Tracy: Everywhere you turn, somebody is impacted by somebody who is on the spectrum. And not to say anything bad about the, they’re all unique, beautiful souls walking the earth, and they all have their own perfect journey.

Dr. Taz: Hi everyone, and welcome to Super Woman Wellness. I’m Dr. Taz. I’ve made it my mission throughout my career at Integrative Medicine to support women in restoring their health using a blend of Eastern medical wisdom with modern science. In this show, I will guide you through different practices to find your power type and fully embody the healthiest and most passionate version of you. I’m here for you and I can’t wait to get started. This is a Soulfire Production.

Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Super Woman Wellness, where we are determined to bring you back to your super powered self. Now, I’m a mom and I’ve been honest about those conversations, but I actually started my career in pediatrics and I have had a front row seat to what it really means when people say you’re only as healthy as your healthiest child. And for the children, they’re only as healthy as their moms. Well, keeping that in mind, I am so honored to introduce you to Tracy Slepcevic. She is a bestselling author, a Certified Integrative Health Coach, a speaker, an Air Force Veteran, and the Founder of PUR Health. She’s educated in the field of complimentary and alternative medicine and has dedicated over 14 years to researching various treatments and therapies for individuals with autism spectrum disorder, which by the way most of you know, but that number continues to grow and escalate at astronomical rate.

We can talk about that as well. Over the years, she’s worked with various doctors, scientists, advocates, researchers, and she’s made it her mission to educate families on the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. She’s the bestselling author of the book, Warrior Mom: A Mother’s Journey In Healing Her Son with Autism, it’s an inspiring story of hope and an indispensable guidebook for any parent desperate to hear the truth that autism is not an incurable disease and that there are a lot of different options available for someone with autism. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you on here. This is such a important topic. It’s an epidemic, I think it’s a public health epidemic that we really can’t seem to be super honest about for whatever reason. But before we segue into all of that, tell us a little bit about you and your son and what led to the book. Give us a little bit of the backstory.

Tracy: Okay. So many years ago when Noah was one, he had met all his milestones and he was doing really well. He was walking early, crawling early. We actually called him our little monkey. He was doing so great. He did become very colicky right around two months old. But soon after I took him in for his one-year well-baby visit, I started to see a decline. But within 24 hours, my son broke out in a full body rash and had a fever for about a week, and it was a fairly high grade fever, so around 103, 104.

So a new mom not knowing what to do, would constantly call the pediatrician, and all I ever heard from that woman was it was, oh, so normal. Everything was normal. And so eventually his fever broke. We did have to give him a mild steroid to flush out the rash because it was like three weeks into it and he still broke out in a full body rash. And then from there I started to just, over the next several months just started to see this major decline. And for a kid who was so mobile, I even taught him baby sign language.

Dr. Taz: Oh, wow.

Tracy: Right around six months old, we would go to the little baby sign classes. I even taught them for a little while and he had so much sign language as well. So it wasn’t just him having those baby words, but he also had that to add to his communication skills. And so over the next few months, I started to see him lose all his speeches. He was going from saying, mama and dada and buddy, the dog, to ma, da, until he just couldn’t say anything at all. Then those physical skills just started to slowly diminish. A kid who was climbing stuff, couldn’t climb anymore. He had very weak motor skills, very uncoordinated. He could still walk, which I have to call a blessing because I’ve seen much worse being an advocate for these kids.

And then I just started to see this cognitive decline as well as to where the lights just went out in my little boy and he wasn’t communicating or looking at me the same way that he used to. And so from there, I just kept questioning over and over and I’d get the same answers. And two preschools telling me, I’m sorry, we can’t care for your child, he’s got special needs. A pediatrician who’s constantly telling me, my kid’s okay. And Harbor Regional Center who ended up losing our paperwork in the pre-evaluation stage where she was supposed to pass that on to a clinical psychologist. And as they never reached out to me, my head was spinning. So I can tell you there was some divine intervention. God would just send me angels. I kid you not, for a couple of weeks, this woman came to work for us and she worked the front desk and she had a child with autism and she worked for us long enough to tell me what to do, where to go, and how to do it.

Dr. Taz: Oh, yeah.

Tracy: Nobody gave me a guidebook, which is one of the number one reasons why I wrote the book. As you were saying, the rate of autism is skyrocketing. It is an epidemic.

Dr. Taz: It really is.

