What's It Like After Recovery From Autism?

A Day In Our Lives...


We've mentioned before that our son is recovered from autism. Recovery means the damage has been stopped and he is not getting worse nor just staying at the same state of functioning but has improved immensely. Do we believe it can be 'cured'? No, not from what we've seen in our own child but many of the issues and symptoms can be improved so that they are no longer detectable or there at all.


So, our son has moved on into young adulthood. There are still daily and weekly issues for him. When he was really ill with the Autism his body did not grow at a normal rate in weight, height, or maturation. It was like he was living in an alternate universe in which time passed slower for him than for the rest of us and his body appeared to mature and age slower. He also seemed to mature slower in social, emotional, and academic areas. He has even asked us a few times in his later teens if there was a way for us to just change his birth year and move it back by two years.


One of the big causes for the slow growth overall was the gut disease that accompanies most, if not all kids with autism. Once we cleaned up and healed his gut he grew and appeared to age at a normal rate. Unfortunately for him, that was towards the end of the growing years. He will never be a large or tall man but he has been slowly creeping up in height and weight. At present he is about 5'4" which is taller than many of the medical professionals had predicted years ago.


Once his body was cleaned up, including bringing an immune system that was not functioning properly back on line, he also began to mature and grow emotionally and socially at least double speed of a typical child. People who knew him wouldn't believe their eyes when they would meet him 4 - 6 month later. When he became more comfortable with social situations it turned things around and he craved the experiences. He went from not being able to attend a social event to being out 4 out of 7 nights a week at functions. We find often we are presented with issues that we never thought we would have to deal with when he was so deep into the autism that he had.


As I said before he is recovered, not cured. So with that said, he still has to take care of himself and live a life clear from toxins, foods that cause inflammation of his gut, certain kinds of medicines, and he has to take a few supportive items that help his gut to run well. If he allows his total body burden of toxins and stress (physical and emotional) to grow too large his body/brain will begin to regress backwards.


This past summer he was hired as a camp counselor. This was an amazing opportunity for him and he really changed and grew from the experience. One of the challenges was that he lived at the camp the entire summer. As a young adult we let him make his own choices about taking care of his body and gut. During the summer he stopped taking the things he needed to support his gut such as digestive enzymes, probiotics, and a few other items. He also did not pay attention to how his gut was working and take action to keep it in good condition.


When he came home by the end of the summer he was showing quite a few symptoms of autism but he wasn't really behaving too autistic - just a little here and there. These were symptoms that some doctors might say are co-existing, if they recognize them as something seen often in children with autism, but we believe they are outward, detectable signs that his immune system and gut aren't doing as well as they were before.


Symptoms he was showing were: warts, constipation that was becoming chronic, severe athletes foot, severe dandruff, big sugar cravings, a lot of pimples, sensitivity to chemicals, sensitivity and gag reflex coming back with several foods, sensory processing issues, depression, anxiety, irritability, and extreme inflexibility over many things in daily life. These were all symptoms that disappeared as we healed his gut and body and brought his immune system back on line.


He saw his doctor who confirmed that these were all indeed coming back and that they were signs of his gut and immune system struggling.


I guess what I want to tell the other parents out there is even if you get to a point where you feel you can say your child is recovered from autism, your child may still be vulnerable and it is important to teach your child they will need to do the right things for their body to maintain their health. Unfortunately, as our child is learning, that means you may not be able to eat the same food as everyone else and do things that stress your body that many other teens and young people do.