Doctors who work with autism.

Need to update this heading (this post was written in 2011), originally this was titled just D.A.N. Doctors but as we no longer use that term, it’s time to update that heading. In 2008, at the very beginning of our journey, we decided to seek out a doctor who was treating children with autism, or at least open to recovering the health of a child with autism. Originally this involved using the D.A.N. acronym because that indicated doctors were open to the idea of recovering children from autism. Unfortunately, much of the time, not just the treatment but simply the idea of recovering a child from autism sparked controversy and anger amongst different people on different sides of the fence. I tried to stay out of the arguments because we were focused on recovery from overall poor health and the intense behaviors that we saw daily. We choose to seek out doctors who described themselves as “Integrative practitioners”, or “biomedical” practitioners with the intention of recovering our son from what had been labeled autism yes, but mostly to improve behavior, gut health, depression, sadness, insomnia and a whole host of other symptoms that simply made his life miserable.

We were lucky enough in the beginning to have an opportunity to work with Dr.Szakacs from the Center for Autism and Integrative Health based in Connecticut. This practice was shared by Dr. Szakacs and Dr. Nancy O’Hara, so I felt like I was in really great hands as both of these doctors were open to working with a child with autism. Dr. Szakacs traveled to our city once every few months and in between I would connect via email.

Since Dr. Szakacs decided not to travel here any longer we haven’t had much luck with a local D.A.N. Dr. The one person who we thought might fit the bill turned out to not be so helpful and we ended up moving the entire family to a local MD who is just an amazing doctor and takes plenty of time with our kids. He makes them feel at ease and is really open to me asking questions and talking about options for our son. It turns out that his autism is no longer an issue and what we are really looking at in the long term is managing our son’s behavior. Most of the other stuff is medically related anyway, things like managing his asthma or just general sickness, etc. so I hesitate to say it, but we feel we no longer have a need for a D.A.N. Doctor as much as we once did.

The great part of working with Dr.Szakacs was her willingness to discover and implement new ideas and treatments. She worked with me to bring down our son’s yeast and other problems associated with his parasite, although we never did get it under control while we were working with her. However, her ideas and knowledge were amazing and she really kept up with his supplements and other ways to keep him moving forwards. I last worked with Dr. Szakacs in March of 2008 but she certainly helped no end to get our son to another level in his treatment.

This was 2008 and my last email update was:

Just an update, *********  is doing great, he is just so cool, (still quite hyper) but he is starting to show affection and his conversation is amazing. His teachers wrote me yesterday saying “he has started giving us hugs, we are so excited” LOL Very cool. Anyway, we are still seeing the naturopath or is it homeopath? Whichever is the one that does that bioset thing. Anyway, we are set to go back on Apr. 8th and start a 6-week course with her. It is her opinion that the bacteria load is still causing major problems! she is going to start working on that, he is now taking

Nystatin 2, 500mg x 2 times a day
Taurine 2 x 2 per day
Folic acid 2 x 2 (1200mg) per day
Brainchild vitamins 3 tsp x 2 a day
Brainchild minerals 2 tsp x 1 per day
Probiotic 2 x 2 per day
Pre-Biotic 2 x 2 per day
Iron 1 x 1tsp Mon/Wed/Fri
B12 2 x 1 per day (although the Homeopath thinks this is neutral for him)
Transdermal Glutathione as prescribed, twice per day.
The Pycnogenol (sp?) was neutral for him in her opinion.
He is off the Pro EFA’s she thought the Omega 6 was causing him problems.
He is off the saccromysis for the same reason.

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Our son has always taken supplements, probiotics, fish oils, iron, etc., and at this time he was still taking the transdermal (cream) glutathione which we rubbed on his back, we later switched to liquid glutathione which we prefer, and seems to work better and faster. We also switched to an injectable methylated B12, which we hadn’t wanted to do at this time due to his fear of needles and our inability to explain why and how to him but now he does the shot himself when we need him to, and it’s no big deal.  I loved the D.A.N. approach to balancing out the body, their desire to treat first with diet and supplements and then work through other options to help my son. In my opinion, Dr. Szakacs was a great resource for me just starting down the path of biomedical treatments for our son.

For more information on integrative protocols and other treatments for health and wellness go to Dr. O’Hara’s website or the Autism Research Institute conference page.