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Vitamin D Deficiency During Pregnancy Linked To Autism (newatlas.com)
New submitter future guy quotes a report from New Atlas: The researchers examined around 4,200 blood samples from pregnant women and their children and discovered a link between autism and low levels of vitamin D. More specifically, they found that pregnant women who were vitamin D deficient at 20 weeks gestation were more likely to have a child with autistic traits by the age of six. Rather than taking in more sunlight and the heightened risk of skin cancer that it carries, the researchers suggest that making inexpensive and safe vitamin D supplements available to at-risk groups may be a better path forward. "This study provides further evidence that low vitamin D is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders," says Professor John McGrath from the University of Queensland. "Just as taking folate in pregnancy has reduced the incidence of spina bifida, the result of this study suggests that prenatal vitamin D supplements may reduce the incidence of autism." The research was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Antisocial tech nerds are useless in the social media era. Good to know how to avoid birthing more autistic people who won't have productive lives. Problem is, what to do with the autistic people still living now? Let them rot in the gutter?
Can't they just get some vitamin shots for this?
- These characters were randomly selected.
They just said vaccines steal vitamins!
The girl from porn was right!
Problem solved.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Presumably peoples who live at the extreme latitudes near the poles, who would get a lot less sunlight in winter, would have a seasonally higher incidence of autism?
that are born in Europe and North America are so dumb. The mother's dark skin doesn't absorb enough sunlight to create adequate vitamin D.
Vaccines cause vitamin D deficiencies
Where is the news?
This seems to just confirm previous data, which is important to researchers, but not that interesting to the public.
The vitamin-D hypothesis has been around for years. It would be interesting if a causal link, or treatment, could be demonstrated,
e.g. a randomised placebo controlled trial of supplements during pregnancy. But there seems to be none of that yet.
1. Autism is primarily genetic
2. Autistic individuals seem to have real problems metabolizing some vitamins and minerals from food. Vitamin B-12 is one well-known example... basically, autistic individuals aren't able to adequately metabolize forms like cyanocobalamin into something that can cross the blood-brain barrier, but giving them injectable methylcobalamin (which CAN cross the BBB) can reduce some symptoms of autism by giving their brain access to a vitamin it would otherwise be deficient in.
3. By extension of 1 and 2, aspie mothers might show vitamin D deficiencies and, for reasons completely independent of their own vitamin D deficiency, be more likely to have kids who are themselves on the autism spectrum.
Also avoid the MMR virus as it's linked to Autism, too.
Don't forget schizophrenia too. Vitamin D3 deficiency (Calcitriol) is why black mothers who give birth in winter months have a significantly high percentage of having a child that develops schizophrenia. D3 has a strong catalytic effect on glutathione production in the brain (PMID 10428085), and without adequate glutathione the body will not have a way to control reactive oxygen species. This oxidative stress then irrevocably damages the brain during fetal development and you end up with a wide range of problems down the road like Autism and mental health problems.
Also don't forget that the half-life for the active metabolite of vitamin D is on the order of 21 days. That means it takes about 5 months to reach steady state. One of the best advice I can recommend is that all pregnant women take at least 2,000 IU of D3 per day, with a 21 day 4,000 I.U. loading dose.
Your move
This is consistent with studies going back to the late 1990's.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-and-autism/
>... Swedish researchers published a study in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology that found the prevalence of autism and related disorders was three to four times higher among Somali immigrants than non-Somalis in Stockholm. The study reviewed the records of 2,437 children, born between 1988 and 1998 in Stockholm, in response to parents and teachers who had raised concerns about whether children with a Somali background were overrepresented in the total group of children with autism.
>
> In Sweden, the 15,000-strong Somali community calls autism "the Swedish disease," says Elisabeth Fernell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a co-author of the study.
In Minnesota, where there are an estimated 60,000 Somali immigrants, the situation was quite similar: There, health officials noted reports of autism among Somali refugees, who began arriving in 1993, comparable to those found in Sweden. Within several years of arrival, dozens of the Somali families whose children were born in the U.S. found themselves grappling with autism, says Huda Farah, a Somali-born molecular biologist who works on refugee resettlement issues with Minnesota health officials. The number of Somali children in the city's autism programs jumped from zero in 1999 to 43 in 2007, says Ann Fox, director of special education programs for Minneapolis schools. The number of Somali-speaking children in the Minneapolis school district increased from 1,773 to 2,029 during the same period.
