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Friday 7 June 2019

Creating a Consistently Loving Attitude – Samahria Kaufman #autism #autismdiet

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Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism – Dr. Skowron #autism #autismdiet

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M.A.P.S. Dr. David Dornfeld Continued – Chelation / Detox / Lyme Disease #autism #autismdiet

Autism Hope Alliance Lectures, Interviews and Educational Events

  • Event: M.A.P.S. Interview
  • Media: Video Interview
  • Host: Kristin S Gonzalez
  • Guest:  Dr. David Dornfeld
  • Theme: Chelation / Detox / Lyme Disease
  • YouTube: https://youtu.be/7amEojUmhSk

See Video:
https://youtu.be/7amEojUmhSk

What Is Autism Series: Lectures, Interviews and Educational Events
Dr. David Dornfeld | Dr. Monsoor Mohammed | Lanier Rossignol Harvey Diamond | Dr. Richard Frye | Dr. Jared Skowron Devin Houston Ph.D. Raun K. Kaufman | Dr. Anju Usman Singh John Gray | Stu Freedenfeld | Bonni Goldstein M.D. | Jeff Thurston | Jonny Bowden | Dr. David Dornfeld Mark Waldman |Dr. Dan Rossignol Maggie Frank | Dr. Elizabeth Mumper Dr. Mary Bove | Shannon Kenitz |Robyn O’Brien | Dr. James Neuenschwande | Scott Smith | Dr. James Nuebrander |Alex Dolman | Natasha Trenev | Dr. Anju Usman Singh | Bob Doman | Dr. Darin Ingles | Lisa Ackerman | Dr. Tom O’BryanDr. Jo FeingoldDr.’s Jason & Melissa Sonners | Dr Sonia McGowin | Dr. Bob Sears | Lisa Ackerman | Jacquline & Chris Laurita | Ocean Robbins Dr Raphael Kellman | Stacey Littlefield | Tom Bohager | Dr Pedram Shojai | James Neubrander Part 2 | James Neubrander Part 1 | Liz Lipski Ph.D | Gay Hendricks | Choose Hope | Let’s Go Shopping | Katherine Woodward Thomas | Dr Dan Rossignol | Dr Jerry Kartzinel | Dr Dave Dornfeld | Raun Kaufman | Celeste King | Dr Anju Usman  | Donna Gates | Dr Dan Rossignol Dr Joseph Mercola

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Naturopathic Doctors vs. Medical Doctors – M.A.P.S Doctor Zayd Ratansi #autism #autismdiet

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Empowering Parents Through Education & Connection – Andrea Pollack #autism #autismdiet

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Environmental Toxins & Autism – M.A.P.S. Dr. Dan Rossignol test #autism #autismdiet

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Sunday 21 April 2019

Sunday 17 February 2019

What is Autism? #autism #autismdiet

Autism appears to have its roots in early brain development. The most obvious signs of autism and symptoms of autism tend to emerge between 2 and 3 years of age. Both children and adults with autism typically show difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, and leisure or play activities.

ASD occurs in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. However, it is about five times more common among boys than among girls. CDC estimated that about 1 in 68 children (2014 CDC) had been identified with an autism aspectrum disorder.

There are three different types of Autism Spectrum Disorders:

1. Autistic Disorder (“classic” autism)

This is what most people think of the word “autism.” People with autistic disorder usually have significant language delays, social and communication challenges, and unusual behaviors and interests. Many people with autistic disorder also have intellectual disability.

2. Asperger Syndrome

People with Asperger syndrome usually have some milder symptoms of autistic disorder. They might have social challenges and unusual behaviors and interests. However, they typically do not have problems with language or intellectual disability.

3. Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)

People who meet some of the criteria for autistic disorder or Asperger syndrome, but not all, may be diagnosed with PDD. People with PDD usually have fewer and milder symptoms than those with autistic disorder.

The post What is Autism? appeared first on Autism Hope Alliance.



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Monday 14 January 2019

How to Make an Autism Cheat Sheet for the Babysitter #autism #autismdiet

How to Make an Autism Cheat Sheet for the Babysitter – by Jim Walter

I remember the first time I left my older, neurotypical (not diagnosed with autism) daughter Emma with a babysitter. I was nervous but excited to get out of the house. My wife took the babysitter around our home, showing her where to find various items and walking her through Emma’s evening bedtime routine. I jotted down our cell phone numbers on a sticky note. That was it.

Things are very different for Lily, my daughter who has autism. A simple house tour and jotted down phone number would be laughably, criminally inadequate.

So, my wife and I both decided early on that we’d need some sort of cheat sheet to give to babysitters and caregivers. Over the years, that first cheat sheet morphed into a repository of medical snapshots, answers to the repeated questions from each new specialist, and more. Eventually it expanded into a novella-sized tome and its practical use was greatly diminished.

It became necessary to parse the information into different documents, pare down descriptions, and make it more of an at-a-glance primer. At its most basic level, the “Guide to Lily” started with the idea that it should be enough information for a babysitter to view and address the majority of Lily’s most common needs and wants — but not so much information that it was impossible to find quickly amidst many pages.

