Outsmarting Autism

Outsmarting Autism + Patty LemerBeth Lambert, Executive Director of Epidemic Answers, calls Patty Lemer’s second book, “Outsmarting Autism:  The Ultimate Guide to Management, Healing and Prevention”, the “Bible” of autism recovery, and it is.

This book is the soup-to-nuts guide of everything you need to know about recovering your child from autism.

Patty has been working to recover children from autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders for over 40 years, and this book reflects the depth and breadth of her knowledge.

For those of you who don’t know her, Patty is now the Chairman of the Board of Epidemic Answers, which recently joined forces with Developmental Delay Resources, another non-profit that Patty founded with nutritionist Kelly Dorfman back in the 1990’s.

Her self-described “cranky grandmother” style comes out at times in the book, which is what makes it a fun and interesting read.  She tells it like it is!  For example, when addressing the issue of potential over-diagnosis as the cause for the rise in autism cases, she writes, “Many cynics and some scientists actually believe that the rise in autism cases is not real.  Frankly, I find that astounding!”, then quickly explains why the autism epidemic is real.

Given her years of experience, Patty has developed a blueprint for recovering kids from autism.  What’s unusual is that she doesn’t recommend typical therapies until after a child’s total load and correcting foundational issues.  I know from my own and my clients’ experiences that you’ll get more bang for the buck if you follow her blueprint.

Step 1:  Take away the bad stuff, and add back the good stuff

I wholeheartedly agree with Patty’s position that “the multitude of possible causes of autism can all be captured under a single umbrella:  STRESS!”  Stress is the crux of Patty’s Total Load Theory, and it comes under six major categories:  biological, environmental, behavioral, educational, physical and emotional.

It is by removing these individual stressors that allows a child’s body to heal from autism.  Autism is not a mental condition; it is a brain’s response to these stressors, and Patty shows us how to peel this onion one layer at a time.

This also means cleaning up your child’s diet, improving digestion and getting rid of gut dysbiosis. Patty gives specific examples of diets that may help your child.

This also means boosting your child’s immune system by strengthening your child’s immune system, eliminating allergies and infections and lowering inflammation.

One of the unique things about this book is Patty’s discussion of balancing the endocrine system, especially the thyroid and adrenal glands.  In my experience, these issues are typically not dealt with by most doctors and practitioners.  However, these issues can be the basis of autism itself because the toxins and stressors that damage your child’s endocrine system also damage your child’s neurological system.

And because so much of what causes autism is so often due to toxicity, Patty provides a thorough explanation of what it takes to detoxify your child.

Step 2:  Correct foundational issues

After addressing the total load of stressors, Patty recommends correcting foundational issues with therapies such as craniosacral therapy and primitive-reflex integration, which, again, I believe are thoroughly under-addressed in these kids.

Step 3:  Address sensory problems

After correcting foundational issues, then Patty recommends therapies that are a typical starting point for children with autism such as sensory integration, sensory diets, gross-motor therapy, auditory therapy and vision therapy, which is what Patty has been a proponent of for so long.

Step 4:  Focus on communicating, interacting and learning

It just doesn’t make sense to expect that a child whose nervous, digestive and endocrine systems are under constant assault would be able to learn and socialize well.  Think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:  what comes first?  Taking care of basic survival needs.  Only after doing that can higher-order needs like socialization and learning be dealt with.

Patty doesn’t even address ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) until this far into the blueprint, although this is another typical starting point for most children with autism.  Not only that, but many times, it is also the ending point.  So many parents and doctors are not aware that autism is a medical condition with underlying bodily dysfunctions.

Step 5:  Plan for the future

There is a growing number of children with autism who are quickly turning into adults with autism.  Many of these haven’t had any kind of medical intervention – who will take care of them?  Patty gives some well-though-out suggestions in the book.

In addition, ultimately something must be done to halt this epidemic.  So much of that comes down to educating women about the risk factors for children developing autism before these women even think about getting pregnant.  I wish I had known this level of preconception information before I had my boys!

Patty knows just about everyone and everything in the field of autism recovery, and this book is proof of that.  I highly recommend it as the ultimate guide for recovering a child from autism.

Book Review: The Diet Cure

Now, you might think it strange that I’m writing a book review for “The Diet Cure” by Julia Ross.  While I am a health coach, I don’t specialize in weight loss.  Instead, I specialize in helping people recover from symptoms of chronic neurological and/or autoimmune issues like autism, ADHD, allergies, asthma, SPD, lupus, fibromyalgia, Lyme and more.