Tracy: And everywhere you turn, somebody is impacted by somebody who is on the spectrum. And not to say anything bad about the, they’re all unique, beautiful souls walking the earth and they all have their own perfect journey. But my son’s journey was not, this was not going to be his end-all, be-all. So once he was diagnosed, which that wasn’t until he was about three and a half years old, so I had lost a-

Dr. Taz: Wait, it takes, so he’s, and at one he had a visit and he did get a vaccine at that visit? Right?

Tracy: He did. So he received the MMR and Varicella vaccine at that visit, yes.

Dr. Taz: Okay. And so from one to three, he’s regressing, you don’t have a diagnosis, and you’re sort of navigating this field on your own. Your timeline mirrors, so I’ve had my practice, my integrated practice for almost 15 years, and when I think back to what it was like 14, 15 years ago, it was, it’s still not where it needs to be today, but it was even bleaker back then for sure. So I can only imagine some of which you went through trying to get him help and trying to figure out what direction to go in from him. So he finally gets a diagnosis at three, tell us what happens next.

Tracy: So I ended up going through the school district at that point, he was past the age of three. The woman who worked for us said, “You know what, go through the school district now that he’s over the age of three.” That report, I did take back to the regional center where he was formally diagnosed. But in that time I’m like, I have answers. And again, I’m headed back to the office to grab something after his evaluation and walking down the hall was my naturopathic doctor, me crying and he’s like, “Well, what’s the matter?” And I said, “Well, Noah was diagnosed with autism.” And he looks at me and he said, “Noah’s going to be okay. I want you to go home and I want you to do your research because I truly feel like Noah is going to function fully in the future as long as you implement some biomedical intervention.”

Now, at the time, I knew a lot about nutrition from my past education, but I didn’t know what biomedical intervention was. And for those of you out there, it’s just addressing those underlying conditions so that anybody can function and live a healthier life. So I literally sucked those tears back up into my eyes, I kid you not. He filled me with hope and inspiration. Back then in 2008 and nine, you could Google healing autism and you could get so much information.

Dr. Taz: Information.

Tracy: So since you can’t really do that today. So this was another reason that I wrote my book, was to really give those parents that information that they needed to get them on that road to recovery or get their child as functioning as possible. When I say healing, because I get a little bit of kickback from some people in regards to saying a mother’s journey to healing her child with autism, when I say healing, I’m really, as I said, addressing those underlying conditions so he could live a functioning life in which he definitely did.

Just addressing the gut right off the bat, just from reading a couple books before I found a good functional medicine doctor, back then they called them DAN Doctors. While as Defeat Autism Now protocol, today they have MAPS Doctors. And my naturopath was so grace because he didn’t treat kids with autism, so he assisted me in finding the best doctor. Because during this time, we had literally lost our business and our home and everything because my husband fights big insurance and you’ve been fighting them long enough, they fight back. So he exposed the insurance companies and the state of California Insurance Commissioner, who was Steve Poizner at the time, for fraud and collusion and smoke and ash.

Dr. Taz: Oh, no.

Tracy: And as you know, smoke and ash has carcinogenic particulates as to where you can’t just go in and vacuum it up. So he exposed them on the news, and over time they did a hit piece on him. He wound up on the front page of the LA Times, tanking his business, his reputation, everything. Today he would fit in, he would totally fit in. But that was a huge hurdle for us. Huge. And at that same time, my son is diagnosed with autism.

Dr. Taz: So let’s, there’s a lot in what you’ve already said. So the biomedical approach, I don’t want to skim over that, for those of you listening, is very much getting into the root cause, into the underlying physiology of what might be driving autism. Which is defined in different ways, but conventionally is mainly defined as a behavioral change, as a neurodevelopmental disease. For those of us in the integrative and holistic or functional, whatever word you want to use, kind of community, I got in trouble on air for saying that autism is essentially an inflammatory bowel disease. That it’s really rooted in the gut, it’s rooted in inflammation. Inflammation takes place for different reasons in different people. And the reason that we can’t really come to a consensus about it is because every single person is unique and individual, and it doesn’t really fit into the conventional model, which wants to say that this disease is created by these one or two things, and therefore these one or two treatments work.

So the challenge for moms like you, and from an observational standpoint and even trying to treat, is there’s so much information out there, at least, well, back then there was a lot of information out there. I’m not sure what it’s like right now, but there was so much information out there that people didn’t know where to begin. They didn’t know where to start. They didn’t know what was a legitimate treatment, what was maybe a fraudulent treatment. So how did you navigate where to start, where to go, especially in the context of financial stress and strain, because there were many DAN Doctors in my time when I had first started, it was thousands of dollars to see them, tens of thousands of dollars to see them. So how did you navigate that puzzle, which might help somebody listening out there today?

