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Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

economist.com

51–60 of 270 posts

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#51

There's no free will :)

I think there is free will, but like most things in life, it is a privilege not everyone has; many people are constrained by invisible shackles. I would wager that evil still exists, but it requires full awareness of what one is doing when perpetrating it, and so it is more rare than we think. (Of course, this is just an opinion.)

I think there is no absolute free will. Some are more free than others. Money, mindset, and circumstance heavily influence how free your will is. Some argue you were always going to decide what you were going to decide , unconvincingly to me, but the role of the conscious mind and what it actually is, we are still discovering.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#52

A bit off topic but what is the HN consensus on probiotics? Any brands you can recommend?

It highly depends on what you're trying to change/treat. I recommending searching pubmed and high quality studies for your condition and the specific strains you need. Some strains can make some conditions worse and not better.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#53

Running this kind of article in a general-audience magazine takes a lot of guts (no pun intended) after all the trouble caused by another article about autism. That was a bogus paper in The Lancet in 1998 published by Wakefield et al. That paper, proven false, asserted a connection between Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine and autism. But the effects of that paper linger on among conspiracy theorists. Let's hope this one…

If you have trouble with histamines, watch out. It actually can hurt: https://www.athinkingpatient.com/probiotic-l-reuteri-mast-ce...

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#54
My thoery:

I'm inclined to think the link in autism might be caused by the prevalence of C-section births not passing the proper gut microbiome to some kids who are also genetically more inclined to autism but only if the gut is screwed up at birth.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4464665/

Doctors nowadays do C-sections often for unnecessary reasons, such as expedience or shift changes or as a default because the believe its "safer":

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/arsdarian-c...

The wrong micro-biome eventually builds up a toxic load that causes the onset of autistic symptoms. Most likely due to cell danger response (CDR) getting stuck:

https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2017-05-26-centu...

Out on a limb, I know. But likely the cause is probably going to come down to a cascade of preventable events and toxic loads causing some kind of malfunction in those who are already gene compromised.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#55
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have previously wondered if HIV could pick up mutations which made hosts more sexually active and promiscuous.

Why HIV specifically?

Presumably because it's an STD that can't be transmitted through casual contact.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't expect this level of attention at all. I hope it is appropriate for me to respond. - what positive effects did you get taking S. Boulardii ? Intestinal "well-being," feeling I can almost forget about my intestines, whereas normally my abdomen always hurts very badly, to the point my entire body is straining in reaction to it. This is only in combination with the other measures I took; S. Boulardii alone is i…

A lot of your symptoms sound similar to some things that I have been through. I found out that I have celiac disease, after suffering through a lot of physical symptoms which were sometimes paired with mental symptoms such as confusion or mood swings, which are common with celiac. The exact cost seems to be a mixture of things… release of neurotransmitters and immune system chemicals, disrupted gut flora, chronic pai…

I don't have any statistics, but judging from the number of sites and blogs that have popped up that deal with similar conditions, this seems to be an increasingly common problem. It seems like you could now speak about brain fog and everyone would understand what you meant, and I don't think that was the case 15 years ago.

I've only ever made 2 top-level comments related to this issue on HN and they have surprised me with the amount of attention they generated.

A lot of people are going through desperate times because of conditions like this. It's hard to appreciate how bad it can be just by trying to imagine the symptoms for an instant. It's much harder to imagine what it feels like to experience that for months; years; decades.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#57

Without S. Boulardii, I am a neurotic mess who can't digest anything at all nor think straight after eating anything, so I'm inclined to believe this hypothesis. I am also intrigued about what this means for criminality and how the line between illness and evil is likely to shift given the role of microorganisms in behavioral dysfunction; and more broadly, we don't like to admit it, but it seems that completely amora…

It also casts religions with dietary restrictions in an interesting light.

Which major religion forbids yeast intake (and how would you guarantee that) and from which angle does one shine light on a people united in faith but with distinct local food (and yeast) sources to make it "interesting"?

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#58
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find out?

I figured out that my problems were related to intestinal microflora because they became ten times worse after undergoing 3 courses of H. Pylori eradication therapy in the span of only a few months, and I never improved for years afterwards. That's the short version; in reality, I suffered for a decade and a half before I caught on that I could do something about it, and it took about 5 years after that to get any ki…

@theprotocol With your permission, I hope, I copied your comments to my wiki http://www.zeynel.a2hosted.com/index.php?title=Digestive_Hea... I think it will be useful to others as well to read them as a whole. I'll update if there are new relevant comments. Thanks!

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#59

My thoery: I'm inclined to think the link in autism might be caused by the prevalence of C-section births not passing the proper gut microbiome to some kids who are also genetically more inclined to autism but only if the gut is screwed up at birth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4464665/ Doctors nowadays do C-sections often for unnecessary reasons, such as expedience or shift changes or as a default be…

Also less women are breastfeeding, a process which also gives probiotics
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