I had the privilege of hearing Kelly Dorfman speak at an Autism Society
meeting, and I wanted to share some of my notes with my listmates. Some of
you may know this stuff already, but a lot of what she said was news to me.

Please keep in mind that these are *my notes* on what she said, so any
inaccuracies are probably mine.

She recommended 2 books, "Smart Fats" by Michael Schmidt, and "The Second Brain" by Michael Gershon.

She explained autism: Your body gives you false info (falling down doesn't
hurt, door shutting sounds like a cannon going off). 90% of your nervous
system is in use sorting through stimuli at any given time. Autistic kids
must begin selectively shutting down because all the input is overwhelming to
them. The first thing to go is the eye contact. Stims are sometimes added to
block out overwhelming stimuli.

On vaccines--Dr. Wakefield discovered pockets of the measles virus in the
guts of autistic kids *only*. Japan outlawed vaccines until age 2, & cut
their SIDS rate in half overnight. The brain has a very thin covering; if a
virus penetrates the covering, the brain's dormant immune system is
activated. It acts "like Pacman", eating everything in its path and often
causing encephalitis or other brain injury. She says the vaccines to be
concerned about are MMR, hepatitis, HiB, and chicken pox. Some vaccines, such as polio, have been around a long time and are pretty safe; others, such as the MMR, are revised frequently and are not safe. For those with infants, she suggests delaying the vaccines as long as possible.

On food allergies and the GF/CF diet: When kids have recurring ear
infections, 90% of the time, they are caused by food allergies. Milk is the
#1 culprit. Milk is a mucus-producing food, and bacteria grows in mucus.
Recurrent ear infections when young cause the child to lose hearing just when he should be learning to talk. Speech delay! Gluten & casein can cause
problems such as bedwetting and trouble sleeping, up to 48 hours after they
have been ingested. Sensitivities to g/c do not show up in scratch tests,
which are "unreliable." DPP4 is an enzyme that is missing in the guts of
autistic kids. The body can't break g/c down without DPP4. They form bizarre
proteins which the body mistakes for cocaine. (Apparently it has to do with
the shape...) It uses them in that way, & gives the child a "high".
Good candidates for the diet 1) have unformed or "soft-serve" stools; 2)
self-restrict their diets to mostly wheat and milk products; 3) are picky
eaters; 4) have frequent illnesses, ear/sinus infections. She says everyone
whose child is a good candidate should try the diet, but also cautions not to
go wild and cut *too* many things from your child's diet. She suggests
rotating foods continuously.

Kids who are cf will need calcium supplements--very important! The best forms of calcium are citrate, malate, chelate, gluconate, and hydroxyapatite. The most popular forms (oyster shell, carbonate, Tums, and those new chocolate candy calcium supplements) are poorly absorbed by the body. A child needs 800-1000 mgs of calcium *split into 2 doses* each day.
Vitamin A is also important for our kids. She suggests "mycellized A", which
can be ordered from The Apothecary or the Vitamin Superstore, and can be put in juice.

On secretin: Secretin works by improving gastrointestinal functioning.
(Apparently the gut "talks to" the brain--I'm not too clear on how this
works.) The first part of digestion is to chew food well. Then the stomach
breaks it down to a pH of 2. The stomach "spits these little acidy balls"
into the small intestine, which neutralizes the acid with bicarbonate. The
secretin manufactures the bicarbonate. If the food is not broken down small
enough, the body either thinks it's cocaine, or thinks it's a germ, and
attacks it.

Secretin works best on kids with symptoms of gut problems, kids who were
damaged by the MMR, and kids who do well with the gf/cf diet. Besides the IV secretin, there is a patch, and there are drops. The drops do *not* help with digestion, but they will have the same effect on the brain--sort of a test to see if the infusions would work, I think.