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ALLERGY,
TOXINS, AND first published by
Academic Therapy, 1539 Fourth Street, San Rafael, California, CONTENTS 1.Allergy, Toxins
and the Learning-Disabled Child ALLERGY, TOXINS AND THE LEARNING-DISABLED CHILD In 1965 we recruited a vivacious young woman as a technician in our neurophysiology and behavior modification lab. Although she had no college training she had been on the staff of the marine biology lab of a major university as a mass spectrometrists and micropaleontologist. She was a very intelligent, popular, outgoing, well organized and competent person capable of an enormous amount of skilled work. Several months after joining us Mrs. Black became very irritable. She began to have serious marital problems. She became less competent at work. From having been the center of social activity, her office became a solitary cell. She began to choose very dark, often black clothing. She painted her bedroom dead black (enough of a reason for marital conflict). She painted her office dead black. I began to think of Mrs. Black in psychodynamic terms. "She cannot accept the pressure of responsibility in a novel community that does not use time clocks and other management devices." "She cannot adapt to the importance of her husband's role in our program." "She has always controlled the society around her; and her habitual methods don't work in this therapeutic environment; therefore she is attempting to control by being sick." Mrs. Black became increasingly fatigued, tense, antisocial, and incompetent. (She had spells when she could not type, and temporary periods when she could not read.) My response was exasperation -- after all, I knew she had greater capacity than show as presently demonstrating; and this childish retreat was not worthy of such a gifted person. It occurred that a hemophiliac student had a crisis and blood was needed. A number of staff went down to give blood. The nurses could not measure any blood pressure on Mrs. Black. This fact managed to penetrate even my prejudiced head, and we rushed her to our internist, Dr. Sol Klotz. After a thorough workup Mrs. Black was returned to us with a diagnosis of food allergy -- pork and tomatoes being the primary villains. This was really too much for me. I called Dr. Klotz and said, "Sol, you have to be kidding. I mean, there has to be something wrong with her." You will notice, of course, that my brilliance neglected to illuminate the fact that an allergy might be something profoundly wrong. After all, everyone knows that allergies are psychosomatic. Sol and I have worked to together for many years, and he tolerates my presumptions. He patiently instructed me on the importance of taking him seriously, mildly inquired if I had a diagnosis I would like to substitute; and we closed the issue. Pork and tomatoes were removed from her diet. In about six weeks Mrs. Black was again vivacious, fully alert, competent, a social butterfly, full of energy and enthusiasm. Her husband seemed somewhat bewildered by the rapid change. The marriage had obviously been set a bubble with life again. It took this event to force me to begin to take my own scientific value system seriously. For several years Dr. Klotz had been serving as primary care physician for Green Valley's adolescent students when they became ill. In those days we initially relied on the referring doctor's examination and history. (We no longer do this.) The children who were sent to Dr. Klotz for a variety of ills frequently returned with a diagnosis of allergy, and with prescriptions and routines for their treatment. Since I had a great deal of respect for Dr. Klotz, both as a person and as a physician, I did not allow my exasperation with his "fixation" to dissuade me from using him as our primary care physician; however, I was often heard to mutter, "Well, an allergist just has to diagnose allergies." Imagine! Over the course of years a physician who I respected and trusted had returned a very high percentage of students to us after careful evaluation with a diagnosis of allergy. Rather than being compelled by the evidence, I was snared in a psychodynamic prejudice and so, for years, ignored hard facts. After the episode with Mrs. Black, we began to send students randomly to Dr. Klotz for allergy screening. The percentage of allergic students, often with no allergy reported in their histories, was extremely high. This information was intriguing; however, we remained suspicious of the extremely high percentage. We began to screen all of our children for allergies. In November 1972 Dr. Klotz reported that 103 of 107 sequentially admitted students had proven to be significantly sensitive to at least three of twelve allergens tested (1). These tests were conducted in a double-blind fashion -- the students did not know which injections were allergens and which were placebos, nor did the physician reading the initial response, nor did the nurses reading the delayed responses. The nurses placed the skin test, forming blebs in the skin with standard allergens, then the doctor read the skin wheals (if any) 10 minutes after the injection. The nurses read any delayed reactions at 24, 48 and 72 hours. The accumulation of data over the years (1962-1974) convinced us that a major factor in the disturbance of learning skills in children is an allergic reaction to ordinary substances and especially an allergic reaction to commonly eaten foods. A large majority of the children sent to us, particularly the boys, are physically immature. This finding is widely reported in the literature of exceptionality. D. Sandberg has reported that a survey of 100 growth-retarded children demonstrated a great increase in growth when highly allergenic foods, such as wheat, corn, and milk, were removed from their diet (2). Sandberg has more recently reported in great detail on the precise effects of food allergy on growth in height of children (3). He has found that, when these children are removed from the foods to which they are sensitive, that the growth curve normalizes but there is no "catch-up" growth. "Catch-up" growth is a well documented finding. Children restored to normal diet after severe malnutrition, or taken off steroid drugs, or otherwise treated so that the growth curve normalizes, experience a spurt of accelerated growth and usually catch up with their age peers. The food-allergic child apparently merely normalizes his growth curve, but remains behind his age peer norm for actual height. However, Sandberg has found that if these children receive hypodesensitization injections (very dilute preparations of food extract) the "catch-up" growth spurt does occur. Sandberg has demonstrated that growth is exquisitely sensitive to allergic stress. The growth curves plotted for his allergic subjects show an almost immediate response to eating allergenic foods, to the removal of allergenic foods from the diet, and to treatment or lack of treatment with hypo-desensitization injections. He chose growth as his measure because it is perhaps