Author: autismlighterside

Periodically, I will share information about my personal journey with biomedical treatments.

We have been on this journey for almost two years now. It seems like a long time, but also a short time.

The other day, we took our son to see his functional medicine doctor. We were there to do our three-month check on his yeast levels, leaky gut and his cellular health.

He told us that our son was doing amazing! All was in check and was good! This is so great to hear especially when you are working tirelessly to make sure every day things don’t fall through the cracks

We are still working on his diet. We are doing an awesome elimination diet where he doesn’t eat gluten, dairy, soy, corn or sugar. The elimination part is great, but the variety of foods is still limited. So we continue to work. We keep working harder and harder every day. This can be difficult, I believe, the older your child is as they have established habits over the years that take longer to break or replace with good ones.

I keep trying to find small ways to introduce new healthy options and also trying not to get stressed in the process. I think changing to healthy options is difficult so I do my best to find small ways and make small changes.

Now that we are at this point in healing, we are going to soon look at his thyroid function and adrenal support. There is a systematic pyramid of steps that you need to follow when you start the path to healing the body. First is the gut. Second is finding out what nutrients are deficient and replacing these in the body with supplementation. Then comes thyroid and adrenal. It’s exciting to be at the next step, even after two years!

Heavy metals are in there as well, especially after you have healed the gut. This one is difficult and can be ongoing for a very long time. We still work on this amidst all the other things we are doing. We had previously discovered extremely high lead levels and we are dealing with trying to lower them. We do a test every six months to check them. Right now we are in the process of re-checking these again.

There are always many moving parts to healing. I have found that the key is to take one step at a time and not to get stressed about one thing in particular. For each child, things will be different as the puzzle pieces (as I see it) fit together differently. The key is to go systematically through the process and give your child time to adjust to each new change.

Til next time…

We have a lot of new beginnings happening in our house. It’s the beginning of summer — my favorite season! I love it and it is extra special for our family as we have had a very tough year.

This is also the start of a new school chapter for our son as he will be going to high school soon. It’s kind of exciting – new chapter, new beginning and new possibilities. I love to think in these terms of what is to come and I also choose to be grateful for what has happened.

The other day we were at our son’s graduation and I thought I would be emotional (which I usually am) but I wasn’t. As I looked around, I realized all of the people that had contributed to this very moment in his life. If he did not have autism, I would not have met so many amazing people who I now consider friends. I had true joy in my heart and I was so proud of him, not for the marks that he had received, not for the struggles that he had experienced, not for the times when others didn’t understand him, but for the people that came into his life, walked along side him, helped him learn, befriended him and accepted him.

That is truly amazing! Definitely not part of an ending, but part of a new beginning!

To all those people who touched our lives, we will be forever grateful and think back on these times with great joy and happiness.

As for the next chapter? I am so excited and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Anyone who has done any kind of biomedical treatment or is in the process may have heard of detox.

The dictionary definition of detox is “a period of time which one rids the body of toxic or unhealthy substances.”

There are important things to know before you start doing anything. My list would be as follows:

• Diet
• Detox – heavy metals, yeast, parasites are common
• Mineral support and supplementation
• Immune support

If your child is on the spectrum, you may have heard of “detoxing the pathways.” This as I have discovered is a very important component to healing the body by ridding it of unwanted or harmful substances. Some of these toxins could include heavy metals, parasites, yeast or other things.

Our son has heavy metals in his body as well as an on-going yeast issue.

When we initially did some blood work, our son was tested for lead; however this did not show up in his blood. It wasn’t until we did a urine challenge test that we discovered that his lead levels were extremely high. As I have learned, lead (or other metals) usually only show up in your blood if you have had a recent exposure. In our case, the metals were in his tissues and bones and had probably been there for a long time.

Our son has also had issues with yeast on and off. This is extremely common for children with autism. Some of the outward signs of a child having yeast can be giddiness or drunken-like behaviors.  We had our son tested for yeast by doing a “live-cell” test. This is done periodically by his functional medicine doctor just to see what his levels are and if they are getting better. Over the past year and a half we have done many of these tests.

