Published: November 14, 2009 09:03 pm      

Autism Recovery Resource Center officially opens in Beckley

The new Autism Recovery Resource Center in Beckley, the first of its kind, has drawn a strong, steadily growing response, not only from area families, but from other states as well, its founder said.

“When I moved into the office space last November, I did not advertise in any way,” Dr. Janet Lintala said. “I was just trying to have all the phone calls come there instead of to my house. Yet, families found me through word of mouth.”

Having three children who’ve experienced some degree of special need from autism to Tourettes syndrome, Lintala has done extensive research and completed training as a Defeat Autism Now! doctor.

For the past couple of years, she and mothers of other children with autism have had good success with a gluten-free, casein-free diet, which has been shown to be effective in many autism cases. Lintala has taught classes and has seen results locally.

A year ago, she did a soft opening of the recovery center in the Beckley Medical Arts Building on South Kanawha Street.

“I didn’t want to get overwhelmed right out of the starting gate, and I wanted to be able to schedule the time to work with the families who came,” she said.

An autism recovery center is dedicated to providing therapies known as biomedical treatments that recover children from autism to the degree that is possible for them individually.

“We don’t offer quick fixes or miracle cures. Autism is so complex. There are no pat answers, but the center provides education and knowledge for the families. It brings resources to the region that one usually has to travel out-of-state to obtain, such as the hyperbaric oxygen therapy or access to a Defeat Autism Now! physician. It also a provides a growing lending library for the area,” Lintala said.

Initially, many families learned about the center and called because they had seen another child with autism at their own child’s school demonstrate huge gains after starting the diet and the various other treatments offered at the center.

“Whenever we have a child who had no language, and, in some cases, who can’t even make sounds, who regains language through biomedical therapies, we have a tremendous number of families who see these gains and then call to make an appointment for their own child. By August, with no advertising, I was getting anywhere from five to 12 new patients a week, with a number of families having two and three children with autism,” Lintala said.

New patients were beginning to trickle in from other states such as Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, most of whom had relatives in the Beckley area.

“When our Web site was up and going in October, people began to come from all over the state and also from Kentucky. Social workers, speech pathologists, teachers and Birth to Three workers who have noticed a dramatic difference in autistic children receiving biomedical therapies have been especially kind to send many families for help,” she said. “I continue to have speaking engagements for schools, therapists and agencies, and these also generate many new families receiving services at the center.”

Lintala is quick to point out biomedical treatments greatly enhance and work well with, but do not replace, other forms of therapy available.

“We encourage parents to explore options that will help their child, such as speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, applied behavioral analysis, behavioral therapy and others. In general, most therapists report they have achieved way more with children receiving biomedical therapies, as opposed to those not receiving them,” she said.

Some of the behavioral problems are actually responses to pain the autistic child cannot describe. Biomedical intervention can help relieve the pain, and the behaviors change for the better, she added.

Services provided at the center include:

- Office visits and consultations.

- Teaching the gluten-free/casein-free diet, and other autism diets.

- Healing the Gut: Antifungal therapy (yeast treatments); biofilm protocols; treatments for the chronic inflammation of autism; healing supplements; help for the constipation and diarrhea associated with autism.

- Mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is ranked as the major therapy for returning language.

- Detoxification therapies that include far infrared sauna; PCA-Rx; PCM-Rx and soon to be included MethylB12.

- Protocols to support the weakened immune system of autism.

- Protocols for behavior and attention problems.

- Lab tests for stool, urine, hair and blood.

Lintala has a degree in genetics and graduated as salutatorian, summa cum laude, from The National College of Chiropractic, a five-year postgraduate program near Chicago. She has achieved the designation of a Defeat Autism Now! clinician, attends many autism training conferences and has completed a mentorship at the RIMLAND Center under Dr. Liz Mumper, the medical director of The Autism Research Institute, which has programs available in several states and Italy.

The center is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, although appointments can be made at other times to accommodate families’ schedules.

Lintala hopes to expand services in the future.

“I envision a multi-specialty, state-of-the art regional center where families can find everything from a diagnosis to educational materials, to that special combination of treatments and therapies that will return their child to as high a level of function as possible. I do not use the word ‘cure’ today, but someday I would love to run the center where a cure is offered,” she said.

“As our motto says, we are a place for learning, a place for healing.”

For more information, call 304-255-2550.

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com