some sort of trauma (such as vaccines) or deficiency. I'm making a muck of the explanation. Basically, autism is either an immune response or an allergic response or a response to nutritional lack or all of the above.
We dipped our toe into this lake when we went gluten/casein free. Monster was drinking 48-64 oz of milk at about 3 years of age. We knew he should be drinking less, but that constituted the bulk of where he got his calories and we were hesitant to restrict/reduce it (some would call us permissive parents in this, oh well). He also would get rashes at odd times, that weren't related to anything. I wish I could say we carefully researched this and applied our considerable intellect (ha!) when coming to this decision, but the reality was a family we knew tried this and their son started talking. At this point, monster had ZERO speech and we were desperate. So to Whole Paycheck (i.e Whole Foods) we went and out came the casein and gluten. His diet shrunk immensely. His behavior got worse, but we plodded through. Suddenly, one day, I didn't realize that buttered popcorn would have butter in it, and gave some to monster. He flipped out. The rash came back full force and he literally bounced off the wall. A similar reaction did not happen when he stole some bread one day, so we allowed gluten back and kept dairy out.
Now we are dipping the whole foot in. We can't afford to do the whole DAN! doctor thing, so we have applied our cost/benefit analysis and came up with the following:
A digestive enzyme (he has tummy problems)
Epson salt baths (detoxifying and soothing)
Lavender oil massage (soothing)
Calcium/Mg supplement
Omega 3 fish oil supplement.
We are also going to see a pediatric gastero-something or other and an allergist.
Who knows where this is going to end, but so far, the evidence is cautiously not pessimistic.
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