The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism

ALSO BY STEPHANIE MAROHN

What the Animals Taught Me:

Stories of Love and Healing from a Farm Animal Sanctuary

The Natural Medicine Guide to Bipolar Disorder

The Natural Medicine Guide to Addiction

The Natural Medicine Guide to Anxiety

The Natural Medicine Guide to Depression

The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia

Natural Medicine First Aid Remedies

ANTHOLOGIES

Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change

Audacious Aging

This edition first published in 2012 by

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22906

www.hamptonroadspub.com

Copyright © 2002, 2012 by Stephanie Marohn

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Originally published in 2002 by Hampton Roads, ISBN: 978-1-57174-288-9

ISBN: 978-1-57174-687-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Cover design: Nita Ybarra

Text design by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in Canada

F

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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To all those who are facing the challenge of autism,

and to Dr. Tinus Smits (1946–2010) and

Dr. Bernard Rimland (1928–2006)

for their life-changing work in helpingparents and

children face that challenge

CONTENTS

Preface to the New Edition

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: The Basics of Autism

ONE What Is Autism?

TWO Causes and Contributing Factors

THREE The Vaccine and Mercury Controversy

Part II: Natural Medicine treatments for autism

FOUR Targeted Therapeutic Nutrition and Heavy Metal Detoxification

FIVE NAET: Allergy-Related Autism

SIX Biochemical Therapy and a Landmark Discovery

SEVEN Homeopathy: Constitutional Treatment, Vaccine Clearing, and an Alternative to Vaccines

EIGHT Cranial Osteopathy: The Role of Birth Trauma in Autism

NINE Soma Therapies: Structural, Functional, and Emotional Release

TEN The Tomatis Method: Listening and Autism

ELEVEN Neural Therapy, Toxic Clearing, and Family Systems Therapy: The Levels of Healing

Conclusion

Appendix A: Professional Degrees and Titles

Appendix B: Resources

Endnotes

Index

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

I began my introduction to the first edition of The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism with the sentence Autism is now an epidemic in the United States. Unfortunately, as I write this preface to the second edition ten years later, autism is still an epidemic and, in fact, the numbers have gotten worse—much worse, as you will learn from the new statistics in the book. The numbers of children now affected are not the only numbers that tell us there has been an increase in autism.

An increasing need for information on autism is reflected by the fact that, in 2002, when this book was first published, 188 other books related to autism were published that year. In 2011, the number of new books on autism was 638. In the intervening decade, the number of autism-related claims filed with the federal Vaccine Court mounted to a total of 5,637 by June 2012, and in 2010, the court handed down its first-ever award for an autism claim, in the amount of $1.5 million.

Though the statistics could summon despair, I am even more hopeful now than I was when I introduced this book a decade ago. Over the years, many grateful parents have written to tell me how much the therapies in this book helped their children. I am always moved to hear this because it is why I wrote the book: to get the information about natural medicine approaches to autism to the people who need it most.

Hope lies in the very approach of natural medicine: identifying and treating the underlying imbalances in an individual child rather than simply trying to manage symptoms.

Now there is more hope than ever. I am excited by two new developments, in particular. One is the new science that has demonstrated the neuroplasticity of the brain; that is, that the brain can form new neural connections throughout an individual's life. The brain is not the rigid system it was previously thought to be. This means that impairment in the development of the nervous system of a child with autism need not be permanent. Neuroplasticity holds out the hope for the development of new therapies aimed at helping the brain form new neuronal connections. Sensory and auditory integration techniques, as well as other methods, have already been doing this, and I expect that new therapies will emerge.

The other exciting development is a gift from the brilliant Dutch homeopath Tinus Smits, MD. I cited his work with autism in the first edition of this book. I was honored to have met him, and saddened by his death in 2010. His gift to us is that he set up a program to train and certify other practitioners in his protocol for using homeopathic nosodes to clear adverse reactions to vaccines. His highly effective clearing method, called CEASE (Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression) therapy, is now available to parents around the world through CEASE-certified practitioners (see chapter 7). When I wrote about vaccine nosodes in the first edition, their use wasn't widely available. My research at that time told me that this was a very promising therapy. I am heartened that parents of autistic children for whom vaccines may be an issue will now have access to it.

