Surprisingly, researchers identified a strong microbial signature for autism spectrum disorder, challenging the idea that autism is a primarily genetic condition and suggesting that environmental factors may be behind the sharp rise in ASD
Anyone with serious microbiome issues will tell you it's pretty obvious most diseases/conditions are due to your microbiome. The research just hasn't caught up yet and it's difficult to analyze since it's pretty much a black box that varies wildly between people.
It's really not. The gut contains most of the immune system, and is most of the surface area in contact with the outside. The microbiome controls how much contact the immune system has with the gut lumen (intestinal permeability) and the chemical products it has to neutralize (like LPS). Through cytokines or movement through the lymphatic system, immune cells in the gut set the tone for the immune system systemically.
When you consider how many diseases are related to a dysfunctional immune system, "most" isn't really an exaggeration. It's especially not an exaggeration if you weight diseases by how common they are.
It has long been noticed that many people with mental issues also have digestive issues. Imagine if the prescription for alot of health problems was to "eat a good diet and no amount of alcohol is beneficial"?
People don't want to make lifestyle changes, they want a pill and the pharmaceutical industry is happy to supply it.
One of the issues with Autism is a total refusal to eat certain healthy foods. The argument for a pill, or better, gut flora transplant, would be for people unable to make informed decisions for themselves. Once the flora were in place, theoretically, repulsion of healthy food would be reduced, allowing the child to feed his gut naturally, and hopefully improve mental health over time. This would be the holy grail, I hope more research is done in this area.
"One of the issues with Autism is a total refusal to eat certain healthy foods"
I have to disagree because "total refusal to eat healthy foods" is another one of the many subjective observations that muddies the definition of autism, which is as loose of a definition as you can get in my opinion.
Are they autistic because they don't eat right or do they not eat right because they are autistic?
Not all autistic kids have food intolerance. But food intolerance is such a common thing in kids on the spectrum that it's part of the evaluation. Autism is a loose definition! My wife and I have had this discussion many times, with therapists, teachers, etc. If you look into it, being diagnosed with ASD, means that you answered yes to enough questions on a long list. That's basically it.
The fact that the definition is so broad leads you to conclude they don't know why it is, or how to change it, or even cause it. Even the definitions of ASD, and or Aspergers has changed. Many who would not have qualified for the diagnosis 30 years ago would qualify now. Money is involved, at the schools, and the schools are the ones doing the testing. But, there is a real need for it. These kids are smart, but the environment is blocking them from learning or expressing.
What is needed is some kind of scientific, measurable, and conclusive understanding of the condition. Until then we are all just grasping in the dark, without even a brain scan.
Thats how homophobia develops too Ive heard, and cancer too, people in hiroshima died because thw radiation destroyed their biome which killed them, not their dna!
Exactly what I was thinking. In my own sons case, 8, his food preferences are extremely limited. We've pushed to expand this, even slipping many things undetected into his oatmeal. I've even wondered, were it possible to do a gut flora transplant, easily, what would be the result. Since early intervention is the name of the game, if the root cause were as trivial as the biome of your gut, every parent in the world would be signing up.
Sadly, these results do not seem game changing. Keep going!
> were it possible to do a gut flora transplant, easily
There is a way to do this, it's been tried before and had dramatic results but is a bit unorthodox. You basically take the fecal matter of a person with a healthy gut biome, blend it up and put it in pills for the other to swallow.
> Surprisingly, researchers identified a strong microbial signature for autism spectrum disorder, challenging the idea that autism is a primarily genetic condition and suggesting that environmental factors may be behind the sharp rise in ASD
It doesn't really challenge anything without some evidence for causation from microbiome to ASD beyond correlation, since causation from ASD (or its genetic determinants) to microbiome is also consistent with a correlation.
That's true to a degree but I don't think we had the level of moronity we currently have. You get children that are just mindless creatures who only know tiktok and biting. That doesn't feel like something that was underdiagnosed or unnoticed before
Does anyone have experience in doing a massive change to their gut and seeing long term results? Specifically, is it possible to "cure" autism through your gut microbiome?
> but I'm wondering how will those bacteria survive the acid?
They don't release in the stomach [1]:
> The oral capsule tested in this study was specifically designed to open and release its content at the end of human small intestine only.
There are many pills that release at different points, and speeds, through the digestion. This is why some pills are labelled "do not cut". See enteric coating [2].
> Fecal transplantation is usually performed by colonoscopy. A gastroenterologist guides the colonoscope through the entire length of the colon, and, as it is withdrawn, the solution containing donor feces is deposited into the colon.
> Less commonly, the transplant is delivered through a tube inserted through the nose that reaches into the duodenum, the area where the stomach connects with the small intestine. This method does not require bowel prep, but is associated with a higher risk of side effects such as aspiration pneumonia.
> Sometimes, FMT can be delivered by a capsule that you swallow or through an enema.
tldr: tube inserted somewhere to deposit, pill, or enema.
What's extreme is that the FDA has generally made the practice illegal, according to my GI. Some people suffered fatal bacterial infections so they pulled back on the topic. There might be still some experiments but I guess right now its still considered risky.
