NO more TV!

I was talking with Dr. Little about vaccines the other day and inevitably, autism came up. It seems like the statistics for autism are growing every day. Just last year the odds of your child having autism were 1 in 166. That number is now 1 in 150. It is very scary to me that by the time I have kids, the odds of them developing autism are great. Everyone has their theory on autism. I know a lot of parents want to blame it on vaccines so they refuse to vaccinate their children. In doing this, they not only hurt their children by not providing them any immunity to vaccine preventable diseases, but they are also leading to strengthening of diseases that were once nearly irradicated. I learned the other day that in a new study done on autism, the rate in unvaccinated kids was slightly higher that in vaccinated children. That's not to say that choosing not to vaccinate your children leads to autism, in fact it was such a small margin that they called the risks equal in vaccinated and unvaccinated. Researchers are now theorizing that watching television is what leads to autism. A correlation to TV viewing and increased autism cases was found by the autism rate rising in the 80's, around the same time TV's and VCR's became widely available. It is though that the viewing of brightly colored two dimensional moving objects interrupts the brain's interferes with the visual processing center of the brain which is developing at this age. Researchers have also linked excessive television viewing in toddlers with ADHD. So no television for the little ones! In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends absolutely no television viewing under the age of 2. I think that television has led to health problems in adults as well. People are spending more time indoors, becoming sedentary, and not using their hands and minds as God gave them to use to use. So I think it would do us all good to get up off our butts and go outside. Engage in physical activity and mental stimulation. It will keep you younger longer and much healthier and happier. To learn more about autism go to autismspeaks.org. I would not use that as my only sourse of information in making informed decisions about autism risks, however. The site is not comprehensive in talking about theories on autism triggers.