the most objective measurement that can be made in children. P.J. Collipp reported that the asthmatic child and those who suffer from eczema are frequently developmentally immature (4). His center is coordinating a national study of the use of pyridoxine (vitamin B-6) with these children. A high percentage of allergic children demonstrate a poor tryptophane metabolism, and specific vitamin dependencies. Edward L. Binkley, Jr., M.D. brought our attention to the fact that pediatric allergists see a high percentage of hyperactive and attention deficited children, especially boys. He remarked that a sequence of minor physical anomalies (MPA) we reported as occurring significantly more commonly in children seen in special education settings was reported in the literature and that these MPA are common in an allergy practice. Binkley's list of traits includes very fair complexion, electric hair, a double crown in the hair, epicanthal folds, low set ears, adherent earlobes, malformed ears, soft and pliable ears, high steepled palate, furrowed tongue, geographic tongue, curved fifth finger, single traverse (Down's line, or Mongoloid line), third toe longer than the second, partial fusing of the middle toes, and a gap between the first and second toes (5). Similar information has been reported by M.F. Waldrop and C.F. Halverson, Jr., and by J.L.Rapoport, P.O.Quinn, and F. Lamprecht, for hyperkinetic children (6). Our own list is considerably larger and was influenced by J.W. Tintera's report of characteristic physical traits in patients with insufficient adrenal-cortical functioning and resulting low blood sugar (7). (See pages 51-61 for the full list of minor physical anomalies associated with systemic disease, learning, behavior, and emotional disabilities). MPA are seen in hyperkinetic children significantly more often than in normal children. They are seen in boys more often than in girls. They are often associated with a wide range of symptoms (fatigue, faintness, chills, tension, and the like). We have surveyed populations in California, Texas, Florida and New York; and we have found that (of our entire list) the normal population averages about three of these anomalies. Hyperkinetic, learning disabled, and behaviorally disordered children average about seven, and psychotic or severely emotionally ill children average about thirteen MPA. These results are statistically highly significant. It is not at all likely that the distribution occurs by chance. The distribution of these traits among populations is quite distinctive. The control populations fall in a normal bell shaped curve. This indicates that the usual random influence of genetic distribution occurs to produce the traits in a control population. The treatment groups fall into an approximately equal distribution. In other words, about the same number of children have five, six, seven, eight or more MPA to the top of the range. These numbers result in a flat line indicating that a strong non-random factor is influencing the ordinary genetic selection. These distributions are charted below. The discovery that our students have a significantly higher number of MPA lends support to other finds we have reported elsewhere. From 1968 through 1974 we monitored the entire population at our center on a wide range of biochemical assays. These assays also demonstrate that our group is significantly different from normal children and adults. Ninety-nine percent of entering students do not demonstrate any spillage of free ascorbic acid on admission. More than 80 percent do not demonstrate any spillage after loading with three grams of ascorbic acid per day for two weeks. Almost no child admitted to our center demonstrates metabolic balance or efficiency. More than 90 percent are deficient in manganese. Almost all are deficient in iron and zinc, and most are toxically high in copper and lead. Eighty-six percent demonstrate irregularities in glucose and insulin metabolism. About 25 percent demonstrate extremes in values of serum fats. Other indications of deficiencies, of malabsorption of food, and of poisoning are often found. Leon Rosenberg has reported on a number of gene-linked vitamin-dependency diseases discovered in the last decade (8). In these disorders the body cannot metabolize ordinary foods efficiently, and must receive enormous multiples of vitamins. If the urine demonstrates high values of homocystine, a metabolic product of tryptophan (an essential amino acid), it is clear that the body does not normally utilize pyridoxine (vitamin B-6) and therefore cannot metabolize tryptophan but consequently produces toxins. Children with this disorder are frequently diagnosed as autistic. Treatment for several months with 400 mg of pyridoxine a day enables the child to function normally. This supplementation must continue the rest of the child's life. It is not a question of a vitamin deficiency (not enough of the vitamin in the diet); but of a dependency. The child simply needs more of the vitamin than the typical child needs. The individual cannot efficiently handle the chemical and depends on an enormous quantity to be able normally to function.
TABLE I
0 N+42, Mean = 3.14 Median = 3 Mode = 3 LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN
0 N = 36 Mean = 7.36 Median = 6 No Mode SEVERELY EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED
0
N = 48 Mean = 12.6 Median = 14.5 No Mode Collipp and his colleagues have found other metabolites of tryptophan, kynurenine and xanthurenic acid, are frequently high in immature, allergic, asthmatic, and eczematous children (9). Again, treatment with pyridoxine (which is the co-enzyme which enables efficient tryptophan metabolism) permits normal functioning. We routinely study all of our children for the metabolites of vitamins, as well as protein, fat, glucose, and insulin chemistry. The evidence is markedly clear that a high percentage of special children suffer from dysfunctions of metabolism. The metabolic imbalance seems to be associated with hyper-sensitivity to toxins and with a very active allergy system. Most people think of allergies as causes of sneezes, coughs, asthma, skin rashes and hives. Allergies can, as well, effect the nervous system and produce a range of symptoms from convulsions to fatigue and irritability. Walter Alvarez, M.D., in his foreword to Allergies of the Nervous System by H. Brent Campbell, reported that for years he suffered from "Monday morning brain dullness (11)." He thought this merely the inevitable consequence of Monday mornings. He took an extended mountain climbing jaunt and was caught away from his supplies for several days. On returning to the support cabin he devoured an entire chicken. Shortly after returning home some hours later he went into convulsions. He had never before and never again suffered convulsions. The Alvarez family custom was to have chicken for Sunday dinner. On abandoning chicken Dr. Alvarez was abandoned by the dull brain of Monday morning. Bibliography
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