Homeopathy and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Excellent book for families, health care professionals and beginning Homeopathy students.

This book by Mike Andrews discusses several different approaches to the Homeopathic treatment of autism. The book discusses advantages of homeopathy compared to other treatments like the nutritional and detoxification therapies available from DAN (Defeat Autism Now) doctors. It mentions that some doctors are using both approaches in a synergistic way. The disadvantages of long term medical treatment using various drugs is also examined briefly.What is really helpful about this book is the discussion of the several different approaches to homeopathy that are being used. This is important because approximately 35% of patients are significantly helped by Homeopathy but 65% are not significantly helped. This discussion of the various approaches and their strong points helps to explain to me why so many patients are not getting results. Simply put the various styles of Homeopathy address certain causes of autism more effectively than others. So let’s look at some of the approaches discussed with cause as our focus.CEASE therapy works on the premis that toxic exposures have jammed the functioning of the brain and nervous system and caused it to malfunction. It uses toxins in minute homeopathic doses (isopathic remedies) to stimulate the body to get the immune system to make complexes that bind to these toxins enabling them to be eliminated. The ability of these remedies to stimulate improved detoxification is well know and used by naturopathic and homeopathic practitioners alike. The concept of using a hair of the dog that bit you to achieve a cure is found in folk medicine. One of the main advantages of CEASE therapy is the ability of a practitioner to quickly find a remedy that will have a beneficial effect on the autistic patient. Finding a similinum is beyond the ability of many novice practitioners unless it is an easy case.CLASSICAL Homeopathy. Finding a classical homeopathic similinum remedy can take many hours. For some patients it is often close to impossible to find a similinum especially if the patient is on drugs that can suppress the symptoms that would lead the practitioner to the similinum. The more skilled and therefore expensive a practitioner is the better their chances of finding a remedy that significantly helps an autistic patient. There is a reason Mike Andrews has interviewed certain practitioners and their approach. It’s because these homeopathy’s are getting results with autism when many others homeopathic practitioners are not.CANDIDA. This fungus is accepted as a major cause of health problems by naturopathic doctors. One of the hallmarks of some autistic patients is an uncontrollable craving for foods that have a sweet taste due to their sugar content. Sugar (from fruit or the breakdown of starch) is the only food that Candida can live on and the carving for sugar/sweets is the most important symptom of a Candida overgrowth. But there are many different strains of Candida yeast/fungus and associated bacteria. An Israeli homeopath interviewed in this book has made a remedy using most of the different strains of Candida fungus and had exceptionally good results giving this remedy to autistic patients who crave sweets.CAUSE. It is obvious to me after reading this book that finding a homeopathic approach that addresses the cause of patient’s autism will have a higher chance of success than an approach that doesn’t address the cause of the autism. Working from that understanding it makes sense that seeking out a Cease practitioner makes sense if the child started to regress after a toxic exposure. Or if the autism started after an emotional upset then seeking out a classical practitioner who could help to unwind the emotional blockage would be the way to go. There isn’t much being written about finding an approach that fits the cause, so I applaud this book as an important step in what I hope will become a trend.OBSTACLES TO HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT. This is another topic of crucial importance that is discussed in several places in this book.Hahnemann the medical doctor who developed homeopathy was a hygienist. He emphasized diet, lifestyle habits, adequate sleep and a lot of other factors as needing to be addressed so the body could respond to these energetic remedies.SUGAR. Many autistic children are sugar junkies. They are nutritionally deficient and the body knows that in nature the sweet fruit are a major source of vitamins and minerals. So they crave sweet foods that due to modern food processing usually have less of these nutrients than foods that are not sweet. Because of high sugar intake many autistic children have high insulin levels and high adrenalin levels and are in a sugar daze. It is a recognized fact in naturopathic medicine that hyperinsulinism and high Adrenalin levels suppress the immune system and the body’s detoxification system. Hyperactive child? How else are they going to burn off all the excess sugar they are consuming other than running around? The connection between stress and health problems is