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Category: General info

1Dec

Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD for short, is an extremely complex condition. It is part behavioral, part neurological, and, to some degree, part organ-related. This overlap into many different areas of diagnosis would make the condition complicated enough, but then the behavioral aspect throws a major spanner in the works. ASD has a huge range of different behavioral symptoms, and many of these symptoms also vary in intensity, which is why the condition was ultimately classified as a “spectrum.”

Because of this, diagnosing and treating ASD has not always been accurate. ASD itself didn’t exist as a unique condition in medical textbooks until the 1980s. Before that, some of its symptoms were classified as distinct disorders, such as Asperger’s Syndrome, while others were completely misdiagnosed as mental illness, and some ASD patients were treated having schizophrenia.

Today, while medical science has a better understanding of ASD, that understanding is far from complete. Research and treatment for ASD are being done at hospitals, labs, and clinics all over the world. For some, one of the more promising chances for successful treatment is at an autism medical center in Tbilisi, Georgia. But why?

The ASD Puzzle

There is a massive range of both symptoms and intensity levels of symptoms in ASD. Some people with ASD require no treatment at all because their symptoms are so mild that their personality is regarded as “quirky and introverted” or “eccentric.” Some ASD patients speak in a monotone, like a robot. Others can’t tie their shoes, or eat food using utensils. Some can’t maintain eye contact when speaking to other people, while others must perform tasks in the exactly the same way, and maintain a strict routine, with any disruption causing anxiety, and even violence.

Because of this range on the spectrum, there are many different ways of addressing the treatment of ASD, but the one thing all treatments have in common is that they are not cures. Currently, there is no known cure for ASD. Once it is diagnosed, it’s a lifelong condition in the same fashion as heart disease or diabetes. But ASD, while currently incurable, is not untreatable. The symptoms themselves can be managed, even if the origin of those symptoms, the ASD itself, can’t be cured.

Autism Treatments In Tbilisi

This is where some international clinics, like those in Tbilisi, the capital city of the country of Georgia, hold some hope for families. Some forms of treatment for ASD require the prescription of medication, such as antipsychotics, for the more extreme behavioral displays. Other ASD children may benefit from behavioral therapy where they consciously learn to confront, overcome, and change their behavior so that a child who was once unable to look people in the eye eventually learns to do so.

However, there are other treatments, still on the cutting edge, that are yet to be performed widely around the world. Stem cell therapy for ASD is one of these treatments. And although stem cell therapy itself is a well-regarded treatment that is being researched for an ever-expanding range of different conditions, it is not a treatment that can be sought in the United States. At least, not for ASD.

How Stem Cell Therapy Works

Stem cell therapy, as the name implies, uses stem cells and transplants them into a patient. Stem cells must be cells that come either from the patient or from someone closely genetically related to the patient, such as a sibling. This is because, like an organ transplant, there are issues of compatibility, and the wrong stem cells will be rejected by the body.

There are two ways to harvest stem cells. The best stem cells, known as “pluripotent,” come from “cord blood,” a term that refers to the fluids left in the umbilical cord after birth. If a family has the foresight to request, that cord blood is preserved after a baby is born, that preserved sample can be harvested at a later date for stem cells. Otherwise, the less potent, but still viable stem cells located within a person’s bone marrow must be surgically harvested, which is a more invasive procedure.

Treating Autism

In the United States, stem cell therapy is currently only legal for treating blood-cancer illnesses like leukemia. While it is widely known that stem cell therapy is likely to be effective at treating many other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, or ASD, treating these conditions is, for now, only legally allowed for research purposes in the USA.

However, a sufficiently experienced and advanced autism medical center in Tbilisi, Georgia, doesn’t have these same restrictions. Although the highest medical standards and experienced medical professionals are still used and observed here, the promising results of stem cell therapy for ASD aren’t restricted, and people who want to try treating their children for some ASD symptoms, such as hostility, or inattentiveness, can come to Georgia to get the treatment that the USA is still too cautious to allow.

