June 26, 2019 - Autism
Hey, everybody! My name is Dr. Sam Berne. I’d like to talk to you today about treatment strategies in helping children diagnosed in the autism to ADD spectrum.
I use an integrative holistic approach when I help these children. There are three pillars that I’d like to talk about today in my protocol.
- Pillar number one is using nutritional and dietary interventions in helping children improve their dietary absorption, their metabolic imbalances, and their toxicities. When you can improve dietary absorption, you give these children more energy, and they’re more available to absorb and learn the therapies you’re offering them.
There was a research study that was published in 2018 in the Journal of Nutrients. Researchers took two groups of people who were diagnosed with autism. One group received placebo effect, while the other group received treatments like vitamins and minerals, essential fatty acids, and a diet free of gluten, dairy, and soy. And in the testing they did, they found that the group that received the treatment scored far higher in the nonverbal tests than the group that received placebo. So nutritional and dietary interventions are the first thing you want to do when you’re helping children in this spectrum disorders.
- Pillar number two is assessing children in the sensorimotor skill set, but doing so from a developmental perspective. This means that you’re starting at their performance level instead of their chronological level in improving their sensorimotor skills.
Now, since I work with the eyes and vision, I recommend seeking out an eye professional who does more testing than just having your child read the distance eye chart. The 20/20 reading only measures our eyesight. It doesn’t measure our vision. Vision is a dynamic skill set that involves things like visual tracking, visual focusing, visual coordination. It’s a dynamic skill set.
The other thing that I would recommend in seeking out an eye professional, is someone who’s going to prescribe lenses who doesn’t use eye drops because when you use eye drops in an eye exam you are paralyzing the focusing muscles and you’re going to get an inaccurate measurement in a lens prescription.
- Pillar number three is using structural therapies like craniosacral therapy. So if children have experienced birth trauma things like induced labor through drugs, forceps delivery, induced labor, and cesarean section. They may have an impediment in the movement of the physical structures of their tissues and bones in their head and body.
This can impede the development of a child. So applying craniosacral therapy can be an effective approach at stimulate a child’s development and improve their overall movement skill set.
So, in summary, we can create, we can improve, and we can change a child’s brain and motor development even within their genetic blueprint. And if you can use an integrative holistic approach, you can offer so many things to help kids along the autism to ADD spectrum disorders.