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Helping Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD, Asperger’s, Dyscalculia

So your child has been diagnosed with learning difficulties or is having problems at school? What can I offer you that is going to be effective? I am a mum who was previously in your shoes, and I found something that was so effective that when I started helping my son, news of our success went out like a shockwave.

I began receiving calls from parents I didn’t know asking me to help their children. With a health science degree and years of practice behind me, I started helping other families.
Most of my patients, even after three years, are recommendations, and that’s a great recommendation in itself.

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Bad labelling

So many labels are given to our children that indicate that their symptoms are poorly understood. What I do instead is look at the child; and then help them. Labels have no place with me. In some cases children have been mislabelled (another problem in itself).

If the label is wrong the treatment will probably be wrong too.

The Fit4reading Programme is designed to help children shed their labels.

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Nerve Growth Factors

Rita Levi Montalcini won a Nobel prize decades ago for her work with nerve growth factors. These chemicals get released everytime we do or think something new and they make new nerve pathways. Taking advantage of this, by repeating certain movements we change the physical structure of parts of our brain.

That’s how, by doing certain special movements on a daily basis, we can correct developmental errors that are stopping our children progressing.

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Sensory Distortions

Our brains rely almost completely on sensory information to tell us what is going on.

Look through a looroll holder and also cover up the other eye.
Try and do something a child in a classroom would have to do such as copy from the board (imagine this) and write it in front of you on paper.
Also imagine that the paper is so bright/dazzling that you can’t look at it.
That is how my son spent the first six years of his life (he had no 3D vision, no tracking, and he had Irlen syndrome). Not succeeding at school? No surprises there with all these sensory distortions going on.

Children labelled lazy and slow may just be experiencing really bad undiagnosed visual problems even if they passed eye tests. This happened to my son. Thank goodness I sorted it out for him by doing the Fit4reading Programme.

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What Treatments Do I Offer?

There are two main ways patients can get treatment:

come and see me as a private patient.

This entails a session up to two hours in which I will carry out an assessment/screening, and demonstrate the first set of exercises. Another session a couple of months later for the second set and a third session for the third set.

As well as this, you have access to the programme on my website (I will give you your own password) including the nutrition module (17,200 words).

Buy the programme from the website:

There are five main modules you need, though you don’t need to buy them all at once. To start you off, you need the assessment and the first set of exercises. Then you can add in the Nutrition, second and third sets when you like.

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ADHD drugs: children do worse at school when on them

ADHD Drugs- Children Do Worse at School When on ADHD Drugs
This is by Dr Joe at

http://www.drjoe.net.au/index.php?option=com_user&view=login&return=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5kcmpvZS5uZXQuYXUvd2VsY29tZQ==

Yesterday at 08:38
Every once in a while a study emerges that fundamentally changes a particular aspect of medicine. A long term study which shows that the assumptions underpinning a particular course of treatment, are shown to be wrong. One example was the Women’s Health Initiative in 2002 that changed our view on hormone replacement therapy for women. It had been assumed for close to 20 years that the benefits outweighed the risks. Then a long-term study showed the exact opposite and almost overnight the routine recommendation to menopausal women to take HRT was changed. Today it is only used where the benefit to the individual can be assessed as outweighing the risks.

This week the same fundamental overthrowing of assumptions has happened with Attention deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For the last 25 years we have seen a significant increase in the number of children diagnosed with this condition and an exponential increase in the use of drugs to treat it. These “stimulant” drugs such as Ritalin and Dex-amphetamine are amphetamine derivatives and are potent. They have been known to have significant side effects particularly affecting the heart and cardiovascular system. Their use has generally been defended on the basis that the benefits outweighed the risks.

One of the main perceived benefits has been improved academic performance. Paradoxically, the use of stimulant medication seems to tranquilize to some degree children with ADHD making them more docile and more attentive in class settings. In turn it has been assumed that children treated with the drugs would do better in school than those that were not medicated.

The study released this week from the well-respected Raine Foundation is the worlds first long term research into drug use in ADHD. The children were followed for nine years. The results showed that not only did the medicated group not do better than the non-medicated group; they did worse by a factor of ten fold! Children who had been medicated had a ten fold higher rate of being identified by teachers as performing below average for age then those who had never been medicated.

The other justification for medication has been improved behavior in the child. The study showed no significant improvement in the medicated children. Their behavior was no “worse” but not better. There was a slightly increase likelihood of depression in the medicated group.

So essentially the two reasons that have been used to promote the use of stimulant medication in children have been shown to be fundamentally wrong. The strength of this study is that is long term (9 years) .It is often easy to show benefits from medication in the short term for a variety of reasons including the placebo effect. Long term is where the truth comes out

Furthermore, the children who had been medicated had a significantly higher diastolic blood pressure, which was not a short-term effect. The drugs are known to elevate blood pressure whilst in the body but it was thought that this wore off. This study showed that medicated children had ongoing higher blood pressure even after the medication was ceased. This potentially increases their risk of hypertension and heart disease in adult life.

So what does this mean for parents whose children are on these medications? The short answer is that one should be looking at getting them off. This needs to be done in consultation with your doctor. Importantly each case is different and there will be some cases where for various reasons the benefits are judged to outweigh the substantial risks. However we will expect to see a drastic reduction in the use of these potent drugs in our children.

In an upcoming piece I will outline other ways to manage and deal with behavioral issues in children.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/dr-joes-diy-health/adhd-drugs-children-do-worse-at-school-when-on-adhd-drugs/313924834153

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My Child is not Naughty, my child has sensory distortions

Imagine sitting in the back of a bumpy car looking through binoculars. Imagine all the sounds around you are too loud. Imagine all the lights are too bright. But really you are sitting still in a classroom while this is going on. Not thriving at school? Any wonder. Are you being naughty? No, you are trying to survive in this sensory nightmare.

Nobody knows that what’s happening for you because you haven’t told them. YOU DON’T KNOW IT’S NOT NORMAL.
What a disaster.
Without knowledgeable intervention, this will not improve very much over the years.
Get these children the help they need. Share this page with your friends. Please.
A head righting reflex is what enables us to keep our head upright and look at moving objects, or we might be moving too.
It relies on the oculomotor and vestibular systems to be in good working order (vision and balance).
Without it, that is when the child experiences the binoculars symptom mentioned above.
Can we tell from looking?
This child will stare at still places and have trouble making eye contact…. See more
So, they will hate crowds, as they find moving things frightening especially accompanied by noise.
They won’t be able to catch very well.
They won’t be able to copy from a board.
They will lose their place while reading.
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Mutism

There is a technique I’ve tried successfully on several children that has helped during the moment when a child is not able to speak.

The Fit4reading Programme offers more lasting help for this, as it gives the brain the nerve pathways it needs for speech.