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| Experience
with Autism |
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| Radiologist Dr.Praveen Kumaar Saxenaa and his wife
,mona , are the parents of Milind, born in 1996, whose autism led Dr.Saxena to become a Chelation Therapy expert and to focus his efforts on investigating the role of mercury in causing autistic symptoms. The family lives in Hyderabad. |
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| I was once a “very mainstream” physician. I did everything by the book. I was taught, “if it is not a drug, it doesn't work,” and “parents know absolutely nothing.” And I truly believed this. |
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| My first child, Milind was normal and quite healthy at birth. At six months he was a very happy baby. He also had very good, if not exceptional, social skills for an infant. By the age of one year, he had 8 to 10 words, and his development was normal in every sense. |
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| But around 15 to 16 months of age, he started to “go away.” This was most noticeable in the disappearance of his eye contact. Looking back, I see that his photos clearly show his regression. He changed from a loving, social child to an unloving, unresponsive mess. He started treating my wife mona and me like furniture, and he would spend hours holding and staring at two leaves. Mona and I knew that something had happened to him within a relatively short period of time, but we had no clue what it could be. We started our journey to find an answer; and when we eventually discovered that answer, we were shocked. |
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| We took Milind to his pediatrician who simply told us, “Boys talk later.” We knew better. He had no explanation as to why Milind had started talking, and then stopped. We finally saw a developmental pediatrician who conformed my fears that Milind was suffering from autism The child psychiatrist then suggested that we try a number of different treatments, such as speech therapy, ABA, and “mind-altering” drugs; but she also said that these treatments would not be very helpful to him. As you can imagine, this was incredibly hard for mona and me to deal with: first, being told that our son had a severe case of autism and second, being told that very little could be done to help him. (Unfortunately, I now realize that our situation was not unique—many families are in this same situation right now.) |
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| We followed the neurologist's discouraging advice and even tried additional treatments, such as play therapy, Floor time, auditory integration training, occupational therapy, and some nutritional/biomedical interventions such as GFCF diet, vitamin B6 with magnesium, and dimethylglycine
(DMG). We did notice some improvements from these interventions, but Mike still was severely autistic. We were
desperate—Milind was 5 years old ,and he no longer talked. |
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| I heard about a physicians in U.S Dr. Stephanie Cave &Dr.Amy Holmes. I started interacting with them and the DAN protocol was followed for my kid. |
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| Hair & nail analysis showed less mercury and I thought for a while we are not having problems with it -. Surprisingly, Milind had very high levels of lead in his hair. It is important to note that his mercury was at an undetectable level; I will discuss this in more detail later. |
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| We then began the standard course of treatment to remove the lead from Milind's body. This involved giving him DMSA
(Chemet) for 21/2 weeks. Within a short time, we noticed better receptive language and better attention. He also was less “zoned out.” We felt we were on the right track, but we were not sure where the track would eventually take us. |
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| Over the next four months, we did not see any additional improvements in
Milind; and obviously, we wanted much more. We repeated the 21/2
week course of DMSA, then let his hair grow out. His lead level was much lower this time, but it was still at an unacceptable level. Interestingly, his mercury level was extremely high; but at this time in our lives, we were focusing on the lead. |
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| Although Milind was getting better, slowly, he was still quite autistic. I knew I was missing something, but I did not know what it was. I then reviewed all of Milind's test results, and the high mercury level from his last hair test made me start to think. I knew that mercury was highly
neurotoxic, and I knew that many vaccines contained the preservative
thimerosal. I decided to add up all of the mercury to which Milind was exposed through his vaccinations, not considering other possible sources of mercury, such as fish. When I did, I discovered that he had received 212.5 mcg of mercury, which far exceeds any government standard for mercury exposure in adults. |
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| At this time, I did not, nor did others, understand what had happened to
Milind. Since he was exposed to extremely high amounts of mercury, why didn't his first hair test indicate a high mercury level? Why did later hair analyses, performed after DMSA treatment, indicate a high mercury level? I wouldn't know these answers for a few more years. |
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| However, I did know our next course of
action - get the mercury out of him! With help and support from Dr. Cave, I followed the Defeat Autism Now! Protocol. We cleaned up Milind's gut because he was loaded with yeast and Clostridium (bacteria). We also gave him numerous nutritional supplements. We then did a provoked urine DMSA challenge, and the mercury poured out of him. A stool test also indicated that he was excreting huge amounts of mercury, as well as other heavy metals. Our little boy, we discovered, was the “king of metals.” We decided to place him on an aggressive chelation program. |
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Within a short period of time, Milind's social and cognitive skills began to improve by leaps and bounds, and his stimming behavior decreased to almost nothing—Now he goes to a mainstream school without a aide
Milind now has severe attention deficit disorder. He has no problem attending when he is interested in something, but non-interesting things cannot hold his attention. He reads at grade level, and believe it or not, is a science whiz. He participates in limited conversations, plays with other children sometimes. He has a great deal of trouble paying attention in a classroom setting, and a resource teacher offers him extra assistance with reading and language. It is very difficult for him to focus and stay on task. |
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Initially I thought Milind was the only one with such a high mercury level. But at around the same time, Sallie Bernard, Lyn Redwood, and others started to argue, quite convincingly, that mercury is likely to be a major contributing factor to autism. At that point, I realized that Milind was only one of many, many, many children.
Since February 2000, I have been working with Dr. Usha
Naik. Our main focus is to treat those with ASD who have laboratory evidence of mercury toxicity. Basically, we follow the Defeat Autism Now! Protocol. We first work on cleaning up the gut and figuring out what nutritional supplements these patients need. After this is done, they receive DMSA alone until the mercury is flushed out of their bodies; then they receive DMSA with lipoic acid to remove the mercury from their brains. |
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| Since February 2000, I have been working with Dr. Usha Naik. Our main focus is to treat those with ASD who have laboratory evidence of mercury toxicity. Basically, we follow the Defeat Autism Now! Protocol. We first work on cleaning up the gut and figuring out what nutritional supplements these patients need. After this is done, they receive DMSA alone until the mercury is flushed out of their bodies; then they receive DMSA with lipoic acid to remove the mercury from their brains. |
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| We are also collecting data
in order to learn as much as we can about the
effectiveness of the Defeat Autism Now! Protocol. We are
finding that younger children respond much faster than
older children, and younger children do much better in
the long run than older children and adults. In other
words, the earlier the mercury is removed from their
bodies and brains, the better their prognosis.
Furthermore, those who were normal at birth and later
regressed into autism do much better than those who were
different from birth. |
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| In 2002,
a study was
conducted by Dr. Amy Holmes that provides insight
into the mercury problem in autism. Evaluation of
first-cut baby hair from normal children from around the
country. I compared the mercury levels in these samples
to the mercury levels in children with ASD. The findings
were very consistent, and almost unbelievable. The baby
hair from normal children contained a low-level amount
of mercury, whereas the baby hair from autistic children
contained almost no mercury at all. According to Dr.
Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky, this provides
clear evidence that many autistic children cannot
excrete mercury from their bodies. An excellent example
would be my son, Milind, whose first hair analysis
indicated no mercury. Once he began receiving DMSA, the
mercury poured out of him. |
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| I also found that mothers of
autistic children were more likely than other mothers to
have numerous mercury amalgams, and that they were more
likely to have received RhoGAM, which once contained
mercury, during their pregnancies. (RhoGAM is given to
Rh-negative pregnant women.) Milind is not unique among
autistic children. In fact, I have often achieved better
results with my other patients than I have with my own
son. The younger the child when treatment begins, the
better the chance of improvement or even complete
recovery. |
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