If you are looking for an explanatory read and roadmap to help recover your child I would suggest reading: “Autism, Pathways to Recovery” available as a free PDF download from Dr. Amy Yasko’s website, containing information that we can use to really help recover our children. The book is a fairly easy read and helps explain much about cleaning up a child’s health and environment to aid recovery. It also explains the methylation process and the cycles that go on in the human body to create homeostasis and well being. Many of our children have real, biological illnesses creating their mental health and physical wellness challenges. In addition to offering parent support, products and a wealth of great information, in my personal opinion, Dr. Amy Yasko’s site offers much in the way of explaining how we may have gotten here and more importantly, what to do next. Find Dr. Amy Yasko here.
May is Mental Health Month
May is mental health month, don’t know that it can be considered a “celebration” of mental health, but it’s high time we started discussing and being open about these challenges in our children and likewise, in adults.
I have been reading various blogs and posts in regard to this month’s subject and found this:
“In an attempt to increase knowledge about mental health issues among today’s youth, California passed a new law in 2013 requiring the addition of age-appropriate mental health curriculum to the Education Code. This law specifically states that all public schools within the state of California need to revise their Health Framework to include the integration of mental health education for grades K-12. … Our hope is that other local schools take the initiative to incorporate mental health issues into their classrooms. We also hope that other states recognize the importance of mental health education for youth and consider implementation of this new law. Let’s work together to better the future generations of America!”
Read full article from Psych Central here.
Wouldn’t it be great if that could really be achieved? Sad that it is even needed, but so many of our kids are either pushed out of schools and end up isolated in a home-school situation or the opposite happens, which in most cases is worse, the child is forced to try and manage with the little help the school is able or willing to offer and in the end the child either flunks out, commits suicide, is bullied relentlessly or worse, turns on the school in full force. It’s a sad story that we see all over today, more and more it seems our kids are having significant mental challenges and none more evident than when a child commits suicide or lets loose on a school, what we are doing doesn’t seem to be working, there is a new need out there, there are new problems being encountered by society today than was 20-30 years ago so inevitably new solutions are needed, let’s find a way to help raise these kids up rather than force them out!
Moving around webville and the mass of misinformation and discord among parents.
When we first started this journey, we spent hours researching places and things to do to solve ‘autism.’ The world wide web was there, but Facebook was in it’s infancy and information was limited to yahoo groups and email listservs mostly. Parents were active in sharing on these mediums and I learnt a lot. However, the information sharing was limited, and then along came Facebook. Now there are groups secret or otherwise galore to glean information on any possible therapy or intervention you can imagine. But the problem with that is, everyone has a different opinion, and their reasoning can sometimes make sense but sometimes it can be so way off base you wonder how they imagined it in the first place. There is no way of knowing if you are headed down a path to nowhere, there is no way to know before you start a therapy if it will give you any progression at all, some will actually cause regression in your child, but blind faith and a ravaging desire to make your child’s life as “typical” as possible drives you on. Having a child who has no friends, who is lonely, who doesn’t fit, who can’t just go with the flow, who can’t attend regular classes, who gets pulled out of classes for extra help, a child who is constantly tagged by teachers and other parents as “difficult”, a child who at home causes disruption, angst and fatigue at every turn – it is all exhausting and depressing and disheartening, so we do the only thing we can do, we try to fix it. We reach out to doctors, to MDs, to chiropractors, to naturopaths, to counselors, to psychiatrists, to anyone that will feasibly offer a solution, a fix, a “cure.”
Sometimes we stumble upon another parent’s success and we grab it with both hands (along with a pen to write the check), and other times we know we already tried that “amazing” therapy and failed out fantastically, sometimes we just don’t even have the energy or the overdraft left to pick up the phone to enquire. However, what is available (and best of all free) on all of these sites, forums and chat group are the other parents, other parents who understand your dilemma, other parents who have been there or are just getting to where you are, and they are all fighting to get their kids recognized, educated and productive. Use the forums, use the groups, join, make friends, and best of all swop stories, if nothing else that 1 in 6 kids with delays you keep hearing about or the 1 in 50 with autism or any of the other depressing statistics you see bandied around, the gaps are getting smaller and smaller, before too long kids with “challenges” will be the majority not the minority, and it is happening faster than anyone wants to admit. Hang in there parents of the world and unite for change is coming (we hope), really it has too, it must, otherwise the alternative doesn’t bare thinking about.
