fasd symptoms | Symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) include fetal alcohol syndrome and other conditions in which children have some, but not all of the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, such as alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (ARND) and alcohol-related birth defects (ARBD).

Children who have none of the visible or physical symptoms of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders can have central nervous system symptoms that are just as severe as those of children who have been diagnosed with all of the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Symptoms of FASD

The symptoms of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders can include facial abnormalities, growth deficiencies, skeletal deformities, organ deformities, central nervous system handicaps and behavioral problems in later life.

Here are some of the symptoms which can occur to children with prenatal exposure to alcohol:

Facial Abnormalities

• Small head
  
• Small eye openings
  
• Webbing between eyes and base of nose
  
• Drooping eyelids
  
• Failure of eyes to move in same direction
  
• Short, upturned nose
  
• Flattened cheekbones
  
• Sunken nasal bridge
  
• Flat or absent groove between nose and upper lip (philtrum)
  
• Smooth and thin upper lip
  
• Opening in roof of mouth
  
• Small upper jaw
  
• Low set or malformed ears

Growth Deficiencies

• Small body size and weight
  
• Slower than normal physical development
  
• Failure to 'catch up' in growth

Skeletal Deformities

• Deformed ribs and sternum
  
• Curved spine
  
• Caved-in chest wall
  
• Bent, fused, webbed or missing fingers or toes
  
• Extra fingers
  
• Abnormal palm creases
  
• Limited movement of joints
  
• Hip dislocations
  
• Small skull
  
• Excessive hair
  
• Underdeveloped fingernails or toenails

Organ Deformities

• Heart defects
  
• Heart murmurs
  
• Incomplete development of brain structures
  
• Umbilical or diaphragmatic hernia
  
• Genital malformations
  
• Kidney or urinary defects

Central Nervous System Handicaps

• Small brain size
  
• Faulty arrangement of brain cells and tissue
  
• Mild to severe mental retardation
  
• Learning disabilities
  
• Poor memory
  
• Lack of imagination or curiosity
  
• Poor language skills
  
• Poor problem-solving skills
  
• Short attention span
  
• Poor coordination
  
• Irritability in infancy
  
• Hyperactivity in childhood
  
• Poor reasoning and judgment skills
  
• Sleep and sucking disturbances in infancy

Behavioral Problems

• Inability to concentrate
  
• Social withdrawal
  
• Subbornness
  
• Impulsivenss
  
• Anxiety
  
• Problems with daily living
  
• Psychiatric problems
  
• Criminal behavior
  
• Chronic unemployment
  
• Incomplete education
  
• Inappropriate sexual behavior
  
• Substance abuse problems
  
• Poor parenting skills

Help for Children With FASD

The above symptoms and conditions can have life-long implications for children who were exposed to alcohol in the womb. However, there is help for even those the most severely affected by their mother's drinking.

Research has shown that FASD children who receive special education and adequate social services are more likely to reach their developmental and education potential than those who do not receive those services.

A loving, nurturing and stable home life, without disruptions, harmful relationships or transient lifestyles, has also been shown to benefit children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Those who live in abusive, unstable or violent environments are more likely to develop later behavioral problems.

_{Sources:http://alcoholism.about.com/od/fas/a/fasd_symptoms.htm}

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O’Malley on ADHD in FASD, Part II

This post assumes you’ve read Part I of this review of Chapter 4 in Kieran O’Malley’s 2007 book, ADHD in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Here, I will overview his observations on pharmacology –using medication –to treat ADHD in a child who has been prenatally exposed to alcohol.

Remember this from the last post: many of us have adopted children with prenatal alcohol exposure do not have enough background information to know whether our adopted kids inherited ADHD (i.e., ADHD runs in the birth family), or if they acquired ADHD secondary to prenatal exposure (no birth family history of ADHD). O’Malley observes that while inherited and acquired ADHD manifest in similar behaviors in children, the underlying neurochemical pathways are not identical.  So kids with inherited ADHD respond differently to medication than those with acquired ADHD.

