All the tests that folks talk about

All the tests that folks talk about « Gryffin's Tail:

This was from a conversation on a list.


Great answer Cheryl. Do you have a blog entry on this? Would be a nice addition if not.


(redacted)


On daily basis, there are many tests are talked about on this mailing list and since I am a beginner with all biomed, everything sounds to me like alien. I find all this information super overwhelming and takes time to digest everything.


So here goes my questions -
- All the tests that anyone talks about, are they all suggested and ordered but you (DAN!) doctor?


Any MD/DO can order any of the labs. Some you can order yourself


- Do you need special lab to do these tests or regular labs do these tests?


I rarely use a specialty lab. Great Plains and Doctors Data take insurance, though. I think of the specialty labs, the most important one is the CSA and OAT. Not all of the information is reliable but it's defnitely helpful.


- How often these tests are covered by the insurance? (of course, it depends on the insurance but if you have a 'good' insurance, like we have Oxford)


The only test that I've found not to be covered is food allergy testing. IgG testing just isn't mainstream enough. But only if the lab you see takes your insurance. I do believe you can self submit to your insurance if the lab doesn't take it but it will be at a lower rate.


Other labs, like the non-specialty labs are usually all covered by your plan but definitely still depends on how good your coverage is.


- Is there any comprehensive list of tests somewhere up on the net those can be performed for testing and treating our kids with the explanation i.e. what this test is for and what the result means? So that I can read up on that before I approach any doctor.


Oi. That's a lot of possible tests. But the ones to start with would be a **CSA (comp. stool analysis) and **OAT (organic acid test). **Food allergy (or you could do a food journal instead... but if you don't, Alletess has one for $89 that you can have your doc sign off on if willing.) --these 3 are not, imo, something you need to do often.


But a good place to start for a newbie to get some baselines.


viral titers: HHV1-6, any vaccine titers you want,


AntiDnase and ASO titers (PANDAS),


Ig and all subclasses,


CBC + CMP,


T&B lymph/NK cells,


homocysteine


Things to consider at some point:


**Urine Amino Acid (specialty lab - I don't think it's that important but if you have proten issues, could be better than nothing.)


thyroid


cortisol


other hormones (pregnenelone, progesterone, testosterone, IGF-1)


Vitamin D (bet you money you're low! ;) )


other vitamins and minerals (ferritin, zinc, copper, etc)


**hair metals test through GPL/DDI(or Labbio urinary porphyrins if you prefer to consider IV chelation - we do AC so hair test only - and not expensive if not covered by insurance)


**Yasko genetics test ($500/one time deal specialty lab not covered by insurance and nothing comparable in regular labs but I do believe you can get *some* of the genes through a regular lab. I think Toni might be able to tell you which ones. These are all metabolic genes.)


Toxoplasmosis


Mycoplasma


Lyme - you can get the Western Blot through a local lab but it's not as sensitive as a specialty lab (**Igenex) which is not covered by insurance. What makes this specialty lab special is that it actually gives you parasite information for all of them and more band information. Western blot I believe only test for borrelia and the other major one that I can't think of right now. The lyme parents can give better info on it than I can. It's expensive, I think it's $1800.


I marked all the specialty lab tests with a ** and really, they aren't that many and not stuff you need to do all at once or too soon. You could easily break them up if you choose to do them.


As for how to read them...that's steak, not popcorn*. The specialty labs will have explanations and nice little KISS charts that tell you exactly what's going on with an explanation attached. They aren't fully explained well but it's a start.


The regular labs, well...it's hard to tell a mainstream doctor that most people are low in vitamin D to even get one to test it (which I find funny that they say most people are *not* low in it but will never test anyone to know that!) And GPs tend to not understand half of the labs that cross them anyway. Any mainstream endocrinologist will tell you that the lab reference ranges for thyroid are too wide and where most GPs tell you it's fine because it's in range, an endocrinologist will tell you that you need thyroid. Soooo, how to read them is a loaded question. High viral titers a mainstream doctor will tell you that it just means you've been exposed. They don't take anything else into consideration. It's an impossible question to answer, unfortunately.


*For an explanation, click here. I shamelessly stole it from Patrick Rothfuss. He rocks. Buy his books, they also rock.

Children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms have altered digestive genes

Children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms have altered digestive genes:

'via Blog this'

Vaccination's vexed link to autism

Nice, calm article from someone that doesn't have a vested interest.

Vaccination's vexed link to autism:

'via Blog this'

Yay, UC DAVIS MIND Institute! I <3 you.