Tracy: So first I set a clear intention of healing my child and I blocked out all the rest. So I after, while my naturopath was making phone calls, he was asking, what kind of tests do you run? What are your protocols? What are your prices? And he could tell when somebody was price gouging. And when he found what he felt was the best fit, and she was the best fit, and she was an osteopathic doctor, still is. He called her and talked to her and said, “Listen, a dear friend and patient of mine has a child with autism, are you willing to take payments? Do you take any type of insurance?” And she did. She really worked with me because I was so determined and I was so inquisitive. And from there I bartered for treatments like his hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and he did have tubes in his ears, so I caution that a little bit with children who can’t clear their ears. I bartered for treatments. I’m like, listen, I’ll do your marketing. I’ll work your front desk. I will scrub your toilets. I don’t care.

So I ended up doing their marketing on the weekends and I sold stuff. I picked up, I sold it. And as I just started something so simple as removing inflammatory foods from his diet, which I didn’t need to, eating real food if you actually think that that is more costly than processed food in crap, then someone who needs more education on that. But that is the root of how I truly healed my child, was eating real food, taking it down to the basics of eating fruits and vegetables, some meat, some fish, all those things. I got a little creative and tried to make gluten-free bread back then. I mean, this was 2009, that didn’t work. So we just eliminated the bread and it just worked really well. And I promise, it’s tough, it may be tough for the first several days, maybe even the first week, but they’re not going to starve themselves.

They’re eventually going to eat. And this is the struggle that I have with parents that are like, oh, but they lose it when I take this food away, or they’re picky eaters. Yes, they’re picky eaters because you’re allowing them to be picky eaters. So you need to take it on, decide who the parent is. And I can’t say that I didn’t have my struggles along the way, but a clear intention in setting that path and knowing deep in my soul that my child was going to live a normal life was the number one step. And then everything else, I mean, I threw everything at that poor kid but the kitchen sink. He graduates tomorrow. He has his driver’s license. He’s fully functioning. He’s a great kid. He eats like crap today because he has his own money and-

Dr. Taz: How old is he now?

Tracy: He’ll be 18 next month.

Dr. Taz: Oh, wow. Okay. Gotcha. So was his story about healing the gut, is that?

Tracy: Yeah. Huge.

Dr. Taz: What brought back his cognition and brought everything, what brought him back essentially?

Tracy: So we started with gut, and then once she got back all the urine, the fecal, the blood tests, everything, I mean, she ran everything under the sun, we do carry the MTHFR gene, so we don’t methylate properly. And for those of you out there who don’t know what that means, we don’t get rid of toxins as well as others. So he did carry that gene. I also carry that same gene. Diet was huge. Number one, diet. Addressing, exactly what you said, inflammatory gut. And this is why I had the master of masters rate my foreword, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who talks about that gut-brain connection and how it is the inflammatory bowel disease causes neurological disorders and addressing that. Now you do have these kids that no matter what their parents do, they still struggle or they’re still non-speaking.

And now there’s so much out there about spell to communicate. They did the documentary, Spellers, based on JB Handley’s book, Underestimated, with his son. And JB Handley and his wife started Generation Rescue, which was all about the biomedical approach to healing these kids. But sometimes you just have to keep plugging away. I see these kids in, they want to talk, they want to communicate, they want all of that. So even ones that don’t make that huge drastic improvement like Noah did, and I’m telling you when I say clean diet, there was no gluten, dairy, sugar, nothing. It was all real food. And this was a good year, not just like a month or 30 days. This was a solid year of he and I, I was on the bandwagon with my child, and then I was also healing myself. So everything I write in my book isn’t just for children, as you know, it’s for all of us. We all have underlying conditions of some sort.

Dr. Taz: Absolutely.

Tracy: So really addressing those is how I truly saw all the improvement, but we did do hyperbarics.

Dr. Taz: I was about to ask you about that because in the world of biomedical therapies, there’s hyperbaric, there is chelation, there’s so many different things out there. Where do you stand on some of what’s out there? If you had to give a list of, we know the guide I think is universally accepted, and then of course augmenting nutrition for sure. Where are you on hyperbaric, chelation, some of these other things that are out there for kids today?

