Heavy Metals Connection to Autism & ADHD

Here is a link to a video of a leading researcher and doctor talking about aluminum.   This information is greatly needed! It will change how you get vaccines and what you cook on!

Interview with Dr. David Ayoub about aluminum and it's link to Autism, ADHD, & Alzheimers

To Buy or Not To Buy - Organic That Is???

“Prioritizing the Non-toxic Conversion”  (my last posting) spoke of “The Dirty Dozen, the fruits and veggies with the most pesticides. I thought I would go ahead and list them here. These are researched and published by The Environmental Research Group. As I mentioned in my last post, as you prioritize where to spend your money, and whether organic this or that is worth it, I would start with oils, then meats (grassfed), then corn or soy and other genetically engineered or modified foods, then fruits and veggies. But if you bear these in mind, while shopping it can help you decide if the extra cost of the organic foods are worth it. Environmental Working Group even has a handy printable form of this that is a convenient size for the wallet. Click here HERE to go to where you can download your own copy. 

The “Dirty Dozen”  (highest level of pesticides) 
1. Peach (imported)2. Carrot  
3. Pear 
4. Apple 
5. Bell Pepper 
6. Celery 
7. Nectarine 
8. Strawberries 
9. Cherries 
10. Kale 
11. Lettuce 
12. Grapes

 The CLEAN 15  – (least amount of  pesticides)   
1. Onion
2. Avocado
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mango
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet Peas
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Papaya
12. Watermelon
13. Broccoli
14. Tomato
15. Sweet Potato

Prioritizing the Non-toxic Conversion

My non-toxic carpet spot cleaners

I was asked a great question this week, and thought I’d share it and my answer with y’all.

QUESTION:
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the different ways toxins get into our lives and the healthier alternatives.  It’s rather overwhelming as I’m sure you know!  Although I’d love to implement many of them, we are not going to spend a lot of money on it, so I am trying to prioritize what would be the most important areas to change.  For example, would it be better to put money toward things that bother me, like a filter for our chlorinated tap water, or to buy natural body care products or organic foods or replace aluminum cookware,etc?  We may do all of the above mentioned things eventually, but right now I’m trying to figure out if certain things are more likely to be problematic and should be addressed first. 

ANSWER:
I totally understand your prioritizing question and went through that myself…still going through that a little. There isn't a clear cut answer, and certainly there is no "right" way to go about it. Any improvement is helpful. Most importantly, just take it one step at a time!

The way I determine what to do first is:

1. A balance of cost and benefit, and if it’s one time or ongoing (e.g. organic foods are a substantial ongoing cost vs. replacing aluminum cookware, one time cost. Personally, I’d be tempted to delay organic produce for a bit and save that money to buy a water filter or stainless steel/cast iron/stone cookware).

2. Level of toxins for each. This is hard to determine, different toxins affect people differently. However, in looking at organic foods, you may choose to buy organic apples since they are in the top dozen of most pesticides, etc and buy conventional avocados, since almost no chemicals are used on them anyway. Or replacing toxic surface cleaners/disinfectants (you breath them 24/7 and touch those surfaces a lot) before buying organic bananas (not on the dirty dozen list and has a thick peel which helps some).

3. Just do one thing at a time, then the next, and before you know it you will have converted most of your stuff. I know it’s easy to panic and want to do it all at once, but slow and steady does win the race. This one is a marathon, not a sprint!

How I would Prioritize Going Non-Toxic

1. Water filter
2. Household cleaners, laundry detergents, air fresheners, etc (this ranks high - afterall, we have to breath this stuff 24/7, and little feet and hands touch and absorb it. It’s also relatively easy to transition.)
3. Natural body care products that stay on your skin or are cheaper than conventional.
4. Organic oils, meats, eggs. (This could easily be higher on the list, it’s a toss up in my book.)
5. Cookware (replacing aluminum, copper, non-stick and Tephlon)
6. Other body care products and other top priority organic foods
7. Food Storage (replacing plastic with glass)

Explaining My Choices

Of these items, a water filter and cookware are mostly one time costs; where body care products, cleaners and organic foods are ongoing costs. So, I would list the one time cost items in order of priority, and do the basic minimums (as money allows) on the ongoing items alongside of that.

