10/24/2024
A little over a year ago, I'm lying on the floor of my closet in pitch black darkness, sobbing uncontrollably like a child.
I have a million and one reasons I should be bawling my eyes out, but the truth is, it's all because of one.
I grab the bottom of my shirt and wipe my eyes while my brain races through every decision I've made over the past year that somehow landed me here in this moment, crying alone on the floor in the dark.
Just a year ago I was working as Head of Marketing for a startup called Owner.com.
I was making more money than I ever had, and I’d just bought my wife a brand-new car, a red GMC Acadia Denali.
I was living in a duplex I owned renting the other side out and basically living rent free.
I had life all figured out.
Or at least, I thought I did.
I was planning to move my pregnant wife, Julia, and our 2 kids, Maggie and Leo, to Nicaragua to live on the beach in a villa for 6 months.
Why not, right?
I could work from anywhere and we could live a very nice lifestyle in Nicaragua, earning in American dollars while spending in Nicaraguan Cordobas.
But then, my son Leo started acting different.
He quit coming to his name, stopped speaking and started squealing loudly all the time.
He quit looking at me and would only walk on his tip toes.
He flapped his hands next to his eyes and quit eating everything except manila-colored foods like crackers and bananas.
It was like our little guy who'd say "dada" and "no done" and "’elcome" was taken from us and replaced with another kid who wasn't present in our world.
My wife and I knew he was autistic before he was finally diagnosed with stage 3 severe nonverbal autism.
It was like my family was an 8 ball headed straight for the game winning pocket only to be hit by the cue ball at the last moment and sent flying into a completely different pocket, a pocket we didn't call...
You might think when your child’s diagnosed with autism, there’s someone who comes along and tells you everything’s gonna be ok, here’s a pamphlet, here’s your next steps, here’s who you need to see, here’s the tests you need, here’s what to do next, you know a step by step guide, right?
There’s not.
There’s no help at all.
Every new parent is blindsided by this life altering event and stuck figuring everything out from scratch on their own.
Who to see, what doctors’ appointments to schedule, how to get their kids into the right therapies and help them learn and make progress.
It took time, and eventually we did manage to get Leo into all of the therapies, but his school wasn't specialized for kids with autism and the therapists there just didn't know what to do with him.
When he'd get frustrated, he'd cry and bite himself and bang his head and throw toys.
They'd constantly trap him in timeout in the corner to separate him from the other kids, which only irritates a nonverbal toddler who can't communicate his pain and frustration or his needs and feelings.
Everyone kept telling us how important early intervention is and that we must get him into ABA, or Applied Behavioral Analysis, since autism is a behavioral disorder.
But Arkansas had very little support for families like ours and it wasn't easy to get an ABA therapist assigned through the state.
So, I decided to take my life savings, sell our duplex, and move my entire family to Katy Texas to get Leo into a better school where he'd get 8 hours a day of one-on-one time with an ABA therapist who's specialized in autism.
I mean who wouldn't do everything they could to help their child, right?
I started looking for a house to rent right away.
And keep in mind, I'm a guy who just had his dream of living in a 6 bedroom villa on the beach in Nicaragua taken away from him, so I may - or may not - have been looking at houses that were a bit on the high end of my price range.
I felt like the luckiest guy in the world when the very first rental I came across was absolutely perfect.
It was a 4500 square foot beauty with high ceilings, it had 4 bedrooms so all our kids could have their own room after the baby was born, and it had a home office.
It was close to Leo's new school, and it was in the Cinco Ranch area which meant Mags would get to go to those award-winning Katy schools.
Most importantly of all, it had a movie room and huge garage I was already figuring out how to turn into my man cave.
It was my dream house, and it was such a great deal I put a deposit on it without ever seeing it in person.
It took a few weeks to get us moved and unpacked.
We got Leo into his new school, and it was so different from what we were experiencing in Arkansas it was like a culture shock.
They were so good with him, and they cared about him and knew how to handle his meltdowns.
They even made him something called an IEP.
An individual education plan.
Yeah, they actually had a plan for helping him learn.
The place in Arkansas couldn't even spell plan.
I was on cloud 9, completely ecstatic, it was the kind of early win and validation I needed to feel like we'd made the right choice moving our family, and we were right where we were supposed to be.
