Louder Than Words November 26, 2007

I read Jenny McCarthy's book, “Louder Than Words” last night.

It totally blew me away.

So moving and absolutely gripping. What I love about Jenny McCarthy is how forthright and honest she is. She calls it like she sees it. And she's not afraid to be herself. I really love and admire that in a person.

What she went through with her son's autism was so horrendous — and it makes you so sad to realize that one out every 150 people in America are going through the same thing. I can't even imagine how hard it would be.

And yet it is becoming commonplace in America. How can this be? How can something so horrendous become commonplace?

We think we've got it so good here in America. We're nothing like the poor slobs living in Beirut, sleeping to the sound of bombs going off. We're so lucky to live in America.

Meanwhile one out of every 150 parents is going through a living hell. Seizures, (SIDS? — there is speculation), tantrums and screaming all night long, loss of language and socialization, total inability to function.

I, like Jenny McCarthy, am absolutely convinced that this hell is avoidable and reversible. Not for everybody — some kids can't recover. But I think most or at least many can. They may not be able to cure it completely but they can reverse it. And I think most or many people absolutely can avoid this nightmare.

The thing I loved the best about her book was her sentence (I'm paraphrasing), “This is not a book about autism. This is a book about faith.”

Faith is believing when you have no evidence. Seeing in the dark. Faith is something I have worked on building in myself over the years. I am now an extremely faith-full person. Full of faith. I have total knowing (not just belief — but knowing) that the Universe is conspiring in my favor. Pulling out all the stops for my good. I always know things will work out. And guess what, they always do. It's not always instant (in fact it rarely is), but it is always consistent.

And how cool is it that Jenny McCarthy (a very faith-full person herself) ended up with a guy like Jim Carrey? He strikes me as a pretty spiritual guy. Yes, they are celebrities and what do we really know, but I do know that he wrote a song called “Heaven Down Here” which was recorded by Tuck & Patti. It goes like this:

“Let's bring Heaven down here
I don't want to wait for the angels
Let's bring Heaven down here”

Yes, he really wrote that. I heard Patti say so herself on a local San Francisco talk show. (http://www.tuckandpatti.com/song_lear.html)

The other really cool thing about the book is how much diet and nutrition impacted Jenny's boy. The story she tells is nothing short of staggering.

Within TWO WEEKS of starting her son on a gluten-free, casein-free (wheat/dairy) diet, he said his first sentence. He had been able to say single words before the seizures happened at around the age of two. Words like “juice” and “milk” and “mama”. And after doing some testing, they realized that he didn't even know what those words meant; he was just repeating his mother. Like she would say, “You want some juice?” and he would say, “Juice.”

Then he had the MMR shot and had constant seizures. After the vaccine and subsequent seizures, he lost all language (this is a common pattern).

After just two weeks of being on the diet, he came up to his mom, tugged on her leg and said, “Want to go swimming”.

Aside: Another diet story was in the introduction — a doctor with an autistic son said that two weeks after giving him a daily supplement of cod liver oil, he regained eye contact and language.

After she got her son on the GFCF diet, Jenny learned about candida (an overgrowth of yeast in the gut, the same thing BTW that caused my arthritis and allergies when I was in my mid-twenties) which is common among autistic kids. She started him on Diflucan, which is a drug that kills the yeast. After that he went on massive doses of probiotics (they also kill off the yeast).

Jenny believes that her son was born with a weakened immune system, and the vaccines weakened it even more. Because his immune system was so weak (they found a doctor who had it tested and it was weaker than that of an AIDS patient), he continually got sick and had to take antibiotics, which killed off the good bacteria in his gut. The good bacteria is what kills off the yeast. When you don't have enough good bacteria, you get a yeast overgrowth. Which she believes is what causes the autism in many kids. (I agree with her.)

Anyhow, TWO WEEKS after he started on the Diflucan and was excreting massive amounts of yeast, they were watching a show on TV and he laughed at a joke. He had never done this before. Autistic kids don't “get” jokes.

Then he laughed again. This was the moment she knew she had saved her child. This was the first time, she said, that she had ever seen the real him.

Heartbreaking but joyous. I cried. Because she saved him. She loved him more than anything — and most of all she believed. She had faith. She saw, even in the darkness.

What an amazing woman she is. I think she is going to help many, many people with this book. I think every parent and every aspiring parent should read this book. Everyone who is close to someone with an autistic child should read this book.

Anyone going through a tough time and needs a shot of faith should read this book.

Hurrah, Jenny McCarthy! I'm glad you are alive on this planet with us and I'm glad you are brave enough to be you. You are a wonderful spirit.