Book Review: Healing the New Childhood Epidemics

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders, by Kenneth Bock (M.D.) and Cameron Stauth.

Well.  This book was a trial.  Depressingly for me, I sensed that it had sufficient merit that I couldn\’t merely throw it aside in frustration and find a less energy-shredding book to review.  So after at least two weeks trying to finish reading it, I succeeded.   I\’m going to explain the bad bits first, then tell you why I bothered finishing this book and why it may still be worth your read despite the bad bits.

The First Third Or So, or \”Augh Whyyyyyyyy\”

First, and most importantly, this book\’s primary author is a medical doctor.  This is important because most understandings of autism consider it a strictly mental disability/difference.  It is, therefore, generally the realm of psychologists, psychiatrists, and other professionals that have an education in psychology.  The people that wrote this book?  Clearly either fell asleep during those classes or never took them in the first place.

That does not mean what they have to say is not relevant or correct… but it did nearly cause me to pop a vein in my forehead when they misrepresented no less than three major schools of thought in psychology, and in the same breath implied they were all basically the same (and useless).  As a person with a degree in psychology, I am regularly disgusted by abuses of psychology in advertising, in politics, and in company policies.  I tend to expect better of educated professionals.

In brief, for your edification or if you read this book.  Freudian psychology is based in understanding and delving into the subconscious, and involves things like dream interpretation, free-association, and psychoanalysis.  The man was a genius, but in a great many cases, he was also extremely misguided.  Very few of his techniques are used today for lack of effectiveness. 

Humanistic psychology, or what this book calls \”Be Yourself\” psychology, was introduced in the 60s. It is focused on the wholeness of the person, the inherent human drive towards self-actualization, and mindfulness.  It involves non-judgemental listening, guided insights on the part of both therapist and client, and a very positive outlook and mindset.

Equating the two schools of thought is flatly wrong, and insulting to both of them and psychology itself to boot.  That entire section, frankly, tastes like the authors\’ best attempts to push you away from psychology at any cost. There were many such breezy, poorly-researched thoughts in the first third of the book, and they drove me absolutely batty.

Another really awful bit was one of the very few citations in the book.  It\’s already somewhat problematic, these days, to write a book on a new theory in which you do not cite your sources… but these authors had the gall to actually cite Andrew Wakefield as a reliable source.  They even refer to him as \”Dr. Wakefield\” which he is not, any more.  He is not a doctor, for the exact same reason that his name is mud in most autism circles: he published a paper (and held a press conference) effectively saying that the MMR vaccine causes autism.  It was thereafter found that not only did his own research not support this conclusion, but also Wakefield had been paid money by prosecuting lawyers against the MMR vaccine.  In short, Wakefield was corrupt, abused his doctorate, and fabricated claims regarding his research.

The end result of all this was that Wakefield was stripped of his doctorate, his paper was redacted from the magazine that published it, and his research was shown, over and over, to be false.  Calling him \”Dr. Wakefield\” in this book, and implying that any of his work should be taken seriously, is not only incorrect, but flatly irresponsible.

Perhaps most insulting to me personally, this book and its authors are very fond of using phrasing like \”recovering from autism\” and \”reversing autism.\”  If you\’re at all familiar with the neurodiversity movement, you\’ll know immediately how utterly insulting such phraseology is.  They may as well have said \”cure autism\” and \”fix autism\” while they were at it, and taken the appropriately leveled firestorm that comes with such thoughtless word choice.

Like many books of this kind, this book is directed towards parents, in particular, parents who are desperate to \”make the autism go away.\”  The easiest mentality to adopt, upon being told one\’s child is autistic, is to blame the autism for everything about your kid that\’s not normal and is bad.  And then seek a cure for it, so you can have your dreams of your child\’s future back.  I get this.  But it is kind of insulting when someone essentially says, \”Oh God, I\’ll do anything to make my kid not like you.\”  I\’m definitely not a perfect person and I certainly have challenges, but I don\’t think anyone appreciates being looked upon with a mixture of horror and pity. 

