Treating your child biomedically will take knowledge, expert advice and support. Below you will find some recommendations for gathering information and support from different sources.

Yahoo groups are a wonderful resource for discussion and sharing of experience. We have more links to the most popular groups in the links section; however, if you are based in Europe you may wish to start by joining Autism Biomedical Europe yahoo support group.

When you first join a group, it may seem as if everybody is chatting in some sort of code. There will be many terms you might not understand and lots of abbreviations used. You can download a list of abbreviations from the Useful Documents section very soon which will help you with many of the most commonly used acronyms. The biomedical terminology will become familiar to you over time. Sometimes it is helpful to simply use a search engine like Google to read about a term you are unfamiliar with. Other times, you may want to use the search engine within the Yahoo group to find out more about the term.

Support groups are another excellent way to gather information and support. Treating Autism support group contacts and information can be found here. Conferences can provide you with information and inspiration to continue your journey.

An excellent way to find information about biomedical treatments is to use websites. Websites are created by both parents and professionals. Anyone can create a website and it is important to know about who is behind the work before you start to trust the information you might find there. Some websites for beginners are listed below. Please see our links section for a more complete list.

http://www.autism.com/index.asp is the home of the Autism Research Institute. http://www.generationrescue.org/ is the home of the US-based Generation Rescue. When reading on websites, take the time to navigate around a bit and familiarise yourself with what information is available; however, realise that it is often best to choose one topic at a time to investigate. For example, diets. There is so much information that trying to absorb the details of each topic simultaneously may be difficult.

There have been many books published in the last few years addressing biomedical treatments and autism. There are, obviously, many more resources than those listed here. Those listed below are simply the ones we felt most helpful for the beginner. Members of Treating Autism have access to the Treating Autism library, which includes all of the books listed below and more. For the price of postage, you can borrow these books to read them before deciding if you would like to purchase them yourself.

Members of Treating Autism also receive reviews of many of these books, written by parents like yourself. www.nourishinghope.com is the website of Julie Matthews, author of Nourishing Hope: Nutrition Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorders. Nourishing Hope covers some of the science behind biomedical interventions, the main autism diets, and many of the basic biomedical treatments like supplementation and chelation. The website also offers a great deal of information to anyone pursuing dietary interventions for their child.

www.treatstarvingbrains.com is one website featuring the book Children with Starving Brains: A Medical Treatment Guide for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Jacquelyn McCandless, MD.

http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/pr/jepson_book.htm is where you can find more information about Changing the Course of Autism: A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians, by Dr. Bryan Jepson.