New here - Lyme, Autism

[Jojo10]

Hi! I'm new! I just found this site randomly entering lyme and autism in the search engine, and I'm extremely glad I did!

 

So, I'm a mother to two children. My youngest has moderate to severe autism; She's 29 months. She is non-verbal and has a lot of sensory issues and stims.

I recently saw a post where a lady mentioned that she had lyme and her child had autism and lyme.

 

I instinctively knew I most likely had lyme due to a bulls-eyes bite when I was 13 years old. I was very sick for many terrible teen years. I have used several antibiotics for acne and uti's since. I attended medical laboratory school, so I studied lyme. I was told that lyme is usually cured from 30-60 days of antibiotics, but that is controversial. Me, I trusted that knowledge, and I accepted that I had post lyme aches and pains that would probably be with me for life.

 

After I had my daughter and realized she was mentally disabled by DSM criteria (although I know she knows a lot more than we know), and I read the autism lyme connection...I had to get it bonfide positive or negative. I didn't screw around, I went directly to a LLMD (lyme doctor). I was tested through IGENEX.

Bam, CDC positive lyme. I cried pretty much all week feeling guilty. I also have celiac and hashimoto's and vit d def.

 

Now here we are, my daughter's blood was drawn for the lyme test along with mercury, manganese, cbcwd, cmp, TSH with T3 and babesia. I could not afford to get the co-infection panel through IGENEX.

 

They had a of a time drawing her because she's tiny and so young. They probed her and barely got enough blood. It was HORRIBLE!

 

I should get the results in 2-3 weeks. I will report back!

 

 

 

Question: Do you think that long term abx will treat her lyme and in return, help her recover from severe autism?

 

Any other suggestions?

[Chemar]

Hi

Just bumping up your first post so others can respond

[pr40]

i don't think anyone here can answer your question positively, unfortuntely

it's possible that your lyme and her autism are related but it is also possible that your other autoimmune issues like celiac and hashimoto's are related to her autism

and then her autism may be caused by something else entirely

in your place, i would first puruse the long term abx and therapy (lowering inflammation, etc) that is recommended for pandas kids since it seems simpler than lyme treatment

in three to six months you might begin to see changes in her

best of luck

[rowingmom]

DD13 had diagnoses of ADHD, SPD, Tourette's and Asperger's. All of which have been rescinded since completion of treatment for bartonella and babesia. Her ASD was not severe, however she was functioning 2-3 years below NT in behaviour and executive function. She has also seen vast improvements in her spatial and math abilities.

 

No one was more surprised than our Pediatric Psychologist.

 

DD recovered from oral apraxia after several years (ages 3 to 6) of intense private speech therapy using the PROMPT method which retrains muscle movement of the cheeks, jaw and tongue. Her loss of speech was concomitant with her loss of other gross and fine motor control which began within days of her 15 month MMR vaccination. Our LLMD says her immune and detoxification systems were likely compromised by lyme/bart/babs at the time.

 

As you mention, I also realized that there was a more functional and intelligent child trapped and waiting to be released. All a mother needs is motivation!

 

You can not feel guilty about passing infections to your child (this happened in our case as well).

 

Mothers of all species pass infections to their newborns. The current mainstream medical paradigm that both adults and babies are aseptic until symptoms manifest is completely incorrect. It is only the proper balance of a functioning immune system with bacteria/viral load that allows health to flourish.

 

If the immune system is not functioning properly, even beneficial bacteria can become pathogenic when they are not kept in check.

 

The problem starts when either the mother's immune system is compromised (and she passes along a high load that the baby's system can't handle), or the child's system becomes more compromised and infection is allowed to proliferate.

 

Please take time to look though these papers written by MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff. There are quite a number of them, but they point toward the pesticides that we ingest (especially glyphosate) and the metal adjuvants in vaccinations (especially aluminum) as causes of immune suppression and autoimmune response.

 

http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/

 

 

Here is the paradigm change.

 

This site is more alternative, but gives cause to think.

 

http://www.naturalhealth365.com/vaccines-aluminum-neurotoxicity-1536.html

Edited August 25, 2015 by rowingmom

[mama2alex]

Glad you've found this group and are on your way to finding answers for your daughter. Many parents have come to realize that autism is medical and that treating underlying medical issues often helps children shed their autism symptoms/diagnosis. There are a host of medical issues involved with autism and Lyme and coinfections is definitely one. So, while I do think treating Lyme will help her, I think you need to do much more. Here are a few things that many autism parents do to recover their children: gluten/casein-free diet (almost always an issue for autistic kids); eliminating other foods as needed, such as sugar, soy, corn; chelating heavy metals if found; stopping vaccinations as these stress the immune system and contain heavy metals; supplementing deficient vitamins/minerals; correcting methylation pathway issues; testing for and treating other chronic infections such as Candida, parasites, viruses; and healing the gut/immune system. An integrative LLMD or DAN! doctor should be able to help with all of these.

Good resources include Autism One, Generation Resue, Safe Minds, and any online group for parents treating their children medically. Their are thousands of parents doing this, so the resources shouldn't be hard to find.

Edited August 28, 2015 by mama2alex

[Jojo10]

Thank you everyone for the information and advice! I look forward to posting her progress and talking to you all!