No Map to This Country: One Family's Journey through Autism
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No Map to This Country: One Family's Journey through Autism

No Map to This Country: One Family's Journey through Autism

by Jennifer Noonan

Overview

Autism is a rising epidemic that affects 1 in 68 children. When Jennifer Noonan's son was diagnosed in 2009, she refused to accept the conventional wisdom that autism was largely permanent, instead launching a relentless investigation into the very latest dietary, immunological, and metabolic research available. "I certainly had no reason to believe at that time that autism was treatable," she writes, "but somehow I decided, in my classically pigheaded way, that it would be." This spirited audacity gave her not only courage — and ultimately success — in the face of such a devastating diagnosis, but also a self-aware and darkly funny perspective on her own faults and struggles over the next six years.

With equal parts defiance, tenacity, and wry humor, No Map to This Country details one family's journey through the modern autism epidemic, and the lengths to which a mother will go to heal her family. Neither a medical manual nor a heartwarming tale of growth, Noonan's groundbreaking yet profoundly relatable memoir seamlessly combines cutting-edge research with a gripping and unapologetic account of her family's fight for recovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780738219042
Publisher: Hachette Books
Publication date: 04/05/2016
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Noonan is the founder of www.thegfcflady.com, a website for autism parents. Despite the photos and recipes on her popular website, Jennifer Noonan is not a professional photographer, and she's definitely not a professional cook. She's just a mom who got thrown into the deep end when she decided to put her autistic son on the GFCF Diet. She found herself not only having to memorize reams of information about safe and unsafe ingredients, but having to learn a lot of the basics of cooking at the same time.

Everything on her site - and in her memoir - comes with the disclaimer that the GFCF Diet is one part of a larger collection of biomedical treatments for autism, pioneered by the Autism Research Institute and to visit www.autism.com for information on specific medical therapies, scientific research, videos of fully-recovered children, and help finding an ARI doctor in your area.

Website: www.thegfcflady.com

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Foreword xiii

Welcome to Holland xvii

1 An Odd Sense 1

2 The A-Word 10

3 Ants, Elephants, and Dinosaurs 15

4 The Color of Spoons 25

5 Data Collection 33

6 A Gut Reaction 44

7 Thoughtful House 55

8 Be the Change 64

9 All in the Family 76

10 Thank God for the Internet 89

11 A Special Education 95

12 Formula for Success 107

13 Eats Shoots and Leaves 116

14 The Summer from Hell 130

15 Code of Silence 139

16 The Specific Carbohydrate Diet 148

17 Shalom, Y'all 160

18 Kindergarten 172

19 In Pursuit of Italy 179

20 The SCD Lady 189

21 Tulips in the Rubble 198

22 Marie 210

23 To Be Served Concurrently 222

24 From the Ground Up 235

25 District Policy 244

26 The Nature of Love and Acceptance 254

27 An Alternative Vision 264

28 State of the Industry 276

29 Autism Awareness 286

30 No Such Thing 294

Epilogue 305

Acknowledgments 313

Bibliography 315

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