I recently attended the 2011 Autism One Generation Rescue Conference in Lombard, IL. I was really excited when my husband supported my decision to go this year. This was my first conference. I chose AO/ GR because they are the biggest one out there, I love the AO website and I am deeply grateful to Jenny McCarthy for spreading awareness not only on autism, but autism RECOVERY.
There is a lot of information out there on autism and it is such a shame that a lot of it is old information. I recently got a flier in my son’s backpack mail during autism awareness month. The information was so out-dated that I felt kind of insulted. It gave the old statistic, that autism affects 1 in 150 and then stated that it is a life-long developmental disability that has no known causes and no known treatments. Really? What about all the kids who go on to recover? Why don’t they just say that autism is due to the “refrigerator mom” too? I know the teacher did not send this in malice, but I have little patience for ignorance and as a special-ed teacher, she should know better.
Anyway, I spent 3 full days at the conference, early Friday morning until the end on Sunday afternoon. I had a good time listening to new research, meeting authors and famous doctors. I also enjoyed meeting other autism parents. I really recommend going at least once to try it and see for yourself. It was exhausting and I missed my family, but it was only for 3 days. I also wished I had gone with someone, but I didn’t know anyone from my area who wanted to go.
It was shocking how many people attended, how big the conference was and how many venders were there. The busiest day was Saturday, the day of the keynote speakers, Jenny McCarthy and Byron Katie. I was really excited to see Jenny and hear the keynote. I have to admit that it was really disappointing. Jenny was listed as a keynote speaker, yet she only introduced Byron Katie and afterward sat outside to hold a book signing. That was a big disappointment for me. I had flown from NJ to IL for this? I did not enjoy Byron Katie at all, another time, another place, maybe, but not at an autism conference. After Byron’s talk, Jenny showed a new promotional video of hers, where she gives a lot of good information on autism recovery and her son appears in it as well. It was a great video, but I could have watched that at home on my computer. Besides the keynote, I never saw Jenny at any other time during the conference. I guess I just expected more as the President of Generation Rescue. I noticed that the executives of AO were all over the place during the conference and very approachable.
I felt overwhelmed by the number of presentations going on within each one-hour time block. At any given time, there were 4-6 talks going on at once. There was no way I could hear them all, so I had to chose the ones that were most important to me. A big topic was the new research on vitamin D - more on that in the supplements section. Dr. Yasko had a 4-hour presentation on h. pylori, which may be something to look into in the future, if my son’s GI issues return.
Also interesting to me was the use of medical marijuana for seizure disorders. I happened to be talking with another DAN doc and I was questioning the use of medical marijuana and she said that she never would have tried it with her patients, but one of them went ahead and did it and he is so much better with it that she now recommends that her other patients look into it. I thought that was interesting. It’s good to know that there are other options out there besides the heavy hitting drugs that have so many side effects.
One scientist provided some interesting data on ASD and how research has showed that where you lived during your pregnancy was the biggest factor in autism. That was surprising to me. It made me think back to where we lived during my pregnancies and wonder what the distribution for my state looks like.
It gets confusing to hear about one biomed therapy after another and one symptom of autism after another. At times, I feel overwhelmed by all the different biomed options out there and the plain fact that it is impossible to try them all. You wouldn’t want to subject your kid to all the different treatments, even if you could; it wouldn’t be healthy. It gets less overwhelming when you find a treatment that works for your child and stick with it.
