The famous story of Helen Keller which became the play and movie The Miracle Worker, is recreated in reality with a mother and her autistic son. Tenacity is really the key to success in anything! This video shows a mother doing what science said couldn't be done.
The miracle that cured my son’s autism was in our kitchen
By Mackenzie Dawson
When a doctor told Susan Levin her 4-year-old son, Ben, was
autistic, she was shocked. It was October 2007, and autism wasn’t
mentioned in the media nearly as much as it is today.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God. What are we going to do?’ ” Levin
recalls. “Everyone knew autism was a lifelong disorder and couldn’t be
cured.”
Except that in Ben’s case, it could be. And it was.
The family’s journey — the many treatments tried and dismissed, from
biomedical interventions to speech therapy to occupational therapy and
more — is detailed in her new memoir, “Unlocked: A Family Emerging From the Shadows of Autism.”
Levin doesn’t call this particular cure a silver bullet for autism:
There is no silver bullet, no one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, she
credits his transformation to a number of things, including a home based
and child centered social-relational program called the Son-Rise
Program.
Enlarge ImageSusan
Levin, pictured above with son Ben, documents her family’s journey in
her memoir “Unlocked: A Family Emerging from the Shadows of Autism.”Tim Daley
But one of the biggest factors was what was on his plate.
“Hippocrates was right when he advised, ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,’ ” she says.
Levin is part of a growing group of people who are paying more
attention to diet — organic, gluten- and casein-free among them — as a
way to treat the symptoms of autism and other disorders. So strongly
does she believe in the healing possibilities of food that she’s now a
family wellness coach working exclusively with families of autistic
children.
While the scientific verdict is still out on diet as a cure,
statistics point to a definite link between gastrointestinal issues and
autism.
A 2012 study published by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
found a direct link between GI issues and behavior. As many as 70
percent of children with autism have gastrointestinal issues at some
point during childhood or adolescence — and diarrhea, food sensitivity
and constipation can cause extreme discomfort, leading to irritability,
and erratic or withdrawn behavior.
But not everyone is convinced.
“Over the years I’ve been privy to a million parents, a million
cures,” says Andrew Baumann, president and CEO of New York Families for
Autistic Children. “Parents are willing to try just about anything.” And
while he concedes that diet can have a very positive effect, he just
doesn’t see it as a cure for autism: “You can’t cure something [when]
you don’t know what the cause is.”
Parents are willing to try just about anything. You can’t cure something [when] you don’t know what the cause is.
- Andrew Baumann, president and CEO of
New York Families for Autistic Children
Kathleen DiChiara begs to differ. The former Fortune 500 executive
was diagnosed with sudden onset neuropathy, which left her unable to
walk. When the doctors told her there was little to be done, she went
back to school to study. She’s now a nutrition educator, chef and
speaker who credits an all-organic diet for healing not only herself,
but her 11- year-old son, Steven, who’d been diagnosed as autistic but
is no longer considered to be.
Why are people resistant to the idea of food’s effect on illness?
“It’s socially inconvenient,” DiChiara says. “They’re already
struggling, and the idea of removing things from the diet is so
daunting. But it’s the difference between the children who get well and
the ones who don’t.”
Maria Rickert Hong, author of “Almost Autism: Recovering Children
From Sensory Processing Disorder,” credits a gluten-free, dairy-free
diet with the recovery of her two children from sensory-processing
disorder.
“In a child with neurodevelopment disorders, the brain is inflamed,
and the gut and the brain are connected,” Hong says. “Most of these kids
have gut dysbiosis — an imbalance of good versus bad bacteria, like
having too many weeds in your garden. When you have that, the body’s
immune system is off.”
Levin and her family initially started Ben on a gluten-free and
casein-free diet, later eliminating soy, corn, potatoes and rice. But as
soon as one offending food was removed, she says, a reaction to another
popped up. Then they tried the Body Ecology Diet, an anti-yeast diet high in
grain-like seeds such as amaranth, quinoa, millet and buckwheat. Almost
overnight, Ben calmed down and started making eye contact.
Now 12, Ben is studying for his bar mitzvah. Eight years after that
chilling diagnosis, he’s become more empathetic, frequently saying “I
love you” to his mother, his father and sister.
Levin says his newfound compassion is nothing short of a miracle.
“It doesn’t matter what people say,” says Levin. “I have my kid back.”
