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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-food-allergies-children-autism-spectrum.html
A new study from the University of Iowa finds that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more than twice as likely to suffer from a food allergy than children who do not have ASD.
Wei Bao, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health and the study's corresponding author, says the finding adds to a growing body of research that suggests immunological dysfunction as a possible risk factor for the development of ASD.
"It is possible that the immunologic disruptions may have processes beginning early in life, which then influence brain development and social functioning, leading to the development of ASD," says Bao.
[...] The study found that 11.25 percent of children reportedly diagnosed with ASD have a food allergy, significantly higher than the 4.25 percent of children who are not diagnosed with ASD and have a food allergy.
Bao says his study could not determine the causality of this relationship given its observational nature. But previous studies have suggested possible links—increased production of antibodies, immune system overreactions causing impaired brain function, neurodevelopmental abnormalities, and alterations in the gut biome. He says those connections warrant further investigation. [emphasis Gaaark's]
"We don't know which comes first, food allergy or ASD," says Bao
#Personal Observations:
Gaaark's personal observation of his son and his self is that at the very least, foods that cause allergic 'reactions' DO INDEED intensify autistic behaviours.
When we fed our son products with gluten (Kraft macaroni and cheese was his favourite), he was much more self involved and much less externally observant. He also regurgitated the macaroni (we think THIS behaviour was linked to the dairy in the cheese) hours afterwards and would often laugh oddly while staring into space (his doctor said this was due to the 'bugs' in his stomach turning the gluten into an opioid: he was 'high').
Off the gluten and dairy, he is much more observant of external things, enjoys and gives hugs and is much more 'normal'.
*End Personal Observation
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:53PM (2 children)
We've got two, aged 14 and 16 now, the older one is on the severe end of the scale, the younger one considered alone would still be called severe, very restricted conversational skill, but is nowhere near the older one.
We started gluten-free for the older one when he was 3 and it helped a lot, better understanding of what people want from him, less total meltdown for no reason that anyone else understands. He's always been an up and down performer, better some days than others. When he was 3 we had a kitchen gate. One day he came to the gate and we just casually asked him "what do you want" and he responded "milk." We prompted him a little and pretty quickly got a "milk, please" and gave him milk. The next day he came to the gate and just stared. We tried "what do you want" prompting for 15 minutes, and he just didn't have any words to give that day - even when we finally said "do you want milk?" he couldn't even echo the word. Yes, we also tried casein free for a couple of years, but it wasn't so dramatic or obvious as the gluten - I think at the time of the gate incident we were casein free and the milk was soy (another hard choice for me: soy is full of copper, displaces zinc, and is a strong source of phytoestrogen...) For years afterwards, the older was highly gluten sensitive - a single graham cracker would cause huge negative effects for weeks. Getting diet compliance at school was virtually impossible. One odd observation we have repeated several times over the years. In times when we would have several months of gluten-free compliance, things would be relatively good and sometimes, for one reason or another the gluten free rule would be knowingly broken. One time in about 2008 we were travelling in Alabama and there just wasn't a choice, so we gave him normal pancakes. For a period of a few hours after initial gluten exposure (onset maybe 30-90 minutes after eating), he had dramatically increased clarity of understanding and ability to communicate - normal-ish requests and spontaneous observations. Then it went to shit, for over a week. We have observed similar brief windows of clarity when he gets a fever.
Just to try to stay on-point here, the younger one is more communicative, but nowhere near conversational - to get anything on a topic you are interested in is an extraction process, but... he's not gluten sensitive, it just doesn't seem to make a difference for him. The older one is less gluten sensitive these days, it still makes a difference, but it's less "light switch" dramatic than it used to be. Hyperbaric therapy makes some observable, but temporary, improvements in the older one, and the reduction in gluten sensitivity came around the time we started doing that. Connected? Who the hell knows. What does the hyperbaric therapy really do? Again, who the hell knows. We tried it because: A) it seemed like a "do no harm" thing to try, B) a (small, performed by researcher with vested interests) blinded placebo controlled study demonstrated significant results, C) when we tried a session in his clinic we seemed to get positive results, D) the kids were 5 and 7 years old, school was a slow motion train wreck, and we were fucking desperate. We've more or less duplicated the results of the study in our older child, the younger one doesn't like the chamber experience and hasn't done more than a handful of sessions. More eye contact, calmer, as a result slightly better communication and markedly better overall behavior. I built a storage shed with an attic about the same dimensions (and temperature/humidity) as the hyperbaric chamber and tried doing 60 minute "sessions" in that space, didn't see the same results as going to 4psi (normal air) for 60 minutes. In my mind, it does "something" - but what that something is is too complex to even begin to draw conclusions about from a sample of one with just behavioral data to go from, and even if we were inclined to go bio-chemical research mode with him, he's not compliant with people who do things like drawing blood. I feel like I've lost the thread again, so: hyperbaric therapy seems to have blunted the gluten response in our gluten sensitive child.