12Nov

Autism today is better known as autism spectrum disorder or ASD. It’s a medical condition that, unfortunately, currently has no known cure, although there are a variety of different treatments available to help manage the many different symptoms that ASD diagnosed patients may display. The one thing that is largely in agreement is that ASD exhibits behavioral symptoms primarily, and so can have an effect on how easy or challenging it is for those diagnosed with the condition to interact comfortably with others.

As the name indicates, ASD has a broad “spectrum” of different behavioral symptoms, and these symptoms can occur at various intensities. This has, in the past, made correctly diagnosing ASD so complex that it wasn’t until the 1980s that ASD was even recognized as its own distinct medical condition. Before this change, ASD was diagnosed as some specific illnesses and even mistaken as a form of schizophrenia, since some types of ASD responded to the use of antipsychotic medication.

Working With Groups

Today, ASD is now recognized as a series of symptoms, and people are diagnosed and treated according to their individual symptoms, but before this modern interpretation, ASD was originally, in the 1980s, broken up into four subtypes of autism.

Adults today are likely to recognize some of these terms as they were used extensively in both the news and in fiction, such as film. It was only 2013 that the current interpretation of a single disorder with multiple symptoms was adopted. Most people will be at least passingly familiar with some of the terms previously in use.

Asperger’s Syndrome

Thanks to fiction and the media, Asperger’s is one of the most well-known classifications of ASD and, to this day, is still in informal use, even if the actual medical designation has been abandoned. Greta Thunberg, the famous 16-year-old environmentalist, is one of the most famous people in the world right now who still invokes the term “Asperger’s Syndrome” to describe herself.

In one sense, Asperger’s is often regarded as the “desirable” or even “fashionable” form of ASD that people want to have, and some people still make unfounded claims about having it. Asperger’s was, during its time, considered a “high functioning” form of ASD, and was often associated with people who had “eccentric” or “quirky” personalities, but were also often considered brilliant due to the hyper-focus and increased powers of concentration Asperger’s could potentially leave as a side-effect of the condition. People legitimately diagnosed with Asperger’s would sometimes go decades without a professional medical diagnosis, because the symptoms could be so mild that some people thought of themselves as just “introverted,” or draining to interact with people, rather than having a medical condition.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified

The previous ASD classification system diagnosed people into four groups based on the severity of the symptoms they had, but it was the second, more serious classification that started to show some of the cracks in the original diagnostic methodology. Known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified, or PDD-NOS, this was considered more serious than Asperger’s and could leave people with real difficulties interacting with others.

However, as the name implies, “not otherwise specified” made PDD-NOS a “miscellaneous” category that just about anything that didn’t fit the other three categories would fall into. While Aspergers and “classic autistic disorder” had a small range of very simple, easy to categorize symptoms, many other diagnoses only partially fulfilled these other categories, and so, due to not completely fulfilling them, would fall into the PDD-NOS category, thus causing many diagnostic headaches. While poor adaptive behavior, difficulty responding to changes in routine, and language developmental issues were part of PDD-NOS, many other symptoms also fell into this category.

Autistic Disorder

Autistic disorder was also commonly referred to as “classic autism,” and this more extreme variant was often the subject of media portrayal thanks to its many unique symptoms. The movie Rain Man, for example, is one of the most famous film renditions of classic autism, with the extreme degeneration of normal interactions, the emphasis on repetitive behaviors, and the subsequent “side-effect” of an ability to focus or perform complex mental operations.

Autistic disorder is the third category in severity, also required much more intensive treatment. Focused therapy and sometimes even the use of medication were advocated for people in this range.

Childhood Disintegrative Disorder

The most severe form of ASD under the older diagnostic system was often, for parents, also the most frightening. A chief component of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder is a regression. That is, the child would appear to be developing normally, learning speech, advancing hand-eye coordination, then stop, and reverse the process, becoming unable to talk or perform activities that used to be easy. CDD could occur between the ages of 2-4 years.

