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| Evan & his sister |
She Refused Her Doctor’s Wishes (Drugs) for Her Son’s Autism. Two Years Later and the Results Speak for Themselves
Alt Health Works, 17 April 2015
By Jennifer Giustra-Kozek , LPC
At 4 ½ years old, my sweet and loving son Evan was diagnosed with ADHD, Apraxia and high functioning autism – Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). Although mostly happy, he started displaying episodes of anger and become anxious and obsessive/compulsive (OCD). He began fixating on many things and lost the ability to sleep soundly.
I often felt hopeless and frustrated with the progress of his recovery during our intense therapy sessions and I knew from experience as a licensed psychotherapist that medication would be introduced as the only other viable treatment option.
I recognized that medication may provide immediate relief, but because I am a psychotherapist also knew that these medications can cause many problems and come with numerous side effects. In some cases they even cause increased anger, depression, fogginess, anxiety, numbness, seizures, tics, paranoia and even psychosis.
I witnessed many of these effects on the children I saw for therapy. Some moms came back to tell me that it turned their child into someone they did not recognize. However, I never really questioned the authority of the medical professionals.
“Who was I to question a doctor that had many more years of experience and schooling to back their theories?” I thought.
As life would have it, all the training and education I received in graduate school and by prestigious psychiatrists about the benefits of medication would be challenged when I had my own child with similar symptoms.
I have discovered that although well intentioned, many mainstream doctors are too quick to prescribe medication to cover up symptoms without digging deeper to find the underlying causes and numerous nutritional deficiencies plaguing our kids.
Our children become out of balance (biochemically). Their immune systems go haywire and their guts become inflamed due to food intolerances, processed foods, food dyes, chemicals, GMOs, yeast, etc. This often can cause inflammation in the brain and nutritional deficiencies – leading to frequent illness (chronic ear infections, illness, bronchitis & asthma) and ultimately neurological dysfunction.
I discovered that we have more neurons lining our intestinal wall than we have in our brain and spinal cord combined. The gut and brain have a very intimate relationship. So, when the gut isn’t happy, neither is the brain. I have also uncovered a few gene mutations preventing the proper utilization and metabolic functioning of essential nutrients necessary for proper brain functioning. These disorders are often linked to constipation, food allergies & sensitivities, heavy metal build-up, adrenal fatigue, thyroid problems and hypoglycemia.
I was extremely skeptical at first.
However, as I started doing a tremendous amount of research, I became to uncover the root causes of these disorders. I started addressing Evan’s gut issues with the help of an awesome naturopath and other functional medicine doctors and began healing him from a deeper level.
We started by healing his gut wall and eliminating all of his offending foods and reducing inflammation and gut permeability so that the nutrients he was eating and the supplements we were giving him would get absorbed properly.
We continued treating Evan with nutrition and biomedical methods. We starting taking advantage of the many Eastern Medicine therapies and treatments such as acupuncture, and energy healing, as well. I discovered that over the course of treatment Evan started improving exponentially in all areas of development, including, emotionally, socially, physically and academically.
I highly recommend that this “avenue of healing” be explored if your child suffers from ADD/ADHD, PDD, Asperger’s, Allergies, Apraxia or Autism.
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