(00:01):

Hi there and welcome to naturally recovering autism. I am your host, Karen Thomas. And I want to thank you so much for being here today and being a proactive parent and getting the resources that you need to help your child reach their optimum level of recovery. And we know that the definition of recovery is to regain health and every child’s level of recovery is different for my own son. He was, I was once told to drug him and try behavioral therapies, and there was nothing else we could do for him. But I fortunately have a background in craniosacral therapy where I’ve studied the brain now for 30 years. And I knew the brain can and does heal. It has now been 15 years this month, since my son was diagnosed with autism and it took me a decade of that time to figure it out. But my own research proved that autism can be recovered from my son is no longer diagnosable.

(00:56):

He’s got his life back. He’s got a better quality of life and some kids may continue to keep their diagnosis. And that’s absolutely fine. We’re not trying to change who anybody is, what we’re trying to do, what the goal is, is to improve their quality of life and let them live the most happy functional one possible for them. Some kids who were non-verbal are now speaking. Some kids who couldn’t focus in a classroom and were getting DS and apps are now getting A’s and B’s and other kids who were having tantrums and the parents seeing screaming, being old day could never sleep had digestive problems are now calm and relaxed. Yeah. And happy and making friends. This is recovery. That is what it’s about. The quality of life possible for a child and our kids are brilliant. So why shouldn’t they have the chance everybody else does?

(01:49):

And it’s toxins and inflammation and a lot of biological issues that are in the way, this has so much to do with how the brain can function and their overall health, right? Likely a parent who notices that your child has a lot of immune issues. Maybe they’re sick all the time from the things I have shared. All of these things, things have been possible for parents that I just mentioned and have happened. Some parents had their children hospitalized multiple times a year prior to finding my program and coming with me and going on this journey where I’ve guided them through things that have been able to improve their child’s quality of life to that extent. And that’s what it’s about. And because it is the new year and happy new year, by the way, I’m happy to be here and happy to share all of this.

(02:35):

I’ll share these grateful things with you on this coming in Saturday, if you’re listening to this live, I am teaching the first autism recovery master class of 2021. We are going to start this year out, right? It is a free three hour live event, and we will do that Q and A, because I know you have questions and I know how important it is to get your support and get your questions answered and how hard that can be on this journey. I have lived it. I know exactly how it is and I want to help you. So this, uh, this Saturday, January 9th, if you’re listening to this live, please, register now at, NaturallyRecoveringAutism.com/masterclass. And, uh, please share it with anybody, you know, who would be interested in learning how they can improve the quality of life for their child, because autism is a lot to do with biological.

(03:31):

It’s not a mental illness and that’s why it can be healed. People sometimes say, you can’t recover this, you can’t cure it. I never use the word cure. I like to explain how these things can change by Anne. And I will explain all of this in the masterclass in depth, because there is a lot, of course, as you can tell with, you know, this is human biology and everything else that’s going on. In fact, all of this came about because other moms on the school yard and in my community began recognizing the changes in my son and how much healthier it was, how much more communicative, how much more interactive he was becoming. He could focus in the classroom and make friends. And he, you know, he just became a different child and so much calmer and honestly happier. And so parents started approaching me, especially grocery stores everywhere and said, Karen, you know, my child’s got this going on, you know, and they’d explain some, some things and it might’ve been some food allergies or some behaviors, what can we do about it?

(04:37):

I’d start running through things that that they could do. And they’d be grabbing in their purse for an old receipt or anything that they had, any piece of paper and a pen to write down things. And I thought, Oh, I’ve got to share this. I’ve got to put this out there where people can get guided through it. So I first wrote my book, Naturally Recovering Autism and released it. And then people followed it and got a lot of help. They said, Karen, I would love to have something where, you know, you could just guide me through this. I’m so overwhelmed and I need the steps and I need exactly everything. And the book of course is great, but you can only do so much in a book, right. There are links to specific supplements that have taken me over a decade to research out and, and when you need them and how to know when to use them.

(05:24):

So that’s what I do in my natural recovering autism membership (hint: in case you’re interested, the doors will open to registration during the masterclass). So that parents have the actual guided help that they need because I know again, how hard this can be and how overwhelming. So my goal is to share this with everyone possible and to get this out there. Even my own daughter had stomach and digestive issues, and she would become kind of wild sometimes and couldn’t calm herself down. And that was simply because of some other health issues. She actually had some PANS. You’ve probably of heard of pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric syndrome. It’s actually where the immune system starts attacking the brain. And my son had it too. I didn’t realize what was going on back then. So there are a lot of symptoms where you might not think are health related. Many parents have approached me and their child’s been in and out of the hospital.

