Initial Revolutionizing Autism Care Pod Cast Video

Hi, my name is John Islanian and I'm very proud to be the moderator of Revolutionizing Autism Care. I have had the great fortune of meeting two phenomenal individuals this past summer that just blew me away. And it was funny because I met them both within a week of each other. First I met Richard Schreiber and I just couldn't believe it. He had his own daughter suffered from autism and what he had to go through to find the right care for her and, and the work that he did and with the passion that only a parent could have. Yet with the background of being a journalist, an IT specialist, an AI specialist, six time author, I just couldn't even believe it. And then only a few days later, I met Charmaine Vega. And she.

Was a teacher for 38 years. And so she teached, she taught students. That and her list of accolades were just unbelievable. She's a recipient of the President's lifetime achievement award, PhD in humanity, humanities ambassador for the Blue Zone. And I was like, oh my God, you two could be doing a book together, a podcast together. There's 280 million people in the world under the age of 20 with autism. Now, assuming they have two parents and maybe just one sibling, this affects a billion people on the planet. And my heart said, you know what, you got to do this, bring the genius of these two people to the world. Now I've probably left out half of the things they've done I did. I even mentioned Richard had published six books. But the most important one is, and you can see behind his, the Autism Care Revolution, best selling author. That one just came out recently. And again, Charmaine Vega, with all the different food things that she's done and the teaching and boy, if she just told you the story of the one individual she told me about, not only did she teach him, but he went through law school and sued one of the biggest corporations in the world here. You think that those people are challenged when she teaches them? They just create miracles. And without further ado, let's start in with Richard. So, Richard, tell us about your daughter and how you first discovered, covered it. And you don't even need any specific questions, just let it flow and let us know when it gets to the point where you would like to talk about the foods.

Sure. Autism was not something that was, I would say, top of mind 11 or 12 years ago or even before that. My daughter's now 18, so we got started out, we, we knew she was different because we saw certain things that when she was about 18 months, we saw her go running through the apartment, and she would trip and fall, and we would put our hands over her eyes and she would get up like nothing happened. She also used to play this wonderful CD of really catchy tunes that was part of a book set that she had. And she would dance to it left and right, spin around like a top. And just as we're waiting Is she gonna fall? When is she gonna fall? She never did. The girl had incredible balance. And we didn't know at the time, but this. These were indicators, these were characteristics of a child that had autism. And she wasn't terribly verbal either until about age 4. And then we sent her off to pre K.

We didn't know how bright she was. She tested into a gifted and talented program here in New York. And then we thought we were all set. And then a year or so in, her autism symptoms started to pick up, started to be more demonstrative. And ultimately what happened is the school came to us. They sent us a letter. The Board of Ed in New York sent us this very cold letter. We got it over the winter that said, your daughter needs to be evaluated. She's disruptive in class. You need to get her evaluated. And so we did. And shortly thereafter, that's when we found out that she was diagnosed with what's now, which. Which is then referred to as Asperger's. But that's one of the different divisions, if you will, or flavors of autism. So that was when she was just seven.

Did you originally seek standard of care, so to speak, medication and whatnot?

Yeah. What happens is back then and even today, we were both very educated parents, both college grads. Some people in our family noticed that Katarina was a little different, but no one really spoke up and said the A word. Some people call it autism. So like most parents, we just gravitated, if you will, towards the people in authority, people in healthcare, people at the school, since the school was really the ones that started it, or pediatricians. And we eventually ended up seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed our daughter. And then the recommendation was to put her on at that time a drug, a stimulant, because that in effect can destabilize rather some of the ADHD slash Asperger symptoms, such as body control, focus and attention, as well as we were directed by the school to pursue applied behavioral analysis services, which unfortunately, in a lot of cases, somewhat, in our case, can be very scripted and very cookie cutter. And essentially what ABA services are, that's the acronym, is trying to get an autistic child to Modify their behavior to act like a neurod. Neurotypical child. Now think about that, John. Think about if you're in a culture and someone's asking you, no, you can't behave or act like you do in your culture. You have to modify that to be in whatever the prevailing culture is. It can be very dehumanizing. And that's a constant thread and criticism that you hear even today with ABA services. But these were the mainstream services that we got directed into back then. And unfortunately what is still very much the case even today.

