Harvard Pilgrim’s Winter 2009 mini-magazine includes a brief feature titled “Eating Organic on a Budget.” (see page 11)

Now, if you read the “fine” print (the paragraph titled “A Guided Tour of the Supermarket”), this feature seems to be just somewhat of an ad for one of the Harvard Pilgrim programs called “Supermarket Shopping” which

includes an aisle-by-aisle supermarket tour, led by a registered dietitian, that teaches you how to make informed decisions about the food you buy for yourself and your family.

Too bad they do it only on Cape Cod! I’m quite a long way from the Cape.

But the article also includes “Tips to avoid pesticides” and provides a link to a pdf of the “Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce” released by the Environmental Working Group. I especially like the page titled “Reducing Exposure is Smart” on the EWG site, which has a section “Tiny Doses Can Be Toxic to Children” and a list of references at the end.

I took a peek at Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children and what really got me interested was a quote that’s actually not related to pesticides or organic food at all.

Chapter 2, “Special Characteristics of Children” says

Because of the dependence of behavioral development on physical and functional development, toxic effects occurring before maturation may permanently alter behavioral development. The most commonly encountered and well-known toxicants that can permanently change all four of the components of behavioral development are bilirubin toxicity in the newborn and lead toxicity in the infant or young child. All four aspects of behavioral development are important in studies of developmental toxicology, but much more attention has been given to the first two because they are easier to measure.

The four aspects of behavioral development that they’re writing about are:

(a) gross motor and fine motor activities; (b) cognitive ability; (c) emotional development; and (d) social development.

And apparently:

Alteration in one of these domains can affect the development of each of the other three.

Interestingly, both of my children had neonatal hyperbilirubinemia, which was caused by our blood type incompatibility.

My son’s hyperbilirubinemia was severe enough that he had to get phototherapy. (if I remember right, when he was two days old his levels were at 17 or 18 mg per dL).

My daughter also had hyperbilirubinemia but didn’t receive phototherapy because supposedly her levels were never high enough to warrant that. I do not remember what they were and I do not have these records at home, and now I wonder, because her jaundice hung around for much longer. In fact, she is quite yellow in the pictures from the first days of her life.

Now, I knew that one of the effects of hyperbilirubinemia might be “mild mental retardation.” But if I understand the paragraph I cited correctly, hyperbilirubinemia might also influence the other aspects of “behavioral development” such as gross motor and fine motor activities; emotional development; and social development.

I wonder if anyone has done studies what percentage of people with autism and ADHD had neonatal hyperbilirubinemia as compared to “control group.”

Another thing to add to my “things to research” list…

It has been a pattern in the past, when he was little, that whenever he was on antibiotics his hyperactivity would go through the roof. This time there are other things happening as well.

I wonder if it’s the red #40, or the antibiotics in general. Or something entirely else… I guess we’ll find out when we stop the medicine.

I’m curious whether anyone has done studies on the influence of antibiotics on the brain, if there are any subgroups of people for whom antibiotics changes their behavior. Or maybe it is the disappearance of the beneficial gut bacteria? I think I’ve read somewhere a theory that antibiotics may increase the severity of autistic behavior, but I don’t remember the explanation of why it would happen and who worked on that. I’ll have to try to look for it…

Responding to her comment, I wrote in the post scriptum “I doubt that anyone visiting my site would not know what NT, mentioned by Debra, means — but just in case — NT is short for ‘neurotypical’ or, as most people who don’t know any better would probably say — ‘normal.’”

Then I remembered seeing on the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Forums a question about what NT means and wondered whether, even though within the “autistic” community pretty much everyone knows what the acronym stands for, others are not as familiar with this term.

The NTs who have a good sense of humor and are not easily offended might find amusing the “Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical” site, especially the page listing the “diagnostic criteria for 301.666 Normal Personality Disorder.”

That site reminds me of a joke Stephen Shore made during the presentation I saw nearly a year ago (see the entry  “Understanding Autism (for Dummies, by Stephen Shore)” from April 10, 2008) – that his next book will be titled “Understanding Neurotypicals for Dummies.” He even had a slide of a mock book cover with the bullet points saying things like “learn to decode nonspectrum behavior”; “educate children on radical acceptance of differences” (I’m not sure what he meant here, I’m afraid); “successfully communicate without eye contact.”

As I’m still learning and sometimes have trouble navigating American social customs, I could relate to the joke.

