Creatine Community Blog

This essay was written by Celeste Graham, ACD Director of Education with support from Laura Trutoiu, ACD Director of Research and Heidi Wallis, ACD President.

#CreatineDecoded is a quarterly educational essay series that sheds light on research relevant for Cerebral Creatine Deficiency Syndromes (CCDS). The essays feature community contributors, often parents, who with the help of the ACD, explore in their own words the CCDS science you want to know more about. Have a topic in mind? Send suggestions to Laura Trutoiu, ACD Director of Research [email protected]

Education is one of the key parts of our mission here at the ACD. This “Creatine Decoded” blog post gives a brief overview of a topic near and dear to many of us as CCDS parents: what science and psychological theory say about what therapies work for our kiddos related to their behaviors. The ACD recently held a webinar focused on supporting parents in the CCDS community in regards to challenging behaviors.  I’m not sure about you, but we have seen an increase in behaviors the past few months in our house!

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Most of the country has been on hold for a few months due to the COVID-19 virus. Even now, with the country reopening, our family is only going to required doctor appointments. Continue reading

“School closed,” says Sam for the 14th time today. I take a deep breath. If I don’t answer him, he’ll just keep going.   Continue reading

My son recently said my name for the first time. I don’t mean he called me Mommy. He says that about a hundred times a day, even when he gets a response. He said my actual name. Continue reading

When it became clear that I would be caring for my son into his adult life, I knew that I had to make sure my body and mind would be ready for that. I knew I had to be as strong and durable as possible. Continue reading

The following is our journey into using Medical Marijuana (MMJ) with our son who has CTD, autism, and epilepsy. For those of us in OH, this is a new option in the treatment of seizures and most of us have little to no experience in the medical use of this product. In talking with other families, I realize that there’s a lot of confusion, stigma, and fear, but also curiosity, surrounding the use of MMJ in the treatment of epilepsy and other conditions, so I thought I would share what I’ve learned thus far on our journey with MMJ. Continue reading

I wanted to talk a bit about something that my son said to me last year. This surely stuck out in my mind as important to share here. I’m sure a large number of readers are parents or caregivers of a loved one with a creatine deficiency. Some parents may have more than one child. And given that every family dynamic is different and each affected child is unique, this is just our own family’s experience that led to this topic. Continue reading

This essay was written by Erin Coller with the support of Laura Trutoiu, Director of Research, and Sangeetha Iyer, ACD Scientific Advisor.

#CreatineDecoded is a quarterly educational essay series that sheds light on research relevant for Cerebral Creatine Deficiency Syndromes (CCDS). The essays feature community contributors, often parents, who with the help of the ACD, explore in their own words the CCDS science you want to know more about. Have a topic in mind? Send suggestions to Laura Trutoiu, ACD Director of Research [email protected]

Pictured: Dr. Sonja Sucic from the Medical University of Vienna presenting on pharmacochaperoning at the Creatine Deficiency Workshop in Rotterdam in September 2019

Being a CCDS/CTD mom, I understand that it can be very easy to put a huge amount of hope in the idea of prospective treatments. The exciting news is that it’s not just a cliché to say that we can each make a difference. Our individual participation in the research process is vital and necessary to help researchers in the quest to find a cure for CTD. There are researchers around the world working on innovative new ideas for therapies that could really work to help our loved ones. Providing access to patient data is in our hands as parents and caregivers, and it is not an understatement to say that if we don’t do our job, the researchers can’t do their jobs. Continue reading

I recently had the privilege of sharing my family’s GAMT story with a group of professionals from ARUP Laboratories. Continue reading