Therefore, when we parents talk about our experiences trialing ADHD meds with our children, there will never be consensus about what works because each child’s life history and brain chemistry is different.

As of 2007, only two controlled studies of ADHD medication in children with FASD had been published. One followed eleven kids; the other followed four. Both studies trialed several different stimulant medications. The sample sizes were too small to draw general conclusions. Yet O’Malley observes that the two independent trials shared a common finding: stimulant medication “significantly improved” parents’ ratings of the child’s behaviors at home while showing “no significant effect” on teacher’s ratings of the child’s attention span in school.

O’Malley’s summary begs questions: Did parents perceive any change in their child’s attention span? Did teachers note any change on the child’s behavior in school? Answering those questions is not the point of his article. I can only hope that more recent research may address them. We met with resistance from a professional who said our report of significantly easier to manage behavior at home was insufficient reason to continue trialing medication in the absence of clear evidence that Hope’s ADHD symptoms impacted her performance in school.

O’Malley notes evidence that children’s response to specific stimulants may change over time–specifically when trialed under age 5 vs. response at age 6 or 7 –and notes some evidence that children of differing ethnicities may metabolize the same medication differently. He also points to advancing genetic research that may eventually lead to being able to screen for genes that enable the transportation of dopamine, a neruochemical key to the expression of ADHD symptoms.

In Chapter 4, O’Malley helpfully summarizes reasons to be cautious about medicating ADHD. Beyond the fact that there are no medium or large-scale studies on ADHD in children with FASD, there is a well-established body of evidence that medication may have unintended adverse effects on the developing brain. “The developing brain of a child prenatally exposed to alcohol has already experienced neurotoxic damage…. Thus it is likely that a child with ‘acquired brain injury’ from prenatal alcohol exposure will show atypical responses to standard medications including psycostimulants [ADHD medication]. The atypical response may be intolerance, hypersensitivity, paradoxical reaction, over-sedation, as well as blunted cognitive ability, or the unmasking of a primary psychiatric familial disorder such as Bipolar disorder…” (p. 55)

O’Malley also cites research suggesting that the commonly noted side effect of weight loss may involve a depressive effect on growth hormones over time. He also points out that since prenatal alcohol adversely effects the child’s developing heart, kidneys, and liver, kids with FASD may be invisibly vulnerable to toxic effects of medication on those organs.

His discussion includes a very provocative question asked in 2001 by Benedetto Vitiello of the National Institutes of Mental Health,”whether the reduction of ADHD symptoms, achieved through pharmacological or behavioral intervention, will ultimately translate into better prognosis with respect to improved educational and occupational achievement and decreased risk of accidental trauma, anti-social behaviors and substance abuse.” O’Malley observes, “In the current climate of NO scientific pharmacological intervention research in children or adolescents with FASD [being able to answer this question] is  an important horizon far, far away.”

O’Malley is well aware of Striessguth’s thesis about guided early intervention with the goal of preventing secondary disabilities in FASD; he cites her research throughout this book. At the same time, he observes that the lack of longitudinal research is the elephant in the FASD living room. As the professional who pushed back about continuing Hope’s ADHD medication trials commented, “I just want to see more evidence that her symptoms are harming her. In this era we generally don’t medicate people just to make them easier to live with.”

O’Malley, cautiously, differs: “Within the constraints mentioned above it is worth acknowledging that stimulant medication can have a profound and sustained positive effect on children or adolescents with FASD (and thereby decrease parent stress) who present ADHD symptoms…. It does appear… that the dopaminergenic pathways are one of the areas most effected by prenatal alcohol and their disruption is commonly expressed in the neuropsychiatric disorder ADHD.” (p. 58)

He concludes with a proposed “Drug Algorithm” for ADHD in FASD based on the evidence available in 2007:

• First choice: dextroamphetamine (Adderall and derivatives)
• Second choice: methylphenidate (Ritalin and derivatives)

Third choice: Second generation, long acting derivatives of the above –which were only beginning to come into use at the time he wrote this article. It would be fascinating to see his updated opinion.