Finally, the first third of so of this book, the \”stories of these kids and their treatments\” that are meant to resonate with parents reading the book… they either end before the child transitions to adulthood, or they end in death to promote the seriousness of seeking proper treatment.  And each and every one of these stories tastes like pop psychology and abuse of persuasion methods.  Had the whole book been like this, I would have been very inclined to burn the dratted thing rather than return it to the library…

The Not-Terrible Part of the Book

So given how utterly awful the first part of the book was, why did I keep reading?  Well…  here\’s the thing.  Once you get past the pop psychology and the insulting terminology and the horrifying misrepresentations, the premise of the book is actually very sound.  Also the style of writing changes once they start explaining their particular program, from \”dramatic pop psychology\” to \”medical doctor talking so a layperson can understand.\”  Much more pleasant, and infinitely more useful.
The idea behind the book is that autism (and ADHD, and the others) are, at least in part, systemic, biological problems.   That seems weird, considering how psychology thinks of autism as strictly a brain problem, but keep in mind, your brain is not some separate entity, it\’s connected to the rest of your body.  What you eat can affect your brain as well as your midsection, and malnutrition doesn\’t just affect physical growth, it can also affect mental development.  Make sense?  
Okay.  Next thing these authors do right: they insist, over and over, that there is no one treatment for autism or ADHD or anything else.  Each child is different, and has different problems, and you can\’t just search for a \”magic bullet\” cure and apply it willy-nilly.  That\’s the major mistake people make when it comes to medicine, ie: \”Just give me a pill to make it better,\” and they\’re done.  This book actually says doctors have the same problem when it comes to medicine.  But the authors strongly insist this is not the way to treat these kids.  Each treatment must be tailored to the kid, they repeat over and over.  
This \”individualized treatment\” philosophy is the exact same one my own doctor uses, and she\’s done very well by me and others in her care.  It also makes sense logically, frankly.  If you go around the world and talk in American English at every person with pale skin, you\’re going to get a lot of annoyed, confused, pale-skinned people in Europe.  There is no one-size-fits-all treatment.
Another thing the authors do right is in the vein of vaccines.  You\’d think, from my haranguing about Wakefield above, that they\’re anti-vaccine.  You\’d be wrong.  They, like my own doctor, are supportive-but very careful- with vaccines.  The benefits of vaccines are well-proven.  Polio is effectively no more.  As a child, the worst illness I remember having was hives (from reacting badly to a medicine).  I never had to contend with measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, smallpox, whooping cough…  the list goes on.  
These folks warn about the dangers of vaccines, and advise you strongly to check what\’s in them before having them administered to your kids.  This is wise, since people can be allergic to eggs and some vaccines have some egg in them.  They also mention the mercury/thimerosal issue as an example of how things can sneak by in vaccines, and why care should be taken with vaccines.  (Please note, there are thankfully almost no vaccines left at this point in time that contain mercury or thimerosal. Do be careful with your flu shot, though.)  They provide an alternate schedule for childhood vaccination, which has more time to allow the child\’s immune system to adjust and react to the injections.  
Finally, the program itself is sound.  Instead of recommending whatever they\’re selling and telling you that\’s all you\’ll need, to trust them and just believe, they explain their four part plan in great detail. Instead of recommending a silver bullet type cure, like one pill, or even one diet, or something, they insist on four facets of treatment: diet, supplementation, detoxification, and medication.  The keyword for these is \”as needed.\”  While in many cases a change towards the healthy (or in their case, a change towards gluten-free/casein-free or other diets) can of course help a person do better in life, medication and detoxification are not always appropriate.  The key, as mentioned above, is individualized treatment.  Because autism is a trashbin diagnosis, there are many factors that can lead to getting that label, and thus nearly as many treatments as there are people with the diagnosis.

Each of the four categories of treatment is described in detail, including a number of options inside each category.  Diet, for example, doesn\’t merely cover gluten-free/casein-free, but also contains options for specific food allergies, anti-yeast, anti-hypoglycemia, etc.  Supplementation and medication are naturally very lengthy sections.  I\’m pretty sure my eyes glazed over about halfway through the medication section, because I have no experience with any of it and there was so much information.  But I can pretty much be sure this book would make a handy guide when approaching your doctor about ways to improve your kid\’s life.

Read This Book If

You want a good guide to a group of therapies that actually work to improve the lives of people on the autism spectrum (and possibly ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies, I don\’t know).  I strongly suggest you skip right to chapter 16/page 189 and use that part of the book as reference, since the first third or so of the book tastes strongly of dramatics and pop psychology.  What remains of the book after that spot is highly useful information regarding therapies my own doctor uses very successfully.  
Please note, this is not a comprehensive guide to all working therapies for autism, but it is the building blocks upon which other therapies (neurofeedback, cognitive/behavioral psychology, and applied behavioral analysis) can really shine.  For more heavily-affected autistic people, these therapies may be the missing key to being able to interact and function in society.  And for people like me that don\’t have as many difficulties, these therapies can really improve the quality of life and make it easier to deal with the curveballs life throws.