But I don’t like throwing the baby out with the bath water, so I read the book to see what’s in it for my clients.  There’s a lot!

In the book, Ms. Ross teaches us about adrenal, thyroid, yeast-overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, fatty-acid deficiency, food sensitivities and blood-sugar issues, which are all common in my clients (both the children and their mothers) and how many of these issues can be controlled with diet (food choices) as well as amino acid therapy.

She recommends a whole-foods diet for all of these issues, as well as an Atkins-ish diet especially for those with blood sugar issues. It’s about the elimination of sugar with an emphasis on protein and fats to keep you full.  For anyone that’s ever done the Atkins diet, you know that one piece of bread will send you into a carb-lover’s binge-fest.

Ms. Ross provides us with the missing links for why the Atkins diet is not successful in the long run:

  • “Dr. Atkins did not know that carbs could be more addictive than cocaine.”
  • “Dr. Atkins specifically did not recognize the addictive power of grains, particularly wheat, for many people.”

The key to overcoming carb and sugar addiction is the addition of the amino acids that Ms. Ross recommends.

The book goes step-by-step into explaining how the factors I mentioned above as well as depleted brain chemistry and malnutrition from chronic dieting make it almost impossible to stay at a healthy weight.  Ms. Ross also shows us how to correct these imbalances.

Given that Ms. Ross has headed up the Recovery Systems Clinic for many years, she has dealt with the full gamut of different types of addiction (drug, alcohol and food).  She writes that the reason her clinic is so successful is because of the use of amino acid therapy to correct these biochemical imbalances in the brain and elsewhere.  It’s not willpower; it’s biochemistry.

When I read this book, I took a step back and looked at it from my perspective of not only a health coach but also the media director and a board member of Epidemic Answers, a non-profit that lets parents know that recovery is possible from autism, ADHD, SPD, allergies, asthma, autoimmune and more.

We let parents know WHY there is such an epidemic of children’s chronic illnesses:  it’s a perfect storm of the Standard American diet that is nutritionally deficient, the overuse of antibiotics, toxins in our environment, stressful lifestyles and gut dysbiosis (an imbalance of good vs. bad gut flora).

But when I read this book, I thought, “Huh.  All those women that have been on nutritionally deficient diets for years since at least the 1970’s are having kids, and those kids are being born with nutritional deficiencies that are compounded by gut dysbiosis, toxicity and stress.  No wonder we’re seeing such epidemics of autism, ADHD, allergies and more.”

Moms being on nutritionally deficient diets isn’t the only reason for this epidemic, but it certainly plays a key, overlooked role.

I’ll be hosting Ms. Ross on my upcoming webinar on April 23, 2014 at 1:00pm ET.  We’ll be discussing these imbalances and how to correct them with amino acids and diet, and you can sign up for your chance to ask questions here.

 

The New Nutrition Label

The New Nutrition LabelThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just announced proposed changes to the nutrition label.  Overall, I think these changes might make a positive and meaningful difference to our country’s health, at least to those who pay attention to food labels.  Here’s a breakdown of what I think are the positive changes:

  • More accurate serving size.  This is the big winner here because it reflects what people currently eat in one sitting.  Most people don’t carefully measure out ½ cup of ice cream for a serving; they eat half the pint instead, so the new label will reflect that reality.
  • Big emphasis on “Total Calories”.  This will be in a much-larger font size so that it really grabs your attention.  It’s kind of like the angel on your shoulder saying, “Do you REALLY want to eat that many calories?”
  • The addition of “Added Sugars” to the label.  Now people will know exactly how much sugar that food manufacturers have been adding to our food.  The problem with our misguided focus on eating low-fat foods is that it comes with the added cost of nasty chemicals to achieve the same “mouth-feel” as well as added sugar.  Fat and sugar both make food taste better.  If you’re taking out one (fat), you’re likely replacing it with more of the other (sugar).Rhetorical question:  Is it coincidental that at the same time we’ve been eating low-fat foods (remember, saturated fats were supposed to have been causing cardiovascular disease), there has been a skyrocketing epidemic of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity?  I think not!  It’s the sugar, folks!  And many times, it’s not listed as “sugar” on the ingredient label, so it can be tricky to figure out just where those calories are coming from.
  • Elimination of “Calories from Fat”.  Unfortunately, we’ve become fat-phobic in this country, as I explained above.  I wish we could become sugar-phobic instead, but sugar causes a dopamine rush, meaning that eating it is addictive and makes you (temporarily) feel good, so that’s probably not going to happen!
  • The addition of “Vitamin D” RDA percentage.  This country is in the midst of a vitamin-D epidemic deficiency, and it’s a factor that plays a large part in the epidemics of autism, allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, so having people pay attention to vitamin-D rich foods is a plus.  I’m betting, however, that most of them will be supplemented with synthetic vitamin D (vitamin D2) instead of the natural form (vitamin D3), so this is going to create another game for food manufacturers:  they will probably just add a lot of synthetic vitamin D so they can claim that it’s “rich in vitamin D”.
  • The addition of “Potassium” RDA percentage.  Potassium lowers blood pressure, so it’s a good idea to put this on the label, especially since so many people (young ones, too!) have hypertension these days.