If you request the whole book, be sure to turn to Chapter 11 and read O’Malley’s summary, “5. Medication Therapy” which includes a list of drugs commonly prescribed for psychiatric disorders that may co-occur with FASD,  yet are contra-indictated as a drugs of choice in kids who have FASD.

source:http://daysofwonderandgrace.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/omalley-on-adhd-in-fasd-part-ii/

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Biography: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Biography: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

The life of Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
By: Luminarium

Ben Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School by the great classical scholar William Camden and worked in his stepfather's trade, bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. He returned to England about 1592 and married Anne Lewis on November 14, 1594.

Jonson joined the theatrical company of Philip Henslowe in London as an actor and playwright on or before 1597, when he is identified in the papers of Henslowe. In 1597 he was imprisoned for his involvement in a satire entitled The Isle of Dogs, declared seditious by the authorities. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to Anglicism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions, and with a felon's brand on his thumb.
Jonson's second known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe with William Shakespeare in the cast. Jonson became a celebrity, and there was a brief fashion for 'humours' comedy, a kind of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a temperament, or humor, of humanity. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels (1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson's classical learning and his interest in formal experiment.

Jonson's explosive temperament and conviction of his superior talent gave rise to "War of the Theatres". In The Poetaster (1601), he satirized other writers, chiefly the English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Dekker and Marston retaliated by attacking Jonson in their Satiromastix (1601). The plot of Satiromastix was mainly overshadowed by its abuse of Jonson. Jonson had portrayed himself as Horace in The Poetaster, and in Satiromastix Marston and Dekker, as Demetrius and Crispinus ridicule Horace, presenting Jonson as a vain fool. Eventually, the writers patched their feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho.

Jonson's next play, the classical tragedy Sejanus, His Fall (1603), based on Roman history and offering an astute view of dictatorship, again got Jonson into trouble with the authorities. Jonson was called before the Privy Council on charges of 'popery and treason'. Jonson did not, however, learn a lesson, and was again briefly imprisoned, with Marston and Chapman, for controversial views ("something against the Scots") espoused in Eastward Ho (1604). These two incidents jeopardized his emerging role as court poet to King James I. Having converted to Catholicism, Jonson was also the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605).

In 1605, Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court. The earliest of his masques, The Satyr was given at Althorpe, and Jonson seems to have been appointed Court Poet shortly after. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. Masque of Blacknesse (1605) was the first in a series of collaborations with Inigo Jones, noted English architect and set designer. This collaboration produced masques such as The Masque of Owles, Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), which were performed in Inigo Jones' elaborate and exotic settings. These masques ascertained Jonson's standing as foremost writer of masques in the Jacobean era. The collaboration with Jones was finally destroyed by intense personal rivalry.

Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the comedies written between 1605 and 1614. The first of these, Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in 1607) is often regarded as his masterpiece. The play, though set in Venice, directs its scrutiny on the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London. The following plays, Epicoene: or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614) are all peopled with dupes and those who deceive them. Jonson's keen sense of his own stature as author is represented by the unprecedented publication of his Works, in folio, in 1616. He was appointed as poet laureate and rewarded a substantial pension in the same year.

In 1618, when he was about forty-five years old, Jonson set out for Scotland, the home of his ancestors. He made the journey entirely by foot, in spite of dissuasion from Bacon, who "said to him he loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls and spondæus." Jonson's prose style is vividly sketched in the notes of William Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded their conversations during Jonson's visit to Scotland 1618-1619. Jonson himself was sketched by Hawthornden: " He is a great lover and praiser of himself ; a contemner and scorner of others ; given rather to lose a friend than a jest ; . . . he is passionately kind and angry ; careless either to gain or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself . . . ; oppressed with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason."1 After his return, Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University and lectured on rhetoric at Gresham College, London.

