Functional Medicine in treating autism and aspergers

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I have just recently been told that my 20 month old daughter is showing signs of autism. I have been scouring the internet for resources and came across Dr Mark Hyman who is using functional medicine to treat children. Is there anybody who has feedback on functional medicine. I have been looking for practitioners in my local area but would like to know if anybody has experienced beneficial results.

First you need to realize that autism is not a disease that can be cured. Second you need to find a new doctor, autism unless severe can't be seen in such a small child. Third you need to forget everything doctor have told you and what you have read about autism, and move on with a normal life where you don't think there is something wrong with your child. Wait until you actually have a reason to react. Children in general are vivid, read a book about children instead of reading about autism in children.

If you are bent on sticking to your/your doctor's hyped theory then please figure what autism is before you go find a "fix". You won't find a cure, there is nothing to cure. You can however "fix" the mind of your child, with medicaments or brainwash. Regardless, the outcome is uncertain as you have only altered something that are a mindset, not a disease.

The best and ultimately optimal option for the child is your full support, endless heaploads of it. Some! of the things an autist are most fragile to are adversity, by attempting to fix a child you are almost guaranteed to trigger a chain of developing feelings and thoughts that you will only be able to affect if your trust is intact. You are running in the wrong direction. You, the autist and the society need to adapt. Not just the autist, the autist will evaluate this in ways you will never understand. The autist know he is different just like you know he is different, that doesn't mean he wish to be treated like a mental patient. It is more likely he want to treat you like a mental patient. If you catch my drift.

The best "medicine" for an autist so that he fit better together with the society he is otherwise not fit in is patience from the surroundings. Any form for mistreating (in the eyes of the autist) if not explained and reasoned very. well. will negatively develop the autist.

In general. An autist is just extremely touchy. Not much else to think about it..

I can tell you and ask you to please. Listen to the autists themselves, not their superiors where only a small percentage have understoud the need of an autist. I have never met anyone below 45 years old who understand how a autist should be treated. All of them have been the "warm" caring type, caring more for the autists individuality and happiness than their own ideas of what is normal and what is not.

Majority on this forum are parents, relatives and normal people with special interests that make them fall into this group. Of those with diagnosed autism a minority of them are functionable enough to participate here. A majority of autists are out living perfectly normal lives..

There are many ways to address the issue. Normally I would answer your post in the following manner:

'Because being unique are not in the new century's interest. We are all to have the same thoughts, alienating everyone be it man and woman, rich and poor, leftist and rightist, autist and neut. Because of course, we do have our differences.'

If you are willing to gamble your offsprings sanity and success in life, then sure go ahead with what you are doing.

Do not fix unless broken. Special is not broken.

Yes, it is possible to see signs of autism in a twenty-month-old. Who said they saw these signs, though? Was it a doctor or a relative or friend? Do some research on REPUTABLE websites and see if YOU feel your child is showing signs. Remember that any child might show one or two signs occasionally, and that doesn't necessarily mean they have autism.
And please be careful. There is no "cure" for autism, but there are many many quack doctors and companies that prey upon the parents of autistic children. Some autistic children have even been accidentally killed by parents trying quack "treatments". Con artists can smell desperation a mile away.

While 20 months is early to call it, I don't see any harm in seeking out OT or speech therapy, ABA etc.. if it's needed. Things that are proven to help. Pretty much anything else... it will be hard to tell if it is working.

Functional medicine? I had to look it up. It's a bunch of unproven treatments. At this point in the game, it's a way to fleece money out of you. My spidey sense tells me you should go get a second opinion. Let me put it this way, it certainly wold be profitable to diagnose a two year old with autism (which it is vey early to really know for sure, let alone gauge the "severity"), scare the crap out of the parents, get them to pay for pricey unproven treatments (may of which are utter snake oil and possibly harmful) And then when the child ages and naturally meets milestones (and perhaps isn't even autistic at all), claim the credit. That is really easy to do wth a two year old who ,may or may not be autistic and who if IS autistic has unknown severity of the autism.

