New Autism Cure - breakthrough treatments and cures for autism

The debate has been going on for years now: Should we or should we not legalize the use of Medical Cannabis (or marijuana)? Everyone has their own opinion on whether or not the legalization should occur. Some argue that legalizing the drug will only make it more easily obtained for recreational use. On the flip side, others say that the benefits outweigh the risks. How many benefits are there to this sometimes considered “miracle herb”? Are there even more diseases and conditions that can be treated by marijuana that haven’t been proven yet?

It has been documented that administering cannabis has been beneficial in eliminating nausea and vomiting, inducing appetite in AIDS and Chemotherapy patients, reducing eye pressure in those with Glaucoma, as well as in general pain reliving. Some individual studies have also shown medical cannabis to be beneficial in Multiple Sclerosis and depression cases.

The legality of this treatment varies by country. The issue often shows up in state elections throughout the United States. One could spend the entire day weighing the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana. What it boils down to is who and how does administering marijuana help. I discussed AIDS, Glaucoma, Cancer and Chronic Pain patients, but how about children? Or more specifically, Autistic children.

There was a letter published (via) from a mother in Florida who shared the story of her very large, autistic child who went from loving and caring son to angry and aggressive. She says in her letter that she often had to lock herself in the bathroom or else her son would attack her. They tried many different medications but nothing seemed to help. A friend of the family suggested something that the mother had never thought of; a brownie laced with marijuana. She weighed her options and decided to give it a try. As a result of giving her son marijuana, his symptoms subsided and the gentle, loving son that once was, was back again. The boy is now being given 1 marijuana brownie as well as several doses of Marinol, which contains the active ingredient in marijuana everyday. The boy’s mother says “He shows no signs of being under the influence of a drug…This has clearly saved my child’s life and my family’s life.”

Typically when such aggressive and assaultive behavior arises, medication is sought to calm the person down. Medications such as Risperdal are administered, but do have high levels of toxic effects including but not limited to rapid heart beat, muscle spasms, and severe anxiety. Granted, marijuana has its own associated side effects, but are seemingly not as severe as those of Risperdal and like medications.

Depending on where you live in the world, this may or may not be a possible route for you to explore. Because of the widely range of illegality, it’s not suggested that you try to obtain marijuana on your own and attempt to treat your child’s (or even your own) condition. It’s absolutely worth speaking to a doctor about - though since the studies and research are not nearly complete, chances are, he/she will not prescribe it. Yet.

We often speak about Autism in children since this is often when the disorder is diagnosed. Parents are much more aware of the common symptoms of Autism including short attention spans, slow speech, specific repetitive behaviors and social interaction difficulties. Parents are quick to ask their doctors as soon as these things become apparent. With the growing rate of diagnosed Autism cases, this also leads one to wonder- what happens to autistic children as they grow older? What happens when they aren’t children anymore?

Of course this question doesn’t have one answer, and needs to be researched on a case-by-case basis. Dylan and Remly Clark are two brothers, 18 and 19 respectively, who have autism. Their mother, Judy Clark is the founder of Autism Support And Programs (ASAP) which is an organization that offers support and information for people with autism.

About 8 years ago, Judy made the difficult decision to put her son Remly into a facility. His autism was particularly difficult to manage and handle, so she had no other choice than to get Remly the care that he needed and deserved. Despite her confident decision, Judy was determined to have her two sons together again somday.

As the ASPS grew, they added more staff members and were able to enhance areas of the organization to promote growth. One of the biggest additions — a group home specifically catered to those who have autism. Everything from the color scheme to the available activities were created and targeted to benefit the residents.

Rainbow Farms is a 5 acre farm and is located in Pender County, North Carolina. Each resident’s case is explored individually and a daily schedule is devised based on their specific needs. The residents have a chance to interact with not only each other, but with farm animals and horses. They staff at Rainbow Farms base their work on several principles including Individualization, Behavioral Support, Collaboration and Positive Supports.