So my understanding is that. So they're hoping for a paradoxical effect when they give you a stimulant.

Right.

To slow the child down or something.

Right. They don't really.

Yeah, go ahead.

The interesting thing, John, is they don't really know. And they don't know. They don't really know. It's very much a trial and error kind of situation. Even today. There's Ritalin, there's Adderall, there's Prozac, there's a bunch of these drugs that are all in the same kind of category, psychotropic drugs that tend to, they're called stimulants because they affect a certain part of the brain which seems to have an effect on reducing anxiety or overactive stimuli over overactive stimulation. Like our daughter had. She had fidgeting and moved around a little bit too much and consequently was unable to focus as well. So they all basically do the same thing. But the problem is, as later on, as I learned, is we don't really know what the true effect is. You know, when you give a drug like that to an adult, you're an adult, you're pretty much formalized. But with a 10 year old, you're not. You're still growing. Your, your brain is still developing that last 10% in all intents and purposes. And no study can really tell you what the long term effect is on a child now transitioning into teenager adulthood and beyond because they were on this drug when they were 10 years old. There's no such study out there. There are studies that in general say that Adderall and Ritalin and these drugs do have a long term effect on people. It may not be catastrophic, but it's in effect nonetheless. But again, that's just another consequence of our healthcare system.

So obviously at some point you took a left turn and went down Charmaine's path and on your own you started seeking out oils and better foods and took, had the courage to get off the standard of care. Let's Call it. And the drugs.

Right.

So let's. We should. This might be a good point to let Charmaine actually jump in. What are some of the things you tried? And then we'll flip it to Charmaine and let her tell us something she was successful with.

What led us to exactly that point that you described, John, is what we dealt oftentimes. And in the evolution of child rearing, we talk about a watershed moment, or even most of us in general. And that happened when our daughter, during her elementary school graduation, which should be a positive, happy day. Imagine being a father to go pick her up. And while all the other kids are signing yearbooks and being happy and cavorting and being celebratory, she's off by herself and crying. And my daughter never cried. So I go up to her and I kneel down next to her, and I say, katarina, what's wrong? And she tells me, daddy, for six years, this school, no one wanted to be my friend. And that was basically a. A consequence of taking the drug, which she was emaciated, barely 60 pounds, grossly underweight. And to someone who has autism, who already struggles with being. Being able to make eye contact and. And understand social interactions, on top of that, you drug them. It's no wonder she didn't have any friends. To your point. Yeah. That was the moment that my wife and I said, this isn't working. We need to become our daughter's fierce advocate and find a better way. And we did. My wife became an expert, to your point, in essential oils. We took our daughter off Adderall, put her on a combination of essential oils, which was just absolutely transformative. She gained all this weight back. She got her clarity back. She got her mojo back. She every. Everything that we knew in person, that we knew in her personality, just started to come out again, like a wonderful bouquet of flowers just blooming. And it was just an extraordinary thing, and it continues to this day. And then ultimately, yes, we tried a program called Brain Balance, and I want Charmaine to speak to part of that program, talked about nutrition and better diet, which is a cornerstone for helping people with autism. Yeah.

Like I said, there's nothing like the passion of a parent to get something done. But Charmaine has been doing it for 38 years. And probably you would have a lot of stories for us. Charmaine, you want to take it from here and talk about some of the protocols you do and some of the foods and things to avoid or not just. It's all yours.

Yeah, I definitely want to, but Richard did Say something that was very interesting. You know how I look at certain things and I pull it apart. That's my personality. I know. He said he got a cold letter over the winter. You forgot to mention that all three of us are from New York, although I live on the West Coast. So we did talk about that, and you totally forgot it. Okay. So it's like, you can take the girl out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl. So I think that has to do with how we all gravitated towards each other and basically have become this little family of our own, so to speak. We. We speak a different language off the camera.

Yes, we do.

Inappropriately.

We are. Yes.