(06:15):

It’s been expensive. They’ve been dosed up with antibiotics with the doctors, trying to figure out what’s going on and really not having answers for them. And so this is a natural approach that we can do to help any individual who wants to be healthier, be happier, and again, have a better quality of life. And it really is about the entire family, because I’m sure you’ve noticed you might have some health issues or your other children may, but also how much, if a child with autism has tantrums and screaming fits and has issues that sometimes can be really disruptive to the family. And the parents I hear are just exhausted. Sometimes they haven’t had sleep in maybe weeks or even months had a good night’s sleep. And this starts to wear on everyone and the health of everyone is affected. So it’s very, very important that the whole family gets well. In autism, the number of diagnosis has increased, almost tripled since the early two thousands, we know in one 36 children, and they’re saying it’s a $3.6 million dollar annual lifetime expense that it costs to have a child with autism.

(07:34):

And this can be greatly reduced not to mention the time lost from parents being able to go to work because, you know, they may be the child who maybe can’t go to regular school. So a mom will do anything to help her child. And I know that that’s why you’re here. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t care. And so not everyone can afford all of these expensive therapies and all the doctors. And every lot of the time that the therapies don’t work for my own son, he couldn’t even think in the classroom and focus or do things in therapies he was asked to do. He used to say, mom, I want to, but I can’t. And he literally wanted to, but he couldn’t carry out the task, and I knew my son was brilliant. You’ve probably seen children with autism have exceptional high IQ’s. Some children, one that I know of I’ve interviewed, you’ve probably seen my interview with, Brian and you can listen to it naturallyrecoveringautism.com/Brian.

(08:37):

Brian was actually diagnosed with autism at age two. And at age seven, he was trying to do schoolwork and testing and couldn’t function in the classroom. And they were set telling his parents that he was not intelligent well, now that he has been healed up and I will say from things like mold biotoxins that affect the brain’s ability to function and Lyme’s disease and other things like that, that get in the way of the brain functioning, today Brian is in medical school. I mean, that is what is amazing. We don’t want our kids to be inhibited by any means. I always knew how smart my son was. I mean, really beyond smart, extremely intelligent. And I thought, boy, you know, there’s gotta be a way to help him be able to clear whatever it is that’s in his way. And fortunately, again, my decade of research went through all of those pieces and brought him to who and where he is today.

(09:34):

My son has graduated college. He is exceptionally bright. He can now do anything he wants to do. He doesn’t have any of those limitations that he once did. I don’t want your child or you to have to have go through any limitations because you don’t know what to do. So again, please join me for this masterclass. That’s coming up. I’m really looking forward to teaching it for you and helping you understand what you can do for your child, because our kids deserve the best quality of life possible. As I mentioned, there are no two children alike and it doesn’t matter if they’re two years old or 20 years old or 40 years old, it’s never too late. I always call them kids. Even if they’re 40 years old, they’re still our kids, right. I work with parents who are in their seventies, who are still working with their 40 year old children.

(10:26):

Of course they’re adults, but they’re doing everything they can to help their child live an independent life because that’s another thing we want to know that our kids can take care of themselves later on in life. That’s really important too. So yeah, there are no two children that are identical, of course are, but there are certain principles that every child, that every person has. As we mentioned, we’re going to go through healing the gut because the gut controls the brain and it also controls 80% of the immune system. So we start with stabilizing the system and helping the detoxification pathways because they’re very often not working right with children in autism, and that can really affect their ability to carry out tasks asked of them and to think clearly. Then there’s natural heavy metal detoxification.

(11:27):

We’re gonna go through this in detail in the class as well, this weekend, but heavy metal toxins are noted and documented to affect many parts of the brain, including speech. Speech is a big one. I mentioned the PANS earlier, PANS can really cause a lot of speech issues. I am approached by parents all the time. They want their child to speak. The reasoning behind speaking, if you really think back to why you want your child to speak so badly, of course, you want your child to be able to speak and communicate. What you really want is connection. You want connection with your child. It’s a heartfelt connection. You want them to be able to speak. Just yesterday in the forum in my membership site, a mom said, Karen, my child today for the first time spoke and said, mommy, why don’t you feel okay?

