Picture it . . . you, your spouse, your child — and multiple medical professionals from different backgrounds — working together as a team to analyze your child’s genetics, symptom presentation, and most urgent things to address and then making a plan together. In a room full of mutual respect.
This is not a dream.
Last May, in my dining room, this remarkable thing happened. My son’s long-time chiropractor, relatively new naturopath, relatively new patient coordinator, myself, and my husband all sat down to talk about my son, brainstorm a treatment protocol path, and plan out its phased implementation. It was remarkable because in this autism world, it’s really hard to get practitioners to step out of the limelight, agree they personally do not have all the answers, and brainstorm as peers with multiple other parties who have very different training than they do. And to accept parents as their peers.
As a team, we made a plan. Overall, I am in charge of the Team. It is up to me to make sure that implementation of The Plan goes smoothly all around. When one party proposes a supplement change-up that is outside of a team meeting, its my job to communicate to all parties what we are doing. It is also my job, as well as the patient coordinator’s job, to keep my finger on the pulse of the new stuff coming out research-wise and if it catches me in the gut — listen, propose, debate, and potentially implement — as a team.
Graphic from Clip arts
What I love about this approach is that we are not stagnating in the office of a doctor who is stagnating in his or her own practice. We are not limited to the expertise and skillset of just one practitioner. We don’t have to doctor hop — we can have all needed people come into the Team. We have different interpretations of symptoms, and different ideas being shared in a mutually respectful environment. I don’t feel like I’m cheating on the DC with the ND and vice versa; both know the other exists as a valued part of my son’s treatment team, and they respect each other.
Any one practitioner who tells you they have the answer to curing autism in all children is lying. Because autism has many causes, and the tricky part in treating is to find the proverbial end of the string and unravel the layers to get to the initial cause. For us, an initial viral brain injury was the trigger to regression. I believe that brain injury threw the essential balance of my son’s whole body out, and we had yeast, pathogens, oxalates, new random food allergies — all sorts of interesting things — pop up as a result. So we are unraveling the string and have finally gotten him to the point where he is able, using a combination of supplementation protocols, detox protocol, and daily (multiple times a day) reflex integration work to address the original brain injury.
It takes a village — of healers. I encourage you to find practitioners who are willing to work together and wish you the best of luck in coordinating it all. You, as your child’s parent, are the one who knows them best, and your gut feelings rule. Any practitioner who dismisses Mommy Gut should be passed right over.
~ JuicyFruit
For more by JuicyFruit, click here.
Okay so I saw one of your memes and just so you know there’s a reason why there are only 23 of you and not millions. While GMO’s and other such chemicals produced by science are bad for you, The rest it pure ignorance. A vaccine does not cause autism. Extensive studies have been done by both people who support your theories and are against them. IT can be caused by head trauma and brain damage from extensive infection left improperly treated. Vaccinations protect your children from the others around them. they are mandatory for nurses and doctors so that while delving your children they are exposed to a potentially fatal illness. Now I know none of this matters to you because you think your opinion is the only one that should be allowed to exist. I also know that you don’t care that your kids getting sick may kill auto immune deficient children who depend on their classmates to have immunizations to protect them. That being said it’s fair that you know your opinions on somethings are very correct. Such as GMO’s and many medications. However when it comes to Vaccines and autism you are very wrong. You need to put some real effort into research. Newspaper articles and CNN, as well as fox news don’t count. Please if you can do some scientific study and prove your point feel free to send it to me. Remember perfectly normal babies can develop issues later on. Sorry to make you work for your thought processes . your opinions have been bought. By major factions trying to reduce a population of the most gullible corners of america. Monsanto is evil. The government is corrupt. your medications are often placebos. However much of what I have read on this site is very faulty. Please consider fact checking. that’s all thanks for reading
There’s so much that’s wrong with your comment that it’s hard to know where to begin.
