For information about my international homeopathy practice, click here.
Our children can absolutely be “recovered” from PANDAS/PANS and other developmental disorders with homeopathy! These conditions can absolutely be “resolved”. These children can and do, with the use of homeopathy, go on to live normal, healthy lives with a bright future!
But can they be “cured“? (scroll down to keep reading or watch this video in which I discuss this post/topic)
In the end, I’ve concluded that with homeopathy you can at least replace “my child has PANDAS” to “my child is susceptible to PANDAS exacerbations”. Will they ever succumb to their susceptibility again? Well that depends on me (or your homeopath). And that depends on you. And that depends on your child!
Hear me out…
I was first a PANDAS mom (my children were recovered from the autistic spectrum as well). And then I became a homeopath managing the cases of kids with PANDAS and autism. And I once grappled with the question…and the answers…and the lack of answers to the question, “will my child be cured of autism or PANDAS?”
Most moms whose children have been recovered from autism or PANDAS with homeopathy will tell you that the efficacy is on the level of miraculous! But most will also tell you that they still have moments when they slide back (more so with PANDAS features than autistic features). To varying degrees. And these degrees rely upon many factors, which I will get into soon. First, let’s go over what PANDAS/PANS is, exactly. And if you want to know exactly what homeopathic medicine is, click here.
What is PANDAS/PANS?
PANDAS stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infection. What does this mean? This means that a child (or even an adult, but that is only the opinion of people who work with many PANDAS families) develops sudden neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, depression, separation anxiety, and/or sensory processing disorder as a result of a faulty, autoimmune response to the presence of “strep”. And over the years it was discovered that some of these children were having autoimmune responses to other pathogens as well (such as mycoplasma pneumonia, epstein barr virus, and borrelia bergdorferi and co-infections…aka Lyme Disease). Hence the birth of PANS, or Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome.
My Boys’ Journey and My Own Questions About “Cure”
Before my involvement with homeopathy my sons took…wait for it…25 medications and/or supplements each (yes, each) per day to maintain the few “gains” that they had gotten from western, or alternative medicine! And what did we gain from this? Some cognitive features of their cases were improved. But PANDAS symptoms were worse, constipation was not resolved, and their immune systems were still shot…to name a few of the many issues still on our plates.
All to the tune of $1500 per month (not including doctor consult fees)!
And I was unable to work as I managed all of the doctor appointments, shuffling of prescriptions, and ordering and administering of meds, supplements, B12 injections, topical creams, and the list goes on. Each day I thought to myself…we are barely surviving and this is just not sustainable…this is not a cure, this is an expensive “semi…sort-of…not really…resolution” to the problem…and what will be of their futures?
Enter…homeopathy!
Homeopathic Medicine
Within 6 months of homeopathic treatment, my boys were off of all of their medications (Rx and over-the-counter) and about 75% of their supplements. These were replaced by a few homeopathic remedies which were very inexpensive, super easy to administer (put a few tasteless pellets into a couple ounces of water and sip) and oh-so-powerful. And I watched the gains “rack up”!
After a period of delight, sighs of relief, and outright euphoria, I began to ask myself questions that I have since been asked countless times by moms I have mentored along the way. And now by moms of my own patients:
Is this a cure?
Will they need to take homeopathic remedies for the rest of their lives?
Will the PANDAS exacerbations ever cease to exist?
The questions, at least for me, were not coming from a place of desperation. Not like when I was making a career of administering medications and supplements and B12 shots all day long. The questions were coming more from a place of curiosity. Like…what will the future hold? Will they go off to college with remedy kits and the contact information for their homeopath in their bags? Will I have to drive to their apartments to help them through days when they slip? (Well, now that I am their homeopath, I would hope they would have the contact info for their homeopath!)
What Did I Discover? Is There a Cure?
After asking these questions to countless other moms who came to homeopathy before me, and not really getting an answer that made sense to me or that I could wrap my mind around, I remember asking this question to my boys’ homeopath a few years ago before I took over their cases myself.
“Will they ever be cured of PANDAS?”