Tracy: So like I said before in regards to hyperbarics, my son had tubes in his ears from chronic ear infections, and so that’s kind of where his messed up gut came as well from all those antibiotics monthly. I mean, literally monthly. So I didn’t have to worry about my child being able to clear his ears. Now, they do work with kids in taking them under slowly, but my concern is their ears. It’s a huge concern. But do I feel like Noah had benefits from it? Absolutely. The behaviors started to decrease. It probably sped up the healing of the gut, but he was sleeping better. And this was a mom who hadn’t slept in four years .

Dr. Taz: Right, yeah.

Tracy: And then you talk about chelation. So we did start with IV chelation, and I’m going to tell you, it was like my poor kid was on chemotherapy.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, I’m not a fan, personally. That’s my experience.

Tracy: So I’m not a fan.

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Tracy: And then I went back to my naturopath because his office was adjacent to ours. He’s the primary researcher and spokesperson for the Beamer, and I was part of the Beamer study back in the day, so I would always kind of use him as a back-up of, what do you think? And he was like, IV chelation is just too harsh. So do a mild form of chelation. So there’s all different kinds of things. I even say if you want to go super mild and you want to go all natural, like Medical Medium came out with a heavy metal detox shake and literally everything in there is chelating and detoxing, and then there’s a binder in it and everything. So if someone chooses to go the chelation route, I highly recommend that they take a lot of binders after. But I really don’t recommend, I think the IV is just too much.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, I agree.

Tracy: But chelation, yes. And some, there’s suppositories, there’s, as you know, compounded capsules. Then we did obviously supplementation. We had to do a lot of IV supplementation just because of how bad the yeast was in his gut. So as you know, that is going to inhibit his ability to absorb a lot of those proteins and nutrients and vitamins, which is why he was so deficient. So getting that into him made a huge difference in bringing the light back in his eyes, getting rid of those dark circles. And we did stem cell therapy.

Dr. Taz: Oh, wow. Okay.

Tracy: We did, and it was fetal stem cell therapy, but we did, back in the day, we did the Bradstreet protocol through Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet. And what he did was he did the Gc-MAF injections for, he called for it for six months, but I only had three months until spring break and I wanted to do it spring break. So for three months we did Gc-MAF injections, which we had ordered from London at the time. Since then, big pharma has definitely shut them down. I think they traumatized them to no end as well. I also think after that, Japan had Gc-MAF injections, but now it’s super hard to find them. So that was to repair the immune system.

Now, Gc-MAF, Gc protein macrophage-activating factors, this is the white blood cells that go and eat up the bad stuff, but they had proof that it was actually curing cancer, so obviously they were going to be shut down. But we got to do that for three months to repair the immune system. And then when we took him to the Ukraine to EmCell for stem cell therapy, we went for two days, he was given an IV with stem cells, and then he was given three injections into the belly. And I did it as well, and so did my husband. My husband regained his hearing. He had some hearing loss. I had-

Dr. Taz: How old is your son at this point?

Tracy: He was seven.

Dr. Taz: Seven. Okay, gotcha.

Tracy: So Noah lacked a lot of motor skills. And for a kid, I mean, he was always built like a brick shithouse. He was a beast coming out, he was about nine pounds, and always really solid and strong, but had no more coordination. And he couldn’t hang onto a monkey bar. He couldn’t climb a rock wall. He couldn’t balance very well, and they would do the half moon ball. So he was in occupational therapy, which wasn’t really doing much for him. And then when I took him and he had the two days, we toured Europe, he got to go through Europe, we brought him home. And that weekend we went to the Renaissance Fair.

And Noah’s like, “Mom, I want to climb the rock wall.” And I’m looking at it and it’s massive. And I’m like, “Uh, okay.” And I’m so used to Noah, he’s trying, when he tried to climb the rock wall before, he would just hang onto it. And this is where he was frozen because he didn’t have that ability to climb it. He flew up that rock wall and ring the bell, and I kid you not, I fell to my knees and I started to cry. Within 30 days, he graduated from occupational therapy. He could go back-and-forth on the monkey bars. He could balance on the half moon ball, he could tie his shoes, he could do all the-

Dr. Taz: So why are we not, so you had to go to the Ukraine for this, why is it not available in the US? What specifically, so you did stem cells, right?

Tracy: So they were fetal stem cells.

Dr. Taz: Okay.

Tracy: And so back then I had done a lot of research on stem cell therapy. You have adult stem cells, which are your own stem cells. I felt that that was the best way, but it was too invasive. And although I’ve banked my cord blood, because it’s FDA regulated, I have no access to it unless it is approved that something that’s FDA approved for stem cell use. So cancer is approved for stem cell therapy, autism is not. And so I couldn’t touch those. I had to go pay for somebody else’s and that were genetically modified, but I didn’t want to drive a needle in his hip or give him liposuction or anything that was so invasive because the kid had been through so at this point.