I started to feel some sense of relief, like we finally did it, we're finally starting to make some progress and get him the help he needs.
That was, until my boss fired me.
Just as we were finally settling into our new normal, the little bit of safety and security we felt was ripped away, like a rug being tugged out from under our feet.
My heart sank, my palms were sweaty, and I was paralyzed.
It felt like a punch to the gut
I couldn't move a muscle.
I could hear my pregnant wife in the living room playing with Leo and I knew I had to tell her.
Panic set in.
Just imagine spending your life savings to move your entire family to another state so you can get your autistic son into a better school, only to lose your high paying job and the insurance that covers that better school as soon as you get there.
The negative thoughts set in fast, becoming ever increasingly outrageous.
"Of course, I move my family 10 hours away into an expensive house to get my son into a better school... and immediately lose my income and insurance that pays for the house and his school."
"How can I possibly replace that much income quickly… I only have a couple months bills in the bank before I'm completely broke and we're homeless."
"We're gonna be on the street in 2 months with nowhere to live, Leo's gonna kicked out of his new school and he's never gonna make progress, and he's gonna be severely autistic forever and I'm never gonna be able to help him and Jewels is gonna take the kids and leave me because I can't provide for them and I'm gonna have to move back in with my Mom, and..."
Yeah, those are the dumb things I was saying to myself.
In hindsight, I realize now that in this undesirable imagined future scenario Jewels and the kids would obviously come with me when I move back in with my Mom…
But you know that negative voice in your head?
The one that tells you you’re not good enough, that you can’t do it, that you don’t deserve it, that it won’t work so don’t even try?
That voice was saying “Yeah you idiot, you lost everything else, may as well lose your wife and kids too.”
“This can't get any worse," I said out loud, breaking the cardinal rule to never say this or think it ever.
How wrong I was.
It turns out the reason we got such a good deal on the rent of our new house was because the owner had it on the market for months without it selling, and he was desperate to get someone in there to cover the rent.
He called me out of the blue and told me he and his wife were buying a house in Michigan and they needed to sell the house in Katy to make a down payment on their new home.
Basically, he was selling the house and we needed to find a new place to live.
If I was panicking before, it was nothing to what I felt in that moment.
How in the hell am I gonna be able to qualify for a new house here with no job and no income?
I hung up the phone and looked out the double window in my office at the gigantic brick houses on this block, and I'd never felt more like an imposter.
"I don't belong here."
This new life I was building with my family suddenly seemed so fragile, like a house of cards on a swaying tree branch, ready to tip over at the slightest breeze and come crashing down.
You see, I'm the kind of guy who learned more from my father about how NOT to be a good dad.
I pride myself on providing for my family and being able to take care of them.
And I was about to fail.
I don't know why I said it, maybe I'm just an idiot.
"Well, now it really can't get any worse."
It did.
A few months later I'm on my way to cut the yard for the last time before we hand over the keys.
On my way out I load the lawn mower, w**d eater, and gasoline in the back of my wife's Acadia, and pause to grab a cigar my stepdad brought me back from Germany, so I can enjoy it while cutting the yard for the last time.
I head over to our old house, that's now someone else's new dream house, and fire up the cigar with a torch.
I put in my headphones and turn on Nirvana while I start the w**d eater and make my way to the backyard.
As I'm cutting along the fence line, the w**d eater runs out of wire, and I turn it up to pull some more through the feeder.
That’s when I see it.
Billowing black smoke pouring into the back yard.
The kind of smoke that only comes when you burn a tire, or something is on fire that’s not supposed to be.
I drop the w**d eater and sprint around to the front of the house like I’m Mr Deeds, ready to save some babies and innocent puppies from a house fire only to find the source of the fire wasn’t one of my neighbors’ houses at all.
It was my wife’s car in full flames.
I panic and fumble with my phone to call 911 and get a firetruck on the way while the neighbors start coming out to help.
Loud popping noises and explosion sounds echo down the block from the car that's entirely engulfed in flames at this point.
And the flames are getting awfully close to the house.
That's when it hits me...
I don't have renters’ insurance for this house anymore, because it's the last day it's mine and what could possibly go wrong, right?