The problem is that some people just don’t pay attention to food labels and portion sizes.  They’re going to eat whatever portion is set in front of them, which is why ex-mayor Bloomberg of New York tried to tax soft drinks over 8 ounces – do we really need to drink a Big Gulp?  The documentary “Super Size Me” did a great job of showing us how this kind of portion creep is making us fatter.

Nutrition-label improvements are mostly a moot point for me, personally, as I don’t buy very many foods that come with a food label on them.  I recommend you do the same.

This is a guest-blog post I wrote for Dr. Henri Roca, MD.

AN EVENING OF INSPIRATION

Maria Rickert Hong heading into "An Evening of Inspiration"I’ve been pretty busy lately helping to organize an event for my non-profit.  Epidemic Answers hosted “An Evening of Inspiration” in New York City on September 27, 2013 to benefit the Canary Kids Film Project.  It was fabulous!

The motto of the film project is:  7 children, 18 months, 1 goal:  RECOVERY.  We will be taking 7 children with a known diagnosis of autism, ADHD, allergies and asthma and providing free healing and recovery services while we film them for 18 months.  Most people don’t know that recovery is possible.

We honored Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group, Deirdre Imus and Harvard pediatric neurologist Dr. Martha Herbert, author of “The Autism Revolution”, for their work in protecting the health of children, which is a subject near and dear to my heart.  Dr. Herbert and Dr. Russell Jaffe will be heading up the film’s medical advisory board.

Allison Moorer singing "Mama Let the Wolf in"Academy-award-nominated alternative country singer Allison Moorer gave a heart-wrenching performance about her son’s autism in her song, “Mama Let the Wolf In”.  I can completely relate to the pain and anguish that she feels in thinking that she didn’t do enough to protect her son from developing autism.  By performing at our event, I sure hope she realizes that recovery is very possible for her son!

Donna Gates, Geri Brewster and Maria Rickert HongI finally got to meet Donna Gates, the developer of the Body Ecology Diet, and Geri Brewster, a functional-medicine nutritionist.  Both Donna and Geri are on the film’s medical advisory board.  I’ll be interviewing Donna in my monthly webinar in November 2013, so be on the lookout for that.  Be sure to sign up for my newsletter below so you can get the invitation for it.

You can watch Ken Cook’s acceptance speech of his Canary Award here:

 

If you’d like to help us get this film made, click here to donate!

To view professional photos of the event, click here and here.

Epidemic Answers Announces Collaboration with Developmental Delay Resources to Raise Awareness about Recovery of Children from Autism, ADHD, Developmental Delays, Allergies, Asthma and More

EA_logoWEST SIMSBURY, Conn., June 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Epidemic Answers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization at www.epidemicanswers.org dedicated to educating the public about the epidemics of chronic illness and helping parents find healing solutions, is joining forces with Developmental Delay Resources (www.devdelay.org), the only educational resource for families dealing with developmental delays that integrates the full spectrum of treatments and therapeutic modalities from diet interventions to biomedical protocols, physical therapies and everything in between.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130625/CG37989)

Epidemic Answers (EA) and Developmental Delay Resources (DDR) are combining efforts to raise awareness about the record number of children being diagnosed with chronic health conditions and developmental delays.  The rates of autism are now 1 in 50 children and 1 in 31 boys.  The rate of asthma is 1 in 8 children, and the rate of ADHD is 1 in 10 children.

Both EA and DDR are dedicated to educating parents about the environmental factors that contribute to these conditions.  Beyond that, both organizations subscribe to the belief children can recover from these conditions.