Along the similar lines, but much more philosophical is the blog NTs Are Weird written by an adult male who’s autistic.

NTs Are Weird is full of “opinion” entries, as well as plenty of passionate advocacy and “issues” posts. It also includes quite a bit of personal (sometimes very personal) reflections. Overall I found it a fascinating read, and quite philosophical too.

Reading it made me wonder if my son will think and feel like that when he grows up, and I had a bit eerie feeling of reading letters from the future. But it also gave me a desperately sought glimpse into what the world looks like to an autistic adult.

I remember having a somewhat similar feeling when I read posts of adult ADHDers on the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Forums but also remembered how much some of them disagreed with the way the parents on the forum thought the ADHD kids should be handled.

I wonder what the author of NTs Are Weird and other adults with autism think of the parents’ posts and blogs and how much they hate the parents for saying how stressed or upset they are sometimes by their kids’ behavior. I frequently wonder myself how much my son would hate me, if he knew what I wrote about him (especially in the first post).

Yet, we don’t really hate our children, and at least in my case I actually don’t wish my son were a typical child. He’s very interesting the way he is. I just wish I knew how to deal with some of his “moments” and how to keep “cool” at those times. That is still hard.

I do hope my son will be able to express himself in the future as well as the author of NTs Are Weird. He’s not much of a talker, he doesn’t like handwriting, and doesn’t know how to type (yet, I’ll make sure he learns). So I don’t really know what’s going on in this 2e head of his.

Going back to NTs Are Weird, I got very intrigued by the post “Disability Awareness Day” (Sepember 28th, 2008)  and was somewhat surprised by the negative responses to the idea #2, because I like this idea the most. I would add the following exercise to the list — go into a room with strobe lights flashing, music blaring and several TVs turned on, each to a different channel. Have a teacher read a story and then quiz the students on how much they remember from the story and if they do not remember much, have the teacher complain that they should have “tried harder” to concentrate on the story.

I’m also curious though why the author of the NTs Are Weird thinks “ABA is unethical” (“Negative Definitions,” January 10th, 2009) I did not read the entire NTs Are Weird but I did use the search engine and could not find more posts about that. ABA seems to be like a religious doctrine in “correcting” the behaviors of children with autism – everyone seems to be expected to do it and believe in its efficacy.

That’s because of “an overseas study” linking artificial coloring “possibly linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” (see also the entry “Food dyes and the Center for Science in the Public Interest”.)

I’m not holding my breath on when that will happen in the U.S. or even Canada.

(By the way, apparently Kellog’s also has decided to include natural colorings in their products sold in the U.K., but those sold in the U.S. are still loaded with chemicals, see http://www.cspinet.org/fooddyes/index.html)

Well, I guess we’ll just have to continue banning Nestle and Kellog products in our house. I’m not feeding my children that crap.

FBISC is the Fort Bend Independent School District funded by the taxes collected by the Fort Bend County in Texas. The district introduced a gifted program in 1990. According to their Gifted and Talented section of the FBISC’s site, GT program is available for identified GT students at every grade level in every school throughout the district. Kindergartners start getting GT services in February of their Kindergarten year.

Texas has a mandate to identify and serve gifted students, (see the Genius Denied, Gifted Education Policies site), and the programming is partially funded by state.

The mandate “that all school districts must identify and serve gifted students at all grade levels” was passed in 1987. (I found this info on the Texas Education Agency “Gifted/Talented Education” page.)

The “Gifted/Talented Education” page has a lot of interesting links. I especially liked the Texas Performance Standards Project link which led me to the “Texas Performance Standards Project Additional Tasks” page with links to specific projects for various grades.

Other interesting info I found on the “Gifted/Talented Education” page were the “G/T Teacher Toolkit II: Resources for Teachers of G/T, AP and Pre-AP Classes” page; and the “Gifted and Talented Teacher Toolkit,” which interestingly includes a link to a page titled “Seven Essential Instructional Strategies for Powerful Teaching Learning” hosted at the Bellingham (Washington State) Public Schools site.

I wish we lived in a state with a gifted mandate…

But on the other hand, I saw a post on ADD Forums from a parent from Texas whose child has been diagnosed with ADHD impulsive at 3 ½ years old and she did not want to enroll him in a public school because did not want him “labeled as special ed” (post # 7 in the “Came home and just cried tonight” thread) because he’d be “thrown into resource classes or self contained classes.” (post # 27 in the same thread). I guess they don’t do as much inclusion in Texas as they should be. Also, the neuropsych doctor who evaluated my son is from Texas and she said that autistic kids do not get very good services around there.

