Study: 1 in 110 U.S. children had autism in 2006

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: CNN

"I was surprised by the increase ," Dr. Gary Goldstein said. Goldstein is president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Nine of the 10 sites had an increase; nobody had a decrease," Goldstein added.

The Kennedy Krieger Institute provides therapies and services for children with autism and conducts research to find the causes of autism spectrum disorders. The institute also works with Autism Speaks.

Not all experts are convinced that there is a surge in autism cases. Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, believes that some children may be given the autism label without meeting the actual case definition for the disorder.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/12/17/autism.new.numbers/

---

What is triggering more autism cases, may be food or ultrasound test?

[valerief]

1. Or Pharma. nt

[Bozita]

2. maybe pharma in the drinking water?

Just asking.

[ananda]

7. Good question.

Pharma
Water
Processed food
Chemicals
Fumes
Stress

[elocs]

19. I have wondered about environmental factors, things which might take generations to show up.

Autism along with other things such as ADD or ADHD. Things which might be safe over the short term, but what are their effects over decades? Things like chemicals, additives, plastic used for food. Maybe a genetic factor is eventually added that exacerbates the negative effects.

[valerief]

24. Or phama wants more kids to take more meds so has more kids diagnosed with more illnesses. nt

[superconnected]

58. My first guess would be the Milk. Milk is a primary source needed for seratonin production and

seratonin deficiency is linked to autism.

Today's milk has a whole lot of cow hormones and who knows what else. I suspect the milk first. But, I never read where anyone else does.

[Orrex]

3. Ladies and gentlemen, I present yet another sad case of

[Orrex]

4. I blame the Thimerosal that's no longer in infants' vaccines

And hasn't been for years.

The astonishingly well-compensated Andrew Wakefield would never lie, would he?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

34. ...

:)

[MickeyFinne]

50. Wrong: Thimerosal is actually STILL used in flu vaccines

see the CDC website...

http://www.cdc.gov/Flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm

These vaccines are routinely given to infants.

[lostnfound]

55. And didn't the govt recommend TWO doses for kids under 8. nt

And it was only in 2004 that they started doing flu shots for toddlers: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/06/loc_loc1flu.html

[LeftishBrit]

57. Flu vaccines are not routinely given to infants in the UK...

and our autism rates are the same as yours.

[Tumbulu]

5. rear facing car seats for infants so they do not interact

with anyone while driving.....?

[ananda]

6. Those numbers are astounding.

I knew autism had increased, but I didn't realize by
how much.

I wonder if this is a harbinger of how toxic our
society is becoming.

[MilesColtrane]

8. Too much TV, too many DVDs for baby.

I don't see how the brain can develop normally when a good portion of its early input is flat-hyper quick images.

I would think that an infant's brain needs to be exposed to the real three dimensional world and the way things happen in it in order to create an internal map.

[Jefferson23]

10. Too much tv has nothing to do with the cause of autism.

At one time Bruno Bettelheim claimed that "refrigerator mothers" were the cause of autism, his evidence was nothing but terrible speculation. He was discredited long ago, thankfully.


"There is no known single cause for autism, but it is generally accepted that it is caused by abnormalities in brain structure or function. Brain scans show differences in the shape and structure of the brain in children with autism versus neuro-typical children. Researchers are investigating a number of theories, including the link between heredity, genetics and medical problems. In many families, there appears to be a pattern of autism or related disabilities, further supporting a genetic basis to the disorder. While no one gene has been identified as causing autism, researchers are searching for irregular segments of genetic code that children with autism may have inherited. It also appears that some children are born with a susceptibility to autism, but researchers have not yet identified a single "trigger" that causes autism to develop."


http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_whatcauses

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. The neurological differences present in autistic disorders...

are of such a degree and kind that they can't have their origins at any point of development other than in gestation, fairly early, in fact, in gestation (at the point in the first trimester when cerebellar differentiation takes place). It's not television or vaccines or any other post-natal cause.

[Scairp]

36. That I don't believe

If that were true, these kids would be autistic from birth, they aren't. In nearly every single case the kid was acting, talking and developing completely normally until about the age of 18 months. If it were something that is taking place in utero, it wouldn't take 18 months for symptoms to appear. No, my bet is that it's something the child comes into contact with at that age that triggers it. The fact that it seems to occur at around 18 months in virtually every case is hard to ignore. I think that's why so many have latched onto the immunization connection. What thing do almost all kids in this country have in common? They all get about 12,000 shots from birth to 4 years. IMO, the jury is still out on that one, and I know many reputable scientists have come out and said they have studied this theory up and down and right to left and cannot find a connection, but I still think that there may be something in some vaccination that kids get at that age that could trigger the autism.