Just opened this year, Rainbow Farms now houses both Dylan and Remly Clark. They are learning to interact with others and enjoying their time spent together. Despite their autism, Judy says she wouldn’t trade her sons or their conditions for the world. The Autism is just a part of her boys’ charm.

Adam and Dean Aviram are best friends - more than that, they’re brothers. At 9 and 10 years old respectively, Adam and Dean brag that they’re building a time machine together. Though he’s the younger of the two, Adam looks out for Dean and enjoys spending as much time playing with him as possible. They work as a team many times, especially because Dean has a wonderful memory so Adam loves that he doesn’t have to remember things.

Though alike in the traditional last name and DNA departments, Adam and Dean’s differences are many. Adam prefers to play soccer and Wii. Dean has a fascination with history and loves to have intelligent conversations about world leaders with anyone who is interested. Though you might not be able to tell by simply looking at them, Adam and Dean’s biggest difference is that Dean has Asperger’s Syndrome and Adam does not.

If I were to pose the question “What is Austism?”, I can only assume that you would head right to Google or WebMD and find the most technical and informative definition. Though it would be certainly accurate, your definition may differ from that of an Autistic child’s parent or even more, an autistic child’s brother or sister. The siblings of autistic children are undoubtedly intelligent and some of the best people to ask about the disease to get an honest, accurate description of what Autism looks like and means to them.

When Adam was asked what Asperger’s was, he answered, “Asperger’s is a type of autism and it’s hard for people to have a good conversation with other people.” His answer was not filled with technical words, however it was very accurate. He was also asked if his friends could notice that something was different about his brother, Dean. Adam answers an honest “Yes.” but says that they are not disrespectful towards his brother. He does go on to say that his friends wonder why he sits with other Autistic children at lunch time. Adam says that he tell his friends that he’s helping people and he’s interested in other people with Autism because of his brother’s Asperger’s.

Not only does Adam go above and beyond for his own brother, but he is a true advocate for the Autistic community by reaching out to others.

Some researchers are concerned with the effect of Asperger’s and Autism on the other children in the household. Do they grow up craving attention? Do they form a resentment for the illness and for their sibling for their mental disorder? Do they develop anger issues and are they more likely to have anxiety disorders as young adults? All of these scenarios and more are being studied, and we’ll surely see reports and statistics released at some point. However, in the case of Adam and Dean and surely in many other cases out there we have a chance to see that when subjected to Asperger’s in their home, children learn the lessons of respect, compromise, tolerance and patience at a much younger age than many other children. These are lessons and skills that many of us live our entire lives trying to learn and perfect.

Drama Therapy is generally defined as the use of drama and theater processes toachieve therapeutic goals. The technique is often used in schools, hospitals, correctional facilities and the mental health field to achieve behavior change, personal growth and improved emotional stability. Though this not a new method of therapy, it has more recently been used to help those with Autism.

Many people with Autism are in fact verbal, however they are unable to successfully communicate socially. Incorporating theater processes enables the participants practice social skills, learn improvisation and memorize lines to recite with increased emotional awareness. In addition and even more importantly, it gives the participators the opportunity to become an actor, preform a show and get applause for their efforts and in turn get a feeling of social acceptance and achievement.

Cindy Schneider is the author of the book Acting Antics: A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger Syndrome. In the book, Schneider discusses in depth the benefits of using Drama Therapy for those with Autism. She offers classes to both adults and children with a variety of diagnoses including Asperger’s Syndrome, high-functioning Autism and non-verbal Autism. According to her findings,  participants may gain:

• self-confidence not only in performing, but in interactions
• improved self-esteem; pride in their accomplishments
• improved recognition of emotions in others
• improved identification and labeling of own emotions
• new leisure time activity in a group where they can be successful
• new awareness of volume levels and beginning modulation of level
• new skills for functioning as part of a group
• new skills for following directions
• improved ability to interact with peers
• increased self-confidence through success

The organizers of a Drama Therapy Company are usually educated in the Psychology field as well as in Theater fields which gives them more experience and the specialized skills necessary in working with the selected group of participants. It is a bit difficult to locate a Drama Therapy Coach who specializes in Autism,  given the treatment’s relatively new status in the Autism community. The good news is that most Drama Therapy coaches do have the skills necessary to successfully and adequately work with those who are Autistic and can modify their teaching technique to be conducive to the needs of participants with Autism.