Of all the way's to go bankrupt, I never thought I'd catch my landlords half a million dollar house on fire and get stuck with the bill.
I drop my phone and run to grab the hose, but I've just moved all my stuff out of this house and that includes the water hoses.
So, I'm unraveling my neighbors water hose from 2 houses down, desperate to get some water on the inferno of what used to be my wife's dream car, when a man walks up calm as can be with a smile on his face, and says, "Don't worry, I got you."
As the flames get high enough to catch the tree in the front yard on fire, this mystery guy proceeds to water my scorched vehicle like he’s watering petunias in his front garden.
Hell, I even think I heard him whistling the Andy Grifith theme song while he did it.
The police chief shows up and shouts at the man, “Get away from the vehicle, it’s gonna explode!”
The man shoots a sideways glance at them and waves them away, the way you wave when someone’s thanking you for something and you’re telling them “Don’t worry about it, it was nothing.”
The man had the fire completely out by the time the actual fire department got there.
With a garden hose.
I walk up to my new hero and notice it says “Richmond Fire Dept.” on his shirt.
“How did you get here so fast!?”, I ask him incredulously.
He pointed to the car where a boy about the age of 12 was looking through the window, and said, “I was taking my son to a dentist’s appointment and I saw the smoke, I knew what it was.”
This off duty fire fighter just happened to be driving by at the exact moment I caught my wife’s car on fire.
Her dream car.
Yes, I lost my son to autism, my life savings, my duplex, my job, my income, my insurance, my new dream house, and my new car, all in the same year.
And I had to somehow figure out how to find a new house and replace my wife’s car, with no job and no income, while managing to keep my son in school and not make my entire family homeless.
This is why I had a million things I could be crying about on the hard floor of this dark closet.
But none of these things was the culprit behind my depressing weeping.
The reason I’m bawling my eyes out, sobbing uncontrollably on the hard floor of my pitch-black closet… is because Leo isn’t making any progress.
He's been in one of the best ABA schools in the state of Texas, a school I moved my entire family and spent my life savings to get him into.
And he’s been getting 8 hours a day of intensive one on one therapy every single day, since we moved here almost a year ago.
And he’s not hitting any of his goals.
In fact, he’s regressing and getting worse.
He's constipated all the time, constantly sick with a cough and runny nose that never goes away, and he hasn’t eaten hardly anything in 3 days.
He's wearing noise canceling headphones for the sensory overload and a rubber necklace to chew on because he bites his arm so hard he bleeds.
His face is black and blue from punching himself in the head so hard when he’s having a meltdown, and he’s missing hair in spots where he’s ripped it out.
He’s covered in red bloody marks all over his body because he can’t go 5 seconds without pinching himself, and his uncontrollable pinching has gotten so bad I’ve duct taped 2 pairs of thick socks to each of his hands to help stop the damage.
I’m gonna have to buy him some thick leather gloves or something…
This is known as SIB, or self-injurious behavior, and almost half of all kids diagnosed with autism experience it at some point.
All I know is…
My son Leo is crying himself to sleep every night in pain.
He is NOT ok.
And there’s clearly something else going on because therapy isn’t helping him as much as we thought it would.
But if I’m being honest, even this isn’t the real reason I’m crying alone on the floor in my closet.
The real reason I’m on that floor crying uncontrollably…
Is because it’s all my fault.
And as my brain scans through my past decisions that led me here, it’s not looking for what I could have done to keep my job and income, or my car and house.
It's searching for what I could have done differently to save my son.
Was it that we stopped breast feeding and gave him formula?
Was it the heavy metals in the baby foods?
Was it the constant antibiotics for his ear infections?
I feel overwhelmed with guilt.
Because I blame myself for Leo being autistic.
And I know my wife does too.
Like something we did wrong somehow made my son this way.
And now he has to suffer this poor quality of life, constantly in pain, crying himself to sleep every night, constipated, pinching his skin raw, with a sore throat, inflamed belly, stuffy nose, aching muscles, a confused mind and no way to tell me about it.
Forever.
This is my life now.
Imagine you’re walking down a rushing river with your child and they fall in.
You grab their hands with a death grip and pull with all your might to save your precious child, but the current is too strong and eventually rips them from your grasp and pulls them under.
