RecoveringNicholas.com

Younger mothers’ breast milk has highest levels of flame retardants.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/younger-womens-breast-milk-higher-levels-of-pbdes/

Daniels, JL, IJ Pan, R Jones, S Anderson, DG Patterson, LL Needham and A Sjödin. 2009. Individual characteristics associated with PBDE levels in U.S. human milk samples. Environmental Health Perspectives doi:10.1289/ehp.0900759.

Synopsis by Kim Harley, Ph.D.

Breast milk from young women – rather than from women older than 35 – has the highest measured levels of commonly used flame retardants known as PBDEs.

A study of breast milk samples from more than 300 women in North Carolina finds flame retardants contaminate the milk from almost three-quarters of the woman in the study. Women older than 35 had the lowest levels of PBDEs in their milk. The highest levels were measured in breast milk from women aged 25 to 29, followed by women younger than 25 years old.

The results suggest that younger mothers may have higher exposure to these flame retardant chemicals through their environment or lifestyles.

PBDEs are chemicals used in electronics, furniture, carpeting and textiles to reduce the risk of fire. In rats, early life exposures to PBDE has been associated with altered thyroid hormone function, hyperactivity and poorer learning and memory. Human health effects are not so well understood.

Most Americans have detectable levels of PBDEs in their blood. Dust and food may be the biggest sources for people. Breast fed babies are exposed through breast milk, however, experts agree that breastfeeding also provides important nutritional and immune benefits for the infant.

The study also found higher levels of these fat-soluble chemicals among obese women.

Interestingly, longer breastfeeding did not appear to lower PBDE levels in breast milk. Measured levels in breast feeding mothers a year after they gave birth were not significantly different from their levels when their infants were 3 months old. Having more previous pregnancies was also not associated with lower PBDE levels.

These findings are in contrast to other persistent pollutants, such as PCBs or DDT, which have been shown to decrease in the mother’s body and her breastmilk with longer breastfeeding. The author’s speculate that levels may not decrease either because mothers’ exposure to PBDEs is on-going or because maternal weight loss after pregnancy continues to mobilize PBDEs from fat stores.

The researchers measured and compared levels of individual and total PBDEs. Measured levels of total PBDEs in the samples were higher than those reported in other studies and ranged widely, from 1 to 2,010 nanograms per gram of fat.

PBDE compounds have been banned in Europe and several U.S. states, and legislation to further limit use in pending in many regions.

Cause of SIDS discovered?

I really thought this was sooo interesting. New Zealand has not had a single case of SIDS since their research found out what causes it. I’ve highlighted important points in blue for those who don’t have time to read all of it right now. Update: I also want to share this article that opposes it.

Click to read more… Cause of SIDS discovered?

PS - I posted instructions on how to wrap your mattress here:
http://recoveringnicholas.com/2009/02/03/wrapping-your-childs-mattress/

When shopping around for organic mattresses (and almost fainting at the prices of them), I found this information to wrap your existing mattresses so that you or your child is not breathing in the fumes when they sleep.

Buy some thick (125 microns) clear polythene - not polyvinyl chloride (PVC) Wrap. It comes in a roll. Its like 5mil Polythylene sheeting which is used for construction and remodeling to block things like lead dust. (you can try Home Depot or Lowes)

You will need enough to completely cover the top and sides of the mattress (and in one piece so it is airtight) – you leave the bottom of the mattress unwrapped. You can secure the sheeting with strong adhesive tape.

More info on Mercola’s website, click here.

PS - We did end up buying Nicholas an organic mattress from WhiteLotus.net and it is one of the most comfortable mattresses I have ever slept on.

Courtesy of Juan Rodriguez, September 8, 2008 on the Autism-Mercury Yahoo Group; posted with permission:

I am not opposed to selective vaccination either as long as vaccines are admistered correctly. But there is the problem, pediatricians and not following the Vaccine safety guidelines from the vaccine manufacturers. Even the CDC says that vaccines are safe for children with healthy immune systems and that might be true. But how do they know what children have healthy immune systems or not. For example, Merck pharmaceuticals with is the manufacturer of the MMR vaccines clearly states that the MMR vaccine should not be administered to individuals with immunodeficient conditions.

The problem is that children are not been screened for immune disorders before they are administered vaccines. That is why I am saying that I am not for selective vaccination either. If children were screened for immune disorders and tested positive with many will do then they would not receive certain vaccines based on the vaccines manufacturers recommendations.

I wanted to share this information with you about why I think vaccines should be administered more carefully by our children’s pediatricians.