Yet, the FBISD site includes a page titled “Gifted Students with Disabilities,” which includes a section on Giftedness and ADHD, so I suppose that district does recognize (and possibly serves) gifted students with disabilities.

By the way, in case anyone is interested what (average) kids in Texas are supposed to know at each grade level, here’s the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) page.

An organization calling itself the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban artificial colorings from food. The press release page has links to the petition itself, and also mentions Dr. Ben Feingold with a link to his Feingold Association of the United States, and two British studies exploring the effects of artificial food colorings on children’s behavior.

The first study was published in 2004, in Archives of Disease in Childhood – “The effects of a double blind, placebo controlled, artificial food colourings and benzoate preservative challenge on hyperactivity in a general population sample of preschool children,” by B Bateman, J O Warner, E Hutchinson, T Dean, P Rowlandson, C Gant, J Grundy, C Fitzgerald, J Stevenson.

The second study was published in 2007 in The Lancet – “Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial,” by Dona McCann, Angelina Barrett, Alison Cooper, Debbie Crumpler, Lindy Dalen, Kate Grimshaw, Elizabeth Kitchin, Kris Lok, Lucy Porteous, Emily Prince, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, John O Warner, Jim Stevenson.

The CSPI is also “urging parents who believe their children are harmed by food dyes to file reports online at http://www.cspinet.org/fooddyes/.”

According to the school’s web site “Eagle Hill School is a private co-educational college preparatory boarding school for students with learning disabilities in grades 8-12. Specific learning differences include: Dyslexia, Language Based Learning Disability, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disability. [...] Eagle Hill School is the preeminent private high school for students with learning disabilities and ADHD who demonstrate average to above average cognitive ability.”

If I read the information on the web site correctly, the school serves 150 students. Their tuition is $51,692 (day tuition is $36,586).

In addition, from early July through early August, Eagle Hill runs a five-week academic and recreational summer camp for students ages 10-18 who have been diagnosed with specific learning (dis)abilities and/or Attention Deficit Disorder. The tuition for the summer camp is $6,888.

Apparently, “studies have shown that stimulant medications like those used to treat ADHD can increase heart rate and blood pressure.” And while “these side effects are insignificant for most children with ADHD; however, they’re an important consideration for children who have a heart condition.”

What I found very curious is the following: “Surveys indicate that ADHD affects an estimated 4 percent to 12 percent of all school-aged children in the United States, and it appears more common in children with heart conditions. Studies report that, depending on the specific cardiac condition, 33 percent to 42 percent of pediatric cardiac patients have ADHD.” What is the link between heart conditions and ADHD?

Interestingly, during the recent American Psychiatric Association, a pediatric psychopharmacology researcher at Harvard, “emphasized that there’s no evidence that stimulant or non-stimulant medication for ADHD causes sudden death.” By the way, his talk was sponsored by drugmaker Abbott Laboratories, which is working on a new drug for ADHD.

What’s the issue here? Money, of course. It’s expensive to do ECG on every child diagnosed with ADHD. And then if a heart condition is detected (in a whooping 33 to 42 percent of the cases) the parents will be told about the risk of side effects and as a result may decide to avoid medications. This recommendation obviously is not in the financial interest of both insurance companies and drug makers.

Bisphenol A or BPA is a component in polycarbonate, #7 plastic that is used to make food and drink containers (including baby bottles). It is also used in the lining of soft-drink and food cans.

No action from the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. on it yet, but apparently, as The New York Times reports in its April 22, 2008 article “A Hard Plastic Is Raising Hard Questions,” the chemical is”facing increasing scrutiny by health officials in Canada and the United States.”

What I found interesting in the article on CTV is the following quote: “There are over 150 peer-reviewed studies that show that bisphenol A is linked to breast cancer, to attention deficit disorder, to obesity and a whole host of developmental problems.“

I knew about the studies linking BPA to cancer. I did not know there’s a link between BPA and ADHD. One more thing I need to do a bit more research on.