This condition was so severe that sometimes the use of antipsychotics or anticonvulsants were advised. Basic tasks like being able to eat, or put on shoes would be beyond children diagnosed with this condition.

11Nov

Most people that start families will undergo a typical parental experience, watching the child grow up, and dealing with the usual social and educational concerns that everyone has about getting good grades, and properly socializing with others for positive interactions and relationships.

However, not every family is going to follow the average path. Some families may find that medical conditions have an impact on the development of a child. For some, these can be specific physical medical conditions such as deafness or blindness that change the way a child learns and interacts with the world. For others, it may be more behavioral disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. Like all conditions, someone diagnosed with ASD benefits the most from specific, focused treatment. But what does that constitute for ASD? This is where understanding what it is, and what Autism Treatment Centers do comes into play.

What is Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Autism spectrum disorder, more commonly known as ASD, is a condition with both physical and behavioral symptoms, although it is the behavioral symptoms that are the most visible and often the most treated. Unlike other conditions, ASD doesn’t have a single set or group of symptoms but instead covers a huge range of different behavioral symptoms at differing intensities.

This is the reason that the disorder is referred to as being on a spectrum, and so are the people diagnosed with the condition. One person can have a very significant set of symptoms that is severe enough to warrant the use of medication and intensive therapy. Another person, however, can have only a handful of symptoms that are so mild that there’s no need for medical diagnosis, except to satisfy curiosity.

Fortunately, it’s possible to diagnose ASD very early in children. Because of the vast range of different behavioral symptoms that may be displayed, there are a variety of different methods, approaches, and even diagnostic tools that may be required for a proper treatment plan to be formulated. This is one of the reasons why an autism treatment center can be an important ally during the process.

Treating According To Need

ASD’s multitude of symptoms at different intensities means that there is no “one size fits all” treatment method that will work on every child, the way a vaccine works. Instead, the most important first step is an accurate, comprehensive diagnosis that lays out the specifics of a child’s ASD so that everyone knows which aspects must be addressed first. As one historical example, it wasn’t until the 1980s that ASD was even recognized as its own distinct medical condition. Some people with ASD were diagnosed as schizophrenic and were treated in that manner, even having anti-psychotics applied because the more severe cases of ASD responded to antipsychotic medication.

On the other hand, some people with ASD were diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome, which is considered a milder, behavioral that sometimes does not even require medical or psychological treatment of any sort, resulting in “eccentric behavior” at its mildest. This means that it’s important to catalog the different behaviors and their intensities, and then come up with a treatment plan that addresses the individual.

Help From Centers

ASD is a condition that is managed. Unfortunately, medical science currently has no cure for this condition, though different approaches can help to address different symptoms. An Autism Treatment Center is one of the best ways for families to get the help they need in understanding how an ASD diagnosed child sees the world, and the best way to manage those symptoms to still live a productive life with the potential for education and self-advancement.

Depending on the diagnosis of a child, treatment methods will vary a lot. Some children diagnosed with very severe symptoms may require medication, such as antipsychotics, to be receptive to other forms of treatment. Other children may be recommended to undergo a regimen of behavioral therapy, consciously training them to overcome their symptoms, such as children learning to make eye contact while speaking with others, or waiting for others to finish speaking before giving out a reply.

In some cases, there may be medical treatments suggested for specific aspects of ASD. Some ASD symptoms are physical, such as the incidence of digestive/gastrointestinal conditions that have a higher occurrence rate in ASD patients. In other cases, more experimental forms of treatment may be suggested at other clinics, such as stem cell therapy. Stem cell therapy, while only approved for cancer-blood disorders in the USA, is now being offered in other countries to treat some symptoms of ASD. Hostility and attention-deficit disorders, for example, have shown promising results, through the use of stem cell therapy, but research into this form of treatment continues.

