If you have seen one child with autism, you have seen one child with autism. This statement rises from the reality that we are still struggling to wrap our heads around the multiple causes of autism. This disease affecting now millions of children appears to vary not only in severity but in what appears to…
Researchers have long noted that male pregnancies seem to suffer more from pregnancy stress than female. Many theories abound for why males have higher rates of neurodevelopmental issues like autism than females. This study looks at both the mechanisms of this effect and a possible therapy to prevent it. In their mouse study, this group…
Forgive me, but I am still a little shell-shocked. After years of mainstream medicine downplaying the role of diet and nutrition in the severity of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, we actually get a study which demonstrates a connection between diet and ADHD symptom. We have known that imbalances in brain neurotransmitters contribute to ADHD. We…
Everyone wants to know why almost 1 in 10 children now have been diagnosed with ADHD, affecting their lives and the lives of their families. Numerous theories ask if some exposure or deficiency during pregnancy could be influencing brain development negatively. Toxins, deficiencies, infections, and various forms of inflammation are also implicated. As with autism,…
With the increasing prevalence of autism and developmental delays in children, would you stop to read a headline like ‘54% of Pregnancies at Risk for Autism’? Most parents would at least read the first few lines of such a striking claim. Uppsala University researchers should have gotten everyone’s attention when they published their results earlier…
In functional medicine, we are trained to think about root causes and this requires thinking about the upstream. For example, according to this study Vitamin D can be traced far upstream in the development of ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Rather than simply waiting until a disease or symptom occurs and then responding with a…
Like a modern-day action movie, the ticking time bomb of autism advances forward, taking a higher and higher percentage of the next generation as scientists frantically search for clues to the mystery. With the estimated rates of autism rising to 1 in 50-something, we all hope for answers which lead to successful therapies. Like the…
With the growing number of children developing autistic features in today’s world, researchers are on the hunt for the causes of autism. In a complex and multifaceted condition like autism, this hunt rarely ends an “aha” moment with the one answer suddenly appearing out of the research. Instead, research inches forward in fits and starts. …
Correlation does not equal causation. We hear that often in medicine. For example, we know there are correlations between maternal illness during pregnancy and autism. We know that these two conditions, maternal illness and infant autism, travel together, but we don’t have a mechanism of action to prove that the former causes the latter. We…
The hunt for autism’s trigger continues. The reason for its long continuance likely lies in that it is not one homogenous disease, but a mixture of different triggers culminating in a similar pattern of brain dysfunction and life disruption. The role of the immune system probably runs second only to genetics in terms of research…