Treatments for high yeast levels can vary from person-to-person. With the direction of our doctor, we put on son on an anti-fungal drug to see if that would help his body get rid of the yeast. This is trial and error so the first drug did not work. But the second one that we tried totally got rid of it. For a time…this as I have learned is something that has to be managed constantly, but at least we had found something that worked for him.

When you are trying to rid the body of toxins, this is just one of the things that you need to look at. If you are new to the biomedical journey before you do any detoxification, you first need to have a good diet in place. If you don’t do this, then there is no point in trying to detox because you will just be going around in circles.

We have discovered that with our son, yeast always seems to be a big issue, so (with the guidance of our doctor) he is on a protocol where he takes a prescription medication one week per month (for the yeast) and then he does three different herbal medicines the other three weeks of the month.

The drug taken for the yeast does have some side effects so you don’t want to be on in continuously, as it can be taxing on the liver, but taking it one week a month allows the child to have a break for the other three weeks with natural supplements. Periodically blood work needs to be done just to make sure that the liver is supported.

This is where we are currently at for treating the yeast.

Another thing we have done is to try to remove heavy metals from his body. There are many different ways that you can do this and this is a very personal decision and approach that you must do research on to be able to know what is best for your child. We have chosen a method that seems to be working for our child right now.

You always have to make sure that you do everything systematically and with each new addition you go slow and monitor the progress for any changes, both good and bad.

We have discovered in our journey that an amazing detox tool is the foot bath. We use the IonCleanse by AMD and in my opinion this is the best brand on the market. We did a  lot of research before purchasing this as it is quite expensive. The great thing about this company is that they have a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can actually try it and if you are not satisfied they will refund all of your money.

A foot bath is just what it sounds like. Your child sits in a chair and puts their feet in a bath for a specified amount of time. There are recommend instructions when you are beginning for time and the age of the child. It is better with anything new to start slow and work your way up. Currently our son does 45 minutes for three days in a row and then takes one day off. If he is sick, we skip it. But this we have found to be such an important detox tool. I would never give this up because it has been a game changer for us. We have seen increased calmness, focus and clarity just to name a few things. We take the foot bath with us wherever we go.

When dealing with biomedical treatments, there are many tools. It is always a combination of things that will help detoxify your child’s body. You need to get the “bad stuff” out. This takes time so be patient and treatments are individualized for each child. What works for your child may not work for someone else’s child. Also, the processes may need to be adjusted or changed over time.

Just knowing that these tools are out there should give parents hope that their child can feel better and function better.

Stay tuned for more to come….

 

Possibilities for a child with autism are limitless. I use this phrase all the time since I heard it a couple of years ago. This goes for any child but I have coined the phrase for my child.

When we choose to limit our child with autism to a specific set of rules or things I believe it can be a huge mistake.  The world outlines for us as parents of children on the spectrum what our child should do, what they can’t do, what they will never do. A lot of times it’s negative information we are being fed. But you don’t need to buy into that.

I have never accepted what someone else has told me about my child, especially if I knew that it wasn’t accurate. Not that I don’t listen or try to make sense of things others say, but I know my child the best.  I’ve been there from the beginning. My child was part of me before he was part of this world and I will gladly listen to others perspectives on my child but I will never let their opinions define my child.

Children with autism have school challenges, no doubt. My child is no different.  But being in tune with the way a child learns is so very important.

Being able to see something and know exactly how that project will look for my child is a challenge but one I am always happy to take on.

I love the learning process. Each time there is a new school project I relish in the possibilities or not only what my child will learn but what I will learn as well.

Our son recently had an art project at school. They were to find a painting to replicate and then watch a YouTube tutorial on how to do this. Sounds easy?

I didn’t really know how to approach this project. Luckily our son’s tutor is amazing at looking at projects and breaking them down in steps. She knows our son well and can adapt anything to his learning needs. I always learn so much from her

For this project we were working on a deadline so she watched the video and decided that it would be a good idea if our son, one of his friends and her all had their own canvases and did this project together in stages.  This was a great idea! It’s so fascinating to me to watch this because honestly I had no idea what it would look like. My goal was just to have him learn something new in this process.

