THE LONG JOURNEY HOME 
The Incidence and Rise in Autism and How it Relates to the Lyme Epidemic

by Kathy Blanco

It was about three years ago that I began to notice something. I noticed it at the stores, the libraries, at church, or wherever I had been…I noticed that there seems to be more children with autism. I know what autism looks like, feels like, and most of all sounds like when found in such places as these because I have two children with autism, a boy who is 25 and a girl who is 19. My son is severely autistic, and my daughter is considered “high functioning.” I have two so-called “normal” daughters in between my autistic children. Because of this fact, I have an uncanny desire to figure out just why the rates of Autism are climbing.

In the 1980’s, when my son was born, the occurrence of autism was about 3-5 individuals per 10,000 births with variations that depend upon diagnostic criteria. The diagnostic criteria use the terms high, middle and low functioning autism, and even Aspergers Syndrome. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), today the rate of Autism is 1 out of every 166 births.

The story of autism started to unfold for many families around our country…including mine. Some families noticed abnormalities arise soon after birth when observing fussy, colicky babies with rashy bottoms that were not feeding or sleeping well and they seemed to have ongoing ear infections.

Other groups of parents saw a slow and steady decline in their children’s language skills after previously acquiring it. Some children did not acquire new language at all. Some children had a great regression of social skills, with increased aggression, biting, and awkward clumsy movements… sometimes even seizures. This sometimes occurred at the same time of vaccination schedules or illnesses. The theory is that there is something going on in Autism other than genetics.

Perhaps there are environmental changes in our world: global warming, increased vaccinations in weaker immune-compromised children, food intolerances, heavy metal exposure (found in vaccines and the environment), viruses, bacteria, fungi or other stressors that worsen metabolic predispositions.

An example of such would be the profound glutathione deficiency, and metallothionein deficiency (needed to detox the environment at large) and the new theory of oxalate problems and the huge issue of oxidative stress. During that time of observing so many more autistic children, I noticed I was getting very tired. Perhaps it was all those challenging years of managing my own autistic children. I But the fatigue was more than usual. I started to notice I didn’t have the strength to wipe down a counter. My throat felt as if I had hand on it, and I couldn’t even swallow simple pills. At night I would experience something like Restless Leg Syndrome. I had tingling feelings in my toes. I noted that I had 14 amalgam fillings, and upon learning about the mercury link to autism, I decided to get all of them removed safely per the DAMS method. I began chelation therapy along with my children.

The day of my surgery to remove the fillings was very dramatic. I remember shaking violently after being in the dental chair for a total of 7 hours. I decided I needed that day to chelate to make sure nothing accumulated during this surgery.

Before my chelation therapy, I went through all my symptoms with the doctor. He began to look for Babinski signs, of which I knew nothing about. I started to feel a little stressed that he was concerned. I closed my eyes and felt unbalanced. I also complained of vertigo and feeling very tired. I was so tired that I was not be able to function in the afternoons without lying in bed for two hours. My husband was with me that day, and he looked concerned too. The doctor sat me down gently and proceeded to tell me, “ I am chagrined to tell you this, but I think you have Multiple Sclerosis(MS).”

I began to cry. How can this be? The doctor said I had other symptoms such as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, low Potassium and Vitamin D, which are said to accompany the diagnosis of many MS patients. But as he backed up his explanation, he said he believed that MS is not really MS as most would understand it disease. He believes MS is a toxic, infectious disease. He said, “If we treat the mercury and the other heavy metals, then work on what infections are present, I think you will never have to ever see MS blossom in you…we caught this early. You are lucky.” To confirm this, he ordered a follow up MRI and found white matter lesions and T2 weighted imaging of hyperperfusion on my brain. This was a confirmatory test, but others could be done, like SPECT scans, that would conclusively diagnose the situation.

So how “lucky” was I? When it got down to the nitty-gritty, we did viral panels, bacterial panels, and genomic SNP’s. My mercury levels were off the chart, even higher than my children with Autism. To say these were AHA moments, is an understatement. One day on the internet I read there was a connection between LYME DISEASE and MS. It made sense. I lived in highly endemic areas of lyme disease, and my parents did too.

I had pinpointed times in my life where I felt the most sick. I knew in lyme disease infected people that stresses in life (emotional or physical illnesses, vaccinations) often accompany what they call “lyme flares.”

It was then, that I began to get busy, trying to learn all I could about lyme disease. Interestingly, it seemed as if the lyme epidemic began to parallel the autism epidemic, all beginning in the late 70’s.

That got me thinking…what if my children have lyme disease? So I had them tested. All of us, including my brother and sisters and their children… TESTED POSITIVE FOR LYME DISEASE. We all, additionally, tested positive for the different co-infections found in lyme: Bartonella, Babesia WA-1, Mycoplasma Fermentens, and co-infection viruses such as the Epstein Barr Virus, CMV and HHV6. Our HHV6 titers were 7-9 times the normal range. Lyme disease had made itself a home in us. Literally.

When I was pregnant with my son, I came down with the Epstein Barr Virus. I was told to stay in bed, for weeks, if not months at a time. It happened at a bad time, with a new job/career, but I had to do it. I had moments where I would actually close up my office to go sleep in the back room because I was so sick. When I pressed upon doctors to see if this was connected to Autism or lyme, they had no answers. I saw one brief news clip on how viruses or bacteria could hamper the immune system of the unborn baby, and or have some effect on the myelin sheath (the insulator of nerves). In my subsequent children, the two without Autism, I didn’t have any illnesses during the pregnancy, but when I had my youngest daughter, a simple sore throat turned into strep.

Lyme disease was literally explaining the following diseases and symptoms in my own family!

etc… etc… etc.

As I began to study lyme disease, I also began to look at literature concerning syphilis. Syphilis is a cousin to lyme disease. Both are spirochetal bacteria diseases. Lyme disease behaves like syphilis, and sometimes can stay dormant in the body for years, and activate at key immune suppression times. Lyme disease is sexually transmitted in some vet models and in human studies. This of course expands how many people actually have lyme disease, or unknowingly carry it symptom free.

In 2005, the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS) (www.ilads.org) published information that Autism Spectrum Disorders are included in the many illnesses that lyme disease can mimic. At present, the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) believe Lyme disease is under reported by almost 20 times the actual number of reported cases.

We have recently started a non-profit organization called the Lyme Induced Autism Foundation (www.lymeinducedautism.com). The purpose of the organization is to disseminate this information to parents and physicians, and to fund major researchers on the Lyme-Autism connection. We are researching different treatment options which include: nutraceuticals, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, other stratagems, and long-term antibiotic therapy. Research money should be spent wisely on the infection-based model of Autism, and it’s related cell mediated immune events such as toxins, vaccinations, and other oxidative events. Autism research also needs to further investigate the direct connection with the major bacterial infection called Lyme disease.