Homeopathy for Autism Testimonial:
M's History Feb 2007

M developed severe diarrhea at about 10 months of age, after a HepB vaccine in 1994. We removed dairy, which relieved the diarrhea, but over the next two years he lost what little language he had and regressed slowly into autism. When we were told he had autism, we removed gluten from his diet and began researching treatment alternatives. We had various tests done and added many supplements to his diet. Over the years, when a new treatment came up on the internet lists, such as secretin, we pursued it for him. In 2000, we did HBOT. In 2002 we did chelation. That year he had his first grand-mal seizure. We put him on medication for that. We did an MRI. In 2004 we began working with a well-known classical homeopath and stayed with her for 1.5 years. Nothing brought improvements and in the case of chelation, it worsened his condition.

His behavior, which had been mild in the beginning, grew worse. He was wetting all over the house. He was getting aggressive. He did not sleep well. In 2003 we tried MB12 shots. He reacted terribly to them and continued to worsen. In 2004, we put him on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. This lead to a cascade of problems beginning with painful reflux after 7 months on the diet and leading to severe gut dysbiosis. We didn't know it was reflux and our doctor assumed his self-injurious behavior (SIB) was just that, a behavior. His SIB meltdowns became daily. He would scream and bite his arm to bleeding, then began coughing and gagging himself until he vomited.

About 2 months into the reflux behavior, he developed OCD. People could not get anywhere near him because he would lick his hands and poke them in the eye. In fact, he would chase someone down to try and complete the cycle of licking and poking. Our doctor offered little help.

Several months later, I finally figured out that he was suffering from reflux and his pediatrician prescribed Prevacid. This worked for a month, then all his behaviors came back with a vengeance.

I had been reading about sequential homeopathy and learned about the work of the Homeopathy Center of Houston. I scheduled a consultation in May 2005. Within a couple weeks of receiving our first shipment of remedies, M's reflux was significantly relieved. By the end of the summer of 2005, it was all but gone with flare-ups on occasion for the next year or so, always helped and relieved by remedies.

We continued treating various problems, but things were not always smooth. There were many ups and downs – mostly downs for the next 1.5 years. On the plus side, he has been off seizure meds for more than two years with no sign of a seizure disorder. But, his gut problems increased as we treated for various overgrowth problems, such as yeast and clostridia. We tried the Low Oxalate Diet to relieve the wetting and painful urination. This helped for a couple months, but was not a permanent fix and we abandoned it in favor of an oxalate remedy.

In early 2006, M became aggressive, destructive and violent. He was eating soap, crayons and many other inedibles. He was flushing any and everything he could find down the toilet, obsessed with flooding the bathroom and playing in the water. He began defecating around the house, eating the stools and smearing them into the carpet and furniture. He engaged in the smearing behavior at school as well. Family and friends were suggesting we look into out-of-home placement. We continued the sequential treatments, which included vaccines clears and targeted other problems such as detox, yeast, viral issues, and bacterial overgrowth. He was cleared for Serratia Marcescens, a bacteria often introduced during scope examinations (M had two bronchoscopies at 11 months due to inhaling a tiny piece of cork), and is linked to urinary problems. This helped with the wetting, but did not eliminate it. Clears were done for the surgeries, x-rays, Antibiotics and other drugs he'd been on over the year. Each major clear brought with it a peak-of-the-clear reaction at precisely the expected time, 7-10 days after he took the pellets. Most of the reactions were major SIB meltdowns, lasting sometimes up to ½ an hour.

In the spring of 2006, we began treating him for parasites. Up until this time, he showed no gains cognitively. His violent behavior was subsiding and he was calming slightly, but flare-ups of yeasty behaviors continued to come and go. An OAT lab showed arabinose levels off the charts. In August, we had a stool parasitology done which found one parasite, blastocystic hominis (b. hominis). One of the symptoms of this parasite is diarrhea which had grown into a major problem by this time. The diarrhea lead to rectal prolapse, a condition in which the rectum actually comes out of the body during bowel movements.

In spite of the stool problems, at the beginning of September 2006, he took a jump cognitively. During the previous two years of school, he made no academic progress whatsoever. For eight years, he was deathly afraid of water, yet during that same month, he started getting in the water during school swimming lessons and now he is learning to swim without a flotation device. Also in September 2006, he was now sleeping well, no longer aggressive, calm, and happy. The pica behaviors were largely gone.

The entire fall quarter of school, he continued to do well academically, but the diarrhea continued to plague us to the point that the school was pressuring us into taking him to a GI specialist, especially for the prolapse situation. We continued our parasite treatment. When we were done with the first phase of treatment, and went onto the second phase in December, the parasites flared up again and all the negative behaviors returned in full force, from feces eating, to aggression, to off-the-charts hyperactivity and sleep problems. We put him back on the first phase of the parasite cleanse at a higher dose and within three weeks the negative behaviors were gone.

In January, he again tested positive for b. hominis. Since we were co-treating him with both phases of the parasite treatment, we decreased the phase one dose and increased the phase two dose which targeted b. hominis. In the past two weeks, his stools have become more formed and the prolapse, considered nearly untreatable, with or without surgery, by conventional medicine, is gone. The parasite treatment has clearly been key to getting him on track with the rest of the sequential remedies. M was considered a non-responder to treatments. It took a lot of faith to keep hanging on to the sequential homeopathy treatments, especially the parasite cleanse. But, this was the only treatment in 10 years of searching to turn him around.

Overall, right now, M is calm 99% of the time and sleeps well for the first time in years. Stim behaviors, such as hand-flapping, have gone from 100% of the time to rare-if-ever. He no longer gags himself or coughs incessantly. His reflux appears to be gone. He used to have frequent episodes of wild laughing (“drunken sailor”) throughout the day – it is now 99% gone. Destructiveness is gone. The wetting problem is approximately 80% improved. He has stopped the feces smearing and eating behaviors. OCD behaviors are 95% gone. He is completely nonverbal, yet in the past four months, 3-4 different people, including his speech therapist, have told me that he very clearly said various words at appropriate moments and he is starting to say letter sounds. He is happy, his meltdowns have stopped, and he is very social and involved in his class at school. And, even through the ups and downs of his diarrhea and behavior issues, his cognitive and social/emotional development has grown in leaps. On his latest IEP progress report, 10 of his 16 objectives were met. This is significant because in the past three years, none of his objectives were met.

--L.P. 2/16/07