And you watch in horror as your child comes up for a breath, and then another, getting farther and farther away, but eventually…
They stop coming all together.
That’s what autism is like.
The little boy I had that would say “No done” and “’elcome” and “Dada” and play with the kitty with string, and blow raspberries on my belly, and play peekaboo.
That little boy was gone.
Taken.
And replaced with a new child who lived in their own world, no words, no games, no laughing, just pain, and struggle, and frustration.
And every once in a while flashes of my son would come back, he’d look me in my eyes, point at my nose and say “nose”.
But those moments of him being “present” and “aware” became fewer and farther between until he retreated into himself all the way and they disappeared altogether.
You must mourn the child you lost.
And that’s what I was doing in that closet.
“He's never gonna go to school and make a friend, or have a sleep over, or play the guitar.”
“He's never gonna ask me for advice about girls, or to borrow the keys to go on his first date, or travel on his own.”
“He's never gonna have a spouse and family or a job or even be able to live on his own.”
He's gonna live with me forever and need full time care.
“I’m never gonna get to help him through his first heart break or teach him to shoot a BB gun or ride a dirt bike.”
“I’m never gonna get to build a fort with him in the living room out of blankets or take him to a late-night superhero movie at the theatre.”
I’ll never hear his tiny voice say my name again.
Not only did autism steal my son, but it also stole my chance to be the father to my son that I never had.
Maybe, everything I went through in the past year was all for nothing.
Imagine your child is writhing in pain, crying, screaming out to you, it hurts so bad they’re banging their head on the wall and punching their face, but they can’t talk and tell you what’s wrong.
And you’d do anything, give anything, to take the pain away from them, but you have no clue how or what to do and nothing you try helps them.
That’s what this hell feels like.
Wouldn’t it drive anyone insane?
We’d taken Leo to every doctor and specialist we could.
Allergy doctors, gastroenterologists, neurologists.
We had his adenoids taken out to help with the constant ear infections and we even had him wear a cap on his head for 3 days for an EeG brain scan.
Yeah… imagine trying to keep 26 wires glued to the head of an autistic toddler who wants nothing more than to remove said cap and wires from his tiny head.
My wife and I bribed him with donuts all weekend.
We’d done blood work, urine tests, stool samples, endoscopy’s, allergy skin tests, vitamin and mineral tests, everything.
No one knew what was wrong with my son, and they all said the same thing, “This is just common in autism.”
I was so tired of hearing “it’s just common in autism” that I was ready to punch the next doctor who said that to me right in the face.
I was hopeless.
And the most dangerous thing in the world is a person who’s lost all hope.
But that night…
The night I was crying my eyes out in my closet on the floor, was the night it all changed.
After at least 30 minutes of beating myself up in the dark, I force myself off the ground and open the door.
I make my way through my bathroom, bedroom, living room and up the stairs to my office.
I slam down in my chair at my desk, and I’m so desperate, I open a google tab and type 3 words that changed everything.
“parents cure autism”
I was looking for any example, any anecdotal story, any shred or trace of evidence that a child as severely autistic as my son Leo had ever, somehow, dropped their autism diagnosis and miraculously became a normal child.
I admit, I knew I was dreaming, I knew I’d find no such story or example, it was just me projecting my own hopes and dreams and insecurities on reality.
But I desperately wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything in the world.
And as much as I desired to get my son back so Leo could have a normal life, go to normal school, speak, learn, make a best friend, borrow the keys, drive his first date to the movies, experience his first heart break, live on his own and travel, you know experience all the joys and pains of life…
Selfishly, I wanted a normal child for my own sake.
Having an autistic toddler is exhausting.
It’s like you get all of the hard parts of being a parent – the taking care of them, teaching them, raising them…
Without any of the rewarding parts of being a parent – the bond and connection and learning and growth.
Our autism diagnosis was a diagnosis for us as parents too.
It limited our lives and determined our future.
It took our time, our money, our energy, our entire identity.
It hogged all of our attention, sapping it from our other kids.
It was all we talked about, thought about, read about, it kept us up at night.
It haunted our family.
We became isolated and alone, afraid to leave the house or have family visit, for fear of how Leo would act or what he might do.
