An interesting article on Autism:

http://www.algonot.com/pdf/AutismTrendsPharmSciAug08.pdf

I’m not sure I buy everything that’s said in this article but it does raise some very interesting questions about Autism.  I personally am of the opinion that allergies play a very large part in the neurological inflammatory process that creates the hemispheric imbalance.

This article from Reuters reporting on an article in Pediatrics journal:

Calls to poison control centers for U.S. teenagers who have overdosed on attention deficit drugs rose 76 percent over eight years, researchers reported on Monday.This is nearly the same as the 80 percent rise in prescriptions for such drugs, Dr. Jennifer Setlik and colleagues at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center reported.

continued here

Two videos for those who are concerned about the possibility of “the flu”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpQ4HMfi3gs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g-QWX1EVXE

This is the route I’ll be going should the flu come knocking at my door, and even before…

The Dairy Reporter announces this:

Childhood food sensitivity ‘normal’, says study

The occurrence of food hypersensitivity in children is common, and not necessarily linked to allergy, says a new study from Denmark.

According to findings published in Allergy, there also exists a discrepancy between sensitisation, self-reported food-related symptoms and confirmed food hypersensitivity.

Results from the Danish Allergy Research Centre cohort study indicate the need for better testing of children, as well as deepen our understanding of childhood sensitivity to certain foods, particularly milk, egg, and peanut.

“Sensitisation to foods in young children without food allergy seems to be a normal phenomenon,” wrote the researchers from Odense University Hospital.

Comments to come…

Looking for a reason why your child has neuro-developmental disorders?  MedPage Today has this article (excerpted):

Government scientists say all 15 brands of powdered infant formula they tested contained some level of perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel since World War II.

However, environmentalists and others have questioned the value of using the EPA’s calculations alone. One reason is that powdered formula containing perchlorate would be mixed with water, which might contain even more of the chemical.

In a series of 48 hypothetical models of daily exposure to perchlorate among infants, Dr. Schier and colleagues found that 54% would exceed the reference dose, assuming that water containing as little as 4 mcg/L of perchlorate was used to mix the formula.

“Further work is needed to clarify both the complex interrelationships among the thyroid, perchlorate, and iodide, as well as any potential public health risk with exceeding the perchlorate reference dose,” they said.

The chemical inhibits the transport of iodine into the thyroid, and thus may disrupt the production of thyroid hormone and stunt fetal and infant brain development, they said.

However, several ecological and cohort studies have failed to establish a connection between perchlorate-contaminated water and neonatal thyroid function or fetal growth, they said.

Dr. Schier and colleagues examined three samples each from 15 brands of powdered formula, including those based on cow’s milk (with and without lactose), soy products, and synthetic amino acids (known as elemental formula).

Taken together, the samples from cow milk-based formula with lactose had a significantly higher concentration of perchlorate than the rest (P<0.05).

“The findings of these studies are somewhat reassuring, although higher iodine intake in the population may have reduced perchlorate-mediated inhibition of iodide transport,” they said.

“This would likely lessen the possibility of perchlorate-induced thyroid dysfunction,” they said. “However, the complex relationships among iodine, perchlorate, and their effects on thyroid hormone production are still being elucidated.”

The Environmental Working Group has some additional information on this, including this chart:

The problem is, perchlorate can affect the unborn child as well.  Thyroid hormone is one of the most important hormones in guiding and directing the developmentl of the nervous system.  And given the seeming increase of ladies with thyroid disorders, you can appreciate the potential problem.

There are numerous articles on the web that verify the effects of a lack of thyroid hormone in neonates and later neuro-developmental disorders.   Here’s one entitled that’s worthy of note:

Impact of Neonatal Thyroid Hormone Insufficiency and Medical Morbidity on Infant Neurodevelopment and Attention Following Preterm Birth

more to come…

This article from MedPage Today.  I found this part interesting:

Nearly 80% of Tourette children had also been diagnosed with at least one other mental health or neurodevelopmental condition, Dr. Scahill and colleagues found.

These associated conditions included behavior or conduct problems, anxiety, depression, and learning disabilities.

