PANS and PANDAS is real | Sanctuary Functional Medicine

PANS and PANDAS

When Your Child Changed Overnight

Where did my little Johnny go? Everything changed over a short period, maybe a night, maybe over a week, but your child morphed into another personality suddenly. These changes make life harder for you and your child, bringing your child mood swings, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, obsessions, and compulsions. Those are bad enough, but the unexplained headaches, changing sleep patterns, and random neurologic complaints of weird symptoms can be terrifying.

You know that something is different and you try to explain this to your conventionally trained pediatrician. Most will start with parenting tips, discuss stages or childhood, or work through a list of scary diagnoses in the child’s brain. After nothing is found and nothing works, they suggest counselors and psychiatrists as they move on to other children with simpler and non-chronic conditions.

The Cause

For many of these children, PANS or PANDAS underlies these acute changes. Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associate with Strep (PANDAS) occurs in genetically susceptible children who encounter an infectious trigger and develop autoimmune attack on their nervous system. Their immune defenses identify their nerve cells or associated cells as foe rather than friend.

When this autoimmune attack interferes with the normal development of a child’s brain, learning and normal function are hindered directly. Indirectly the resulting inflammation leads to imbalances in the neurotransmitters and thus to the symptoms as noted above. An endless variety and combination of symptoms arise, practically all of them resulting in problems for the child.

How to Treat

You don’t want “control the symptoms” therapy with little to no hope of overcoming the condition. You want a root cause therapy that removes the trigger and allows your child to return to normal. Functional medicine aims to give you that therapy.

The Solution

Symptoms and diseases have causes or triggers. Functional medicine digs for these triggers, knowing by experience that the removal of triggers from the child will allow their growing bodies to recover and return to more normal development.

At Sanctuary, we start by exploring your child’s entire life story beginning inside your womb. By identifying factors which may trigger or contribute to neurological dysfunction from womb to the present, we can design a unique protocol to address the list. When a major trigger like a toxin or an infection is identified, that target moves to the top of the list. Detox of the synthetic or organic toxin begins. Eradication of the infection like strep or viruses begins. Meanwhile the immune system, anti-inflammatory work, and regenerative process receive attention and support.

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Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.

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