A Time For Everything: Worry

Planning ‘Worry Time’ May Help Ease Anxiety – http://www.livescience.com/15233-planning-worry-time-ease-anxiety.html

Still

clockDo you know that you can postpone worrying? It seems silly, but it really is helpful for people struggling with frequent worry and anxiety. Start by planning a time of day when you can worry about your problems. Set aside maybe 20-30 minutes per day. Decide now when that time will be. It should not be soon before bed, as that is a time you need to be relaxing and unwinding for your best restful sleep. Maybe it’s on your drive home from work. Maybe it’s on your lunch hour. Just choose a time that works for you. As you catch yourself worrying throughout the day, write it down and commit to yourself that you will take time to worry about it later. Now that you are writing down your worries, here are a few other helpful tips.

1. Identify frequent worries or anxieties. 

Often these are “what if” statements…

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The Mock-Turtleneck: Smart-Casual Without The Fuss

Because autistics often find ‘unspoken rules’ mystifying, cryptic dress codes like ‘smart casual’ are fraught with pitfalls. One item of clothing that’s guaranteed to smarten up any casual ensemble is the mock turtleneck, a favorite of Apple founder Steve Jobs. The mock turtleneck is basically a sweatshirt with a slightly raised neck (unlike the full turtleneck where the neck is raised high enough that it needs to be folded down). It generally needs no ironing, an added bonus if you’re an ironophobe!

I Just Like It: Audio-Technica Headphones

Audio-Technica may not be a familiar name to all, but they make the best headphones for my money. For several years I’ve owned a pair of low-priced ATH-FC700s which I use daily (not sure if they still make them). Apart from the crystal-clear sound, the headphone’s cable and ear-cushions have remained fully intact (unlike some other brands, where these parts tend to wear out after a year or less. If the cable wears out, that pretty much renders the headphones useless).  Audio-Technica headphones score consistently high on Amazon’s customer reviews, which is not surprising based on my experience with the ATH-FC700s. Here’s a video review by MKBHD of the higher-end ATH-M50x:

Design For Autistics Gets Another Thousand Views!

A big THANK YOU all our readers! Since this year began, Design for Autistics has received another thousand hits! It’s encouraging to know that people are finding the site useful, and we’ll continue to add to our hundreds of posts, on anything and everything that might be of interest to the ASD community (with a particular focus on design). Keep visiting, and please spread the word!

Costs of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the United Kingdom and the United States

ASF Blog

Having an accurate estimate of the economic cost of autism has many implications for service and system planning. The most recent estimates are almost a decade old and had to rely on many estimates for which there were no good data. Today in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers, including ASF Scientific Advisory Board member Dr. David Mandell, updated older estimates and further expanded our understanding of costs by estimating them for two countries: the United States and the United Kingdom. They also estimated costs separately for children and adults, and for individuals with autism with and without intellectual disability. To estimate costs, researchers reviewed the literature on related studies, conducting a thorough search of studies that estimated direct costs, such as education and service use costs, as well as indirect costs, such as lost wages for family members and the individual with autism. They found that for individuals with autism and intellectual disability…

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Study Confirms Mitochondrial Deficits in Children with Autism

Article from Bioscience Technology online

Eosinophilic granulocyte 

Children with autism experience deficits in a type of immune cell that protects the body from infection. Called granulocytes, the cells exhibit one-third the capacity to fight infection and protect the body from invasion compared with the same cells in children who are developing normally.