"Juice Plus+ is the perfect way to ensure that we get more of the whole food based nutrition we really need."

San Diego Walk Now for Autism 2008

Families Needed to Participate in Transition Study

It's not just boys who are autistic

Orange County Walk Now for Autism

Parent Workshop in Seal Beach, CA

Meet the Doctor who Developed the Juice Plus+ Concept

Third Annual Athletes Against Autism Golf Tournament

8th annual Joe Mantegna Celebrity Golf Classic

St. Maddie's Summer Swim Schedule and Hawaiian Luau!

CALLING ALL PICKY EATERS! (Ages 3-5 yrs old)

Learn More About Melaleuca

Delia Garcia, M.D.
Home: St. Louis, Missouri

Medical Specialty: Radiation Oncology

Education: Graduated summa cum laude from Western Illinois University (1976). Graduated from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (1979). Internship at University of Wisconsin Hospital (1979-80). Resident/Chief Resident at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (1980-83).

Fellowships and Appointments: American Cancer Society Clinical Fellowship (1981-82). Assistant Professor of Radiation Therapy and Oncology, Medical College of Virginia (1983-84). Assistant Professor of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine (1984-1992). American College of Radiology Fellowship (2001).

Other Professional Accomplishments: Author of over 40 scientific articles. Founding member of a cancer and breast institute in St. Louis (1999). She is a leading expert in breast cancer and was selected by her peers to appear in Best Doctors in America.

Community Service: Professional Advisory Board Member, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation ("Race for the Cure") and The Wellness Community of Greater St. Louis.

Health Advice: "Take responsibility for your health, and you will be astounded by the benefits. Stop smoking; eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; exercise daily; and, drink plenty of water. "Life is not a dress rehearsal! Simple measures can make a huge difference in disease prevention."

Why she recommends Juice Plus+: "Last year alone, I consulted with over 400 new patients diagnosed with cancer. The sad truth is that many of these cases might have been prevented through sound nutrition, stress reduction, and an overall healthy lifestyle. "As a busy professional and mother of three, I realize how difficult it is to eat the way we should, especially day in and day out. Juice Plus+ is the perfect way to ensure that we get more of the good, whole food based nutrition we really need."

Juice Plus+ is the simple, convenient, and inexpensive way to add more nutrition from fruits and vegetables to your diet, every day.

Tony and I have been taking Juice Plus+ daily for almost 5 years and we feel fabulous, and are more healthy. I have Fibromyalgia Syndrome (an inflammation of the nervous system that causes painful muscle spasms and chronic fatigue), and Juice Plus+ reduced my pain level by 90% and doubled my energy level. (Results may vary.)

Juice Plus+ is whole food nutrition and will not interfere with any biomedical treatment that you may be doing with your child, but will actually enhance it. Poor nutrition has been linked to ADHD in numerous studies.

If you would like more information about Juice Plus+, please email me.

To check out my Juice Plus+ website, click here.

Isadore Rosenfeld, MD, and his 'family take Juice Plus+ regularly.'

I never endorse anyone or anything. Opinions expressed in what I send out, may not be shared by me. Everything is for informational purposes only.

People who "advertise" through this newsletter have never been checked out by me. This includes professionals and even people who are interested in babysitting, etc.

Please take the time to thoroughly check out anyone and everyone that will be working with or caring for your child. We are all sadly aware, through news stories and word of mouth, of people who pray upon special needs children because of their extra vulnerability.

Thank you,
Valerie Dodd-Saraf
My enewsletters are archived on my website:
www.ValeriesList.com

Join Autism Speaks as we tackle autism! Experience the power of thousands united by a single cause by joining Walk Now for Autism. Start a corporate, school or family team today!

Walk Now for Autism offers everyone a fun-filled experience with entertainment, refreshments, an autism community resource fair, and much, much more. Be sure to raise $100 to earn your commemorative Walk Now for Autism t-shirt. We look forward to seeing you at the event!

Walk Day Information
Walk Now for Autism is a family-friendly event so bring the whole family along. There are activities for the children, resources for families, light refreshments and entertainment.

Date:
November 8, 2008

Location:
Balboa Park, San Diego, California

Dr. Bonnie Kraemer , a professor at San Diego State University is looking for families with sons/daughters 16-24 years of age with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to participate in an interview on transition. Transition is a critical stage in the life span of young people with ASD that has received relatively little attention in the research literature. Dr. Kraemer is currently interviewing families to find out how youth with ASD have been prepared for the transition from the school system to the adult world, family involvement in that process, and how preparing for transition has affected family life. Interviews take place in the family home (or another location preferred by the family) and last about 1.5 hours.

