Customer Reviews

The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism (The Healthy Mind Guides)

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Being a parent of an autistic 14 year old, this book has been a lifesaver. We are doing one of the options that is listed in the book after much research. The book triggered an option that we have not considered before. Our son has been aggressive since starting puberty. The natural medicine alternatives is allowing us to wean him off his medicines. I have been a PICU nurse for 22 years and believe in the medical field. As a mom who has tried everything, I believe in the alternatives especially if they work. All medicines have untoward side effects and never a cure. I wish this book was written ten years ago when our son was young for him to have a chance of full recovery. A must read book for everyone with a child with autism.

Stephanie Marohn has done the autism community a great service. Considering autism is by and large an iatrogenic disease it is Stephanie's great luck never to have received formal training in medicine. In place of the common medical text where much is written and little said, Stephanie researches and reports on the underlying causes, and most importantly, on those rare physicians and practitioners who are safely and effectively treating autism.

Rarely has a disease been held hostage by the medical establishment to such a degree. Instead of psychiatric punditry and academic sophistry "The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism" provides parents, families, and professionals a ready reference to those individuals and protocols making a difference.

Children with autism do recover. Flat-earth physicians mired in the teaching and practice of hopelessness and prescription medications do not help. As a parent I know the road is bumpy and difficult. It is a road littered with obstacles from outdated theories to ongoing medical practices.

You can make a difference in your child's life. Read this book and let one criteria be your guide when following any of the protocols. Is my child better today than yesterday? There is every chance the answer will be yes.

Edmund C. Arranga

This is a good book for parents as an overview of alternative treatments for ASD children. Note, it contains some approaches not all approaches of alternative medicine. I would sincerely recommend this book but if you are a parent looking at all alternatives, including Children with Starving Brains by Dr J. McCandless as well. These two books will provide you all the information you need in evaluating next steps with a good, thoughtful, forward thinking doctor.

I am very excited by this book! As a professional working in the field it has been difficult to recommend books to parents of this client group. While it's wonderful to read heartfelt stories of parents struggles and them finding answers BUT I often feel uncomfortable if a particular 'brand' of therapy is seen as the 'answer'.

This book shares many 'answers' and feels like parents are at last getting the parts of the jigsaw. It's up to them which part they place down first! For professionals the book is educational and informative.

The chapters on vaccination, nutrition and detoxification particularly encouraged me. Many times I hear people approaching these subjects as 'alternative' and by association are seen as somehow being invalid.

I found the author's research impeccable and her authentic way of writing made it hard to put the book down.

Chapter 11 is a wonderful chapter talking about Levels of Healing using a structure I am slightly familiar with. The tone of the writing makes me interested and curious to follow up on these ideas and approach. Even I would normally dismiss some of these methods as 'far out'

The symbols 'See also' and ?Resources? are very user friendly as are the endnotes and references.

There is a chapter on the method I employ. I found was an excellent description and a clear understanding of how the work can help autism. After all the reading I've done in this area, this must be the best! The author is an excellent interviewer. Such depth of understanding of the various treatments- it's as if she has experienced them all!

I intend to email the details of this book to parents of autistic children I know. I believe it to be a must read for all parents and professionals associated with autism.

Thank you Stephanie!

Stephanie Marohn's books on mental health issues are all excellent and this one on autism is a good starting place for anyone wishing to find out more about Autism and how to effectively treat it. One challenge in writing this book was that there are multiple factors contributing to the development of autism, and the most prevalent factors happen to be iatrogenic - standard medical practices that cause illness. A recent study survey in 2 Western states showed that children who were vaccinated were more than twice as likely as their unvaccinated peers to have autism and other developmental disorders. The medical establishment and those indoctrinated by the cult of modern medicine don't want to acknowledge that they are causing unneeded harm to millions of people. There are financial and psychological reasons why many people won't face that reality. Thus, Marohn's book looks honestly at those issues and quotes doctors who oppose vaccinations and certain unnatural child delivery practices. One has to accept the validity of the factors cited in the etiology of autism to appreciate how the treatments discussed in the book work. A spectrum of treatments is explored (and the focus is on the most cutting edge and effective approaches, not the more mainstream approaches that most people investigating the subject already have exposure to). Most children will benefit immensely from a combination of the approaches discussed in this book. There is a growing body of evidence to support many of these approaches and much evidence that standard drug therapies cause a variety of side effects and impairments. Wouldn't it be logical to try the natural approaches first? Well, much of modern psychiatry and allopathic medicine are concerned more about conformity to dogma than using critical thinking and sensibly looking at all options. Stephanie Marohn looks at nutritional therapies, allergy clearing, osteopathy, homeopathy, sound therapy, and even family therapy and shamanic type interventions to help resolve issues contributing to autism. That's a lot better than just giving a child drugs, external behavior manipulation, and hiring someone to make sure the child gets physical and social stimulation (typical conventional approaches to autism). While this book doesn't cover every alternative therapy or go into great depth on each topic it discusses, it offers a good overview of the types of treatments that are working and it explains them in a clear manner. At present this is the ideal book for people looking to begin to understand autism and how to treat it - it's time to look beyond the DSM (the psychiatric diagnostic and statistical manual) and learn to really help those with developmental impairments.