(12:21):

He could tell that his mom was upset. She said, first of all, he spoke, but he also was able to have empathy. He understood his mother’s feelings and was able to speak to her about it. Now that is where we’re going. That’s the emotional connection behind this. Speaking clearly gives us connection, gives them the ability to speak to others and make friends and be able someday to maybe have a job and where they can support themselves or work, make friends. All of these things are really important. So I have compiled up a whole process. Heavy metal detoxification, that’s safe and natural, I will explain in this weekend’s class. It’s very important. Beyond that we want to move into doing things that work with the co-infections of autism. Now I’m talking about mold biotoxins. This might seem like a foreign or a new concept to you, but over 29% of the world population has a genetic defect that disallows their body to dispel the toxins from mold exposure and these toxins build up in the body.

(13:39):

So the body’s natural defenses are to put out inflammation markers, and then more inflammation markers are put out and there’s this cascade of inflammation put out in the body affecting not only the brain but your ability to focus and concentrate. It’s a big culprit of people with depression. People are being put on SSRI or antidepressant drugs for depression when it’s actually the mold biotoxin issue affecting their brain. And it also affects the gut extremely, so very important to know about this. And we’ll talk about that this weekend also. Lyme’s disease. They say close to a hundred percent of children with autism have Lyme’s disease to some degree. So this is very important as well. Very commonly missed in most diagnostic tests because it’s very hard to detect, especially when the immune system is so busy fighting other issues in the system.

(14:42):

The immune markers for Lyme may not show up in blood testing. It can be really, really hard to test and very hard to treat if you don’t know how to properly. So we’ll talk about that. And naturally and safely. There are also things like I mentioned, the PANS, which is an acronym again for the pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric syndrome. When you hear the term PANDAS, the acronym would be  associated with strep. Streptococcal infections are extremely common in children with autism. They disrupt the gut, and they disrupt the brain. They cause the immune system to over-react. If you heard last week’s episode, I talked about in autism, how important it is to NOT overstimulate or activate or boost the immune system. This is very commonly mistaken, even with doctors who are working with children with autism.

(15:38):

You don’t want to do that because it is a form of auto-immunity and we don’t want the body starting to attack itself and its own tissues instead of the infections because it becomes overactive. What we want to do is regulate. So immune regulation is key. You’ve got to be careful how you’re working with these issues in a child with autism. Mycoplasma, if your child has asthma issues or respiratory, a lot of respiratory issues, there are a couple of things that are very important and mycoplasma infections cause a lot of these. So very mucousy kids may be sick with a lot of respiratory issues that can have to do with that infection. So we’re going to talk about that in the class. As I mentioned, my background now is as a craniosacral therapist. I’ve been doing that for over 30 years now.

(16:34):

And that means we study the brain. We very gently work with the bones of the head to balance them so that they’re not negatively affecting the brain because when they’re out of balance, the brain can’t function properly. We use about the weight of a nickel. Craniosacral therapy is a very gentle, yet very effective way to calmly and naturally balance the bones of the head so that the brain can function at optimum. The temporal bones around the ears are very commonly displaced. They can cause a lot of speech, language and irritability and anger issues if they’re out of place, just to name a couple. The bone in the back of the head called the occiput, If that’s out of balance, it can be pinching on the vagus nerve, which can cause a lot of anxiety, a lot of digestive issues, and sleep issues.

(17:30):

As I just mentioned, the asthmatic type issues, respiratory ones, that same thing can be affected by pinching on those nerves in the back of the neck there as well because all of these cranial nerves branch out and they affect different parts of our central nervous system, our brain or body’s ability to function. So all interconnected. As you can see, there’s sort of a domino effect. We want to be able to work with everything. First, we’ve got to stabilize the body. Then we’re going to move on to help the detoxification pathways. You may have heard my past episodes. We’ve done things about MTHFR, gene mutations or methylation issues. About 98% of kids with autism have those genetic defects. It’s very common. Not to fear it. Know that this can be worked with knowing that epigenetics, which are the genes being affected by environmental factors, which is what’s happening today with all of us and especially children with autism, epigenetics can be reversed.

(18:38):

You’ve got to gently, and one step at a time, be very consistent and very patient because it does take time. Work slowly to move forward. I will share all of this in the class and how I help people in my program with this as well, because I know that you may need help and I want to support you on this journey if that’s something that you’re needing because I don’t want you left hanging, and I don’t want you out there scared and feeling alone because I want you to know you’re not alone anymore. And there are so many other parents that are in there that are really working through the same thing you are. I want to help you on this journey because it’s becoming more and more prevalent and we can put a stop to it. The key is to know what you can do for your child, and how.

