In honor of World Autism Awareness Day, take a moment and type Autism in your search bar. Read all you can, even the wacky theories. Everything is information and information is never a bad thing. But more importantly, find the blogs of families who have children on the spectrum. Allow them to share their story.
Autism may seem like something foreign to you. You don’t have Autism, your children don’t, and you don’t know anyone who does.
But you will.
In 1975 1 out of 5,000 children were diagnosed with Autism.
Today Autism affects 1 out of 68 children.
I know lots of autistic folks with varying ranges of autism. I have heard many ideas and opinions and have some of my own, but just guesses and such.
That diagram on the rising diagnosis of autism was interesting. I did not know it was as many as 1 in 68 now! Fascinating. Definitely something to look more into. Can’t learn too much.
<3
Thanks, Virginia. Autism is increasing at incredible bounds, and all the experts say they don’t know why.
I did as I suggested and spent a good amount of time reading about the families of Autistic children. And what I discovered was a wealth of parents who have minimized if not eliminated symptoms of Autism with diet change. Sugar free, gluten free, GMO free and introduced healthy probiotic rich raw dairy and fermented foods. So I find it absolutely incredible science hasn’t gotten a hold of this yet. Well they have, studies of the human microbiome is considered one of the most exciting new fields in science today, but so little money from Autism grants is going to that field. Plus it obviously leads one to think our food sources are the problem as well as the inundation of chemicals in our water, soil, food, dishes, cookware, personal care products and medicine. Which also leads one to see how vaccines may not be the cause, but could easily be the catalyst when given to a child who’s tiny little new body has already been weakened fighting off the influx of all these toxins.
Definitely food for thought, pardon the pun.
This is exactly part of my reasoning, as well. The increase in environmental toxins paired with the decrease in the quality of our food systems seems an obvious area for investigation regarding not only autism, but other conditions that have been on the rise, like food allergies. I’m no scientist, but those are my theories. I remember reading in my environmental education masters coursework that firstborn whale calves often die from the amount of toxins in their breastmilk. (My own personal theory is that firstborn human babies may incur a similar toxin load.) That kind of environmental load seems like an obvious problem in so many ways.
I did not know that about whale calves. Scary thought, I guess that makes me a little grateful my firstborn weaned herself at 6 months. It would be interesting to look at statistical data for firstborn children and their health.
Funny you should mention food allergies, I did some reading on that as well and I find it interesting that most food allergies are proteins. Considering most people have all but destroyed the healthy bacteria in the stomach that breaks down proteins it seems like a logical link. I’m no scientist either, but I do enjoy a game of internet hide and seek. Sometimes it takes a dozen or so medical papers, but eventually something will start to connect.
If your interested take a look at Microbiome studies. There are so many papers out there of scientist who say they can diagnose various diseases prior to any symptoms just by looking at the bacterial and fungal makeup of ones stool. Which leads to the natural conclusion it can be stopped or cured by changing the flora in ones gut. Which means eliminating just about everything that makes up the typical America diet as most of the GMO, sugary, chemical laden foods are what is killing off the good gut flora.
Did you get your bees yet? That is next on my list of animals to add to the little farm. Good raw honey is hard to find anywhere. Plus like everything else, I worry about what people feed them in the winter.
We pick up our new bees Saturday morning, and Mr. S. will install them in their hives that evening. He’s been prepping his new Warre hive and cleaning up the old top-bar hive. We’re going to re-site the hives since we had this set back, to a less trafficked area of the pasture, but still with early light and lots of sun. And Mr. S. still wants to build a new roof for the top-bar to prevent moisture problems by allowing more airflow. He bought materials yesterday, but won’t have it done for Saturday. But he can use the old flat roof and swap the roof out once he gets it finished. So you can guess what one of my weekend posts will be about. 😀