Families are desperately needed!
For more information contact
Dr. Bonnie Kraemer
At (619) 594-3492
Or email bkraemer@mail.sdsu.edu

When it was first discovered more than 60 years ago, Asperger's syndrome was thought to be a male-only condition. But now that more and more girls are being diagnosed with it, why do we hear so little about them, wonders Joanna Moorhead

Wednesday June 4, 2008
Joanna Moorhead - The Guardian [UK]

Ten years ago, when she was 11, Robyn Steward was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that made that already challenging time particularly difficult. While other girls were forming tight friendships, hanging out with each other for hours after school, Steward had trouble fitting in with her contemporaries - more so, she suspects, than if she had been a teenage boy with the syndrome. "At that age," she says, "boys aren't connecting with one another so much, but for girls it's so cliquey. Also, the stuff I was interested in seemed even more weird in a girl than a boy. It was mostly computers and music with me - boys can get away with being a bit obsessive, but it seems more strange in a girl."

As Steward says, her situation was complicated by the invisibility of girls on the autistic spectrum and by the association of autistic traits - social awkwardness, for instance - with masculinity. The majority of autistic people are men, with four times as many males as females being affected, and the medical world is awash with theories about how the syndrome is connected to the wiring of the "male" brain.

In fact, when Hans Asperger first described autism in 1944, he initially believed that he had discovered a condition that only affected boys. As Asperger himself went on to realise, there are girls and women with autism, and more recently their numbers have been growing, along with the incidence of autism in general.

For these women, the diagnosis can be a double whammy. Not only do they have a disorder whose causes are unclear and the treatment of which is still controversial, but it is even less recognised in females. Women and girls tend to be pushed to the sidelines of any coverage of autism and Asperger's syndrome, their experience purged from the public eye, making those who experience the disorder even more cut-off and misunderstood than their male peers.

Because of this, securing a diagnosis, for example, can be difficult. Margaret Lambton's daughter Harriet, who is now eight, developed normally until she was about 13 months. "But then she stopped answering to her name, and stopped engaging with those around her, and I had a sickening feeling that something was very wrong," says Lambton. "To me it was screaming 'autism', but when I told my health visitor, she tried to reassure me.

She said autism was so rare in girls, it was very unlikely."

Unlikely, but not impossible. Harriet failed her two- year health check, and three weeks later Lambton was told that her child had severe autism, with the developmental profile of an eight-month- old. "Girls who have autism often have it very seriously, and that's the case with Harriet," she says. "She'll never live independently, and she'll never have a relationship or children when she's older. She's my only daughter, and one of the many devastating aspects for me is that we'll never have a normal mother-daughter relationship.

"I go on courses for parents of children with autism and there often isn't a single other parent of a girl," says Lambton. That is because, despite the fact that more girls are now being diagnosed, they tend to be diagnosed later than Harriet. At special schools, and in support groups, girls find themselves heavily outnumbered by boys.

"Around nine in 10 parents at the support group I help run are parents of boys," says Rose Edumijeke, whose five-year-old daughter has autism.

"And all the groups we go to tend to be very boy- orientated. There's no shortage of football sessions, but my girl might like to try ballet or tap-dancing. She couldn't possibly manage that in a regular class, but I don't know of anywhere that runs special sessions for children with autism."

Dr Lorna Wing is a veteran psychiatrist who devoted her career to studying autism after her only child, Susie, was diagnosed with a severe form of the condition. She says girls on the autistic spectrum often appear "normal" at first meeting.

"They appear to be more social than boys with autism, but then you notice that their sociability tends to be inappropriate," she says.

"They might go on and on talking about the things they are interested in, and they fail to notice that you're not remotely interested. They have a poor ability to 'read' people, and that's something that's often very highly developed in females."

This means that women with autism often struggle at work because they lack what is often taken for granted in women - the intuitive ability to understand where people are coming from and how to manage situations.

Because of subtle sex differences, we tend to "expect" more of women in the workplace in terms of smoothing things over, of saying the right thing; and whereas we would excuse a man who lacked these abilities, we are subliminally a lot less forgiving of a woman who has similar shortcomings.

At facilities such as the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism in Bromley in Kent - named in tribute to Wing's contribution to understanding the condition - more and more women are coming forward for diagnosis who have struggled all their life to "fit in", and who, time and again, have found themselves wanting.

For women such as this, having their "oddity" validated, acknowledged and, to some extent, explained, can be life-changing. Selina Postgate, 53, always knew she was different: but it was only last summer that she finally found out why. "Knowing I have Asperger's syndrome has changed everything in my world," she says. "It's made me realise who I really am, and why I think differently."

If the diagnosis had come earlier in her life, Postgate believes she would have been a lot more successful. "I've never managed to do the things I've wanted to do," she says. "I've done very little with my life professionally and I could have done a lot more if I'd understood myself."