Mensah Medical. Progress Update, month 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and we quit
So we have now been on the supplements for 2 months. His regimen is 3 pills in the morning which is a compounded supplement mix including but not limited to targeted amounts for his size and weight and chemistry, then he takes 4 pills at lunch (2 mensah pills, and 1 vitamin E and 1 SAM-E), and 6 evening pills along the same lines as the AM formula. While this seems a lot, this is actually far less than he has taken in the past. When he was taking Truehope, he was taking triple that amount, so overall he is actually happier on this regimen. Month 1 was really nothing to report, but after a full second month we are beginning to notice changes. Progress has been slow but steady and it is my understanding that this is the goal. It has to be tackled long term not short term, as normalizing copper involves the copper releasing from his body. This has to be done slowly as going too fast could cause more harm than good. That’s ok, as long as we keep seeing progress, it is very exciting. Slow and steady wins the race in this it seems.
I rewatched the video on their website yesterday – you can watch here MENSAH MEDICAL, and it reinforced that slower is better, it was good to hear and pay attention to the things we know are going on in his body and realize that what happened in the long term is not going to change overnight. If you are looking for alternatives, or wondering what the options are, this is a great place to start. Yes, it is almost 2 hours long, but the last hour is questions and answers, which is a wealth of information in itself. If you are considering long term solutions, watching a 2 hour video searching for clues can be a great place to begin. 😀
So a quick update on Mensah. While I truly believe this is the most pressing part of our struggle my son refuses to swallow the pills anymore. No amount of begging, pleading, arguing, crying has made him change his mind. It was sad, he really was making progress. I wish there were just not so many pills to swallow. Certainly less than Truehope but still a large amount. The worst was the evening dose, it just kept making him throw up. I tried everything I could think of, bribery, coercion, feeding them in split doses, extra food, sweet food… nothing helped and he threw up every 4th or 5th time he took them. It was just making him more angry and frustrated. So we dropped back. Now he does take the lunchtime formula and the AM formula but not the evening doses. Is it enough? I don’t know, probably not. I want to keep slowly using what we can until we are maybe able to reintroduce the evening formula. Thankfully his depression is non existent at this point. He still gets sad but that seems more related to other things than a non stop overriding depression. Maybe what we got in him was enough but I do know that if we stay off long enough, the chances are great that his original issue will return. This is not over, we are just pausing for a while I suppose.
Mensah Medical
My new hero’s. After strongly debating whether to make another trip to Chicago after our last hideous adventure (I must stress NOT to Mensah Medical – which can be read on this site), Dr. Mensah assured us, that not only was he sure he could assist us but was pretty adamant he could. So after much heated debate and discussion and with trepidation in our hearts (and it has to be said, barely any money left on our credit card) off we trekked to Chicago.
The trip was truly amazing, for fun we took an extra day or 2 and did the sights, sounds and touristy parts of Chicago. Wow, what an amazing city. We went to Navy Pier and the aquarium and just wandered around as tourists do. The hotel had a fabulous sky-high swimming pool, which made the kid’s week.
Anyway, long story very very short, (I promise more to follow), after we came home, we did a bunch more blood and hair testing and had our results in about 6 weeks. Last week we started our new supplement protocol. B was happy as it has reduced his supplement load by half, all the Mensah suggestions are compounded which makes life so much easier (and cheaper). So far, B is doing amazing, he had made so many improvements on the multiple supplements we had him on but this seems to have gone a little further faster. I have taken a 1000 pictures in the last 2 weeks because he won’t stop smiling.
The anxiety is still evident, very much so, but he is getting along with his sister, he is being congenial to his grandparents, just all round being cooperative, funny and a pretty typical 10-year-old. Christmas is a tough time for him, he tends to look back not forwards and his heart breaks for his birth family, the holidays compound those insecurities and feelings and often all that we get accomplished during those times is – well – nothing, this year no regression. Sadness yes, but no regressions.
For now that will have to suffice. I will be back to post his protocol and results but in the meantime know that for now we are stable and actually better than that, we are happy. Life is good, things are still there needing to be resolved but this has taken the stress off for right now.
If you would like to know more about Mensah Medical or to see the seminars/webinars they have going on all the time in relation to mental health, their website is at Mensah Medical.