Healing Autism, PANS, and PANDAS When Conventional Medicine Fails

Hi and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, and in today's episode, I'm really looking forward to introducing you to Lauren Lee Stone. She is a pediatric chronic illness specialist, and she's also co-author of the book Brain Under Attack, a resource for parents and caregiving— caregivers of children with PANS, PANDAS, and autoimmune encephalitis. Thank you so much for joining us today, Lauren.

Oh gosh, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Of course. I mean, this is such an important topic and issue that more and more people are dealing with, parents and families and children. And I just really am so grateful for people to know that there are other options out there and there are specialists like you who have researched and written and focused on this area and helping patients in this area. And so I'm, I'm so glad for everyone to learn more about what you do. Maybe start by sharing a little bit, because this isn't originally what your, your career was, but this is— you were pulled in this direction. And, and I think that's huge because that means that what you do is really your passion.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I— this was not my first choice of career. I was actually set to be a professor and studying literature and all the rest of it. But You know, while I was in graduate school, I had my children. I had my first child anyway. And, you know, I was young and healthy, and I really couldn't imagine that my son would be anything but, you know, the beautiful boy that he was, that he is, that, you know, he turned out to be. You know, but I didn't— I couldn't— it never occurred to me that there would be any issue at all. And he was born healthy. I was healthy in my pregnancy. But shortly after he was born, he started to manifest with what I now realize were soft signs that something was really amiss. And, you know, I didn't realize it. The pediatrician certainly didn't help me to understand what these signs were. And for example, he had— Dr. Doni Wilson. An incredibly severe case of colic. He would writhe and scream in really wrenching pain most of the evening and well into the night. It was really hard to watch, hard to not be able to soothe him because nothing did soothe him. He had loose stools. They were actually not just loose, they were burning. So if I didn't change his diaper right away, they would, you know, he'd have welts on his skin. Mm-hmm. He had chronic ear infections, right? Which meant rounds of antibiotics. He, you know, started actually hand flapping when he was about 3 months old. He had seizures when he was 18 months old.

Hmm.

And I was told at that point by the Yale Child Study Center and by my pediatrician that there was nothing I could do, that he would continue to regress and eventually be institutionalized. And, you know, I actually just did not accept that trajectory, you know, thank goodness. So I quit my job and I went back to school and I studied biochemistry and I studied nutrition and I studied homotoxicology, which is a beautiful form of homeopathy. Really anything that would, I thought, help him. And the beautiful and miraculous news is that he lost his diagnosis when he was 8. He is now a grown man, married, you know, the head of a— he's a scientific head of a small startup and he has a PhD in environmental engineering. And really the truth is you would never know that he ever had a disability, that he ever was diagnosed with autism or seizure disorder or anything else. And, you know, all that to say, you know, that that if I can do it, other families can do it too. And, you know, don't take the medical establishment's diagnosis of your child as, you know, the end because it's not. It's a point of departure to learn and grow and to heal, right? Mm-hmm.

Wow. I mean, it's, and to be able to, for you to be like, hey, I, at what point did you kind of realize, hey, this, the medical system, was it that conversation when the doctor said there's nothing else we can do that you, that told you, oh my gosh, I've got to figure this out. There must be something else I can do.

Yeah, it was such an interesting, like, turnaround because I'm the daughter of an oncology nurse and I was brought up to revere doctors in particular. And so I put all of my trust in my doctors, you know, throughout, again, you know, my life, my pregnancy, the birth, and throughout the first 4 years of my child's life, but they let me down. You know, they totally turned their back on me. And, you know, it was really like I was forced into realizing that they don't know anything. I mean, they know some things, but they don't know everything, really, is what I meant to say. You know, they don't. And there are answers out there that, you know, perhaps they haven't encountered, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah, and so that's when I did, you know, it was so obvious to me that, you know, my child was not going to be institutionalized. It was just obvious to me. And I was the one who had to make the change. I had to become my child's medical professional. And that's what I did.

It's really inspiring, Lauren, it really is. And now you help other families. Now you've created Alsea Health and Wellness, right? And you're helping other families through these types of diagnoses.

