Research

They’re children without a voice—literally. They’re not able to speak at all while infants of the same age are talking like crazy, experimenting with new sounds and new word combinations all the time these kids are intelligent. They know what they want to say—but the words just won’t come out. It’s a frustrating and agonizing for them and their parents. Often parents are reassured by friends, relatives and even their pediatricians: “Don’t worry, he’s just a late talker.” But, for a dramatically increasing number of children that’s not true. Tens of thousands of American children don’t have a speech delay. They have a serious speech disorder. And if they don’t get intensive therapy at a very young age—they may never speak properly. It’s a problem that’s getting worse. In a 10-year period which saw a four-fold increase in autism, there was a staggering 30-fold increase in children with speech and language disorders. But it’s a problem that gets surprisingly little attention.

Apraxia, also known as dyspraxia, is a neurologically based motor planning disorder that affects a child’s ability to be able to talk and/or coordinate fine/gross motor skills. While it is still relatively a less commonly known condition, it appears to be on the rise internationally for unknown reasons; it is frequently occurring in families with no genetic predisposition. Apraxia can exist alone as a speech issue, but apraxia commonly presents itself as a multifaceted condition with sensory integration dysfunction and/or hypotonia (low muscle tone).

As awareness about apraxia has increased in the autism community, it has come to light that a large number of children diagnosed with autism have underlying and undiagnosed apraxia; which affects their ability to speak.

In educational settings, many of these children are misclassified and placed in inappropriate disability-related classes when they could be mainstreamed if provided the appropriate opportunity.

The Cherab Foundation hopes to be instrumental in increasing awareness of Apraxia to both families and the medical community. We are excited to announce that we now we have a tremendous opportunity to raise money for research on essential fatty acids therapeutic effects on apraxia with leading medical and speech professionals to help bring a voice to the growing number of children diagnosed with apraxia.  In addition, we will do our best to post related research and keep you informed of ongoing research.

With a fundraiser we started we had thought that Nutriiveda would be a great way for busy parents and professionals to take better care of themselves.  What we didn’t expect is that Nutriiveda would have some sort of therapeutic affect on the special needs children of the parents and professionals which Lisa Geng first discovered due to her apraxic son Tanner.   Cherab is now receiving parental as well as professional anecdotal feedback as well as questions about Nutriiveda.   We are going to develop a subgroup on our BigTent site to cover some of the stories and questions about this product from Zrii. To learn more or purchase this product to help with furthering our research goals, find out more at http://www.pursuitofresearch.org.