Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program

I mentioned research-supported findings about how stress affects physical health and well being in my last post “Worried about my telemers.” Since then, I have attended and completed an anxiety study at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and I’ve learned a few interesting things. It was an interesting experience as well. The study (about which I [...]

Worried about my telemers

I had never heard about telemers until I watched “Stress: Portrait of a killer” on DVD. Sure, I knew before that stress is not good for my physical health, after reading Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, by Joan Borysenko, but I had no idea that stress in a way damages our DNA (if I understand [...]

Connection between levels of fetal testosterone and autistic traits

I wanted to title this post “Would you want to know if your child might be autistic?” but after reading in the Guardian Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen’s response article titled “Our research was not about prenatal screening for autism,” I have decided to give my post a different, more neutral title, and closer to the title [...]

Engineers, Hips, and Autism

The headline “Men who don’t find curvy women attractive ‘could father children with autism‘” sounds just too weird to pass up. I found it through Google alert on a rather curious blog “What Sorts of People.” The entry does not comment on the title, just refers people to an article in the Daily Mail Reporter, [...]

Food dyes and the Center for Science in the Public Interest

This isn’t exactly news – I found this information months ago, when the press release just came out, but I had no time to blog during the summer, so here it is: An organization calling itself the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban artificial [...]

Biomedical Treatments for Autism

Saturday, November 1, and Sunday, November 2, 2008 there will be a conference in Weston, Massachusetts titled “Successful Inclusion in School & Community” organized by Autism Conferences of America. It looks interesting and I would like to see “Learning Social Skills Through Play: Life’s Most Important Skill Made Fun!” by Rick Clemens, MA, and would [...]