A few weeks ago, we took a look at Carly, a young girl who has Autism. She is non-verbal however she independently communicates via keyboard to her family, friends, Twitter Followers and Facebook Friends. She often fields questions from followers and she answers them herself. Once in a while her father has been known to send out a message just making a general request. Recently, for example, Carly’s father sent a message out kindly asking that people use Twitter to communicate with Carly as opposed ro Facebook. This was simply because Carly prefers Twitter over Facebook. Other than these once-in-a-while instances, Carly communicates everything herself with near no assistance.

As common as  individual communication methods have become, there are still some non-verbal people who are unable to successfully use a keyboard.  Hand-eye coordination is required to be able to utilize the keyboard method and many people lack this skill, especially if they have Autism. There are alternative methods of communication that have opened the doors of possibility for those who are non-verbal and lack the hand-eye coordination to successfully use a keyboard. One method in particular is known as Facilitated Communication or FC. In this method, specifically targeted to those who cannot type, there are two people involved; the communicator, (whom is often autistic, deaf, mute, etc) and the Facilitator. The facilitator is responsible for conveying the message of the communicator by assisting them in finding the right key, easing their hand to the desired letter, or pressing they key down that the communicator indicates.

Despite the numerous success stories that have come from this method, it is still under much controversy and has been for years.  In 1977, Rosemary Crossley claimed to have successfully used facilitated communication with a group of non verbal children. In 1989, the Facilitated Communication Institute was founded by Douglas Bilkin at Syracuse University in New York. The school was designed to educate families who were exploring such a method.

Facilitated Communication has had its advances over the years, but both medical and psychology experts claim that there is not enough hard evidence to prove the success of FC. In the 1990’s the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association issued statements that opposed the use and validity of FC. Their main criticism being that the facilitator had influence over what the communicator was attempting to say.

In 1997, Diane Twatchman-Cullen, the editor-in-chief of the Autism Spectrum Quarterly journal published “A Passion to Believe: Autism and the Facilitated Communication Phenomenon. ” In the book, Twatchman-Cullen takes a look at the conditions that led parents, teachers and others to depend on FC.

Also featured in the book is an examination of the study that Twatchman-Cullen conducted in 1990 of three adults with non-verbal, non functioning Autism.  All three people spent their educational and informative years in institutions so they had no real external exposure. With a facilitator, however, all three were able to communicate ideas about the outside world.

“I don’t think that the vast majority of people were deliberately typing their own messages,” she said. “I really don’t believe that, but I do believe there was unconscious facilitation.”

Though rare, there have also been a few cases in which individuals have graduated from using FC to independent communication.

It is estimated that there are about 700 - 1,000 people worldwide who communicate using FC.

Tuesday mornings were always “Fluoride Day” when I was in elementary school. We’d all pile into the cafeteria and wait anxiously to see which flavor of the often used teeth treatment would be distributed. Some days, parents would be invited to come in and take part in the fluoride festivities.  Why shouldn’t they have? Clean teeth are important in both children and adults.

Could it be that this weekly ritual does more harm than good? Could too much of a good thing actually be detrimental and cause neurological disorders in children?

It’s possible - according to researchers  investigating fluoride and its effects.  Too much fluoride consumed by women who are pregnant lowers their thyroid levels and this may affect the brain and neurological development of the unborn child.  Such disturbance in development can cause ADD, Autism and decreased IQ levels.

This raises the question: “How much is too much?” and “If I stop doing fluoride treatments will this put me in the clear?” Not so fast. Fluoride is found not only in toothpaste and other dental products but in drinking water and some foods as well. Exposure to fluoride from these multiple sources could be enough to cause the lower Thyroid levels that can lead to neurological deficiencies.