Autism completely consumed our life.
And I was ashamed.
I constantly felt like I wasn’t good enough, that this wasn’t the life I signed up for, that it’s not fair, that I don’t deserve this.
Leo doesn’t deserve this.
I keep reading articles and reddit forums and Facebook group posts leaving no stone unturned.
I come across all kinds of weird things, from f***l matter transplants to bleach enemas.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
I was imagining some unknown treatment or rare plant that could bring my son back from being trapped in his own mind… but I knew there was no cure for autism.
Deep down I thought all of that “naturopathic”, “homeopathic”, “functional medicine” nonsense was just a bunch of hippy bu****it if I’m being honest.
And then I found a video on YouTube.
It was called Autism | Stem Cells & Biomed Recovery| Before & After and it was on a tiny channel with no subscribers called Recovering Ryman.
It was about a little boy named Ryman who like my son Leo, was diagnosed with severe autism at the age of 2, and had retreated into himself, stopped communicating, had ticks, was sick all the time, and was covered in bruises from banging his head on the floor and walls.
She said she’d visited all the doctors, and she always heard the same thing, “this is just common in autism.”
Those words spoke directly to my soul.
That’s all we ever heard, hand flapping, being vacant, not paying attention or learning skills, constant stimming, not talking, not sleeping, not eating, constipation, screaming in pain, crying himself to sleep, pinching his skin raw, didn’t matter how mundane or how severe, “that’s just common with autism”.
She talked about “Detoxing” and “Diet Changes” and “Biomedical Intervention”.
She talked about “Gut Repair” and “Parasite Cleanses”, “immune system protocols” and “STEM Cells”.
I’d never heard any of this before, no doctor, no therapist, NO ONE had ever mentioned this, and I hung on her every word.
She showed how Ryman made progress, developing eye contact and regaining his speech.
I couldn’t believe it, I watched in amazement as Ryman answered his Dad’s questions.
“What’s your name?”
“My name’s Ryman,” he said in his cute little voice.
“What’s this fruit?”
“A banan-na-na,” Ryman said without missing a beat.
At the end of the video, Ryman’s mother said “I love you” and Ryman responded “I yuv you”.
I completely lost it and my eyes teared up.
But these tears were different.
Because earlier, when I was sobbing alone on the floor in my closet, those were tears of grief, of pain, of regret, of hopelessness.
But these tears were different.
They were tears of joy, and determination, and curiosity and hope.
I heard my son’s little voice saying “No done” and “’elcome” and I imagined his tiny voice saying “I yuv you.”
I’d give anything to hear my son say “I yuv you.”
For the first time in the past year, I had hope I might hear his voice again one day.
Ryman’s Mom doesn’t know it, but that video changed mine and my son’s life.
In that moment I knew there was a lever I could pull to help my son, that this WASN’T JUST COMMON IN AUTISM, and I became obsessed.
I immediately open a tab on Amazon and order every book I can find on Autism.
Jenny McCarthy’s book “Louder than Words”, The 4 A’s, Temple Grandin’s “Thinking in Color”, Autism Breakthrough, Uniquely Human, Turn Autism Around, and more.
I read hundreds of scientific studies on supplements and biomedical interventions.
I devour everything I can on diet and nutrition, gut health, detoxing, healing the brain and boosting the immune system as it pertains to autism.
The more I learn, the more excited I get and the more overwhelmed I feel.
It's SO much information.
But the more I read and learn, and tinker and test on Leo, the more I begin to realize that everyone has autism completely backwards.
Everyone says autism is a combination of genetics and environmental factors, but what does that even mean?
They diagnose autism and ADHD as “behavioral disorders” and they recommend Applied Behavioral Analysis Therapy to help correct these unwanted behaviors.
But if autism and ADHD were just behavioral, then behavioral therapy would help every child, right?
I knew deep down there was something else going on with my son, and all the modern research kept showing autism is both a Behavioral Disorder, and a Biomedical Disorder.
The more I read and learned, the more convinced I became that autism is a “Neurotoxic” disorder, because it’s caused primarily by damaged systems in the body that injure the brain.
Things like toxic chemicals, viruses, incomplete proteins, inflammation, and immune cells that attack the brain, are all harmful forces that wreak havoc on the brain and cause damage to the rest of the body.