Yes. Yeah, 100%. And it's such a beautiful place to be that, you know, when families come to me, they often have lost all hope, right? They've often, you know, they've just been told, like I have, that either their child's issue is, you know, it's a parenting issue, it's a behavioral issue, they need to be medicated, they need, you know, another round of antibiotics or, you know, whatever it is. But there's never really a vision for, or a trajectory for true healing, right? And that's not to say that, you know, certain medications don't work. They certainly do. Antibiotics, we all, you know, there are time, there's a time and a place for all of that. However, it's not, you know, it's not the only part of the healing journey, right? There's a reason why our children are sick. You know, there's a reason why 54% of American children are sick with a chronic illness today. And that is, that is a true statistic.

It's really eye-opening, isn't it, when you start to go, wow. And these are like, maybe list through some of these common, what are those 54% of conditions that they are having?

Yeah, so definitely, um, things like asthma, eczema, PANS/PANDAS, which I work with a lot, autism, which I work with a lot. Anxiety, depression, you know, all kinds of GI issues. You know, really, there's a real true epidemic of chronic illnesses that run the gamut from, you know, autism to cancer. And that's for all of us, you know. And the truth of the matter is that we are sick because of our environment, because of, you know, an unbearable toxic load in our body. And because of the inflammatory, the unrelenting inflammation and immune reaction that we're having as a result of this toxic load that should never— that we are not— as human beings, we were not meant to have. Right. So it's not cancer, it's toxicity. Right.

And what are the most common toxins that you identify in your patients or that you that you find that a lot of people aren't realizing they're exposed to?

So I like, you know, when I get this question, I really like to tell a story about my, where I live and my kids' exposures because I think it's so, it's such a great, you know, just, it's just so typical of what goes on. So we live in Connecticut in the woods, literally. Beautiful, bucolic, like we have all kinds of wild animals in our backyard, you know, I mean, it's really the woods. And we chose to live there because we wanted to have a healthy environment for our children. Lo and behold, we found out a few years into living there, and after, you know, my first child manifested with autism, that we actually have super high mercury levels in the air. And why is this? Well, we are downwind from a coal-fired power plant that's up in actually Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is, you know, 30, 40 miles north of us. And just because of the wind currents, all of the, you know, the coal, I mean, the mercury from the coal combustion sits in the air and comes downstream on the jet stream and lands over our community and poisons us, right? So the truth is you don't know what you don't know.

Mm-hmm.

And the amount of toxins that our bodies are holding, it's just, it's different.— a different story for everyone because we all have our own unique biochemistry, our own unique genetics, and our own unique history of where we live and what we've been exposed to. So for my son, for example, his biggest stressors were mercury, not just because of the air we breathe, but because I had— when I was pregnant, I had silver fillings in my mouth, which are actually mercury amalgams. And, you know, Despite what the powers that be might tell you, that mercury is not inert. It does not stay in the amalgam. Every time you chew, every time you drink a hot liquid, those vapors disperse and they end up lodging wherever they lodge. And mercury, for example, is lipophilic, and so it is attracted to fatty tissues. Imagine it's right here in the mouth, it's going to end up a lot in the brain, but it also ends up in the bloodstream. And when you're pregnant, everything crosses the placenta, not just the nutrients. We share everything. So every time I ate or drank my cup of tea, I was sharing that mercury with my baby. Right. So he was born mercury toxic. Right. I also had a huge load of lead in my body because I lived in a very old home growing up, and my mom was a consummate decorator, constantly redoing the paint on the walls and, you know, whatever. It was just, it was a nightmare. So for him, there was that. He also had really super high levels of glyphosate, which is a, well, it's the herbicide used in Roundup, which is sprayed on, I think, 98% of crops in the United States today. And we can go down the road of glyphosate, but it's incredibly— Yeah. Toxic and is particularly toxic to kids. And his other— he also had super sensitive allergies to soy and gluten and dairy. So those foods became toxins for him.

Mm-hmm.

That's one individual story. But today, I actually— the kids today are even more toxic. We do urine panels on them often, and we find all kinds of things, particularly huge burdens of mold, even mycotoxins from black molds, for example. We see plastics, we see chemicals, lots of heavy metals, particularly mercury and arsenic and cadmium. And uranium actually is an interesting one that comes up a lot. It's, it's, it's a mixed bag, but our kids are toxic and that is why they're expressing with the symptoms they're expressing.

