Aspies For Freedom

hey vanilla coke tastes like rum and coke. it's a good alternative if you don't want the alcohol.

haven't had jolt in years. i'm really sensitive to caffeine, so it would probably kill me now. pepsi blue isn't good. i don't like raspberries. coke blak was excellent when it was out. too expensive though.

my faves are cherry coke, C2 (when it was out), black cherry vanilla coke. i try to drink only diet now bc i don't want diabetes. diet sodas have come a long way. diet wild cherry pepsi is good. too bad about the caffeine.

coke with lime and coke with lemon seem worthless to me.

i can't do energy drinks. caffeine and the taste of butt? no thx.

I didn't mind vanilla coke all that much, but mostly I dislike carbonated drinks (I preferred green tea) and vanilla coke just taste as ok as I might judge another pepsi/coke variety.

There is a difference in taste between the two but it's very subtle with Pepsi just about edging it!
Despite these discoraging remarks about Pepsi Max Cappuchino I would really like to give it a go.
It should prefably have a catchy slogan to go with it as well!

Hey, I like Mountain Dew! It's like Sprite!

Sprite is the greatest soda ever.

I like Coke, but I dislike Pepsi. There is that slight difference in taste that annoys the hell out of me.

I think Diet Coke takes and fizzes better than regular Coke.

Vanilla Coke and Lime Coke are really good.

I haven't had this in years, but raspberry soda... IS SO GREAT. D:<

Apparently if you put just a few drops of lemon juice in Coke, it will taste like Pepsi.

But cola is cola. I buy "Budget" brand. You get just as much for a fifth of the price.

Years ago... at the end of the 20th century I started to dig out an old cellar whose roof had totally caved in and there was a birch tree growing on top of it. The cellar sat next to some cement pillars that once was the foundation to a house. The cellar was full of junk and pieces of old roofing and dirt but as I advanced down into it I found an old Coca Cola bottle (0.7 litre) that still held a great amount of liquid. I brought it home, unscrewed the cap and poured the liquid through a coffea filter and drank it and Damn!!! It tasted just like Coca Cola (it was stale of course). It must have been sitting down there for 25-30 years. Ah, isn't it wonderful what things you can find?

***attempt at humour***

Cool. We should put out the idea that Coke causes ASD ... if Coke causes ASD they have the money to pay out on a class action.

Hmmm ... I could come up with a few (very shaky) theories connecting Coke with ASDs.
Coke has sugar.
Coke has sodium benzoate.
Coke is in plastic bottles which might (no idea if this is true!) contain benzene which has recently been shown to cause or increase the risk of cancer.
Coke causes teeth to erode making more people need dental fillings which contain mercury and tin and they react to Coke ...
Mercury is therefore more abundant ... in the teeth, and in the body, and in the environment.
So, if a pregnant woman drinks coke, and has amalgam fillings and they need to be redone, no wonder there is a epidemic of ASD!
It is all Coke's fault. Oh hang on, dentists too.
We'll be rich, rich, rich.
We'll be able to afford that island with satellite broadband and have Coke executives for wait staff.

27 May 2008 - Reports in the British press have recently stated that the Coca-Cola Company is phasing out sodium benzoate (E211) from its soft drinks 'where technically possible', and, by the end of the summer, Diet Coke should no longer contain the preservative.
Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative in food and drinks to kill most yeasts, bacteria, and fungi. The preservative, which is used to increase the shelf life of many soft drinks, was subject to a lot of controversy last year and during the early months of 2008 after different research studies indicated that it may cause hyperactivity and DNA damage. Also, when mixed with vitamin C in soft drinks, it causes benzene, a carcinogenic substance.
http://www.flex-news-food.com/pages/1674...ummer.html

Two years ago, the FSA found a small number of soft drinks were contaminated with cancercausing benzene. This can be produced when ascorbic acid (vitamin C) reacts with sodium benzoate.
Ascorbic acid is found naturally in fruit juice and is sometimes added to make soft drinks taste better. The contaminated drinks were taken off the shelves and the FSA spoke to the drinks industry about replacing or reducing sodium benzoate.
The drinks industry successfully argued that it should continue to use the preservative with caution.
However, confidence in sodium benzoate was further dented last year when Professor Peter Piper of Sheffield University went public on research carried out on yeast in his laboratory in 1999.
Found that sodium benzoate could potentially damage a small part of DNA in living cells  -  the mitochondrial DNA. Without further research, we don't know if mitochondrial damage would also occur in humans.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...anned.html

Benzene is a natural constituent of crude oil, but it is usually synthesized from other compounds present in petroleum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene

Oh, you must have inadvertently consumed the water that had washed the bottles, and some of the water that was affected by the environmental impacts of pumping effluent out to sea ... effluent that contains the coke, and mercury, and sodium benzoate, and benzene. And then the water evaporates, it rises cools and condenses, and then it comes down as acid rain and is pumped through our pipes ... can we sue the waterboard too? They made a movie about that. They got megabucks. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ hooray we can make a movie and get money from Hollywood too $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

You will just have to stop drinking tap water ... I always did prefer booze.

Or maybe it is tinned food that they have added water to. Or bread. Or milk.

We had milk delivered to a milkcan when I was a kid. Maybe it was when they homogenised and pasteurised it (I don't remember which came first). Pasteur is past it, so maybe sue the milk company? Or the farmers?

I don't remember having icecream until I was about eight, so that can't be it.

I didn't have a microwave oven until after my kids were at school, so that can't be it.

