MARY HONDROS: I am going to talk a little bit about autism. Autism is all over the media right now. People are trying to figure out what the causes are, what is going on with all these new cases of autism. Basically what it is, is a child that has a developmental delay of some sort. Autistic children have difficulty communicating. They have delay in basic social skills, and they have obviously communication issues with others and then issues with limited imagination. So, what happens with autistic children is that they kind of tend to close themselves off it seems to the outside world. There are a lot of different speculations about the causes of autism like genetic factors, viral infection, or problems at birth. But there is no really known cause. Nutrition as far as autism goes is a controversial subject, but there are things that you can do to ensure that your baby has the best chance of having a healthy life and those include things like breastfeeding your infant until the age of one at the minimum, consuming a healthy diet when you are pregnant, and also making sure that your child, if your child does have autism that you continue to introduce new and different foods into their diet because they tend to get very picky with eating. Some children, not all children, have that problem, and also, just in general, limiting excess sugar. So, again, just to reiterate four good practices to have if you are concerned about autism is: Number 1, make sure you eat a healthy diet while pregnant. Avoid additives, preservatives and chemicals and things like that, because we do not know what role they play in the development of disease. Secondly, make sure, if you are able, to breastfeed your infant until the age of one. Thirdly, make sure that you are constantly introducing new foods to the child's diet because autistic children sometimes tend to get very picky and kind to stick to certain foods and you want them to eat a variety, so make sure that you are persistently introducing new foods. And lastly, just remember that to limit excess sugar in the diet. Sugar is not good for children anyways, but particularly with autistic children you want to make sure that they are not getting too much excess sugar from refined foods, processed foods and also remember, excess sugar is found in fruit juices, even 100% fruit juices, so make sure they are not getting too much of that per day. And those are some tips on autism.
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