“The fundamental belief that ties our two organizations together is the belief that children can get better,” said Beth Lambert, Executive Director of Epidemic Answers.  “Both EA and DDR want the public to know that there are answers for their children and that personalized application of therapeutic, healing and recovery solutions can bring children closer to reaching their full potential.”

DDR’s Executive Director, Patricia Lemer, will be joining the EA Board of Directors, bringing forty years of experience to advise and help guide the future of Epidemic Answers.

DDR will be supporting Epidemic Answers’ latest project aimed at raising awareness:  The Canary Kids Film Project.  For this project, Epidemic Answers will be supporting seven children with a diagnosis (such as autism, ADHD, allergies, or asthma) and providing them with free healing and recovery services for eighteen months.  These children’s recovery journeys will then be documented and made into a feature length film to be directed and produced by award-winning film maker Mary Mazzio.

The children in the program will be involved in a clinical study being run by Dr. Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, pediatric neurologist and professor of neurology from Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Herbert will be tracking the children’s progress over the course of the program by collecting biomedical data.  The program and film are being entirely funded through donations and grants.  To learn more about and view the trailer of The Canary Kids Film Project, or to make a donation, please visit:  www.epidemicanswers.org/canary-kids.

Epidemic Answers will manage the collaboration between DDR and EA.  DDR members are welcomed to join the EA community by visiting www.EpidemicAnswers.org and signing up for the newsletter.

Epidemic Answers was founded in 2009 by two moms, Beth Lambert (author of “A Compromised Generation:  The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children”) and Michelle Tortora.  Through a variety of healing modalities (including diet, supplements, energy medicine, homeopathy, and others), both Beth and Michelle have recovered their children from chronic illnesses including autism, sensory processing disorder, Lyme disease, allergies and more.  Epidemic Answers is dedicated to educating the public about the epidemic of chronic illness affecting the current generation of children and providing prevention and healing solutions for parents, caregivers and future parents.

To view this video on YouTube, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjXFDDELLRI

Media Contact: Maria Rickert Hong, Media Director, Epidemic Answers, (860) 217-0111, [email protected]

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Epidemic Answers

View the press release here on PR Newswire.
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http://www.EpidemicAnswers.org

Baking Soda and Health

Baking Soda and HealthI have to say, I was fascinated with the material in Dr. Mark Sircus’ book, “Sodium Bicarbonate:  Rich Man’s, Poor Man’s Cancer Treatment” because it provides a fundamental framework for understanding the nature of disease:  that chronic health conditions and diseases arise from an acidic state of the body.

This book is an interesting look at the link between baking soda and health.

Sign up below to get the webinar replay of my interview of him.

What pH Leads to Optimal Health?

By this point, many of us may have heard or read that an alkaline body is required for good health or its converse, that an acidic body develops diseases and disorders.  If you haven’t heard about this, that’s OK, just know that a slightly alkaline body pH of 7.35 – 7.45 is optimal.

Dr. Mark Sircus lays the foundation for why this pH level is optimal:  because “excessive acidic pH leads to cellular deterioration” and because “acid conditions increase the strength of oxygen free radical reactions which are involved in the processes of cell injury and cell death”.

Anyone who knows my work as a Certified Holistic Health Counselor knows that I am constantly harping about inflammation.  Inflammation is caused by the aforementioned free-radical reactions and is a common underlying factor in chronic diseases and conditions.

Acid Conditions Lead to Inflammation

So, here we have an underlying factor to the underlying factor of inflammation:  acid conditions in the body.  Not only that, but Dr. Sircus digs further to show us that this increased oxidative stress caused by free radicals, which is caused by an acidic condition, is especially dangerous to our mitochondria.  Aha!

Mitochondrial dysfunction is beginning to be shown by researchers to be a common underlying issue in conditions ranging from autism to Parkinson’s, and I’m betting that it goes deeper than that:  I’m betting it’s common in most, if not all, chronic diseases and conditions, which is, I believe, essentially what Dr. Sircus is getting at, too.

If I understand this correctly, then an acidic body condition => free-radical generation => oxidative stress => inflammation => mitochondrial dysfunction (in a nutshell).

So here’s a simplified, yet elegant, approach to understanding the nature of disease:  an acidic body condition, which is brought about by our Standard American Diet (SAD), toxicity, especially from heavy metals, stressful lifestyles and radiation, such as from EMFs.

Not only does Dr. Sircus deliver this framework, but he also dives deeper into two diseases with growing rates of incidence:  diabetes and cancer.