Here’s what’s in it:

1. Specialized language guide
This is probably first and foremost. Lily verbally communicates pretty effectively with her family in general. But certain things that I take for granted — like her special names for different things (e.g. “red nono” means the first “High School Musical” movie on DVD) — wouldn’t be understood by a babysitter.

I wrote out an alphabetical list of terms, common words, and phrases to help decrease some of the frustration on both ends. Lily doesn’t always understand requests to repeat the things she says. She becomes frustrated when she isn’t understood, and will say “Please” over and over instead of repeating the misheard phrase or word. Understanding her could alleviate a lot of potential stress.

2. Emergency contact information
Lily does have some medical concerns. A mastocytoma (mass cell tumor) on her shoulder can grow into a welt and give her a full-body rash if it’s triggered. That can be pretty scary. Lily has suspected seizure activity.

Listing and discussing this can prepare a caregiver to more calmly and appropriately react to those sorts of situations. This is also a good place to list doctors’ numbers, parent numbers, nearby neighbors, etc.

3. General strategy
Lily is pretty easy to get along with, but definitely struggles with transitions. She queues her life: Each next step in the queue is smoother to reach if there’s a set trigger. I always tell caregivers to set timers on their phones and give her verbal prompts for new transitions. Potty breaks, for example, go pretty smoothly in general if, five minutes before the next break, you tell her, “In five minutes we’ll go to the bathroom.” When the timer goes off, she’s typically prepared for what’s next.

4. Anxieties and coping mechanisms
There are things that make Lily anxious. While it might be important at some point for someone to know that gorillas and bathroom hand dryers really alarm and frighten her, the odds are pretty good that won’t come up.

Still, listing things that could — like thunderstorms and rain and strategies for helping Lily cope with them — can be very useful.

5. Bathroom routine
Lily doesn’t just “go” like other kids. She doesn’t associate that feeling with a need to go. She needs some intervention. Prompting. It’s nothing overly complicated, but it needs to be understood.

I’ve found outlining bathroom expectations — for Lily, as well as the person responsible for her — in three steps are enough to make sure that routine is consistent and stress-free.

6. Activities
What sorts of things does your child like to do? Lily’s different approach to toys is one of the things that contributed to her autism diagnosis. Because of that, children with autism may be a little hard to engage in what most babysitters might consider “typical” play.

When Lily was a toddler, she loved nothing more than playing with clean diapers. She’d play with almost nothing else — just diapers. That’s not exactly intuitive for a babysitter or caregiver to just pick up.

Now, apart from screen time sorts of activities, Lily does have a handful of things she enjoys doing. It’s useful to list her favorite activities for the babysitter and caregiver. Sometimes even I find myself at a loss as to how to entertain Lily. Some of what’s on your cheat sheet isn’t just for the babysitter!

7. Mealtime tips
Although Lily will typically tell you if she’s hungry, she won’t always. And when Lily gets hungry, she can get impatient, frustrated, moody, and defiant. It’s nice to have rough expectations not only about when Lily might be hungry, but also what’s suitable and acceptable for her to eat.

Directions to finding the food (pantry, basement, fridge, freezer), preparing the food, and whether it must be fed to Lily or not are a good starting point. Cues about when she might be getting full also help.

So are strategies for getting her to eat. In Lily’s case: turn on the TV so she’s not focused on the food, negotiate taking turns with rewarding food to get her to eat less preferred foods, negotiate breaks using a timer to return to the table, etc.

8. Leisure time and TV
TV is a much larger subject in our house than perhaps it should have to be. But with Apple TV, Netflix, DVR content, DVDs, and iPads, it’s very easy to find programming to entertain Lily. The problem, however, is navigating to and from those things. Cable remote, TV remote, DVD remote, iPad remote … toggling between them … navigating back …

So, I took a couple pictures of our various remotes. I added notes about what buttons to push to access different devices, settings, or features so that babysitters could figure out how to navigate away from programming that was upsetting Lily and toward something she’d find more satisfying.

9. Bedtime routine
Lily expects things to be done a certain way. This light is on, this fan is on, this rail is up, this story is read, etc. Lots of caregivers forget the night light (more of a lamp with a very low-watt bulb, really). When/if Lily wakes in the middle of the night, she gets very scared.

The routine is calming for her. If it’s followed, she knows the expectation is for her to sleep. It’s even her expectation.

Other things you could add
For the purposes of babysitting, it wasn’t necessary to overly complicate the cheat sheet. But things you could add if they apply to your family are:

10. Traveling
Apart from an emergency situation, the sitter wasn’t allowed to drive Lily anywhere. This would get added back in for daily care, but for an evening at a restaurant, it wasn’t necessary to go into detail.

11. Homework
Lily doesn’t really have homework, as such. She has goals to work on, but she has therapists who work on them with her. Babysitters can focus on being fun.

You might have other things you want to include on your guide, or maybe some of my topics don’t apply to your situation. You might want to organize them differently. However you address it, the “Guide to My Child” doesn’t necessarily need to be comprehensive and all-encompassing. But it should be informative, concise, and easy to navigate at-a-glance.