Water Filter

Without a doubt, I would get a water filter first, and not just a chlorine filter, but one that takes out fluoride, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, VOC’s (volatile organic compounds, I think) etc. We drink water a lot, it’s obviously very essential to the body. We’re made of mostly water! It’s extremely important to our health to have pure water. There are tons of different types of filters available. Personally, we decided to get a Reverse Osmosis (RO) system that mounts under the sink. It seemed the best balance of cost, purity, and ease/convenience of install and use. The prices vary greatly, as does the quality and most expensive ones are not necessarily the best. We got ours from Costco for around $200. I know Sam’s Club has them too. And replacement filters (every 6 months) run around $50. My husband is quite a handyman and installed it himself, so there was no plumber cost.

The rest of the conversion options aren’t as clear cut.

Natural Body Care Products

I would switch to natural body care products as I used up the conventional ones, and spread out the initial change-over cost over time that way. And, you can do things like switching to natural bar soap instead of using liquid soap. The natural liquid soaps are really expensive, but the bar soaps are cheap and long lasting, so I actually spend less now on soap than I did before I went nontoxic! I do get liquid soap (nontoxic, but not organic) for the kitchen though. And here you really have to think through how you use products and where to spend money. Personally for kitchen soap, it’s on my hands briefly and I wash it right off, so I just get something real basic, not the best. Now lotion, where I rub it on and it soaks in (so some of it ends up in my blood fairly quickly without the slight benefits of filtration through the digestive system) I’m willing to spend a little more. Make up falls in this category as well!

Non-toxic Cleaning Products

I would do this similar to the body care products, where I replaced things as I used them up, and spread out the initial cost that way. Something easy to forget is that most cleaning products have fragrance, the chemical kind, not the natural God-made kind. By far, the majority of these fragrances are toxic (not to mention all the actual toxic chemicals for cleaning in these products), then combine tens or hundreds, even thousands of the chemicals in one product and we spread them around our homes, in every room, on most surfaces where we breath them in and touch them repeatedly. Just think of little feet and hands crawling across a freshly mopped floor (absorbing all those chemicals through the skin), and then sucking a thumb, all while breathing in the vapors! Or wonderfully smelling freshly laundered clothes, covering the body, sitting on the skin 24/7 allowing skin to touch and absorb those detergents and dryer sheet chemicals and fragrances.  Since these impact us 24/7, and they are completely loaded with chemicals (that’s what they made of) replacing them ranks pretty high on my priority list!

Cookware and Food Storage

As a  one-time cost priority, I would put it after a water filter. I don’t know about you, but for wedding gifts and hand-me-downs from grandparents and stuff, I got corningware ceramic casserole dishes and glass bread pans, etc. Yet, I totally forgot about the corningware when I went to bake something I had always baked in a 9×9 or 9×13 aluminum pan. I had to realize that it was okay for bread or brownies or whatever to be round or oval and not square. That alone saved some money and let me feel like I could wait to buy alternatives. I’m not always the best at thinking outside the box! That’s baking.
Cookware – fortunately, I had bought a stainless steel set with wedding money when we were first married, so I didn’t need to replace much of my cookware. If you garage sale (or visit antique shops), you can often find some great cast iron skillets and things for cheap – and that can generally go in the oven or on top of the stove! Also, many of these items fall in price ranges where you can put them on a wish list for gifts.

Food Storage 

I would do this after cookware, replacing plastic with glass (pyrex-type).