My layman’s understanding is that your immune system has an “strong opinion” about what bacteria it will tolerate, so simply introducing new bacteria generally does not make a permanent change to your gut biome. Even fecal transplant doesn’t really work for transforming the gut biome, as I understand it. (It can help reestablish bacteria that were lost due to medication or disease though.)
In autism case that actually happened first. Parents began to restrict gluten out of the diets for kids with ASD and were adamant that this helped them a lot. The research community was highly skeptical and even derisive of this until they started finding real gut brain connection and proof in trials and mice studies. Hopefully parents of children who have such conditions can chime in and corroborate this history.
Gliadin (Gluten) increases intestinal permeability through Zonulin[0]. This is true in all humans, independent of allergies or auto-immunity.
It's unlikely that gluten itself has anything to do with ASD, it just exacerbates an existing predisposition to intestinal permeability. And so restricting Gluten is a reasonable intervention. The underlying cause is almost certainly dysbiosis, the microbiome continually modulating permeability in a way that is damaging to the host.
It’s discussed in the paper under the heading “ASD microbiomes mirror behavior improvement after fecal matter transplant”
“To test this, we re-analyzed data from a 2-year, open-label fecal matter transplant (FMT) study with 18 children with ASD52. In this study, the children were subjected to a 2-week antibiotic treatment and a bowel cleanse, followed by 2 d of high-dose FMT treatment and 8 weeks of daily maintenance FMT doses. Based on one of the most common evaluation scales for ASD, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), significant improvements were achieved after the 10-week course of treatment. Two months later, the initial gains were largely maintained, and a 2-year follow-up showed signs of further improvement in most of the patients. The results are consistent with a potential role of the microbiome in improving autism symptoms, but how the underlying changes in microbiome composition related to those seen in other studies remains unknown.”
Theres alot of anecdotal evidence from parents that seems to prove some of this. There are two problems: 1) Most people with autism don't have it e.g. there is no good definition. 2) Not only are diet studies hard to do because they involve self reporting, but there is no money in telling a person that they should eat right unless its part of a diet fad.
Saying autism depends on your microbiome is like saying your sexuality depends on it. Sure, might make sense, yet there is no single Person that changed its preferences after a change in diet or microbiome death through antibiotics. That sounds like a pile of crap to me - Im autistic myself btw
Yeah in a world where dogs can smell cancer and people with relatively mild brain injury can wake up permanently speaking in a different accent I think it's entirely possible that a radical change in microbiome due to freak accident or experimental treatment has resulted in a change in sexual preferences.
Not strictly genetic, certainly, but in at least one configuration there is a clear effect that is perhaps genetic in the mother:
> Biochemical evidence for this hypothesis was identified in 2017, finding mothers with a gay son, particularly those with older brothers, had heightened levels of antibodies to the NLGN4Y Y-protein than mothers with heterosexual sons.[1][2]
The point is autism is a neurological condition - like a hardware wiring. Changing that because of bacteria can be compared to changing sexualities imo - and Im highly sceptical of it.
From my understanding, the 'wiring' of an Autistic person's brain is pretty much the same as that of the neurotypical person. Of course, it should be noted that Autism is not one thing, but a constellation of possible ways of thinking. For example, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a trait common in Autistic people, but also a percentage of neurotypicals is not how the brain is wired, but a more complex mechanism that has not fully been understood.
What I am trying to say is the analogy of wiring is wrong. Our brains are not static, like the wiring in the walls of a house. New connections are formed all of the time, old connections are forgotten. Perhaps we should be more inspired by mycelium connections then wires. Research might open up new ways of thinking, for Autistics and Neurotypicals alike. Imagine, thinking like a child.
No. Wiring in the sense of architecture. We process things from details to overview, bottom to top, while allistics do the opposite. Thats the wiring I meant. It is not wrong, you interpretet my analogy differently which can happen! Imagine the difference between intel and amd chips, both are x86 but they have a different architecture, even though the transistors work the same...
Do you have a citation for this, or is it just a guess? I think my brain works this way (bottom to top). My child has an autism diagnosis, but I do not.
Oh, I understand! Yes! I actually have some of these tendencies myself, while my son has much more. My brain is naturally attracted to details, especially the intricate interlocking kind. That being said, I am not entirely certain that all autistic people are the same in this fundamental way. At least, I am not aware of it, I am still learning.
How do you feel about the analogy of Hardware / software. Like the hardware is the same, but the software is written different. Good talking with you. Would love to know more. Any types are welcome!
How rigorous is your understanding of human sexuality though? It's a very politically charged topic to compare it to, and we don't, scientifically, understand it. Where we're discovering that there's a gut-brain connection that works in ways we don't understand yet, is it hardware wiring or is it the firmware?
I think it’s worth looking at what different facets are part of being autistic. It might be possible to differentiate between personality characteristics that are important to you (that you associate with your sense of self) and those that you can see as somewhat less essentially part of who you are.
For example, you might have a particular way of thinking that is different from other people which is both important to you and often associated with ASD. That doesn’t feel like something likely to change qualitatively from say a diet change.
On the other hand, there might be aspects like being overwhelmed by particular kinds of stimuli, that feel less personal and may feel more likely to be impacted be something like a diet change.