According to the following studies, darker skin colors are are significantly associated with poorer vitamin D status and whites are 30% more likely than blacks and 50% more likely than Hispanics to be identified with Autism. These trends do not seem to support the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency is a primary cause of Autism. http://www.medscape.com/viewar... http://www.aappublications.org...
Apparently you can give your child autism if you don't get enough sun and or don't drink enough milk. But injecting a newborn with a dead or slightly alive virus... Oh that can't lead to autism???
I'm - as I suspect most of us are here - your classic nerdy/geeky semi-ADHD/Auspergers type. But generally speaking AFAICT nutrition has been linked to this condition and personality type more than once (look for the book "The LCP Solution"). My mother told me she was practically addicted to licorice during her pregnancy with me. This could have been a "self-medication" attempt of her body to mitigate the lack of vitamin D which she recently noticed. And, fittingly enough, excess licorice consumption during pregnancy is actually in fact one of those rare things that has been found to correlate with ADHD symptoms in the child.
As for vitamin D I haven't had a bloodwork in more than a decade but I'd bet money that I've got a vitamin D deficiency, as any indoor computer expert guy probably has. My mom herself is of the nerd/shut-in/bookworm type and ADHD disposition runs on my mothers side of the family.
I myself don't drink alcohol, eat meat very rarely and live quite healthy aside from the fact that I am basically a sugar-addict. A thing I certainly link to my mothers excess licorice consumption during her pregnancy. I also notice that as soon as I actively curb my sugar addiction and lean towards a more organic balanced, whole & fresh foods diet, my awareness hightens notably and I get cooler/calmer than I usually am. If you're a nerdy type, try it out and go full organic & balanced for 8 weeks. The difference you'll notice is palpable.
I'm coping pretty well and wouldn't call my ADHD a disfunction rather than a disposition ... "Hunter/Gatherer in a Farmer/Settler society, Rebel/Adventurer/Leader disposition, etc, jada-jada" ... you probably know the evolutionary theories concerning ADHD. That aside I truely believe backed by what I've read and experienced nutrition is the biggest leverage any ADHD/Aspergers candidate has, aside from regular excercise and a diversified daily routine.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you don't like the taste look for mint flavored cod liver oil.
Ok, lets be clear this is a retrospective cohort study. That means that no experimental treatments were applied, so cause and effect cannot be determined on the basis of this trial. This is a clear example of what is wrong with most people's understanding of "BIG DATA". Just because the sample size is enormous, it does not immediately follow that differences detected are real, meaningful, or causal. In-fact, large sample sizes Guarantee that spurious differences will pop up in the data pretty regularly.
Even if the association is real, there is nothing in this data to say whether
A) low Vitamin D causes increased autism risk
B) Increased autism risk causes low Vitamin D
C) Or whether both are in turn caused by something else with improvements in one having no effect on the other..
The authors should never have made recommendations based on this data, other than that more trials are needed to determine whether or not this association is causal, or if it could be used as an indirect indicator of autism risk.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Again, another issue - whether proven or not, that indicates that pre-natal vitamins ARE THE BEST THING YOU CAN INVEST IN FOR THE HEALTH AND FUTURE OF YOUR IN-UTERO DEVELOPING CHILD ! ! !
It's a shame that these supplements are not covered as a matter of course for EVERY pregnant woman in the world.
redneck geek
If Vitamin D is a culprit, then we should see more autism in places like the UK, which are historically deficient in sunlight. Furthermore, this correlation should be strongest in specific locales where a modern supplemented diet does not predominate.
Physicians always strongly suggested a multi-vitamin during pregnancy, and even wrote scripts for them - has this stopped?
Considering that an overdose of some vitamins is actually harmful to you (and in turn a potential fetus growing inside of you), you might want to reconsider that.
I agree that a sensible level of all essential substances you might need is a good thing, but simply saying "pump as much of that stuff into your body" isn't going to cut it. That's like watching an anorexic woman giving birth to a sick child and concluding that every pregnant woman should drink a few gallons of fat every day, even if she looks like she's about to give birth to an elephant.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Blood draws are required to measure efficacy. For instance, most vitamin D supplements did not improve my wife's vitamin D levels. Science requires measurement and the science people should care the most about is the science of their own health. Doctors telling patients to take supplements without follow up are poor practitioners of medicine.