Of course, this is not news to us biomed families but if just one thing could bring us some vindication for being called whack jobs, HERE IT IS. This is where we need to be looking to see why biomed helps some and not others. This is where we need to be looking to figure out where to start with our kids, who should start where in biomed and how it should be done. This is where we start looking to come up with an actual diagnostic effort and acceptable protocols for mainstream acceptance. This is where we stop guessing and start proving.

Does anyone else find it telling that it's an article from Australia and not the US?

US researchers' discovery promises answers on autism

RESEARCHERS have for the first time identified two biologically different strains of autism in a major breakthrough being compared with the discovery of different forms of cancer in the 1960s.

Read the full article here.

After you read the article, come back and tell me in the comments what kind of autism you suspect/know your child has.

My son has immune and hormone dysfunction. It's likely the hormone dysfunction is a result of the immune dysfunction but hey, that might be digging a bit too deep for the uninitiated. Let's keep it simple for now.

What about you?

Should we even try to recover our kids?

I know, I promised a post on recovery and what it means but I got sidetracked and offer you this instead, which is sorta-kinda the same thing. But not. I still plan to post one on recovery, though. Pinky promise.
In response to Jim C. Hines' review of The Speed of Dark, I'm posting this here because what I have to say really isn't appropriate for his blog comments. I also thought that maybe some of my readers have read the book and might have something to add and would want to go to his blog to comment. I haven't actually read the book so this is really in response to the question he poses:should we "cure" those with autism? There was a little more to it, and I'm not even going to touch the high vs. low functioning topic today, but that's the basic question.


As someone that has a son that is mostly recovered from autism, it's not something that I can understand as being something that changes one's life to the degree that this kind of moral question asks. The book may be showing a "cure" in a different angle than real life, but in reality, there is already help. Not enough help, but some.


In real life, recovery is not a cure because autism is not a mental disorder that needs curing (something the NDers and biomed parents can all agree upon, but that's as far as the agreement goes). It's a bunch of biological inconsistencies and malfunctions that end up creating neurological symptoms. In some people, these symptoms can't be corrected because the underlying condition can't be corrected or found. I would venture to add that it's not for lack of trying. Each child is unique in their issues. There are no two children with autism that present exactly the same way. But with thousands of kids recovering from autism every year, it's hard to imagine that western medicine is right. A lot of people can be helped, and without the use of antipsychotics or antidepressants.


The real question is: what's really going on with our kids? Why does the diet work for some and not for others? Why is it that treatments for other chronic illnesses, like CFS or Lyme or any of the other many things biomed parents and practitioners generally discuss, work on our kids, too? Has anyone ever noticed that even some people with depression seem to recover through biomed? Why has no one in traditional western medicine noticed the pattern? Or maybe they have and just refuse to acknowledge or explore it? Okay, so that's way more than one question. You get my drift.


Not all kids can be treated the same. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. It boils down to this: different biological issues for different children (and adults). But they all produce neurological symptoms.


Is it fair to expect that a child that has nothing but diarrhea doesn't have something wrong with his/her bowels? They call it "normal" in autism instead of asking why. Prevacid is what you get. This is only one of may examples of what plagues these children. Sensitivity to sound. Why is it that when you treat a child for PANDAS, this sensitivity goes away? The OCD goes away? Why is it that when another child is treated for lyme, that child becomes completely and totally recovered?


Because there are really still very few cases of autism. It's still as rare as it's ever been, if it's ever been at all.
Recovery doesn't change who a person is. It gives them the chance to live life the way they want. Being able to not live life with an aching stomach doesn't change the core of a person. It just means their stomach doesn't hurt. Which in the case of developing children, many times means they can sleep better, eat better and focus better. Which amazingly enough, means they function better. Whoda thunk?


So is the question really about changing the core of a person with autism or is it about healing the medical problems they have? A person who thinks in pictures is still going to think in pictures. Having a healthy body isn't going to change that. A savant isn't going to suddenly stop being a savant because their vitamin deficiency was treated and they stopped scripting Thomas the Tank Engine.


My son went from moderate/severe autism to pretty much typical (I always say "pretty much" or "mostly" because he still has raging ADD - we're working on it) and not once did it change him as a person - except when I gave him antidepressants but that's another post. He is still the same lovable, caring and funny little boy he always has been. He's thrived and become so much more. And he's able to tell me exactly how what few issues he has left bothers him and makes him hate himself and frustrates him. I'm not going to lay down and allow him to grow up hating himself and then deciding he has to accept that this is him and he doesn't need to change, all the while silently hating every minute of his life - nor will I let someone else convince him of that.


No matter what, he'll be happy with who he is and I'll encourage him and love him and teach him to love himself, but that doesn't mean I won't strive to help him become who he wants to become.


There's a reason why autistic adults have a high suicide rate. If it's hard for neurotypical people to watch and be around, if it's hard for a mother to watch her son struggle, it's 100 times harder to be the autistic person. Everyone wants to be happy and comfortable with who they are, including those with ASD.


