Are supplements forever?

Does Mike have to take all those Yasko protocol supplements all his life?  This is a question I wondered about when we first embarked in 2007 on treating his Asperger’s with the Yasko protocol, based on genetic testing.

I figured the answer was yes. We’d have to give him tons of supplements all his life. The theory seemed to demand it.

Now it turns out that the answer is no, or at least not so many!  I took him to the chiropractor in July for his annual testing. She uses “muscle testing” to evaluate whether each of his supplements is of value to his body.  In particular, several of his supplements addressed a set of mutations that cause the body to make too much ammonia, causing behavior problems.This is not an uncommon set of mutations that Yasko sees, and it’s hard to treat.

Well, this July, after 2.5 years on the protocol with the chiropractor, Mike didn’t need any more the ones that “mop up” or otherwise neutralize ammonia. In fact, his ammonia metabolism was perfectly normal!!! This really floored me.  Something has changed in a big way.  I can speculate as to what, but I don’t actually know.

He’s on 10 supplements now, down from 15 the chiropractor first identified. Nearly all the dropped ones have to do with the ammonia system.

In case you are wondering why I am talking about supplements, here is the theory behind the Yasko protocol. The body has a lot of little chemical factories, in the mitochondria of each cell. These factories have inputs and outputs, and the individual processes are run by enzymes. If the enzymes are genetically messed up, creating too much or not enough of an input, that skews the system. You can’t change the enzyme imbalance. But you can supply the missing input with supplements in order to make the little factory work at full tilt like it is supposed to.  And you can supply something to “mop up” too much output, in our case ammonia. For us that was yucca and quercetin, given at each meal. Don’t ask me how these work, I don’t know! But they did.

At first I could see the effect if Mike forgot to take his pills. His behavior was atrocious.  The excess ammonia was apparently driving him nuts.  Gradually that changed though; if he forgot his pills, it wasn’t so bad. Now it doesn’t seem to matter much at all if he forgets for a particular meal.

He seems more and more normal in so many ways. Could it be that my “Curing Autism Blog” is aptly named?  I am daring to hope.

Phyllis Wheeler