And to be honest, I trusted Dr. Bradstreet, he did an amazing job and his research was solid. So you have adult stem cells, you have fetal stem cells, and you have embryonic stem cells. And I had found back then that embryonic stem cells were still very controversial. And it was either, really, you go out of the country and you either do adult or you do fetal stem cells. So we chose the fetal stem cell route based on the reports. And obviously he showed amazing progress, and they were much more affordable than a lot of other options, especially in adult stem cell route as to where they’d have to extract it and it’d be a process but, I mean, he did so well.

Dr. Taz: So healing hyperbaric stem cells that ultimately turned your son around, it sounds like.

Tracy: Yeah. And then we always had this reoccurring PANDAS, so strep. So I’m here to tell parents if you see behavioral issues in your child, it could be tics, Tourette’s, autism, ADD, ADHD, or oppositional defiance disorder, any of those, get them tested for PANDAS, Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal. So high levels of strep causes major inflammation on the brain and causes regression in these kids. And I never knew this, but Noah was diagnosed with PANDAS like three times. So when we first took him in, age three and a half, and then he was treated with IVIG and more antibiotics.

Dr. Taz: We see all of this in practice, so we know PANDAS very well.

Tracy: And I feel like when he was nine and it came back and they did the same treatment, and I got to tell you, the most expensive part of any of this is IVIG. I don’t feel that it does what I feel IV ozone therapy does. So we took a different approach when Noah developed it as a teenager. And we did, we first tried high dose vitamin C and it did bring his levels down. And then we just did a 10-pass IV ozone. No, we started off at one and then we worked our way up. And it does get pretty expensive. So it’s about a hundred dollars a pass. But even if you do one pass or not every IV clinic has a 10-pass machine, but the more passes we did, the more die off we got and those levels were down to normal in no time. So IV ozone therapy, I find personally, is huge.

Dr. Taz: Interesting because there’s so many complicated protocols for PANDAS, everything from IVIG. And by the way, nowadays, we’re diagnosing PANS, not just PANDAS, which can be from a viral trigger as well. But I mean, there’s patients that have gone to some of the other academic centers and they’ve ended up on immunosuppressants, things like 6-MP and methotrexate and all these other drugs to manage PANDAS. Which the more, again, we’ve done the work, we feel like rebooting the immune system is more about a gentle approach because otherwise we play this game of like, okay, well, this antibiotic didn’t work, so let’s try this one, or this thing didn’t work, so let’s try this, and it’s so hard on the body. So it’s interesting to see that you’ve had some really great results with ozone, which, to be a hundred percent honest, we haven’t used a ton of in practice, but it sounds like that’s one of the ones that truly make a difference as well.

Tracy: And I could tell you ozone can be used in many different ways, for those out there who don’t know much about ozone, it just doesn’t have to be IV ozone. You can do nasal insufflations, really good if somebody has MARCoNS or staph in the nasal cavity. You can do rectal insufflations, vaginal insufflations. The rectal help with the dysbiosis of the gut and any bacteria. I mean, that’s the number one thing is if there’s bacteria in the gut is to really address it with the ozone. You can do ear ozone. You can make ozone oil. I don’t do it. I have an ozone machine and it’s just too messy to make the oil, but you can make ozone oil. I mean, there’s all different kinds. I have a Far Infrared Dome Bed that you pump.

Dr. Taz: Oh my gosh, yeah.

Tracy: Heat up the body. And you can’t breathe ozone, so that’s the most important thing because it’s not like regular oxygen, so you have to be careful when you breathe it that it can damage the lungs. So there’s so many different ways to implement ozone that is non-invasive.

Dr. Taz: So let’s talk for a second because we’re coming up on time here. And I know I could talk about this probably forever, we probably need to do another session, but talk about it for another 30, 40 minutes. But I have two key questions that I want to leave the listeners and viewers with. Why do you think there’s a rise in autism? What do you think the factors are that are contributing to that? Because I think everybody out there needs to understand that from your perspective of being in it. And then secondly, once any neuroinflammatory diagnosis is made, whether it is ADHD, OCD, ODD, autism, anxiety, depression, any of these, all of them I call diseases of neuroinflammation, what is everybody’s first few steps that they should take? So I’m going to leave you to answer those two questions and we’ll go from there.

