Actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06102-y
^^^^
Better to read the paper instead of the pop journals. Most writers don't understand the issues fully and make mistakes, or sensationalize the discovery.
Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
51–60 of 358 posts
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#52I feel like this is going to be used by pseudo-science influencers to push trendy diets to prevent autism when this study is observations stage at best.
Does this mean that they'll start getting their kids vaccinated?
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#53I know of at least one book written by and for autistic people who advocates for a gluten free diet. They claim in the book that this significantly reduces their symptoms. I don’t know if I believe it or not, but the notion of gut-brain axis seems to imply that a good diet should help a bit, right?
Asperger here, who doesn’t eat gluten at all for almost 3 years now (due to allergy). I cant say it improved symptoms of autism but my life is divided between before/after stopping gluten consumption. I feel like I just started living for real.
Celiac is an awful disease. My ex has it and it wrecked her life for years until she found out.
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#54Used to have a mix of what could be considered ADHD/light asperbergers. I dont eat carbs and mostly stick to a keto diet, it resolved many symptoms. Our food is poison
I'm Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) and prefer low carb because I feel better, but it doesn't change my personality traits or cognitive tendencies one iota.
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#55On the topic of metabolic disturbances in Autism, huge fan of the work Dr. Randy Blakely is doing on the links between Serotonin metabolism and Autism. One of the most surprising, and strongest (25-30% of patients), biomarkers for Autism is actually Platelet Hyperserotonemia (high levels of bound Serotonin in the blood).
For decades it's been without explanation but recently Dr Blakely has described a bunch of cases where it was narrowed down to SERT transporter polymorphisms and inflammation.
Worth a watch for those interested in the weeds of this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpDtuKV5CJs
I've got a pet hypothesis that differences in Serotonin metabolism (and receptor hypersensitivity) might play a role in why SSRIs aren't generally considered a first line treatment for ASD symptoms, https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1112345109
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> defined in such a way that two with the same label can have remarkably little overlap in terms of observed behaviour I believed this until my daughter was diagnosed and then I was later diagnosed. My experience with (some) professionals was a surprise to me; a much wider variety of "observed behaviors" than I expected seem to stem from sensory issues for example. And I think it makes sense that humans might adopt a…
Here [1] is the DSM diagnostic criteria for autism. It's broad to the point of absurdity. The reason many people think autism is a faux disorder is because it includes everything from an individual who simply sits in the corner endlessly flapping his hands, completely unable to function as a human being, to Bill Gates or Elon Musk. The weaker diagnoses, which is an increasingly large chunk of all of them, often seem…
> The reason many people think autism is a faux disorder is because it includes everything from an individual who simply sits in the corner endlessly flapping his hands, completely unable to function as a human being, to Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
Autism and intellectual disability are different things. Successful people like Bill Gates can also be depressed, as can somebody who sits in a corner. That doesn't say anything interesting about depression, nor does it say anything interesting about autism. Same with cancer or male pattern baldness or really just about any condition you care to think of.
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#57Pathologizing autistic behaviors is not the right approach here. Most autistic behaviors are harmless except insofar as allistic (non-autistic) people provide unnecessary consequences for it and through incompatibilities. We don't say that a Linux workstation in a network of Windows computers is broken or needs to be fixed (or visa-versa), but rather we recognize that the problems are due to the differences. As such, attempts to "cure" or "prevent" autism are actually an eugenic attempt to remove harmless variation that many people irrationally deem to be objectionable.
For example, it is commonly stated that autistic people have communication deficits, but this is just a communication difference. We can see this because if a communication task is given to a group of only autistic people they perform comparably to when the same task is given to a group of allistic people. Problems only take place when the group is mixed with both autistic and allistic people being present. The keyword "double empathy problem" can be used to find more information about this. (https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286)
As another example, allistic people tend to very harshly judge autistic people for extremely subtle cues that they are different. When allistic people are shown recordings of autistic people communicating and of allistic people doing similiar tasks they, within less than a second, judge the autistic people very harshly. This effect persists when controlling for the content of the communication. (https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700) Of course, doing anything that actually warrants such a judgement in a context like that is impossible so this is a bias against autistic people. I think that this can be compared to implicit racial bias: it is something that most people need to learn to consciously identify and then not perpetuate and is not due to any faults with the victim.
Good resource on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1AUdaH-EPM
There are higher support needs autistic people who need help with activities of daily living. In my opinion, though, in many cases this is not autism but rather autism with an accompanying intellectual disability and the intellectual disability is the reason for higher supports needs. In some cases this could also be caregivers unnecessarily pathologizing behavior and then convincing someone that they need more support than they really do, which I have seen in real life.
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#58> The researchers discovered that a small number of biochemical pathways are responsible for the majority of these changes, which could help inform new early detection and prevention strategies for autism. It won’t. Autism is a socioculturally bound diagnosis, not a single disease that exists in biology. It’s a label for those perceived by others in a certain light, defined in such a way that two with the same label…
That's completely incorrect. Autism has clear physiological differences in the brain. It's not just a personality difference. People like to call themselves autistic when it's just social awkwardness, and some doctors might even improperly diagnose them, but these are separate from the condition. https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/autism/autism-brain-... This could help us prevent autism completely.
>People like to call themselves autistic when it's just social awkwardness, and some doctors might even improperly diagnose them, but these are separate from the condition.
What makes such a diagnosis incorrect when various forms of social awkwardness satisfy criteria A and D of the diagnostic criteria [1], and all of the criteria for social pragmatic disorder[2]? In the DSM-V-TR era psychiatrists are instructed to not just judge somebody to not be autistic if they do not appear socially awkward, and to additionally ask if they find social interactions distressing, and observe them for longer in more naturalistic settings to find the deficit in social functioning[3] as part of a thus far continuously lowering diagnostic bar as to what is considered sufficient social awkwardness to be diagnosable.
>Autism has clear physiological differences in the brain.
Which physiological changes in the brain make you autistic, or put another way, which physiological changes in the brain must you lack to NOT be autistic? I've heard of any autism diagnosis's and self-diagnosis's and I've never heard of any of them being based on a brain scan and yet people go around calling others and themselves autistic. I've never heard of a diagnosis being lost or gained due to a brain scan.
I've heard this insistence that we can infer the territory, the neurological conditions of peoples brains, from the map, the behaviourist diagnosis, and there may be a correlation but it can't be said that any given person with an autism diagnosis has any given specific neurological change. The only thing we test for IS behaviour, and infer biology from it.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_(pragmatic)_communicati... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergirls/comments/th9hku/dsm5tr_n...
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#59I know of at least one book written by and for autistic people who advocates for a gluten free diet. They claim in the book that this significantly reduces their symptoms. I don’t know if I believe it or not, but the notion of gut-brain axis seems to imply that a good diet should help a bit, right?
Well as the article says:
"Metabolism is the language that the brain, gut and immune system use to communicate, and autism occurs when the communication between these systems is changed"
So it's not unreasonable that for some people, dietary interventions can have some effect on this interplay between systems. Mostly a just a random "YMMV" shot in the dark at this point. But hopefully as this research advances, more targeted and predictable treatments will emerge.
Re: Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
#60Used to have a mix of what could be considered ADHD/light asperbergers. I dont eat carbs and mostly stick to a keto diet, it resolved many symptoms. Our food is poison
I'm Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) and prefer low carb because I feel better, but it doesn't change my personality traits or cognitive tendencies one iota.
I have a noticable ability to react quicker in social situations, im more "normal". Otherwise my brain is sluggish and i struggle to maintain conversation/things go over my head