Letters
"Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet"
| The Schafer
Autism Report Letters |
"Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet" |
Letter continues below shaded text The very intelligent letter from Teri Small prompts me to share the following notes that I took down recently during a lecture given by William Walsh, PhD of the Pfeiffer Treatment Center ( http://www.hriptc.org/ ). I'll add no comments (the notes are long enough in their own right), other than to say my son, now 18, started Pfeiffer's protocol two years ago. Possibly because of his age, the outward results have been minimal at best. Lab tests do show a biochemical improvement. Even in the absence of results, I believe these people are onto something, and that this is precisely the sort of work that professionals need to be doing on behalf of our kids. (See http://www.latitudes.org/autism_articles.htm ) - Steve Gallup http://kidsbright.org/ ============ In 1968 Dr. Walsh was working in nuclear physics. He became interested in crime prevention as a community service (various do-gooder activities such as setting up educational programs and other services for convicts in prison, and helping them get a fresh start in life after release). He was surprised to discover that many convicted felons had ideal families, and began to think their crimes could not be the result of poor upbringing. Some mothers of convicts told him they'd seen something wrong with their children as early as six weeks of age (children who resisted being helped and who when they got older would torture pets, could not be disciplined, etc.). These kids continued to have problems when they went to school, and of course the school blamed the parents. Sometimes powerful medications such as thorazine were tried, without any benefit. Ditto behavior modification. "A parent of a criminal is often a parent with a broken heart.” Letter continues here Dr. Walsh began wondering what was the cause, and began studying journal articles about abnormal behavior. A revolution in thinking was under way at the time (mid-sixties to mid-seventies) with the new belief that problems like bipolar disorder and depression were not the result of some life experience after all. (That assumption went back to John Locke in the 16th century: Babies come into the world as blank slates to be written upon by what happens to them.) Now study after study, drawing on extensive data going back to 1905, showed that if one fraternal twin had such problems, there was a 30 - 35% probability that the other twin did also -- even if they had been separated at birth and raised in different households. In the case of identical twins, the probability was 80%! Therefore, there was some powerful predisposition that appeared to be genetic and that was working on these individuals' brain chemistry. Still, there was no understanding of what chemicals were off. At this point psychiatrists began experimenting with a variety of medications, but it was very much a trial-and-error process. Dr. Walsh wondered if the criminals he had been trying to help actually had medical issues that caused them to commit crimes. He got them to donate blood and urine samples. It was "just a fishing expedition." He was looking for any unusual factors in their body chemistry. Everything looked pretty normal until he checked trace metals (copper, zinc, manganese, etc.). Here the levels were very different from those in the rest of the population. He constructed several sibling studies in which one sibling was a model of good behavior (super-well-behaved, with no history of violence or poor discipline) and the other had a history of multiple assaults. They had to be living in the same household and attending the same school. (And in the first study all subjects were boys, since he wanted to avoid any gender variables.) In all studies he found that the kid with good behavior had the expected levels of trace metals and the other kid had abnormal levels. He first divided these latter into a Type A (high Cu, low Zn, low electrolytes (Na, K), high Pb, Cd and other toxic metals) and Type B (low Cu, low Zn, high electrolytes, and even higher toxic metals). Type As simply couldn't control their tempers. They had outbursts and were remorseful afterwards. Type Bs were mean and nasty all the time (sociopaths). Later he identified a Type C, which had a basic problem digesting and absorbing everything, and a Type D, high in Ca/Mg and low in everything else. Both C and D types were impulsive underachievers -- not violent but delinquent (e.g., likely to be truant from school, to hang out with a bad crowd, etc.). More than half of the kids with behavior problems also had learning problems (attention deficit disorder, learning disability, etc.). At this point Dr. Walsh began working with Dr. Carl Pfeiffer in Princeton, NJ, who found additional factors in a study of career criminals (e.g., just five individuals had committed 50 murders and hundreds of other crimes). All of them had elevated level of blood histadine and elevated pyrroles. He devised a treatment program for correcting those imbalances. This was based on simple nutrients (amino acids and minerals). He found it to be especially helpful in treating children. Apparently there's a "window of time" in which they can be saved. There's no age cutoff, but they get great results up through age 12: 90% improve if the family achieves compliance with the program. And the improvement