ABOUT AUTISM
August 21, 2011
Talking about autism is always interesting to me. My older brother is autistic, he’s 40 now and works in my dad’s office. But his job is only doing something simple like wrapping the stationery into the box. He’s so happy when he receives small pocket money as his salary per month of a job as what I first thought as a child’ game. One thing that makes us so proud of him is his intuition of people. He can recognize the people only from their face and body language, which we normally can not do perfectly. Till now, it seems so hard for my mom to accept him completely. My parents are Chinese Indonesians (the same race). When my brother was born, doctor found he was not able to cry out loud as the other normal new babies born. Then my dad accused my mom because she came from poor family. This retardation must be from her genetic problem / heredity because of malnutrition. But in my opinion, it does not always come from poor or wealthy families. Then he started to find out how many her family members that were also autistic, and it hurt my mom a lot. That’s why till today she can not believe one of her kids is autistic.
6 years ago I also worked as a playgroup teacher in an international school and one of my students (George – not the real name) was an autistic boy too. First I fully understood that his parents wanted him to be as normal as possible so they sent George to normal school. But since George was not able to adjust with all of his classmates, I thought it was just spending money and time. He needed a special treatment / therapy in a separate school, a school that specially opens for “children with special needs”, not normal schools. So we went and explained this to his parents. But we only came with never end-up arguments, the point was his parents just wanted his son to be normal. I said,” Please accept him to be special.”. And George’s parents are an educated couple. His mom got PhD degree from Japan and Europe. It took few months for her to get awake and start finding the information for autism.
Below may be the causes of autism:
1. The biggest cause of autism – ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), Asperger Syndrome – is because the parents have too much heavy chemical exposure in the period of long time that makes chromosomal mutation, such as under heavy nuclear radiation, malnutrition (consuming too much fast food, junks, dairy products, canned food), water and air pollution. Life style of people has changed and specially for who live in big cities, in their busy life, taking those kinds of food which contain less nutrition for the body is much easier to be prepared than natural ones. Few decades ago scientist only focus on the genetic problem without observing deeply why and what factors that make the structure of gen changes. I wish I can conduct a campaign and encourage people to go back to nature, prepare their food from natural resources. But they have choices and of course we can’t stop them. But at least, people should know the side effects of taking fast-food.
2. Tooth patches for pregnant women.
Some dentists use materials that contain lead / metal for tooth patches. To avoid cavities, regular brushing teeth and reducing high-sugar food / drinks such as cokes are much safer.
3. Cosmetic materials from mercury / contaminated seafood of mercury.
Usually cosmetics for whitening body purposes contain some levels of mercury. Although the level is minimum, but the accumulation may result in dangerous effect in the future if it’s used for long time.
A question is “So, do pregnant women still need protein from fish for their babies ?”
Yes, they need more protein but taking fish from deep water sea such as tuna and salmon is more recommended.
4. Over Dosage or excess vaccine that contains mercury such as hepatitis B vaccine. It should be given in careful recommendation.
5. Genetic factor
Symptoms of autism:
1. Speech delay or very slow in mastering language.
2. No eye-contacts.
3. Live in their own world, they prefer to play alone and be separated from their friends. (socialization problem)
4. No ability to express what they want verbally
5. Very aggressive, some of them have sleep difficulties.
6. They also like to spin themselves
7. No or very slow responds of other people surround them.
Many other foods are blamed for worsening autism as well, including eggs, tomatoes, eggplant, avocado, red peppers, soy and corn. However, authors of alternative medicine literature on the subject of autism and food allergies admit that allergy tests to these foods, as well as to wheat and milk, are usually negative, and most of these children do not seem to experience typical symptoms of food allergies. Therefore, they recommend testing for specific antibodies (IgG) against these foods. However, a set of guidelines known as the Practice Parameters for Allergy Diagnostic Testing states that IgG antibodies have no role in the diagnosis of food allergies.
Diets free from the above foods, mostly gluten-free and casein-free diets, have been studied for children with autism. Most of these studies are of very poor quality and not up to modern-day scientific standards. About.Com
But my opinion is contact the doctor to determine some food dietaries for autistic children before we decided not to give the nutrition they might need