Finally, consider that you might be holding too tightly to some aspects of who you are “right now”, to be able to see and accept how some of these things might change. I know I do sp sometimes (regardless of whether I might be on the spectrum, or not). At the very least a relatively fixed (as opposed to growth) mindset is also often associated with ASD.
I agree that some parts might be fluid, especially what the term autism denotes and entails. The way I use it, it summarizes my neurological differences compared to allistics (non-autistics), not today and right now but throughout my _whole_ life.
Anyone who says that autism can be cured, would therefore have to change my being fundamentally, which I personally would oppose, as it is this exact difference, that allowed me to get to points intelectualy where others were not before.
If anyone wants to eradicate autism, sure, go for it, just dont expext any dirac, newton, einstein, and many others to ever get Born again.
Yes, this topic releases a lot of emotions Im aware of that. Whats important to me is that being autistic means being different - not worse. "a relatively fixed mindset" sounds soo pathological.
Autistics hold onto their constructs and routines, because their minds are too flexible and boundry less. I could frame that NT "rigidness" as a pathology just as well.
Thanks for being that open and non black/white thinking to let that sink in and accept it because it comes from an autistic person who does know better about them than someone who is not.
And Im aware of not targeting the main subject of gut bacteria here, and apologize for that. Im sure with your mental fitness youll be able to separate the two aspects and still value the insights shared, thanks!
I’m sorry if I phrased my comment in a way that offends you. I did not intend it as such and wanted instead to offer such a more fluid view of autism. Not only the definition, like you say, but also how different facets affect each person with ASD to a different extent which also changes with circumstances and throughout life in general.
And if you can accept these different facets being more fluid, I’d propose that rather than curing autism (something I don’t believe in and would never champion), one might be able to moderate specific facets of ASD that people on the spectrum themselves find a hindrance by changing the microbiome. Say some kinds of stimuli-caused overwhelm. Similar to somebody changing their diet to limit hangriness or blood sugar drops.
Note that at no point am I suggesting somebody with ASD needs treatment, just that they might see some improvements in their well-being if they wanted.
Finally, I derailed my comment by mixing it with a well-intended comment about mindset. I mean no judgement w.r.t. a fixed mindset, just that I found it a hindrance myself and have been happier since I started working on changing it.
For example being able to write down some things I may have held as axiomatic in the past (e.g. ideals or standards of behavior) and being able to consider how they may not be so fixed and deciding to change them or ignore them entirely is very liberating.
Among other things it lets me view my identity as separate from my feelings and behaviors.
P.S. I don’t appreciate the ad hominem at the end of your comment. Even if I unintentionally offended you don’t think I deserve that.
So youre saying its not disproven that autism cannot be cured, hm interesting. Then you surely must also think that conversion therapy can work, many people there report it worked for them too, didnt they?
And I did not lie. There are people who claim that. That they die weeks later is another part of the story.
Point Im wanting to make: claims dont prove anything.
>His claim at least isn’t a blatant lie while yours clearly is
Let's see what Tao Lin has to say for himself about being "cured":
>Through nutrition, detoxification, exercise, writing (and other autism-friendly forms of self-expression), reading (allowing me to alleviate loneliness in private, without distress), cannabis, change-catalyzing psychedelics, meditation, and practice, I’ve become much less autistic since high school and college. I estimate I now range from 30 to 98 percent more autistic than my peers, depending on the hour, day, week, and month; every symptom varies, I’ve learned, depending on sleep, situation, inflammation levels, cultural consumption, mindset, and hundreds of other factors.
Note he didn't say he was cured at all, he said he's "30 to 98 percent more autistic than my peers," and also said that a lot of his treatment wasn't dietary.
You might want to reflect on this a while. You introduced the idea of "lying" which isn't a generous way to interact with anyone. I'd suggest you consider giving others more of the benefit of the doubt. You're very wrong on multiple levels here, but I would never accuse you of lying, I believe you were just mistaken.
I'd also suggest you spend a while doing more investigation into the claim that there's a "cure" for autism. No experts believe this, and the reason is because not only is there no reason to believe such an thing exists (and no evidence), but the idea of a "cure" probably fundamentally misunderstands what autism is to the best of our current knowledge.
Thanks a lot for supporting the current state of art research on the field.
Imagine the horrors of not being taken seriously, people saying we need to be cured - i cannot not compare it to conversion therapies for lgbtq+. There are actually institutions promoting this, called ABA therapies.
We need people like you to thrive as part of this society, thanks a lot! :D
True, that ABA "treatment" is utterly pernicious. Framing autism as an illness that needs to be treated or cured is problematic. Human neurodiversity is a broad spectrum with a great deal diversity, and talking about a "cure" pathologizes that which is not only wrong-headed, but can be incredibly harmful in practice as ABA therapy illustrates.
People who practice Breatharianism claim to live without food and get sustenance from various mystical sources, including sunshine (they either don't live very long or else are frauds and do secretly eat).
>Through nutrition, detoxification, exercise, writing (and other autism-friendly forms of self-expression), reading (allowing me to alleviate loneliness in private, without distress), cannabis, change-catalyzing psychedelics, meditation, and practice, I’ve become much less autistic since high school and college. I estimate I now range from 30 to 98 percent more autistic than my peers, depending on the hour, day, week, and month; every symptom varies, I’ve learned, depending on sleep, situation, inflammation levels, cultural consumption, mindset, and hundreds of other factors.