Most common was attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, co-diagnosed in approximately 64% of Tourette cases (95% CI 52% to 76%

More to say on this soon…

This from the American College of Cardiology as reported on MedPage Today regarding testing children pre-stimulant medication for risk of sudden death:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ACCMeeting/13540

My comment:  Quite a turn of events, given that it follows this article just a few weeks earlier…

ADHD Drugs: Sudden Death Risk Higher?

June 15, 2009 — A new study suggests that children and teens who take stimulants like Ritalin for ADHD have an increased risk for sudden cardiac death, but the FDA says the study has major limitations and should not change the way the drugs are used.

There have long been concerns that the stimulants used to treat ADHD may increase the risk for sudden death in children with undiagnosed heart conditions.

The new research finds corroborating evidence for concern, although all agree that the risk of sudden cardiac death is very small.

http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20090615/adhd-drugs-sudden-death-risk-higher

It seems that someone decided it was worth the cost – especially to the parents of those 1.9% of kids at risk.  Thank someone for the injection of sanity.

Another impression comes from noted anti-medication Psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/stimulants-for-adhd-shown_b_216912.html

Dr. Breggin has some interesting things to say.  I would highly recommend you check out this article.

For the record, I am not against medication.  I am certainly against the unwarranted use of medication.  And I’m only for medication when all other reasonable measures have been tried.  Unfortunately, a “quick fix” mentality is pervasive in our society.  Parents DON’T want to get those notes from the teachers and principals, so they cave in and go for the medication.  Of course, no one tells them that, according to the longitudinal  Finnish study that eight years down the road there is no difference between the medicated and non-medicated group.

Researchers also found surprising results regarding the effectiveness of medicine in treating ADHD. In contrast to children in United States, youth in northern Finland are rarely treated with medicine for ADHD, yet the ‘look’ of the disorder — its prevalence, symptoms, psychiatric comorbidity and cognition — is relatively the same as in the U.S., where stimulant medication is widely used. The researchers point out that this raises important issues about the efficacy of the current treatments of ADHD in dealing with the disorder’s long-term problems.

“We know medication is very effective in the short-term,” said Smalley, who authored or co-authored each of the papers. “But the study raises important questions concerning the long-term efficacy of ADHD treatment. Here we have two different cultures and two different approaches to treatment, yet at the time of adolescence, there are few differences in the presentation and problems associated with ADHD.”

I thought this was worthy of passing on from the National Autism Association:

http://nationalautismassociation.org/images/NAA_OBAMA.pdf

Greetings!  It’s been quite a while since my last post, but lots of interesting things are happening I want to share, so I’m going to try to be a more responsible blogger.  Stay tuned…

A new article on rhythm, timing and intelligence from the Journal of Neuroscience entitled ‘Intelligence and variability in a simple timing task share neural substrates in the prefrontal white matter’, Fredrik Ullén, Lea Forsman, Örjan Blom, Anke Karabanov and Guy Madison from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.  This article is summarized by Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2008 ) — People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows. The team that carried out the study also suspect that accuracy in timing is important to the brain processes responsible for problem solving and reasoning.

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. They stress that the task subjects performed had nothing to do with any musical rhythmic sense but simply measured the capacity for rhythmic accuracy. Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.

“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving,” says Fredrik Ullén at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study with Guy Madison at Umeå University. “Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”

According to Fredrik Ullén, the results suggest that the rhythmic accuracy in brain activity observable when the person just maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacity that is measured with intelligence tests.

“We know that accuracy at millisecond level in neuronal activity is critical to information processing and learning processes,” he says.

They also demonstrated a correlation between high intelligence, a good ability to keep time, and a high volume of white matter in the parts of the brain’s frontal lobes involved in problem solving, planning and managing time.

“All in all, this suggests that a factor of what we call intelligence has a biological basis in the number of nerve fibres in the prefrontal lobe and the stability of neuronal activity that this provides,” says Fredrik Ullén.

Who was the gal who sung “I got rhythm…?  Guess she was pretty smart.  O, yeah…Ella Fitzgerald!

This article demonstrates that using the Interactive Metronome, one of the modalities we use in Brain Balance, has a definite scientific basis.