Understanding motor planning impairment in autism treatment
To best understand why it is so important treating motor planning, consider reading an overview of motor planning and mitochondrial function.
Want to hear about a simple, elegant and effective way to improve language, social and cognitive skills for your child diagnosed with autism?
Dr. Claudia Morris has shown that motor planning can be improved by helping to repair the cell membrane and stopping lipid peroxidation. Say what??? Cell membranes are made up of fat. Damage to the cell membrane causes lipid peroxidation which is essentially the membrane being “shredded”. A “shredded” cell membrane than dramatically reduces the mitochondria’s ability to produce ATP, which is the energy molecule in our body. In the research section, an overview of motor planning and sensory integration is described as it relates to autism. People with autism do not create enough energy to perform complicated motor movements like eye contact, verbal communication. Part of the problem is energy production and the other is scrambling of sensory information.
Repairing cell membranes and supporting mitochondrial function with a modified ketogenic diet, fat soluble vitamins, essential fatty acids, carnitine, methylation supports and phospholipids dramatically improves praxis contributing to gains in verbal communication, eye contact, social skills, learning in addition to reducing or removing repetitive, stimming, aggressive, self-injurious or self-stimulating behaviours.
We know that many toxins can damage the body on a cellular level. There are too many to list here but there are few we want to touch on:
- Acetaminophen is toxic to cells because it depletes glutathione, which is the body’s most important antioxidant. Glutathione protects mitochondrial function and cell membranes, so the depletion of glutathione by Tylenol is one way cells get damaged. Women who take Tylenol in pregnancy are more likely to have a child diagnosed with ADHD. Tylenol has also been linked to asthma, ADHD and autism.
- Alterations to the microbial ecosystem in the gut can negatively impact motor planning by damaging mitochondria, impairing methylation, depleting glutathione and compromising the carnitine shuttle which delivers essential fatty acids to the cells. The microbiome, the ecosystem in the gut, plays a crucial role in protecting cells from toxicity. Digestive problems like constipation or diarrhea decrease the body’s ability to remove harmful toxins and chemicals increasing body burden.
- Derrick MacFabe has shown in an animal model that overgrowth of the species clostridia will impact the brain and cause many “autism-like” behaviours and similar brain changes found in the brain tissue of children and adults diagnosed with autism.
- Carnitine deficiency is common in autism and treatment with carnitine improves language, social and cognitive skills in autism.
Medical treatment of autism:
While hundreds of millions of research dollars are investigating what is contributing to disorders such as autism, very little research is focused on treatment. We now know incontrovertibly that environmental toxicity is picking off at risk children with increasing devastation each generation. Repair of the cell membranes is an elegant treatment strategy. It is so simple. It is so beautiful. We have 100 TRILLION cells. We have 100 TRILLION cell membranes. If a treatment can help to repair 100 TRILLION cell membranes; guess what? Motor planning will improve. Eye contact will improve. Focus, hand writing, walking up stairs, chewing food, blowing bubbles, speaking. This approach is helping tens of thousands of children.
Simple. Elegant. Effective.