For our first blog on Camel Milk and links to more
information, please read: Got Camel Milk?
information, please read: Got Camel Milk?
To learn more and buy Camel milk online:
www.camelmilkassociation.org
www.camelmilkassociation.org
| Autism One Camel Milk Presentations: - Barry Smeltzer This talk will give an overview of some of the attributes of Camel’s Milk from a medical and nutritional stand point. Camel's milk is a staple of many cultures around the world. It has many advantages to cow's milk both from a nutritional and allergenic standpoint. We will be presenting how these advantages can bring healing to many of the issues plaguing children on the spectrum. Included will be reports from families using the milk to heal their children and how it can benefit yours as well. - Christina Adams Camel milk is gaining anecdotal praise for notable effects in ASD children (C. Adams, Autism File, April 2012). Hailed by the UN for nutritional value, it reportedly shows remarkable benefits in several diseases. Adams shares her unique experiences and information gathered from scientists and camel experts since 2005, as her son is probably the longest continual ASD user of camel milk. She covers fascinating studies, explains potential benefits, and outlines the complexities of obtaining milk. |
 |  |  |  |  |
April 16, 2012
The Recovery Bus :: Camel on Board
The Recovery Bus :: Camel on Board
“I never see you guys anymore,” Caroline’s pediatrician said as she entered
the room.
“Hi doctor!” Caroline responded, proudly handing her the play stethoscope
from her toy dog’s neck.
We had clearly made ourselves at home. “Sorry about the mess,” I offered.
“And yes, she’s been really healthy. Well except for all the PANDAS stuff.”
“We’ve ALL been dealing with a lot of PANDAS stuff,” she said.
Impressive. It took me by surprise that she actually knew about PANDAS.
Most physicians still tend to respond with a blank stare.
“So she had strep?”
“No,” I clarified. “We think it was other bacteria.” She listened, nodding
along as I explained how the name has actually been changed to PANS to
reflect that it’s not just strep causing the obsessive compulsive behaviors and
tics in our kids.
To her credit, she always takes notes and tells me she learns more every time
we visit. “How did you get rid of it?” She asked.
“We worked with a specialist in New Jersey. Actually, the same one who was
called to diagnose the teens in LeRoy.” That was when I lost her. Although
the story has been huge in the media, she wasn’t sure who they were.
I continued, “He put her on antibiotics and she was better almost
immediately. Her OCD, throat clearing tic, tapping tic, debilitating insistence
on sameness, bedtime separation anxiety, handwriting deterioration, gone.”
“But then, every time we took her off the antibiotics, they all came back. After
about 3 months of that dance, I decided we needed to stop. All the
antibiotics were destroying the gut we’d worked so hard to repair. We were
considering IVIG. But first, I wanted to try some natural options.”
Eyebrows deeply furrowed, her curiosity mounted, “Such as?”
“Well,” I hesitated for a moment, giving an ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
look.
“Camel’s milk and goldenseal, the herb.”
Eyes wide, comfort zone violated, she pressed on.
“Where do you even get camel’s milk?” Naturally, it’s the first question
everyone asks. Chuckling, I replied, “The Camel Milk Association, of course!”
“But, isn’t she casein free?”
“Yes,” I said, “She hasn’t had a any dairy in 3 years. But camel milk is beta
casein free, which is what most people react to.” I went on, “Many of my
friends with children on the spectrum are also giving it to their kids and
they’ve seen big gains while drinking it.”
“Like what?”
More language, better focus. Dramatically increased engagement and eye
contact. Notably calmer. That one seems true across the board. Almost all
of our kids are so much more at ease in their own skin when they drink the
milk. In Caroline’s case it’s been better than any other intervention we’ve
tried.”
I also told her, “When I think of the struggle her diet and chelation and the
rest of it is, compared to how easy camel’s milk is, I wish I knew about it
sooner.”
“So what makes it so special?”
“It has both anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.” I explained, “The
nanoglobulins in it are much smaller than our immunoglobulins and they
can enter the cells very easily. This means they can heal weakened immune
systems.”
She was still listening, so I continued, “I can’t tell you how many children with
autism have improved on it. And I have friends, adults, with diabetes who
have been able to come off insulin while drinking it because it contains
insulin. It seems to help with all intestinal diseases and autoimmune
conditions. As for PANDAS, it helped us avoid having to use IVIG because it
acts as a ‘mild IVIG’ so to speak. In the Healing with Camel Milk Facebook
Group , we sometimes call it ‘liquid gold.’”
