Children
suffering from autism are unable to process information coming in from their
senses and hence cannot make sense of their surroundings. They therefore cannot
learn from the world around them, nor can they learn by imitation in the same
way as normal children.
As a result
children with autism fall rapidly behind their peers in their development in
three main areas:
These are
often referred to as the “triad of impairments”
Their
inability to process information explains why many children with autism
consciously block it out, e.g. by screaming or covering their eyes. In addition
there is frequently the unconscious shutting down of various sensory inputs as
a coping strategy, in order to reduce the information down to something that
makes some kind of limited sense. This explains why these children frequently
suffer from dysfunctional vestibular and proprioceptive systems, or visual
impairments such as tunnel vision and bad 3D perception.
Many children
with autism indulge in “self-stimulation”, e.g. arm-flapping, spinning in
circles. This is their way of providing sensory input which is absent due to
their inability to process what is coming in from their senses. For example,
when the proprioceptive system is not functioning correctly, the physical act
of flapping the arms tells the child where the arms are located in space and
indeed that the arms are still there, something that they cannot sense in the
way that neurotypical children can.
The inability
of these children to understand their surroundings also explains why they
exhibit ritualistic behaviours and try to put objects in the same place or in
regular lines: it is their attempt to create order from a world of chaos.
For a long
time after
The
“refrigerator mother” theory was widely discredited when it was shown that
family traits are a factor in autism. Unfortunately the establishment view has
now swung to the other extreme: that autism is purely genetic in nature. On
this basis they would have us believe that autism is a “lifelong impairment”
and that there is no treatment for it. The educational establishment is equally
unhelpful, condemning children to communicating with picture cards in their
misguided belief that they can never learn to speak normally.
Yet again,
the medical establishment is wrong. Genetics alone cannot explain the
unprecedented rise in autism rates: from 4 in 10,000 children in 1978 to 60 in
10,000 in the
The
educational establishment is equally wrong. Proven methods exist to
teach children with autism to speak and interact just like neurotypical
children. By far the most empirically validated method is “Applied Behaviour
Analysis” (
Many
thousands of children with autism have fully recovered using these
approaches over the last few years. Unfortunately this is still quite a small
number when compared with the millions of children who are afflicted – there
are ½ million in the UK alone. This is largely because the relevant authorities
remain either in ignorance or denial of the effective treatments that are
available, and so consequently do most parents.
The tragedy
is that everybody loses – the children, the parents and society as a whole. Children
who are not treated for autism generally end up in secure homes reserved for
those with severe disabilities and behavioural problems at a cost to the
taxpayer of between £3000 and £6000 per week. This outcome is not in
anybody’s interest, but unfortunately it is the one that the authorities tell
parents they should be resigned to.
Autism is
treatable. In recent years thousands of children have fully recovered from
autism using a combination of the biomedical and behavioural treatments outlined
below. All children treated in this way make marked improvements, even if they
do not fully recover. Thirty-one accounts of full and partial recovery can be
found in “Treating Autism” by
Unlike the
The following
guidelines are for educational purposes only and are not intended as a medical
treatment guide. All medical treatments for autism should only be undertaken
under the supervision of a qualified practitioner.
Empirical
data overwhelmingly points to diet as a factor in autism. 63% of a sample of
22,600 parents surveyed in the
The
Sunderland Unit can perform a test on the urine of the child to test whether
the offending peptides are present in the urine. This is a very useful piece of
evidence as it indicates whether a GF-CF diet needs to be implemented and can
also be used to gain support for diet intervention from the family doctor.
It is likely
that autism is linked to other modern-day childhood disorders such as ADD,
ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and others. This is because children with all these
conditions show marked improvements with nutritional changes which replace
heavily processed food with fresh, natural, home-cooked produce. This subject
is covered in “Gut and Psychology Syndrome”, an excellent work by Dr Natasha
Campbell-McBride, described on her Be
Healthy website. Dr Campbell-McBride’s GAPS diet, similar to the Specific
Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) has arguably even greater benefits than GF-CF.