I did want to bring a little bit of humor in there. And then what I always like to do is I say I did do some of the aba, but I can give you an interesting story, is that I worked for a company.

Oh.

And how are you still there? There you go.

I am.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And I didn't like it because I. At that time, I had already been teaching for many years and everything. I just did it as a consultant, and I wanted specifically to get into the trenches with the family. So this is a situation where you go into the homes and. And you're actually doing it with the family, with the children, so that I would have an understanding of, not just from a book standpoint, but what were the parents going through. So as a chef and.

Another pregnant pause. John.

Yeah, I thought it was just me because I don't have great Internet, but I guess it's her. Okay, go ahead.

Okay. So I wanted to get into the homes so that I could see what were the parents dealing with on a daily basis. Some of my parents had multiple children. And so how do they deal with that? When you have children who have different textures and you want to eat one thing, your husband wants something else, and you have two, three, four children, all who have some aspect of autism on the range. So what they want to eat or do is a little bit different. But what I found is that the parents didn't ask the children what they wanted. Oftentimes, what you're doing is you're doing what you want and what you think is best and not really taking an inventory on what are they saying.

For me, when I went in there, I also told them, you want them to sit at the table. They're little, but you want them to sit in an adult table and behave the way adults would at a table. Why don't you get A small table and sit at their table so that now you're at their level and you put on your plate. Because remember, many of the children, and I can't say remember because you wouldn't necessarily remember, but they will repeat a lot of things that they see someone else doing.

Yes. Yeah, go ahead. That's such a critical point that I mean to jump in. But one, one thing that we learned as parents is that we had to throw away the playbook that we inherited from our parents because it just didn't work. And you have illuminated on that point so well. And that's something that we encourage parents to have to be. You have to be flexible. And as you so pointed out. So sorry to jump in, but.

Oh, no, I have a question. Let me be rude as well.

Go ahead.

Whenever I listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube and I can listen to you guys for hours, but if someone who's listening to this wants a takeaway, apply to everyone.

Yes. And. And part of that general good that that general thing would be give them value.

Yeah.

Is to ask a question, validate what they're saying, and say that what. What you want. But why don't you tell me what you want? Because some of them are non verbal. Some of them are verbal. Some of them don't like textures. My niece happened to be in the store just last week and she noticed that. She asked actually, her son has Asperger's and he's an adult now, but she was in the store. She noticed this parent going through the store and having the child who was non verbal actually pick out the food that he wanted. And because she's working with me, she knows. She was actually able to see that she's in Philadelphia, she's not in California. So she called me immediately and she's, oh my gosh. I had to actually wait until they finished doing what they were doing and I had to commend the parents for what they were doing because you don't see that happening too often. When your child or someone, anyone, your child, anyone, has a disability, you look at them as having a disability. You forget that they have abilities. Not disabilities, but they have abilities. So you focus on the lacking rather than focusing in on what they do have. And that was what made me different as a teacher. I was always focusing in on what are you interested in? What do you want to do? What do you like? Not what they were telling me with the books. Even though I had to teach certain topics, I figured out what's the best way to teach it. They saw more videos and movies that was on their topic because maybe that was the best way for me to teach the concept. So it's a matter of teaching the concept and not teaching. Getting down into the weeds and teaching all that. It's irrelevant to them. People mistake their intelligence. They look at their behavior as their behavior being their intelligence. And those are two different things. Their behavior.

And the intelligence is off the chart in many instances. And I say many, probably most. They're smarter than the average bear.

Oh, yeah, my daughter is definitely smarter than I am and know how to.

Manipulate, because when there's something that they want, they know how to manipulate. They're great at manipulation. And I can give you a story that when I was doing the aba, they want you to follow the system and make all the little marks that they do and everything. And I. I was like, this is stup. This is robotic. I'm not going to do this crap. But I had a supervisor that would want to come in and observe me to see what was going on. And if I was following the aba, the little girl who I was working with without me teaching her, she knew that when that supervisor came in, she's going to do exactly what she needs to do for me for aba, she would not do it for the instructor. However, she also knew that when that supervisor left, I wasn't going to do that crap.