[Odin2005]

43. There are symptoms, they just are not obvious before 18 months.

And thus people fall victim to the correlation-causation fallacy with regards to the MMR vaccine. the doctor behind that BS, Andrew Wakefield, is as PROVEN liar and fraud. the neurological differences implicated in autism can ONLY be the result on pre-birth differences in brain development. The cerebellum, for example, is often significantly smaller than average, and most cerebellum development occurs in the 3rd trimester. Many autistics (Including Albert Einstein) have reduced Sylvian Fissures, the creases that mark the boundaries of the Frontal and Temporal lobes and is adjacent to areas important for language, those difference can only be the result of pre-birth developmental differences.

[Spider Jerusalem]

46. You may not believe it, but...unless you're a neurologist, then your opinion is worthless.

And even if you are a neurologist, your opinion is worthless unless supported by peer-reviewed research. Regardless of what you believe, neuroscience has found that the degree of difference in certain brain structures of autistic vs neurotypical individuals (relative percentages of white matter vs grey matter and cerebellar structures, to name two) are of such a nature that they cannot have their origins anywhere OTHER than in utero; there is no post-natal etiology that explains them.

[Scairp]

49. WELL

I'm NOT a neurologist, but I am a parent and I'm sufficiently literate to read both the research being done and the accounts of parents of children who seem to be fine and then suddenly begin to degenerate in that specific age range, around 18 months. They are talking and making eye contact, feeding themselves, or beginning to depending on the kid, show interest in books and like being read to, respond to people appropriately, and one day, they begin to slip away. By age three they don't make eye contact, aren't able to learn their ABC's, counting, feeding themselves, etc. That's what is so mystifying to both parents and researchers. Kids doing all the things we expect of them and then they seem to hit a wall, and it seems to happens very fast. I find it odd that if these differences in brain structures are solely responsible for autism then these kids would never develop as we expect kids to, ever. They wouldn't grow and learn and interact unless something is triggering it in those who were born with these particular different brain structures around that age. I think that ruling out vaccines as the trigger in those kids is being exceptionally close-minded. I have an almost five year old, but I also have older children, and the number of vaccines the baby had to have was staggering to me. It was like I had never been a parent before the youngest one came along, so many immunizations had been added. Half of them I didn't even know what they were for, what disease it was preventing. And it looks like each year the number of kids diagnosed as autistic has gone up with the increase in vaccines they are getting. Sometimes they get four, or more, in one office visit, if they have to catch up on any missed. My kid was getting sick every single time she got shots, and every kid around me was getting sick after shots, but if you call the doctor and ask them if it's the immunizations, they completely shut you down, like you're a moron for just asking. Every single time. I know they are afraid that if they say yes, it's probably the shots, parents might not bring their kids back for vaccines, but at least don't lie to our faces and tell us that there's no way the kid has a fever of 103 and won't eat and can't sleep or can't be touched for four days after shots, BECAUSE of the shots. It's bullshit, it is the shots. And if they can do that to a kid who doesn't have this different brain structure, then what could they do to a kid who DOES have it?

[Igel]

51. 6 months.

Eye tracking studies on kids at 0;6 (year;month is the convention for noting ages). The parents thought the kids normal, as did the pediatricians and researchers. But a small amount of data showed consistently strange results for some kids. In review the researchers were asked to account for the aberrant data; they checked, found no errors, but the kids turned out to have pretty severe autism. Fortunately, the experimental and peer review process was time consuming and the autism had already been diagnosed. Not a good clinical tool, however.

It seems that their autism wasn't so severe that they couldn't function well enough at 0;6 for it to escape notice. But when you count every fixation, the evidence was there and statistically irreducible to anything else. The autism finding was an accident.

A similar accident occurred with infants at 0;3. Except that passing for normal is easier, the bar is lower. At 0;3 the kids were exposed to no thimerosal, no flu shots. Yet there it was, autism.