“A Facebook Group?” She said, half-implying that my knowledge came from
a source equivalent to the National Enquirer.
“Yes, but that’s not how I learned about it. I learned about it from a blog that
was written by a mom healing her son.”
“Then,” I told her, “After we tried it, I wrote a blog too. And after that, we all
had to stop talking about it so much, because the camel farmers had a milk
shortage for months. Finding camel’s milk a few months ago was harder
than finding the latest toy at Christmas.”
I explained how the Facebook Group grew by hundreds weekly and it’s
become one of the hottest topics in the autism community. In fact, there are
two separate presentations on it at the Autism One / Generation Rescue
conference next month.
She looked at me incredulously. Either we were all crazy or there was a
whole world of healing out there that she knew nothing about.
What’s a doctor to do? She could choose to learn more and potentially
embrace a new method of healing, or shut it out and move on.
Her next statement spoke volumes.
Clearly uncomfortable, she uttered, “I don’t know how to say this to you. So
I’m just going to come out and say it.” LOOONG pause. “I’m not sure what
my role is in Caroline’s life.”
Hmmmmm. Fair enough. I get that she was probably wondering. After all,
we seemed to consult Dr. Google far more often than we did her.
I told her that course we need a local pediatrician. Someone to sign our
school forms. Someone to see us when Caroline is sick.
She clarified, “I guess I feel like I’m just along for the ride.”
Whoa. This one required a second to think. Thoughts reeled through my
mind.
ALONG FOR THE RIDE? Well yeah. You are. Just like her DAN doctor, her
PANDAS doctor, her homoepath. All of them, along for the ride.
The ride on the recovery bus. The bus that I’m driving.
Me. The parent. That’s all. No MD or special training. Just Caroline’s mom.
Yet because of the medical community’s complete lack of understanding of
autism, I’ve been left with no choice but to drive her recovery bus. And you
indeed are “just” along for the ride.
Of course, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the answer I should give. So I applied
a social filter....
“Well, I’ll admit, you’re not the person I think to call if Caroline has what a
PANDAS attack. I think first to ask my friends, who are dealing with it, who
they’ve used.”
I went on to explain that in the circles I’m in, it’s very common for parents to
have multiple physicians, each one being an expert in a particular area. I left
out the part about how it’s also the other parents themselves who are often
the best resource.
After all, even the big-name PANDAS specialist we used wasn’t the one who
told me about Camel milk or Goldenseal (the anti-bacterial herb we used
when taking Caroline off antibiotics). I figured if she was crushed by playing
second fiddle to other doctors, she’d be even more dismayed to learn she
was taking a backseat to “regular” people.
Furthermore, if I did call someone like her, who thought a negative test for
strep ruled out PANDAS, Caroline’s recovery would’ve been stalled at the
starting line.
But still, after all my reassurances of her worth, she seemed unsure. She
said she’d have to talk over any liability with her partners. Because, “What if
something happened to Caroline?”
I bit my tongue and didn’t remind her that something already did happen to
Caroline. Something terrible. Something life altering. In that very office.
So I agreed to wait for her to discuss our fate and she said we would “Speak
about it again at the next appointment.” Well. Alrighty then. We’ll see if
there IS a next appointment.
***
As we drove away from the office, I thought more about what transpired.
What a shame. Really. A shame that we have to be our own advocates. To
learn how to drive a bus or risk that our children will never get better.
Clearly, I was an aberration among the parents of children she treats. What
about other children with special needs? Asthma, allergies, even autism? Is
she really the one driving their recovery?
The pediatrician who tried to convince me just last year to get a DTaP
booster for my daughter who was neurologically damaged after her last
dose of DTaP when she was 6 months old.
The pediatrician who had just enough knowledge about PANDAS to be
dangerous.
The pediatrician who wondered why all those parents would run to buy
camel milk after reading another parent’s blog. Another parent who, might I
add, knew more about PANDAS than her whole office combined.
Why would we? The answer seems obvious. It’s BECAUSE. WE. HAVE. TO.
Because you and your “partners,” have left us with NO. OTHER. OPTION.
Suddenly I was furious. How could she possibly think she should be the
driver? She has never given me a single idea about how to help Caroline.
And did she really think I wouldn’t much rather live in a world where I could
come to her office and say, “Ok, what should we do next?” To which she
would respond with a complete outline of treatment options and we’d move
forward, seeing results. OH EM GEE… that would be my dream world!
