The Truth About What Causes Autism
By Jared M. Skowron, ND
A
utism is the fastest growing medical condition in our children today. From 2002 to 2016 the rates practically tripled. Approximately 17% of children have a developmental disability, based on CDC data. Therapies and treatments have improved to help these children speak, socialize, learn, and eventually recover; however, the most controversial part of autism isn’t the treatments, it’s the cause. The Cause of Autism Identifying and treating the cause of disease is one of medicine’s most important breakthroughs. Treating anything else (a symptom) is a band-aid, whether it is ibuprofen to relieve the headache from drinking too much or the cholesterol medicine to prevent the clots from eating fast food every day. These are band-aids that do not treat the cause of the illness, but rather help the patient make it to the next day. If the treatments are stopped, the condition returns. That is, unless the cause of the disease is treated. If you have strep throat, antibiotics will cure. If you have diabetes from a poor diet, a better diet will cure. Once the cause is known, a treatment that targets the cause is the most effective. Here lies the problem with autism, the cause is the controversy. (I have created an in-depth 2.5 hour free course for those of you interested in all of the science. Instructions are at the end of the article).
How Does Autism Occur? Let’s take a look at how autism occurs. There are two distinct presentations of autism. The less common (approximately 5% of children in my clinic) are born with a genetic condition that mimics autism. This could be Fragile X, a genetic micro deletion or duplication, or a genetic mutation condition such as Charge syndrome. There are a multitude of these genetic conditions that some children are born with and they eventually get diagnosed, usually through the school system as having autism. The actual genetic condition isn’t known until thorough genetic testing is performed (which sadly is very under performed by physicians). These children are born slow to develop. They often don’t talk until age 4 or 5 and improve slowly with speech and occupational therapies. If your child or a child you know seems to be developmentally delayed from birth, then genetic testing including CMA and WES should be performed. (CMA genetic test looks for missing or extra pieces of DNA. The WES test looks for genes that aren’t functioning.) Now, that’s only 5% of children diagnosed with autism. What about the other 95%? These children have regressive autism. Regressive autism is when an infant is developing normally, making eye contact with you, babbling, potentially saying ‘mama’ or ‘dada’, and then one day it
all disappears. No talking. No eye contact. This regression of development usually occurs between the ages of 12 - 18 months. Why is there a controversy about this regression? Parents try to identify a cause. What happened on the day that I lost my child? Hundreds of thousands of families believe they lost their child around the time of a visit to their pediatrician. Whenever there is blame, there is controversy. Pediatricians would never do anything to purposefully harm a child, so why do parents believe that their child regressed near that time? The answer is in the science. More and more research is being published to identify the cause of the regression. What we now need to do is share this science with others; other families, other pediatricians, and other policy makers. Our ultimate goal is to help those with autism and prevent other children from getting autism. To make that change will require a change in our beliefs. To paraphrase Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” To paraphrase Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” The focus of research identifying the cause of developmental regression of autism revolves around two topics, toxicity of aluminum and toxicity of acetaminophen.
www.NaturalNutmeg.com
43