It was more than eggs an honey. Also looking into him a bit, he still seems very autistic despite being "cured."
The biggest issue people with adhd have (me included) is focus. Methylphenidate helps a lot with that as its mechanism is proven.
It does however not change the "neurodivergent" thinking and processing. There still is a clear distinction from non-adhd ers - in all aspects of being, including communication.
Many issues that make these things a "malfunction" are due to todays system of work and society. Not judging anything, but simply pointing out the huge diff between that and e.g. hunter-gatherer societies where we lived in at least 100x longer - the genotypes of adhd & asd established themselves over that periods in humans, compared to "disease" like trisomy 21 the rates are much higher too - its not a disease but a neurotype and most research agrees today.
Humanity Profits from diversity in all forms, like all biological systems - it makes them more resilient (thats also used in ML btw).
Trying to cure such things by making them dissapear is sick by design and often results in eugenics theories.
I use this opportunity to say that "help" organizations like autism speaks that promote finding "cures" do a lot of harm - similar to conversion therapies for lgbtq people.
Autistics should self advocate as much as possible, thats also the safest organisations to support.
I must say that thats solely my opinion - many autistics also suffer a lot and would love to be healed - even if it means losing their personality, sufferings are real. I just dont think its realistic to implement such things until we understand tvmhe brain fully and could also e.g. change psychopaths, color blind people etc (not easy "fixes")
Generally speaking, lesbians are more affected by PCOS than Heterosexual women.[1] PCOS is associated with higher androgen production due to insulin resistance.
Do you know what decreases insulin resistance and changes gut microbiome composition? intermitent fasting.
A review published in Frontiers in Microbiology in 2020 suggested that women with PCOS tend to have less diverse gut bacteria, and the balance of different types of bacteria might also be altered. The causal relationship is obviously not clear.
There are alt-right theories that nutrition also impacts brain development such that global south people can not get as intelligent as white people. Where do you draw the line between your theory and that theory?
Nutrition demonstrably effects brain development, and this adversely effects both economically disadvantaged countries and economically disadvantaged populations in developed countries.
That's not an alt-right theory.
(No doubt, the alt-right has a very horrible “...and, therefore” for it, but that's a different issue.)
You’re right. That your viewpoint has so much resistance is just typical of how autistic people never get rapport in neurotypical discourses - even when it concerns the very perspective only they have.
Theres no uniform definition of autism. If you go to 10 different psychiatrists for a diagnosis, you'll get 10 different answers most relying on heavy self reporting by either the parents or the patient. None of this is accurate.
I'm not saying there isn't criteria, I mispoke, I'm saying its not very objective. In other words, the criteria is so broad you can almost diagnose anyone with autism.
Figuring out if a person has a particular problem is the first thing you need to do before you can correct that problem... and there appears to be no accurate way of doing that for autism.
So is there a possible correlation or causation between "helicopter parenting" -> "not letting kids play in the dirt" -> "weak microbiome" -> "autism" / developmental difficulties?
Definitely could be other factors too, like non-diverse diets.
What are all the factors that impact gut microbiome? Is it just things that go into your mouth like dirt and food? Or are there other pathways as well?
Interesting thought. I was raised in a rather hygienic house. I started mountain biking a lot. Part of which is regularly eating a banana covered with all sorts of filth from a backpocket. IMO I got much more social and less awkward in my late 20s. Could this be improved microbioma?
> "not letting kids play in the dirt" -> "weak microbiome"
I'd caution that there are at least two variations of this, with rather different treatment implications:
1. ("Hygiene Hypothesis") Modern immune systems are coddled degenerate weaklings that should be toughened up with exposure to survivable levels of hostile microbes.
2. ("Old Friends") Your immune system is complex and its ideal tuning is reliant on normal exposure to benign, commensal, or symbiotic microbes which help it calibrate or even serve as outsourced components.
As a parent of Autistic child, I would argue it is a correlation. It only takes a few incidents of your child running off without interest in returning by your calling to him, to make you a helicopter parent. It's also true that since your child has no interest in playing with other kids, and you are trying to teach survival and social skills, you end up spending far more time with your child than the typically developing kid.
And it is further true that in social situations the anxiety level of the autistic child increases, as does the parent, and so people viewing the situation might be biased to see a highly anxious parent with a spoiled kid, and assume the causation.
My kid loves playing in dirt, he also loves to track it into the house, no-matter how many times you tell him. We live with dirt, and autism. My kid is also a genius, so there are good things about it also.
Well glyphosate accumulates on wheat products and ends up in your food (e.g. breakfast cereal) [1]. So it's not impossible glyphosate is affecting us negatively, but there just isn't any real evidence yet.
So both have a similar shaped growth curve, but large deviations from that curve on the suggested independent variable are not reflected at all in the suggested dependent variable? Sounds like two unrelated phenomenon with similar long-term shape but no direct link.
The correlation is perhaps not the smoking gun OP thinks but your analysis seems to be based on the assumption there is no time lag in the population of children 6-21 with autism and glyphosate use on grains.