I gave up nearly every semblance of my former life to learn how to drive this
bus… because I HAD to. And now I’m getting the third degree. What nerve
does she have?
But then I remembered, anger gets us nowhere. The mainstream medical
community may never come around. My first priority must be healing
Caroline. A close second is to try to motivate other parents to heal their
children. To drive their own bus. Dead last in the priority contest is caring
what an uninformed pediatrician thinks about my choices.
***
Which brings me for the reason for this blog. Healing our children indeed
takes a busload. A bus full of both MD’s and “regular” people. That is, if you
call people accomplishing the heroic task of recovering a child from autism
and people who you can learn more from than any MD on your team,
“regular.”
As you network and join parent groups you meet these people, you take
notes and compile your team. But no one, ever, can replace you as the
driver. That bus can’t move without a driver.
You are the one who knows where your bus has been and where it is going.
The responsibility of mapping out the course lies squarely on your
shoulders. No one else can do it for you. Not with the type of attention to
detail it requires.
You will be the one who makes the tough decisions. Including those last
minute judgment calls and quick maneuvering sometimes needed to avoid
head on collisions.
YOU ARE THE DRIVER. Everyone else is along for the ride.
And your bus? No, it’s not a bright yellow, low mileage model that
transports meds from the town pharmacy and GMO’s from the mega-
grocery mart. Not at all.
We’re talking about a safari bus. A rugged machine equipped for off-
roading expeditions. Driven by a parent who knows healing doesn’t come to
our doorstep. We must venture out to find it. We know that having a
variety of practitioners and parents, each with valuable insights, is the only
way to have the best possible chance at recovery.
So we drive, sometimes to the most unlikely places, in search of anything
that will help our child.
Some friends’ busses have entire sections devoted to homeopathy, or a
certain style of therapy, or specific diet. Others place the DAN approach in
the front row, while still others save that section exclusively for their stacks of
PubMed articles.
On Caroline’s bus, I’ve gathered the best mix I can find of parents who have
journeyed before, parents who are in the thick of it now, physicians who care,
scientists who know, nod to Andy Cutler seated over by the window, and
supplements and diets that work. I never thought I’d be making room for a
camel. Yet, there she is, taking up four whole rows, but worth every square
inch of it.
So, if someone, such as a pediatrician, doesn’t like Dr. Google having a place
up front or the boisterous Facebook parents, armed with their binders of
research, loudly belting out “99 Bottles of Camel Milk on the Wall….” then
they are free to leave at any time.
The last thing any of us need is negative mojo on our healing journey. We
need to surround ourselves with the brightest minds and most positive
people who will be there to cheer us on if we are stuck in the mud. People
who encourage us to try new healing options. Whether that be dietary
changes or chelation or camel milk. People who are happy to share the bus
and thrilled to be along for the ride.
Drive on warriors... and surround yourself with excellence!
the room.
“Hi doctor!” Caroline responded, proudly handing her the play stethoscope
from her toy dog’s neck.
We had clearly made ourselves at home. “Sorry about the mess,” I offered.
“And yes, she’s been really healthy. Well except for all the PANDAS stuff.”
“We’ve ALL been dealing with a lot of PANDAS stuff,” she said.
Impressive. It took me by surprise that she actually knew about PANDAS.
Most physicians still tend to respond with a blank stare.
“So she had strep?”
“No,” I clarified. “We think it was other bacteria.” She listened, nodding
along as I explained how the name has actually been changed to PANS to
reflect that it’s not just strep causing the obsessive compulsive behaviors and
tics in our kids.
To her credit, she always takes notes and tells me she learns more every time
we visit. “How did you get rid of it?” She asked.
“We worked with a specialist in New Jersey. Actually, the same one who was
called to diagnose the teens in LeRoy.” That was when I lost her. Although
the story has been huge in the media, she wasn’t sure who they were.
I continued, “He put her on antibiotics and she was better almost
immediately. Her OCD, throat clearing tic, tapping tic, debilitating insistence
on sameness, bedtime separation anxiety, handwriting deterioration, gone.”
“But then, every time we took her off the antibiotics, they all came back. After
about 3 months of that dance, I decided we needed to stop. All the
antibiotics were destroying the gut we’d worked so hard to repair. We were
considering IVIG. But first, I wanted to try some natural options.”
Eyebrows deeply furrowed, her curiosity mounted, “Such as?”
“Well,” I hesitated for a moment, giving an ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
look.