I've heard of a study or two where parents documented that their kid had regressed. They had video evidence. It was the same with the gorilla language project and Koko. They had video evidence. In both cases, when you look at the entire video record, the evidence is carefully chosen. In the case of Koko they had hundreds of hours of video and presented only those instances to prove their point--even if Koko was just mimicking what the researchers signed (with the researchers' signing edited out). In the case of parents, they had hundreds of hours of video and managed to find cases where their kid showed behavior that was, for him, exceptional. Sometimes scaffolded, sometimes acontextual, sometimes after coaching. The full record showed that this behavior was exceptional or coaxed, as well as lack of affect, inappropriate gazes, lack of communicability, and other characteristic symptoms. The "regression" was an artifact of the parents' confirmation bias--they only remembered the good things, and their edited video proof was chosen to confirm their bias. When confronted with the evidence from their own video record they usually became very angry.

In some cases kids may well retrogress. If a professor gets partial funding for a peer reviewed study we discount anything he says. He's biased because of some grant funding and because he doesn't want to be embarrassed. But parents? They're biased towards their kids--their kids are great, their hopes and the earth's future, perfect bundles of joy and the result of investing lots of time and gold and emotion. Gee, desire for grant funding versus love for offspring, I guess "desire for grant funding" is really more deeply felt. Then there's the negative side--a researcher's embarrassment. But parents fear doing bad and stupid things--not catching an illness that leads to deafness, not catching developmental disorders, doing things to hurt or injure their kids. Even genetic stuff--if your kid has diabetes it reflects on you as a person, as a parent. But again, we judge the researcher's fear of embarrassment affecting his research as orders of magnitude greater than a parent's fear of hurt his kid or being called a bad parent affects his claims. That's inane.

Parents suck when it comes to being objective about their kids. But we empathize and sympathize with them and therefore declare them infallible (by which me usually mean they're like us). Austism advocates are nearly as righteous--they're fighting on behalf of people we empathize with against people we don't understand or empathize with. We see ourselves in the parents and in defending them we defend ourselves, in believing them we say we're trustworthy. And who's against defending themselves and considering themselves trustworthy? Our asymmetric evaluation of claims, denying evidence that's from better sources than the evidence we jump at, shows *our* bias.

Every claim of retrogression I've seen comes from somebody with no more credibility, if you consider their likely biases, than an anti-global warming researcher funded by Exxon. In most cases, the claims come from people with insane levels of probable bias. But critical thinking for most people plays lickspittle to their confirmation bias instead of being their most powerful tool to fight their own confirmation bias.

[Spider Jerusalem]

53. I'm sorry, but you are very much wrong

there have been dozens of studies that have found no correlation between vaccination and autism. None whatever. The original paper that started all this 'vaccinations cause autism' nonsense was retracted and ten of the co-authors removed their names from it. The lead author, Dr Andrew Wakefield, is currently up before the General Medical Council in the UK for serious ethical breaches, among other things for failing to disclose conflicts of interest (fun fact: Wakefield has a patent on a single measles vaccine, and was being paid large sums of money by attorneys looking to show a connection between vaccines and developmental disorders). Wakefield is quite likely to lose his medical licence.

ALSO, the vaccine most frequently cited by the anti-vax nutters as a cause of autism, the MMR triple jab, does not and has never contained thimerosal (the mercury preservative claimed to be an 'autism trigger'), and NO childhood vaccines at all have contained thimerosal since 2001. Yet autism rates have not declined.

It is not 'closed-minded' to rule out the idea that vaccines are responsible for autism at all; it is quite the opposite. It is the only reasonable conclusion one can draw in the face of all the evidence.

[LeftishBrit]

48. Firstly it is not the case that most autistic children develop normally and then regress

There are some cases of typical development followed by regression. But mostly it is not that a typically developing child regresses in the second year of life, but that autism starts to be noticed in the second year of life, when most children make giant strides in communication, interaction with others, and the beginnings of pretend play - and autistic children fail to do so as it is these characteristics that are impaired.

Secondly, even if a disorder develops later in life, this does not mean that it is caused by postnatal environmental factors. Many genetic or prenatally-caused disorders only become manifest some time after birth. An extreme example is Huntingdon's disease, which is known to be caused by a genetic abnormality, and which often develops only in middle age.