Nor would it have mattered so much, Postgate argues, if she had been born male - even undiagnosed, men with autism can live a life that is high-performing, acceptable and rewarding, she believes. "At school I was bright, but eccentric. If I had been a boy, that would have been tolerated more. I'd have gone into science, I'm sure - I might have gone on to be a nuclear physicist. I'd have met some girl who would have become my supportive wife and she would have made up for my social shortcomings, in the eyes of the world, and I'd have been the rather odd but brilliant professor who couldn't really handle social occasions but who was always well looked-after by his lovely wife, and who did so many wonderful things at work that none of it mattered anyway.

"Instead of that, though, I have achieved practically nothing. Relationships, like jobs, have gone out of the window - I've not had the self-awareness to hold down either.

Being an autistic woman has been pivotal to everything that's happened to me. If I'd been an autistic man, my story could have been very different."

Because autism has probably been underdiagnosed in women, and because study of the condition only stretches back a few decades, very little is known about how it pans out for women in later life. According to Wing, there are plenty of indications that the disorder is exacerbated by hormonal disruption - and while that has been documented around puberty in both females and males, less is known about what happens around the menopause.

In the case of Wing's daughter, the menopause was to trigger a worsening of her condition - with tragic results. "Susie had been through a bad time around puberty, and when she was menopausal it seemed to get very bad again. She started drinking more and more water - we knew it was dangerous, and we tried to stop her, but we didn't realise how dangerous it could be, or how much water she was drinking."

Two years ago, Susie's obsession with drinking water triggered a heart attack, and she died at the age of 49.

"I miss her so much," says Wing. "She wasn't like other people - when we went out we always got noticed and she always looked odd, but I was so used to it. To me she was just Susie, with all her funny little ways. I loved her very, very dearly."

Steward, though, is full of hope for the future. She understands her condition and is adamant that it gives her some advantages. Some women, she says, are just too focused on contact with other people and on the ins and outs of human relationships. "Relationships are important, but to be a really self-reliant individual you need to be the sort of person who can cope alone. I think autism gives you that self- reliance, and I think it makes me strong - it helps you know your own limits."

Another plus, says Steward, is that she has an unusually strong ability to focus on one clear goal. "It's part of the obsessiveness of autism, and it can make you very determined and that, in turn, can lead to success.

"I think to turn autism to your advantage you have to find your niche, and maybe a lot of women with autism find it harder to find that - but if you can, some of the traits of the condition can be advantageous - why else have so many geniuses been people with autism?".

An atypical girl writes ... Just because you can't see women with Asperger's doesn't mean we're not here, says Bridget Orr

I am a girl with Asperger's syndrome. And if you thought that the sob story ended there, I'm afraid that there's more: my condition is inescapable, and four times as many boys have it. I rarely saw myself reflected anywhere in relation to the condition. The newsletters my mother received from the local autistic society always featured a blank but crying young boy. I used to go to special schools and classes that were dominated by rowdy and moody boys, and even the misconceived stereotype of people with autistic spectrum disorders is that of a humourless and awkward-looking nerdy man with an attitude problem. I am offended most by the "awkward-looking" part.

Like the girls and women featured in Joanna Moorhead's piece, I too have struggled to fit in with the mainstream and also the autistic subculture. No matter which school I went to, I would either feel frustrated by the chaotic mainstream world or suffocated by special schooling. Yet, I knew I wanted to live a normal and independent life like my big brothers and sisters, and not be dependent on my mother like the sons of my mother's friends.

I am still a normal young woman. Because so many of my experiences have been shaped by my condition, it is easy to forget that my life has also been shaped by society's expectations of girls my age. I am sure I would have loved reading, disliked school dinners and hated my teachers in any type of school, and I guarantee that all young people, autistic or not, are worried about their plans for the future and how to assert their independence. Feeling uncomfortable in one's skin is not just an autistic trait.

If there is one slight difference between my experiences and those of the "normals", it is my subconscious fear that losing a wallet or a mobile phone could set my personal independence back 10 years.

As much as it is hard to be a girl with Asperger's syndrome, it is still unimaginable what my life would be like if I were "normal". I would love being more confident around new people and assertive about my feelings and opinions, but surely these can be developed with time. I do not believe in autistic pride, but I would hate to lose my determination to take on new challenges and become more independent. Female "invisibility" in the autistic spectrum should be a feminist issue. For all the struggles with employment, family relationships and individuality that "normal" women face every day, we face these too - and more besides. You only have to look at the lists of famous people who, it has been speculated, were in the autistic spectrum - Isaac Newton, Ludwig van Beethoven, Albert Einstein, - to see how boys' autistic traits are synonymous, to some extent, with success. For girls like me who have been affected by autism, the challenge is to stand up for ourselves in the male-dominated world of the autistic spectrum, yet reassure ourselves that we are still normal girls.

