Whats with the Hand Flapping?
The past few weeks have been difficult around here. On a personal note, we have been dealing with our second adoption and the issues with Guatemala. We have decided to cut ties with Guatemala and head down the domestic path and we have turned in everything to our local home study agency and are well on our way. It is difficult though, to imagine having an infant in our home now instead of a toddler.
But, I’m also worried about how AJ will do with an infant. We deal so much with his issues everyday that I worry about bringing another child into the mix. Right now we are dealing with insomnia, high frustration levels, hand flapping, screaming for the sake of stimming, throwing things for the sake of who knows what, and he’s back to crashing and needing deep pressure.
What has me confused is that every doctor says that he is not necessarily on the spectrum. But, some parents report that their children react to B6 by hand flapping. Although B6 is beneficial and many doctors recommend it for treatment we have only noticed the hand flapping since increasing his B6 with a Pfeiffer primer to help decrease his insomnia and increase his zinc levels (he was showing signs of Pyroluria; not eating in the morning and white lines on the fingernails).
So what is not working? Not sure. But, I think I found the problem here at Enzyme Stuff, a site I frequent for information I can’t get elsewhere. According to them, B6 is NOT tolerated by many autistic children, despite what research says about B6 being beneficial. Because B6 is a neurological stimulant it can be too stimulating to some children. If a child, like AJ, is phenol sensitive, they would not be able to tolerate it.
Additionally, B vitamins feed yeast and although we are treating yeast, we have not rid his gut of all of it, thus we are probably feeding it resulting in hyperactivity, hand flapping, insomnia, etc.
We’re riding this out for the week and managing the medications for now but we’ll see what happens. I’ll update you as we go.
Word Press, Technorati, pyroluria, yeast, phenol, B6, vitamins, Enzymes, hyperactivity, hand flapping, autism, spectrum, pfeiffer treatment center, stimming, crashing, deep pressure, adoption, Tags
October 26th, 2007 at 9:12 am
[...] Marcie put an intriguing blog post on Whats with the Hand Flapping?.Here’s a quick excerpt:Although B6 is beneficial and many doctors recommend it for treatment we have only noticed the hand flapping since increasing his B6 with a Pfeiffer primer to help decrease his insomnia and increase his zinc levels (he was showing signs … [...]
November 5th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
[...] for my entry… I think you might see AJ out there [...]