We've had a couple of those "suddenly something clicked" moments, potty training was a big one, also around age 5 and 7 maybe 6 months before we started the hyperbaric stuff. Sometimes you think it's something you've done, but I think it's more often just developmental, not really the result of any specific thing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 09 2018, @06:04PM (1 child)
Now that my sons school got rid of his old teacher, he is doing better and they are actually (sort of ) trying to give him an education instead of the edumacation he was getting before, but his teacher was away on Friday and he was given regular fucking pizza:
:he was up, last night, until 3am and he has been loud (he mostly just makes repetitive noises) loud, loud with some moments of anger (he dug his nails into my back which he has never done before).
Yeah, it's a trial at times.
One day when my son was about 3, we were outside and a butterfly landed near us. I said, "look at the butterfly!" His head whipped up to look at me and i said "butterfly... butt-er-fly...butterfly"
His mouth started working, he screwed his face up and said, clearly, "BUTTERFLY". Well i fucking almost shit myself because he'd started losing so many of the few words he DID have.
I praised him up and down: "YES, BUTTERFLY" etc. He kept watching my mouth but NEVER EVER has he said it again.
Sigh.
We started looking at things like the hyperbaric chamber, etc, after we started him on the GF diet but once we got that 'FINALLY' moment at the year point, we stopped (one, it ended a loooong period of him only getting 2-4 hours sleep per night....we were just completely exhausted and off our rockers (I believe i was at the point where my boss reluctantly started the process of firing me (i got one write-up) because she was trying to fire another woman and couldn't do that without also doing the same to me...luckily at that year-ish point we got one night of sleep, then another and another...but my long term memory has never really returned to normal), and two because we thought maybe he would just keep progressing and doing better, which he did but only up to a point.
He's doing pretty well now with his communication software, but my wife is now wishing we'd kept him in public school the whole time instead of having him graduate to high school: he was doing amazingly there, learning english, math, science. In high school (under the old teacher especially) they weren't using his software, we finally discovered, and when they started to use it, they couldn't get him to spell CAT.
Glad your kids are doing 'well' with a great parent/parents. The parents loving advocating and pushing make all the difference.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @08:53PM
Our oldest was in public 8th grade this year (oldest they've had at that school), and they did a good job with him. In the old days we really pushed to give them the opportunity to learn how to pass as normal, and there were times it paid off big. We got the oldest included for 1st grade in a K-2 room and he really made huge progress, started reading out loud, showed big signs of self esteem, had some challenges but was 200% better off than he was in the "special" room we moved him from. The following year the Principal got him a new "appropriate" 1:1 aide (read: low salary, low ambition) and problems started, at which point the principal started pushing to move him to the special room, which he clearly resisted, and the whole thing turned into a major shitshow including a pre-firing meeting for me (not really deserved, the company was on greased skids to bankruptcy anyway and I had more than successfully finished the job they needed done, so clearly getting rid of my salary extended their runway...) My wife has been SAHM the whole time, so there is a bit of stress involved when my work gets sketchy...
Communication software, PECS cards, etc. have never really helped us much. Communication is majorly lacking with both of them, but it's not because they can't speak or understand spoken words. There is a processing time issue: say something, then wait, and wait, and wait maybe 10x as much as you normally would and if he's really paying attention / focused, he'll usually understand what you said and respond accordingly (no small challenge that extended period of focus...) He will fool you by anticipating situations, when there's a familiar routine going on he will wait for trigger/cues and respond to them instantly with words, actions, whatever, but if you throw him a curve then he's back on the slow processing time. It reminds me of when I hung out with Germans for a summer, they'd say something in German and I wouldn't get it at the moment, but many times 20 seconds to 10 minutes later it would dawn on me what was said.
Keep up the advocacy, but also find a sustainable place for yourselves - having our eldest picked up at 8:30 and dropped off at 4:30 by the school bus every day was a huge work reduction for the rest of us, and it improved everybody's situation including his.
🌻🌻 [google.com]