Ultimately, it is up to parents to get their children diagnosed and then decide what is the best course of action for a child’s welfare. An autism treatment center can be an important cornerstone of this.

6Nov

Autism, more accurately known today as Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD, is an extremely complex condition. One of the most challenging aspects of ASD is the fact that it has so many possible behavioral symptoms that for centuries, it wasn’t even recognized as a single condition, and different symptoms were thought to be completely separate, distinct disorders. In fact, it wasn’t even until the 1980s that ASD was formally recognized as a distinct medical condition. Before this, ASD was sometimes misdiagnosed as a form of schizophrenia, at least partly because some ASD symptoms responded to antipsychotic medication.

Today, the treatment of ASD is much more comprehensive, and there are many options, both medical and behavioral, to help ASD patients and their families to understand and manage the symptoms. But what is ASD? How do people exhibit ASD symptoms, and what causes this condition?

Not A Disease

First, it’s important to understand that ASD is not a disease that is caused by the transmission of bacteria or a virus. Unlike pneumonia or even something mild like a headache or an upset stomach, taking some prescription medication doesn’t make ASD go away. There is no cure for ASD. Once ASD is diagnosed, this is a lifelong condition that must be taken into account for a person’s daily life activities, just like the precautions that need to be taken for people with asthma, diabetes, or even geriatric conditions that come with aging, such as Alzheimer’s.

This means that ASD, like other medical conditions, can only have the symptoms managed, and this will be an ongoing, lifelong activity. While most medical conditions have physical symptoms, and ASD does have a few, the majority of ASD symptoms are behavioral. This means that, unlike typical medical conditions, symptom management may involve counseling and behavioral therapy, though administering some types of medication may also be part of the regimen.

Why It Happens

Unfortunately, the understanding that medical science currently has of ASD is far from complete. While it’s now widely acknowledged that ASD has a huge range of different symptoms, some of them are physical, but most behavioral, the exact reasons why ASD occurs are still not fully known. Medical experts now know how some people come to have ASD, but the reasons why it occurs are still being researched.

However, it is safe to say that there are three primary means by which someone may contract ASD, and vaccine transmission is not one of those delivery mechanisms.

Genetic

The most common form of ASD is transmission is through family lines. If a parent has been diagnosed as having the ASD condition, then this means giving birth to a child with ASD is a possibility. In such cases, it may be prudent to have infants evaluated for ASD, or to wait until parents notice familiar ASD characteristics then bring the child in for evaluation.

Pre-Natal

Another cause of ASD may be at the pre-natal stage. That is to say, the child may not be born with ASD, but, due to circumstances that occur while developing in the womb, may contract ASD during pregnancy, and then be born with the condition.

In this case, prenatal causes of ASD have been theorized to be diseases the mother may contract, especially in the early stages of pregnancy. Rubella, for example, when exposed to pregnant mice has resulted in a higher incidence of ASD in the mice that are subsequently born. In humans, it is suspected that the mother’s immune response to rubella, especially in the critical first eight weeks of pregnancy, may lead to ASD, as it also believed to be the cause of other behavior disorders like schizophrenia.

Post-Natal

It’s also theorized that there may be causes for ASD just before birth, during the birth process, or perhaps even shortly afterward. The results of definitive post-natal causes thus far, however, are inconclusive. For example, in numerous reports, it was found that the administration of vaccines to children was found to not have any impact on the formation of ASD.

However, one report was contrary to this, and, despite that report having been withdrawn on improper research, there is a general belief among uneducated parents who refuse to do follow up research that the one now withdrawn report is valid, despite the mountains of factual and statistical evidence to the contrary.

Get Professional Help

As with any other medical condition, it is important for people with no medical training to get a professional diagnosis from trained, experienced medical experts. ASD has a variety of different symptoms at different intensities, so the recommended approach for treatment is unique to each individual.