[Odin2005]

54. I've tried to point that out to the anti-vax nuts, never works.

[Jefferson23]

9. If there is a genetic link how would that explain the high increase I wonder.

How could the high increase be solely attributed to children being diagnosed properly now than in the past. I find that hard to believe as when you look at the symptoms of autism, these children do stand out. There is such a thing as a genetic explosion? And if so, what the hell could be behind that. How sad this is, autism is a life long neurological disorder that compromises a child's life, and so many do not receive the best interventions available, which only infuriates me reading the piece of garbage health care bill we are being asked to embrace as reform.

[Demeter]

20. Because Women Who Carry Genetic Risk Are Getting to Procreate With Male Carriers/Sufferers

Before when most professions were closed to women, Like didn't get to meet, let alone marry, Like.

But now women can study engineering and law and other right-brained professions and meet similarly-minded men, and reinforce the genes that lead to logical thinking, thus increasing the likelihood of overdoing the brain enhancement via genetic selection.

Take my family--please! I come from generations of "difficult" men, I marry another, and end up with a daughter with marked autistic characteristics.

[uppityperson]

11. Maybe they have changed diagnosis standards?

[tonysam]

29. Yep. That's the only thing that truly explains it.

A lot of kids who in times past would not have been diagnosed as having "autism" are being diagnosed as such, included many of those who would have been simply labeled "mentally retarded." Same is true for Asperger syndrome children. In the old days, they wouldn't have been labeled at all but just regarded as odd.

[Ka hrnt]

33. Yup.

http://autism.suite101.com/article.cfm/autism_diagnosis_rates_not_on_the_rise

[asdfa88550]

12. appaling figures

[Odin2005]

44. Take your bigotry and shove it.

My existence is "appalling"?

[uppityperson]

47. TS'd trolls like you are "appaling"

[chollybocker]

13. Way to refute your own argument.

"Not all experts are convinced that there is a surge in autism cases... some children may be given the autism label without meeting the actual case definition for the disorder."


"What is triggering more autism cases, may be food or ultrasound test?"


WTF???? Nice canard.

[ozymandius]

21. My thought too re: diagnosis.

Autism is a fairly new category. Special education teachers I work with say that autism did not exist as its own identifiable category until about twelve years ago. So my questioning brain wonders if the label "autism" is applied too heavily in too many cases due to the "newness" of its identifiable existence.

[tonysam]

30. And perhaps having less stigma than a child being labeled as

"mentally retarded." I contend a lot of these "autistic" kids really should be labeled as MR, as the vast majority of autistic kids are such.

[Odin2005]

41. Most autistic people are NOT mentally retarded.

[ozymandius]

45. I disagree but respectfully understand your position.

I have worked with autistic and MR children. There is quite a difference between them when one sifts through the biological and cognitive ability details. ASD was once lumped with MR before evidence determined them to be dissimilar.

[Dulcinea]

14. It may be at least partially environmental.

I'm no expert, but look at all the crap in the food we eat & the air we breathe. It's got to be affecting children badly, some more so than others.

[Frank Cannon]

22. This, I believe, is the 300-pound gorilla in the room

There is still so much scary crap in our air, water, food, and especially in the cheap Chinese toys our children play with, that I find it impossible to believe that there ISN'T a major environmental component to this problem--one that is most likely much, much worse than we know about or will choose to accept.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. They mean 'were autistic', not 'had autism'.

'Person-first' language used to describe autism annoys me extremely; it's not something you can cure or get rid of, and if you took it away you'd have a different person entirely. (NB: this is my POV as an autistic adult.)

Also, the 'rise' may be more due to broader diagnostic categories and a change in just what is recognised as 'autism' (see the idea of the 'autistic spectrum', a range of developmental disorders that has classical autism, also known as Kanner-type autism after Leo Kanner, who first described it in detail, at one end and Asperger Syndrome at the other end). The recognition of conditions that aren't classical autism as autistic spectrum disorders is probably more responsible than anything else for the perceived 'epidemic'; before these diagnostic categories existed people now recognised as autistic would more likely have been seen as being merely odd and eccentric.

[Odin2005]

26. Good post. I "am Autistic", I don't "have" Autism.

[Orrex]

37. "I'll have the autism, please, and a side of fries."