Organic Foods 

There is such a range here, from eating only organic, to just getting a few things organic, so it’s hard to say, and it can eat up a lot of money. Personally, I’ve come to where I try to get “The Dirty Dozen” organic, and things extra hard to wash (not that washing actually gets the chemicals out of them, but probably does reduce exposure a little) e.g. spinach, lettuce, broccoli; and things close to the same price as conventional e.g. carrots I can usually find organic for about the same price, but if they happen to be way expensive that week and we need them, I get conventional. You can look up the Dirty Dozen – the fruits/veggies with the most pesticides on the Environmental Working Group website (I need to look it up again myself!) Oh yes, and for foods that are mostly genetically modified (GMO) nowdays – corn, soy – I try hard to get those organic too, so that we don’t eat GMO stuff. So, for example, nacho chips (corn) – we only get organic, but Costco has huge bags really affordable.  This area, and how far you can go, is something you really have to decide for yourself.

 Someday, I hope to be able to do more organic (we will soon, my husband is building an aquaponics system in our backyard to grow our own veggies and fish), but for now, we do the most toxin containing foods organic (prioritized in this order): oils (fats/oils are where toxins are stored, so we only get organic oils), meat (grassfed or wild), eggs (preferrably free-range, but at least organic), foods normally genetically modified (corn, we stay away from soy, generally), and the “dirty dozen” fruit/veggies.

Autism Recovery - No Progress...Normal???

Jordan progressed an amazing amount between September and the end of December.  January was a different story. Nothing bad, nothing great. But no progress. When progress slows or stops, I start questioning what is different. What we have added to his diet that may be affecting him, what we have forgotten to keep in his diet or regimen of supplements that may be causing it, what point he is at in his treatment – when one issue is resolved, another will often present itself, as we “peel back the layers” of his health issues. So, maybe we’ve resolved some yeast and heavy metal issues and revealed some viral or parasite issue?  All these things go through my mind – repeatedly. And I turn detective again trying to figure it out.

Discovering Stingrays!

We saw his neuro doctor (Dr. R) today, and I came away encouraged. He, obviously, knows way more about the brain and it’s development than I do (most of what I know of the brain, I learned from him).  He saw a couple of things in Jordan that I hadn’t counted as particularly significant, like using imagination as he took a toy lizard, changed his voice, and began a pretend interaction with the toy snake I was holding :)  He also mentioned how the brain will grow and learn, then may step back a bit and go, “Hmm” and let things settle a bit, before advancing again (okay, so that might not be the scientific explanation).

Tonight as I was reflecting on Jordan and his progress, or lack thereof, and was recalling my older, neurotypical son's progress in his first couple years. I remembered how it seemed that he would go through developmental spurts, where he would progress a lot, and then his development seemed to slow for awhile, until he would hit another developmental growth spurt.

Maybe I’m getting a little too used to monitoring every single detail of Jordan’s diet, development, supplements, vitamins, socialness, fussiness, motor control, etc.  Maybe sometimes something doesn’t have to be wrong or need to be changed when development slows a little.  Now I’m not stopping – we’re still consulting with the nutritional and detox doctor again in two weeks and we’ll be doing the new brain exercises for this month from the neuro doctor, and I’ve already redoubled our efforts on his diet and supplements, removing a couple things we had allowed to creep in.  But, I am breathing a little easier and find myself taking a nice big sigh, relaxing, and putting away my detective badge for tonight. Taking a moment, or a few, to enjoy and reflect on how far he’s come. A bad day now is still 1,000 times better than a good day one year ago!

New Autism Statistics Published by the CDC

In October the CDC (Center for Disease Control) released new Autism rate statistics, the rate of Autism continues to grow rapidly:

• 1 in 91 children (formally 1 in 150 up until 2009 and 1 in 10,000 in the early 1990s)
• 1 in 58 boys
• Fastest growing developmental disability
• More children will be diagnosed with autism this year than cancer, diabetes, Downs Syndrome and AIDS combined.
• Approximately 1 million individuals in the US have autism
•  Studies have shown that environmental toxins like mercury and pesticides can trigger autism.
• There has been no study that has directly linked a pure genetics basis for autism.
• The fastest growing genetic disorders increase at anapproximate rate of 1% per 100 years.  Autism is growing at a much greater rate.

Quote of the Day

My new favorite quote:

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” 

- Chinese Proverb

I just love this, so to all the naysayers out there, you can keep saying Autism is genetic and isn’t reversible, or that nutrition has nothing to do with neurological issues.  While your talking and naysaying, I’m busy saving my child! And I’m succeeding!