“Camel’s milk and goldenseal, the herb.”
Eyes wide, comfort zone violated, she pressed on.
“Where do you even get camel’s milk?” Naturally, it’s the first question
everyone asks. Chuckling, I replied, “The Camel Milk Association, of course!”
“But, isn’t she casein free?”
“Yes,” I said, “She hasn’t had a any dairy in 3 years. But camel milk is beta
casein free, which is what most people react to.” I went on, “Many of my
friends with children on the spectrum are also giving it to their kids and
they’ve seen big gains while drinking it.”
“Like what?”
More language, better focus. Dramatically increased engagement and eye
contact. Notably calmer. That one seems true across the board. Almost all
of our kids are so much more at ease in their own skin when they drink the
milk. In Caroline’s case it’s been better than any other intervention we’ve
tried.”
I also told her, “When I think of the struggle her diet and chelation and the
rest of it is, compared to how easy camel’s milk is, I wish I knew about it
sooner.”
“So what makes it so special?”
“It has both anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.” I explained, “The
nanoglobulins in it are much smaller than our immunoglobulins and they
can enter the cells very easily. This means they can heal weakened immune
systems.”
She was still listening, so I continued, “I can’t tell you how many children with
autism have improved on it. And I have friends, adults, with diabetes who
have been able to come off insulin while drinking it because it contains
insulin. It seems to help with all intestinal diseases and autoimmune
conditions. As for PANDAS, it helped us avoid having to use IVIG because it
acts as a ‘mild IVIG’ so to speak. In the Healing with Camel Milk Facebook
Group , we sometimes call it ‘liquid gold.’”
“A Facebook Group?” She said, half-implying that my knowledge came from
a source equivalent to the National Enquirer.
“Yes, but that’s not how I learned about it. I learned about it from a blog that
was written by a mom healing her son.”
“Then,” I told her, “After we tried it, I wrote a blog too. And after that, we all
had to stop talking about it so much, because the camel farmers had a milk
shortage for months. Finding camel’s milk a few months ago was harder
than finding the latest toy at Christmas.”
I explained how the Facebook Group grew by hundreds weekly and it’s
become one of the hottest topics in the autism community. In fact, there are
two separate presentations on it at the Autism One / Generation Rescue
conference next month.
She looked at me incredulously. Either we were all crazy or there was a
whole world of healing out there that she knew nothing about.
What’s a doctor to do? She could choose to learn more and potentially
embrace a new method of healing, or shut it out and move on.
Her next statement spoke volumes.
Clearly uncomfortable, she uttered, “I don’t know how to say this to you. So
I’m just going to come out and say it.” LOOONG pause. “I’m not sure what
my role is in Caroline’s life.”
Hmmmmm. Fair enough. I get that she was probably wondering. After all,
we seemed to consult Dr. Google far more often than we did her.
I told her that course we need a local pediatrician. Someone to sign our
school forms. Someone to see us when Caroline is sick.
She clarified, “I guess I feel like I’m just along for the ride.”
Whoa. This one required a second to think. Thoughts reeled through my
mind.
ALONG FOR THE RIDE? Well yeah. You are. Just like her DAN doctor, her
PANDAS doctor, her homoepath. All of them, along for the ride.
The ride on the recovery bus. The bus that I’m driving.
Me. The parent. That’s all. No MD or special training. Just Caroline’s mom.
Yet because of the medical community’s complete lack of understanding of
autism, I’ve been left with no choice but to drive her recovery bus. And you
indeed are “just” along for the ride.
Of course, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the answer I should give. So I applied
a social filter....
“Well, I’ll admit, you’re not the person I think to call if Caroline has what a
PANDAS attack. I think first to ask my friends, who are dealing with it, who
they’ve used.”
I went on to explain that in the circles I’m in, it’s very common for parents to
have multiple physicians, each one being an expert in a particular area. I left
out the part about how it’s also the other parents themselves who are often
the best resource.
After all, even the big-name PANDAS specialist we used wasn’t the one who
told me about Camel milk or Goldenseal (the anti-bacterial herb we used
when taking Caroline off antibiotics). I figured if she was crushed by playing
second fiddle to other doctors, she’d be even more dismayed to learn she
was taking a backseat to “regular” people.
Furthermore, if I did call someone like her, who thought a negative test for
strep ruled out PANDAS, Caroline’s recovery would’ve been stalled at the
starting line.
