The Autism Revolution

I am late getting to this but better late than never...

Last month Mark and I were able to attend The Autism Canada Conference in Moncton. I was pretty pumped about it being so close, most things I read about are happening all over the world so when I saw Moncton, I was like...Moncton, we can go there! Thanks again to Auntie Carol who stayed the entire day with our little mess-makers. You can read more about the conference here.

We had high hopes for the conference but it wasn't quite what we expected... a lot of theory and not enough practical information. But the highlight of the day was definitely listening to Dr. Martha Herbert speak. When I saw that she was presenting I kept thinking..where have I heard this name before? And then it hit me, she was the author of a book my mother in law had bought that I was in the middle of reading! How cool is that?

Here is a link where you can read more about her and the book "The Autism Revolution".

http://www.autismrevolution.org/

She is a brilliant woman, I mean the lady is a pediatric neurologist and a brain development researcher at Harvard! Basically she views autism as a medical condition that can be treated. Otherwise we wouldn't be hearing about all these amazing stories of recovery...it made a lot of sense and made me even more excited about an appt. we had made for Porter with Dr. Bryan Rade.

Dr. Rade is the only DAN doctor in the Maritimes. DAN stands for Defeat Autism Now and the DAN physician approach to autism is biomedical, meaning that it views ASD as a condition characterized by biochemical abnormalities that can be addressed through appropriate treatment, leading to changes in clinical presentation. ( I took that directly from his website here )

The appt was set for Oct 30th. We were already heading to Halifax for Ruby's 1 year visit to the IWK. For anyone who may not know, Ruby is part of a research study for siblings of children with autism. There is a 1 in 5 chance that siblings will also have autism and this study is designed to give early interventions to any siblings who are showing signs. Miss Ruby did wonderful and she couldn't have been happier with all the attention! We will be getting an official report in the mail in the next few weeks so I will share more of their observations at that time. 

So we decided to book Porter's appt with Dr. Rade  for the same day seeing as we would be there anyway. It made for a long day, but it was worth it. This guy was awesome. He said many people view our children with autism as the new "canaries in the coal mines". Apparently years ago they used to send canaries into coal mines before the miners to see if the toxic levels were too high to survive. Our children with autism are our warning signs that something is going on in our environment, but are we listening?  Have I ever shared the latest statistics? 1 in 88. In the 1980's it was 1 in 10, 000. That simply cannot be explained by better diagnostic tools alone. It just can't. But back to our visit...

We left feeling very hopeful. Our first step - magnesium. "The Department of Family Medicine, Pomeranian Medical Academy, states that magnesium deficiency can result in disruptive behaviors. When dealing with autism spectrum and other neurological disorders in children it is important to know the signs of low magnesium: restless, can’t keep still, body rocking, grinding teeth, hiccups, noise sensitive, poor attention span, poor concentration, irritable, aggressive, ready to explode, easily stressed." Hmmm..yep, that sounds about right.

We also sent some poop to Chigaco! Yes, that's right poop. Fed Ex will deliver ANYTHING! There it will be tested for yeast and bacteria levels. I am anxiously awaiting the results! Once we get those, we will go from there. But basically we are going to get Porter's body working to the best of it's ability step by step. And how many times have you heard..healthy body - healthy mind? It makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

 He also said we should continue the gluten free- casien free diet and cut out as much refined sugar as possible. He said that putting him on the GFCF diet will definitely help but every time we put sugar   into his body, it's kind of like we are squirting gasoline on the "fire".  A lot of kids with autism also have a "leaky gut" which basically means that there are holes in their intestinal walls which allow toxins , bacteria and other nasties to be absorbed . Did you know that almost 80 % of our immune system is in the gut? I truly believe that if we can heal Porter's belly, we will see a huge improvement in his language and behavior.

So we are doing our best to get rid of refined sugar, but it's a challenge. It's pretty much in everything! And it's good. I shouldn't tell this story but I will...last week I had to take out my winter jacket because the temperature has seriously dropped around here and I found a half a bag of skittles in there from last winter. So of course I ate them. And you know what's scary, they tasted perfectly fine. Delicious even! But even as the fruit flavors were exploding in my mouth, I felt guilt for eating pure garbage. I mean anything that tastes the same after being opened for a year is not food! But yet, I ate it? I am such a work in progress, but that's a whole other post, actually, that's a whole other blog!

Chat soon!