Yeah, it's such a— I'm so glad for you to go into that. And I see that too in my practice, you know, adults and children who we find out have these perhaps toxins that they, that they were exposed to through pregnancy or toxins from their current environment. And even like you said, sometimes foods or other, even overgrowing bacteria in the gut can produce toxins. And now we're getting toxins from the inside as well. And so it's like a big pileup. And, and then if the body's not able to detoxify, then those toxins start especially going after the nervous system, which I know is one of your specialties. So I want to go into talking about, you know, how that presents when the nervous system is, is being exposed to toxins and inflammation. Um, I was going to ask you, in terms of testing for these toxins, just so— because people might be thinking, okay, how do you know if you have any of these toxins? I know I run urine testing for some of those. You know, we can run urine testing for mold toxins or for glyphosate. But is that how— what you find as well?

Yes, we do. We run urine panels. But I also, you know, I do a really in-depth health history, and that too can You don't even have to do the panel if you know that the child has lived in an older home, has lived in a farming community, has— the mom is cooking or dad is cooking on Teflon pans or in aluminum or drinking out of plastic water bottles. All of that, that tells a story too. Symptoms tell a story as well. I think it's really important to note that So many of the symptoms that our children are expressing with adults are really are, you know, they are just, they are the body's way of expressing out-of-control inflammation. You know, and I tend to specialize in like neuroinflammation. So things like anxiety and depression, those are neuroinflammatory conditions, right? That is a brain that is toxic and inflamed. PANS/PANDAS, autism, OCD, aggression, you know, even things like behavioral regression and focus issues, that's a huge one. ADD, ADHD, brain fog, that's all, you know, a toxic brain, right? So the way, you know, again, medications can help, but the way to heal is not through the medication, it's through changing up what's going on in the child's life and through actually supporting the body to heal. And that means really opening those pathways of elimination and supporting the detoxification process.

Yeah, it's, it's so such an important distinction and I think a shift in our understanding of the nervous system. I mean, still for past several decades, the, you know, symptoms like these mental health issues that you've just named, um, ends up, they fall into the standard psychiatry and mental health protocols. And so oftentimes medications are the main treatment in that, in that, uh, you know, breakdown, in that, in that, um, scenario. And so sometimes then medications is the first things we go through, whether it go to, whether that's for anxiety, depression, ADHD. But to point out that— the symptoms are not a lack of a medication. Sometimes the medications are necessary and to stabilize, but to your point, we— I think we have to be asking more. We have to be digging deeper and saying, why is this symptom here? Not just put a medication and consider it done. And so to be able to— and that's why I love what you do, because that's what you're doing. You're saying, hey, let's, let's look at what's disrupting the nervous system. And the research on inflamed nervous system has existed for decades, but it's taken a long time. Why, why do you think it's taking so long for us to— for it to break into the standard of care?

Well, I think then you get into, um, you know, you get into corporate greed and, you know, the fact that unfortunately our government is You know, they are in, you know, they are, they are in partnership with a lot of the companies that are causing the toxicity. And so there's not a huge pull to do, to make any change. And I'm not pointing fingers at any individuals. I just think it's, there's a, uh, just a not, there's not a lot unless, unless you have a child who's sick, you're not going to feel that urge because it's hard work. It is hard work fighting against, you know, this, the tide.

Mm-hmm.

You know, but companies like Monsanto that makes glyphosate, Roundup, that's, they're huge and it's a huge, it's a huge battle. They won it in Europe. So I'm hopeful that at some point it will be won here, but Yeah, I think it's, I think it's just complacency and I think it's, it's financial greed.

Financial interests. Yeah. And, and so it really becomes the onus of each individual and each family to say, hey, we want to choose differently. We want to start to become more aware of what we're being exposed to and the choices we're making in our homes and our food and everything. And is that a lot of the work you do is guiding families how to transition, you know, to— because it's not like something you can change overnight, right? It's a process.