Sari Solden has a Masters Degree in clinical counseling from California State University and is also licensed as a marriage and family therapist (LMFT). She currently serves on the professional advisory board of the National Attention Deficit Disorder Association and has a private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In addition, she’s the author of Journeys Through ADDulthood: Discover a New Sense of Identity and Meaning with Attention Deficit Disorder, published in 2002 by Walker & Company and Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life, published in 1995 by Underwood Books (second, revised edition was published in 2005).

In short, she said that it’s okay to be disorganized and messy. Well, no… Not quite. At least not exactly in these words.

Solden’s message was aimed primarily (but not only) at women with ADHD – she emphasized how crucial it is for women to move “from perfection to fullness” which (if I understood her point correctly) means to let go of the idea of trying to achieve the impossible and unattainable ideal of perfection in life and instead find strength from embracing one’s differences and learning how to respect oneself and expecting respect from others.

Women, according to Solden, have a harder time getting diagnosed with ADHD because they are not as hyperactive as men and instead frequently are given the diagnosis of depression, which of course is present, because women, more than men, feel more ashamed of themselves if they cannot meet the prevalent cultural expectations of women as being good organizers, housekeepers, and caretakers. There’s more acceptance in the society for men who are disorganized — the absent-minded professor type.

Women are also more likely to overfocus on their deficits than men and have a harder time to seek help. Once they do look for help they also have a harder time with healing and improving their condition because they continue being so critical of themselves.

Solden says that instead of trying to attain the lofty goal of trying to live up the ideal stereotype, women need to redefine their idea of success and learn to build on their strengths and their unique traits, concentrate what they’re good at while not obsessing about but acknowledging and coming to terms with their weaknesses.

(At that point I was thinking that Solden has been saying also applies to children –parents need to help children “experience success” – find an activity that the kids are good at and then teach them to concentrate on the feeling of being successful to understand that they have both strengths and weaknesses.)

Solden also “warned” that once women seek and receive help and get better, they may need to know how to renegotiate relationships, because they frequently become more outspoken and less intimidated by those around them, which might lead to conflicts, because their family members, friends and co-workers may not know how to “deal” with this “new” person, so confident and full of wonderful ideas and energy.

I liked the story that Solden told at that point – at one time when she was getting ready to go to a conference, she kept losing her conference ID (I believe), and her daughter was getting frustrated to the point that she finally said “Mom, you’re a very messy person.” In response Solden asked her “How big a problem is it for you? How important is it whether I’m messy or organized,” explaining that at the conference she will be talking to other women with ADHD who are probably just as disorganized and messy as she is. And the daughter responded “Tell them it’s not important, what you feel inside is important.”

That also seems to be a pattern in women – to concentrate so much on the external and conforming to the perception and expectations of others to the point that it overshadows their own feelings, desires, and ambitions.

Ultimately, Solden said, women need to learn how to let go of the ideal, allow themselves some slack and acknowledge that it’s okay to get help with housekeeping, laundry, babysitting, paying bills, organizing, whatever it takes. And get social support from family, friends, or even virtual friends on the Internet.

I hope it is all right to quote here an excerpt from her book that is posted to her web site. “I said I’ve learned to live successfully with ADD as a woman. The definition of the word successful is very important, because women very often get locked into a fruitless search for an unachievable goal. When I say I’m living successfully, it doesn’t mean that I’m living stress-free. It doesn’t mean that I’m perfectly organized. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have to constantly strategize and struggle. And it doesn’t mean I’m never overwhelmed or that I don’t sometimes still hide.

What it does mean, for me, to live successfully with ADD, is that I’ve found a way to move the focus of my life onto my strengths, my talents and my abilities, to increase my choices and options. […] It means that I’ve learned to separate out my strengths and my weaknesses and to embrace both of those as part of myself, even though it’s a long stretch. I’ve come to accept the fact that I do have deficits out of proportion with the rest of my abilities, and that these do severely impact my life. I’ve learned to separate out the shame, embarrassment, and guilt surrounding these difficulties from my core sense of self.”

If that peaked your interest, you can see more excerpts from Solden’s books on her web site.

Solden also announced that pretty soon she will be launching a new web site and encouraged everyone interested to contact her to become part of its “special pre-launch group.”

As a sidenote, I also found on her web site a link to “National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization.” Turns out, there exists “a non-profit organization serving professional organizers and related professionals who are interested in the study and methods of serving chronically disorganized people.” I had no idea someone might be interested in studying chronically disorganized people. They even have a clutter hoarding scale.