On the eve of World Autism Awareness Day, Rachel Cooper talks to the Merseyside couple who have adopted a radical approach to their son’s condition based around a special diet which is already paying dividends

FIRST-TIME parents Andrea and Neil Edmondson were delighted when their son Lewis arrived. “We’d been married for a few years,” says Andrea, 32. “We’d both been working hard, we’d travelled to lots of places and we were ready to settle down.”

After a difficult pregnancy, Lewis was born in June, 2006.

“He was a healthy baby who fed and slept well,” says Andrea. “He reached all his milestones – he sat at six months and said his first word at eight months.”

But, when Lewis was 16 months old, everything began to change. And Andrea says he became like a different child.

“He didn’t want to be in the same room as us,” recalls Andrea, from Eccleston. “He just wanted to be on his own. He’d even forgotten how to use his toys.

“Lewis also developed terrible diarrhoea. It burnt the skin off the top of his legs – we couldn’t leave the house without being laden down with nappies.

“Then, in the February, he stopped responding to his name and he stopped using all the words he’d learnt.

“We went to a speech therapist who told us that he was a typical boy and a doctor told us his bowel problems were just toddlers’ diarrhoea.”

But things were getting progressively worse, says Andrea, who gave up her job in banking to care full time for Lewis.

“We felt like we were losing him.”

At Lewis’s second birthday party last June: “It was like he wasn’t even there. He had just gone.”

But the next day, Andrea read a newspaper article which seemed to explain the transformation.

“It was about the 10 key signs of autism,” says Andrea. “And I was ticking everything on the checklist. I knew that day he was autistic.”

Andrea feared that, from then on, life would just be about coping with Lewis’s autism.

“Everything I read was about coping strategies,” says Andrea. “It was saying your child will be like this and you just have to learn to live with it.”

But, after receiving an official diagnosis of autism from health professionals in January, Lewis – now 2½ – is, Andrea says, “coming back to us both physically and emotionally”.

With the help of a specialist practitioner, Andrea has started treating Lewis’s autism by changing his diet and says that the results are “phenomenal”.

“He can now make eye contact, he’s much more sociable, less anxious and his attention span has improved. He can actually sit in the same room as us.”

“For many parents, these things are normal,” adds Andrea. “But for us, they’re amazing.”

Lewis’s improvement is, Andrea believes, down to the dietary changes recommended to her by Jean Muscroft, a Chester nutritional therapist who is part of the Defeat Autism Now! movement.

Autism is described as a developmental disability, which affects social development and communication. But, DAN! practitioners believe that autism is linked to problems with a child’s biochemistry, leading to nutritional deficiencies, gut problems and immune system problems.

Practitioners test for these deficiencies and then treat them through dietary intervention.

Andrea first learnt about the treatment known as “Biomeds” last summer, when she started researching autism online.

“I decided to remove gluten and casein, which is found in dairy products, from his diet,” says Andrea. “And, within two days of him stopping drinking milk, he was sleeping better and starting to notice the world around him.”

Last October, Andrea joined the Treating Autism network, a group of parents who are all using Biomeds and discovered Jean Muscroft.

“Jean has saved my sanity,” says Andrea.

The family first met Jean in November and, within a month, Lewis’s symptoms had begun to improve.

“She ran a huge number of tests and found that Lewis’s bowel was inflamed, there were colonies of bacteria in his gut, he was lacking a number of vitamins and minerals, and he had high levels of lead and mercury in his body.”

Lewis now eats a completely organic diet and takes a number of vitamin supplements recommended by Jean.

“It’s a full-time job,” says Andrea. “Lewis is now on a specific carbohydrate diet as well, and nothing he eats is shop-bought, so I cook everything.

“I make him biscuits with flours he can tolerate, and casseroles with pulses instead of potatoes.”

“We’re working to get rid of toxins around the home as well,” adds Andrea. “We use eco-friendly paints and I use vinegar and bicarbonate of soda for cleaning the house.

“It’s like something out of the 1950s.”

As well as the improvements in Lewis’s physical health, his communication skills have also improved.

“Lewis couldn’t learn anything before because he wouldn’t let me sit down with him,” explains Andrea. “But now, he’ll actually let me sit down beside him.

“We’re also using the Picture Exchange Communication System, where Lewis can point to a picture to say what he wants. He’s not verbal, he just makes sounds rather than words; but he is making slow, but steady, progress.”

“I didn’t think this is what I’d spend my life doing,” admits Andrea. “But changing your child’s diet is so much easier than having a child who won’t sit in the same room as you.”

Andrea is keeping an open mind about the causes of Lewis’s autism, and doesn’t believe there was one single trigger.

“He had his MMR at 14 or 15 months,” she says. “It was possibly a contributing factor – but one of many contributing factors.”

For now, she is working to tackle Lewis’s autism.

“As well as changing his diet, we’re also using homeopathy and behaviour interventions such as ‘relationship development intervention’, which helps Lewis to learn to be around people.

“He also spends time with a play therapist every weekend.”

“I don’t believe that autism is curable,” Andrea adds. “But I do believe it’s treatable.

“All you hope for is the very best for your child, and this is the very best that we can do for Lewis.”