In the first two articles below, one by Merck Pharmaceuticals and other by the Center for Disease Control are saying that vaccines are safe for children with normal immune systems. Merck clearly states that the MMR vaccine should not be administered to children with immunodeficient conditions

Please think about how the pediatricians know that the children they will administer the vaccines have immunodeficient conditions. They don’t. The only way to know is by ordering lab tests. Many children look very healthy on the outside, but their bodies are very sick.

There are available lab tests to screen for autoimmune disorders that can be easily performed to test children before they are administered vaccines.

Most autistic children have inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. Even children with other neurological disorders have the same problems. Many children will test positive for autoimmune disorders if these lab tests are peformed.

MMR Vaccine safety guidelines by Merck Pharmaceuticals
ProQuad should not be administered to certain individuals, including those with any of the following: an immunodeficient condition.

Vaccine safety article by the Center for Disease Control
Is simultaneous vaccination with multiple vaccines safe? Wouldn’t it be safer to separate combination vaccines and spread them out, vaccinating against just one disease at a time? The available scientific data show that simultaneous vaccination with multiple vaccines has no adverse effect on the normal childhood immune system.

Testing for autoimmune disorders
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000816.htm

The five lab tests below can be used to diagnose autoimmune disorders:
Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) - It is a nonspecific screening test that indirectly measures how much inflammation is in the body.

C-reactive protein (CRP) - Is a test that measures the amount of a protein in the blood that signals acute inflammation.

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) - Elevated IL-6 serum or plasma levels may occur in different conditions including sepsis, autoimmune diseases, lymphomas, AIDS, alcoholic liver disease, and in patients with infections or transplant rejection.

Tumor Necrosis Factor-á –(TNF-á) serum or plasma levels may be elevated in sepsis, autoimmune diseases, various infectious diseases and transplant rejection.

Natural Killer Cell and Activated T-Cell Profile (Immune Panel)- Assess changes in T-lymphocyte surface markers that may indicate immune stimulation

I hope this information is useful to all of you.

…play a role in Nicholas not being able to detox the toxins from his vaccinations?

I have to wonder……(please note: I am ‘thinking out loud’ here while reading a ton of research and just posting my thoughts so I can keep them straight)

So, the one time in my life when I religiously took vitamins could be the worst time I could have chosen to take them. What’s worse, I know more about vitamins now than I did then - and I just took the rx my ob/gyn gave me and had them filled without doing any research on the amounts of each ingredient that was in them. I’m sure I’m not alone, but it just doesn’t make me feel any better.

The CDC says that pregnant women should take 27 mg of Iron per day. I took Vitafol-Ob which has a whopping 65 mg per day - more than double the RDA. Not to mention that I also took Slow Fe (an additional 47.5 mg of iron per day) because I appeared to be deficient (yeah right) - so wow - I got a total of 112.50 mg of Iron PER DAY. OVER FOUR TIMES THE RECOMMENDED DAILY AMOUNT.

Vitafol-OB ingredient listing
CDC Chart: How much Iron do I need?

So, since I was taking these LONG before I was pregnant, so, let’s just figure that the average gestation is 180 days. So 180 days times 85 extra mg per day = 15.39 grams (15390 milligrams, which is 25 TIMES… 25 TIMES the amount that the US FDA has said could be fatal to an infant) of Iron over the RDA during the course of my pregnancy. (Not including the iron which was consumed via food/water) Interesting that breastmilk supplies babies with 1 mg of iron per day. - I guess our bodies don’t know how to appropriately nourish our babies that we needed mega-doses of supplements to do it for you.

Iron and insulin modulate each other. If higher body stores of iron are known to increase a person’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, then, since I got so much extra iron, could this be why I had gestational diabetes? …which went away after Nicholas was born and I stopped taking the prenatal vitamins?

Insulin is apparently a natural metal detoxifier. Given this, would having gestational diabetes be a way for my body to have dealt with the toxicity from the mega dose of iron?

During week 28, fetal blood is supposed to switch from 2 alpha + 2 gamma proteins to 2 alpha + 2 beta proteins. In moms with gestational diabetes, the switch is delayed to week 36-39. The switch involves the globin part of the infant’s blood, which is the part of the blood tied to immune system functions. Was the switch delayed because beta cells appeared to be succeptable to metal toxicity?

So, if the immune system is delayed 3 months, and he received all vaccinations on time - and his immune system was not yet caught up and then add in all of the extra iron - sounds like a recipie for disaster to me. It only takes 1 gram of iron to cause severe poisoning in a child under 2 and 3 grams is considered a lethal dose. The USFDA has said a 600mg dose of iron could be fatal to a child.