Absolutely. So yes, that is a huge part of our foundational piece of our, you know, the way we work. Before a family can work with me one-on-one, they have to do that, you know, that foundational piece, which means, you know, doing the testing and seeing what's going on in their child's body. Seeing what the exposures are, doing that deep dive into the home, into the school environment, into the food in particular. We really do clean out every nook and cranny. And once that's done, once you've lightened that load, then you can move into the more specialized protocols, which are— I use homeopathics and botanicals. Mm-hmm. And nutritionals to help to open, again, open those pathways of elimination, support our amonteries, support the mitochondria, making sure all the systems are up and running so that the body can naturally detoxify.

And that's such an important part. Oh yeah, it does. I know, I see this too. And I talk about this as well in terms of detoxification, where, because so much of the time people assume, oh, if we're up against this toxin, we're going to have to combat it with something big or strong or like a medication or something synthetic. And we're going to have to feel worse in the process. And I just, I just don't think that's true. I think if I just know that when we use natural substances like you're describing from diet, nutrients, herbs, homeopathic remedies, these are substances from nature that can help support our own body's ability to detoxify, which our bodies already know to do. But we just need to— and so it doesn't— it's— see, I mean, from, from what I see, it becomes like a whole family process, right? It's not usually just that one. If it's one child, it's not really that one child. It's the family that needs to go through this process.

Yeah, I mean, healing is not done in isolation. It is— we work, we work with everybody. I mean, when I work with a child, I work with the entire family because you have to. You have to. Yeah. And apropos to your point about the body's wisdom, I mean, the body will do what it needs to do to heal, and it's brilliantly endowed with the tools. We just have to do what we can to foster that healing and to support that healing. And I think the most important thing that any practitioner can do is to be a good listener, right? To listen not only to what a parent is saying or what a child is saying, but also listen to the body. Like, what is that symptom saying? Because the symptom, it's not the enemy, right? And that's something we have to relearn as well. The symptom is the body talking to us. It's telling us what's going on. And if you're an acute listener, you will be able to discern what the body is trying to tell you. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, amazing. It's so true. It's so true. And sometimes we do, yeah, we resist and we, we, first of all, we're frustrated for being in this situation and we're frustrated with the medical system and we're— so then it's harder to just settle and be like, okay, what do I really— what's really happening here? And where does this— and we're also unique and as individuals, as you've mentioned, right? So we have to really be listening and responding to each person uniquely.

Yeah, 100%. And we have to remember too that, again, like, I'm not against medication, not at all. Um, but we have to remember that oftentimes what medication does is it silences that— the voice of the symptom. And sometimes when the symptom is super uncomfortable, you want to silence it. Like, if you have a horrible headache and it's just not going away, you know, sometimes you need to take Advil. Okay, that's fine. At a certain point, you're going to want to say, why do I have the headache? Right? How can I reverse engineer that headache? Right? So it's the same thing with our kids and with— same thing with any disease process. It's like you just have to really just gently peel back the layers. And from my perspective, they're usually— they're layers of misunderstanding in the body and toxic layers. And there's environmental stuff, there's emotional layers, there's infectious layers, like all kinds of things that need to be gently peeled away in order to get at the baseline, back to baseline actually. So typically it's never just one thing, so it's not a straight path, but it is possible, it does happen. It happens all the time in my practice and in yours, right? That gentle unwinding is really the true way to heal.

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Yeah, it's really beautiful to observe and, um, an honor to, you know, get to support people in that way. And, and, um, and, and yeah, thank you for describing that. And, and I'm thinking like even for someone who may be really new to even the concept of PANS and PANDAS, maybe if you don't mind, just talk through that a little bit. Like, what— how are some of these, these diagnoses— how are we identifying them? What, what's shifting? What's the latest now in terms of even diagnosing autism? You know, like, because it's changing every, every year or 5 years, it's, it's— we learn more, right, about what's really going on here.