As much as 2/3 of the nation’s water sources contain fluoride. There are organizations  such as the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation whose goal is to omit fluoride from public water sources.

Every time I watch the scene from Rain Man when Dustin Hoffmann’s Autistic character, Raymond has a meltdown, I cannot help but to feel sorry for his new-found brother and caretaker, Charlie (played by Tom Cruise).  As Charlie stands by and watches his brother have a meltdown in a crowded airport, he looks helpless, confused and scared.

We often sympathize with the parents and guardians of autistic children and people because its difficult to imagine being in the overwhelming position of caretaker. We put focus on advocates of Autism, giving them thanks for raising awareness and funding for the cause. We praise the doctors and researchers who are studying this neurological disorder in hopes to find new causes, links and treatments that can help us to better understand Autism. We often wonder how all of these life-changing individuals get through each and every stressful day.

Parents. Caregivers. Advocates. Doctors. Researchers.

We’re forgetting someone. Actually, we’re forgetting thousands of people; those who are living with Autism.  Of course, I say this more figuratively than literally as we all know that the people who are suffering from this disorder are never forgotten.  However, they are often overlooked on the list of people who we wonder “how they have the strength to do it.”

In the years that Autism has been under the microscope, we’ve discovered how it affects the brain, what types of medications help to treat it, what types of things are linked to it, etc. It’s generally known what the symptoms are and what they look like as these are things that can be researched and proven. There are some things that you unfortunately cannot put under a microscope, particularly emotions and feelings. So, we’re left with the often unanswered question: What does it feel like to be autistic?

14 year old Carly Fleischmann was once assumed to be mentally retarded because she was unable to speak. She was diagnosed with Autism and 2 years ago began interacting with people via keyboard. The words that had been caught inside her for years were starting to come out and now she communicates very well using moderm technology.

Carly describes in detail how she feels both physically and emotionally, like no one else other than she would be able to do:

“It is hard to be autistic because no one understands me. People look at me and assume I am dumb because I can’t speak…It feels like my legs are on first and a million ants are crawling up my arms……Our brains are wired differently. We take in many sounds and conversations at once. I take over a thousand pictures of a person’s face when I look at them. That’s why we have a hard time looking at people. I have learnt how to filter through some of the mess.”

Carly also “speaks” about the things that any 14 year old girl does, like her fustrations with her siblings and her interest in the  opposite sex.  She has already inquired about when she will be allowed to go out on a date.

Epilepsy is defined by the Epilepsy Foundation as ” a medical condition that produces seizures affecting a variety of mental and physical functions”.

Children and adults are diagnosed as epileptic when they have suffered two or more seizures. Epilepsy and seizures are linked to many disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, and research suggests that somewhere between 20% and 35% of people with autism also suffer from seizures, and this can be a real worry for parents whose child has just been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.

The Autism-Epilepsy Link

It is not known what the exact link is between autism and epilepsy, or seizures, but a study called “Autism and Epilepsy: Cause, consequence, comorbidity, or coincidence?” by Gabis, Pomeroy and Andriola in 2005, concluded that abnormal electroencephalograms (EEG scan of the brain) and epilepsy tended to occur at significantly higher rates in children with more severe autism, those who were in the more impaired range of the autism spectrum.

Another study, “An Investigation of Sleep Characteristics, EEG Abnormalities and Epilepsy in Developmentally Regressed and Non-regressed Children with Autism”,  published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, concluded that abnormal EEGs and epilepsy were more common in children with regressive autism, rather than those who had shown symptoms from birth. Regressive autism is autism that occurs at around the age of 18 months after a child has been developing normally. All of a sudden the child regresses, losing skills like speech and other skills previously learned.

Parents should not assume that a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder means that a child will suffer with seizures because most autistic children do not have seizures. Those who are at a higher risk of seizures are children who have neurological conditions like tuberous sclerosis, neurofibromatosis or phenylketonuria that has been left untreated, or those with major cognitive impairment. Children who have suffered with infantile spasms, which are pronounced muscle contractions between the ages of 3 and 8 months, are also more at risk from autism combined with epilepsy.