My focus in this book tends toward therapies that effectively treat underlying imbalances, with the aim of restoring a child's immune, nervous, and digestive health. Obviously, there are many other therapies that are useful for children with autism, such as the range of methods aimed at helping children catch up developmentally with their peers in reading, speech, social behavior. But as I've learned from many natural medicine practitioners, restoring the health of the body's systems will make remedial therapies that much more effective.

We may still be in the midst of an epidemic, but we have more knowledge and more tools than ever to help us end that epidemic as well as aid the children who are suffering from it now.

FOREWORD

My own autistic son, Mark, was born in 1956, a screaming, implacable, cuddle-resistant infant who would not tolerate being picked up, or put down. I was then three years beyond my PhD in psychology and had never seen or heard the word autism. Neither had our pediatrician, who had been in practice for thirty-five years. It wasn't until Mark was two that my wife remembered reading in one of her old college textbooks about a youngster who looked through people rather than at them, repeated radio commercials and nursery rhymes without engaging in communicative speech, and spent hours in rocking and other pointless rituals. We found that old textbook, and there I saw the word autism for the first time.

It is estimated that in those days autism occurred once or twice in every 10,000 live births. But the prevalence was slowly rising. In the late 1980s I summarized the research on the prevalence of autism in an article I wrote for the Autism Research Review, and reported the average from a number of then-recent studies showing that autism occurred in approximately 4.5 births out of every 10,000.

How things have changed! The most recent estimates, as seen in prevalence studies of several populations in both the U.S. and U.K., range from forty-five to sixty-eight autistic children per 10,000 live births, an increase of 1,000 to 1,500 percent in two decades! (The reasons for the increase are discussed in this book.)

Whereas twenty years ago you could rarely find anyone who had ever heard of autism, today you can hardly find anyone who does not have firsthand contact with an autistic child, perhaps in his or her own family. Things have also changed very dramatically with regard to the treatment of autism.

When our Mark was an infant, the textbooks universally held that autism was an emotional, not a physiological or biomedical disorder, and the only treatment recommendations were to give psychoanalysis or other forms of psychological therapy to the mother and child. The mother was required to acknowledge her guilt and to search her soul to try to discover why she hated the child and wished it had never been born. The child, in so-called play therapy, was provided with a paper or clay image of a woman (his mother) and was encouraged to tear it to pieces, thus cathartically expressing his hostility toward the mother who was presumptively guilty of having caused his autism. A few drugs were also used with autistic children, but the idea then, as now, was not to treat autism, but to slow the child down so he could become more manageable.

Just as the prevalence of autism has increased astronomically since then, so has the number of available treatment options. The traditional medical establishment has been compelled (for the most part) to abandon its barbaric insistence that the mothers admit their guilt and engage in futile psychotherapeutic counseling, since it is now recognized (albeit reluctantly) that autism is caused by biomedical rather than psychological factors. Conventional medicine still, however, relies largely on drugs to treat the children, and a recent compilation by the Autism Research Institute, which I founded in 1967, shows that at least fifty drugs have been tried on the 21,350 children for whom these data were available in our files.

While we parents whose children were born in the mid-twentieth century were confronted with a true paucity of possible treatment options, the parents of children born in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century are confronted with an overabundance of choices. How do you decide which forms of intervention you should try on your autistic child? The fact that you are looking at this book is a very good sign! You have already decided that drugging the child, giving him or her Ritalin, Mellaril, Clonidine, or any of the other harmful psychoactive drugs, is not necessarily the best course of action. You are considering options, which include natural medicine.

Stephanie Marohn has done an excellent job of assembling for you a buffet of nondrug therapeutic options that you may wish to employ in your effort to bring your child out of autism. This book provides you with detailed discussions of about a dozen approaches to the treatment of autism. The description and discussion of each treatment is based on the expertise of carefully selected and respected advocates of that approach.