First and foremost, I think that parents need to know that these conditions, they're clinical diagnoses. There's no test for autism really, there really isn't. There's no one single symptom that describes autism. The same thing with PANS and PANDAS. There is no absolute test that's going to tell you, yes, your child has PANS or PANDAS. It is a constellation of symptoms. More often than not, it doesn't tell the whole story. The diagnosis doesn't tell the whole story. Again, it's the body talking and the diagnosis can be helpful as a point of departure for what your next step is, but it's not— I wouldn't be satisfied with just a diagnosis is what I'm saying. What you want to do is take that symptom, if your child, You know, say your child has, you know, a PANDAS diagnosis. Well, let's dig into why, you know, say your child has OCD. Why, what is it that's causing the OCD? Well, generally speaking, if it's a PANDAS diagnosis, then strep sits somewhere at the core, right? But what also sits at the core is this basal ganglia inflammation. And the basal ganglia is a part of the brain that houses our dopamine receptors. And when, you know, this part of the brain is under attack, you know, it means that there's fluctuations in dopamine, right? And what happens when you have fluctuations in dopamine? Well, you get, you know, you can imagine you'd get all kinds of movement disorders, right? So you get the facial tics or the motor tics, but you also have ups and downs in your ability to focus, your ability to, feel comfortable, to feel, you know, contented, to feel pleasure. And, you know, it can cause, you know, these kinds of neuropsychiatric symptoms when really what it is is, you know, inflammation sitting in the basal ganglia. And so how do we reverse engineer that inflammation, right? That's really the questions that you need to be asking. It's not— what is the child's diagnosis necessarily? Because I think that can lead you down pathway of complacency. Someone says, I'm an autism expert. Great, I'll go to the autism expert. But that's not the answer. The answer is what is sitting behind your child's symptom? That's unique to your child.

Right. Mm-hmm. And it's true, it's true. We have some, you know, it's— we have to be careful with diagnoses. You know, sometimes it's helpful to help understand, but at the same time, it can become— we can become attached to the label and then we're stuck, right? So it's about always having it as a— it can also be validating, but it's like how to find something that helps validate but also keep you in the healing, right? Because otherwise you get stuck and you're not— no longer in the healing process of letting go of that label. I love how you said where your son was able to let go of the diagnosis, you know, like it no longer is attached to him. And that I think should be the goal, right? It's like, how can we— we can be aware of what we're experiencing, but it doesn't have to mean that that's forever.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and I also, you know, the diagnosis is just like I said, it's so different for each person. It really is kind of meaningless. Um, if you need it for You know, if you needed to help a certain professional understand what's going on with your child or for to help get accommodations at school or whatever it is, that's fine. But the issue is not the diagnosis. The issue is what are the symptoms that are impacting your child and not allowing your child to flourish? You know, and those are the symptoms that we go after. It's not the diagnosis. Mm-hmm.

And you mentioned autoimmunity as well, which catches my attention because I, I've seen so many children that have been diagnosed with autoimmunity, and I know the rate of autoimmunity in children has been increasing, and how many times that then we go to discover that it's something in their school, you know, like a mold exposure in the school, for example. And it— in that situation, being— can be difficult too because it's this other building, this other location, you know, and having to sometimes make tough decisions about, you know, because the, the, the school system may not have an interest in changing the situation, right? Or dealing with the molds.

Yeah, schools are famously toxic. If it's not mold, it's a new carpet that's giving off fumes or it's like Lysol being sprayed or whatever. I mean, it's just— they're famously toxic, which is why oftentimes the kids I see can't go to school because they flare. Whenever they go to school. And, you know, I guess, you know, our job is to create resilient children whose, you know, whose immune systems are able to tolerate even that level of toxic onslaught. And that is what we do, you know. However, it shouldn't be that way. So, you know, it's a difficult quandary. A lot— Mm-hmm. A lot of the parents, once they understand what's really going on, end up doing homeschooling or finding other alternatives. But that's not for everyone. And so we have to really, you know, I think it's really important parents unite and fight for what they know is right and what their children need. That's number one. They are the taxpayers. They do have a right to, healthy schools, healthy everything actually. Alternatively, sometimes that doesn't happen and it doesn't happen overnight. What I do try to recommend is even if you can do something like get an air purification, an affordable one, either little ones that the child can wear or they can put on the desk, or if they're young enough and they're only staying in one classroom, you can buy one for the classroom and the teacher would be so happy. I've never had a teacher say, oh no, don't bring that air doctor into my classroom. They're like, okay, great. And you can say, my child has a compromised immune system and I don't want him or her to get sick. And the air purification system will help to reduce viruses or whatever you want to say, but it will help to tone down the chemical and mold assault as well.