Whilst
implementing a GF-CF diet seems extremely challenging at first, it is really
mostly case of eliminating processed foods and “ready meals”, and replacing
them with fresh meat/fish + fresh vegetables, freshly prepared every day. Every
effort should be made to use either organic ingrediens, or those known to have
been produced with minimal or zero pesticides, preservatives, hormones and other
contaminants. The diet should also include plenty of fresh fruit and nuts as
snacks, special treats such as biscuits should be home made from ingredients
such as ground almonds and carob. A range of GF-CF substitutes for common
ingredients can be found at your local health food shop or at Dietary Needs Direct,
particularly recommended is the Chestnut Flour.
Again the
evidence is overwhelming: 21 out of 22 studies
have shown that a large sub-group (45%) of children improve markedly when given high
doses of vitamin B6. The mechanism behind this is that in an child, the B6 from a normal diet is not being
correctly metabolised and so high doses are needed. The effect can also be
measured by a urine test: children typically have excess kynurenic acid,
a tryptophan metabolite requiring vitamin B6 for its further metabolism.
Elevated kynurenic acid indicates a functional vitamin B6 deficiency which can
be corrected by giving high-dose B6 together with magnesium. As well as
normalising the urine, this frequently results in improved behaviour and reduction of symptoms.
Note that
compared to drugs, vitamins are an extremely safe treatment. Drugs such as
Ritalin, often prescribed for children with behavioural problems, work by
blocking the body’s normal functioning so as to sedate the child. This is a
very dangerous approach with many, often unpredictable side-effects. By
contrast, vitamins facilitate the body’s normal functioning and are thus far
safer as well as far more effective in the treatment of autism.
There are
many supplements that have been found to be effective in various sub-groups of children such as vitamin C, cod liver oil, zinc
and others. It is important that the supplements are pure and do not contain
gluten, casein, or certain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame - otherwise
the benefits of the GF-CF diet are lost. An excellent range of pure supplements
is manufactured in the UK by Biocare
and can be purchased from Your
Nutrition Shop. A long-time leader in this field is Kirkman Laboratories of the
USA, while Humet-R from Hungary provides a
good balance of minerals as well as having another interesting property
described below.
Recent
research indicates that children with autism also suffer from toxic overloads
of metals such as mercury, lead and arsenic. The symptoms of mercury poisoning
in adults are similar to those of autism, and mercury is known to be a
neurotoxin. It enters body cells and attaches to cell mitochondria, causing
gross cell dysfunction and preventing cell replication. As well as affecting
the brain, mercury can also prevent the gut from secreting the right balance of
digestive enzymes and can also increase gut porosity, which explains why the
GF-CF diet described above is so effective.
Tests on
groups of children show that they carry
an average mercury body load three times higher than control groups of
neurotypical children. The most heavily afflicted can have twenty times the
mercury load of a neurotypical child. Furthermore, the symptoms of mercury
poisoning and those of autism are identical, as described in a groundbreaking
paper by Sallie
Bernard et al. But the most powerful piece of evidence is that, if mercury
is removed from an child, he/she gets
better. Many are cured completely if this is done early enough.
The
connection between mercury and autism has been hotly debated in the USA, with
advocacy group Safeminds leading the
debate. This has led to a great deal of US research on treating children by removing mercury and other toxic
metals from their bodies, a process known as chelation. American doctors
such as Dr Jeff Bradstreet, Dr Stephanie
Cave, Dr Amy Holmes
and Dr Anju Usman have successfully treated thousands of children with this method in the last few
years. The excellent book “Children with Starving Brains” by Jacquelyn
McCandless describes this treatment for the damage done by mercury to the
brain, gut and other organs. The more recent “Changing the Face of Autism” by
Bryan Jepsom is a very comprehensive work on the whole subject.
Europe lags
behind the US in both treatment and research on heavy metal toxicity and its
impact on autism. Detoxification treatment is available at a few specialist
clinics in the UK such as Breakspear
Hospital in Hertfordshire, Autism
Treatment Trust in Edinburgh, and Jean Muscroft who practices at clinics in
Cheshire. Other European practitioners
are listed on the Autism.com website. Due to the low provision in Europe, many
parents have to travel to the USA to obtain treatment for their children.