Jordan's PDD-NOS (Autism) Heavy Metal Chelation Update

Jordan has been on OSR for one month now. OSR is an antioxident that is quite potent, but gentle as well, and is specific to chelating (pulling out of the body) heavy metals. It is fat soluable rather than water soluable (all other chelators are water soluable). This allows it to get INTO the cell AND cross the blood brain barrier to get metals out of the brain! The best part – it’s rates a zero on the toxicity scale. So, it’s very safe.

So my son who is ultra sensitive to everything…like put sunscreen on him one day and he’s in meltdown for 2 days, has been on OSR for 4 weeks. The last week got a bit bumpy and he started overreacting (aka meltdown) to things like big brother looking at him cross-eyed, so we took him off the OSR to give his body a break for a week or two before he goes back on it.

A recap of our first month on OSR.
 I didn’t notice any remarkable differences nothing changed from one day to the next. There was no WOW experience…until we got to the end of the month and I looked back. This month he progressed very quickly in his speech and cognition, and evened out in his behavior/emotional reactions significantly. So much so that I’m able to tell others that he’s a normal 2 1/2 year old now (excepting his diet, of course)!!! This month he arrived at his age appropriate level of speech and was “kicked out” of speech therapy!

One week the speech therapist was here and said he didn’t need to continue anymore, because he was basically age-appropriate except for 3 things that he should be added soon at this age, but that most kids struggle with a little more:  1) “I” to his vocabulary 2) something else, I forget what it was 3) colors (but that often they can take substantially longer before they are incorporated in vocabulary). His case manager was here the next week and mentioned the great news as well as the slight concern of the speech therapist and I was like, oh, ya, he’s has 2 of those 3 things now. He uses “I” regularly and appropriately, and whatever the other category of speech was he was all caught up on too. So, the only thing he doesn’t have yet is colors and I’m not worried about that, it’ll come when he’s good and ready…he doesn’t seem to care about colors just yet. It was fun to see those things added so quickly and so thoroughly! One week those things were lacking, the very next week they were so incorporated into his vocabulary I had forgotten they were new!

As far as his behavior and meltdowns, we can pretty much go anywhere and do anything. It’s fun to be out of the house and visiting parks, playgrounds, stores, or the zoo. All things that were unthinkable until the last several months. And now he’s off and running, discovering, and investigating – and running back to tell me about it or drag me over to see it!!!

He’s a normal 2 1/2 year old – with the exception of his diet, supplements, and supersonic hearing. He still has aways to go in his body being fully healed, but he’s getting there slowly but surely and the OSR is speeding him along that path!

Today was Day #2 off of OSR and WOW what a difference this morning. I had an appointment this morning and when I returned (this is important because he’s not much of a morning person, so he had time to wake up while I was out) he would not stop talking! He wanted to tell me about everything I had missed while I was away, ask me about everything – I had stopped at the store on the way home and he wanted to know what EVERYTHING was. A few months ago when the talking was so rare, I never thought I’d tire of his talking, and him being curious and desiring to learn is still a little bit new, and exhilarating. For the barest moment I started to bristle, all that nonstop talking – I was trying to put the groceries away and he was underfoot, pointing to things, asking me about everything, wanting to tell me about his morning, etc – anyway, the moment I started to bristle, I smiled and had the purest most wonderful joy. He was talking – nonstop (except for when patiently awaiting an answer to his question “What’s that?”)! Ten months ago he could not point to something he wanted much less say mama or dada. His only way to communicate was a scream and I had to figure out what it meant. Ten months, and here I am conversing with him – unbelievable. Miraculous. God’s incredible… 1) To choose to bless me this way, the gift of truly being able to know my son, sharing life with him and he with me  2) The healing He has brought to this little one’s brain and body. Yes, I started to bristle, then smiled, slowed down, and wonderfully soaked up the joy of conversing with my 2 year old and helping him learn about the curiosities of the world around him!