Wednesday, February 16, 2011

A Little History Lesson

I thought it was time for a little history lesson for all the newbies to the DS world. In 1997, Neal was born-I'm dumped into the DS world without any notice. All of a sudden, the internet is something I need. I bought a laptop and dialed up the internet. Can you imagine? how slow could we go......
Research started. I found the library.....pubmed.
Then I found forums where people talked to each other. So, I joined and began to participate. Soon, it became very apparent that there was a lot of bickering going on. Actually, is was down and dirty verbal fighting. Do you know what people were fighting about? Whether or not DS should take vitamins. Are you kidding? We have one of the most complex genetic conditions and people are arguing about vitamins!

I soon walked away from the forums and continued to read the science. A small group of us about 10 emailed each other what we found in the scientific studies. The pace of the research was slow. We wanted something now and it wasn't until 2004 that Stanford published the study about the GABA antagonist. Then, it wasn't until Feb. 2005 that we found ginkgo biloba. Luckily for Neal an avalanche of information came out, compared to the first half of his life. The rest of the Changing Minds Protocol came about in 2006 and 2007. We may not know everything and there is still a long way to go but yesterday I came home and he had written this paragraph with his tutor. I called her this morning to make sure he had done it himself. She said, of course. Tomorrow, I will list all that he is now taking because we have added to the protocol.


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