Keep on Trucking!

Adam and I both feel that the hyberbaric oxygen chamber was well worth it based on the improved verbal skills we witnessed with Owen.

This past summer Owen continued with his physical, occupational and speech therapies and also attended a 6 week summer school program at the Abilities Center.

On July 16th, 2008 we started Owen on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. The SCD diet excludes and removes ALL starches and complex sugars. This removal helps kill major yeast and bacterial overgrowth. This helps to decrease malabsorption, which rebalances the gut flora and encourages healing. Eating SCD yogurt or probiotics helps to repopulate the gut with "good bugs" that keep yeast and bad bacteria in check. The ultimate goal is that digestion will normalize causing behavior, cognitive and language development to improve.

This diet is very challenging! In order to avoid the starches and sugars found in almost all foods, we essentially make everything ourselves now. We even make our own yogurt. It's time consuming and expensive but well worth it. Almond flour and honey are now staples in our house, since they are the key ingredients in what Owen will eat.

Owen started school in the ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) classroom this September. He goes to school 5 days a week in the afternoon. The school bus picks him up at our house, which Aubrey thinks is pretty cool. There are only 4 kids (all boys) in Owen's class, with a teacher and 3 para's, so the kids get alot of personalized attention. There is a regular preschool class with 17 kids across the hall from owen's class. Owen typicaly goes to the preschool class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The tracher said other than the noise level sometimes being overwhelming, he fits in great!

He definitely seems to be enjoying school this year. He even comes home and talks about his new friends.

At the end of October, Owen started a new treatment with Dr. Boggess in Ann Arbor. The treatment is called Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique or NAET. The NAET treatment is a non-invasive, drug-free, natural solution to eliminate allergies of all types. The treatment uses a blend of medical knowledge and practices from chiropractic, accupressure, kinesiology, allopathy and nutritional disciplines.

According to Dr. Devi Nambudripad, Autism is a nutritional deficiency disorder causing biological, neurological and developmental problems in children. The nutritional deficiency is caused by poor digestion, absorption, assimilation and utilization of essential nutrients due to allergies. Autistic children are not digesting what they consume and their bodies do not receive essential nutrients from food or supplements. Adequate amounts of nutrients are necessary for normal growth and development. Normal body functions cannot take place where there are insufficient nutrients available in the body. In a person with allergies, when the appropriate nutrients are not utilized adequately, the body will begin to substitute other available substances to run the regular functions. the substitutedsubstances will produce various health disorders and abnormal body functions as seen in Autistic children.

There are 15 basic essential nutrient treatments that each person must receive. We are currently on Owen's 4th treatment, so we still have a long road ahead of us. The ultimate goal is for us to be able to add food back into Owen's diet that has previously been eliminated and for him to be able to properly digest the essential nutrients his body needs.

NAET is definitely a difficult concept to understand since it does not involve traditional medical practices. I tried to provide a basic description of the treatment, without being too technical or giving information overload. If you are interested in learning more about this treatment, please refer to the website at www.naet.com

We want to thank everyone for their continued support as we continue on our journey to recovery.

Happy Holdays!