So she would want to go and climb up a tree or do whatever in the backyard, and I would let her go climb up this tree. She would want to douse herself with the hose, and I would let her do that. But at the same time, while she's doing it, I'm still teaching her. And then when it came time for her to go eat, I would say, okay, let's go to your table. And I had it where I taught the parents how to sit at the table, make their plates. But they would take the food and put it in the center of the table, and they would take from it almost like it was an a la carte, and she would pick out of what it was. Now, that's teaching her independence. But as we've learned in another group, it's loving her unconditionally with boundaries. She doesn't see the boundaries. And the boundaries are she has choices, but these are the only choices that you have, is what's here. And so it makes her more independent. And in addition to that, parents who could do this, I had them to take little refrigerators and put it in their homes, and that's where the food was that this child could get. And if it was multiple children, it was labeled with their names on it. So they knew, when I go into this refrigerator, this is what I can get. This is my stuff, or in the cabinet, this is my section. Because they're very territorial, too. Don't mess with my stuff.

Who moved my cheese?

Can we do another commercial interruption? I know we're not selling anything, but.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just because I'm a little presence of some. The growing brain needs fatty acids, fish oils. Is that safe for everybody? All the children with autism, whatever. A growing child.

And my answer to that is, it's general. And the reason I would say general is because you have to look at what is their microbiome. That gets into the science of it. What things might they be allergic to? Because there are some children, so you have to look at the allergies. And where is the omega 3s, which is what you're looking for? Where is it coming from? And some people will say fish oil, but krill oil is actually higher in omega 3s. Okay.

Yes. Because they're tiny. They're at the very bottom of the food chain. Yes. By the time it gets eaten by a fish, that fish is. You don't know what that fish is eaten, where it's come from. It's. It can be almost polluted. You're right about that.

Yes.

What type of person would they need on their team to make sure they're, like you say, maybe tested for allergies? Which, by the way, that's got to be huge. Because if you're allergic, your brain, you could be just that way because of allergies, right?

Yes, it could have an implication to that, but it would be a holistic nutritionist, not just a nutritionist. Because not every nutritionist, especially if you're a nutritionist who's working for.

Institutions where you have to follow their regulations and what they're telling you to do, or.

You'Re using food that has pesticides, chemicals, is produced at traditional farms instead of sustainable farms.

It's a laundry list. But it also to go into that, you would want. Where. What I tell people is you've got to look at your. It's a laundry list. But it also. To go into that, you would want poop. You've got to get that tested. The traditional way of just testing the blood is not going to give you the total picture. You need the blood, the saliva, the poop. You need all of these things tested to see what's going on. You need the output, all the outputs that's exactly correct. And what's interesting is, while we're speaking right now, it's probably about a month ago that they actually started testing the poop in younger children below the age of seven, where they can now diagnose the possibility of autism, which they couldn't do before. Before, they were only looking at a test, but the test was just on cognition, but it wasn't on the microbiome, because there's other things that you can see that's going on in the body by looking at the microbiomes. And now they're starting to look at that so that they can get it at even earlier ages. I didn't read the entire article to see how young, but I know it's very young that they can do this, which they couldn't do before. And those tests that they're giving are not necessarily the big picture of what it is, just like any other test. When you went to college and everything, did you think those tests actually tested your knowledge?

No.

Very. Specializing, compartmentalist. Yeah.

Besides both your websites and your book, Richard, do you both actually. I don't even know this. I can't believe it. Do you both actually function as coaches for the services, and then you bring in experts or doctors as you need them? Do you both offer that as a service?

Not completely. I do have people who are being seen by doctors, and then they may come to me either as a referral from the doctor, or they just find me by Googling me and say, oh. And usually what I'll find is they will say, why didn't my nutritionist tell me that? And I said, because I don't follow the Pied Piper. I walk to a different drummer. I do my research, and I give you ways of looking at things differently. And I always tell people, don't accept what I said, go do your research.