The most obvious one would be a six year lag. But it might have variance depending on crop cycles and whether glyphosate is handed off through the placenta and/or mother’s milk, and depending on the proposed mechanism of action and weaning age.
> The correlation is perhaps not the smoking gun OP thinks but your analysis seems to be based on the assumption there is no time lag in the population of children 6-21 with autism and glyphosate use on grains.
No, if there was just a time lag, than the variations would still be reflected, but with a time lag.
There is variation in the data that could be reflective of that time lag.
If the population had no awareness of the effect and no ability to observe the impact of grain consumption on their children, then maybe it would proceed like some chemical process. But the population can learn and change behavior.
My point is that your dismissal, in the way you framed it, is possibly just as much a random walk as the correlation in the way it is presented. Neither is conclusive.
I hate those graphs. You can manipulate the axes on any graph to make it look like the two variables closely match each other and increase at the same rate
Autism prevalence growth may be driven by increased medicalization of society causing more diagnoses and increased medical training to hand out the diagnosis. We have little reliable data on the past with diagnoses only becoming a thing in the 1990s. One should be very careful extrapolating from the existing data since it's not a reading of actual numbers of people affected, but the rates of diagnosis.
Whenever I see these gut biome results, I can't help thinking that there are so many common causes that can explain both biome and diagnosis/behavior: region, ethnography, socioeconomic class, etc. Has anyone gone deep enough into the studies to know if/how that is controlled for?
I appreciate the scientific question. These posts tend to launch wild takes on HN that confuse correlation with causation and attempt to reduce disease to just one foundational factor. It just doesn't work like that for a lot of illnesses.
Fair point. But once you start comparing regions that differ in one way (say food between Western European countries), they most likely differ in so many other ways that the analysis becomes very very hard.
It's also worth questioning in which direction the causality flows.
If it's reasonable to expect diet and activity levels to have microbial effects, and it is reasonable to expect the psychopathology in question to have an effect on activity levels and diet; then whatever microbial differences you find between sufferers and non-sufferers could just as easily be the consequence as the cause of the pathology.
Is there anything that flows both ways? When it comes to human behavior I've read that faking it and smiling more makes you feel happier, and happier people smile more.
Almost like your brain goes, "I'm smiling so I must be happy right now."
Yeah sure, it's pretty common in physics and everywhere. The notion of cause and effect is closer to a legal concept than a physical one.
If you kick a ball, it begins to roll not only because it was kicked, but because it was round, solid, not made out of lead, etc. Further the presence of the ball may have induced you to kick it. Surely you don't go around kicking empty air.
But we tend to have a sort of simplified view where there is an active cause acting on a passive world to have an effect.
Interestingly, on Monday a preprint [1] was posted calling into question a major Nature paper from 2020 that associated the microbiome with multiple cancer types [2] (though within each tissue sample, not the gut).
Autism isn't a disorder, but a mutation and in this instance can be correlated to the microbiome of the gut. But does not account for the increase in reeln nor changes in rna that cause increased sensitivity to stimuli. And is only treated as a disorder in respect to assembly line predetermined processes typical of today's organizations. That runs counter to the increased stimuli of maintaining said predetermined process, while punishing divergence.
This is also noting that data can be fit to suit a narrative and causation is different than correlation. But seem similar in the general context of today's discourse. And limited by predictability while noting the massive reproduction crisis in science such as this article and others. Including the recent controversy at Stanford with the president stepping down due to enabling the manipulation of data specifically in this domain of science.
I respect your journey! My son, 8, is not able to cope in school, but is able to read, write, dream, solve math problems, and be extremely friendly to people. Due to the pandemic, we took him out of kindergarten, and homeschooled him, like many. Online classes were a joke for that age, but one on one with Mom worked great.
We wanted him to be in school with his peers, desperately. The steps involved in getting him re-enrolled were numerous, and exhausting. Once 2nd grade started, the reality quickly became obvious to us. He learns far more at home than in the 'structure' of school. He could be placed in a more severe structure, but we opted to bring him back home to teach him. My thinking is that by developing an ability to read, write, and think, he will have the tools to better cope with the world. Of course, it is a gamble, and social skills are not easy. But anyone who thinks, send him to school to develop social skills is not really looking at the details.
As for Autism being an adaptation, I think that is true, like many adaptations. His math skills, and memory are genius level. He seems highly adapted to computers, ipads, and abstract thinking, like numbers, spelling, birthdays, etc. He would make an excellent QA engineer.
Again, respects to you on your journey through this.
As someone with major dietary issues due to autoimmune conditions (essentially vegan + fish - tree nuts - nightshades - gluten), who was diagnosed as Asperger’s ~20 years ago and has a child with “severe” autism:
I’m both hopeful and doubtful of studies like this. I tend to think these help narrow the search space, but are missing whatever underlying issue is causing the thing they see. My sons diet is hugely restricted due to his intolerance of many things (chemo changes to taste hurt that significantly as well) so I’d imagine his gut biome is an issue at this time. It likely was NOT prior to his chemo (though we can’t know for sure) as he ate the same diet my daughter did (and we tend towards quite healthy). We’ve investigated other possible environmental factors, including PFAS/PFOS testing, heavy metals testing, etc. (my career exposed me to those but he was never exposed that we can tell). Everything inconclusive.
