Stem cell therapy is a controversial and experimental treatment for many conditions, including autism. In this post, I will share with you how we made the decision to try it for our son, what we learned from our research, and what happened after the procedure. If you are a parent who is considering stem cell therapy for your child, or if you are just curious about this topic, I hope you will find this post helpful and insightful.
Why We Wanted to Try Stem Cell Therapy
This was not an easy choice for us. The main question we were looking into was “Does this procedure have any side effect?” We had heard about it before, but we became more curious when we watched Dr. Alok Sharma’s interview on YouTube, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87HqwEVjf-s)
This was in the middle of 2023. From then on, we did two things at the same time,
- We started to actively research on the procedure &
- We start our conversation with Dr. Alok’s team for more information.
How We Researched Stem Cell Therapy
Some of the sources we consulted while doing our research were:
- Joined the WhatsApp and FaceBook groups where these topics are discussed and started conversations to find out if we can meet anyone who has done this procedure.
- Reached out to the individual parent who were open to talk to us. We try to spoke with parents who personally experienced this procedure and avoided individual who have heard about it from friends and family members.
- Spoke to the therapist and their colleagues who know this procedure and get their perspective.
- Examined the published papers on this topic at google scholar (https://scholar.google.com). These were sometimes very scientific and technical, but usually they have a summary and a conclusion. You can also use AI tools such as chat GPT to simplify these papers for you in plain English.
- Viewed more YouTube videos. To be fair, we searched for both pro and con stem cell therapy.
- Asked medical doctor (who we can trust) and get their opinion on this procedure.
Conclusion
In the end, we could not find any major drawback of this procedure. The main feedback we got from parents personally and in the chat-groups was either neutral or positive. No one said anything bad about the procedure except the cost.
Our Decision
Like any other parent, we want to do everything we can for our son, and we thought, even if there might not be any difference, we do not want to regret not trying this. We decided to have no expectation and go ahead with this procedure. in September 2023, we booked the procedure and got a date for the week of 24th December for the procedure.