An Observer Says My Daughter isn’t Autistic
“Shannon,” my 24-year-old daughter, was unable to tell what others were thinking, because of her Asperger’s. The world was a confusing and unpredictable place to her. It’s the reason I homeschooled her from grades 8-12.
But now, after some vitamin therapy under the Yasko protocol and more than a year of NAET treatments, she CAN tell what others are thinking. She’s a responsive and caring individual. In my book, that means she’s not autistic anymore.
My first cousin had the opportunity to get to know Shannon this fall when Shannon went traveling. She hadn’t known Shannon previously. Here’s what my cousin said:
“I have to tell you I had such a good time getting to know ‘Shannon’ when she was out here … What a treasure she is! I was wondering about her autism; she really has emerged from it hasn’t she! How wonderful! Have you ever heard of that happening?”
Personally, I haven’t heard of recoveries like this for others her age, although there probably are some. There are many reported recoveries from more severe autism for kids who are much younger, like under the age of 5 or 10. All these recoveries come from the alternative medical treatment world.
Comments used by my cousin’s and Shannon’s permission.
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@amateurprose@xanga – Can I have some of that tape??? It might help with my son and all of his issues (ADHD, ODD, SPD). If not, I’m sure @gwacemom@momaroo can pass some tequila.
More Evidence Vitamin D May Reduce Autism Risk
(Quoted from Medscape)
Pam Harrison Dec 27, 2012
Children and adolescents living in the United States in states with higher levels of ultraviolet B (UVB) exposure are much less likely to develop autism than their counterparts living in states with lower levels of solar UVB exposure, new research shows.
William Grant, PhD, Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center, San Francisco, California, and John Cannell, MD, Vitamin D Council, San Luis Obispo, California, found that children and adolescents living in states with higher solar UVB doses in summer or autumn had half the rate of autism as their counterparts living in states with the lowest UBV doses.
Rates of autism were also 40% higher in African Americans living in states with the least solar UVB doses compared with white Americans.
Further, African Americans had approximately 40% lower levels of vitamin D than white Americans.
“Summer is when people make the most vitamin D from UVB, and we found that the more UVB dose in summer or fall, the lower the prevalence of autism,” Dr. Grant told Medscape Medical News
Latitude, on the other hand, is an indication of vitamin D production in winter.
Both latitude and UVB were found to be related to autism prevalence in the current ecologic study, Dr. Grant added.
The study was published online in the October/November/December issue of Dermato-Endocrinology.
Autism Map
According to Dr. Grant, the study was prompted by a map of autism rates published in the Los Angeles Times in December 2011.
The map showed that autism rates among children between the ages of 6 and 17 years in 2010 were highest in the Northeast and on the West Coast and lowest among the Southern and Plains states — a trend that is similar to that seen for many types of cancer.
The authors then calculated autism prevalence rates for white, African American, and Asian American persons by using total prevalence and relative populations of minors for each ethnic group by state.
Some states were omitted from the analysis either because no data were available or the numbers of minorities in these states were too low.
Results were reported as regression coefficients, which is a measure of the strength of the association.
For both whites and Asian Americans, solar UBV doses for March, July, and October were much stronger than either UVB doses in January or latitude.
This observation suggests that vitamin D’s effect is associated with vitamin D production from solar UVB when doses are relatively high, the authors note —a finding that is again similar to observations for many types of cancer.
For African Americans, results for latitude were similar to those for UVB, they add.
As the authors point out, the literature supports the idea that vitamin D deficiency before or during pregnancy is an important risk factor for autism.
For example, as previously reported by Medscape Medical News, the older the man at the time of conception, the higher the risk for autism, a risk that is felt to be due to sporadic DNA mutations.
“Vitamin D can correct for sporadic mutations,” Dr. Grant noted, “so it weeds out the bad genes and encourages the good ones.”
The authors cautioned that they cannot rule out whether or not vitamin D status in the infant contributes to autism risk.