Yeah, that's. And that's really. You talked a little bit earlier about what to impart with parents I mentioned in our journey, become their fierce advocate. And I really think every parent who has a special needs child really needs to step into that role. And it's not a daunting role. It just means. To your point, Charmaine, you have to do your own research and refute what the common knowledge is, because the common knowledge didn't do justice to us. It was. It ended up being harmful to our daughter. So my wife became an expert in essential oils and supplements, dietary, all of that, because that kind of fell under that same kind of umbrella, and we pursued solutions that were more holistic. And homeopathic for our daughter. Again, not without research. Early on, we learned the lesson. We didn't blame ourselves, although for a father who basically oversaw his daughter taking drugs for three years, that's still. It's a burden that I carry, although I'm at peace ultimately because of where my daughter ended up. And I realized that's ultimately why my wife and I created a community, an autism community group here in New York, was to hopefully spare other parents from those same kind of of choices.

That's the Autism Innovation Community Foundation.

Right. That's what came afterwards. At first, it was the New York City Autism Community Group. We used to invite parents to have small get togethers at our church on the Upper east side. Because one of the challenges you have when you have in particular an autistic child is for a parent, sometimes it's difficult and uncomfortable to go out in public because you never know if your child's going to have throw a tantrum or behave or talk to themselves or any of that. And for us, it was like, you just need to get over that. The kind of people that would observe that and look negatively on that. Shame on them. Really. Shame on them. And that was a key piece for my wife and I. And subsequently, whenever we see a parent now with a child who's on the spectrum or throwing a tantrum or whatever, and the parents apologizing profusely, we say, stop. We got you. We've been there. It's okay. Let your child be expressive. There's nothing wrong with that. It's okay. Let go of that. Let go of any guilt, shame, blame, any of that, and just own that you are a parent. And patience is a virtue. We know from the good Lord that's such a key piece in raising a. A child with special needs. To Charmaine's point, it takes a little bit longer for them to decide what food they want, maybe to make other decisions. You can't force them. God forbid I do that with my daughter. I get pushed back in spades. It's a different timetable and people in New York, of course, we're so uptight. We're so short on time. We're juggling 10 balls in the air. We got something on the smartphone going and someone else talking. There's all this different stuff that sometimes takes away our ability to just slow the world down, be patient, and really give our attention to our child and just be a different parent than perhaps generation was. And so it's patience, and it's definitely.

Being flexible. Being flexible and being loving. And just put away the blame game and all those things and come out of yourself. It's okay to talk to other parents and other people about what you're going through because that's where you may learn some important things or just to get it off your chest.

That'S so important. Raising a special needs child.

I want to inject something here that a lot of people may not know. And that is these days we always hear the word alternative medicine. You know that what we're looking at when talking about food, nutrition, the oils and all of that. I'm a fourth generation nutritionist and obviously that was, that's not alternative. And if you look at the history of regular medicine, it was all political. And how it became political was it became the pharmaceutical companies in the Rockefeller foundation that wanted to do away with chiropractors and people who were practicing what we now call today alternative medicine. It became the alternative that they, that it should be is what you should be looking at, going to your kitchen cabinet and seeing what's in your kitchen cabinet that you can do. You should be looking at the foods and looking at that first and then looking at the other, popping the pills and all those things as your alternative medicine. That is alternative medicine. Looking at the whole food, looking at the oils that you can get from those foods, looking at some of the things that you can just naturally do. Some of the weeds in your yard instead of having them mowed down and thrown away like dandelion leaves and dandelion flowers. I'm not saying make the dandelion wine, but you can use the leaves. And the leaves of the dandelion is a diuretic to help get rid of certain toxins. And you stop spraying all the pesticides that you're even for your lawn because you're killing the bees. I can go on.

Oh, throw away that roundup. Throw away that roundup. Yeah, yeah.

So all of that stuff you need to be looking at, what are you doing? And do the research. Like I said, don't just take what I'm saying. Go and do the research and look at it. And you will see that alternative medicine of the way they're labeling it now, that is not alternative medicine. That is your medicine. That is medicine.

That's what many cultures have relied on for hundreds of years. My mother in law is from Peru and in Peru there's over a hundred plants that are used for medicinal purposes in, in that country. And yeah, for any kind of an ill. I just call my grandmother and she'll give me a concoction and, and it'll no doubt work. Oh, I always.