Yeah, amazing. And I know you have so many amazing tips for people. And I think this relates to this— you had mentioned this concept of total load, right? It's like, what's the total load of exposure and how do we try to reduce it?

Yeah, 100%. It all— I mean, from my perspective, the vast majority of autoimmune conditions are total load phenomena. They are part of that multifactorial disease model where it's never just one thing. Right? There are, you know, there's environment, there's genetics, there's, you know, infectious exposures. But really the key is how well your immune system deals with all of this. And if your immune system is dysregulated in any way, then you're going to start to not be able to deal with it and you'll end up with symptoms.

Symptoms somewhere, right? Sometimes it's a rash, sometimes it's in the nervous system, sometimes it's in the gut, sometimes it's all of the above. Yeah. And then, yeah, we just go little by little to, you know, to make those changes. So maybe if you— and you've already given us a couple amazing ideas to start with, but is there any other little, like, things that people could take from today to say, hey, let's even jumpstart in that direction of healing?

Yeah, I mean, we haven't really spoken a lot about food, but I have to say that Food is first and foremost because, you know, our body runs on nutrients. And if you are not getting your nutrients, you're not going to be running efficiently, that's for sure. And, you know, there's, there's an intimate connection between the gut and the brain. And, you know, if you have any leakiness in your gut, which 100% of the kids who come to see me have, you necessarily have a leaky brain, a blood-brain barrier. You cannot heal heal that leaky blood-brain barrier until you heal the gut. So I truly believe that taking a deep dive into food, into the digestive system as a whole, is key. So, yeah.

Yeah. And you and I both have that nutrition background, that clinical nutrition specialist. So it's amazing how you can bring that to these other concepts and be able to have your whole protocol that you're guiding people through. And, and I know you've written several books, including the, the one that I mentioned, the bestselling book that you co-authored, Brain Under Attack. Is that what— like, if someone wants to learn more, is that—

That's an excellent— it's an excellent resource. Yeah, it's, it's focused on PANS/PANDAS, but the truth is, as I said, like, you know, Healing one quote-unquote condition, I mean, it's the same process for everything. It really is. So it's a beautiful, beautiful resource. And I think that many parents don't realize that the child, that, you know, the symptom that they either they're having or their child is having is something that can be healed through this, you know, through recognizing what the concept of total load and getting to really dig into your health history and your individual story and starting to peel those layers back. So, yeah, The Brain Under Attack is a beautiful book. It's on Amazon. I highly recommend it, of course, but it's a great book.

And does it have some starting place with the food as well? With how to—

Yes. It talks about food. It talks about— Yeah. It talks about, um, yeah, it has all kinds of resources in there.

It's amazing. Yeah, because there's some part of this that people could start on their own. I know, like, okay, you can start to go, okay, let's reduce the sugar, right? And let's maybe choose more organic food and less non-organic food. And like, little, right, these little, little baby steps in that direction. And even, like you said, get an air filter and start, you know, it's like almost like, because otherwise it becomes decision fatigue and overwhelm. But if you just go little by little, each time you go to the grocery store store, right? Or each week, okay, what can we do to get different cleaning products in our home? Or, you know, little by little. But then at what point do you find that people are usually like, think they need your help, right? Where they go, okay, we better make an appointment with Lauren because we know now that we're to the point where we've figured as much out as we can on our own.

Yeah, I think that, um, I think it's different for each individual. Um, It used to be that most of the families in KyGOT were the ones who weren't getting better at all and conventional route did not work for them. They've been on this journey for a long time and they really needed expert guidance because of that. These were very highly impacted children. More and more though, I feel As our world has become more and more blatantly toxic, I'm getting families right in the beginning of their journey, which is a beautiful thing because it's so easy to impact a child early on. And I'm getting more and more families who are really craving the education piece. So I did— I created a program for them, and it's just a beautiful— it is that step-by-step how-to you know, how to do the work to heal your child. And the truth is, you know, that is the magic. I'm not the magic. The magic is what the parents or caregivers are able to achieve. It's not me. So yeah, that I think is, that's the gold, right? Everybody should be digging deep into that educational piece and, you know, learning. Mm-hmm. Where they can make changes in their life and how to make the appropriate changes, and then what the next step is. And if they feel called to it, then working with a practitioner is a beautiful thing as well.