Boyd Haley said, “A single vaccine given to a six-pound newborn is the equivalent of giving a 180-pound adult 30 vaccinations on the same day. Include in this the toxic effects of high levels of aluminum and formaldehyde contained in some vaccines, and the synergist toxicity could be increased to unknown levels. Further, it is very well known that infants do not produce significant levels of bile or have adult renal capacity for several months after birth. Biliary transport is the major biochemical route by which mercury is removed from the body, and infants cannot do this very well. They do not possess the renal (kidney) capacity to remove aluminum. Additionally, mercury is a well-known inhibitor of kidney function.”

Another thing that is relevant here is that Nicholas had slight jaundice when he was 2-3 days old and spent a day in the nursery under the bilirubin lights. Bilirubin is one of the body’s strongest defenders against oxidative assault. “So potent an antioxidant is bilirubin that it displaces glutathione, the molecule believed for 80 years to be the most important cellular antioxidant” (Solomon Snyder, director of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins School of medicine) Scientists have found that while it takes one glutathione molecule to consume an oxidant, a single bilirubin molecule can take care of 10,000 oxidant molecules. So, the bilirubin is a good thing, not a bad thing. Nicholas having jaundice was clearly a sign of oxidative stress, no doubt brought on by all of what I have written above in addition to the hep vaccine he received when he was born.

So after we got home, I had a major worse-than-labor gall-stone attack and ended up having my gallbladder removed when he was 7-8 weeks old. Before getting pregnant, I never had an issue with gallstones. I had a few minor attacks while I was pregnant, but we did not know specifically what they were until afte Nicholas was born. Since we store toxins in fat, and gallstones are primarily cholesterol (a fat), could this be our body’s mechanism for getting rid of toxins?

Another thing I have stumbled upon. I have suffered on and off for years with ridiculously heavy periods. I have had D&C’s to stop the bleeding at times, that’s how bad it was. After Nicholas was born, I started taking metformin and noticed that if I took it on the 1st few days of my cycle, the bleeding ceased without other drugs, without having to have a D&C. Could the heavy bleeding been my body’s way to getting rid of all of the extra iron? (You lose iron when you donate blood, through your menstrual cycle, etc.) Was the metformin stopping my bleeding evidence of that iron/insulin connection?

To recap this hypothesis:

Too Much Iron during pregnancy
which modulates insulin
which in turn caused gestational diabetes
which caused the late fetal blood switch
which caused Nicholas’s immune system’s development to be delayed
add the high levels of iron he received while I was pregnant with him
and add the Vitamin K shot he received at birth
and that he had jaundice before we left the hospital
which is a sign of oxidative stress
he was put under bili lights to reduce his bilirubin
vaccinations given on time on top of apparent oxidative stress and a delayed immune system
?

Related Links:
The Truth about Iron Overload
Iron Overload & and Hemochromatosis: Signs and Symptoms

*Will be posting links to research shortly

Note: this is not medical advice and should not be perceived as such - I am not a doctor. These are only my thoughts based on research I have been reading.

Came across this blog post today and thought I would share a link to it. It’s by a mom who stopped vaccinating her child (wish someone had told me to stop) - her reasons why and the issue she faces with finding a pediatrician who is on board with HER choices for HER child. The last pediatrician she went to wanted to catch up a years worth of vaccinations in ONE OFFICE VISIT. ONE OFFICE VISIT. Of course, she got the standard pediatricians line, “Vaccinate or find another pediatrician!” - Well, dear ped, she’s going to do just that and so will alot of other parents because no one is buying the BS anymore.

The Choice to Vaccinate

I’m happy for you, StaySeptember, your child(ren) will be one less that joins our club.

Tylenol depletes Glutathione.  Glutathione is an important anti-oxidant which helps scavenge free radicals, deals with oxidative stress, etc.  Essentially, your baby’s body needs glutathione to detox the toxins from the vaccines.

Besides, if your child spikes a fever from a vaccine - this is important for you to know for the future - don’t mask it before it happens!

Also, Acetominophen use after certain vaccinations were found to be associated with autism:
http://aut.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/3/293

Another useful link: http://greenfertility.blogspot.com/2006/07/ap-story-tylenol-linked-to-liver-woes.html

http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/pdf/PregFAQ.pdf

Lots of people always asked me if I saw any signs that should have alerted me to hold off vaccinating Nicholas any farther - and the answer is a resounding, YES!  But of course, my concerns were blown off by my pediatrician as is the same tale told my many moms out there.  Use our experience as your knowledge to move forward with caution if you see any of the signs - no matter how much your pediatrician tries to convince you otherwise.  Mommy instinct is right, follow it.

This is a great checklist - download it, print it out - pass it on to your expecting friends and family.  Having the knowledge could save yourself the heartache we’ve been through….

http://www.recoveredfromautism.com/images/ASD%20warning%20signs.pdf