Tracy: Okay. The rise of autism. So you can have a genetic predisposition for anything. It’s going to be some sort of environmental factor that triggers it. And do I believe that the childhood vaccine schedule is a slingshot into a regressive state of autism? Absolutely. 100%. You can almost guarantee, and I’m not a physician, that you can almost guarantee that if a child gets the regular vaccine scheduled these days that they are, one, they’re going to be neurologically compromised, they are going to wind up in a wheelchair, or they’re going to wind up dead. And it’s very sad, if you, I have a vaccine chapter in my book, but it just really paints the picture of the facts. And I do talk about Andy’s story. Now, initially they called Andy the original anti-vaxxer when that wasn’t what he had stated.

But after all the evidence came out, and Dr. William Thompson from the CDC, who was a whistleblower, came out and admitted that he was told to destroy the evidence on the research study that the CDC had done in regards to the direct correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism. And that it did actually state that the MMR did cause autism. So then he could actually go ahead and say, yes, the MMR does cause regressive autism. So you’re seeing the more they keep implementing more vaccines, the sicker these kids get. And then SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, is just, people overlook that and they don’t realize it’s between two and six months. And that’s when children receive the most vaccines, two, four, and six months. So just look at the facts. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to open up their eyes and see, but to me that’s what’s going on. Because in my mom’s day and age, or when I was younger, autism was unheard of.

Dr. Taz: Right. So disturbing to me. I mean, we talk a lot in practice about really evaluating a newborn and infant’s gut health, their detox capacity, their MTHFR status, their risk factors before making a lot of those decisions. And I just think when we combine the changing genetics with things like vaccines and other toxins, and even with just the environment that’s incredibly toxic nowadays as well, we’ve got a recipe for a lot of neuroinflammation. And I think that’s really where parents need to understand that they’ve got to dig into this concept, into this idea of triangulating gut health, detox capacity, and genetics, and understanding kind of what that relationship is for their children, because I think the fallout from that is the public health epidemic that we’re dealing with today. But I still want everyone to make sure they have at least some actionable steps. So what would you tell them to do?

Tracy: So first and foremost, do your research, but be careful of where it is that you find your research. Educate yourself. Go to conferences. I’m putting together a conference, Autism Health Summit, and the first one will be February 2nd and 3rd in San Antonio. And you’ll be able to find all the information at autismhealth.com. But really get out there. They can read my book, Warrior Mom: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Her Son with Autism.

Dr. Taz: Love it, yeah.

Tracy: It’s my right.

Tracy: And if they have any questions, they can reach out to me at info@warriormom.org. But proactive, you have to be proactive. There’s a small window of opportunity to really get as much intervention in these kids as possible. Start with diet, just clean it up, real food. Don’t ask how to do it. Just know that if you can pick it, plug it, grow it, skin it, you can eat it.

Dr. Taz: I love that. That is awesome.

Tracy: So there’s so many steps to take and so many different avenues to go.

Dr. Taz: Follow. Yeah, it can be, as a pediatrician and as a mom, I know how overwhelming it is and I know how fatiguing it is to constantly try to understand and sift through information and sort through all of those. But I would just encourage everyone out there, just like I talk about gaslighting with women’s health, there’s gaslighting in pediatric health. We’ve got to, you’ve got to be a little bit of a bulldog and really seek and look for answers. And I agree, when it comes to autism or that spectrum of neuroinflammation that we’ve described, it really does begin with the gut. Begin there, clean up the diet, and then move out from that foundational point.

Tracy: And I wrote my book as a guidebook. Part of it that’s, part two is all step-by-step, here’s what you do.

Dr. Taz: There you go.

Tracy: Here’s how to battle the schools. Here’s how to get your services. I mean, if you’re looking for answers, it’s the best place for answers. I talk about all different kinds of biomedical intervention. Couldn’t stick it all in there. There’s so much out there.

Dr. Taz: There’s so much out there. Well, thank you for starting to peel back some of the layers for us. We appreciate it so much. And everyone, if you are in this space or interested or know someone who is dealing with autism, definitely recommend Tracy’s book. I think it would be such a great resource for them. And then at the practice too, at CentreSpring MD, we’re doing a lot of this work day in and day out, and happy to offer any support there. But Tracy, thank you so much for taking time out to join us. I think this is such an important topic. It really is a public health issue. I wish everybody was talking about it more, but at least we’re doing it here. So thank you again, and for everyone else watching and listening to this episode of Super Woman Wellness, thank you so much for joining. We will see you next time.