some ASD rambles.

[emmacrew]

I don't know how the "OMG THE MMR VACCINE MAKES KIDS AUTISTIC" folks (and boy, there are an awful lot of them) explain things like the UW study where specialists from their early autism treatment program watched video from the first birthdays of a number of children, and were able to tell from those videos which of the kids had grown up to get ASD

Comments

[emmacrew]

Yep. It's just this e-mail list I'm on, with the parents of autistic kids, there's a very vocal core group of them that seems to think if we're not putting our kids on CF/GF diets and we vaccinate them and we don't give them chelation drugs to remove the mercury and it goes on and on... that we're bad parents not interested in finding a cure and, well. I don't think there's some magic cure for all of autism like they seem to. And every now and then the barrage of posts from these folks just gets to me and I'll blurt out something like this on my journal instead of posting something unpleasant to the listserve.

[boojum]

I have an (often trainwreck) interest in what I've been calling anecdotal psych: books, often written for a lay audience, which focus on one or a handful of patients and tell their stories, usually with some degree of purple prose. I'm pretty sure that one of the anecdotal autism books recommended GF/CF (/yeast-free/tomato-family-vegetable-free/sugar-free/food-coloring-free/soy-free/banana-free) for *everyone*, pretty strongly. I don't remember the argument, other than that it had to do with spiky yeast in the intestines.

If you haven't seen the chez miscarriage mommy-drive-by posts yet, they might make it easier to cope with that vocal group of that list.

[emmacrew]

When P was being diagnosed, most of the autism books that one could find in palces like Barnes & Noble really talked about the GF/CF diet. I read one that said "if on the day you even suspect your child has an autism diagnosis you do not immediately cut out all wheat and dairy products, you are an awful awful parent who does not care about doing what is best for your child." And I only paraphrase a little bit.

The argument I've seen for the diet is that some thing (vax, Hg, whatever) has damaged the ability to process nutrients properly (this is where they start using the term "wounded gut"). And something with peptides and other handwaving, means the dairy proteins and gluten form substances that are basically opiates. So the kid is going around with roughly the equivalent of a brain full of morphine, so no wonder they can't process anything. I kid you not.

I also wonder if they even know what it feels like to have a brain full of morphine, because I can tell you the way I felt then has nothing in common with the behaviors of

[boojum]

I think the book I'm remembering used the same argument, only yeast was the perpetuator of the wounded gut because of the spikes, and the wounded gut meant incompletely digested casein/gluten/etc. was getting into the bloodstream through the holes, and they were what was behaving like opiates. I don't remember how the author got to spikes

[aylara]

Just so you know, leaky gut is an actual real thing. It's more scientifically tied to things like celiac disease. Basically, in celiacs, wheat damages the intestine quite horribly and starts tearing holes in it. Usually, though, celiacs know and have extreme adverse reactions to wheat, like cramping and diarrhea

[emmacrew]

Oh, I know that's a real thing. But the auto-immune responses you're describing is pretty different from what the people who think that autism is caused by "wounded gut" (their term) talk about.

[aylara]

OK. I'll take your word for it, because I haven't read that stuff. :)

[emmacrew]

If you haven't seen the chez miscarriage mommy-drive-by posts yet, they might make it easier to cope with that vocal group of that list.

I haven't! Where is?

[boojum]

It starts here, and the next few posts are follow-ups of various sorts. Lots of stories and commiseration about "shouldn't you be [x]-ing for/to your child, you horrible evil person you?" and thoughts about ways to cope with them.