There is a well established treatment pathway for autism that involves early intervention therapies. These therapies are important and can significant help children on the spectrum. These therapies including psychology, speech pathology and occupational therapy will be the backbone of your child's treatment plan. You are probably already utilising these therapies, so I won't go into much detail on those treatments in this post. The purpose of this post is to offer some additional approaches and understanding.
Most of us don't have access to or have the funds to utilise a skilled integrative health practitioner right from the start. As such, we need to make some improvements to health and lifestyle first. An integrative health practitioner will suggest you do this anyway, so why not start now.
The health and lifestyle changes that I mention here are not to be considered medical advice and are my opinion only. You should seek advice from a qualified health professional able to provide specific advice The ideas below are general only.
Consider start with changes to the diet that remove potentially inflammatory foods. Consider implementing an elimination diet protocol that works for you. You can find many good options from simple internet searches and books. Elimination diets remove likely foods that are causing inflammation, then reintroduce them one-by-one and monitor symptoms.
Common inflammatory foods includes:
- Gluten
- Diary, particularly milk.
- Eggs
- Sugar
Our son had noticeable improvements in his wellbeing and symptoms quite quickly from eliminating milk and gluten. This gave us incredible hope and motivation to continue. We knew that we were on the right track.
Increase the amount of vegetables in the diet while reducing processed foods. Focus on nutrient dense foods.
Our default these days is to make sure we are filling our kids up with food. We believe that we need to provide enough energy for our children to grow and thrive, so we want to fill them up. I urge you to stop thinking like that! Please focus on quality food. That's where health comes from.
If you are ready for some fine-tuning and potential supplements, that's where you should seek help from a good integrative health practitioner who can run diagnostic tests and specific advice.
For more details on alternative strategies to help your child with Autism, please visit our post about
healing autism. There are many additional strategies and therapies that can be very helpful that you may not have explored yet, such as those to help with noise sensitivities and primitive reflexes.