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by CALISTA DUFFIELD
GROUNDBREAKING treatment piloted in Leamington has proved so successful it may be used to help dyslexics across the country.
A group of chlidren and teenagers were given special medication which achieved 'astounding results'.
The treatment devised by New York psychiatrist and neurologist Dr Harold Levinson is based on the theory that dyslexia, learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders were linked to a dysfunction of the inner-ear.
Dr Levinson has treated tens of thousands of youngsters in America since he first made his discovery in the 1970s.
Now he has brought his work over the ocean to assess the first clinical trials in Britain conducted on a group of Warwickshire children.
Project
The project has been running since May, when the doctor first visited to set up the pilot project with members of the Leamington Dyslexia Support Group.
He is returning to the town on Wednesday to study the youngsters's progress.
Wendy Harrison, of Bubbenhall, is the support group organiser and her 11-year-old son Jon suffers from dyslexia - a condition which makes it difficult for the sufferer to make sense of words and numbers.
She said the results so far have been 'staggering', with children improving their reading age by up to two years in just six months.
It will mean in four years or even less they will have adapted and will be effectively 'cured'. They can then stop taking the medication.
Linda Gooch, of St James Meadow Road, Milverton, said there had been 'definite improvements' in her eight-year-old son Harry, who suffers from ADD as well as dyslexia.
She said: 'Harry is one of the youngest in the group, and because of that he's not on the full course of medication, but still there have been improvements in his behavioural and concentration patterns.
'He has been able to put the days of the week and months of the year in sequence and he has learned to tell the time.
'There is noticeably a marked difference in his hand writing, and his teachers at school say he is getting more focused and concentrating better.
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'At Christmas I took him off his medication just to see wether it was really making a difference and during those three weeks his behaviour and concentration really did deteriorate.'
Another parent, from Wellesbourne, whose 12-year-old severely dyslexic son was involved in the trials said the treatment was a 'miracle'.
She said 'It's transformed my son's life. He has wanted to ride a bike since he was two-and-a-half, but he couldn't because the problem with his inner-ear affected his balance.
'But on Sunday he rode a bike for the first time. We are absolutely thrilled to bits and he is slowly beginning to build on his self-esteem.
'His reading and writing ability has really improved. At the start of the medication he had a reading age four years behind his peers, but now he's beginning to move forward.'
Dr Levinson chose Leamington as the first town in this country, after a patient from the area visited him at his New York practice for help.
He first discovered dyslexia was due to simple signal-scrambling disturbances in the inner-ear after examining students with reading difficulties and finding 95 per cent of them had an inner-ear dysfunction which lead to poor eye co-ordination when reading.
He said: 'The inner-ear acts as a 'fine tuner', similar to the vertical and horizontal tuners on a television.
'We found that any dysfunction of the inner-ear led to blurred, scrambled, reversed and distorted sensory and motor signals.'
Unique
Of more than 30,000 children and adults treated at our New York clinic, between 75 and 85 per cent responded favourably, rapidly and often dramatically to this unique medical treatment - a simple and safe combination of inner-ear improving medications and related nutrients.
'Dyslexia is not just a severe reading disorder and it is not due to brain damage, as was traditionally thought. It is a syndrome of many and varied symptoms affecting over 20 per cent of children and adults - severely impairing their self-esteem.
'And, the smarter dyslexics are, the more frustrated they become and the dumber they feel.'
Dr Levinson is giving a lecture at the Manor House Hotel, Leamington, on Wednesday at 7.15pm.
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