However, assuming that solar UVB production of vitamin D is an important factor in reducing autism risk, Dr. Grant advises that pregnant women take enough vitamin D3 to raise serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations to 30 to 40 ng/mL.
Suggestive Evidence
Gene Stubbs, MD, professor emeritus, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, told Medscape Medical News that more work needs to be done to prove the connection between low levels of vitamin D and increased autism risk.
Nevertheless, he said the current study provided “indirect but suggestive evidence” for such a connection.
Dr. Stubbs also noted that there has been at least 1 study in which vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk for clinically significant language difficulties ( Pediatrics 2012;129:485-93).
Animal models of vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy have also shown that low levels have a definite effect on how the brain develops, and the same may be true for humans, although that is speculative, he added.
Dr. Stubbs is now in the early stages of a study in which investigators will evaluate whether vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy decreases the incidence of recurrent autism in women who have previously given birth to an autistic child.
“I’m aiming for 40 ng/mL of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations,” Dr. Stubbs observed, “as I think the 20 ng/mL levels now recommended for pregnant women are too low.”
Dr. Grant received funding from the UV Foundation, Bio-Tech Pharmacal, the Vitamin D Council, the Vitamin D Society, and the Sunlight Research Forum. Dr. Cannell is president of the Vitamin D Council and received remuneration from Purity Products Inc. Dr. Stubbs has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Dermatoendocrinol. 2012:4:4.1-6. Full article
Medscape Medical News © 2012 WebMD, LLC
Send comments and news tips to [email protected].
Cite this article: More Evidence Vitamin D May Reduce Autism Risk. Medscape. Dec 27, 2012.
Improvement is a day brightener!!
@Jenny_Wren@xanga – When she says “All these recoveries come from the alternative medical treatment world,” she’s making a point to insinuate that the same progress would not have happened with modern medicine. I’ve read her plenty long enough to know her tone.
I have no problem with alternative methods. Success is success, no matter where it comes from. But when one uses that success to degrade the success of other treatments, that’s what I have a problem with. And she does this ALL THE TIME.
@amateurprose@xanga – hahahaha i laughed out loud when i read this.
I have a 4.5 year old son who is autistic. and a 13 year old niece who is autistic. will i ever know what caused either of them to have autism? no — if i didn’t vaccinate could my son still have autism? maybe — guess what i vaccinated my now 3 year old daughter — and she has the skills in language, development, and so on of a 5 and 6 year old.
both were exposed to vaccinations. both are exposed to the SAME environmental situations, my daughter was even born 5 weeks early. — and yet one has autism and the other doesn’t.
Same with my neice — she has an older brother and an older sister — neither of which are autistic, but all 3 were exposed to the same environmental toxins the other were. and 1 out of 3 has autism.
while i think environmental factors, foods, etc can help symptoms, it will only do that — help a little (if at all).
autism is a neurological (ie brain) disorder that you have to learn to manage. while it’s possible for the brain to change overtime thus causing symptoms to change or not to be as strong, i don’t think this is something that will just go away that easily.
@chronic_masticator@xanga – I might be missing something, but I don’t see how she slams anyone or anything in this post. She is offering evidence for an alternative route, but it’s possible to use ideas from both conventional and alternative medicine, and get good results, and not slam either.
Is it the very fact that she’s talking about alternative medicine that gets you angry? Because, there shouldn’t be anything off limits for testing and discussion. If it works, who cares if it is alternative?
@Jenny_Wren – not sure how often you read the OP’s posts, but she ALWAYS demonizes modern medicine. Every single time. And when she’s not slamming medicine and doctors, she’s busy pushing that tired and disproven vaccines-cause-autism argument.
I don’t think all people with autism need to be cured. I work with special education students, some of who have autism. I find some of them to be fascinating people who care about others in a different way, but still tend to care. Maybe that’s what is going on… a different level of understanding.
