"Juice Plus+ and JP+ Gummies are a great way to get good nutrition from fruits and vegetables into kids."

Birth Weight and Gestational Age Characteristics of Children With Autism, Including a Comparison With Other Developmental Disabilities

Diagnosing Autism, Asperger's

Model Me Kids

State's Shameful Neglect of Mental Illness

6TH ANNUAL SAN DIEGO TOPSOCCER DAY

Meet the Doctor who Developed the Juice Plus+ Concept

News From ASA National

Keep the Green Our Vaccines Momentum Going

People with Autism? Or Autistic People?

Class helping young and old make transitions in their lives

Fundraiser for family of 3 autistic children in Dana Point

CARES: Adult Group for Aspie Women

POMONA VALLEY LDA Meetings

Melaleuca Offers More Than 350 Products For Your Home And Family

William Sears, M.D.

Home: San Clemente, California.

Medical Specialty: Pediatrics. "Dr. Bill" (as his patients call him) is in private practice with his two oldest sons, Dr. Jim and Dr. Bob.

Education and Training: Harvard Medical School Children's Hospital in Boston; The Hospital for the Sick Children in Toronto, the largest children's hospital in the world, where he served as Associate Ward Chief of the newborn nursery and Associate Professor of Pediatrics.

Most Recent Position: Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine.

Professional Distinctions: Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and of the Royal College of Pediatricians.

Professional History: Former Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Southern California School of Medicine. Accomplishments: Author with wife Martha of 32 books and numerous articles on parenting and child care. Medical Consultant to Parenting and Baby Talk magazines. Known as "America's Pediatrician", he has appeared in over 100 television programs, including 20/20, Donahue, Dateline, Good Morning America, Oprah Winfrey, and The Today Show. AskDrSears.com. Known worldwide for his popular website.

Why he recommends Juice Plus+: "Parents who feed their children the most nutritiously have the children who get sick the least. Juice Plus+ and JP+ Gummies are a great way to get good nutrition from fruits and vegetables into kids."

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. I would be happy to meet up with you to give you more information.

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

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

Empowering Through Information & the Fostering of Connections

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

Diana Schendel, PhD and Tanya Karapurkar Bhasin, MPH

National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

OBJECTIVES. The objectives of this study were to compare the birth weight and gestational age distributions and prevalence rates of autism with those of other developmental disabilities and to estimate the birth weight-and gestational age- specific risks for autism.

Colorado State University researchers are looking for neurological clues to the cause of sensory processing deficits, perhaps giving hope to parents worrying about their children's diagnosis of autism, Asperger syndrome, attention deficit hyperactive disorder or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Through the use of electroencephalograms, one research project at Colorado State is looking at the underlying neural mechanisms of sensory processing deficits commonly displayed by children with neurodevelopmental disorders. EEGs measure and record electrical activity of the brain and provide results that could potentially impact the diagnosis and treatment of children with autism, Asperger and ADHD.

Model Me Kids® is dedicated to producing high quality teaching tools for children with Autism, Asperger Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder. We strive to make our products affordable so that they are accessible to both families and educators.

Our projects are entirely self-funded. Proceeds from sales are used to produce future Model Me Kids projects. We appreciate your support in this effort.

We are here to answer your questions. Please feel free to call or email us. We always enjoy the personal feedback that we receive from parents, teachers, and children.

John Diaz
Sunday, June 1, 2008
This is the issue that candidates at all levels prefer to avoid. It divides families, contributes to the crowding in our prisons and jails, explains why so many people are living on the streets, and causes more pain and suffering that can be calculated by any government statistic.

Yet it rarely merits mention in any politician's stump speech.

The issue is untreated mental illness.

Last week, hundreds of psychiatrists, social workers and relatives of people with severe mental illnesses attended a symposium on mental illness that was held simultaneously, via video hookup, at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The upshot of the daylong conference was that the status quo is not working. The failure of the current approach can be measured in myriad ways, each a tragedy: The $200 billion in lost earnings in this nation every year from untreated mental illnesses; the 20,000 California inmates who are receiving psychotropic medications, in all too many cases, too late to avoid an act of violence. According to one study, 48.5 percent of those with severe mental illness in the United States are not getting treatment.

One of the reasons is the enduring stigma that is associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression.

Another is that the law is ill-equipped to deal with people who are suffering from severe mental illness and may not realize they need treatment. All too often, they self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

California led the way into what was supposed to be an enlightened era with the 1967 passage of the Lanterman-Petris-Short law, which was designed to move the most severely mentally disabled from institutions to community settings. The laws were tightened, as a matter of civil rights, to make it far more difficult to force someone with a serious mental illness into involuntary treatment.

But the state's approach, which became the national standard within a decade, went from one extreme to the other. The promise of a robust community-based system to replace the institutions was never realized. Family members who saw their loved ones suffering - oblivious to their conditions - found it virtually impossible to intervene. Benign neglect became the unwritten state policy toward severe mental illness. In effect, the severely mentally ill were shifted from asylums to jails.

"Our jails are loaded with people who need psychiatric treatment," said Richard Vagnossi, a deputy district attorney in the psychiatric division in Los Angeles. Rod Shaner, medical director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, described the situation as "40 years of wandering."

And still we wander.

No one should want to turn back the clock to the 1950s, when institutionalization was the standard, and its costs were spiraling to the point that it was the single-largest budget item in most states.

But to look on the streets of San Francisco, or in the jails just about anywhere, is to realize that the protection of individual liberty is not necessarily achieved by allowing him or her to go without treatment.