That's exactly what you do. And why do you see so many things now where they're telling you, oh, I have people laughing when I ask them, oh, do you eat a fresh pineapple? Oh, yeah. I take the pineapple and I cut it open. I throw away the peeling and I take the core out and I throw it away. And I'm like, okay, you just threw your medicine away because what you're eating is just a juice. The medicine was in that core and is in the skin because that's bromelian. So if you got arthritis, you need to be using that. So people don't think about all the waste that they have and they talk about, which I can get into, how expensive it is to buy food. No, it's expensive to buy food because you keep throwing over 50% of it in the trash, which is really your food. You're throwing your food away. But you also need to be looking at doing organic because when you do the organic, if you eat the organic, you eat less of it anyway. So therefore you don't eat as much as you did before when you were eating the non organic because it plays tricks on your mind. When we talk about the brain connection and the brain gut connection and all those things, that's what it's doing. Your immune system and all that. 90% of that is your digestive system. So if you're putting the wrong stuff in, that's why you have brain fog. That's why you have all these other things breaking out on your face. All these things are related to what are you eating and what does your poop look like. That's going to be what's going on.

And we know the statistics. What's changed dramatically in the last 50 years in America is food. It's genetically enhanced. It's the abundance of chemicals, pesticides. Food itself has an abundance of preservatives because it's an industry, it's a business. And shelf life is now the nirvana. They, they do all put all kinds of chemicals in things so they stay on the shelf longer. To your point, organic, yeah, you got to eat it within less than a week or it goes bad. But that's the way it should be. You should be eating fresh food.

That's exactly right. And people don't realize that. And like I said, you eat less because you become satiated. Your cells are like, oh my gosh, I had all this good stuff. And it goes in. Your body can then absorb it. Your body can't absorb these chemicals because it's tricking your brain. That's what it's doing. It's. And it's called a pleasure trap. That's exactly what it's called. It's called a pleasure trap. And that's what you're doing is you're like, oh, I want more. How many of us, even me, at one point in time, you get that bag of potato chips and before the whole Dargon bag is gone, Right. You were just going to eat just a couple and now you've eaten the whole thing.

Layers, potato chips. Nobody can eat just one. John, I have a question.

So obviously none of us are doctors. Disclaimer. But when you had the phenomenal courage to walk away from standard of care and leave the doctor, how. And again, we're not telling anyone what to do. But how do you even start on that journey? Do you just have the courage to say no more and just walk away and then do it all yourself organically?

Yeah. Again, I think for us, or do.

You recommend a way to do that?

I think for us, we had a watershed moment. I'm not saying that every parent, every set of parents has to have that. I think our preference is that you start young and early with some of what Charmaine has talked about. Look at the diet, remove certain foods, go with organic, take out gluten, make sure the food is fresh that you feed your child. My, my advice, and this is just my advice, I'm not a doctor, is we are way too dependent on drugs in general. We are a pill pushing, magic pill society. We know doctors are incentivized to write prescriptions. I'm not saying that there aren't some drugs that are lifesavers. There are those that lower your blood pressure, are good for your heart. But the bottom line is these drugs, all of them treat symptoms. They don't cure anything. And there is no cure for autism. So we don't have to be constrained by taking things that just treat symptoms that are artificial. And again, the scientific evidence is lacking that really understands what we are doing or what the effects are to an 8 or 9 or 10 year old who has autism or any kind of neurological challenge. We don't know what those drugs will ultimately do long term to their development or beyond. Because the Food and Drug Administration, I often liken them to the automobile industry. They take the studies and the research provided by the drug companies and they evaluate an acceptable death rate or harm rate. And as long as it's within certain guidelines, the number of crashes, an Automobile can have. They approve the drug for general use with all these disclaimers about what the side effects are. And to me, that's always been a head scratcher. To me, something that treats a symptom, treats one symptom, and causes three other side effects. And I watched it in my father, who had Parkinson's. He took a cocktail of drugs for his Parkinson's, and he took another cocktail of drugs that negated the side effects that the Parkinson's drugs were doing. And I'm like, oh, my God. That is a circle jerk. Is that what modern medicine is? Yeah. My advice to parents is if you can at all avoid drugging your children, look at other avenues. There are pediatricians who are trained in homeopathic options. That's where we learned to give our daughter certain macrobiotics that were found in yogurt and other sources. My daughter subsequently doesn't like yogurt, so we found a good supplement. But she was 100, and she was trained in both traditional medicine and homeopathic. But she encouraged us. She encouraged us to pursue homeopathic options. She said drugs should be a last resort, not the first option. And again, that's coming from me. To your point, John, I'm not a doctor. To Charmaine's point, always vet and research things yourself. If you speak to a. A group of people saying that you have no other choice but to administer a drug to your child to help them with their neurodiversity challenges, then that's what you have to do. All I'm saying is it didn't work for us. And the lack of evidence or the lack of data that tell me that it's not going to be harmful for my child. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but for the rest of your life. Quoting Casablanca, my favorite movie, that wasn't good enough for me, and it shouldn't be good enough for any of us. So, again, comes down to making your own informed choices. But if you can in any way avoid going down the pharmaceutical direction, that would be my recommendation.