They’re especially damaging to the very sensitive gastrointestinal systems, nervous systems, and immune systems of young children.
And once these three systems have been damaged, it’s a vicious spiral of destruction.
Severe nutrient deficiencies, food reactions that have horrible neurological consequences, inflammation of the brain and gut, viral infiltration of the brain and gut, and autoimmune attacks on the brain and body all quickly follow leading to chaos and destruction in the body.
And what’s worse, most of these problems can’t be easily observed or diagnosed, all that can be seen is the behaviors they cause.
This is why everyone says, “It’s just common with autism.”
But if you can heal the body’s damaged systems with Biomedical Intervention, many of the behaviors improve, sometimes very quickly.
I immediately start building Leo his own Biomedical Intervention protocol.
First, my wife and I remove all gluten and casein from his diet, and we start giving him high doses of Vitamin B12 and Glutathione.
Next, we add in minerals like iron, zinc, magnesium and calcium.
Then, amino acids like glutamine, chromium and glycine.
The more I read and learn, the more I tinker and test on Leo.
Vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, digestive Enzymes, antifungals, amino Acids, fatty Acids, antioxidants.
My kitchen turns into a science lab as my wife and I carefully weigh powders, break and crush pills, and squeeze drops of liquids into Leo’s chocolate drink concoction every morning.
And with these different supplements and diet changes, we start to notice some changes.
Leo starts eating more and feeding himself with a fork, which he’s never done before.
His constipation gets better, and he starts pooping more regularly.
He potty trains himself, practically overnight, and no longer needs to wear a diaper during the daytime.
He starts meeting his goals in school and his teachers start noticing and making comments on how well he’s doing and ask us what we’re doing differently.
He stops crying himself to sleep and starts sleeping through the night better.
He's way calmer and has much less vocal stimming.
He's listening to more commands and playing games with me.
He starts communicating with claps for yes to tell us what he wants.
All of a sudden, he becomes really interested in the foods on our plates.
He starts eating foods he’s never tried before, like ribs and chicken right off the bone, veggies like avocado, red peppers and cucumbers, and he even starts eating salad!
When’s the last time you got a toddler to eat salad, much less a 5-year-old severely autistic toddler, who just a couple months prior would eat nothing but crackers and bananas?
These are all HUGE wins for us, because for the first time in over a year, Leo’s making some progress and not regressing.
He's clearly in less pain, he slowly stops pinching himself, and his meltdowns where he cries for seemingly no reason are fewer and farther between.
These improvements are absolutely life changing for my family.
We can’t believe how much a few diet changes and the right nutritional supplements have helped our son.
That’s the power of Biomedical Intervention.
But eventually, my wife and I were spending over $400 every month on different supplements and using Leo as a guinea pig.
We’d wake up early every morning and carefully weigh out 15 different powders, crushing this pill, breaking this capsule, 5 drops of this liquid, it took forever!
And it was dangerous.
One morning, I accidentally gave Leo 5 times the amount of Selenium he’s supposed to have because of how highly concentrated it was.
My wife and I tried every supplement marketed to kids with autism on the planet, Aspire’s bio heal, all the Bioray kids, neuro broc chews, simple spectrum, and more… but none of these had everything Leo needed in one easy scoop.
They were only made to target one aspect, like nutrition, or brain health, or gut health or immune support.
But none of them did all 5.
And none of them were liposomal formulas.
You see, when you give most kids vitamins, especially kids on the spectrum, their body can’t break them down and use them because kids with autism have damaged methylation pathways.
This just means their bodies have trouble breaking down the food and nutrients they eat into a form their body can use before they’re destroyed by their digestive tract.
So, regular supplements given to kids with autism are only about 10% absorbed and are mostly a waste of money.
One way to prevent this is to protect the nutrients in a fat like molecule called a “liposome” that allows them to skip the digestive tract and be absorbed quickly in the bloodstream.
But this is harder and more expensive, so most supplement companies don’t invest in making their formula “liposomal.”
I needed something that had all of these scientifically backed ingredients, in a liposomal form, in their clinical doses, in one easy scoop, that I could quickly, easily and safely give to Leo every morning.