In some cases, ASD may be treated with behavioral therapy techniques, similar to psychological counseling. In other cases, medication may be advised. Some ASD is now being treated through the use of stem cell therapy, but you should always consult with a doctor first before deciding on what approach to take for dealing with ASD in a child.

22Sep

Famous Personalities With Autism

Autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has often been misunderstood throughout human history. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1980s that ASD was even recognized as its own unique condition. Before that, medical science had incorrectly interpreted ASD as a unique form of schizophrenia, and so many people that could have received better, more effective treatment, did not due to this misdiagnosis.

However, ASD has some unexpected expressions of its different symptoms that can sometimes make a difference in perception, or an increased ability to focus, and turn these symptoms into talents that allow some ASD patients to excel. Some of the people that world admires the most are diagnosed with ASD, and that condition can, in part, play a role in their talent and success. Here are just a few of the famous people in our culture—and throughout history—that have taken their condition and used it to their advantage, not their detriment.

Glenn Gould

While there was no formal diagnosis, since he lived and performed before the current understanding of ASD came to the fore, one of Canada’s most famous contemporary musicians is now strongly by current medical experts of having ASD, were he to be diagnosed today.

One of the traits of ASD can be an obsession with maintaining a routine. Things that disrupt an ordered routine can be extremely stressful for certain types of ASD patients. Gould showed many typical ASD symptoms, such as his poor receptivity to performing with new instruments, in new venues. His physical symptoms are also what makes experts suspect he was on the spectrum and he showed classic mannerisms, such as rocking back and forth while he played, a very common behavior for people with ASD. Of course, this same ability to focus on things other people might not also make him one of the more accomplished musicians of his day.

Sir Anthony Hopkins

Perhaps one of the most celebrated “elder statesmen” of British acting talent alive today, Sir Anthony Hopkins has been clinically diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Before the new classification system that condensed all the different categories in just ASD, Hopkins was originally diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome, which, in the old system, was considered a “higher functioning” form of autism.

In Hopkin’s case, his ASD let to a focus on the unusual details of the characters he played, as well as a very intense, distinct style of performance that could, under the right conditions, be perceived as abnormal and disturbing. Of course, his most famous role as the brilliant, but psychotic criminal Dr. Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs is now revered to this day for its off-kilter delivery.

Kim Peek

When most people think of ASD, one of the most famous performances of Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man comes to mind. However, Dustin Hoffman’s performance wasn’t just something he made up. The inspiration for the Rain Man movie came when, in the 1980s, screenwriter Barry Morrow met a man named Kim Peek in Arlington, Texas.

Peek, as a result of ASD, had extreme difficulty interacting with people in normal social settings, and struggled with everyday activities, such as buttoning up a shirt. However, he also had an astounding capacity for memory and had was capable of memorizing up to 12000 books that he could quote, word for word.

Tom Wiggins

This blind musician from the 19th century was notable not just for being a famous black performer during a more prejudiced century, but many medical professionals today speculate that his talent may have, in some capacity, be a result of having ASD.

“Blind Tom Wiggins” as he was known, had an unusual talent that landed him with the nickname “the human parrot.” He could hear any song just once and then be able to play it precisely on a piano. His most famous trick, however, was his ability to play three songs simultaneously, once again, a side-effect of the differing perception and ability to focus that is sometimes characteristic of ASD.

Courtney Love

While she is most famous for being the wife of revered 90s grunge music icon Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana, Courtney Love is also the lead singer in her own band, Hole. She is also, however, a talented musical celebrity that has, like many before her, found a way to cope with ASD through music.

Courtney Love was diagnosed in an earlier period with Asperger’s Syndrome, putting her, once again, in the now-outdated “high functioning” category. Like many people classified as such, she is introverted, has a difficult time casually interacting with others in the way most people do. However, she is also able to perceive things and concentrate on areas of interest differently and with more intensity, and that has resulted in a successful music career, outside of her famous marriage.

