When people ask me to recommend an experienced Walsh practitioner to take them through autism turnarounds, my answer is:
There isn’t anyone in Scandinavia that I would personally go to.
There’s one in Europe, I can recommend (the best in the world is in the UK at the moment) but she is closed for new clients with a waiting list. There are a couple of great ones in Australia and maybe 5 – 7 in the US I would go to.
Whaaat? If you search for Walsh practitioners, Biomed for autism, and autism protocols online, you will find LOADS, right?
The sad reality is that true expertise is very rare.
Most practitioners have missing links and gaps in their (otherwise brilliant) knowledge. This is not a criticism. It is totally understandable. Practitioners are human and it takes time, money, patience and dedication to master all the underlying issues. The best practitioners have a child on the spectrum. Motivated by the possibility of saving your own child drives you to go to extremes to learn EVERYTHING.
A combination of skills and experience in the areas listed below is extremely rare in the field of autism. But it is very important to ask your practitioner these questions to determine whether he or she is up to date and worth the investment.
1. How many children have you reversed?
This is the main question. Why would we go to someone for autism turnarounds, if they haven’t succeeded in helping other children overcome the symptoms before?
2. What is your strategy for testing and addressing undermethylation?
If the practitioner thinks that testing for gene variants like MTHFR is enough, you are wasting your money.
The practitioner must be experienced in taking patient history, understanding the role of histamine, gene variants, epigenetics, and the tug of war between under and overmethylation in a healing process.
3. How do you rule out Gaba to glutamate conversion issues, elevated kryptopyrroles, copper overload, and undermethylation in your approach to dealing with mood swings, nutrition, and supplements?
If the practitioner does not know what you are talking about or tries to talk about methylation as a general term or histamine as merely a gut issue that is not good enough for you.
A great practitioner knows that it is a very delicate process to regulate undermethylation, he or she can describe the paradox of the folate intolerance aspect and knows that copper toxicity is addressed carefully with nutritional therapy. A great practitioner knows that dumping copper too quickly can lead to more symptoms. Also, he knows that the diet and nutritional approach to deal with pyrrole disorder, copper overload and undermethylation are 3 completely different things.
4. How do you address each child’s bio-individuality in a world of “one size fits all” protocols and diets?
This is a great question because it will irritate the practitioners who try to fit your child into these protocols (which never works in the long run). A good practitioner knows that each child’s nutritional need varies from month to month. No two children are alike.
5. How important are the sun, grounding, a clean environment, and nature in my child’s healing process?
This question is important because the answer reveals whether this practitioner understands the role of the mitochondria. It also reveals whether this practitioner understands how we are yoked to the sun and how our children’s sleep problems, cortisol/melatonin imbalance, inflammation, and levels of oxidative stress all have to do with the lack of sunlight, grounding, water, and electromagnetic charge from the ground.
I have hooked up with the only practitioner in Europe who did and she is teaching my upcoming nutrition and lifestyle course with me. She is the one practitioner in the world that I would recommend to any other parent out there. Are we lucky to know her or what?