"Laura's Law" was passed by legislators and signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 as a way to allow involuntary outpatient treatment for seriously mentally ill people who pose a danger to themselves and others. But local governments - with the notable exception of Nevada County, where the law's namesake, Laura Wilcox, was shot to death at age 19 by a deranged man who resisted treatment - have shied away from using this new authority.

Their excuses are many: It's too cumbersome, too expensive, too sensitive for social-services types who want to focus their energies on the people who realize they need treatment and are willing to accept it.

Even San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who once called implementation of "Laura's Law" a priority in a city where homelessness is pervasive, has walked away from the issue.

The solutions are not easy. They require resources. They require laws on "mental health parity" that recognize that depression or a bipolar disorder is every bit as urgent to treat - and no less of a character "flaw" - as a broken limb or heart disease.

More than anything, a solution requires the political will for a commitment to put untreated mental illness on the front burner of public policy. We're paying for it in jail costs, homeless services, in lost wages, in anguish of loved ones and in lost lives.

Forty years of wandering is enough.

John Diaz is The Chronicle's editorial page editor. E- mail him at jdiaz@sfchronicle.com.

HOSTED BY
LA JOLLA YOUTH SOCCER LEAGUE
AUGUST 17, 2008

What is TOPSoccer Day? TOPSoccer Day is dedicated to provide soccer opportunities for athletes with physical and/or mental disabilities, and the opportunity to succeed and have fun at his or her level with players of similar abilities.

Come join us for a fun filled day of soccer related activities and plenty of smiles!

Place: Allen Field
Time: 2:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M. (Volunteers arrive at 12:00 P.M.) Athletes arrive at 1:30 P.M. for check- in
Cost: Event is free to all athletes with special needs
Contact: Rick Flores cysacoachrick@aol.comor 760-519-4233



For more information on "The Outreach Program for Soccer" visit the website at http://www.calsouth.com. Click programs then TOPSoccer.

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.

2008 ASA National Conference
July 9-12, 2008
Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center
Orlando, Florida
Don't Miss this Conference!

Last chance to donate to the AUTISM MATCHING GIFT CHALLENGE!

Get Your Representative to Support Green Vaccines

Let's keep the momentum of Jenny McCarthy's and Jim Carrey's Green Our Vaccines Rally going by getting your member of the House of Representatives to sign on as a sponsor of three excellent vaccine reform bills already in Congress.

Representatives Dave Weldon, MD, (Republican- Florida) and Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York) along with other thoughtful Representatives have sponsored three bills that move us toward greener vaccines.

When I first started writing about autism, I was told in no uncertain terms that "people first language" - i.e. "people with autism" as opposed to "autistic people" - was always preferred by members of the autism community. As a writer for About.com, I am constantly challenged to fit my titles and metatitles into limited space, but I've worked hard to use people-first language as often as possible.

Now, as I read about the autism advocacy movement, I see that people with autism are starting to refer to themselves more and more often as... autistic!

With that in mind, I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me your opinion. Should I use "people first" language (even when it makes it tough to create great headlines) - or is it ok to sometimes use the word "autistic?"

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
By Claire Cummings
ccummings@citpat.com -- 768-4918

Though separated in age by more than 60 years, Alex Rice and Rose Beafore are on the verge of a life transition.

Alex, a seventh-grade special-education student at Columbia Middle School, is learning how to move into society, while Beafore, a 77-year-old resident at Summit Park Assisted Living Center, is doing all she can to keep from transitioning out.

For both, human interaction and independence are crucial. And Transitions, a Columbia Middle School class now in its fourth year, brings the two together a few times a year as a way for the students to practice social skills.

But the seniors say they get a lot out of it, too.

Students who enroll in the two-year class are recommended by their teachers. All have a special- education label, whether they have learning disabilities, are autistic or are cognitively or emotionally impaired.

With the approval of a parent or guardian, the students learn how to solve problems, manage their anger, practice proper health and hygiene, and develop personal finance and employability skills.

The activities and lesson plans are fluid and change with the needs of the students.

``We learn life skills, how to progress in life so we can become more independent,'' Alex, 14, said. ``I learned how to balance a checkbook, and I don't like math that much.''

After a recent field trip to a Subway restaurant, the students returned to class and ran their own mock Subway complete with job applications, interviews, menus and real sub sandwiches.

Last week, the students met with the senior citizens in the school's media center, where they shared homemade memory books and served them pizza for lunch.

``It's a wonderful experience,'' Beafore said. ``I know some of them I met, they are kinder than I thought they would be. You're afraid to make that first step.''

Alice Kolb, a speech and language therapist who is assigned to the course through the Jackson County Intermediate School District, said the most notable change in the students is their attitude.

They become more positive and they are much better at problem solving, she said.

Candy Corser, activity director at the assisted-living center, said students have been coming to the center for about a decade but they have been working with the Transitions class for the past three years.

``It's great for them to be able to interact with the children ... To have that sense of community,'' Corser said. ``They do find out that the kids aren't what they imagined (them) to be. They can really relate to them.''

Although Alex says the class has been worthwhile, he didn't need much help learning how to talk with others.

``That comes easy,'' he said.

``Yeah, you do talk a lot,'' added his cousin, Cory Edwards, 15.

Join Power Hour Fitness and Stroller Strides for an Outdoor Fitness Fundraiser benefiting the Snow Family.

Workout and unite in the fight against Autism and help a family in need!

Saturday, June 21st
9am to 10am

Fitness Class and Silent Auction
WHERE: Heritage Park, Dana Point
COST: Minimum donation of $25. Proceeds go to the Snow Family.
RSVP: Virginia Crowe at crowesnest1104@cox.net to reserve your spot.

The fitness class will be one hour in length. Men and women are welcome. Bring a