They all did the work together as a group but all of the paintings were slightly different because their interpretation was different.

It took them a few sittings to complete all the work but when it was done I was totally amazed. I knew our son had some artistic ability but I was blown away at the end result!   Wow was all I could say! A picture of his painting is above!

It goes to show you that with the proper guidance and understanding of how an individual works amazing things can happen.  A child can learn to express themselves and feel confidence in their accomplishments.

I continue to be amazed and realize that life does have limitless possibilities for all of us. We just need to believe that they can happen!

 

I thought I would write about something that I have experienced in the past couple of weeks. I have been impressed with our son so much in the past few months. He has been doing amazing and has made some significant gains!

I experienced a few things in the last couple of weeks that were not that amazing. In fact they were crappy and made me feel horrible.

Whether or not you have a child in your life on the spectrum or not, I am quite certain that all of us have seen kids with autism.

In my mind I always want to be moving forward as do most parents, no matter what their situation. But I seem to put a lot of pressure on my child at times in order to do this. Not only do I compare him, but it’s like I don’t want him to fail or  I don’t want him to have a bad “behaviour” or feelings. Is this right? No, it’s not and this is where I have to take a step back.

In the last couple of weeks our son has had a lot of changes and for the most part he’s been adjusting quite well with no issues. Then a few things happened and he was struggling.

He’s preparing for high school (he’s in grade 8) so he started taking the bus to and from school so he would be ready for this routine in the Fall. It started last week and he had to get up a bit earlier. I had reminded him about the bus and we were waiting outside talking about it. The bus never came. I had to call the company and they didn’t know what happened so I ended up driving our son to school, which normally would have been fine but now he was wondering what happened and was looking forward to going on the bus. I explained to him that perhaps the bus had a mechanical issue and that we had to drive.

When I picked him up at lunch he was not in a great mood. Knowing him the way I do, I could tell he had been thinking about the bus all morning.

At lunch, he was pleasant enough and seemed okay when he went back to school. Unfortunately, I got a phone call not long after I dropped him off saying that he wanted to come home. I was annoyed at first and then went to pick him up. The teacher told me that he got upset and dumped a bunch of stuff – something he hasn’t done in a long time. Then he told me how sad he was and that he just wanted to go home. It was then that I realized that I needed to change my mindset.

I needed to be more in tune with his feelings and listen to his needs. Sometimes, this is difficult but I have been trying really hard to improve my skills in this area.

We then had a wedding to attend on the weekend. Our son was not feeling that great as he had been fighting a cold. Just like anyone when you are not feeling well, you don’t want to be out and you certainly don’t want to have to sit and pay attention for a long time. You just feel like you want to be by yourself and chill.

Nevertheless, I felt we had to go as both the bride and groom had worked with our son at school and he was the reason we were invited to the wedding. In hindsight, it may not have been the best decision but we did it anyway.

We were a little early arriving at the church. The service was long and our son hadn’t had any prior issues sitting for longer periods for a very long time, but this day he did. About halfway through the service, he said he wanted to leave. Not quietly, but very loud so everyone could hear him. My husband took him out of the church. I crossed my fingers that either he would stay out for the vows or come back and remain calm and quiet. All I could think about was their wedding video with his voice saying something on it – a permanent memory.

He came back into the church. Again, not quietly. I remained calm and he did great for the rest of the service.

Talking about mindset – looking back I realize that I need to adjust mine at times. I’m not usually affected by things he does in a negative way but for some reason that day I was feeling it.

After the service, I felt the need to apologize to the couple (if you are an autism parent you probably have done this a lot.) They were totally fine because they both knew our son very well. But I had to ask myself, why do I always feel that way? I guess it’s human nature. People looking at us, perhaps judging us or talking about us, I don’t know. I know that there were people at this wedding that would never understand this but I also need to change my mindset and realize that my child has come so far and he has done so many amazing things and even if others don’t notice it, that it’s totally okay. I know and that’s all that matters.

I think I will always remember kindness that people show me in difficult situations and I hope that I am able in turn to show this to others as well.