This book is a good overview of many of the alternative health and natural treatments for autism. She has three chapters that discuss what autism is, how it's diagnosed, theories on causes and contributing factors, and of course the vaccine and mercury controversy. These chapters were interesting, but the meat of the book are the chapters that discuss natural medicine treatments for autism including:
* Targeted Therapeutic Nutrition and Heavy Metal Detox-This involves a 24 hour urine analysis, digestive enzymes, nutritional supplementation, protease enzymes to clear the immune issues that cause food intolerances, and healing the gut with specific nutrients.

* NAET: Allergy-related autism-They focus on releasing the allergy to a certain group of foods on each session, and then you have to completely avoid them for 24 hours. I remember the day we had to stay away from vegetables and fruits, what a nightmare. Plus, we saw no improvement in symptoms.

* Biochemical Therapy -This chapter focuses on metallothionein, and the Pfeiffer Institutes protocol of supplements that work to get it working again.

* Homeopathy: Constitutional Treatment, Vaccine Clearing, and an alternative to vaccines-This was my favorite chapter! I've read it several times, and each time learned something new. They talk about several homeopathic approaches to autism, all quite different, but with histories of success.
I was especially excited to read about one homeopath who used an LM potency of pertussis nosode to counteract the damage done by the DPT vaccine. LM potencies are much less likely than other potencies to make symptoms like seizures worse. There is no LM potency homeopathic remedy made from the DPT vaccine and since it doesn't exist anymore, one can't be made. Using the nosode from the disease itself is the best plan B available. Most people believe that the pertussis portion of that vaccine is the part that did the neurological damage.
I don't completely agree with the author on the subject of using homeopathic nosodes to prevent that disease. There is research that indicates this does not work. I do agree that homeopathy can be used prophylacticly, you have get the proper remedy (not the disease nosode) and it has to be taken when the outbreak occurs not years ahead according to the current vaccine schedule.

* Cranial osteopathy -Seeing an osteopath really helped my son when he was sick. It kept the mucous moving and prevented the normal ear infections that are so common with severe allergies.

* Soma Therapies: Structural, Functional and Emotional Release
* The Tomatis Method: Listening and Autism
* Neural Therapy, Toxic Clearing, and Family Systems Therapy-I didn't like this chapter. One of the therapies they used is to inject anesthetics into different areas of the body to release trauma and energy blocks. On one child they did a "crown of thorns" which is a ring of injections around the skull. That doesn't sound very natural to me.
I have a lot of books on treating autism, this is one of the better ones.

Do not buy this book; it is pseudoscientific garbage. You might as well believe in creationism or supply-side economics. The author is spreading false cures to autism. She invokes Andrew Wakefield as an authority, unaware he has been absolutely discredited. This is cruel, false hope--it should never have been published. Pure quackery.

As a professional/advocate in the field of autism treatment, I am continually disheartened by the large number of false claims made about the causes/treatments of this disorder. This book only adds to that trend.

As of the writing of this review, there are still no definitive data to suggest that autism is caused by environmental toxins or vaccinations (although the author suggests otherwise). While the effects of environmental influences continue to be investigated by competent researchers, it is irresponsible to suggest to parents of children with autism that we already know the cause of this neurological disorder. The only influence/potential cause of autism that has strong evidence to this point is a genetic influence.

Homeopathic treatment of autism? How can the author seriously suggest that such a treatment is advisable? Homeopathic compounds have NEVER been shown to be effective for ANY disorder (autism or otherwise) under controlled conditions (and by that I mean double-blind placebo-controlled studies). Although many persons have reported a benefit of homeopathic rememdies in their own lives, just as many people have reported the same effect when given a placebo. This suggests that homeopathy rests on people's beliefs for its perceived effectiveness.

I typically suggest that people search the "Association for Science in Autism Treatment" on the internet to get a handle on what professionals really know about the causes and effective treatments for autism.