Life interrupted my plans to release the first chapter of The Myth of Merula by the end of the year. Wyatt, now almost two years old, had been showing some red flags for autism. Some interventions were in order for him. He needed major dietary changes, requiring lots of cooking from scratch. He also needs lots and lots of interaction and play. When I haven’t been cooking or playing with him, I have often been online doing research related to autism, especially biomedical treatment of it.

I’m feeling pretty good about his progress right now, and I’m feeling pretty confident that I’m on the right track in treating his issues. He has not been diagnosed, but the label and code do not matter unless they can get you services you could not otherwise access, or unless they can add to your understanding of your child. In the case of an older child, the label and the code also matter in the school system. What matters right now is clearing up the underlying health problems that were (and still are to a lesser extent) manifesting with behavioral symptoms. My gut tells me that Wyatt is going to be allright now, but if I see reason for concern again, I will have him diagnosed before he is three years old so that he can qualify for ABA.

This is what has worked for us so far. Removing all dairy from Wyatt’s diet helped him immediately. Putting him on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) gradually helped him and continues to help gradually. There have been no dramatic jumps with SCD so far, but there has been continual improvement. Giving him saccharomyces boulardii led to another overnight leap in progress, as dramatic as the removal of dairy. It has been so powerful I have had to limit it to a little sprinkle at a time. Oxy Powder along with probiotics to treat his constipation has been the other major help.

Now Wyatt is almost twenty-three months old. He’s playing pretend with his Thomas the Train set and other toys, he’s pointing and grunting at objects all the time wanting me to label them for him, he’s following simple instructions and helping with basic tasks sometimes, and he’s often signing for more when he wants more of something. He says a few words sometimes but doesn’t talk much yet. He laughs when I laugh, imitates my actions all the time, and likes to play simple interactive games like running when somebody says “Go go go”. Often he initiates games such as putting a hat on my head so I will pretend to sneeze and make the hat fall off. Yet he still doesn’t interact much with anybody when he is focused on playing with a toy. And when he does interact with somebody, he doesn’t go back and forth very many times before he gets distracted or moves onto something else. He doesn’t do as many circles of communication in a row as a typically developing kid of his age. He has been slow to pick up on signing. He needs to get more obvious with his nonverbal communication, which is often subtle. Not long ago his only communication often consisted of nothing but a look from him. He still has some room for improvement. But my gut tells me he will begin talking a lot more pretty soon, after he masters the developmental level of his current pointing frenzy.

So how did this happen to us? Wyatt has never been vaccinated. I think several things contributed to his issues. First, the entire time I was in labor, I was on antibiotics, because I had Group B Strep. Antibiotics selectively kill bacteria, leaving yeast and clostridia untouched and free to proliferate to fill in the gaps in the internal ecology. Yeast and clostridia are both high on the list of things that cause autistic symptoms. In fact, in a study, autistic kids who received anti-clostridia medication improved but then regressed as soon as the medication stopped. Yeast actually puts toxins into the system that are the same as a hangover, because its byproduct of fermentation is alcohol. Alcohol and hangover toxins have a profound effect on developing neurological systems. When Wyatt passed through my birth canal, he likely got colonized with clostridia and yeast but not any beneficial bacteria. So he had that going for him.

Second, I think I had my own issues that made my breast milk a mixed blessing for him. I can remember eating ice cream and a bowl of cereal every night after he was asleep, when he was a newborn. Who knows when his dairy issue developed or how, but it could have happened then. When he was four months old, I finally figured out that if I did not drink milk, he would not spit up. But I returned to eating cheese after a while, since I didn’t see any sign it was harming him. I wasn’t sure about ice cream, so I limited it. It turns out that autistic kids have a lot of trouble with casein, so all that cheese I ate definitely did Wyatt no good.

Third, trouble digesting gluten runs in my family, on my mother’s side. When Wyatt was fourteen months old and his constipation was getting horrendous, I fed him lots and lots of whole wheat baked goods full of fruit and ground flax seed, in an attempt to get fiber into him. It was the only way I could get him to eat fibrous food. I couldn’t figure out why he kept getting worse, even after eating things like whole wheat muffins full of shredded carrot, raisins, pineapple tidbits, and ground flaxseed. Now I think all that undigested gluten from the whole wheat was actually making his constipation worse. Not only that, but undigested gluten forms opioids that bind to receptors in the brain and contribute to autistic symptoms. And as a bonus, all those undigested carbs rotting in his little constipated gut were feeding yeast and harmful bacteria.

Fourth, I believe that Wyatt was born with a weak liver. It took two months for the yellow patch from his newborn jaundice to disappear from his forehead. I don’t know why he had a weak liver, but I suspect that it didn’t help that my office building was remodeled while I was pregnant. Everybody at work was getting headaches from the strong fumes. The worst of the fumes lasted for days and days.

Fifth, I gave Wyatt Tylenol during his first year while he was teething. It turns out that Tylenol severely depletes glutathione stores in the liver. Autistic kids are known to have extremely low glutathione levels. Glutathione is a key antioxidant. Your body’s ability to detox is crippled without it.

If I ever had another one, I would do several things differently. I would make sure my gut was very healthy before getting pregnant, and I would drink tons of kefir and eat tons of yogurt to keep it that way. I would give the baby probiotics at the first sign of colic or stomach ache. I would avoid Tylenol entirely. I would avoid introducing any gluten during the first two years. And I’d also keep it out of my diet and my breast milk. I would be very careful introducing dairy and would start with yogurt and kefir, avoiding milk altogether. And the same would go for my diet while I was breastfeeding. So that’s my take on it. Others have entirely different stories, I’m sure.