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

I’ve never actually sat down and made a post about Tristan’s treatment plan, and I thought it may be a useful post. In terms of a treatment for autism I believe that treatment needs to be multi-pronged. I don’t think one treatment type is sufficient to help kids with autism. Tristan receives speech therapy to help his speech along, occupational therapy in an effort to help with sensory processing and the cadillac of therapies for autism: intensive behavioral intervention (IBI) also known as applied behavioral analysis. We also have Tristan under the care of a naturopath to address his physical problems, to heal his gastrointestinal system.

The therapy part of the equation is out of our hands a bit, we waited nine months for speech therapy and over a year for occupational therapy. Here in Ontario Tristan is entitled to half an hour each week of both. This is not nearly enough in my opinion. That’s why IBI is so important, Tristan recieves almost 10 hours of IBI a week. As I’ve said before the wait list here for IBI is three years! Since Odum is a student we can’t afford private IBI on our own but we where lucky enough to receive President’s Choice Children’s Charity grant to pay for it. It is incredible, but that’s a whole other post.

The treatment of Tristan’s physical issues is entirely up to us. Most pediatricians and family docs don’t endorse or aid in the biomedical approach to the treatment of autism. So pursuing this route is entirely up to the parents. Tristan had always had loose stools and I thought this was normalish. Our naturopath told us it is not and the cycling between diarrhea and constipation is a good indication that there is problems in the gut.

Many children with ASD have gut problems and Tristan is no exception. Many kids have what’s called a leaky gut. Basically leaky gut is a condition where the junctions in the intestinal wall are super loose and let through huge particles and toxins that normally wouldn’t be let through. Think of it like going through customs. If you have tight security the guy with the gun is not getting into the country to wrek havoc. Lose a few guards though and the bad guys get into the country.

This leakiness sets up a host of problems: yeast overgrowth, allergies, impaired immune function the list goes on. This is a reason why many children with autism have a gluten and casein allergies; these big proteins get through and not only start an immune reaction resulting in inflammation but they also act as opiates in the brain. As soon as we took Tristan off gluten and casein he was much more aware and didn’t stare off into space. And it seems counter intuitive but most people with this syndrome also have deficiencies in many vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients. We had an organic acids test done to see where Tristan had deficiencies and found he had yeast overgrowth, which caused him to have other deficiencies as well, like Vitamin B deficiencies. To begin to heal the gut this is what we are doing with Tristan, this is his supplement list:

Morning Juice:
1 tbsp children’s cod liver oil – for the omegas and vitamin A, it helps heal the intestinal walls
1 capsule of digestive enzyme to digest any leftover gluten or casein
1 capsule Vitamin B complex – since Tristan is deficient

Evening Juice:
1 capsule digestive enzyme
1 tsp probiotic – these are the good bacteria that you need in your stomach

Tristan is also on a Gluten Free/Casein Free diet

We also give Tristan an injection of vitamin B12 every three days. Read my Methyl B12 post for more info.

To counteract the yeast Tristan is currently on an anti-yeast protocol which involves a black walnut capsule in his juice twice a day, and bentonite and flax to help the dead yeast cells and their toxins out of his system.

A really great site to help you get started on biomedical intervention for autism is Generation Rescue, they go through step by step how you can start and why.

Once the yeast is out of Tristan’s system we’ll have to go back to the naturopath to see what our next course of action is. I would like to start zinc supplementation, I have a gut feeling this will be beneficial to Tristan. I also wonder if Tristan has any heavy metals in his system, like aluminum from vaccines or other metals from all the mouthing he does. I also wonder if Tristan has any viral problems from the MMR vaccine.

As you can see this treatment schedule is aggressive and can sometimes be overwhelming. We have therapy everyday, sometimes twice a day. And I’m always spiking his juice. But it’s worth it, when I heard mommy from him from the first time, I knew all the hard work was paying off. We still have a long way to go to heal Tristan. But he has made incredible gains and I have no doubt they will continue.