As I said, I’m hopeful we can figure this out. Each step helps, even if it’s not the final one to finding the cause.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadWhen you consider how many diseases are related to a dysfunctional immune system, "most" isn't really an exaggeration. It's especially not an exaggeration if you weight diseases by how common they are.
People don't want to make lifestyle changes, they want a pill and the pharmaceutical industry is happy to supply it.
I have to disagree because "total refusal to eat healthy foods" is another one of the many subjective observations that muddies the definition of autism, which is as loose of a definition as you can get in my opinion.
Are they autistic because they don't eat right or do they not eat right because they are autistic?
The fact that the definition is so broad leads you to conclude they don't know why it is, or how to change it, or even cause it. Even the definitions of ASD, and or Aspergers has changed. Many who would not have qualified for the diagnosis 30 years ago would qualify now. Money is involved, at the schools, and the schools are the ones doing the testing. But, there is a real need for it. These kids are smart, but the environment is blocking them from learning or expressing.
What is needed is some kind of scientific, measurable, and conclusive understanding of the condition. Until then we are all just grasping in the dark, without even a brain scan.
I think we are the early days of Neuroscience.
Not me, oh and do sports, but ive hidden it very well.
Sadly, these results do not seem game changing. Keep going!
It doesn't really challenge anything without some evidence for causation from microbiome to ASD beyond correlation, since causation from ASD (or its genetic determinants) to microbiome is also consistent with a correlation.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/23/autism-epidemic-cdc-numb....
Also, I'm guessing that after someone's brain has developed it's going to become much harder to change.
That said, I'd be asking the alternative question, can we use this to give people high-functioning autism?
It’s mainly used with c diff people who have had their gut micro biome wiped out by treatment.
> Technically, a colonoscopy is a type of endoscopy. An endoscopy is a nonsurgical procedure
Also it can be done via nasal/oral tube to the guts.
They don't release in the stomach [1]:
> The oral capsule tested in this study was specifically designed to open and release its content at the end of human small intestine only.
There are many pills that release at different points, and speeds, through the digestion. This is why some pills are labelled "do not cut". See enteric coating [2].
[1] At least the early ones didn't. I doubt there would be a point in putting fecal matter in the stomach. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7918368/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_coating
> Fecal transplantation is usually performed by colonoscopy. A gastroenterologist guides the colonoscope through the entire length of the colon, and, as it is withdrawn, the solution containing donor feces is deposited into the colon.
> Less commonly, the transplant is delivered through a tube inserted through the nose that reaches into the duodenum, the area where the stomach connects with the small intestine. This method does not require bowel prep, but is associated with a higher risk of side effects such as aspiration pneumonia.
> Sometimes, FMT can be delivered by a capsule that you swallow or through an enema.
tldr: tube inserted somewhere to deposit, pill, or enema.
It's unlikely that gluten itself has anything to do with ASD, it just exacerbates an existing predisposition to intestinal permeability. And so restricting Gluten is a reasonable intervention. The underlying cause is almost certainly dysbiosis, the microbiome continually modulating permeability in a way that is damaging to the host.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonulin
“To test this, we re-analyzed data from a 2-year, open-label fecal matter transplant (FMT) study with 18 children with ASD52. In this study, the children were subjected to a 2-week antibiotic treatment and a bowel cleanse, followed by 2 d of high-dose FMT treatment and 8 weeks of daily maintenance FMT doses. Based on one of the most common evaluation scales for ASD, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), significant improvements were achieved after the 10-week course of treatment. Two months later, the initial gains were largely maintained, and a 2-year follow-up showed signs of further improvement in most of the patients. The results are consistent with a potential role of the microbiome in improving autism symptoms, but how the underlying changes in microbiome composition related to those seen in other studies remains unknown.”
>> related thread from two years ago...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26038638
>> also searching on hn.algolia yields this...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1690998813&dateRange=all&dat...
Seems like a huge claim you can’t backup due it being a negative.
Who?
> Biochemical evidence for this hypothesis was identified in 2017, finding mothers with a gay son, particularly those with older brothers, had heightened levels of antibodies to the NLGN4Y Y-protein than mothers with heterosexual sons.[1][2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_ma...
I'm not saying your sexuality can change, but I thought there was fairly conclusive evidence that microbiome changes do impact people neurologically?
What I am trying to say is the analogy of wiring is wrong. Our brains are not static, like the wiring in the walls of a house. New connections are formed all of the time, old connections are forgotten. Perhaps we should be more inspired by mycelium connections then wires. Research might open up new ways of thinking, for Autistics and Neurotypicals alike. Imagine, thinking like a child.
How do you feel about the analogy of Hardware / software. Like the hardware is the same, but the software is written different. Good talking with you. Would love to know more. Any types are welcome!
For example, you might have a particular way of thinking that is different from other people which is both important to you and often associated with ASD. That doesn’t feel like something likely to change qualitatively from say a diet change.
On the other hand, there might be aspects like being overwhelmed by particular kinds of stimuli, that feel less personal and may feel more likely to be impacted be something like a diet change.