The Orange County Walk is set for Saturday, November 15 at Hidden Valley in Irvine. Registration is open at www.walknowforautism.org/orangecounty. If you know anyone who would like to participate on the committee and help plan the event, they can contact Liz Carroll at (323) 297-4769 or ecarroll@autismspeaks.org.

The Autism Partnership is offering a one-day workshop to help parents with the issues of eating, sleeping and toileting for children affected by autism. It will be taught by Dr. Ron Leaf, a licensed psychologist with over 35 years of experience treating children, and will offer practical strategies.

June 10, 2008
8:30 AM-2:30 PM
Seal Beach, CA

For more information, contact The Autism Partnership at (800) 816-9293 or email AutismPtnr@aol.com

FREE Seminar
"Returning to Health"
Speaker: Humbart "Smokey" Santillo, N.D.
Developer of the Juice Plus+ Concept

Thursday, June 26, 2008, at 7:00pm
Holiday Inn - Stadium/Mission Valley
Main Ballroom
3805 Murphy Canyon Rd.
San Diego 92123 (I-15 and Aero Dr.)

As a young man overwhelmed by a variety of health problems, Dr. Santillo began to search for a new way to better health. He found the answers he was looking for in his diet - specifically in the nutritional goodness of fruits and vegetables.

Since that nutritional awakening, Dr. Santillo has spent a lifetime sharing his knowledge with others, first as a lecturer for "The Juice Man", then as the man behind a revolutionary idea: to take juicing fruits and vegetable one step further by reducing the juices to highly concentrated powdered form. Along the way he secured a degree as a Doctor of Naturopathy, earned the designation of Master Herbalist, and authored three best books.

Join me as one of North America's leading naturopaths tells us about "The Power of Fruits & Vegetables" and explains how Juice Plus+ works.

To reserve your seat, please contact Valerie Saraf by June 18th.

Bacara Resort & Spa
Sandpiper Golf Club
June 22-23, 2008
Santa Barbara

Sunday evening, Bacara Resort & Spa will host a cocktail hour, silent auction, dinner program and live auction. On Monday, Sandpiper Golf Club will host the golf tournament, including contests for Hole in One, Closest to the Pin, Accurate and Longest Drives, and an after event BBQ Dinner & Awards Reception.

Olie Kolzig, Byron Dafoe, Scott Mellanby, Travis LaBoy, Travis Hall, Campy Russell, Fred Brown, Tom Flores, Jim Gott, Greg Swindell, Andruw Jones, Scott Erickson and Sinjin Smith are among those expected to tee off in support of autism awareness and research. With over 35 athletes and celebrities, golfers, and supporters from across North America, join us for this spectacular weekend and help raise over $350,000 in support of the research, awareness, and outreach programs of Autism Speaks.

View the Invitation.

View the list of AAA Athletes.

Interested in becoming a Sponsor? Visit Us Online.
Interested in volunteering at the event?

Email: epetievich@autismspeaks.org or call 323-297- 4757 for more information.

Proceeds benefit HomeChoice, a non-profit organization that helps create independent living experiences for people with disabilities. They help with budget management, credit counseling and offer assistance in finding loans.

June 30, 2008 MountainGate Country Club

For information to participate or become a sponsor, call (310) 258-4031 or visit www.homechoices.org.

Sophie's Hawaiian Luau!
(For Developmentally Disabled Adults & Family & Friends!!!)
Friday, June 27, 2008
5:30 to 8:00 PM
$6 Admission Fee: Includes 1 raffle ticket, 1 Photo, Snack and Water and an evening full of Dancing!

If you're hungry....Hot Dog, Chips and Soda for $2 extra!

Additional Raffle Tickets: 1 for .50 or 3 for a $1.
Bake Sale!!! --Courtesy of St. Maddie's Auxiliary!

Please RSVP to Karla Bryan at 619-442-5129 ex3443 by June 20th.
Proceeds will benefit Sgt. Joseph W. Perry Memorial Corp.


ST. MADDIE'S AQUATICS PROGRAM
2008 Recreational Swim Schedule

**Fee is $3 Per Person -- Children under the age of 3 are FREE!!!

Children 6 and under MUST be accompanied by an adult in the pool. All individuals need physical assistance MUST be accompanied by an adult in the pool.

Year Round Public Swim Hours:
Tuesdays and Thursdays - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Summertime Saturday Public Swim Hours:
June 7th through August 23rd - 10am - 2pm

Note: Pool will be closed on July 5th and July 19th.
For more info: 619-442-5129 ex3114