I find it utterly fascinating that people who can understand that genetically modified organisms could be bad for you and that, supported by industry-funded science, our watchdog agencies can be corrupted by Monsanto’s billions somehow think that vaccine manufacturers are exempt from the same sorts of behavior and influence. Pharmaceuticals have been the MOST profitable industry in the United States for the last two decades. Vaccines are the fastest-growing profit sector they have, with 2015 expected to top out at about $40 billion in business. That’s a whole lot of incentive for protecting and growing your “market.” Unlike Monsanto, vaccine manufacturers were absolved of all liability for the harm their products do by a 1986 law passed by Congress that established a fund that has paid out over $3 billion hotly contested dollars on vaccine injury claims. Know who pays for that fund? The people receiving the vaccines in the form of a tax, not the manufacturers. Awesome setup, eh? Vaccine companies (all of whom have paid hefty fines for unethical practices with respect to OTHER drugs in recent years) are free to make, develop, and market their vaccine products without any fear of consequences for the damage they do. No wonder there are several hundred vaccines in the works. Most of the science “exonerating” vaccines in the meteoric increase in autism were performed at or funded by the CDC when Julie Gerberding was in charge. The same Julie Gerberding that left to become the head of the Vaccine division at Merck, the maker of the MMR. During her time there, two studies in particular came out, one by Thomas Verstraeten on Thimerosal and neurological disorders and another by a number of the “usual suspects” in CDC epidemiology on the timing of the MMR and autism rates. Both studies were highly manipulated to get the results they did. A whistleblower came forward to say that the CDC epidemiologists literally THREW AWAY data implicating the MMR in autism risk. THOSE studies are two of the most frequently cited as “proof” that there is no vaccine/autism link. If they have to misrepresent the studies they produced (Verstraeten’s was a “neutral” study in its final form, which by definition is proof of exactly NOTHING, in addition only one vaccine and one ingredient were ever studied), which are already misrepresentations of the actual data, then you know they must be really afraid of the truth.
It’s beyond naive and insulting to come here and imply that we have not done scientific research on the subject of vaccines and autism (“Sorry to make you work for your thought processes”? Really? On a site called Thinking Moms’ Revolution where we REPEATEDLY urge people to read the science — ALL the science?), when it’s clear that the truth is the average READER on this site has done significantly more study than you have. “Newspaper articles and CNN, as well as Fox News” don’t paint anything LIKE the truth on the subject. Pharmaceutical companies, by virtue of being the most profitable sector of the U.S. economy, shockingly enough, spend more money on advertising than any other industry. How likely do you think it is that media outlets are going to piss off the folks who supply them with the dollars to stay in business by airing the truth? The answer is Not. At. All.
If you’re serious about your own scientific study, start with the studies and papers on this list that all support the vaccine/autism link: http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-of-any-link.html and then we’ll talk.
And OUR opinions have been “bought”??? “Bought” by whom? Because if they have, they sure as hell aren’t paying enough for them! The cognitive dissonance has to be strong in you for you to be even capable of typing such a sentence.
Get one thing clear right now: We care deeply about the health of ALL children. Repeat, ALL children. Which is why we cannot endorse sacrificing the health of some for the sake of others. And make no mistake, that is exactly what you advocate when you endorse a one-size-fits-all vaccine policy. Devastating vaccine injury is a FACT. It exists. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has not paid out over $3 billion for nothing. (By the way, they have compensated over 1300 brain injuries, and when investigators tracked down approximately 200 of them they found that 40% had a diagnosis of autism, which means it’s extremely likely that the VICP has already compensated over 500 cases of autism).
No one knows the immune status of their child when the very first vaccine is recommended, hepatitis B the day they are born (which, by the way, confers zero benefit for 9,998 out of 10,000 infants who receive it because they were never at risk of encountering the disease). That first vaccine can TRIGGER the immune deficiency (not, by the way, “auto” immune deficiency. Autoimmunity is a different thing, frequently triggered by vaccines, as well) that you’re talking about. We have run two blogs by the mothers of immunocompromised children, the very children you claim we don’t care about, who believe very strongly in vaccine choice. You see, they know the dangers, and they don’t want anyone making the same mistakes they did and risking their child’s health in a misguided attempt to protect theirs. Especially when immunocompromised people are actually warned by their doctors to stay away from those who were recently vaccinated with live-virus vaccines such as MMR and FluMist because the viruses in those vaccines can be shed by the vaccine recipient for weeks, potentially endangering the health of those with compromised immune systems.