known. Most practitioners who specialize in stress physiology would agree that a hyperactive child is under a lot of stress. What is not widely accepted is that high insulin and adrenal hormones are maybe the most damaging factor in highly stressed patients. Fresh fruit and fruit juice is just as much of a cause of a fight or flight stress state as white sugar. When the body is in a stressed state it is marshaling all its reserves to fighting for its life. All other systems of the body are turned down or turned off. This includes detoxification, the immune system, tissue and organ repair and even growth and development. The fighting off of a pathogen can be almost as effective in decreasing the normal growth and development of the body. After reading this book I am wondering how many autistic kids have a Candida problem as the major stressor blocking development and for how many is it hyper insulin hyper adrenal functioning. If the body is fighting a pathogen then eliminating it would be required to stop the stress response. It seems logical to explore both possibilities. Decreasing or eliminating sugar consumption would be a way of quickly finding out if it is just hyperinsulinism. As little as 2 days without fruit, juices, staches, high carbohydrate snacks and other sources of food that raise the blood sugar can cause a 50% decrease in hyperactivity. (Substituting with artificial sweeteners is the worst solution because the body needs to detoxify the breakdown products. NuStevia from NuNaturals is a stevia product that has been processed to remove the bitter stevia aftertaste making this brand more agreeable to some patients.) My experience supports the importance of sugar reduction in the management of autistic children. I have seen an autistic children start to respond to homeopathic remedy after a reduction in total sugar intake. The child was drinking 50/50 apple juice water blend out of a 64 oz bottle kept in the refrigerator. The parents gradually reduced the apple juice and added a teaspoon of erythritol (Now foods) for every 2 oz of apple juice they replaced with water. They had to still use 12% apple juice because of the flavor it imparted. The child was still eating vanilla yogurt and lots of grapes so this measure only cut the sugar consumption in half. Yet even this reduction in sugar intake resulted in better eye contact and response to verbal commands. It also accelerated this 7 year old child’s response to a remedy that hadn't been having much effect previously. This child has progressed from being the equivalent of a 2 year old to being close to that of a 4 year old (except for speech) in 6 months.ELECTRICAL SENSITIVITY. Parents need to read books like Zapped and see if their autistic child is EMF sensitive. Dr Vikas Sharma does not let his autistic patients use any electrical devices such as, computers, phones etc or play games on electrical devices..AUPUNCTURE and acupressure work with some autistic patients and not others. If a session has a positive effect for only 12-24 hours there is probably a stress condition that prevents it form having a longer term benefit.FINDING THE OBSTACLES It may be necessary to see a environmental / ecological oriented naturopath to find someone who can take in all the details of a child’s environmental stressors and come to a conclusion as to what the blockages to a cure are for any given autistic child. It would be better to do this before seeing the homeopath so that the child’s stress caused non responsiveness to all therapeutic interventions could be addressed. I understand that in practice getting a hyperactive child calmed down is verging on the unobtainable on a normal diet.OTHER HOMEOPATHIC APPROACHESRobin Murphy ND and his naturopathic approach are not mentioned in this book. The Homeopathic Repertory is hard to use unless you have learned its idiosyncrasy. Robin Murphy ND has updated the repertory using modern language with a great index so it is possible for even a layman to find a list of remedies for most conditions. Robin Murphy says that a naturopathic approach for a beginner homeopathy is to determine what the most important condition is for a patient. This requires a bit of naturopathic understanding of how the systems of the body work. Then one looks in the repertory for a list of remedies that clinically have been found to work for that condition. Then one reads the Materia Medica for each of these remedies to see if one seems to fit the patient better than the others. It takes much less time than a full repitorization and can often find a remedy that can improve the health of the patient even though the remedy is not the similinum.POTENCY OF REMEDIES. Robin Murphy likes the gentile low potency remedies like 6x -12x or 6c-12c to start a patient out on. If the low potency doesn’t work as well as expected he raises the potency until he find the potency that is right for the patient. He finds that low potency work when the high potency 200c, 1M, CM or MM remedies do give long term benefit. This may explain why classical homeopathy is only helping 35% of the autistic patients. This question of potency is a significant issue in Homeopathy with the classical