Reading this, all I can think of is how much sooner would we have figured this out if we hadn't wasted millions of man-hours and 10s of millions of dollars fighting against all the anti-vaccine idiocy.
Please note that I said PRE-NATAL VITAMINS - - - implicitly referring to medically prescribed levels of vitamins and supplements.
Agreed, dosing the body with massive supplements is bad, and in many cases is tantamount to self-poisoning, along the same lines of taking arsenic to restore youthful appearance. Without medically approved control of vitamins and supplements, you may as well eat a bullet - - - at least that would be quicker and more painless than the damage you can do to your body by gulping massive doses of ANYTHING.
cheers . . .
redneck geek
Rather than taking in more sunlight and the heightened risk of skin cancer that it carries, the researchers suggest that making inexpensive and safe vitamin D supplements available to at-risk groups may be a better path forward.
1) more sunlight does not mean heightened risk of skin cancer--it actually *reduces* it:
http://www.realfarmacy.com/sci...
2) vitamin supplements actually *increase* our risk of disease:
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
Is so bad that there is a real lack of prenatal care. Thanks Republicans.
You can find lots of studies about the correlations of UVB exposure with the incidence of autism.
Check out the NIH web site.
For example: Autism prevalence in the United States with respect to solar UV-B doses https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897584/
Yup, lower UVB exposure correlates with increased risk of autism.
It just isn't. https://www.fastcodesign.com/3030529/infographic-of-the-day/hilarious-graphs-prove-that-correlation-isnt-causation
What about toddlers? It would explain the Scandinavian custom of sending their babies outside into the freezing spring air for their midday nap. Plus, it would harden them against pollen and other irritants.
Sorry, I thought "pre natal" only means "before birth", didn't know it entails medical supervision.
In that case, I guess we agree.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bullshit. Predispositions are hereditary. Everyone knows that it runs in families.
Apologies. A bit of naivety on my part, as I "assumed" that proper vitamin supplements marketed as 'pre-natal' would have to meet relatively rigid medical guidelines, and be doctor prescribed or doctor recommended - by name - in order to be labeled as such. Additionally, I made the assumption that the vitamins would be part of a medically supervised course of pregnancy protocols handled through a physician - ob/gyn or otherwise.
Thanks for helping to clarify that issue.
redneck geek
It would certainly be sensible, yes. Whether it is done and whether making the claim that "it's good when you're pregnant" is protected from abuse by marketing is a different question.
What I know about pregnancy shortcomings is that as far as I know (but don't quote me, I'm neither a physician nor pregnant) pregnant women show a noticeable deficit in iron and sometimes calcium. A vitamin shortage isn't really a big issue as far as I know.
Still, one thing is certain: It would certainly be a GOOD idea to get a physician/gynecologist involved and ask him for advice on the topic.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
F.U.D. + promotion of confusion... So Fear Uncertainty Confusion and Doubt.... F.U.C.D. Pronouncing it aptly describes what that kind of propaganda does to society.
"anti-vaccine idiocy" was promoted to create CONFUSION. The vaccines involved are now voluntary banned by the FDA; which normally doesn't ban things to avoid idiotic complaints. The whole issue involves an additive put into certain vaccines given to children after it was previously banned in another market and now it has once again been banned it is now used in flu vaccines. In addition to using a new PR tactic, it appears this is a new way to still sell banned drugs: move them to new applications!
FUCD is so much worse because it fools people into making bad decisions as well as creating plenty of righteous smug people who waste tons of time attacking each other on both sides of the issue. It's a divide and conquer approach because most likely those squabbling would be unified.
MS did it with Outlook viruses in the 90s... all the media I saw always said EMAIL and never mentioned MS outlook was the only attack vector every single time it was a news story. Did they intentionally create confusion? I don't know. But I knew a TV news director who censored for sizable advertisers - he didn't know enough to realize how all of them were outlook only exploits (fyi, he didn't care either.) This is similar in that they get people blindly opposing all vaccination instead of the specific ones that were linked to the problem.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The problem is how confident low-information people can be and how the media will give them time and equal treatment when the better informed people are lucky to even get coverage...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news