So I looked up this Dr Hyman. Why did you take your 2 year old to see this guy? He is buku bucks and doesn't accept insurance. Seems like a really aggressive and somewhat desperate move very early on for a child with "signs of autism"

I must respectfully disagree wth feddup. 20 months is by no means too early to see signs of autism -- many of those with language delay and notable repetitive behavior are diagnosed between 18-24 months. In hindsight my Aspie son was showing signs by 30 months. Speech therapy at this age can make a huge difference in learning to communicate.

I had to google "functional medicine" to find the following definition, "Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership." The underlying causes of autism are not known at this time, so anyone who claims they have a biomedical treatment to cure it should be viewed with caution. Especially with a 20 month old, I would stay away from the biomedical interventions (things like antifungals, enzymes, chelation, biomarker, inflamation, and gluten-free diets) and focus on the developmental/behavioral interventions (speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, Floortime, ABA). These have been proven to make a difference in developmental delays in these areas. The exception would be that if you observe significant gastrointestinal distress you might pursue allergy testing and see if diet changes (including gluten- or casein- free) make a difference in those observable physical symptoms.

What signs of autism have been seen in your child, and who brought them to your attention? Has he or she been evaluated using the ADOS (autism diagnostic observation schedule)? Have you gotten a multidisciplinary evaluation (including speech, OT, PT, developmental psychologist) by your county's Early Intervention?

Sounds like snake oil if you want my opinion.

Look-- you don't need a $$$$ "expert" who won't work with insurance (Red Flag #1-- and for the record if they push you to apply for Medicaid or SSDI, that's Red Flag #2) to test dietary changes (and yes, DO get an allergy evaluation if you see signs of GI distress, because both Feingold and GFCF are too restrictive to do "just because"), or to know that you shouldn't feed your kid a boatload of highly processed crap, artificial crap, or added sugar. That's common sense, not revolutionary medicine.

DO NOT TRUST ANYONE who swears that they can make autism miraculously go away. People, especially kids with their stretchy-plastic little minds and lack of negative experiences to draw mistaken inferences from, can learn both specific and general XF (executive function) and social skills, learn to calm their own anxiety in unobtrusive ways, and generally learn to function so well that an outsider would hardly believe they were autistic, but YOU CANNOT GET RID OF IT.

You can learn to deal with it, and even learn to deal with it so well you turn it into an asset (my husband swears I have done this, though I don't believe him for a minute and would gladly cut off an arm and a leg in trade for something I really thought would make me 'normal'). But at this point you CANNOT "make it go away."

It's a damn shame that the world is full of people who prey on you by making you think it's the end of the world and the only desirable outcome is for it to disappear, and then other people who prey on you by swearing they can do just exactly that. Bloody depressing that someone would take a parent's fears and hopes for their child(ren) and shamelessly turn it into a profit machine, but that's capitalism. It does not have an inherent moral compass-- no economic system does.

Welcome to the ship, by the way. How about you tell us what's going on with your kid that makes people suspect autism?? We're friendly, we promise. All of us either have autistic kids, or were autistic kids, or both.

"Signs" is a very vague word. In hindsight we saw signs at the one-year mark when our son was having trouble pointing at things with one-finger, lining things up, having sensory issues, and spinning around and hand-flapping.

I am assuming your were told this by a pediatrician. Did they refer you to early intervention, did they tell you to wait and see? What were the "signs?" Autism is a collection of behavioral observations that they sort of assembled into one diagnosis. Our kids have as many differences as similarities, and whatever you do, you want to address the things that are issues for your child, not just general things or things that are non-issues or not actually negatives. (Not all of it is negative)

There are a lot of snake oil and scams, and what you mentioned sounds like one to me. There is all sorts of hokum out there b.c parents get desperate and people prey on that. At 20 months, the main thing you want to be doing is observing sensory reactions so that you can make your child happier and more comfortable, and working on communication skills and perhaps attention. If you post your child's specific issues we can probably be of more help.

Edited to add this:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/ ... cience-on/
The first thing that showed up when I Googled "Functional Medicine Autism Scam"