But it didn’t exist.
So, I decided to make my own.
The only problem is…
I don’t know the first thing about how to start a supplement company.
Luckily, I was running ads for a company called BioRebalance, a supplement that helps people quit drinking without cravings or withdrawals.
It was formulated by world renowned Dr. Rebeca Eriksen, a nutritional geneticist with her PhD from the prestigious Imperial College in London.
She worked as a clinical dietician in hospitals for years building custom supplements for patients to help them repair nutrient deficiencies based on their unique blood work.
She’d successfully built many commercial supplements before this, including BioRebalance and an antiaging supplement called EIR.
She’s probably the most qualified person on the planet to help me build the supplement I need.
But I don’t have her number.
So, I text Chris, the COO of Biorebalance to ask him if can set up a meeting with Dr. Eriksen so I can ask her some questions about a supplement I’m making for my son.
My original plan was just to get her feedback on my initial formula and suggestions on how I could improve it.
Then, I’d muster up the courage to ask her how someone, hypothetically, might go about getting this made by a lab.
I’m super nervous because Dr. Eriksen is well known in the supplement space, she’s a published clinician, and obviously very busy, you know with the inventing multiple supplements while helping patients in her clinical practice and still finding time to publish her papers.
I know Chris is gonna laugh at the idea and tell me she’s too busy to talk to me.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he loves the idea so much; he asks if he can be on the call too.
I hadn’t considered that Chris would be excited about the idea too, but none the less, I was just happy to get the opportunity to talk to Dr. Eriksen.
I immediately start preparing for the call.
I get the base formula I’ve come up with, a list of all inferior products, and write a list of questions about the best way to build a full Biomedical Intervention supplement for autism, one that targets all 5 damaged systems common in kids with autism.
When I finally meet Rebeca, she’s not anything like I expected.
First, she has a Dutch accent, as English is her second language.
I don’t care who you are.
No matter how powerful you are, how rich you are, or how famous you are…
If you have an accent, it makes you a good person who’s way more approachable and way less intimidating.
That’s just a fact of life.
My nervousness vanishes, and I start making my spiel.
“I’m looking to build a supplement for my son Leo who has level 3 autism, something that has all of these ingredients in it and can help with common nutrient deficiencies, healing the gut, helping the brain develop and boosting the immune system to detox the body.”
I pause and wait for her to respond, watching her face in anticipation.
She’s probably thinking, “Oh great, another person with a supplement idea I have to talk to… if I only had nickel for every Tom, Dick and Harry who’s told me they have a ‘great idea’ for a supplement…”
Or whatever phrase the Dutch use for Tom Dick and Harry.
Daan, Floris and Coen?
“I LOVE THAT IDEA!” Dr. Eriksen shouts.
It turns out that she worked with kids with autism and ADHD in the hospital for years, early in her career, and has a soft spot for kids on the spectrum.
She’d always wanted to create a formula for them.
She loves my idea so much, that not only does she answer all of my questions and give me her expert opinion on how to build it…
She offers to invest her own money to be my partner and help me formulate it!
She got off the call to immediately start writing our White Paper, which is a scientific draft that covers all of the latest random controlled, double blind studies that have been done on nutrition with autistic toddlers.
Can you believe it?
“Wow, Dr. Rebeca Eriksen loves and believes in my idea so much, she’s gonna write an entire paper on it and invest her own money helping me bring it to life!”
And that’s how I became business partners with one of the best supplement formulators on the planet.
And that’s how Neuro Nourish® was born.
It took us more than a year, 20 different versions, and over $100,000, but we finally did it.
Neuro Nourish® is a biomedical breakthrough, it’s the only supplement ever created that has all 17 ingredients scientifically proven to repair nutrient deficiencies, restore gut health, support brain development, and boost the immune system, all in their clinical doses.
I’m proud of Neuro Nourish®, because it’s the supplement I wanted for Leo, that didn’t exist.
And somehow…
I made it for him.
I turned a thought in my head into something I’m holding in my hand and giving to my son every single morning.
Isn’t it crazy when you think about it?
Neuro Nourish® has ingredients you won’t find in any other supplement, like our patented MicrobiomeX®, a flavobiotic® made from citrus that helps heal the gut lining and build a strong and healthy gut microbiome.
