Healing Our Autistic Children: A Medical Plan for Restoring Your Child's Health, by Dr. Julie A Buckley, is a cross between a "my family's story of autism" book and a "this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism." I've seen plenty of the former, and at least a dozen of the latter, but not a cross between them 'til now.
The author is a pediatrician, and of course, the mother of an autistic child. The book itself is more heavily slanted toward "this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism." Interestingly, it comes with a personal look into how biomedical doctors are viewed and treated by other doctors. (Spoiler: not well.)
This is perhaps unsurprising, as the neurodiversity movement and much of medical world views autism as the result of a brain difference (or disorder, depends on who you ask), and only that. Biomedical doctors tend to view autism as a medical problem, and only that. Both sides think the other side is deluded and wasting resources better spent helping autistic people using their methods.
I tend to read these biomedical books with a certain amount of annoyance, tempered with patience. Words like "healing" and "reversing" and "erasing" are just ways of avoiding the word "cure." They do that because saying "cure" around the neurodiversity community tends to produce rather rabidly unfriendly responses.
To understand why that is... imagine you could go into someone's genetics, and change their genetic heritage. You could turn an African American person into a white person. Now, it's well-established that black people in the US get a really raw deal. Words like "school-to-prison pipeline" and "racial profiling" and "police brutality" come up pretty often. Now, if you offered the African American community the chance to become white, what do you think they'd say?
I'm not saying every last black person in the US would say no, and possibly rudely. Some autistic people do want to not be autistic, especially if they suffer a lot from complications relating to it. But to my mind, it's kind of the same question. Asking "would you like to be cured?" is like asking someone if they would like part of their culture and personal identity ripped out of them.
Regardless of the exact cause of autism (still undetermined after dozens of years of research), I do think that being autistic is an identity thing, at least as much as it is a disability. That perspective would likely horrify the author of this book, who likely defines autism as "all the gut problems, food intolerances, metabolism problems, and social difficulties my child/patient has to deal with." I've commented on this tendency before.
The truth, as it often ends up, is probably somewhere between "autism is the differences in my brain and my personal culture" and "autism is a medical problem that needs to be cured." I tend to favor, "Autism is a set of brain differences, no two quite the same, and is a culture as well as a diagnosis. People with autism often have various health issues, depression, anxiety, and social difficulties. These problematic things should be treated for best results, but the culture around us should also change to accept us, rather than us having to always change to fit in." Which covers both camps, but satisfies neither. I've been told the best compromises make no one happy, so maybe I'm winning?
Anyway, the author has a gift for metaphor, and she uses it well in service of describing her preferred treatments for autism. These include supplementation, killing off any yeast infections, adopting the gluten-free/dairy-free diet, use of hyperbaric chambers, and chelation if needed.
I've discussed supplementation recently, so I'll leave that one alone. I don't think I've ever commented on yeast infections, though. I take probiotics regularly, and one of the things that does is keep a particular type of yeast, candida, under control. Apparently people with autism can have a massive overgrowth of candida, which has disastrous effects on the intestines and the body in general.
The gluten-free, casein- (dairy) free diet is... kind of hard pill to swallow for most people. Gluten is in most breads, grains, cereals, pastas, etc. And dairy is in cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, etc. Now, just imagine having to cut all of that out of your diet, all at once. That's where this book recommends you start. It has good reason to do so, and the author explains in decent enough detail. I myself have gone mostly dairy-free, with good results. I am still flatly refusing to try going gluten-free, though, because of how much of an intense headache it would be.
Hyperbaric chambers are those high pressure chambers they use to treat the bends in divers. They help the body re-oxygenize at a much higher rate than normally possible. This isn't the first book I've read that suggested they have good effects for autistic people and their parents, and it probably won't be the last.
I really don't have a decent opinion about chelation. There's a lot of conflicting stories being tossed around about its effectiveness and its danger level. I would tend to suspect that it's a medical procedure, which can be dangerous to anyone under the right circumstances, and that it probably shouldn't be messed with if you don't know what you're doing. This book has a guide to chelation, though it suggests it only if everything else isn't working as well as it should be.
The book's format is such that, when you go to see a pediatrician for your autistic child, you would take this book with you, having read the appropriate chapter. It's structured around six doctor visits, in about as many chapters, and you can point to the various scientific descriptions, or read from parts to the book, to hopefully help your doctor understand what it is you want and why.
Woven in with all that are stories of the author's own child, and several other children she's treated in the course of her practice. She seems to regard them all fondly, and as individuals rather than problems to be solved, which is points in her favor if you ask me.