Finally, consider that you might be holding too tightly to some aspects of who you are “right now”, to be able to see and accept how some of these things might change. I know I do sp sometimes (regardless of whether I might be on the spectrum, or not). At the very least a relatively fixed (as opposed to growth) mindset is also often associated with ASD.
Anyone who says that autism can be cured, would therefore have to change my being fundamentally, which I personally would oppose, as it is this exact difference, that allowed me to get to points intelectualy where others were not before.
If anyone wants to eradicate autism, sure, go for it, just dont expext any dirac, newton, einstein, and many others to ever get Born again.
Yes, this topic releases a lot of emotions Im aware of that. Whats important to me is that being autistic means being different - not worse. "a relatively fixed mindset" sounds soo pathological.
Autistics hold onto their constructs and routines, because their minds are too flexible and boundry less. I could frame that NT "rigidness" as a pathology just as well.
Thanks for being that open and non black/white thinking to let that sink in and accept it because it comes from an autistic person who does know better about them than someone who is not.
And Im aware of not targeting the main subject of gut bacteria here, and apologize for that. Im sure with your mental fitness youll be able to separate the two aspects and still value the insights shared, thanks!
And if you can accept these different facets being more fluid, I’d propose that rather than curing autism (something I don’t believe in and would never champion), one might be able to moderate specific facets of ASD that people on the spectrum themselves find a hindrance by changing the microbiome. Say some kinds of stimuli-caused overwhelm. Similar to somebody changing their diet to limit hangriness or blood sugar drops.
Note that at no point am I suggesting somebody with ASD needs treatment, just that they might see some improvements in their well-being if they wanted.
Finally, I derailed my comment by mixing it with a well-intended comment about mindset. I mean no judgement w.r.t. a fixed mindset, just that I found it a hindrance myself and have been happier since I started working on changing it.
For example being able to write down some things I may have held as axiomatic in the past (e.g. ideals or standards of behavior) and being able to consider how they may not be so fixed and deciding to change them or ignore them entirely is very liberating.
Among other things it lets me view my identity as separate from my feelings and behaviors.
P.S. I don’t appreciate the ad hominem at the end of your comment. Even if I unintentionally offended you don’t think I deserve that.
And I did not lie. There are people who claim that. That they die weeks later is another part of the story.
Point Im wanting to make: claims dont prove anything.
Let's see what Tao Lin has to say for himself about being "cured":
>Through nutrition, detoxification, exercise, writing (and other autism-friendly forms of self-expression), reading (allowing me to alleviate loneliness in private, without distress), cannabis, change-catalyzing psychedelics, meditation, and practice, I’ve become much less autistic since high school and college. I estimate I now range from 30 to 98 percent more autistic than my peers, depending on the hour, day, week, and month; every symptom varies, I’ve learned, depending on sleep, situation, inflammation levels, cultural consumption, mindset, and hundreds of other factors.
see: https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/xl952r/tao_lin...
Note he didn't say he was cured at all, he said he's "30 to 98 percent more autistic than my peers," and also said that a lot of his treatment wasn't dietary.
You might want to reflect on this a while. You introduced the idea of "lying" which isn't a generous way to interact with anyone. I'd suggest you consider giving others more of the benefit of the doubt. You're very wrong on multiple levels here, but I would never accuse you of lying, I believe you were just mistaken.
I'd also suggest you spend a while doing more investigation into the claim that there's a "cure" for autism. No experts believe this, and the reason is because not only is there no reason to believe such an thing exists (and no evidence), but the idea of a "cure" probably fundamentally misunderstands what autism is to the best of our current knowledge.
Imagine the horrors of not being taken seriously, people saying we need to be cured - i cannot not compare it to conversion therapies for lgbtq+. There are actually institutions promoting this, called ABA therapies.
We need people like you to thrive as part of this society, thanks a lot! :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRniMqhr00 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia
To me it seems uncalled for to accuse go_elmo of lying about knowing some of these people.
It was more than eggs an honey. Also looking into him a bit, he still seems very autistic despite being "cured."
It does however not change the "neurodivergent" thinking and processing. There still is a clear distinction from non-adhd ers - in all aspects of being, including communication.
Many issues that make these things a "malfunction" are due to todays system of work and society. Not judging anything, but simply pointing out the huge diff between that and e.g. hunter-gatherer societies where we lived in at least 100x longer - the genotypes of adhd & asd established themselves over that periods in humans, compared to "disease" like trisomy 21 the rates are much higher too - its not a disease but a neurotype and most research agrees today.
Humanity Profits from diversity in all forms, like all biological systems - it makes them more resilient (thats also used in ML btw).
Trying to cure such things by making them dissapear is sick by design and often results in eugenics theories.
I use this opportunity to say that "help" organizations like autism speaks that promote finding "cures" do a lot of harm - similar to conversion therapies for lgbtq people.
Autistics should self advocate as much as possible, thats also the safest organisations to support.
I must say that thats solely my opinion - many autistics also suffer a lot and would love to be healed - even if it means losing their personality, sufferings are real. I just dont think its realistic to implement such things until we understand tvmhe brain fully and could also e.g. change psychopaths, color blind people etc (not easy "fixes")
Thanks a lot for asking and reading this!