And it was an “a-ha” moment for me when she said, “well they fell off the cliff once, they can fall off the cliff again”.
Suddenly I got it. And I was a bit disappointed by the answer.
But my experiences since then…with homeopathy, with PANDAS, with life in general…have allowed me to understand that, in the end, true, deep mental and emotional healing will depend partly upon the will of the individual.
Follow me, here…
Homeopathy is a Vehicle
Homeopathy, and other deep, true healing modalities, are vehicles. Or catalysts. These vehicles can take you to miraculous places. But, what are you going to do when you get there? You still have your genetic susceptibilities. In the case of our children, their susceptibilities are: exposure to strep and other infections, inflammation, and autoimmunity. Can homeopathy change the level at which they react to these factors? Yes, when things are going well, perhaps one will not react at all when exposed to strep. However, when there is a bit of stress in the environment, perhaps one will get a few hives on their bodies or some kidney dysfunction causing urinary frequency from strep. Or if there is a lot of stress in the environment, perhaps one will have an asthma attack or worse a panic attack which looks very much like the start of a PANDAS exacerbation.
This is What it Boils Down To
Homeopathic remedies will always be there to pull you out of the “ditch” of regression you may find yourself or your child in (and rather fast…minutes, hours or days). But whether or not you cease to have these regressions into PANDAS exacerbations (which is what one may call a true “cure”) will depend upon your answer to the following questions:
What are you going to make of your life with this new level of energy and vitality and perspective?
What are you going to do about the aspects of your life which have been weighing you down?
Will you have the courage to make difficult choices required of you to maintain a high level of health and live above your own susceptibilities?
What type of people will you choose to associate with? Will they drain you or energize you?
Will you pursue your passions in life (aka, have the courage to take risks) or will you chase “security” and the almighty dollar at the expense of your health? (these do not have to be mutually exclusive, but that is another topic entirely)
What food will you choose to eat? Salads over pizza? Juice bar over Tiki bar?
What time will you go to bed?
Will you choose yoga over drugs? Meditation over medication?
Will you choose gratitude over dissatisfaction? Love over hate?
Will you forgive?
Will you spend time in the sun, at the beach, in the forest…away from wifi?
Will your packed schedule dominate your life?
Will you be more worried about making everyone around you happy, or will you put yourself first (within reason)?
Will you be so busy trying to impress everyone around you that you forget to care for yourself and live, eat, breathe, and experience life for yourself?
So here it is. My answer to the question, “will my child be cured of PANDAS?”: the environment which we create in our thoughts and in our own world will determine whether or not we rise above our susceptibilities.
It is true that some of these questions can’t quite be answered yet by children who are recovered in their younger years. Much of their lives are being dictated by their parents. In this case, I hand these tough questions, questions I still have to grapple with for my own children and myself on a daily basis, over to the parents.
Yet, even these young children who are dependent upon the lifestyles that their parents choose for them, will have more say over their lives each year as they get older. And one day they will leave our homes and have to make choices for themselves. They will make mistakes. They will learn from these mistakes. They will make bad choices. They will learn to make good choices. Sometimes they will stay “above susceptibility”. But…
Sometimes they may “fall off the cliff”.
You may stop me here and say, “But Stephanie! PANDAS/PANS children are susceptible to the autoimmune effects of strep and other pathogens. This has nothing to do with choices!” To that I ask you to change your way of thinking about this illness. Homeopathy can help our children and ourselves to face and clear the unique deep limiting beliefs or emotional hang-ups which have left them/us more susceptible to disease. Homeopathy can help to strengthen the “terrain”. And yes, on a physical level this translates to healed guts, less permeable blood-brain barriers, and modulated immune systems. But the point, really, is when we are in an emotionally stable place, we can withstand exposure to pathogens better, or even completely. But homeopathy cannot make the choices for us which will ultimately continually further weaken or strengthen us, mentally and emotionally.
So, it is worth saying again: the environment which we create in our thoughts and in our world will determine whether or not we rise above our susceptibilities.
And in the end, if they “fall off the cliff again”, they can always go back on their homeopathic remedies!
For information about my international homeopathy practice, click here.
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