A child may understand an instruction and still struggle to get their body to respond. Dana Johnson, PhD, an occupational therapist and researcher, joins me to discuss what she calls whole-body apraxia and the gap between intention and movement.

We talk about motor planning, unreliable speech, sensory processing and the role of vision. Dana shares her theory about toe walking and her observations with therapeutic lenses, then explains how she approaches AAC, RPM, Spelling to Communicate and the Spellers Method. We also address the debate around prompting and independent communication.

The conversation connects these questions with sleep, overall health and caregiver co-regulation. Dana’s examples describe her clinical experience working with particular clients and families.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Whole-body apraxia and apraxia of speech

• Planning, starting, coordinating and stopping movement

• Nonverbal, nonspeaking and unreliable speech

• Visual processing, depth perception and motor control

• Dana’s observations about toe walking

• AAC and different spelling approaches

• Prompting and independent communication

• Sleep, biology and supporting the whole family

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FIND DANA

https://drdanajohnson.com

https://spellerstampa.com

Share this episode with a parent, caregiver or professional who would benefit from a closer look at communication and motor planning.

Your kid is anxious about everything, bouncing off the walls at 10 pm, and can’t focus, can’t sleep, can’t get through the school day. You are exhausted at 9 pm and wide awake at midnight. Those two things are the same problem: looking energetic and having energy are two different things.

This is the short, parent-friendly version of my conversation with Dr. Scott Sherr, a board-certified internal medicine physician who specializes in mitochondria and cellular energy. His model in plain words, for the person with autism and for the caregiver in the same house.

What’s in it:

1. Four definitions: alarm mode, rest mode, the battery, and the spiral of doom.
2. What running on empty looks like in a kid and in a parent.
3. Energy first, then calm, and why calming tools so often work for a week and then stop.
4. GABA and glutamate, the paradoxical effect, and what happened when I supplemented GABA for Jimmy.
5. What to do for the person with autism, and what to do for the caregiver.
6. Methylene blue in two minutes.

You don’t need to do ten things this week. Three are plenty: pick a bedtime and a wake time and keep them seven days a week; subtract one thing from your own day; morning sunlight, outside, together.

Newsletter and community wait list, with the labs-to-start-with checklist: https://biohacking-autism.kit.com/d9c8b01fd7

The full conversation with Dr. Scott Sherr: https://biohackautism.com/podcast/anxious-and-exhausted-at-the-same-time-the-energy-first-approach-autism-caregivers/

I’m Nadia Elkhatib, the mother of a 22-year-old with autism, and I apply longevity and biohacking science to autism and to the caregivers behind it. We don’t treat the label. We work on the biology underneath it.

Biohacking Autism is educational. Nothing in this episode is individualized medical advice or a recommendation to start, stop, or change a treatment. Work with a qualified clinician who knows your history.

You can be completely exhausted and still unable to switch off. Most parents I talk to live there, and so do a lot of our kids. In this episode Dr. Scott Sherr gives me a different explanation for it: the nervous system is not just over-activated, the body no longer has enough cellular reserve to recover. And the fix runs in the opposite order from what most of us have been told.

Dr. Scott Sherr is a board-certified internal medicine physician, certified in health optimization medicine, a specialist in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and the chief medical and health education officer at Troscriptions. He calls the pattern the sympathetic spiral of doom: chronic stress activation and failing mitochondria feeding each other.

What we cover:

1. Stimulation is not energy. A kid running around hyper, or a parent who can’t sit down, can be running on cortisol with empty mitochondria underneath.
2. Two people in one house, two doors into the same spiral. The caregiver enters from the outside (years of vigilance). The child enters from the inside (direct mitochondrial stress).
3. Energy first, then calm. If you try to down-regulate a nervous system that has no floor to stand on, it falls through the floor. Scott builds the energetic floor first, then works on regulation.
4. GABA and glutamate, the brakes and the accelerator, and why giving more GABA can backfire in some kids. I share what happened when I tried it with Jimmy.
5. Sleep, trauma, and the elephants in the room: why years of broken sleep leave a pattern in the caregiver that talk therapy alone rarely fixes.
6. Co-regulation. Jimmy can feel my nervous system. Scott explains why working on yourself is working on your child.
7. The parasympathetic edge: what a regulated nervous system actually feels like, and how to get a first taste of it with vagus nerve devices without making them a crutch.
8. Subtract before you add. For caregivers, the shift is taking things out of the day, not stacking thirty things into the smoothie.
9. Methylene blue: what it does in the mitochondria, why quality and sourcing are everything, and why you do not buy it on Amazon.

What I would do this week: pick one thing to subtract, get morning sunlight with your kid, and keep the same bedtime and wake time every day even if the sleep is bad. Then talk to your practitioner about mitochondrial support.

Find Dr. Scott Sherr

Website: https://drscottsherr.com

Health Optimization Medicine and Practice (nonprofit for clinicians): https://homehope.org

Also: Troscriptions and OneBase Health

Join the newsletter and the community wait list

Get the labs-to-start-with checklist and be first to know when the private community opens: https://biohacking-autism.kit.com/d9c8b01fd7

Related episodes

Autism Biology From a Completely Different Point of View (thyroid, hormones, insulin resistance): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8fnI3xC0ts

The 6 Step Healing Order for Sensitive Autism Kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEbHibq0q9g

I’m Nadia Elkhatib, the mother of a 22-year-old with autism, and I apply longevity and biohacking science to autism and to the caregivers behind it. We don’t treat the label. We work on the biology underneath it.

Biohacking Autism is educational. Nothing in this episode is individualized medical advice or a recommendation to start, stop, or change a treatment. Work with a qualified clinician who knows your history.