Casein, Seizures and Taurine

I wrote this summer that I was seeing odd behavior in my son, something that I thought could be brain blips, something seizure-like. We took Liberty to a neurologist and they botched the entire procedure because they gave him Benadryl without asking me. These people just assume that Benadryl works for all children and makes then sleepy. A pharmacist told me once that Benadryl has a paradoxical effect in many children and can make them bounce off the walls.

Anyway, I had Liberty in summer camp at the time, and had been letting him have yogurt. They liked him manding for yogurt and began to give him two cups a day. That is when I started seeing the behavior. When I stopped the yogurt, the behavior ceased.

I told Dr. Bock this at our last appointment and he thought it was very significant; in fact he was rather stunned.

I looked up epilepsy and dairy products, and there is a lot of information about it. One of the treatments for epilepsy is a gluten free, casein free diet. Did you know that?

Below is a clip I found on another blog, Schuyler's Monster, that shows absence seizures. Can you spot them? The little girl has four of them. She will stop, look up, and there is a little bit of swallowing or mouth movement. That is exactly what my son did this summer. He would get very sleepy afterward, too. I dreamed around that time of Lib having these God-awful seizures and convulsions so that was confirmation for me that I was seeing actual seizures. These seizures, though not really harmful in themselves, do need to be controlled because they can lead to bigger seizures. Absence seizures are called petit mal seizures and the more overt seizures are grand mal seizures or the type we usually think of as seizures. As you can see, if you did not know what you were looking for, they are easy to miss.

I started Liberty on the amino acid taurine which has been used for prevention of seizures for a very long time and is a common supplement for the biomedical treatment of autism. I believe it helps absorb some other nutrients and is typically low in children with autism. It won't stop a seizure when one is occurring, but does help prevent them. So far, we have had no more of that type of behavior and have avoided medication.