It is hoped
that one day this treatment will be available on the NHS, though this will be
too late for our generation of parents. At present it has to be carried out
privately, but it is nonetheless essential to fully involve your family doctor.
The child’s blood needs to be monitored to ensure that zinc, calcium, magnesium
and other minerals are not being depleted by the detoxification process and
this is a function which the family doctor can participate in.
Natural
remedies such as Humet-R can also be used
for heavy metal detoxification. This product provides essential minerals such
as zinc, iron and magnesium but also attaches to toxic metals such as lead,
cadmium and mercury resulting in their excretion. It’s use in treating autism
has been documented in the book “Autism, Amalgam and Me” by Jean Shaw, and it has also been used to
successfully treat adults with premature dementia caused by mercury amalgams.
Humet-R is particularly pleasant and easy to administer in syrup or capsule
form.
A new
chelating agent known as OSR (Oxidative Stress Relief) promises to
revolutionise detoxification of lead and mercury in children with autism.
Developed at the University of Kentucky, USA by Dr. Boyd Halley, details are
available from the company Dr Halley has set up, CTI Science. Although the
capsules require a prescription, it is possible to buy the powder without
prescription at the time of writing from Biopure
USA. Being fat-soluble, the powder can be dissolved in an edible fat such
as Coconut Oil for
effective delivery to the fatty tissues where mercury is concentrated. It can
also be dissolved in the fat-based supplement known as phospholipid
exchange from the protocol developed by Dr Klinghardt, according to which
OSR should be delivered in this way at bedtime for optimum de-toxification.
All children
with autism ought to be tested for mercury poisoning by means of a porphyrin
test. This can be carried out by Laboratoire Philippe
Auguste in
Recent research
such as that by V.K.
Singh indicates thatin many cases of autism, there is an auto-immune
response in which the body attacks its own brain cells. It does this by
producing antibodies against “Myelin Basic Protein” or MBP, an essential
component of the myelin sheath in the neuron. The production of such antibodies
in these children seems to be linked with the excessive presence of certain
viruses such as Herpes and Epstein-Barr. It is as if the body is trying to
attack these viruses but is failing, instead attacking its own brain cells and
leaving the virus largely intact.
Children who fit
this profile seem to respond very well to anti-viral drugs such as immunovir
(isoprinosine), acyclovir and its “pro” form, valacyclovir – commonly known as
valtrex. By suppressing the virus, the auto-immune response is reduced and the
child can make dramatic improvements as in the case of Stan
Kurtz, whose son completely recovered from autism using this kind of
treatment.
Not all
children respond so well however. In many cases their immune systems are so
weak, with very low white blood cell counts, that they have hundreds of chronic
infections: viral, bacterial and fungal. In these cases, targeting a selected
group of viruses may have limited benefit, or may even be detrimental as this may
strengthen infections not targeted. When this is the case, treatment is best
focussed on strengthening the immune system.
Natural
ant-viral remedies can also be effective, such as elderberry, olive leaf extract and monolaurin. A good
background to viruses and how anti-viral treatments work can be found on Wikipedia.
There are many forms
of behavioural therapies, but the one consistently shown to be the most
successful for children is known as
Applied Behaviour Analysis (“ABA”). Initially developed by Prof. O. Ivar Lovaas
at the
ABA essentially works
by breaking down all the life skills a child has to learn into small steps,
more easily grasped by a child whose ability to process complex tasks is
impaired. By rewarding the mastery of each step, the child is gradually taught
verbal communication, self-help (e.g. toilet raining), appropriate interaction
with others etc. This process must be carried out in a one-to-one situation
with an adult for about 40 hours per week, and as such is not a very “natural”
way for a child to learn. However, since the ability to learn “naturally” has
been impaired, it makes sense to use a method from which the child can learn.