@amateurprose@xanga – Stop that!!! lmao
My daughter has Down syndrome. People tell me often they didn’t realize that she did. Guess what…she still has Down syndrome. Yes, she is a typically functioning five year old who happens to have Down syndrome.
@amateurprose@xanga – Best response EVER.
Just ignore all of the skeptical comments. There are actually a lot of alternative treatments for these kinds of things. For example, did you know that there are studies that suggest that masking tape can cure Tourette’s Syndrome? Crazy, I know!
A friend of mine has a kid with Tourette’s Syndrome, so after a long day of drinking, she and I decided to wrap a shit ton of tape around his mouth, and now he NEVER says weird shit! He is totally cured! The only downside is his dramatic weight loss. We haven’t really pinpointed what the cause of that could be,but we have our best people looking into it.
Furthermore, it turns out that masking tape might be able to cure his A.D.D. too! I have only read a little on the subject, but apparently it involves a lot more tape and a strong, sturdy chair.
@chronic_masticator@xanga – I think I see your point that saying “Oh, she’s cured!” when she likely still needs regular attention to her autism is irresponsible, but in the end, who are we to say that this method doesn’t work? If this worked for this girl, who are we to demonize this method, even if it hasn’t yet been adopted by modern medicine? If they are still adopting the training/teaching tools recommended for autistic children/adults, what harm is it doing to improve her chances of overcoming autism via some dietary additions/restrictions? I guess what I’m saying is–if these methods work for families, what bad could they possibly do?
Is your cousin a doctor? Are you? No? Then neither of you are in any position to say “Hurray, she’s cured!” Because you don’t know. Her symptoms may be reduced, but in the end, she still has autism. If her treatments were to stop, she would likely go back to the way she was before.
I have a friend with a 16 year old son who has autism. He doesn’t act like he does. I had the pleasure of speaking to him about it. He said “I still have autism. I just learned how to act…not weird. I’m still weird, but everyone thinks I’m normal now.”
Leave it to you to demonize modern medicine with a nice story about your daughter. That’s quite a skill you’ve got there.
Congratulations, I’m sure your love and patience was the biggest influence and best medicine.
This is interesting. I’ve heard of parents who’ve put their diagnosed-autistic children on a strictly organic greens/vegan fats/protein diet, and found that it nearly cured them, or at least greatly reduced the symptoms.
I do wonder how much autism can be related to environmental factors, and thus how much of it can be cured through controlling environmental toxins. Anecdotes like these shouldn’t go ignored. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work–but if it does work for some people, why not try it?
I don’t think that she could just magically not have AS anymore. I think a lot of it just has to do with learning normal behavior, that’s what my teacher who has AS says.
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These stories come out of “alternative medicine” because there is a much lower standard of evidence there. In the same way that you take a stranger’s superficial and uninformed perception as evidence of “cure.”
I know what your daughter went through because when I was damaged, I went through the same thing. I noticed that a lot of people who are called autistic are merely brain damaged.
I still rock and hurt myself. I’ll scratch myself up a lot to feel anything.
But I’m starting to be able to think more, which is good.
I don’t know. I started taking a mushroom a little over a week ago, and I’m doing a lot better. It makes me a little happy sometimes, which causes me to go in the opposite direction, but I’m not floating as much, and I have enough brain power to think semi-coherently. I started being able to do puzzles again. I’m taking quite a bit of it twice a day. I was drinking Greek Mountain tea before that, which is the only thing that will calm me down. I’m naturally always agitated or in a state of movement/activity.
I went screaming today, so we know I’m getting back to my old self, my poor neighbors.
I like being angry and in agony. Now that I can’t feel it it’s even more intense. I personify other peoples’ emotions and walk around crazy. I wander. That’s what I like to do. I can play emotions but I can’t process them.
I don’t have control, and it makes me crazy.
I usually scream at satellites that make me feel trapped. I can really scream. People around me get used to it. Some scream back at me.