elmhar

Hi MarksMom,

Biomed interventions are very complementary to traditional therapies. In fact, in the USA where parents can pay big $$ for private therapy, biomed is cost-effective because it maximizes the benefit of therapy. There is a saying: it is possible, with behavioral therapy, to teach a child who is sitting on a tack to sit still, but it's a lot quicker & easier if you remove the tack. Kids who recover on biomed after 12 to 18 mos. of intensive intervention may require little if any ongoing therapy after that point, except for followthrough on their biomed regimen.

It's easy to get overwhelmed when encountering info on biomed interventions. Most of us are a little shy on the chemisty, biology & biochem that helps one understand the basis for the interventions. That's one reason. A second reason is, this treatment camp is complex, in comparison to say behavioral interventions which after a time seem to be a variation on one or two themes that can be applied to most kids on the spectrum.

Biomed intervention addresses the 18+ biochemical glitches that have been found to affect our kids. Most kids are not affected by all 18, but some are. Getting comfortable with all of that info can be a huge job, especially when one is trying to patch it all together from bits & pieces on the internet.

That's why I recommend working with a DAN! doctor who can lead you through the maze. With testing, it often becomes evident which aspects need to be addressed first. Otherwise a parent is sort of shooting in the dark with trial & error. Apparently there is at least one DAN! naturopath (ND) in Nova Scotia, as well as a number of DAN! docs in Quebec & Ontario that you may be able to investigate if interested.

The book that Betsy Ann recommended, Children with Starving Brains, is a great place to start. The author, Jacquelyn McCandless, MD, was a psychiatrist & neurologist on the brink of retirement, when one of her grandchildren wasdiagnosed autistic. This doctor's journey, from nonbeliever to proponent of biomed intervention, is fascinating. You may be able to find the book at your local public library, or have them get it for you through interlibrary loan.

As an interesting aside, there are a number of physician-families with autistic or formerly autistic kids in the leadership of the biomedical intervention movement. If you get a chance to attend a DAN! or mini-DAN! conference, or an AutismOne conference, many of these doctors are featured speakers.

The other book I like is the Baker & Pangborn's Autism: Effective Biomedical Treatments, subtitled: Have we done everything we can for this child? Individuality in an epidemic. This book does dive fairly deeply into the scientific rationale for the biomed treatments, however, that is balanced by a common-sense approach.

Pangborn & Baker say that you can boil down the whole biomedical intervention philosophy to 2 questions:
1) Is there something my child needs to function better, that he's not getting now?
2) Is there something in my child's experience, environment, diet that is unhelpful, or toxic, or holding him up, that needs to be removed?

If you think about it that way, biomed intervention is doable. Pangborn & Baker also say that the way to avoid being overwhelmed is to focus on doing one step at a time.

IMO it's always best to introduce one biomed intervention at a time, to use it consistently for a while before introducing a 2nd intervention. Ideally, Mom & Dad would be on the same page with whatever biomed interventions are introduced.

About the BM in potty, have you asked the behavioral intervention folks for programming? With my own son it was a matter of rewarding him for going in the bathroom in his diaper, then sitting on the potty in the bathroom going in his diaper, then cutting a hole in the diaper so that the BM fell into the potty ... a behavior that was slowly shaped with plenty of reinforcement, in steps moving progressively closer to the desired goal. My son was verbal at the time, told me he was more comfortable going in the diaper ... over a period of a month or so with small steps he became more comfortable going in the potty. But, depending on the situation, a different behavioral program may be more appropriate for Mark.

Best wishes.