In this way he/she gradually absorbs the knowledge and develops the skills
he/she needs to become independent and function like a normal child. Normal
functioning cannot be guaranteed, but ABA gives them the best chance – research
shows that 85% of children with autism make measurable gains with ABA.
There is a drawback
with ABA: it is expensive and very onerous for the parents. Enlisting an ABA
provider company is only the start. In order to reach the required 40 hours of
therapy per week, one has to recruit a team of people locally and buy a whole
host of materials. The task of managing the team, administering the programme
and ensuring that every team member is constantly up to speed on the child’s
next targets is an exacting task that usually falls on the shoulders of one of
the parents. In this context it is essential that only one parent goes out to
work: the other must be fully dedicated to managing the ABA programme.
A first-class provider
of
Pioneered by Dr.
Stephen Gutstein, RDI is based on the idea that children with autism can be
“remediated” by teaching them the developmental steps that they have missed.
This is done by slowing them down, and taking the children through them with
specially designed exercises. Unlike ABA, there is no team of therapists – the
exercises are done by the parents in the context of everyday activities. Videos
are taken an uploaded to a special website, so that they can be viewed remotely
by a consultant who supervises the next steps in the programme.
Background to how RDI was conceived is provided by Dr Gutstein himself on YouTube. In the UK, RDI is provided by Think Autism.
The theory
here is that children with autism have a non-linear frequency response in their
hearing range, so that, to an child,
sounds at certain pitches seem hundreds of times louder than they should be. It
is a fact that many such children are hyper-sensitive to certain sounds, and
this incidentally is another symptom of mercury poisoning in adults.
There is
nothing wrong with their ears – it is the processing of the sound in the brain
which is malfunctioning. It would appear that, by listening to music with
certain modifications, extra “synaptic routing” is created in the brain which improves
this processing and creates a “flatter” frequency response. Out of 28 studies
of auditory integration training, 23 found measurable behavioural improvements
in children with autism. The most popular method is that of Dr Guy Berard, available in the
The
ground-breaking work by behavioural optometrist Melvin Kaplan, Seeing Through
New Eyes, describes how children with autism who have visited Dr. Kaplan’s Center for Visual Management in New
York frequently exhibit visual impairments. He describes how many of them have
made improvements through the selective use of yoked prism lenses which can
either correct the child’s view of the world, or disrupt it in order to make
the visual processing part of the brain work harder. These lenses plus a
suitable set of vision exercises has resulted in many classing autistic
behaviours such as toe-walking and arm-flapping being eliminated. In some
cases, non-verbal children have even started to develop language shortly after
vision therapy! This suggests a coupling between the visual and auditory
processing parts of the brain.
In the
Heavy metal toxicity
has many symptoms similar to vitamin B12 deficiency, as explained by the MELISA Society. Recent
research in the
Evidence has
shown that injecting an activated form of vitamin B12 into fatty areas of the
body, where it can be stored and released gradually over several days, can help
to re-activate the methylation cycle in spite of the presence of toxic metals.
The injections are known as “methyl B12” and are cheap and straightforward to
administer by the parents themselves. The leading authority on methyl B12 is Dr. Neubrander, whose website
describes the details and contains much video evidence.
Hyperbaric
oxygen has been used for some time to treat divers, and more recently multiple
sclerosis sufferers. By breathing pure oxygen in a pressurised chamber for an
hour, the patient can obtain multiple benefits including:
Recent
anecdotal evidence from the US has shown dramatic benefits, such as previously
non-verbal children uttering their first words after a few sessions. More
information on this interesting therapy can be obtained from the International Hyperbarics Association,
and their October 2005 newsletter containing many testimonials from parents of children
with autism.
To find a
hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the
The Advance Technique
developed by Linda Scotson starts with the premise that brain injury at or
close to birth results in under-development of the diaphragm and other
respiratory muscles. By using restorative methods such as special exercises and
massage, oxygenation to brain is greatly improved with consequent developmental
benefits. Originally developed for children with cerebral palsy who were known
to have had hypoxia, it has also been used to great effect on ASD children. This
suggests that a more subtle form of hypoxia is a causal factor in autism.