Your guide can be more than just a handout for babysitters. Whenever Lily enters a new program, school, or therapy, I can hand it out to new staff. It gives them a little insight straight out of the gate. And as I find myself forgetting things in the hustle and bustle of the day in and day out, it can be a great reminder to me as well.

Jim Walter is the author of Just a Lil Blog, where he chronicles his adventures as a single dad of two daughters, one of whom has autism. You can follow him on Twitter at @blogginglily.

Source: http://bit.ly/2QLvzMo

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Friday 11 January 2019

Video Game Treatment for Kids with Autism, ADHD Suggests Efficacy #autism #autismdiet

From Benjamin Yerys, PhD

A pilot study has found that a video game designed to treat autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and co-occurring attention/deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is acceptable to kids and parents and feasible. While not statistically significant, investigators did report an improvement in measures of attention for children who played with the multi-tasking game.

The game, Project Evo, has been previously studied in children with ADHD, but without co-occurring ASD. Investigators led by Benjamin Yerys, PhD, a child psychologist at the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wanted to test the digital medicine tool with this unique population of children with both diagnoses.

“How feasible is it to use a digital treatment for kids with autism?” asked Yerys in an interview with MD Magazine®. “There are very few such treatments that are out there—there are none that are FDA-approved.”

The question is particularly important because typical medications for ADHD, including methylphenidate, guanfacine, and atomoxetine, aren’t as successful at treating children with autism in addition to ADHD, Yerys added.

The Project Evo game requires children to multi-task by switching between a memory-based task and a visuomotor task. The first requires players to tap the screen to choose a target from a few options, for example, a blue fish as the target with red and yellow fish as distractions, according to the paper. The second task consists of steering a hovercraft along a river. The game’s difficulty increases as the child progresses.

The educational game that children in the control group were given tasked them with generating ever-longer words from a pool of letters.

Children assigned to either group demonstrated high engagement with the games, indicating feasibility of the treatment. Acceptability was measured by questions answered by children and their parents. Most children believed the games improved their attention (72.7% of multi- tasking group answered “yes” or “unsure,” as did 62.5% of educational group). Parents responded that they would want their child to continue playing with the game after the study (90.9% of the multi-tasking group said “yes” or “maybe,” as did 62.5% of the educational group).

Despite the study’s small sample size—just 19 children—the CHOP team also measured promising trends in attention scores for the patients assigned to the multi-tasking game compared to those in the control group.

“While it is extremely early, we did see things moving in the direction that has been seen in other studies,” said Yerys. “The performance on the measure of attention of sustained attention seemed to be in the direction of improving for kids in the active treatment group versus the kids in the control treatment group.”

The multi-tasking treatment group showed non-significant improvement as measured by the Attention Performance Index (API) score from the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA), while the educational group showed non-significant losses on the API from TOVA. The multi-tasking group had a positive effect size (Hedges’ g = .72; 95% CI, − 2.68 – .98; P = .12) about twice that of the educational group’s negative effect (Hedges’ g = -.35; 95% CI, − 1.73, 3.08; P = .55).

“This treatment may be doing what we think it’s doing, which is to improve a certain aspect of cognitive function which can help reduce the negative effects of ADHD,” said Yerys, though he emphasized that with just 11 children participating in the active treatment group these results are not statistically significant.

The research team made minor modifications to the Project Evo game to better suit children with autism as well as ADHD. The study included a pilot phase a week before beginning where the children had access to the games and shared feedback with the investigators.

“One of the most critical things that we changed was in the learning rate,” said Yerys. “That learning rate is a critical piece because you want it to improve fast enough that the game is a challenge, because if the treatment isn’t a challenge, then it’s not actually pushing the system that they want to push with that treatment.”

Yerys indicated that the team is currently pursuing federal funding to continue this research.

“Based on the promising study results, we look forward to continuing to evaluate the potential for Project: Evo as a new treatment option for children with ASD and ADHD,” Yerys said in a statement.

The paper, “Brief Report: Pilot Study of a Novel Interactive Digital Treatment to Improve Cognitive Control in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Co-occurring ADHD Symptoms” was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Source:http://bit.ly/2H9D0NT

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Tuesday 8 January 2019

SeaWorld’s Aquatica Gets Autism-Friendly Designation #autism #autismdiet

Aquatica

ORLANDO, Fla. — SeaWorld officials say its Aquatica Orlando park is becoming the world’s first water park to be credentialed for visitors with autism.

Aquatica Orlando on Tuesday received a designation as a “Certified Autism Center” from the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards.

As part of the credentialing process, the staff at Aquatica is continually trained to assist guests with autism and their families. Autistic guests and their families also are given specific information about which attractions might be best for them.

The park also is planning to have a quiet room with adjustable lighting and a comfortable seating area for guests to take a break.

Last April, a SeaWorld sister park, Sesame Place, became the world’s first theme park designated as a “Certified Autism Center.”

Source:http://strib.mn/2siSDse

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