The author is a pediatrician, and of course, the mother of an autistic child. The book itself is more heavily slanted toward "this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism." Interestingly, it comes with a personal look into how biomedical doctors are viewed and treated by other doctors. (Spoiler: not well.)
This is perhaps unsurprising, as the neurodiversity movement and much of medical world views autism as the result of a brain difference (or disorder, depends on who you ask), and only that. Biomedical doctors tend to view autism as a medical problem, and only that. Both sides think the other side is deluded and wasting resources better spent helping autistic people using their methods.
I tend to read these biomedical books with a certain amount of annoyance, tempered with patience. Words like "healing" and "reversing" and "erasing" are just ways of avoiding the word "cure." They do that because saying "cure" around the neurodiversity community tends to produce rather rabidly unfriendly responses.
To understand why that is... imagine you could go into someone's genetics, and change their genetic heritage. You could turn an African American person into a white person. Now, it's well-established that black people in the US get a really raw deal. Words like "school-to-prison pipeline" and "racial profiling" and "police brutality" come up pretty often. Now, if you offered the African American community the chance to become white, what do you think they'd say?
I'm not saying every last black person in the US would say no, and possibly rudely. Some autistic people do want to not be autistic, especially if they suffer a lot from complications relating to it. But to my mind, it's kind of the same question. Asking "would you like to be cured?" is like asking someone if they would like part of their culture and personal identity ripped out of them.
Regardless of the exact cause of autism (still undetermined after dozens of years of research), I do think that being autistic is an identity thing, at least as much as it is a disability. That perspective would likely horrify the author of this book, who likely defines autism as "all the gut problems, food intolerances, metabolism problems, and social difficulties my child/patient has to deal with." I've commented on this tendency before.
The truth, as it often ends up, is probably somewhere between "autism is the differences in my brain and my personal culture" and "autism is a medical problem that needs to be cured." I tend to favor, "Autism is a set of brain differences, no two quite the same, and is a culture as well as a diagnosis. People with autism often have various health issues, depression, anxiety, and social difficulties. These problematic things should be treated for best results, but the culture around us should also change to accept us, rather than us having to always change to fit in." Which covers both camps, but satisfies neither. I've been told the best compromises make no one happy, so maybe I'm winning?
Anyway, the author has a gift for metaphor, and she uses it well in service of describing her preferred treatments for autism. These include supplementation, killing off any yeast infections, adopting the gluten-free/dairy-free diet, use of hyperbaric chambers, and chelation if needed.
I've discussed supplementation recently, so I'll leave that one alone. I don't think I've ever commented on yeast infections, though. I take probiotics regularly, and one of the things that does is keep a particular type of yeast, candida, under control. Apparently people with autism can have a massive overgrowth of candida, which has disastrous effects on the intestines and the body in general.
The gluten-free, casein- (dairy) free diet is... kind of hard pill to swallow for most people. Gluten is in most breads, grains, cereals, pastas, etc. And dairy is in cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, etc. Now, just imagine having to cut all of that out of your diet, all at once. That's where this book recommends you start. It has good reason to do so, and the author explains in decent enough detail. I myself have gone mostly dairy-free, with good results. I am still flatly refusing to try going gluten-free, though, because of how much of an intense headache it would be.
Hyperbaric chambers are those high pressure chambers they use to treat the bends in divers. They help the body re-oxygenize at a much higher rate than normally possible. This isn't the first book I've read that suggested they have good effects for autistic people and their parents, and it probably won't be the last.
I really don't have a decent opinion about chelation. There's a lot of conflicting stories being tossed around about its effectiveness and its danger level. I would tend to suspect that it's a medical procedure, which can be dangerous to anyone under the right circumstances, and that it probably shouldn't be messed with if you don't know what you're doing. This book has a guide to chelation, though it suggests it only if everything else isn't working as well as it should be.
The book's format is such that, when you go to see a pediatrician for your autistic child, you would take this book with you, having read the appropriate chapter. It's structured around six doctor visits, in about as many chapters, and you can point to the various scientific descriptions, or read from parts to the book, to hopefully help your doctor understand what it is you want and why.
Woven in with all that are stories of the author's own child, and several other children she's treated in the course of her practice. She seems to regard them all fondly, and as individuals rather than problems to be solved, which is points in her favor if you ask me.
Read This Book If
You're a parent of an autistic child, and you're interested in a primer on the basics of biomedical autism treatments. This book is that, along with some personal stories and some very well-crafted metaphors to explain the complicated science. It's fairly approachable, combining the standard "my family's story with autism" with the other standard, "my professional opinions about autism treatment." It leans more towards the latter than the former, but explains its aims plainly and without being over-dramatic or pushy. The author genuinely wants to help you by laying out what she knows, in a clear and digestible fashion.
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