Yeah, that sounds kind of weird. ;)

[AngryAmish]

17. Shirley Muldowney

[LeftishBrit]

18. And 1 in 100 adults in the UK have autism, if the same criteria are used as for children

http://www.physorg.com/news172845617.html

Moreover the rates were similar for younger and older adults, suggesting that there has not been any increase in recent years, if the same diagnostic criteria are used.

A great deal of the increase in diagnosis is due to changes in diagnostic criteria and in level of awareness of autism. In the past, many children who would now be diagnosed with autism were diagnosed as 'mentally handicapped', 'emotionally disturbed', 'childhood psychotic/ schizophrenic' (a diagnosis almost never used nowadays), or language-impaired:

http://www.physorg.com/news126959497.html

This does not rule out some environmental factors being involved as well as genetics (we already know some, such as prematurity, birth difficulties, and some maternal infections), but it is unlikely to be something very new. I think there should be more studies for example of prenatal nutrition, and of prenatal exposure to pollutants (many of these have been around for a long time), and less single-minded focus on vaccines.

[Jefferson23]

23. If you are familiar with families who have children with autism, do you

know what the best practices/interventions are considered and implemented in the UK. Your health care system acts responsibly to this population?

[LeftishBrit]

35. In the UK, services for people with autism are seen more as an issue for educational and social

services than for medical care, as autism is not in itself an illness in the usual sense, though it may be associated with illnesses.

Autistic individuals are supposed to get early interventions, speech and behavioural therapies, and support in schools, either in special schools and units, or in mainstream schools with additional support. As adults, they are supposed to get necessary job training, support and adaptations in the occupational setting according to the Disability Discrimination Act, and those who cannot work should be supported by benefits.

Sometimes all this works very well; sometimes less well. The website of the National Autistic Society may be of interest:

www.nas.org.uk

[Jefferson23]

38. Autism is defined here as a neurological disorder too, not an illness, it sounds

as though the interventions are similar. I was curious as to the availability of intervention/treatments applied via your health care system. In the U.S., each school system provides services under the law IDEA, although a break through law, there is a great deal of discrepancies as to what services a child will receive, the frequency and duration. Of course parents can employ private providers IF they have health care insurance, thus my curiosity of the situation in the UK.

Thanks for the response.

[Odin2005]

25. More of us are just getting diagnosed, there is no epidemic.

The "epidemic" is mass hysteria, nothing more. The definition of "Autistic" has expanded in the last 20 years as Folks with Asperger's Syndrome and other forms of "high-finctioning" autism" have been recognized.

[WriteDown]

27. Bingo.

Also, autism is overdiagnosed and misdiagnosed quite a bit. Girlfriend is an LPC so I hear about this stuff all the time.

[WriteDown]

28. Its much higher than this. Its 80 out of 100 at least...

:eyes:

Autism is also highly over-diagnosed.

[stray cat]

31. or a related less serious condition ie asbergers or other

[Odin2005]

40. Asperger's is just a type of autism.

The diagnostic distinction between Asperger's Syndrome and Autistic Disorder is going to be removed when the 5th edition of the diagnostic manual comes out in 2013. Under the new diagnostic terminology I would no Longer be "Asperger's" but instead be "Autistic Disorder, mild to moderate impairment, comorbid CAPD and Dyspraxia"

[tova]

32. autism

I believe it had already been discussed previously here that it is unlikely that autism is increasing simply because it is being diagnosed more. If this was the case you would see a decrease in other children's mental health diagnosis which to my knowledge is not the case. My 6 year old son's MRI from last summer showed underdevelopment in the back portion of his cerebellum. The Doctor saw no signs of scarring or anything else that might have caused it. He said this would have occurred within the first 4 months of his gestation. He also underwent genetic testing which all came back as negative. My son is diagnosed as high functioning autism with possible tourettes. He is definitely not mentally retarded.

[AlphaCentauri]

39. Maybe ultrasound test could affect the cells in their early development

ultrasonic energy has two potential physiological effects: it enhances inflammatory response; and it can heat soft tissue. Ultrasound energy produces a mechanical pressure wave through soft tissue. This pressure wave may cause microscopic bubbles in living tissues and distortion of the cell membrane, influencing ion fluxes and intracellular activity. When ultrasound enters the body, it causes molecular friction and heats the tissues slightly. This effect is typically very minor as normal tissue perfusion dissipates most of the heat, but with high intensity, it can also cause small pockets of gas in body fluids or tissues to expand and contract/collapse in a phenomenon called cavitation; however this is not known to occur at diagnostic power levels used by modern diagnostic ultrasound units

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound

[rd_kent]

42. "some children may be given the autism label without meeting the actual case definition" BINGO!