(19:26):

Focusing on natural resources and self-care. When I asked other people, other parents, what they wanted, they said they wanted simplicity. They needed a guide so that they knew what to do and how to do it. So that was it. That has been my goal with everything that I have created to help parents. And I want you, first of all, to relax and just take a couple of deep breaths. It’s so important as a parent to be taking care of yourself. A parent just wrote me two days ago and said, Karen, I’m just exhausted. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.  I don’t even know if I can take it anymore. And I said, please make sure you’re at the masterclass. I want to be able to lead you through what can be done and understand that there are things that you can do because it is about your own health as well.

(20:23):

You can follow the program for yourself, just like you are for your child. Because again, many parents have some of the same or similar health issues that are going on in their child. You’ve got to work with those for yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, who’s going to take care of your child, Right? We have to. Our children are depending on us. It’s very important to know that it’s not being selfish to take care of yourself. This I see in women a lot in my craniosacral practice. It is so, so common for women especially, to take care of everybody else and put themselves last. It’s like, Oh, well, I’ll get to myself after I take care of my kids or after my family is better. No, you take care of yourself now. And you have to put yourself up in front and know that you matter. You matter as much as anybody else.

(21:18):

You have to make sure that you are putting yourself up as a priority just as you are for your child and know there’s a better way and that you do have choices and that there are solutions. You’ve got to be patient. Take one step at a time, take a couple of really deep breaths. Even just going out for a five minute walk can really help just to clear your head. Get out. Just take a moment before your children wake up in the morning. If that’s the only time you have, or at night, when they’ve finally fallen asleep and you can have a couple of minutes to yourself, whatever it takes. However you can make it happen. Maybe you and your spouse can take turns. I know there are a lot of single parents out there but find a couple of minutes when you can do it for yourself as well, deep breathing, calming relaxation, meditation, anything.

(22:13):

It doesn’t have to be an extremely long amount of time if you don’t have it. There’s got to be five minutes in a day that you can take and say, this is my time. This is for me. I’m going to take care of myself now, and I’m really, really looking forward to helping take care of you and helping you take care of yourself because I’m a guide I will guide you. You need to take the steps and you have to again, put yourself as a priority as well as your child, because you’re so important. I want to make sure that you really understand that and that this is about the whole family getting better. We want everybody’s health to be good.

(23:01):

We also do pass infections around the family, So we don’t only want to work on our child with autism, but not be working on ourself or siblings or the spouse, the other parent in the household. Even by exhaling, we are exhaling other infections and germs and viruses and things. So we want to make sure that everybody is getting worked with, everybody’s getting healthy because that will also help everybody’s mental state. You can see how, even for yourself, you see maybe your child with autism, having a tantrum and an irritability, just for an example, maybe they’re lethargic and fatigued. Well, you might notice how, of course, if you’re having a bad day, you haven’t slept well, or you know, the candida overgrowth, other pathogens in your body will create a lot of anxiety and irritability. So if you’re having a lot of that irritability, you know how it feels. We, as parents, just try to hold it together a little bit better, but  still, we have plenty of days when we’re just plain irritable.

(24:06):

What if we’re not working with those things, Right? This is what your child is dealing with. So again, having some empathy to understand internally what they’re experiencing, because nobody wants to be having screaming tantrums all day long or not be able to sleep or have digestive trouble, or just overall lack of focus and ability to function or any energy to get through the day. So this is about everybody understanding that it’s about everybody’s health. I look forward to seeing you in the masterclass this weekend, please register now. The link again is, naturallyrecoveringautism.com/masterclass, no spaces. Please share it with anybody you know who could benefit from this information because again, with one in 36 kids being diagnosed now with autism and the prevalence increasing every year, this is about everyone having the knowledge and understanding to help you save you the time and the expense and giving you emotional support on this journey. It’s so crucial to the optimum outcome and getting the best benefits for yourself, your child, and your entire family. So thank you again so much for being here. Happy new year to you. Let’s make 2021, the absolute best year ever. I’m really looking forward to it, and I really look forward to seeing you in this class soon. Until then, take care of yourself and have a great week. Bye for now.

FREE 3-HOUR AUTISM RECOVERY MASTERCLASS LIVE!

JANUARY 9TH, 2021

Start the New Year out right!

Click here to register now.

Interested in hearing an inspiring autism success story from a mom helped by these resources I will share with you in the masterclass? Listen to Diana’a story here.