Testing, Testing, Testing ... and THAT DIET THING

Thanks for all of the emails of stories! I am reading each one and am responding (albeit slowly!), but I've been swamped this week with work (I work part-time from home) and in working on moving Alec along in his recovery.

Here's what we've been doing: Matt and I attended a conference put on by the Great Plains Laboratories this past weekend. Information overload, but it gave us both a lot of hope concerning new biomedical therapies for autism. We have been waiting to take thelab tests for Alec and I had sent away for the free test kits (it's the processing of them that depletes your cash reserves...), but we found out about a conference here in Charlotte with a following clinic to do the labs. (Others are conducted nationally. Check their site for other conferences.)

The conference featured a number of speakers, including William Shaw, Director of The Great Plains Laboratory whose session was titled “The Importance of Biological Interventions in Autism” and Rashid Buttar, DO, who presented “Chelating Heavy Metals with DMPS”.

Dr. Buttar was featured in a February 15th, 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal's Personal Journal in an article entitled "A Radical Approach to Autism". He has a son who is autistic. He developed a transdermal chelating cream that has helped his son. Dr. Buttar has testified before Congress regarding this treatment (read the Journal article) and is now working hard to further biomedical therapies to other autistic kids. His website is not very informative in terms of treating autism (looks like its still in the works), but it does have some info there. Here's a link: http://www.drbuttar.com/video/heavy_metal/heavy_metal.htm.

Alec has an appt. with Dr. Buttar scheduled for June (its a long wait...).

Dr. Buttar believes that autism is a result of mercury poisoning (metal toxicity), with genetic factors causing a child to not be able to flush the metals from the body. He believes that by removing the toxicity, then we can repair the core of autism itself.

Dr. Shaw spoke on yeast overgrowth and allergies. So, Matt and I have finally been convinced to formally give the GF/CF diet a true test for at least four months. With Alec, however, we believe he also has a corn allergy, so we are struggling to find food to feed him. I'm going to be posting, I'm sure, about my upcoming frustrations in that area.

Great Plains Labs offered a local clinic the next day, and Alec has taken their panel recommended for autism and PDD. (See http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/autism-test.html for more info.)

We are pretty excited to see what those test indicate. In the meantime, the GF/CF diet has left Alec, well, sort of foggier than usual. He is repeating phrases over and over... much more than usual. It's only his third day. Are there any parents out there with suggestions or comments about what to expect in starting this diet? If so, I'd love to hear from you!