is not only in behavior but scholastic. Kids with IQ scores of 60 test again at twice that level. On the other hand, "there's a hard 10% failure rate." With older kids who have formed a negative self image, and especially if they have abused illegal drugs and alcohol, it's very difficult to help. Having learned this much, Dr. Walsh quit his day job and began focusing on this full-time. In 1989 he founded the Pfeiffer Treatment Center, named after Dr. Pfeiffer, who had just died. In 1990 they were concentrating on clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. In 1994 they added autism. Today they have 2,850 autistic patients from many parts of the world. Their database contains body chemistry for 10,000 people. (The NIH says it's the largest such database in the world.) It doesn't take a genius to look at this data and see the differences in these people's chemistry. Many have problems with metal metabolism. Many (including 28% of those with autism) have pyrrole disorders resulting in extreme deficiencies of B6 and Zn. Many have too much or too little methyl (which controls neurotransmitter synthesis and expression of genes). Many have problems with fatty acid chemistry (esp. low omega-6 and arachadonic acid -- which means taking fish oil only makes the problem worse). In addition to having blood and urine samples taken, patients seen by the Pfeiffer clinic are screened against about 160 different clues they have observed over the years. For example, bumps on the backs of the arms suggests a fatty acid disorder, preference for spicy food suggests a zinc deficiency, lack of interest in breakfast suggests pyroluria. Dr. Walsh often gets calls from doctors who want to know how he has helped their patients. When he says his treatment focuses on amino acids and minerals, two-thirds of the doctors scoff. They believe any effective treatment would have to involve prescription drugs. But the brain is a chemical factory. It makes the chemicals it needs (seratonin, norepinepherin, etc.), on-site -- and its only raw materials are the nutrients taken in. If someone has a genetic abnormality that causes deficiency of certain necessary building blocks (such as Zn, B6, folic acid, or tryptophan), then bad brain chemistry results. It should be noted that taking supplements without first knowing the individual's situation is very unlikely to help. Multiple vitamins in particular are a bad idea. Most people will be at least a little deficient in something. But taking more than they need of something else can lead to a toxic overload. That's why it's important to start out with a baseline and monitor how it changes. When a genetic deficiency is found, the treatment for it will in most cases be lifelong. A pyroluria disorder can be balanced out within a week, but the imbalance can reappear just as quickly if the treatment is stopped. There are known subcategories of autism (classic Kanner autism, PDD-NOS, Aspergers, etc.), and it was expected that these would be reflected in different chemical profiles. But to everyone's surprise, in a study of 503 autistic individuals no difference was found in any of these groups. All had shockingly high Cu and low Zn levels -- imbalances twice as bad as the criminals had. Also, 499 of them had clear evidence of failure of a protein called metallothionine, Metallothionine is the way Hg is processed in the body. It's also involved in brain development, and lack of it is implicated in Alzheimers. Further, metallothionine is concentrated in the intestinal tract, where it kills Candida. Lack of it can lead to yeast overgrowth. Also, metallothionine is a "chaperone" for Zn (seven Zn atoms loaded onto each metallothionine molecule), and Zn is important in digestion of gluten and casein. Candida, and gluten/casein intolerance are two well-known conditions often associated with autism. It's also well-known that autism primarily affects boys. Testosterone depressed metallothionine production, and that could be the explanation. Metallothionine deficiency also causes "extraordinary immune problems, and a vulnerability to vaccines." We're all exposed to mercury. We probably breathe in a mcg of it every day, and take in at least 10 mcg in our food. Any mercury in vaccines adds to the load, which people with normal chemistry can handle. But assurances that this is safe for everyone are not reasonable. "If you want to measure the effect of sugar on diabetics, would you give sugar to a test group of normal people? Of course not. But that's what they do in studies of vaccine safety. If you give vaccines -- esp. vaccines with Hg -- to children with metallothionine deficiencies, you worsen their condition.” Pfeiffer's treatment program for autism involves first normalizing the Cu/Zn ratio and the B6, and anything else that is found to be amiss, and then cautiously treating the metallothionine problem, starting with very low doses. Not everyone responds, but the improvements they get are cognitive, speech, and better socialization. Autism does not mean a damaged brain but one that has not completely matured. The only people the Pfeiffer Treatment Center can help are those with a genetic problem, because that means a chemical imbalance. If the problem is due to an injury, it is not correctible. The good news is that brain maturation continues throughout life. However, it's lightning-fast for little kids and much slower later. "Older kids can get there too, but it takes a lot longer.” |