Treating Autism

Coffee yes Sally dibs dibs Sally forces whoa-oh-oh-ah 9 - how did you know my phone number how did you know that said Reva telephone book last night did Sally for 6 101 92 he remembers things little things sometimes and it's from the movie Rain Man April is Autism Awareness Month even though there's no cure or is there at any rate intervention should begin as soon as possible after a diagnosis but what does that look like and what can actually cause more problems for the autistic brain psychiatr

ist dr. Jay tano is back with us what should happen immediately after a parent is told we have the diagnosis your child is autistic though then we stopped formulating a treatment plan and the treatment plan after a very comprehensive evaluation has to start on looking at these very specific things like let's develop language the big problem a lot of these children at the age of two three four or five are aggressive and they're out of control in terms of sometimes their hyperactivity and impulsiv

ity so we got to look at each of these factors and focus a treatment plan about what's going to be helpful it was interesting what you just described is also the ADHD child yes so that's why I'm going to somebody who's learned in this is obviously very important to get the right diagnosis I know with my son who's ADHD a daycare worker pulled me aside once and said he might be autistic and so you got to go to somebody who's a professional in the field for that right okay so in starting treatment

there's no single plan for each child as you said you gotta look at each child individually The Wall Street Journal came out with a an article that said there could possibly be a cure for this is it a cure or is it a maturation or what is it well I think that first of all because there are so many different types of autism and each child is individualists you can't put it into one big category and say everyone develops the same way because they're very different so the issue about cure well what

I was taught in medical school and what has been the medical understanding is that children don't grow out of this this is a disease forever per lifetime but all of a sudden we're starting to see something different now one is because there has been a bigger understanding about what autism is and the and one aspect of that is that people want to get services so now schools are providing services for kids with autism and that is a new thing and so as a result of it parents want the diagnosis so

they can get to services special protections and things like all those types of things but the the Disability Act is really helpful here but what what they want is let's treat the symptoms to let's treat what pieces when you start treating the symptoms especially the issue about language of social development there is a progression of getting healthier the other piece of this is that we now understand the biology of it and we can start looking for things that may underline that may be causing th

e problem with the autism that we can change yeah and there's like that 2 prong approach obviously if you could kind of help someone mature out of something that's that's you know getting to the root of something but you talked about utilizing medications a lot of people misunderstand medications right I know I was like that as a parent I came in said my child will not be on medication you're like depends on what you need your child to do but it can you know your your your if someone needs it fo

r a lifetime they need for a lifetime if it's something they can wean off of then they wean off of but it can take care of those things so you can get to the kind of the real root of the child right or the person irritability aggression repetitive behavior all that stuff you talked about there are medications that can help deal with those symptoms when it comes to medications I have this is like everybody around us we'd be getting press releases on it people have been calling me and asked me abo

ut it CBD oil which we know CBD and THC and all those types of things have been in the news for a long time for medicinal purposes what are your thoughts on that because they're saying it's it's not the the miracle thing for everything right oh yeah it's great for autism it's great for ADHD it's great for pain it's great for what is it really well I think that this wall came from Charlotte's Web oh and Charlotte's Web was a form of marijuana that was grown in Colorado that was helping children w

ho had epilepsy and these are children whose epilepsy was not responding to other all the other medicines and matter of fact you can get that here in Texas also allows Charlotte's Web to be used and Charlotte's Web was a portion of CBD and that CBD which is part of the marijuana compound was very helpful and was able to help control these children's seizures I think a lot of the research especially the research that I've done is that we see kids who have autism having these abnormal spikes nib r

ain causing a lot of the symptoms like aggression hyperactivity and impulsivity and the obsessive compulsive type traits and so the theory is that if we give them Charlotte's Web CBD oil that that will help those abnormal aspects in the brain and also you know CBD oil is very helpful for calming people and decreasing anxiety it's very helpful it's great for pain I take some and put it on my shoulder whether I have pain shoulder and it's very healthy you can use CBD oil it's legal except it canno

t have any THC the psychoactive which goes to here was the issue that a number of pharmacists talk to me about what are you really getting at your party well the problem with CBD oil is the FDA has done research on this and what they found and they took a huge number of different products and they found about 38 to 40 percent did not have what it said in the bottle in the bottle that was about one to ten percent of what they said was in the bottle was really in the box because it's not regulated

it's not regulated and the other piece about it is that it had a lot of contaminants most importantly pesticides so you don't want to be taking pesticides that's really important yeah now the other piece about this in my view is they're kids with what their parents are desperate yeah these kids are really having a lot of difficulty with that said there are certain things that the autistic brain should not be exposed to video games is one we talk about that a lot with kids in the young brain rig

ht video games for people with autism is incredibly addicting yeah incredibly think they get to isolate themselves they don't have to deal with people and they deal with the game and they love computer type games because of its clarity about what the messages are also certain drugs even like an autistic brain in marijuana don't go together that's right that's right but the thing about the marijuana or the CBD oil that's so popular right now is no one has ever done a study of CBD oil long term in

children and I would be very very afraid and I will not recommend CBD oil for children unless there's more research yeah more research and a pharmaceutical grade of something at least that you know exactly what is it some companies now they're making pharmaceutical grade CBD oil all right dr. turn out thank you very much for opening our eyes and by the way you have someone here today who actually works with kids with autism in your autism and has done a lot of very innovative things like not us

ing medicine instead using neural therapy yeah all right all kinds of cutting-edge stuff there thank you very much and for more information on ASD and to connect with psychiatrist dr. J tar now we have a link on great day Houston dot-com