Children boys girls fence
18Sep

The condition called autism, which today is more often referred to by specialists as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has had a very turbulent journey over the years. Medical science has not been quick to diagnose this condition, and for many decades, different aspects of ASD were thought to be completely separate disorders by themselves, while other types of ASD weren’t even recognized as disorders.

The most resounding example of this was how, until the 1980s, autism was not even thought of as a distinct medical condition, but was often misdiagnosed as one of the possible symptoms of schizophrenia, resulting in many people throughout the centuries not getting proper medical attention or treatment.

Because of the many different symptoms and intensities of those symptoms, autism is a very complex disorder to both understand and treat. This is one of the reasons why, for many years, there was a classification system in place that tried to categorize the different types of ASD. Atypical Autism was one of these, but what was Atypical Autism, and why is it that it is no longer formally recognized?

The Categorization Years

For American—and ultimately global—medical professionals, one of the “sacred texts” of mental health is the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, more colloquially known as DSM. The DSM publication first went into print in 1952 and became the benchmark that medical experts would use amongst each other, and as a tool of communication and diagnosis for different mental conditions.

It was with the third edition of DSM, known as DSM-III, that autism was finally acknowledged as a distinct condition with its own symptoms, and recommended forms of treatment. When autism was first entered into DSM-III, however, it wasn’t in its current form. It divided autism into separate categories that tried to make distinctions according to the severity of the symptoms diagnosed. On the mild end were “high functioning” autistic patients, often with what was called “Asperger’s Syndrome” during those years, a condition originally thought to be distinct, until it was understood to be a type of autism.

Then there was atypical autism, which took on a host of different symptoms and classifications.

The Miscellaneous Autism

Under DSM-III, atypical autism was formally known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, or PDD-NOS. Asperger’s was considered the “mildest” or least severe category and was “high functioning.” PDD-NOS was a little more severe, and then very severe was “Classic Autism.” On the opposite end, the most severe, “low functioning” disorder was referred to as Childhood Disintegration Disorder.

One issue with PDD-NOS was that it showed the cracks in the categorization system. While experts felt that there were enough common characteristics to divide autistic patients into Asperger’s and Childhood Disintegration Disorder, many patients “fell through the cracks” and had symptoms that didn’t neatly fit into the other categories and were thus, “not otherwise specified.”

The only consistent aspect of the atypical autism classification was that it wasn’t quite as “mild” as Asperger’s. It included symptoms such as:

Atypical/Unusual Social Behavior

One of the chief symptoms of autism, in general, is atypical or unusual social behavior, but if it is more severe and pronounced, it tends to move people out of the Asperger’s category and into atypical autism. If the patient experienced difficulty in socializing, and others commented that the person’s behavior was unusual and abnormal enough to interfere with interactions, it was considered atypical.

Language/Communication Deficit

PDD-NOS was usually associated with communication problems as well. In particular, competence with language, especially conventional speech, could be a problem. This could manifest itself in different ways, such as people having difficulty speaking at all, or speaking in problematic ways, such as an inability to add inflection to words, resulting in all speech coming out flat and monotone, more like a robot than a person.

Repetitive Motions/Behaviors

PDD-NOS was also characterized by having more frequent and/or severe focus on repeated motions and behaviors. The tendency to repeat a motion, such as rock back and forth, or repeat a gesture with hands is characteristics of autism in general.

The Change

As time passed, it became more clear to the medical experts that if more and more patients were being diagnosed as atypical autism because that was far more common—or less restrictive—than the other categories, then that became a diagnostic problem.

That is why, in 2013, with the release of DSM-IV, the four categories of autism were abandoned, and atypical autism, like Asperger’s Syndrome and the other conditions, were “collapsed” into a single diagnostic class, Autism Spectrum Disorder. This meant that now, instead of looking at a few symptoms, and trying to decide which “class” of autism a patient fell into, and then apply treatment based on that class, patients are now diagnosed on the individual symptoms they exhibit, with treatment being based on their individual symptoms along a spectrum, rather than a rigid class system.




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