But still, after all my reassurances of her worth, she seemed unsure. She
said she’d have to talk over any liability with her partners. Because, “What if
something happened to Caroline?”
I bit my tongue and didn’t remind her that something already did happen to
Caroline. Something terrible. Something life altering. In that very office.
So I agreed to wait for her to discuss our fate and she said we would “Speak
about it again at the next appointment.” Well. Alrighty then. We’ll see if
there IS a next appointment.
***
As we drove away from the office, I thought more about what transpired.
What a shame. Really. A shame that we have to be our own advocates. To
learn how to drive a bus or risk that our children will never get better.
Clearly, I was an aberration among the parents of children she treats. What
about other children with special needs? Asthma, allergies, even autism? Is
she really the one driving their recovery?
The pediatrician who tried to convince me just last year to get a DTaP
booster for my daughter who was neurologically damaged after her last
dose of DTaP when she was 6 months old.
The pediatrician who had just enough knowledge about PANDAS to be
dangerous.
The pediatrician who wondered why all those parents would run to buy
camel milk after reading another parent’s blog. Another parent who, might I
add, knew more about PANDAS than her whole office combined.
Why would we? The answer seems obvious. It’s BECAUSE. WE. HAVE. TO.
Because you and your “partners,” have left us with NO. OTHER. OPTION.
Suddenly I was furious. How could she possibly think she should be the
driver? She has never given me a single idea about how to help Caroline.
And did she really think I wouldn’t much rather live in a world where I could
come to her office and say, “Ok, what should we do next?” To which she
would respond with a complete outline of treatment options and we’d move
forward, seeing results. OH EM GEE… that would be my dream world!
I gave up nearly every semblance of my former life to learn how to drive this
bus… because I HAD to. And now I’m getting the third degree. What nerve
does she have?
But then I remembered, anger gets us nowhere. The mainstream medical
community may never come around. My first priority must be healing
Caroline. A close second is to try to motivate other parents to heal their
children. To drive their own bus. Dead last in the priority contest is caring
what an uninformed pediatrician thinks about my choices.
***
Which brings me for the reason for this blog. Healing our children indeed
takes a busload. A bus full of both MD’s and “regular” people. That is, if you
call people accomplishing the heroic task of recovering a child from autism
and people who you can learn more from than any MD on your team,
“regular.”
As you network and join parent groups you meet these people, you take
notes and compile your team. But no one, ever, can replace you as the
driver. That bus can’t move without a driver.
You are the one who knows where your bus has been and where it is going.
The responsibility of mapping out the course lies squarely on your
shoulders. No one else can do it for you. Not with the type of attention to
detail it requires.
You will be the one who makes the tough decisions. Including those last
minute judgment calls and quick maneuvering sometimes needed to avoid
head on collisions.
YOU ARE THE DRIVER. Everyone else is along for the ride.
And your bus? No, it’s not a bright yellow, low mileage model that
transports meds from the town pharmacy and GMO’s from the mega-
grocery mart. Not at all.
We’re talking about a safari bus. A rugged machine equipped for off-
roading expeditions. Driven by a parent who knows healing doesn’t come to
our doorstep. We must venture out to find it. We know that having a
variety of practitioners and parents, each with valuable insights, is the only
way to have the best possible chance at recovery.
So we drive, sometimes to the most unlikely places, in search of anything
that will help our child.
Some friends’ busses have entire sections devoted to homeopathy, or a
certain style of therapy, or specific diet. Others place the DAN approach in
the front row, while still others save that section exclusively for their stacks of
PubMed articles.
On Caroline’s bus, I’ve gathered the best mix I can find of parents who have
journeyed before, parents who are in the thick of it now, physicians who care,
scientists who know, nod to Andy Cutler seated over by the window, and
supplements and diets that work. I never thought I’d be making room for a
camel. Yet, there she is, taking up four whole rows, but worth every square
inch of it.
So, if someone, such as a pediatrician, doesn’t like Dr. Google having a place
up front or the boisterous Facebook parents, armed with their binders of
research, loudly belting out “99 Bottles of Camel Milk on the Wall….” then
they are free to leave at any time.
The last thing any of us need is negative mojo on our healing journey. We
need to surround ourselves with the brightest minds and most positive
people who will be there to cheer us on if we are stuck in the mud. People
who encourage us to try new healing options. Whether that be dietary
changes or chelation or camel milk. People who are happy to share the bus
and thrilled to be along for the ride.
Drive on warriors... and surround yourself with excellence!
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