Autism – A New Understanding

With this month being Autism month and with all the work I do with children with Autism, I felt it was fitting to write about these truly amazing human beings and give you perhaps a new understanding of the challenges these children face.

A woman brought her son into my office and within minutes, he started moving his hand, making waves in the air above his head. His mother saw this and said, “You see that is not normal. That is one of the reasons I had him assessed!” I asked the mother if I could talk to her four year old son. She gave me permission and I asked the boy if he was seeing numbers above his head. He said “Yes.” I asked if all the numbers went together. He said “Yes, big numbers, all fitting together.” I said to his mother “You see, children with autism don’t fit into our norm but that is only because they are way beyond us.” His mother was completely taken aback. The intelligence of children with autism is immeasurable; our usual tests cannot measure it. And unfortunately, our regular school systems often bore these children.

Despite the incredible aspects of these children, many parents struggle with aspects of autism. How can we help these children become comfortable physically? All of these children have:-

Inflammation in their intestines, spreading to their brains. Inflammation is caused by insufficient good bacteria or leaky gut (requiring probiotics and other healing supplements) and adverse reactions to common allergens e.g. dairy (casein), wheat (gluten), corn, soy, sugar etc (requiring the avoidance of certain foods)
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies – more than 85% are deficient in zinc suggesting an inability to detoxify heavy metals e.g. mercury lodges in the exact part of the brain that is affected by autism and mercury inhibits an enzyme needed to breakdown gluten and casein (naturopaths and many nutritionists can test and correct these vitamin and mineral deficiencies, as well as cleanse the body of heavy metals)
A need for the cleanest, purest food and environment possible. For example, flouride levels are high in many of these children, requiring filtered water and natural toothpastes.
One frustrated mother asked me, “I know how incredible these children are but I have also heard there is a lot that can be done to help these children physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have been exploring many of the options. How do I know when I need to stop?” After having studied these children for many years now, I told this mother that we need to do everything in our power to make these children feel comfortable and then, once we have done that, our task is to learn from them. They can teach us to clean up our toxic world, how to love one another unconditionally (they are some of the most loving souls) and live in the present moment. If we can learn these valuable lessons from them, just imagine how our world would benefit, not to mention, ourselves.

Is your family affected by Autism? I’d love to hear from you! And feel free to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.