In my own experience tinted lenses can increase the ability to keep up with a greater range of visual information, and help to better keep up with receptive language, by cutting out certain light frequencies, allowing the brain to more fully process what's left. The result, for me and many others, was that we could, often for the first time, process a face or an object as a whole, process the car and the road simultaneously in relation to each other, see the view outside the window in 3 D instead of seeing like a flat picture. We experienced ourselves as less 'mono', able to feel better in our bodies because we didn't have to compensate for a lack of depth perception, visual fragmentation and consequent meaning blindness and context blindness which happens when you process the part but not the whole... taking the visual world in in pieces bit by bit. It must, however, be noted, that those I'm referring to ALREADY had had dietary intervention. The lenses then simply took us that extra step further.

Years ago I wrote about tinted lenses and why they worked for me. I have to say that believing in tinted lenses does necessarily mean I support a particular company. Unfortunately, this is not how my name has always been used out in the public arena. I was once asked to write a comment regarding tinted lenses. Unfortunately the company I don't support has continued to use that comment in promoting their product as though it is personally endorsed by me.

There are certain tinted lenses I have used over the years. Some are simply sunglasses among which I stumbled across a tint which worked to pull visual perception together. I originally found a company which used a huge range of cosmetic tints. But after this I found a company with a choice of about six colors. Surprisingly 7 of the 8 people who had had cosmetic tints from the earlier company, chose to replace these with cheaper (around 10 GBP a pair) tints from the small range. Why? Because the small range were produced not by psychologists charging by the hour as people scoured through vast collections, but by opthamologists who had found only a handful of tints worked for their dyslexic and Scotopic Sensitivity client groups. Because you could buy the entire test range for about 60 GBP and test at home in your own time, the ONLY tinted lenses I support are those produced by BPI (Brain Power International - see below).

My earliest photo shows signs of rickets- a vitamin D deficiency that causes bowing in the limbs, later knock knees, that kind of thing. D deficiency is associated with severe magnesium deficiency causing severe chronic anxiety but is also recently considered linked to hypothyroidism in the mother and some cases of alcoholism in the mother. Lack of exposure to sunlight in recent years has also lead to a re-emergence of vitamin D deficiency in children who are over-protected from the sun at all times and spend all their time indoors. D deficiency means problems with absorbing vitamin A (and excess A can be bad news so don't go taking heaps for vitamin A) which effects the processing of zinc, an important immune booster and gut support and essential to learning and these deficiencies can be bad news for visual perceptual processing. Lack of vitamin D can mean an alkaline system and that can mean Candida (fed by high sugar diet and white flour products), a systemic fungal infection that can mess with blood sugar levels and disturb mood balance as well as strip the body of vitamin B necessary to imformation processing and stress management. D deficiency can be latent and undetected until adulthood. By the way, cod liver oil (in sensible recommended dosages) is a good source of vitamin D with A as well as omega 3s - which can be good news for the brain and visual processing.

Without adequate visual perceptual processing, the image links to language can be inadequate. One may fail to fluently 'imagine' the concepts linked to incoming language. Contrary to a recent modern stereotype not all people with autism think in pictures. In fact for those with severe visual perceptual problems due to metabolic problems or extreme food allergies or food intolerance, the chances of easily retrieving mental pictures in response to words might be a big developmental problem. I learned sound pattern and got the feel of words in my mouth and sound pattern in my ears. I learned the emotional tone of phrases in advertisements and whether these expressed glee, fear, reassurance themes... but without any gestural signing to link experiences to the blah blah NO IMAGES HAPPENED and the interpretation was lost.

Unlike Temple Grandin's modern autism stereotype, I do NOT see in pictures and from the feedback I've had from people on the spectrum, I'm not alone in not fitting this new stereotype. We need to question the old stereotypes but equally be careful about the implications of creating new ones.

I imagine primarily in feel, movement, kinesthetics and via the acoustics made by the object when struck. I 'visualize' like a blind person.

I linked meaning with words when i was about nine when I got a picture sentence dictionary and linked the tiny (and tiny=cohesive) images with the physical experiences of the words they stood for- and then translated these images into kinesthetic experience related to the picture (ie: prodding motion for cushion, tapping motion for the sound of cup, swirling motion for the inside of bowl, patting motion for cat, the movement associated with the acoustics produced by running fingers through a comb for the image of comb etc) and then back to the written in order to understand the spoken in order to translate the heard.... long track and big consequences for processing delay.

So, yes, tinted lenses made the job easier, but so did dietary intervention, treatment for leaky gut and supplementation for malnutrition and toxicity issues caused by a gut which didn't work and an immune system which was chaotic and added to the burden.

BPI (Brain Power International) are in Rugby West Midlands UK (01788 568686) and in Miami in Florida (305 2644465). Their website is www.callbpi.com and they have a BPI tints page here www.brainpowerusa.com/shopping/xcart/product.php where you can buy their 'autism range' test set on line very affordably.

This company supply tints directly to Ophthalmologists but supply direct to the public too. Ophthalmologists are not psychologists, they are optician type people who study perception, not sight- how the brain understands what the eyes see. Now, the BPI lenses are around 10 GBP a pair (+ around 5 GBP shipping). You can buy the entire test set for about 60 GBP, test at home in your own time- all sent out by post world wide- trusting people with their own capacity to self test and make choices in their own time with no 'by the hour' fee hanging over them. If you choose the test kit the one's I've tested with over the years which get chosen consistently over others are BPI IR Blue, BPI Omega, BPI Sahara, BPI Mu, and BPI yellow 450, also BPI Diamond Dye 400, signal blue, and signal green.

When people choose a color that works, they simply send specs in to BPI with tintable clear lenses and BPI tint them with the color requested and send them back. BPI will accept orders internationally. Their technician, I have found, is happy to talk things through and they have free literature they can send out about the science behind their lenses according to Opthalmology.

I would NOT recommend you go to someone who charges high hourly fees to test your child when you can test at home using the whole kit.

Also the lenses chosen can change with changes in the diet, in digestion, in immunity, with supplementation. BPI is far more affordable under these circumstances and they post the lenses out by mail order. And people with autism are very hard to test. If you are paying someone else for their time, this can be very costly. And in the end, my own view is that the real test is not what the tester thinks but which pair the person with autism chooses not to let go of and seems to feel more physically at ease, more visually curious, when wearing. If lenses make things more chaotic rather than cohesive, a person with autism will often reject them.

I thought it necessary to let people know my real view. I am very sorry to anyone who has gone to any expensive company because of the reference to my writings or the use of my name and not been satisfied (although I'm sure many have been satisfied). At the time I did not know of BPI. If people are happy with lenses from another company, I think that's fine too.

I do support tinted lenses for visual perceptual problems but I support them AS PART OF A VAST NUMBER OF INTERVENTIONS including an indirectly confrontational approach which makes the environment user friendly, holistic nutritional treatments, reduction of information overload in general among other things. And, above all, I support what is accessible and affordable in this sometimes very expensive field and I find BPI a reliable and quality product which achieves its aims in helping people with visual perceptual processing problems.

I have no financial interest in the sale of tinted lenses by any company.