Or our AvailOm® Powdered Fish Oil, with clinical doses of brain healing DHA and EPA, that are clinically proven to be 5 times more bioavailable than regular fish oil capsules.
Or our LipoQuest® Reduced Activated Liposomal Glutathione, the body’s most powerful antioxidant that quickly boosts the immune system and helps detox the body by binding to toxins and removing them through the liver.
You can’t just buy these ingredients on Amazon, they only exist in Neuro Nourish®.
And they’re some of the most important nutrients you can possibly get into your autistic child’s gut.
But most supplement companies don’t even have the inferior version of these nutrients, because they’re very expensive, they make the supplement harder to mix and they make it taste worse.
So, they leave them out, because they care about profit, and why would they ever pay more for their supplement to be harder to mix and taste worse?
It doesn’t make sense, right?
But with Neuro Nourish®, I was making it for my own son Leo, so I only included the highest quality ingredients money could buy, no matter how much they cost.
And I didn’t stop until we got the powdered fish oil to taste like delicious vanilla cake batter.
Which is why it took us 6 months of research and development and over 19 other versions before we got this one, Neuro Nourish® V20.
Those 5 systems that are disrupted and damaged in autistic toddlers?
Neuro Nourish®, and these unique ingredients, are the Biomedical Intervention that helps you heal them.
And it’s not just the patented ingredients in Neuro Nourish® you can’t get anywhere else that truly set it apart.
We shrink down every nutrient and microencapsulate it in a fat like molecule called a liposome which mimics your body’s natural cell wall.
That’s right, we managed to make Neuro Nourish® a liposomal powder, so it skips the digestive tract and is rapidly absorbed in the blood stream where the nutrients are carried immediately to the cells that need them to be put to good use right away.
Which means it’s in a form our kids can absorb and use.
Neuro Nourish® is truly one of a kind, and I’m excited it’s finally here.
My goal is to get these 17 scientifically proven and clinically backed ingredients into the gut of every child on the planet.
Because I’ve seen the difference Biomedical Intervention can have firsthand with my son Leo.
In all the autism parenting forums I’m in, I keep coming across the same comments from parents who’ve just discovered Biomedical Interventions.
“I wish I knew all of this sooner.”
Their kids are already 10 or 11 or 12 and they’re left wondering if things would have been different if they’d known about Biomedical Intervention when their kids were 4 or 5 or 6.
Here's what I know for sure, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next best time is right now.
So, if your child has autism or ADHD, or you work with kids who have autism or ADHD, or you know someone with autism and ADHD.
Please help spread the word and let them know about Biomedical Intervention.
And whether you invest in Neuro Nourish® or not, please get these 17 ingredients into your kids as soon as possible.
Because every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential.
And I won’t stop until I get Neuro Nourish® into the guts of every child who needs it, starting with my son Leo, and then every other child on the planet, one scoop at a time.
A year ago, I was sitting on the floor of my closet in the dark crying… broke, jobless, and completely hopeless to help my son Leo.
I’d lost everything, my son to autism, my duplex, my life savings, my friends in Arkansas, my job, my income, my house, my car…
And yet, if all of that hadn’t happened…
I wouldn’t be where I am right now, telling you this story.
I wouldn’t be the CEO and co-founder of my own supplement company with the best supplement doctor on the planet, Dr. Rebeca Eriksen.
I wouldn’t have thousands of tubs of Neuro Nourish® in our warehouse ready to heal the guts and brains of kids with autism and ADHD who desperately need it.
And I wouldn’t get to wake up every morning with a purpose, getting to work on something I’m passionate about with business partners I respect and love.
Call it god, call it serendipity, call it physics, call it karma, you won’t always recognize it in the moment, but life has a plan.
This is what I’m here to do, I know it.
And I’ve never been happier.
And sometimes in life, it takes hitting rock bottom and losing everything, bawling your eyes out on the floor of your closet in the dark…
To set you on the right path to finding your purpose in life.
And when you find it…
The only reason you’ll truly appreciate it and enjoy it and hold onto it…
Is because of the hard times you overcame to get it.
Kyle B.
Father of Leo
CEO and co-founder of Neuro Nourish®
