Foggyrock
Beta
"When autism is your mountain, you will never have to climb alone"
Feel free to browse around and get to know Foggyrock. However, you will need to login/register in order to fully participate

Library Categories > Environmental Issues > Our Assumptions About What Causes Chronic Diseases Could Be Wrong

 
Library Item Name:

Our Assumptions About What Causes Chronic Diseases Could Be Wrong 		   
Summary Statement:

Our Assumptions About What Causes Chronic Diseases Could Be Wrong

By Laura Wright, OnEarth Magazine. Posted August 9, 2007.

Discoveries about how chemicals and environmental toxins interact with our DNA and make us susceptible to disease could revolutionize our concept of illness.

Martha Herbert, a pediatric neurologist at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, studies brain images of children with autism. She was seeing patients one day a few years ago when a 3-year-old girl walked in with more than the usual cognitive and behavioral problems.

She was lactose intolerant, and foods containing gluten always seemed to upset her stomach. Autistic children suffer profoundly, and not just in their difficulty forming emotional bonds with family members, making friends, or tolerating minor deviations from their daily routines.

Herbert has seen many young children who've had a dozen or more ear infections by the time they made their way through her door, and many others -- "gut kids" -- with chronic diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, including severe food allergies. Such symptoms don't fit with the traditional explanation of autism as a genetic disorder rooted in the brain, and that was precisely what was on Herbert's mind that day. She's seen too many kids whose entire systems have gone haywire.

Click on title to read more....
Submission Date:

08/13/2007by: shannonj
Current rating:


Our Supporters