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What is Autism?

Autism is a set of child developmental delays and disabilities. It includes impaired social interaction and communications, delayed and impaired verbal and language skills, and focus on repetitive activities. Autism is just one of several related disorders in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) classification. Asperger’s Syndrome is the second most common ASD illness after autism and generally differs from autism because language development is not affected as severely.

Early Detection of Autism Provides More Time for Intervention

Early detection of autism can provide parents, doctors, and therapists the time to intervene early in a child’s development, before autism becomes more severe. Although doctors recommend screening for autism starting at age 18 months, it is difficult to screen kids under the age of 2 (sometimes even older) because of typical developmental variations between children that are apparent in the verbal, language, emotional, and motor skills tests used to identify autism.
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Statins are a now famous (or infamous, depending upon your viewpoint) class of medicine used widely in American medicine. While studies do show they help reduce total and LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol and triglyceride levels, there are serious side effects to these medicines. They can lead to lethargy, headaches, muscle weakness, confusion, memory loss, and other side effects. More ominously, a recent study of Crestor (a statin drug) showed an increase in type 2 diabetes rates for those using the drug versus the control group using a placebo.

High Cholesterol Just Small Part of Cardiovascular Health Risks

Many people have the mistaken impression that high cholesterol is the biggest risk to your cardiovascular health. This isn’t likely true. There are a large variety of risks that are likely to be even more significant than high cholesterol levels. Many of them are not commonly tested for by doctors. Too many in the medical establishment have bought into “big pharma” pushing of statin drugs as the ultimate solution as they inaccurately believe high total and LDL cholesterol are the exclusive risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. As cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Michael Ozner points out in his book The Great American Heart Hoax: Lifesaving Advice Your Doctor Should Tell You About Heart Disease Prevention (But Probably Never Will), many of the therapies and surgeries for cardiovascular disease that are common in the United States are probably unnecessary, raise health care expenses, and don’t really improve overall outcomes. Much better than surgeries would be to prevent cardiovascular disease in the first place. But there are many risks that must be managed.
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Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a 16-week study to see if slightly modifying the diets of Latino teenagers would affect type 2 diabetes risk factors. The findings were reported in the April 2009 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Latino Teens Have High Obesity and Diabetes Risks

The research participants were Latino teenagers because previous research showed almost 40 percent of Mexican American children ages 12 to 19 were found to be overweight or at risk of developing diabetes.

“Latino children are more insulin resistant and thus more likely to develop obesity-related chronic diseases than their white counterparts,” the authors write. “To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of a high-fiber, low-sugar diet on metabolic health in overweight youth, and to our knowledge, none have tested the effects of this type of intervention in a mixed-sex group of Latino youth.”

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is celebrating a big improvement in its public perception. This year, only 47 percent of the US residents recently polled think the agency is doing a poor job. That’s a marked improvement for the agency, down from 58 percent of those polled expressing a “poor” rating a year ago. The public’s poor perception of FDA is based upon facts that show the agency is incapable of performing its mission and is not aligned with public health and safety interests. Unfortunately, the declining public disapproval ratings of the FDA have more to do with the amazingly short-term memory of the American public and media which is bombarded with government scandals and crises (real or imagined) on a daily basis.
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As the misleadingly named “swine flu” spreads across the world killing a few people here and there, a combination of scientific illiteracy and emotional idiocy are hurting a lot of people and businesses.

The pork industry is seeing sales plummet as people errantly think eating pork is dangerous due to the virus.
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Life Extension Foundation is a non-profit organization that funds research studies and public educations campaigns. It does this in part by selling nutritional supplements.

One of their publications we enjoy on a regular basis is their monthly Life Extension Magazine. It’s a mix between health and diet news and production information. It generally features three or four major articles on particular health topics plus news tidbits on recent medical research. Information on Life Extension’s products is mixed in as advertisements.

Recent articles have covered topics such as stopping and reversing age-related bone loss, the link between autism and vitamin D insufficiency, and a summary of research on quercetin which is another compound found in red wine that in conjunction with resveratrol may help explain the “French Paradox” of how the wine-drinking French live a little longer.

Since it’s free, the worst case is it is like getting a dietary supplement catalog delivered to your home every month. Best case, it may help you save a life — yours, or that of a family member or friend.

We’d encourage you to sign up for your complimentary subscription to Life Extension magazine today!

If you or a loved one, especially your children, have an allergy to peanuts, you should read the news about a research study sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Consortium of Food Allergy Research. It appears the doctors have found a way to significantly decrease and possibly cure peanut allergies using an exposure desensitization method. The method being studied is so effective that children who used to have extreme reactions to even small bit of a peanut can now eat many of them with no allergic reaction.
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Every one of the cells in the human body needs a way to provide energy to power the functions of the cell. Each healthy cell has numerous mitochondria, tiny little cellular power plants that produce most of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) used as a source of chemical energy in the body. The natural enzyme CoQ10 is critical to operation of mitochondria to produce ATP, but when oxygen levels are low CoQ10 acts to create many damaging free radicals. An alternative synthetic form of CoQ10 known as idebenone has been found to not suffer from the low-oxygen induced increase in free radical production. It is being investigated for treatment of numerous diseases, especially of the cardiovascular and nervous systems in organs such as the heart and brain.
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American baby care products are not as safe as consumers may expect. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released a report on 48 baby care products that were tested for the carcinogens formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane. The March 2009 report, entitled “No More Toxic Tub”, reveals that 67 percent of the products tested contained detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane. 82 percent of the products tested contained detectable levels of formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane. And 61 percent of products tested contained both.

Of the 48 products tested, only 28 were tested for formaldehyde. So there’s a chance that if all products had been tested for both, the percentage of products contaminated with both could be higher than 61 percent.

The State of California classifies both chemicals as carcinogens under its Proposition 65 “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986” passed in 1986. Both were listed as carcinogens on January 1, 1988. The US EPA regards both as probable carcinogens.
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We’ve previously written about how increasing vitamin B12 intake can help reduce the frequency and severity of canker sores. B12 is also critically important for heart and nervous system health. Unfortunately, some of the best B12 supplements are generally fairly expensive as they use large doses of the less common methylcobalamin form of the vitamin.

The good news is that until April 6, 2009, there’s a terrific deal on sublingual (under the tongue) vitamin B12 via the Life Extension Overstock Sale for just $6.40 for a bottle of 60 tablets of 5000mcg (5mg) each. These are the more expensive and readily metabolized methylcobalamin form, so folks whose livers cannot convert the common cheap cyanocobalamin form of B12 can still benefit. Even in a healthy normal person, the liver converts just 1% of cyanocobalamin into the biologically active methylcobalamin form.