Now, this whole argument is probably geared more toward the management of symptoms with antipsychotics, antidepressants and the like and I've kind of hijacked it for biomed. But that's what happens when the argument is so vague. Could mean traditional medicine, could mean biomed. I dunno. And maybe those drugs do change a person. Like I said earlier, when I gave my son antidepressants, they definitely changed him. He was, quite literally, psychotic. At best, they are only meant to manage symptoms, and they do a very poor job of it. Still, some people do very well on them. I can't argue with that.


But the recovery I'm talking about, the recovery us "crazy moms" are talking about, doesn't change a person. It doesn't change the way a person thinks or views life.


Wait. I'm wrong. It does change people. It makes them feel normal. Or maybe a better way to say it is not that they feel normal, for what is normal anyway, but that they no longer feel abnormal. It takes away the pain they aren't supposed to have. Being in pain (physically or emotionally) doesn't make a person special or unique. It just makes them in pain. To go through life needing to bang your head against a wall long after the bleeding started, is that really something you want to keep?

Packing up and moving

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I've decided to take the plunge and move my blog to Wordpress. Eventually I will be setting up an actual website with my very own domain name that will house my blog and Wordpress is just better for that. And I still get complaints of how blogger is working out. Or rather, not working out, for readers.

What does this mean for you, dear reader? Not much. You can continue to stay right where you are if you are happy with your subscription just the way it is. I will continue to mirror the feed on Blogger because I'm just sweet like that. I don't want to disrupt anyone's happy feeling and it isn't any skin off my back to continue mirroring here. But you may have to deal with seeing shortcodes at the beginning of every post. In order to mirror, I have to email all my posts. I haven't managed to figure out any other way to do it after extensive googling. (I wonder if I can put them at the end? I'll have to try a test of that.)

But for those that are unhappy with Blogger or are irritated by the way the page doesn't seem to load correctly for so many of you, there is an alternative. You can now also find Gryffin's Tail here. I can't make it as feature rich because I'm not self-hosting it yet but maybe someday.

This is actually my first test run on seeing how well emailing all my posts work out. Wish me luck! If all goes well, I shall continue on to focusing on plain old blogging and will get the recovery post up as soon as I can.

Summer reflections

As the summer break comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on how it went.

It's definitely been enlightening. My mostly recovered son didn't behave so mostly recovered while I was on vacation. As a matter of fact, he definitely had me worried for a second that I had accepted recovery as a fact a bit too soon.

Then I remembered.

Oh yeah.

I tried to stop the Valtrex again. Epic fail.

If anyone has ever had any doubt that autism is a poorly functioning biological system, all they'd have to do is take my son for a week or two and stop giving him antivirals. The difference is that big. Even in recovery he still has major ADHD issues. Having to deal with both the ADHD and autism can just be exhausting.

Got back on it and he's mostly back to normal. It will probably take until school starts to get him back to where he was.

Which brings me to another thought. My sil said something to me while I was visiting that made me realize I probably need to do a post on recovery and what it means. We were discussing water and how good Gryffin was around it and in it. And that moved on to how many children with autism drown because they have no concept of danger or drowning, or some don't feel pain or whatever it is that leads a child with autism to jump into water and drown. I told her water was still a concern for me even though I knew he was safe around water. Old habits.

She couldn't understand why I'd still be worried. She said, "But I thought you said he was recovered?"

And that's when I realized that recovery is very misunderstood. My sil is no fool. She's one smart cookie. She owns and runs a learning lab where she teaches struggling kids how to process information better and she's had ASD students. So this wasn't something I would've thought she would misunderstand. What I failed to realize is: why wouldn't she? She doesn't live with it everyday. She doesn't treat it. She doesn't research it and it doesn't engulf her life. She may not have even heard of recovery until the moment I first told her Gryffin was mostly recovered (yes, I always say "mostly recovered"). My expectation that people (anyone, not just my sil) know what I mean when I say recovered is completely unrealistic and unfair on my part.

A child recovered from autism is not necessarily issue free. Like a child with asthma, they live a mostly normal life if they have an inhaler.

So I really need to write a post on what recovery means. All the different forms and variations and how it's perceived. I'm going to post that sometime in the next week.

School is closing in on us and I feel like I haven't really had a summer. My NT son had his tonsils/adenoids removed right when we got back from vacation and that kept us homebound for a while. I wanted to do some more chelating this summer and never got around to it. Especially since I had to get Gryffin back on track with his antiviral. This summer seems to have just completely gotten away from me.

Pfffft.

At least we had some fun, though. We spent time visiting with our families and friends, something we just don't get to do enough.