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It was the Vaccine Court Poling Case that brought the possible link between Mitochondrial Disease out into the open in 2008. The Poling family won compensation, in the form of an out of court settlement, because they were able to convince people that their daughter Hannah’s autism was a result of nine vaccines that had been administered to her just 48 hours before Hannah developed the first signs and symptoms of autism.

Hannah Poling suffered from Mitochondrial Disease, or dysfunction, a disorder that she had inherited from her mother, and it is not known whether it was the vaccines alone that caused her autism or whether her mitochondrial disease had left her vulnerable to the vaccines triggering the autism. The Chief Science Officer of the charity “Autism Speaks” thinks that in cases like Hannah Poling, the vaccinations stimulate the immune system, putting stress on the functioning of the cells in of the body and exacerbating the symptoms of the Mitochondrial Disease that the child already has and triggering autism symptoms.

Mitochondrial Disease

Mitochondrial Disease is not just one disease, but is actually a collection of over 40 different disorders that affect the mitochondria. The mitochondria are the “powerhouse” organelles (subunits) of cells known as the eukaryote cells. The job of the mitochondria is to covert energy from food molecules into Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) which is needed to power cells and for metabolism.

Mitochondrial Disease has many different characteristics, depending on where the defective DNA has been distributed in the body, but symptoms can include:-

• Muscle weakness
• Heart problems
• Episodes similar to strokes
• Problems with co-ordination and motor skills
• Seizures
• Vomiting
• Developmental delays

Evidence Linking Autism and Mitochondrial Disease

As well as the Poling Case, a Portuguese Study has also suggested a link between autism spectrum disorders and Mitochondrial Disease. This study (”Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Population-based Study” 2005) looked at 69 autistic children and found that five of the group had mitochondrial abnormalities. A US Study by Dr John Shoffner backed this up by finding that about 20% of autism sufferers also have markers for mitochondrial disease.

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Although Horse Therapy, or Equine Facilitated Learning (EFL), is not a DAN! protocol biomedical treatment, it’s something that I feel can be of real benefit to autistic children.

Just this week, I saw a post on an autism forum from one parent whose son was really benefiting from this type of therapy, so I asked her more about it and what it involved. She explained to me about how everything was done in small steps:-

1. Child introduced to the trainer and taken around the stables to see the horses and other animals, like chickens.
2. Child offered the chance to touch the animals or touch the straw bedding if touching the animals was too much for him. The child even got to look at the horse poo and to sniff it! The parent remarked how good this was for desensitizing the child.
3. Sitting on the horse - The final step was the parent lifting her son onto the horse. The trainer sat behind the child and the horse was surrounded by the child’s mother and three helpers, so the child felt completely secure.

In just 5 months, this sensory sensitive child is now able to ride the horse alone, with the help of a special harness and the trainer and a helper walking alongside. Wow!

The parent felt that this therapy was extremely beneficial to her son because the horse had a calming effect on him and he would often come out of himself during these sessions. She is combining the EFL therapy with biomedical treatment.

The Theory Behind EFL

Franklin Levinson, who has taken EFL and the work of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association over to the UK, says:-

“It’s been clinically proven that just being in the vicinity of horses changes our brainwave patterns…They have a calming effect…giving them [the rider] a really positive experience.”

and the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association say that EFL:-

“encourages personal explorations of feelings and behaviors to help promote human growth and development.”

The idea behind EFL is that the child builds a partnership with the horse. A horse is always on the lookout for a leader and, by being calm and peaceful, a child can become the horse’s leader and so manage and command the horse. This type of therapy has been shown to be beneficial for children with autism, bipolar disorders and ADD, helping to calm them and making them more communicative. Being able to control a horse, and seeing it obey commands, also gives the child’s self-esteem a real boost.

It sounds to me that this type of therapy could be a great addition to a program of biomedical treatments. You can find out more at http://www.narha.org/ and read an article on it at http://www.wayofthehorse.org/Articles/horse-therapy.html.