[Bearware]

52. A lot of the increase in probably due to autoimmune forms of Autism

We have an autoimmune epidemic underway in much of the industrialized world.

One significant cause is we eliminated semi-symbiotic intestinal parasites that modulate our immune systems. In countries where most people have asymptomatic intestinal parasite infections, autoimmune disease is very rare. In the U.S. virtually everyone knows 10-100 people with an autoimmune disease. There have been a number of cases of children with Autism who have had significant to complete remission of symptoms when given low doses of intestinal parasites. I believe a clinical trial is in the works. There are some YouTube video's on the subject.

In the 1920's medical science figured out how much vitamin D you need to prevent rickets. Sometime after that they decided to make 200 international units (IU) the minimum daily requirement. Until the last 2 decades or so, vitamin D was considered primarily in it's relationship to the bones. For the last 2 decades researchers have been finding vitamin D receptors in tissues all over the body and have found what optimal blood levels should be. To maintain optimal blood levels, the the minimum daily requirement of vitamin D3 needs to be much (10-25 times) higher. Most doctors learned in medical school that these levels are toxic but get surprised when they actually measure the blood level of a patient taking this amount instead of just reading numbers off a chart.

Vitamin D is critical to the maturation processes in the immune system. If your vitamin D level is very low you are very likely to develop autoimmune disease(s) probably depending on genetic issues. If your vitamin D level is optimal, autoimmune disease development is greatly reduced. The problem is once you have an autoimmune disease, getting your vitamin D level up to optimal will not reverse the disease although it will likely prevent your getting more. See above for reversing some cases of autoimmune Autism.

The final straw breaking the camel's back was a combination of people spending more time inside and dermatologists saying we should avoid the sun by covering up or using sunscreen. The following is a video of the rate of juvenile diabetes in Finland with the official government recommended minimum level of vitamin D over time. It speaks for itself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTtmvMvgfl0&feature=channel

For more information on vitamin D:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/

[dugaresa]

56. i think that people are more aware of issues than they used to be

i remember a time when all kids who had learning disabilities were basically labled "retarded" and that was it.
if you were docile and could learn a task you became a bagger at the local grocery store. if you considered uncontrollable, you were sent to an institution.

people were ashamed of their children back then, they locked them up to avoid the "shame".

then slowly, people started to wake up and realize that just because kids were different they shouldn't be hidden and then the schools and social systems helped us address the learning needs and many children who would have been locked up are now doing far better than ever expected and we started to notice the differences in disorders and conditions and that is why i think we see a rise in cases.

granted there may be environmental factors as well but i think taking the social stigma away definitely helped

[superconnected]

59. They've been labeling in right for about 30 years now though.

[cpompilo]

60. At the risk of getting flamed (again):

Many autistic kids are finding *relief* with a combination of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (www.BreakingTheViciousCycle.info and www.PecanBread.com PecanBread is for autistic kids on the SCD) and Low Dose Naltrexone (www.ldninfo.org) Dr. Jaquelyn McCandless has developed a LDN cream for autistic kids. She reports huge success with the LDN and diet modifications (basically eliminating all starch, sugar and casein). It has been found that many autistic kids have severe gut dysbiosis. The SCD helps to restore the good bacteria and to balance the gut ecology.

For those of you who say diet has nothing to do with illness/recovery, I say that I am living proof. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet saved my life, healed my Crohn's diseased gut and made me asymptomatic.
I am also using Low Dose Naltrexone cream for Crohn's. I have been on the diet for 5 years and on LDN for 6 months.

The parents with autistic kids who participate in the SCD Yahoo Health Group I am in report great sucess with the diet, so I am passing along the anecdotal evidence.
Carol

[Pavulon]

62. Advise those who are grasping at straws

to consult an internal medicine doc to be sure they are not actually making a situation worse. I generally do not post medical stuff as some person may actually take it seriously.

Autism and Crohns are both diseases with difficult and long term health and lifestyle impacts. So people have a hard time with this and get scammed by people selling or promoting crap.

[Pavulon]

61. DO NOT eat at OLIVE GARDEN while pregnant

obviously the cause of the "rise" in autism.