With the new year upon us I felt it was time to take stock of where we are in Matthew's journey and to give you an idea of what has worked for us.

Matthew always seemed like a "gut" kid to me so we have spent a lot of time working on healing his gut and providing him with the nutrients he was lacking. As time has gone on and we have learned more and more, we also realized Matthew has a lot of inflammation, especially brain inflammation, and metals. That has helped us hone his protocol into what we hope is the right mixture, although we know we will probably have to reevaluate and revise as he grows and we uncover yet another layer or piece of this puzzle.

So what are we doing right now? We are still utilizing our private OT to help with fine and gross motor skills. She works with him on balance, strength and writing issues weekly. We also have him in a swimming program, and although this is really recreational, it is taught by a school designed to work with special needs children and it helps with his overall core strength. We are utilizing homeopathy with my friend Jenn Palmer of Nourishing Journey, who also introduced us to ionic foot baths and Reiki. I actually took a Reiki class so that I could perform Reiki weekly on Matthew. I'm hoping to take the second class and become a Reiki master within the next year. We are trying to reintroduce the weekly foot baths, and are simply waiting on me to add them to our schedule.

We began AC Chelation, also known as frequent, low dose chelation, a few months ago and are currently up to round 24. We have seen improvements, especially in cognitive areas and in self control. Although the first 24 hours of each round does seem to bring out the bear in him! We are probably going to do a test to see what sort of metals he is dumping, although it really isn't necessary.

We had reintroduced casein over the summer without negative results so that is still in his diet. But we have once again eliminated all forms of gluten, including the naturally fermented sourdough we had been using. We aren't sure, but we think it has been causing him to flap more and to have anger and self control issues. So out it came. We will consider dropping the dairy again if we don't see appropriate improvements after going GF.

We still use many of the "typical" biomedical supplements including zinc, a vitamin B-complex, strong multi-vitamin, vitamin C, magnesium, probiotics, digestive enzymes, krill oil and astaxanthin, Enhansa and liver support. Due to the chelation we have added adrenal support and bumped up our yeast protocol while on round. We like grapefruit seed extract for yeast and Culturelle for bacteria.

Interestingly we have dropped the cod liver oil, which has been replaced with Krill oil, and Methyl B 12. This change was one we instigated and was not doctor directed. He does get B12 in the B-complex, but we no long give him shots or even a specific MB12 oral lozenge. The most interesting part of that is that the first time we tried eliminating the B-12 shots resulted in him having serious night wakings, but once it was reintroduced his sleep evened out. Since dropping it this time we are not seeing any sleep disturbances.

We are far from done, especially since AC chelation is at least a two year process, but we think he is on the right track. Some interventions we are considering for the future include a social skills group to help him with his social interactions. Often he forgets how others feel in certain situations and how he should behave. He also has anger issues where it is hard for him to control himself. And the other intervention we are considering is Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). Many people have seen tremendous results with LDN, but it is a drug and we aren't sure how we feel about using a drug with our 6 year old.  

So that is where we are and where we are heading. Stay Well.

About The Author:

Maryann DellaRocco is the mother behind the blog Matthew’s Puzzle, which chronicles her journey into the world of autism and biomedical interventions. She is married and has three boys, her oldest is on the spectrum. Follow her on Twitter: @mehmig.