If I can say something here along doing the research, One of the things I can suggest is do the research and see what medications are banned outside the United States.

Great point.

That's a nice way to think about it. Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant.

We have a lot of pharmaceuticals and chemicals that's allowed here that has been banned in countries outside the United States.

Especially food additives.

Yeah, exactly. So what is it that they know and why did they ban them?

And then there's the corollary. There's the Corollary to that, Charmaine, in that there are drugs that are banned in this country by the FDA that are acceptable for use in Australia, Canada, Europe, that are effective.

That's correct.

They're banned in this country for one reason or another, the FDA hasn't given their approval. And which is why for a lot of special needs people go overseas.

Exactly right. And that comes.

Research, because as we know, we call it a spectrum. So there's things on the spectrum, but what can you do to help whatever that. Wherever your child is on that spectrum, because ultimately that's what we're looking at is trying to make them still independent or independent enough. So when that parent is no longer there, because you as a parent, that's something you would be concerned about. What's going to happen if I no longer here? How is she going to take care of herself? What is she going to do? And I know that's what many of these parents are facing, the ones that I've talked to. So it's a matter of. That's why I encourage parents to, as best you can, to make them independent or have them to be as independent as possible, putting some of those things in place that are the safeguards that it will be there for them.

And.

But along doing that is making sure you do the research on whatever is being recommended to you. Too often, what parents do, not just of autism, but in general, is we just. If the doctor says take this, we just do it, but we don't go and look at what are the side effects or look at.

The. What they call alternative medicine. And you can ask that of the doctor. They may get irritated and I tell you, but that's where you get a second and third opinion.

Yeah, yeah. If you go to a clinical psychiatrist and ask them about essential oils, you'll get a betwixt look because again, to them it's evidential, it lacks that, doesn't pass the litmus test of scientific proof. But as a parent, the only scientific proof I need to know is, is what I can see with my own eyes through my child's own evolution and getting better and getting stronger and really becoming who she is without the use of drugs and with the homeopathic.

Oils and supplements that we gave to her.

Oops. Now we lost Charmaine. What a gift. 50 years of experience between the two of you, and I can't wait to do it again.

Thank you, John, for being a wonderful host again. The book is called Autism Care Revolution. It's on Amazon. You can find it easily. There's an ebook and a paperback version of it. And it's really all about our journey and what Charmaine and I wrap our arms around, which is alternative care. And we need to start a revolution because too many parents are being misdirected, I feel, into these mainstream solutions that are even harmful to our neurodiverse kids. And we just have to give ourselves permission really to become our child's advocate and to think outside the box. I know that sounds so cliche, but most solutions today come through innovation and innovation is not coming from the FDA and from traditional mainstream institutional services is just not. So thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks to Charmaine and her wonderful contributions and thanks to you, John, for anchoring our very first inaugural podcast. And we will see you out there again and keep asking questions.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for letting me be a part of it. Have a great one.

So long everybody. Bye bye.

Okay.