The comedy The Devil is an Ass (1616) had turned out to be a comparative flop. This may have discouraged Jonson, for it was nine years before his next play, The Staple of News (1625), was produced. Instead, Jonson turned his attention to writing masques. Jonson's later plays The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) were not great successes, described harshly, but perhaps justly by Dryden as his "dotages."

Despite these apparent failures, and in spite of his frequent feuds, Jonson was the dean and the leading wit of the group of writers who gathered at the Mermaid Tavern in the Cheapside district of London. The young poets influenced by Jonson were the self-styled 'sons' or 'tribe' of Ben, later called the Cavalier poets, a group which included, among others, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace.

Jonson was appointed City Chronologer of London in 1628, the same year in which he suffered a severe stroke. His loyal friends kept him company in his final years and attended the King provided him some financial comfort. Jonson died on August 6, 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a plain slab on which was later carved the words, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" His admirers and friends contributed to the collection of memorial elegies, Jonsonus virbius, published in 1638. Jonson's last play, Sad Shepherd's Tale, was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in 1641.

Related link:
1. Volpone
2. Summary of Volpone

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Kopi Luwak

Kopi Luwak

Kopi Luwak is known by several names.  These include Civet Coffee.  In the Philippines it is known as Coffee Alamid and Kape Alamid.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee the world, often selling for around $30 a cup in the USA but in some parts of the world the price approaches $100 per cup.

For most, even more shocking than the cost is how this coffee is obtained.  This coffee can only be obtained from the dropping of a cat like animal known as the Civet.  Some call the Civet the fox-cat.  In the Philippines, it is cute but scruffy while the African version is absolutely beautiful!

The following video features the Asian Palm Civet that can be found in the Philippines and describes exactly how this coffee is made and how prized Kopi Luwak is.

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Asik and Destroy

Asik and Destroy Video



It'll be interesting because we've got this Euro guy stashed for a year or two who's supposed to be phenomenal and should be cheap. I would guess they'd match any reasonable offer for Asik-and-Destroy, but who knows. They'd pay a small That is why, if the Bulls want to make any moves this year, it should be to not trade Asik—nor even discuss him in a package unless they are getting a superstar in return. ... In the words of Stacey King, “Asik and Destroy!”

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Klay Thompson

Klay Thompson Stats, News, Videos, Highlights, Pictures, Bio ...

Get the latest news, stats, videos, highlights and more about Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson on ESPN.com.

Klay Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Klay Alexander Thompson (born on February 8, 1990) is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball ...

High school career - College career - Golden State Warriors - Personal

DraftExpressProfile: Klay Thompson, Stats, Comparisons, and Outlook

Klay Thompson is a 21 year old 6 foot 7 inch 205lb SG/SF. Check out more at draftexpress for detailed stats, comparisons, and outlooks.

Player Bio: Klay Thompson - The Washington State University ...

10 Mar 2011 – The Washington State University Official Athletic Site, partner of CBS College Sports Networks, Inc. The most comprehensive coverage of ...

Klay Thompson | NBADraft.net

22 Apr 2011 – 1 - Klay Thompson. Washington State. Birthday: 2/8/90; NBA Position: SG/SF; Class: Junior; Ht: 6-7; Wt: 206; Hometown: Ladera Ranch, CA ...

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i love Allah wallpapers

I found this wallpaper as a smaller background image. I thought it was nice to make this simple yet powerful expression of loving Allah into Another islamic wallpaper to show the love to Allah. Allah's name is written on a red heart that is blurred by drops of water. Other tags:- allah ALLAH IS THE MOST MARCEFULL & GRATEST. Subhan Allah I love to see more and more wallpapers of ALLAh (SWT) and Prophit (PBUH) live in agra -3

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