Do you know what decreases insulin resistance and changes gut microbiome composition? intermitent fasting.
A review published in Frontiers in Microbiology in 2020 suggested that women with PCOS tend to have less diverse gut bacteria, and the balance of different types of bacteria might also be altered. The causal relationship is obviously not clear.
1. https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282%2804%2902227-7/...
Not relevant to the to be proven point that change to biome implies change in sexuality, none at all.
Maybe they play a role in insulin resistance which causes higher androgen production in women with PCOS, that impacts brain development.
That's not an alt-right theory.
(No doubt, the alt-right has a very horrible “...and, therefore” for it, but that's a different issue.)
Figuring out if a person has a particular problem is the first thing you need to do before you can correct that problem... and there appears to be no accurate way of doing that for autism.
Definitely could be other factors too, like non-diverse diets.
I'd caution that there are at least two variations of this, with rather different treatment implications:
1. ("Hygiene Hypothesis") Modern immune systems are coddled degenerate weaklings that should be toughened up with exposure to survivable levels of hostile microbes.
2. ("Old Friends") Your immune system is complex and its ideal tuning is reliant on normal exposure to benign, commensal, or symbiotic microbes which help it calibrate or even serve as outsourced components.
And it is further true that in social situations the anxiety level of the autistic child increases, as does the parent, and so people viewing the situation might be biased to see a highly anxious parent with a spoiled kid, and assume the causation.
My kid loves playing in dirt, he also loves to track it into the house, no-matter how many times you tell him. We live with dirt, and autism. My kid is also a genius, so there are good things about it also.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Correlation-between-chil...
Unless you have some kind of mechanism to explain it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9145961/
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8622992/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/health/bayer-monsanto-roundup...
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
The most obvious one would be a six year lag. But it might have variance depending on crop cycles and whether glyphosate is handed off through the placenta and/or mother’s milk, and depending on the proposed mechanism of action and weaning age.
No, if there was just a time lag, than the variations would still be reflected, but with a time lag.
If the population had no awareness of the effect and no ability to observe the impact of grain consumption on their children, then maybe it would proceed like some chemical process. But the population can learn and change behavior.
My point is that your dismissal, in the way you framed it, is possibly just as much a random walk as the correlation in the way it is presented. Neither is conclusive.
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
If it's reasonable to expect diet and activity levels to have microbial effects, and it is reasonable to expect the psychopathology in question to have an effect on activity levels and diet; then whatever microbial differences you find between sufferers and non-sufferers could just as easily be the consequence as the cause of the pathology.
Almost like your brain goes, "I'm smiling so I must be happy right now."
If you kick a ball, it begins to roll not only because it was kicked, but because it was round, solid, not made out of lead, etc. Further the presence of the ball may have induced you to kick it. Surely you don't go around kicking empty air.
But we tend to have a sort of simplified view where there is an active cause acting on a passive world to have an effect.
[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.28.550993v1 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2095-1
Autism isn't a disorder, but a mutation and in this instance can be correlated to the microbiome of the gut. But does not account for the increase in reeln nor changes in rna that cause increased sensitivity to stimuli. And is only treated as a disorder in respect to assembly line predetermined processes typical of today's organizations. That runs counter to the increased stimuli of maintaining said predetermined process, while punishing divergence.
This is also noting that data can be fit to suit a narrative and causation is different than correlation. But seem similar in the general context of today's discourse. And limited by predictability while noting the massive reproduction crisis in science such as this article and others. Including the recent controversy at Stanford with the president stepping down due to enabling the manipulation of data specifically in this domain of science.
Broad brush strokes don’t help. It’s labeled a “spectrum” for a reason.
This obviously isn't the place for said discussions.
We wanted him to be in school with his peers, desperately. The steps involved in getting him re-enrolled were numerous, and exhausting. Once 2nd grade started, the reality quickly became obvious to us. He learns far more at home than in the 'structure' of school. He could be placed in a more severe structure, but we opted to bring him back home to teach him. My thinking is that by developing an ability to read, write, and think, he will have the tools to better cope with the world. Of course, it is a gamble, and social skills are not easy. But anyone who thinks, send him to school to develop social skills is not really looking at the details.
As for Autism being an adaptation, I think that is true, like many adaptations. His math skills, and memory are genius level. He seems highly adapted to computers, ipads, and abstract thinking, like numbers, spelling, birthdays, etc. He would make an excellent QA engineer.
Again, respects to you on your journey through this.
I’m both hopeful and doubtful of studies like this. I tend to think these help narrow the search space, but are missing whatever underlying issue is causing the thing they see. My sons diet is hugely restricted due to his intolerance of many things (chemo changes to taste hurt that significantly as well) so I’d imagine his gut biome is an issue at this time. It likely was NOT prior to his chemo (though we can’t know for sure) as he ate the same diet my daughter did (and we tend towards quite healthy). We’ve investigated other possible environmental factors, including PFAS/PFOS testing, heavy metals testing, etc. (my career exposed me to those but he was never exposed that we can tell). Everything inconclusive.
As I said, I’m hopeful we can figure this out. Each step helps, even if it’s not the final one to finding the cause.