Autism

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On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:10 AM, syriajboyd <syriajboyd wrote:

 

> I don't know that Applied Behavioral Analysis is considered

> alternative. However, I'm guessing it is fairly effective given that

> ABA is becoming an emerging industry in Houston. However, I would

> imagine you would have come across that already in Calif.

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding the autistic child, I had a brief conversation with the parent of

this child on the phone the other day. I'll pass one what I told him then,

which is the best that my own clinical experience has to offer. This is

based on a somewhat small number of cases, but I have had the opportunity to

track one of them for nine years now.

 

So, in my experience, autism still comes down to treating what you see. This

is a common issue for us working in the TCM business. We'll get someone with

a Western diagnosis such as autism or OCD or stomach ulcer or whatever and

the patient will ask " which herb for this " or " which acupuncture point

treats that? " . Neither of these questions can be answered like that. In each

case, we begin with observable (or reportable) signs & symptoms and go from

there. We have to come up with our own (TCM) diagnosis.

 

When it comes to autism, (again, in my experience) we may not be able to

turn an autistic child into a " normal " child, but we can make an autistic

child healthy (not such a bad goal when you think about it). According to

the gentleman who began this thread, their child was given a flu vaccination

at the age of two. He reports that since then, it has been all downhill and

it seemed like a sudden change then and so he believes that it was the

vaccination that did him in. This is a common perception among parents of

autistic children. I have yet to see any reputable research study (eg.

appearing in a peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal) that supports

this perception, but I can report that it is a common belief that

vaccinations are causing autism.

 

I myself don't know. However the vaccination issue may have some medical

significance in treating his particular child's issue. I believe that the

child is now five years old. Our phone call was quick and I didn't take

notes, so I could be off on this part. Because vaccinations are essentially

a controlled infection to which the body needs to mount an immune response,

it may stand to reason that the infectious material is still alive and well

and living somewhere deep down inside of their son.

 

In the " wen bing " school of medical thought (a subset of TCM-Traditional

), febrile pathogens (febrile pathogen means illness that

causes a fever) are tracked as they move from the most superficial layer, to

the deepest. They call these layers " wei, qi, ying, and xue " which

translates to " defensive level, qi level, nutritive level, and blood level " .

In its most simple form, one can describe the wei level heat as your common

cold with a sore throat. The qi level heat is more like a flu with a high

fever. What makes the ying level unique is its effect on the spirit. Think

fever dreams here. The final layer and most deep is when the heat enters the

blood. This causes the blood to boil out of the vessels and gives rise to

bleeding or hemorrhagic fevers. Nasty stuff, that one.

 

There are more benign expressions of all these too. For instance, " heat in

the blood " can also give rise to nosebleeds in children or excessive

menstrual flow in women. Not the end of the world, but something to fix

eventually.

 

Now there are some other variants of the wen bing diseases I've listed thus

far. One is called " latent heat " which is to say that you've got a flu, but

it's kind of bubbling beneath the surface, and only periodically makes it's

presence known. This is that flu that you had last year, and you kind of got

over it, but never really and so sometimes, it just comes back and you know

deep down inside that it never really left.

 

So I bring up this concept of latent heat as a possible explanation for how

a flu vaccination could cause ongoing issues in a child. There's no way that

I'd run to the store to find " Latent Heat Begone " because it doesn't exist.

However once we know where the latent heat is hiding, then we can put out

that fire. Sometimes, even often, it is wrapped up in dampness which makes

it somewhat impervious to one-dimensional therapies. It may need a few

different formulas to first dry the damp, then clear the heat... then this,

then that. You get my point. It can be somewhat complicated.

 

Again, this is just a theory that I'm throwing out there. I can't honestly

see how latent heat would have such an effect on the spirit to the point

where one is labeled " autistic " . However if all this stuff began with a flu

shot, you gotta wonder.

 

Theory #2: his son was autistic, but until the child reached the age in

which other cognitive faculties should have arisen, it was undiagnosed. Just

a thought, don't know either way myself.

 

In either case, we still would try and get the child as healthy and balanced

as possible. Autism is one of those things, like so many others, that

provide a real challenge early on, but once the necessary changes in

expectations are made, a decent life can arise from their specialness. This

is of course really easy for me to say, not having an autistic child. But we

all have our challenges in life, and those who live well tend to roll with

the punches and even use them to our advantage somehow.

 

Speaking of which, there is another treatment principle in TCM that says " to

treat the child, treat the mother. " I told him that having an autistic child

WOULD be easier if both parents were also seeing to their own needs and that

to treat their child, it would be wise to get them treated as well. He

understood the inherent wisdom in that, so I'm sure that he'll follow up on

that on his own time.

 

Finally, I would add (somewhat connected to the mother/son thing) that

autism parents are EASY TARGETS for unproven (dare I say " alternative " )

therapies of all kinds. They are such easy targets that the FDA considers

dietary supplements that claim to treat, cure, mitigate, or diagnosis autism

to be against the law. They say:

 

Parents of autistic children can be desperate and provide easy targets for

unproven therapies. The FDA's article on this topic mentions marketers of

dietary supplements for autistic children who contend that their products

promote more complete food digestion, thereby preventing neuro-toxic

molecules that contribute to autism. The FDA calls this a false and

unsupported claim.

 

Source: http://www.fda.gov/oc/nutritioninitiative/report.html

 

Funny too, because the first thing I did was asked about his son's bowel

movements. I have heard from my patients that when their autie kids poop

firm up, their consciousness was more clear. However I'm not doing it for

any neuro-toxic whatever. TCM has well-established mechanisms such as poor

digestion causes dampness. Dampness congeals into phlegm. Phlegm mists the

Heart orifices and causes the cognitive aspect of autism. While these

statements wouldn't fly in the biomedical community, any trained TCM person

would understand exactly what I'm talking about.

 

Anyway, our autistic child's family lives in the SF bay area. I'm in L.A.,

so maybe we'll have a chance to hook up, or maybe not. Perhaps there is

someone else on this list who services the SF bay area who could make their

presence known.

 

-al.

 

--

, DAOM

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.