Do you happen to have a case that you've worked with that is an example for people to just get a sense of?

I have tons. But so a little boy I've been working with, I started with last year. He came to me in January of last year. And he was, I think, 3 at the time, diagnosed with autism, had really very, very limited language, basically no language. He would point when he wanted something. He was super, super, super hyperactive, like would not sit down, could not sit down, could not attend. He was in— you know, a daycare that had sort of a preschool component. He was not interacting with the kids. He just run the whole time and da da da, you know, eloping constantly, you know, and we, I later, I found out, you know, in our intake that he actually didn't breathe through his nose, only through his mouth, constantly congested, did not sleep.

Yeah.

Like had dark circles under his eyes. So, you know, very, um, what on the, on the outside would look like a pretty serious case of autism. So, you know, we did a, you know, a bunch of testing, um, found out, you know, he was sensitive to just about everything under the sun, everything he was eating, which of course is what happens when your gut is leaky and damaged. You're going to be sensitive to what you're eating because you're absorbing undigested food particles, and then the immune system mounts a reaction against those food particles and you become sensitive to them. So we started out very simply. Oh, and he was also a child who got— who was constantly sick and was in the ER because every time he got sick, he'd end up in the ER. So we started out really, really simple. And it's not simple, but it is simple. So took him off all the foods that he was reactive to, number one. Number two, had mom, you know, take a deep dive into the home to see if there was mold and had a building biologist come in and dig into the possibility of mold, ripped up all the carpets, that kind of thing. So got rid of the mold, took him off all of the food. And then I put him on GABA and theanine. For calming. And 3 months later, like, usually I meet every 8 weeks, but she— he got— he got sick right after we met and was back in the ER, and so she didn't start everything. But anyway, we ended up 3 months later, um, we had our appointment, and it was a total miracle. Like, he started speaking, he was suddenly not hyperactive anymore, he was able to sit at circle time, he was looking to make friends. He was— she said he was actually he sat down and watched TV with her. He'd never watched TV and started to mimic what was going on in the program. He started playing with figurines that he's had since he was a baby and he never had played with before. And he was starting to breathe through his nose. So, like, what more can you want in 3 months, right? Amazing. Yeah.

It's so amazing. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I know I see that too. Like, sometimes it seems seems so simple in front of us that it seems like, how could it be that simple? And yet these food sensitivities, we don't, we don't realize it's happening because they're— it's in a delay, right? It's not like they eat a food and have to go to the emergency room. It's more like they're eating these foods every day and it's causing inflammation and we don't realize it is. And, um, and it's so— that's so awesome when you can go, hey, like, here's exactly which foods are an issue. Let's take them out while we heal your gut and 'Let's get rid of the mold and heal your body from that.' And then lo and behold, the body starts working again. And it's— ah, that's beautiful. That's— that's— thank you for sharing. That is so— it's so amazing. And I— and it's— and you start to realize, like, wow, this is— you know, sometimes things can— it's amazing to me how quickly children can heal, right? Like, it's like sometimes children heal faster than adults, I find. Um, and, um So I was gonna say that, like, 'cause sometimes when people are, maybe have received a diagnosis of a spectrum disorder or neurodivergency of some form or autoimmunity or even Lyme disease, they might be already going to specialists. Maybe they even with PANS, PANDAS, they might be working with someone who's offering IVIG, for example, but still sometimes like, they might still be having symptoms. Do you see that a lot? Are you working with families where they also have other practitioners and doing other treatments?

