What? Autism can be cured?

I've been curious about autism ever since I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon for my Freshman Experience at USC (the University of South Carolina). The book tells a story of how a high-functioning autistic teenage boy tries to get to the bottom of the death of a dog in his neighborhood. Anyway, I don't really remember many details from the story, but ever since then, I have been slightly curious about autism. I hadn't done anything about it until recently.

Last week, I went to the library in Indianapolis for the first time. Oh, I sure do love libraries! (thanks, Dad!) I had decided before hand that I was tired of being curious about autism and ready to learn more about it, and that I would check out some books about it. I found some books that looked promising and came home.

Since then, I've read two of the books. One of the books that I selected was A Real Boy: A True Story of Autism, Early Intervention, and Recovery, the other was The Autism Book: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Early Detection, Treatment, Recovery, and Prevention. Whew, those are both really long titles! Before that day in the library when I saw the first book, I thought autism was a permanent condition. That's what everyone thinks, right? Also, I thought that the title of the first was kind of presumptuous. The plot summary on the back of the book threw me off even more -- What's wrong with being autistic? I know it's not easy having an autistic kid in your life, but recovery? Isn't it offensive to those who ARE autistic to think of themselves someone that needs to be improved on, or "fixed," just to fit the status quo? I got the book anyway because there wasn't much of a selection. The second book seemed to be the only one that talked about the causes of autism and what it was like -- most of the other books at the library seemed to be instruction books for parents on how to engage or deal with their autistic child.

Interesting things learned:

Here's a list of the points I'd like to share and things I learned that surprised me (I know I do this in just about every blog post. Gotta love those lists!):

1. Autism is not usually a congenital condition (meaning most kids that have autism weren't born with it)

2. Children with autism generally develop normally until they begin to be affected (usually some point between ages 1 and 3 years)

3. The earlier a child is diagnosed, the better. Autism tends to be more reversible the earlier it's caught.

4. Many autistic kids also have food allergies, specifically to wheat and milk proteins (gluten and casein, respectively).

5. Many autistic kids also have gut problems (diarrhea, constipation, leaky gut syndrome).

6. Autism seems to be caused because the brain doesn't get the right nutrients because of #4 and #5.

7. Not all kids can recover, but some do, and most are helped with the right changes to their environment.

8. All kids diagnosed with autism will also need therapy (language, occupational (motor skills), and something else that I can't remember right now).

I'm just going to expand on some of the points:

2. These children will either stop in their development or regress, losing developmental steps that they've gained. The most common example that I read was that they will not start talking by 18 months of age or that they will lose some or all of the words they've already learned.

3. One point that the author of the more scientific book made was that many doctors are hesitant to diagnose autism and that many parents are reluctant to accept that diagnosis until it is glaringly obvious that a child has autism. At this point, autism is much harder to treat and more difficult to overcome.

4. Because of this, gluten-free and casein-free diets often help children with autism. Many parents see "wow" results just a week or two after starting this diet. Also, children of people that already have gluten or milk allergies (or sensitivity) are more susceptible to developing autism.

7. About 80% of children with autism can benefit from the methods in the more scientific book that I read. About 30% will recover to the point that a doctor cannot tell that they even had autism. Considering that autism was considered to be incurable, these numbers are really impressive.

I hope this was informative! Also, PLEASE, if you think your kid might have autism, talk to a doctor about it  and start doing something to help your child.

I wrote reviews for the books that I read. They will probably be posted on http://gwensgoodreads.blogspot.com/p/submit-your-reviews.html by June 1st if you're interested in reading them.

New in Indy

Austin, Levi and I have officially been in Indianapolis for a week now! It's fun being in a new place and meeting new people.

We have had several neat experiences. Let me expound:

1. Having the missionaries over for dinner
2. De-odorizing the house
3. Meeting the neighbors/ giving away cookies
4. Not getting lost (yet!)
5. Rain and thunderstorms

1. We had the missionaries over for dinner! After living in Utah for a year and a half, this is a big deal. I was excited when the dinner calendar came my way in Sunday School, and signed up for the first open slot. Unfortunately (for the missionaries), it was the very next day. The whole week was empty! I was kind of disappointed that in our fairly large ward there were so many empty spaces. However, most of the rest of the month seemed pretty full and from first glance at the ward, there were quite a few members that didn't look super affluent.

Austin and I are excited about being able to participate in missionary work in other ways, too. I think I may have frightened one of the missionaries with my enthusiasm, actually. Oops!

2. We are subletting our apartment (or town home, if you want to get technical) from the previous renter in order to get a better deal, since short term leases tend to have extra fees on them. It's a nice place, and has nice neighbors. It's HUGE compared to our last place, and even has a dishwasher!

Unbeknownst to us, however, the previous renter had a dog and smoked, so the place has a very distinctive smell to it. We've tried using Febreze, which probably helped, but the odor is still there. I'm planning on using baking soda next; I've heard of it getting out impossible smells. It's a lot cheaper, too!

3. Last night, Austin and I made cookies to give away to our neighbors! We had fun cooking together, and we had fun delivering them, too. When it's nice out, some of our neighbors like to congregate in a group. When we approached the group, the first thing that anyone said to us was, "This is just like TV!" It was so funny! Austin and I both remembered it after we were back and had a little chuckle over it.

Everyone was pleasantly surprised about the cookies and said they were delicious. One of our neighbors even said something to me about them today about how good they were! The recipe is my favorite for a reason, I guess. Also, every single one of them told us that if we needed anything, that we should ask them. All of them were super nice and also super friendly.

4. I haven't gotten lost yet! I've been cheating, though, since we're using the GPS that we bought when my old car's speedometer went out. I think it had a wrong address in it, though, because it told me to take an exit (which I missed) and then the next exit was the one that I needed to take to go home.

5. The day after we got here, it rained! And then it rained some more! And then some more! For days! And there was thunder! I hadn't realized how much I missed rainy thunderstorms until we got here. It was nice.

I'm looking forward to the summer in Indy. We've gotten off to a great start, and are happy with being here :)