Neurological Disorders and Body Pollution: A Personal Journey

For over 20 years my wife and I have searched for answers and treatments to help our children (now young adults) to deal with their diagnosis of Autism and Tourette Syndrome along with Attention Deficit Disorder. Our research of late has also expanded to include Fibromyalgia which my wife, Irma has recently been diagnosed with. We have come to believe that a primary reason we are seeing more cases of childhood disabilities and why nearly half of all Americans are chronically ill is that we are poisoning ourselves through our dietary habits. It should be noted that there is no direct research supporting our opinion, but sometimes when something makes so much sense you just need to accept it.

We tell our story in the hopes that others may find it of value. Many have asked over the years how we are able to stay so positive about our situation. Our response has always been what's our alternative; be depressed and look for someone to blame or stay positive and continue to look for answers? It is through our successes and failures that make us who we are as individuals. Make no mistake if I had a magic wand I would wave it and cure my children in a heart beat. On the other hand it is these very problems and obstacles that we have weathered that has made us stronger as a family and hopefully made us better for the experience.

Over the years as you may have guessed we have seen a multitude of physicians who have prescribed an even greater multitude of medications for our family. But we keep coming back to the same fact, that we have seen the greatest positive results when we have focused on eliminating toxins from our diet thereby ensuring our bodies got the correct amount of nutrients.

Our Position

Some would say that we have had more than our share of medical issues to deal with. Raising two children with special needs (Autism and Tourette Syndrome). On top of this my wife Irma suffers from valley Fever and Fibromyalgia, and as for myself I suffer from lower back and knee problems as a direct result of spending 20 years walking on steel decks while in the Navy. Not to mention the other typical stuff that just happens to us as we get older.

As a result of our research into these areas we have come to the conclusion that many of our conditions can be helped considerably by staying aware of our nutrition or lack there of, and how our environment is effecting our health. There are many articles on the Internet Body Pollution and Leaky Gut Syndrome that support our views and we encourage you to do your own research if this is an area of interest.

As a society we have been conditioned to Super-size everything, treat all of our problems with a pill, and expect immediate gratification. These Conveniences come at a high price! Through our research and of course through trial and error we have become more focused on the use of botanicals or green products. These are products that are developed with all natural substances and help in offsetting the various toxins we ingest in our day to day lives.

When all you got is lemons then the only thing you can do is make lemonade!

Background

Irma and I were married in Long Beach CA, where I was stationed while in the Navy. Our son, Robert was born in 1984 and our daughter Valerie in 1985. Valerie was our first child who was diagnosed. She had normal development up until the age of 2 when for some unexplained reason she completely regressed loosing all learned speech and training. She was diagnosed as high functioning autistic at the age of 4. Our son who didn't exhibit symptoms to later on and not as sever as Valerie was diagnosed as having Tourette Syndrome at age 7.

This was our birth into the world of disabilities and special needs. I must say in all fairness that if it wasn't for my wife's dedication to our children and finding answers they wouldn't be as well off as they are today. I personally went through a time of denial and self pity and she picked up the slack for the both of us. During this time we saw many doctors, both medical and psychological to have our children evaluated and tested. It saddens me to this day when I remember that some of these so called professionals actually accused us of causing this through mistreatment and abuse. It's always easy to blame the parents.

This was a very rough time for us as very little was know about either of these conditions and much of the research was just getting off the ground. We both did much soul searching and asking that age old question: Why Our Kids? Once we got past the self pity and accepted our family's situation we discovered that many of the professionals knew even less than we did about these conditions. In fact we found ourselves explaining it to many doctors on our first visit.

We had no alternative to become the experts if our children were going to have any type of quality of life. So that's what we did with the help of many trips to the library and of course the Internet we started on our journey that is still going on to this day.

Treatments

Over the past two decades we have tried more treatments for our children than I care to consider, not mentioning the amount of money that was invested in many of these treatments. Because we all know that anything new is classified as experiential and therefore not covered by Health Insurance. Furthermore there is a lot of well meaning people working to find a cure for these disorders, there are also a lot of others who have no problem in preying on your love for your children, knowing you will try just about anything and at any expense.

Below are some of the treatments and theories that we have pursued. Some of these helped some didn't. The list may not seem very long but there are of course many variations within each of these categories.

•Vitamin Therapy - One of the first programs we tried and have returned to it. No drastic results but then again its non-evasive.

•Audio Integration - This is based on a physiologic- educational, not emotional, approach says that behavioral and cognitive problems may arise when people perceive sounds in a "differential" manner. This one almost sent us to debtor prison!

•Sensory Integration - Children and adults with developmental disabilities may have a dysfunctional sensory system. Sometimes one or more senses are either over- or under-reactive to stimulation. Seemed to help at the time, but who knows.

•Pharmaceuticals - Another area of concern, our children have taken some pretty intense medications over the years, many of them new and experimental. So the jury is still out on this one on whether we did them any favors or not.

•Gluten/Casein Free Diet - There is now a growing body of research that shows that certain foods seem to be affecting the developing brains of some children and causing autistic behaviors. Not a whole lot of research on this one but again the concept is solid.

•Music Therapy - Music Therapy is the application of music to enhance personal lives by creating positive changes in human behavior. It is theorized that you can utilize music as a tool to encourage development in social/ emotional, cognitive/learning, and perceptual-motor areas. Our daughter has responded well to this and we have noticed more self realization and perception since this program.

Today we have come up with a program that includes a composite of the bare minimum of pharmaceuticals supplemented with vitamin therapy, diet restrictions and exercise. This program seems to be the best program to date and both of our children seem to be functioning well with it. It's amazing how the body will adjust and try to cure itself if we provide it with what it needs.

Present Day

As mentioned previously we have found that we receive the greatest quality of life for our children and ourselves when we focus on ingesting a minimum of pharmaceuticals, concentrate on nutrition and what we are putting into our bodies, and getting plenty of exercise. This may seem like an over simplification but I am constantly amazed that when you provide the body the nutrients it requires then it will do some amazing things.

Valerie is doing well and is employed part time at the local school district office learning various office skills. Robert has attended community college and now works full time in a local insurance office. Both Irma and I are proud of our children and what they have been able to accomplish but also realize that the task is far from complete. It is our hope that both of our children can have whole and complete lives despite their handicaps.

Body Pollution is a serious problem in our society today, environmental chemicals are all around us and there's no way to escape their harmful effects. Our bodies are not capable of eliminating all the different toxins and chemicals we inhale and ingest every day. We are paying a very high price for all of the conveniences we enjoy.