Everything Self Defense Columbia, South Carolina

By MARY SHEDDEN The Tampa Tribune Published: November 07, 2011 Updated: November 09, 2011 The first time Billy Blanks showed up at karate class, the instructor bet $5 he wouldn't stick it out. Blanks, then 14, seemed like a lot of kids who showed up at the Martin Luther King Center in Erie, Pa., in 1969. Also, Blanks had spent years in special education classes because of dyslexia that went undiagnosed and untreated. The boy knew martial arts offered something different. It would pay off, he told himself, as long as he watched the instructor's every move and practiced every afternoon at the gym. Within six months, the teen's focus improved, at home and at school. In a year, he had earned a black belt. "It really gave me a chance to see that I could do it, that I could really be successful," said Blanks, who today is known worldwide as the creator of the Tae Bo kick boxing workout. "I was learning how to bring my body under control. I got my ...

Study in Twins Finds a Shared Environment Influences the Development of Autism More Than Shared Genes By Brenda Goodman WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD July 4, 2011 -- One of the largest studies of twins shows environment may play a larger role in the development of autism than previously recognized. Several small studies conducted over the last three decades have found that it is much more common for identical twins to be diagnosed with autism than it is for fraternal twins. That’s led to the belief that the lion’s share of the odds of developing autism is written into a person’s DNA, with a much smaller percentage coming from something in the environment. The new study, which is published in the Archives of General Psychiatry , found that autism was surprisingly common in fraternal twins, despite the fact that they don’t share as many of the same genes as identical twins, suggesting that something in their mutual life circumstances may be...