The next step is not easy—deciding which of the treatment approaches are best, and most appropriate, for your child. That is a decision only you, and your family, can make. As you will see, these treatment approaches vary enormously from one another in almost every respect. I say almost because they all agree that drugging a child who already has many problems is not a good idea.

Study these chapters. Consider the evidence supporting each of these therapies, as presented in each chapter. Consider the logic behind each therapy, and consider your child's history and symptomatology. Before long, it will become clear to you which of these natural therapies is most appropriate for your child. And if the first approach does not work out to your satisfaction, there are others you can try that are also promising.

Stephanie Marohn has done a landmark service to the parents of autistic children by providing us with this excellent compilation of natural, nondrug treatment possibilities.

Well done!

—BERNARD RIMLAND, PHD

Founder, Autism Research Institute

and Autism Society of America

Note: Dr. Rimland kindly wrote this foreword for the first edition of this book (2002). The autism community lost one of its great leaders when he died in 2006. I have kept his beautifully written foreword here as a tribute to this man whose research and discoveries in the field of autism continue to help parents and children.—STEPHANIE MAROHN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My profound thanks to the healthcare practitioners and researchers who provided information on their work for the natural medicine treatment chapters in the book. I am very grateful for all the time and energy you generously gave in imparting this information to me and making sure that what I wrote did justice to your work. Specifically, I thank:

Richard E. Hiltner, MD, DHt

Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD

Lawrence Lavine, DO, MPH, DTM&H

Paul Madaule, LPs

Devi S. Nambudripad, MD, DC, LAc, PhD

Maile Pouls, PhD

Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, ND, MSW

Zannah Steiner, DO(MP), RMT

William J. Walsh, PhD

Cilla Whatcott, HD(RHom), CCH

And thank you to everyone at Red Wheel/Weiser/Hampton Roads for your dedication and excellent work.

NOTE TO READERS

This book is intended to be an informational guide and is not meant to treat, diagnose, or prescribe. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical condition or symptoms. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any responsibility for your health or how you choose to use the information contained in this book.

INTRODUCTION

Autism is an epidemic in the United States and the incidence continues to rise at an alarming rate. In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited the prevalence of autism as one in 500, with a rate of one in 150 identified in a few geographic locations. Now the CDC cites the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) as one in eighty-eight in numerous locations. This dramatic increase tells us that autism is not a purely genetic disorder; the incidence of genetic disorders remains stable over time. While there may be a genetic component, there are clearly other contributing causes or triggers. The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism explores the reasons for the increase in autism and details natural medicine therapies that address the underlying causes that have produced the epidemic.

This book is here to tell parents of autistic children that you don't have to accept that there is nothing you can do for your children beyond remedial intervention to help them live more easily with their limitations. You also don't have to accept that pharmaceutical drugs are your only treatment option. Unlike the grim prognosis conventional medicine gives the disorder, natural medicine offers a positive, practical approach to autism: identify the imbalances in the child's system, apply therapies to correct those imbalances, and autism can be ameliorated or reversed in many cases.

The approach is based on treating the causes of an individual's condition, rather than seeking to suppress the symptoms as most drugs do. The operative word here is individual. Treatment tailored to the individual is key to a successful outcome because no two people, even with the same diagnosis, have the exact same imbalances causing their problems. Yes, as you will learn in this book, many children with autism have basic contributing factors in common, but the imbalances these factors have created in their bodies are never precisely the same. As a result, it is necessary to identify what is happening in each individual child.

To me, this approach is common sense, and I don't understand why it isn't applied throughout the medical field. Find the imbalances. Address them. To proceed with treatment in this model, you don't have to get caught up in the debate over what causes autism. The specifics of a particular child's condition guide the way to the appropriate treatment plan.

Using drugs to suppress symptoms makes no sense to me because it does nothing for the condition producing the symptoms. It's like sweeping dirt under a carpet—the dirt's still there even though you don't see it. And when you keep sweeping dirt under the carpet (ongoing medication), eventually the dirt can no longer be contained and you have an exponentially bigger clean-up job than you would have had in taking the dirt out of your house with each sweeping.