Well, most of my, you know, my clients are all over the world, so I require that they have one local who they're working with. And so I work with, I partner with, you know, hundreds of doctors. Yeah. And the thing with homotoxicology and using the homeopathics and the nutrition, It is something that is beautifully synergistic with any other modality. So it's just empowering the body to work the way it should be working. It's not counterintuitive to have a child on antibiotics and to be doing the work that we do. And I often do see also kids who have been through the conventional system and have, you know, come pretty far but not all the way. And a lot of that is cleanup and also, again, supporting the body to actually heal on its own because, you know, antibiotics, while they are, you know, necessary often and incredibly powerful tools, they are very disempowering to the body because they do the work. They step in and do the work for the immune system. And so in a sense, the immune system becomes weaker, right? So what we wanna do is reinvigorate the immune systems and rebuild that resilience so that they don't fall back into the same routine again. So the next time they encounter strep, the immune system doesn't go crazy and shut down. Instead, it's able to deal with it and hopefully move on.

If you don't mind, it's reminding me that for some people, they might have questions about homeopathy. I know they often ask me about what is homeopathy, how is it working? And because I love homeopathy too, it can be so powerful and yet oftentimes doesn't have other side effects. So that's a nice reason to use it for children. But tell us more, like, how do you explain homeopathy and how it's working?

Yeah, so I'm not a classical homeopath, so that's a different modality and that's its own beautiful thing, you know, using constitutionals and single remedies. The remedies that I use are combination remedies. They are drainage and detoxifier remedies. There are SAR codes too. I mean, SAR codes support the individual organs or organ systems. Drainers help with basically that detoxification process. And then nosodes go after particular disease processes, right? So you want to use those in combination. And from my perspective, you also want to use them in combination with proper nutrients to fuel mitochondria, botanicals to support liver and gallbladder, et cetera, et cetera. Wherever there's weakness, we want to support. And generally speaking, in this crazy world, we always want to support because we're asking our bodies to do more on less because our foods are so depleted, right? Because our soils are so depleted. So we're getting less nutrient, we're getting less less even of the biological signaling in the plant because it's been so modified. Anyway, that's a whole other topic. But yeah, when you put together a protocol that has that combination, the homeopathics to bioenergetically support the body, and then the nutritionals and the botanicals to do the same thing, but on a more you know, physiological level. It's just a beautiful synergy that really empowers the healing process.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I, I find that, uh, that homeopathy of various forms can be so synergistic with these other forms of healing. And, and what that means is like, if you just used it by itself, it could help, but when you combine them together, with, you know, with the experience and the knowledge behind them, then you can get even more healing efficiency and support happening. So, oh my gosh, so that's so amazing for people to know that, that that's what you do, and that that can go alongside perhaps other treatments they might be doing, and they're not going to work against each other. It could just support the healing process to go faster, and also to really get to the core issue and to, to resolve it so it doesn't just keep recurring, right? Because sometimes I'm sure that's a fear for families that like, as soon as their child feels better, then they're afraid it's going to go back again. So, but when you get to the core issue, you, you release that fear that it's ever going to come back because now you know what to do going forward.

Yeah, 100%. And the body knows what to do because, you know, you're feeding that information. Yeah.

Amazing. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much for coming today to explain all about what you do and these resources for people. And, and I'll definitely be putting your— the link to Althea Health and Wellness down below, as well as to your— to the Brain Under Attack book, so that everybody can find those easily. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?

Yeah, I mean, I think what I always like to tell parents is that I think that one of the most important keystones to helping to heal yourself and your child is to really trust your intuition and to not let others, the world at large, tell you that you're not doing a good job. Trust when you feel something is right, then go with it. And that is, you know, that you will have success if you do that. So you have the power. Um, you can do this.

Yeah, that's great guidance. It's such great guidance, especially, yeah, when you feel like you're on this path, you don't know where you're going, and you've been, and you're like, am I going the right way? But just connecting back to your, like, hey, this feels right to me. And then you keep going forward with that, connecting back to yourself. It's beautiful. Um, well, thank you again, Lauren, so much. It's so good to talk to you, and I look forward to staying in touch with you and, and working together on cases, because that's another thing is we can, you know, like you said, you can— we can work together as practitioners and help families even more that way.

So wonderful.

Yeah. All right. Thank you. And thanks everyone for joining us here at How Humans Heal today. If you're new, I welcome you to join me so you don't miss the next episode. And I look forward to connecting with you all very soon. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, Leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdoni.com.