Parents seek
autism options
September 12, 2006
ASHEVILLE — Sitting on a low bench
in a quiet room, Luke Lesley tugged at his plaid button-up shirt.
 The
tow-headed 6-year-old didn’t talk. With intense focus, he opened the
acupuncture needle packages M. Cissy Majebe, founder and director of
The Chinese Acupuncture and Herbology Clinic, handed him.
One by one, he put them in the
tray, and then the treatment began. He squirmed as Majebe held his
wrists to take his pulse, howling just a little.
“You’re a goose,” Majebe teased as
he pushed at her hands. “You’re a silly.”
Over the last year, Majebe and Luke
have gotten to know one another. About once a week, Luke, who was
diagnosed with moderate autism at the age of 3, traveled to the
clinic with his mom, brother and grandfather from his home in
Greenville, S.C.
Luke’s mom, Lori Lesley, said the
family makes the long and frequent trips for the treatments —
including nutritional guidance, acupuncture and herbs — out of hope.
She, like many others, hope the
multiple alternative treatments and programs caring for her son will
push back the disorder that left him unable to talk and with
digestive and social issues.
Studies show one in 166 children
have autism, and experts and parents say families frequently seek
out alternative medicine to help with the disorder.
“We’re just trying to do the best
for him,” Lesley said. “We’re trying to make his body healthy, which
will hopefully make his mind more healthy.”
Finding success
She said parents hear too often
from conventional doctors that the best they can do is cope with
autism. That pushes families to look other places for treatment.
At the clinic, Luke’s getting a
combination of acupuncture, herb and essential oil treatments and
nutritional counseling. The family buys gluten-free bread there,
because Luke doesn’t eat sugar or wheat gluten and caseine, things
found in wheat and diary foods.
“Sometimes parents don’t know all
the options out there,” Lesley said, adding that she hopes Luke will
be one of the success stories. “You do have to go to alternative
types of medicine to get help for this situation.”
Majebe, who said she began treating
children with autism in 1989, has treated children from Dallas,
Winston-Salem and New York City. A network of health professionals
advised the Lesley family to seek her out.
Still, alternative medicine doesn’t
offer the families of autistic children a 100 percent cure rate.
Majebe said that for about
one-third of the about 30 children she’s treated, they’ve had
excellent results. For another third, some improvements were seen.
For the rest, the treatments didn’t work.
Philosophies of cause, care
“Part of the difficulty with autism
is it seems that Western medicine is looking for a cause, and
Chinese medicine believes it’s a multi-faceted problem,” Majebe said
later, sitting in her office at Daoist Traditions College of Chinese
Medical Arts, where she is president.
Perhaps the child’s parents passed
along a predisposition. The debate continues about the role
immunizations and antibiotics play in a child’s development of
autism. Perhaps they are exposed to and can’t process large amounts
of metals, such as mercury. Others believe children are “hardwired”
with the disease.
Indeed, a hallmark of the disorder
is that every person exhibits it differently. And treatments,
likewise, are developed based on the individual.
“We’re not treating a disease or
disorder,” Majebe said. “We’re treating a child who has that.
In Chinese medicine, she focuses on
chi imbalances and yin and yang connections, like the heart’s
connection to the tongue, or speech, and to the small intestines.
“I have children who are going to
school and they’re doing perfectly well and operating at grade level
in their education,” she said.
But Chinese medicine isn’t the only
alternative area tackling the disorder.
Dr. John L. Wilson, with Great
Smokies Medical Center, said children with autism make up 30 to 40
percent of his environmental medicine practice.
“There’s a huge epidemic of
autism,” he said, and he doesn’t believe that children are just
“hardwired” with the disorder, but that it comes from what he called
an environmental insult.
Specifically, he pointed to the
mercury compounds found in immunizations that he said contributes to
the disorder’s development.
He also said children with autism
have an overgrowth of yeast and bacteria in the gut and food
allergies that must be treated.
Wilson’s treatments focus on
nutritional health and detoxification, with some success. He said
about six of the children he’s treated have “moved out of the
spectrum.”
Does it work?
Steven R. Love, with the Asheville
TEACCH Center, said not enough research has been completed to
confirm whether alternative medicine works for children with autism.
Love is the clinical director at one location of the Treatment and
Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children
division of the Department of Psychiatry at UNC Chapel Hill.
“There are a variety of different
things that are being used that on the surface, they sound
intuitively to make sense,” he said. “But I’m not sure if they are
indicated for all people with autism.
“I think probably, in a lot of
cases, families may want to leave no stone unturned.”
And when one family hears of
success with one treatment, it encourages others to try it.
“I think one of the things I’ve
tried to caution families about, if it sounds too good to be true,
it probably is too good to be true,” he said, though he added
holistic approaches to the disorder could be effective.
But Wilson said he thinks health
professionals shouldn’t wait for the research to catch up with
treatments that have shown success with some children.
Majebe also said definitive
research is limited because autism is a behavioral disorder.
But there is agreement that
awareness of the disorder is increasing.
Children may be getting
professional attention earlier, and that helps.
Over the last year, Lori Lesley
said, Luke’s behavior has improved.
After his nearly 15-minute
treatment, Luke pulled on his sandals and shirt and headed outside
to run around the clinic with his brother.
She said his teachers have noticed
a difference. She said sometimes he doesn’t have any outbursts
during the day. Other days, there are two or three, she said.
“Some of the stuff you try, it does
sound kind of crazy,” she said. “But I encourage people to keep
looking, trying, to keep fighting for the child.”
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