Ken Siri - Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism

ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR CUTTING-EDGE THERAPIES FOR AUTISM

Lost in the Spectrum? Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism provides a compass and comprehensive map for finding your path to actionable options for your child. The many autistic children who have lost their diagnosis have done so with therapies thoughtfully explained in the pages of this book, which contains plentiful insights from the research, experience, and love of our most thoughtful and articulate scientists, practitioners and parents.

Sidney M. Baker, MD, founder, Autism360

Its like having a parent mentor with you at all times. Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism delivers on so many levelsfrom practical advice and alternative insights, to the most relevant and high-value information on autism therapies today. A must-have for caregivers, even veteran parents!

Lori McIlwain, executive director, National Autism Association

This updated edition is so jam-packed with new and useful information that it is a must-have even if you bought last years edition.

Kim Stagliano, author of All I Can Handle: Im No Mother Teresa

The Autism Society of Illinois supports individuals with autism and their families through the critical stages of early detection and intervention following. Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism offers information on many interventions that have been used by parents who have watched their children improve.

Mary Kay Betz, executive director, Autism Society of Illinois

For parents, Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism is an invaluable resource. Whether you are new to an autism diagnosis or a parent who has been in the trenches for years, Ken Siri and Tony Lyons compile the most current information all in one place to allow parents to research the best options for their childs unique needs. This is a must-have book that you will find yourself consulting over and over.

Kim Mack Rosenberg, president, National Autism Association New York Metro Chapter, and board member of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law & Advocacy

Bioautismo is a non-profit corporation that promotes biomedical interventions to children diagnosed with ASD in Chile. We firmly believe that by detecting environmental insults, removing them from the childrens environment and making available the appropriate therapies, we can improve the quality of life of individuals on the spectrum. We encourage parents to make informed decisions in terms of causes, treatments and therapies and to be in control of their childs recovery. The book Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism helps parents do just that.

Carmen Chaigneau, Bioautismo-Chile

Copyright 2014 by Ken Siri and Tony Lyons

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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A record for this title is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-1-62914-174-9
eISBN: 978-1-62914-290-6

Printed in the United States of America

This book is for Lina, Alex, and all the kids suffering from autism, and for their parents struggling to give them the best possible life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

K en and Tony are deeply indebted to in-house Skyhorse Publishing editor Joseph Sverchek, without whom we could not possibly have completed this project. We are also indebted to Teri Arranga of AutismOne who spent countless hours going over the manuscript, the jacket, and the press release and gave us excellent editorial advice.

Tony would like to thank his ex-wife Helena who has worked with Lina to the brink of insanity, utilizing many of the therapies described in this book, staying up with her when she cant sleep, calming her down when she is dysregulated, holding, comforting, and carrying her, joining and engaging with her and giving her as much love as any human being has ever received from another human being. She is pulling Lina with both hands out of the abyss of autism.

Ken would like to thank his parents, Ken and Carole, and his sister, Noelle, for standing by him and Alex and for all their support and guidance.

WARNING: The editors and contributors are not giving medical advice. They are just describing the various therapies that are available. Tony Lyons, Ken Siri, Skyhorse Publishing, and the contributors cannot take the medical or legal responsibility of having the information contained within Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism considered as a prescription for any person. Every child is different and parents need to consult with doctors, therapists, and others to determine what is best for their child. Failure to do so can have disastrous consequences.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

A utism is a disorder in desperate need of better biomedical therapies. The father of one of my patients works in a field of information management called big data. At the time when he gave me a fabulous book on big data, I didnt really know much about it or how big data was changing the world we live in. To give you a feel for its potential, big data is now capable of analyzing datasets larger than 1 billion gigabytes. As the Internet grows, our cumulative knowledge expands at an amazing rate. The future of solving truly complex issues like autism likely will finds its path through big data analytics.

Like many disorders where the current state-of-the-art medical care falls short of the clinical needs, families work to push the treatments and research to new levels. Generally, this is a good thing. Those with the passion to help their own families are tireless researchers, who often stay up late at night investigating possible interventions through the Web. But filtering out the creative, potential and promising therapies from the ramblings can be very challenging. There are no medications to treat autism; only a handful of powerful and potentially dangerous antipsychotics are approved to treat irritability in autism. Biomedical solutionsimmunological, detoxification, nutritional, and hyperbaric oxygenhave been published with varying degrees of success. But for most of the rest, well-controlled studies to support their use is missing. This isnt the fault of parents. Medical research is mainly funded by those interested in patentable and profitable therapies. In the absence of support from their own doctors, parents are abandoned to do nothing or to venture out to try something new.

While some, even most, of these biomedical approaches are logical, and most are likely safer than available psychopharmaceuticals, many in the so-called mainstream of medicine call for caution and express concern. Internet chat rooms, blog sites, Facebook, and Twitter often find parents networking with stories of success, setbacks, and novel strategies. Although, ideally, any biomedical intervention or change in biomedical regimen should be done with the oversight of a knowledgeable healthcare practitioner, all of these posts and chats along with the accumulating published scientific data can be assessed efficiently through big data analytical systems. And it is probable that within all of these datasets, some new understanding of the truth will be revealed, and, with that, better therapies will emerge at a much faster pace than in the past.