The analogy of dirt is an apt one in the case of human disease because the environmental toxins to which we are all exposed have turned our bodies into chemical storehouses. Today's increasing incidence of chronic and degenerative disease is a symptom of this toxicity. Autism is no exception. The developing nervous system of an infant is even more vulnerable to toxins than the adult system is. Fortunately, natural medicine therapies have methods for detoxifying the body, as you will learn in this book.

I use the term natural medicine because these therapies work with the body, not against it. This medical model recognizes the wisdom of the body. The body has its reasons for producing the symptoms it does, and it is the job of a health-care professional to discover those reasons. On a general level, neurological symptoms could be considered a cry for help from the nervous system. The cry is calling for investigation of what is creating the distress, so it can be removed. On a more specific level, a symptom such as a persistent rash can be the body's attempt to rid itself of toxins that the liver can no longer keep up with processing. Viewed in this light, autistic symptoms that may seem irrational begin to make sense.

Another important aspect of natural medicine is the core principle upon which it operates, and that is, Do no harm. Unlike prescription drugs, which often have side effects ranging from mild to life-threatening, the therapies detailed in this book both treat your child's condition and do so without causing your child other problems.

Natural medicine restores balance to the body at a profound level, rather than employing surface palliative measures. For this reason, I prefer the term natural medicine over alternative medicine. This medical model is not other—it is a primary form of medicine. In the book, I sometimes use the term holistic medicine to avoid monotony of language. I find that term equally acceptable in that it signals the natural medicine approach of treating the whole person, rather than the parts.

Part I of the book covers the basics of autism: what it is, what causes it, and the role of vaccines and mercury in its development. The natural medicine view of autism is that it is a multicausal disorder, with a variety of contributing factors and environmental triggers in those who are susceptible.

Part II of the book covers a range of natural medicine treatments for autism. These are advanced therapies that demonstrate the comprehensive healing potential in the field. Based on research and interviews with physicians and other health-care practitioners, the therapeutic techniques are explained in detail and illustrated with case studies. (Contact information for the practitioners appears in appendix B: Resources.) The names of patients and the family members of patients in the case studies have been changed, except in those instances in which both a first and last name appear. In these cases, the person or parent involved gave permission to use the real name.

Although the focus of this book is on autism in children, the treatments discussed can be beneficial for adults with autism, too. The causes and treatments are likewise applicable to Asperger's or any other condition that falls on the autism spectrum or in the category of pervasive developmental disorder. I sincerely hope that this book is of service to you in your quest to find the help you need.

PART I

The Basics of Autism

1

What Is Autism?

You know, Mommy, the world is full of sounds. When I listen to them, I realize that the sounds make patterns, and the patterns all turn into music in my head. Sometimes when you call me, I don't hear you because I'm listening to the music.¹

—Miles, five years old, recovered from the

autism diagnosed at nineteen months

After long being regarded as a mental illness or emotional maladjustment, autism is now recognized as a biological disorder, meaning that it is due to organic rather than psychological causes. More specifically, autism is a neurological or brain-based developmental disorder that particularly manifests in problems in cognition, communication, and interaction. The onset typically occurs before three years of age.

Despite the consensus of biological causality, the American Psychiatric Association's criteria remain the standard for an autism diagnosis, and autism is still classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), the diagnostic bible for psychiatric disorders. As the criteria paint a portrait of the disorder, I include a summary here.

For a diagnosis of autism, according to the DSM-IV criteria, a person must have at least six items from the three areas delineated below, with at least two from the first area and one each from the other two.²

Impairment in social interaction

impairment in nonverbal behaviors related to social interaction, such as eye contact and facial expression

failure to develop peer relationships

lack of spontaneous sharing of enjoyment or interests, as evidenced by showing or pointing out objects

lack of social or emotional reciprocity

Impairment in communication

delayed or nonexistent language development

impairment in conversation abilities if language is present

stereotypic, repetitive language or idiosyncratic language

lack of make-believe or social imitative play

Repetitive and stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities

abnormally intense preoccupation with one or more interests

seemingly inflexible adherence to routines or rituals

stereotyped and repetitive mannerisms, such as hand or finger flapping or twisting, or whole-body movements

preoccupation with object parts

While the DSM-IV description is a good starting place for understanding what autism looks like, there are many symptoms and conditions associated with the disorder that are not reflected in these criteria. This is especially true when autism is considered from a biological rather than a behavioral perspective, which involves looking beyond the outward signs to what is happening on the inside.

