My Green Family. ramblings of one family's journey to green living

We decided to go ahead and take the next step with Tristan’s biomedical therapy and started giving him vitamin methyl B12 shots, simply vitamin B12 in an injectable form. There are many different forms of B12, but it’s the methyl B12 that kids with autism have a need for.

Methyl B12 is so important in our bodies, its an important cofactor to an enzyme that converts one amino acid to another in the methylation cycle. For those of you who aren’t science nerds like me, think of it as if you are at work and it’s finally time to go for that after work drink (or five) but you need to get from work to the bar (work and bar are the amino acids) so you hop in your car (the enzyme) put the key in the ignition and nothing, you look at the fuel indicator and its empty. How pissed are you?! The gas is methyl B12.

This is what has been found to happen in some kids’ bodies and this cycle is so important. It produces important molecules, switches important genes on and off, produces important structures for the nervous system, helps produce glutathione which is essential for detoxification and is an antioxidant, controls sulphur metabolism which is important for detoxification, is a part of folic acid metabolism which helps make DNA and RNA, and it’s essential for normal immune function. This sounds like a pretty important cycle right? It is. If your methlyation cycle doesn’t work you’re going to have immune system problems, you’re not going to be able to detoxify your body properly or heal and repair it.

This best part of this therapy is that you cannot overdose on it. At the end of the day it’s a vitamin and if there’s too much of it in your system you pee it out. What does suck, however, is having to inject it. The reason why it’s best to inject methyl B12 is because it’s not absorbed well into the body. So if you swallow a B12 vitamin you won’t get close to as much as you would if you injected it. I was really not looking forward to this part.

But we bit the bullet and did it. The needle is super small and we injected it while Tristan was sleeping. He cried and fussed a bit but went right back to sleep. So the next 3 days we kept an eye on him and not much happened. I was pretty disappointed because I’d heard that some lucky parents and kids saw results immediately. The shots are given every 3 days so time came for the next dose. The following morning Odum left us for four days for a conference (lucky bugger) and left me in charge (at least he thinks so, but I know that I’m always in charge!).

The day after, the kids and I were reading and Tristan was pointing to the pictures and I was labeling them for him. As I usual did with Tristan I would ask him: “what is that Tristan?”, and to my complete amazement he answered “mouse”. I pointed again, “what’s this?” I asked. “Bird”, he replied. I kept going. He kept labeling. Not perfectly clear, but you could tell he knew the words and was trying to get them out. I pointed to his trucks; he said truck and then wheel. I was bawling. My baby was finally talking. So I called Odum right away and put him on speaker phone so he could hear. And it wasn’t just me, Odum heard him saying the words too. This was only 4 and a half days after Tristan’s first B12 injection!

So now, about a week and a bit later, Tristan says or attempts to say well over 30 words, he counts to 10, recognizes and says letters, and is starting to sing songs. B12 doesn’t work for every kid, but its working for ours and I couldn’t be happier. My baby now has a voice!

Check out Dr Neubrander’s site if you want more info on B12. He developed the protocol and is the expert.