Diabetes and Cancer

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body’s cells become insulin-resistant, so the pancreas, which produces insulin, has to make more and more insulin to keep stuffing our excess blood sugar into our cells.

Dr. Sircus writes that “the pancreas, an organ largely responsible for pH control, is one of the first organs affected when general pH shifts to the acidic” and that “once there is an inhibition of pancreatic function and pancreatic bicarbonate flow, there naturally follows a chain reaction of inflammatory reactions throughout the body”.

He also points out that heavy-metal toxicity, other toxic chemicals and radiation “will affect, weaken and destroy pancreatic tissues.”  Interesting (at least to me)!

What’s even more interesting is what Dr. Sircus writes about cancer:  “Cancer patients have a saliva pH of 4.5 to 5.5.  Healthy people have a pH of 7.0 to 7.5.”  He points out that way back in 1931, “Dr. Otto Warburg discovered that ‘to become malignant, cancer must have low oxygen, strong acid environment'”, so this is not new news, although it appears it’s been forgotten.

Baking Soda and Cancer

So what happens when cancer patients alkalize their bodies?  He indicates that “Cancer cells become dormant at pH 7.0 and 7.5 and kills them dead at 8.0 and 8.5”.  He also advocates the use of sodium bicarbonate in cancer patients (as well as patients of other chronic conditions).

Before you start poo-pooing this idea and calling it quackery, consider that “Sodium bicarbonate is used routinely to keep the toxicity of chemotherapy agents and radiation from killing people or from destroying their kidneys.”

I caution, as does Dr. Sircus, that ingesting baking soda can be harmful if it is not done correctly because it leads the body into an overly alkaline state, which comes with its own set of of problems.  Perhaps the safest route is to toss a half cup of it into your bath and to eat a more alkaline diet.

Overall, I appreciate the material and references in this book for showing us how important an alkaline condition is and how it can be promoted with the use of sodium bicarbonate, which is baking soda.

However, I’m giving this book only 4 stars out of 5 because the book reads like a collection of blogs that weren’t edited for coherency from one chapter to the next.  In fact, there are many points where whole paragraphs are copied and pasted verbatim from one chapter to another.

The use of a professional editor would have been a good idea for this book because he or she could have added more flow and coherency while correcting the many typos and grammatical errors in the book.

I only point this out because I know, from having published many reports myself when I worked on Wall Street, that credibility is seriously lessened by such easily fixable mistakes.  If Dr. Sircus wants his ideas to receive more credibility with a bigger, mainstream audience, and I would like to see that happen, I recommend that he hire a professional editor first before publishing.

BOOK REVIEW: IT’S ALL GOOD, GWYNETH PALTROW’S COOKBOOK

Gwyneth Paltrow It's All Good book coverMy husband bought me a copy of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, “It’s All Good:  Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great” the other day for my birthday.  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised!

She openly talks about the health problems that she had that led to her needing to make dietary changes.  I can relate because I’ve had to do the same for myself and my children.  [Read more…]

RECOVERY FROM SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER, REFLUX, ASTHMA, ECZEMA

older sonMy Children: Recovered from Sensory Processing Disorder, Acid Reflux, Asthma and Eczema, and getting healthier everyday!

(NOTE:  This is a blog I wrote for Epidemic Answers, a 501(c)3 non-profit of which I am a Board Member.  We let parents know that recovery is possible from autism, PDD-NOS, ADHD, allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and other chronic children’s health disorders.)

I have recovered my sons from sensory processing disorder (SPD), acid reflux,  asthma and eczema.  [Read more…]

HURRAY – MY LINKEDIN PROFILE IS IN THE TOP 1%

LinkedIn profile

Hurray! I have one of the top 1% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile/6/991/891

I AM A THINKING MOM

Maria Rickert HongHere’s a recent blog I wrote for the Thinking Moms’ Revolution, a very outspoken group of moms of autistic children who question the current medical paradigm.

Because traditional doctors and their medicine weren’t helpful in the recovery of my sons from Sensory Processing Disorder, asthma, allergies, acid reflux and eczema, I was forced to become a Thinking Mom and to learn to think for myself to recover them.

Here’s an excerpt:  “The first red flag was his incessant projectile vomiting, something the pediatricians waved off as colic and “he’ll outgrow it”.

As Thinking Moms know, this would be a recurring theme.  Next came his refusal to eat most solid foods, again dismissed by multiple pediatricians.”