For example, many children with autism suffer from allergies, nutritional deficiencies, and/or intestinal overgrowth of the yeast-like fungus Candida. Many also have weakened immunity or autoimmune problems. See pages 6-7 for an expanded list of the symptoms, behaviors, and conditions that have been found to be associated with autism.

For more about the symptoms of autism and their correlation with other factors involved in the disorder, see page 100 and pages 117-118.

An aspect of autism that has fascinated many is what is known as islets of ability. Autism pioneer Leo Kanner (see The History of Autism, which follows) coined the term to refer to the advanced skill areas of autistic children. The most well documented islets are in drawing, music, calendar calculation, and rote memory. Unusual drawing ability, perfect pitch, the ability to play an instrument that one has never been taught, and the ability to play a complex piece after hearing it only once are all examples of islets of ability.³

Another positive aspect of autism may arise from behavior that often drives family members to distraction. Temple Grandin, who was autistic from an early age and provides rare insight into the experience of autism in her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic, points out a potential benefit of the intense preoccupation with certain objects that is characteristic of autism. High functioning autistic adults, who are able to live independently and keep a job, often have work that is in the same field of interest as their childhood fixations.⁴ In her case, an early obsession with livestock equipment turned into a creative adult profession as a designer of such equipment.

Grandin also illuminates the function of the puzzling, repetitive, almost ritualistic behaviors in which many autistic children engage. I, as an autistic person, reacted in a fixated behavior pattern in order to reduce arousal to my overly stimulated nervous system....By concentrating on the fixation, [autistic-type children] block out other stimulation which they cannot handle.⁵ Of her sensitivity to sound, Grandin says, Sometimes I heard and understood, and other times sounds or speech reached my brain like the unbearable noise of an onrushing freight train.⁶

Donna Williams provides another glimpse into the inaccessible world of autism. Like Temple Grandin, she was autistic from early childhood and went on to write a book about the experience, entitled Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic. She, too, offers an explanation for the fixed behavior patterns and repetitive actions: The constant change of most things never seemed to give me any chance to prepare myself for them. Because of this I found pleasure and comfort in doing the same things over and over again.⁷

Symptoms, Behaviors, and Conditions Associated with Autism

Anxiety

Attention deficit

Distractibility

Hyperactivity

Hypersensitivity to sound, light, touch, certain foods, environmental toxins, and/or vaccines

Hypersensitivity or imperviousness to pain

Seeming lack of awareness of danger

Impulsivity

Self-stimulatory behavior (stimming) such as rocking or twirling

Hand flapping and other repetitive movements

Rhythmic rocking

Walking on tiptoe

Severe language deficits

Loud, monotone voice

Lack of use of the pronoun i, referring to self in the third person

Echolalia (repeating others' words or phrases)

Prosody (singsong speech)

Abnormal nystagmus (eye movement)

Islets of ability (perfect pitch, unusual drawing or musical talent, calculation or rote memory skills, etc.)

Preoccupation with light switches or other objects

Spinning objects repetitively

Unusual and intense interests

Repetitive acts and thoughts (stereotypies, mannerisms, perseverations, obsessions, and compulsions)

Using someone's hand or arm as a tool, as if it is not attached to a human being

Absence of pointing

Lack of shared attention (showing or pointing to something)

No playing peek-a-boo

Impaired nonverbal behaviors (eye contact, etc.)

Incomprehension of gesture

Impaired social interaction

Impaired communication

Seeming lack of interest in people

Seeming unresponsiveness to verbal cues (parents may suspect deafness, but hearing tests normal)

Blankre moteness

Seemingly expressionless face

Resistance to change

Tantrums or odd behavior in reaction to sudden change or for no apparent reason

Laughing, crying, or showing other emotion for no apparent