Recent
research from Switzerland indicates that pathogenic moulds grow 600 times
faster in the present of ambient electromagnetic fields than do those in a Faraday
cage (Ref. Explore
Sep 2009). Children with autism usually have an excess of such moulds, for
example candida albicans, which
produce potent neurotoxins such as arabinose. Such toxins compete with mercury,
lead and other heavy metals for the body’s de-toxification pathways, stunting
the body’s ability to remove said metals. The immune systems and detoxification
pathways of children with autism are already under severe stress, so
eliminating the compounding effect of EMFs can only be positive. Screening out
EMFs reduces the growth of pathogenic moulds, allowing the body to better
excrete other toxins.
There is
mounting evidence that “electrosmog”
from Wi-Fi, mobile phone masts and cordless phones is causing long-term harm to
a vulnerable subgroup of the population. The damage takes place over a long
period and there are other factors, so it is difficult to pin the blame on EMFs
at this time. However it must be borne in mind that atomic radiation was
thought to be harmless because it could not be seen, heard or smelt. Its
discoverer, Marie Curie, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 39.
Whilst we
cannot escape EMFs in our modern world during the daytime, it is possible to
screen them out at night by sleeping under a silver-plated mosquito net which
acts as a Faraday cage. Since the body carries out over 90% of its
de-toxification at night, this would seem a sensible precaution. Suitable
products are available from EMFields.
Pioneered by Dr Yurkovsky, the idea of FCT is to
strengthen weak tissues with homeopathic remedies, causing them to expel
mercury. Whatever one’s views on homeopathy, it has to be said that it cannot
do harm, and there are many positive anecdodal reports indicating the benefits
of FCT which cannot be ignored. They may be due to the placebo effect, but this
is unlikely since the functioning of many of the children is so low that they
have no idea of they are taking a medicine or just water.
Having evolved
from kinesiology, FCT is gradually gaining ground with a leading European
practitioner being Jonathan
Frewing.
Remember that autism is treatable. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, regardless of how high up in the medical profession they may be. Don’t let them grind you down. They are wrong.
Further
The following
books have been our main inspiration for Jamie’s treatments and have given us
hope that he can be normal one day.
“Seeing
through New Eyes” by Melvin Kaplan
“Treating
Autism” by
“Teaching
Developmentally Disabled Children” by Ivar Lovaas
“Gut and
Psychology Syndrome” by Natasha Campbell-McBride
“Let Me Hear
Your Voice” by Catherine Maurice
“Children
with Starving Brains” by Jacquelyn McCandless
“Facing
Autism” by
“Autism,
Amalgam and Me” by Jean Shaw
“The Sound of
a Miracle” by Annabelle Stehli
“Evidence of
Harm” by
“Autism, Brain and Environment” by Richard Lathe
“Changing the Face of Autism” by Bryan
Jepsom
Useful
Links
There is a
great deal of general information about autism. The following links are
specifically for those parents who actually want to treat their children rather
than just attend support groups and learn to “cope with the problem”. By
applying the treatments described on these sites, parents will increase the
chances of their children recovering from autism.
Autism
research Institute,
New
Gluten-free
and casein-free diet: http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/autism/aru.htm
Supplements: http://www.autismwebsite.com/ari/treatment/treatment.htm
Mercury
poisoning: http://www.autismwebsite.com/ari/vaccine/mercury.htm
Testing and
treatment in the
Laboratory in
Humet-R and
how it works in removing toxic metals: http://www.fulcrumhealth.co.uk/
Principles
behind
A leading UK
ABA provider: http://www.ukyap.org/
Information
and support on
Auditory
Integration Training: http://www.drguyberard.com/
Johansen
Sound Therapy: http://www.johansensoundtherapy.com/
Clinic for
biomedical treatment for autism in
Recovered Children video: http://autism-recoveredchildren.org/
Center for
Visual management: http://www.vision.com/
Vision
Therapy in the