I know ... my adoptive father smoked, so maybe I could sue the tobacco compaines after all. Yay!!!

If it is solely attributable to genetics, then all monozygotic twins, triplets, quads etc would be equally affected. The incidence is just not high enough. There must be at least one environmental factor as well.

Oh and I would like to say that I LOVE 'diet vanilla coke'.

I am working on a theory of causality, but it is difficult to settle on one factor. The incidence of ASD is the same across culture, class, education, income, and age. There is a significant number of comorbid conditions. There are also conditions where the person is likely to exhibit autistic behaviours.

My thoughts are towards a genetic autoimmune deficiency, sleep deprivation, and oxidative stress combined with undernutrition, infection and antibiotics, and heavy metals in our air and water.

I 'become odd' at around 18 months. I have a large skull. I have an ASD and ADD and mild OCD and Fibromyalgia and endogenous clinical depression and frequent migraine and a number of other medical 'problems'. I do not want a cure for the 'bad' bits if that means I lose the good bits, but I sure as hell would like to at least stabilise the mix.

I hate being able to do something really well for one day and then not at all for two. If I know that I am always going to be unacceptably bad at something that must be done, I need to be able to take action to ensure that it is done by someone else. But, to do that, one has to have help or money.

To get enough money that you can afford to live and to pay other people, you need to have a job (or a healthcare system that provides more support than ours does here).

To have a job, you need to be consistent, and reliable, to cook and clean, and be able to get out of bed every morning, and wash your clothes and hair, and drive a car that is registered and insured, or use a timetable and be on time for public transport, and to know what to say when you see each person arrive in the morning, and to know what to say when your boss tells you to come into their office after you have had your lunch and it is still only 9:30am, or they stand at their office door and gesture for you to come in, and to be able to cope when you get blamed for doing things that you had been told to do by someone else, or for not doing things that no-one had told you to do, and to be on time with the rent, and utilities so that you don't get charged late fees and overdrawn fees, and to remember to put the rubbish bin out and then to bring it in.

I never had the MMR. I had mumps at age five. I haven't had measles. I have had contact with mercury ... at high school we had mercury rolling around the floor in one of our science classes. I had german measles (Rubella) when I was 18. I have had Eppstein Barr twice.

So for me cause is only an issue where it gives me some understanding of what to do to be the best me that I can be. I don't want to live my life in the trenches when the mountains are so beautiful but neither am I willing to use the mountain tops to fill in the cracks and crevasses on the way up.

The only benefit to being able to blame someone else would be where compensation would be able to fill the bits that I cannot.

My theory is currently towards genetic predisposition triggered by one or more environmental factors.

What we can do about it is impacted by those factors (that have not been isolated).

Until know whether it IS one or more genes and one or more environmental factors, it is unlikely that we will be able to 'prove' anything. If and when we isolate the triggers, there may be evidence that points to critical events in your life.

But, you still haven't explained why you have this overwhelming need to know 'why'. If mercury does prove to be a contributing factor, what good will it do to know that your brother made a mistake with a thermometer? Do you need to blame someone? If so, how will that help?

Food does have to do with the topic of Aspergers.

Apart from chemical contaminants and genetically modified foods, soils are becoming depleted.

Many people on the spectrum have unusual eating habits ... some have pica, some will only eat white foods, some will only eat carbs, some will only eat food that has been cooked a certain way, some will not eat food that has touched other food on the plate, some will only eat cold food, some will not eat food that is mushy, some will not eat food that is stringy, some will only eat one or two foods just in case a new food is 'prickly' or 'burns'.

If inadequate nutrition is going in, then what comes out is going to be impacted to a greater or lesser degree.

I am sorry that I gave the impression that I think that lack of sleep at 10 or 11 would trigger autistic traits (I haven't really considered the implications of that). I made a statement based on information that I did not include. There are quite a few diagnoses that are comorbid with autism and the behaviours are evident, and some (eg, congenital blindness) where autistic traits are not unusual but are not considered to be part of the diagnostic criteria.

Most children with LFA show behaviours (or don't show typical behaviours, as the case may be) before the age of three. Children with HFA/Asperger's are often just considered odd or difficult until they are at school and some even older (10/11?). However, some authorities (eg, Simon Baron-Cohen) consider that the only difference between LFA and HFA is the age at which we speak. There is obviously a problem in that some people with an ASD never acquire spoken language, but that may relate to the development of the hypothalamus.

There is neurological evidence that ASD brains develop more neurons (up to 1.5 times) than NT brains. A process called apoptosis normally occurs to allow learning to take place; so unused immature neurons are supposed to die and shed to allow the other neurons to move into place and develop mature connections. In addition to having genes that know what to do, that process requires environmental factors such as oxygen, sleep and nutrition. If the brain doesn't mature in one area (eg, hypothalamus) because of (unspecified) factors that occur at a particular stage of development, then it could be that that area doesn't ever develop fully, or the brain could develop workarounds, or the brain could go off and do its own thing (eg, savant skills).

Sleep apnoea and sleep hypopnoea can lead to oxygen deprivation in the brain. Sleep is also required to allow the brain to recuperate and process inputs. If an individual does not develop 'any' autistic behaviours until age 10 or 11, they are likely to be given a different diagnosis, and be treated quite differently (eg, as an 'acquired' brain injury).

So I am not saying that I believe that the lack of sleep is 'the cause' of autism, but that I believe that it affects the brain in several ways and those impacts trigger the genetic component of ASD.