practitioners almost always using what Murphy considers to be high potency powerful remedies. These high potency remedies may have less of the original substance but they have a much higher energy level. This is evidenced by the practitioner only needing to give the remedy once a month or even less frequently. In contrast the low potency 6-12 x, c or LM remedies need to be repeated one or more times a day. Murphy explains his use of low potency by saying low potency is like a gentle stimulus. In contrast a high potency is a powerful command that can forces a change in metabolic functioning. Murphy finds that the low potencies work better in patients with long standing chronic conditions. He found that many patients with chronic conditions would briefly respond to a high potency remedy but need to have it repeated after a week. The response to the second dose would be less and the patient might not respond to a third dose. By that point it was too late and going to a low potency of the remedy often has no effect. I mention this because of the 65% of the autistic patients that are not being helped by homeopathy. Is choice of potency a cause? It is also worth noting that a classical homeopath will consider a 200c to be a low potency when compared to the M, MM, or CM potencies they often prefer. The higher the potency the more exact the choice of remedy must be. But a low potency remedy is often of some benefit even if it doesn’t fit the patient. Dandelion root in herbal form and low potency will have an effect on everyones liver. When the similinum cannot be found for whatever reason using several different well chosen low potency remedy is often of enough benefit to achieve a significant improvement according to Robin Murphy. Choice of the remedy is only 50% of homeopathic care, case management is equally important.Most classical homeopathys are unaware that Hahnemann developed the low potency LM remedies at the end of his life while working with nutritionally deficient people in Paris France. These patients did not respond well to the homeopathic approach that had worked so well in his native Germany. Of course the low potency remedies have the huge disadvantage of not giving an aggravation, so the homeopath often doesn't know for several weeks or months if it is working or not. The slow improvement in the patient on low potency remedies can easily be missed or credited to some other therapy or supplement used and not due to the Homeopathic remedy.Dr Vikas Sharma MD from India starts autistic patients on the low potency LM remedies for their gentleness and higher response rate. He mentions on his website many of the same remedies mentioned in Mike Andrews book.UNUSUAL OBSTACLES to a cure. Some books say that detoxification abilities are depressed in most autistic children and reestablishing detoxification is necessary for recovery. NAC (the amino acid cysteine) is needed by the body to make glutathione which is the master detoxification compound in the human body. Some autistic children have low levels of cysteine and some have high levels of cysteine in their body. High levels make it undesirable to supplement with NAC. So it is not advisable for all patients.The DAN (Defeat Autism Now) approach has been found to address some obstacles to recovery from autism. They give nutritional supplements so the body has all the nutrients needed to have a healthy functioning brain and nervous system. They heal the leaky Gut through avoidance of allergenic foods like gluten and dairy etc. Attempts are made to reduce mercury levels through dangerous and ineffective methods like intravenous chelation. A safer method of removing mercury has been discovered by Christopher Shade PhD. of Quicksilver Scientific. If there are pathogens like viruses, bacteria, fungus or parasites then medicines are given to kill them. The DAN approach helps many autistic patients but not all. The problems of the DAN approach are many, not the least of which is compliance of the autistic child. Mike Andrews discusses these problems with the DAN approach. He says that homeopathy can work to kill pathogens and detoxify the body in a safer manner than the DAN approaches. Hopefully he will write another book and go into detail as to how this is done homeopathically. This is important because as much as 40% of autistic cases are pathogen /Lyme disease mediated.HEAD BANGING is a symptom that many autistic patients have. The internet says that some autism is caused by an overactive anterior pituitary gland. Head banging could be the child’s attempts to stop this over activity of a gland in the head. Many homeopathic remedies can reduce head banging. They are listed in the repertory under “Beats, head” “Knocks, head” and “Strikes, the head”. Weekly Cranial balancing has been found to reduce head banging but the practice often returns after the sessions are stopped.

After extensive researchings, I've reached the conclusion that homeopathy doesn't work at all, and obviously not for autism, however there are some exceptions. The homeopathy works for who believe, like a religion, as a placebo effect and for who doesn't knows what they are getting .

Not much material in the book.