You might find this of interest too from eleven years ago: https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/12/09/breakthrough-discovery-o... "Let’s look more closely at what this new study in The Journal of the American Medical Association tells us about mitochondrial dysfunction and how this may lead us to new methods of treatment—methods similar to the ones I used to help reverse Jackson’s autism. ... This study forces the question: How do children acquire energy deficits that affect their whole system, not just the brain? The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction are well known, specifically as it relates to metabolism and the brain, and I have documented them in my books UtraMetabolism and The UltraMind Solution. They include environmental toxins(iv)—mercury, lead and persistent organic pollutants(v)—latent infections, gluten and allergens (which trigger inflammation) sugar and processed foods,(vi) a nutrient-depleted diet,(vii) and nutritional deficiencies.(viii) These are all potentially treatable and reversible causes of mitochondrial dysfunction that have been clearly documented. I found all these problems in Jackson, and over a period of 2 years we slowly unraveled and treated the underlying causes of his energy loss which included gut inflammation, mercury, and nutrient deficiencies. Over time, the tests for his mitochondrial function and oxidative stress (as well as levels of inflammation and nutrient status) all normalized. When they became normal, so did Jackson. He went from full-blown regressive autism to a normal, bright beautiful 6-year-old boy. This is just one story, but if autism can be reversed in one child, if there is any possibility of effective treatments or a potential cure, it forces us to ask critical questions: How did this happen? Can it happen in other children? What were the biological patterns found and how were they treated?"
And if it applies to young brains, why would it not apply to older brains?
I can back up my pet theory with studies. Bottom line is, stomach sleeping with good air circulation (2) reduces SIDS at similar rates to back sleeping without the side effect of autism.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4978628/ 2: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
We were looking for natural experiments. Ideally somewhere that babies are still stomach slept. Much like Israel and peanut snacks in the study of peanut allergies, it’s hard to change a protective paradigm without a natural experiment.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/02/eating-peanuts-preve...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/06/30/c...
The WaPo article is very illuminating re: how Chinese babies were raised. As it was published almost 30 years ago, those babies are now established Chinese adults. Makes you wonder how much they're shaped by how they were reared.
I’m disinclined to trust our contemporary society with deciding whether autism is good or bad.
A difficult scenario for parents, perhaps, but I feel that’s better handled by society pulling its head out of its ass and providing a system that supports such situations.
May I ask why? Can't it be some other process that builds up over time?
I was in a lab meeting maybe 4 years ago or so and my PI had just come back from a conference on Alzheimer's. He reported back that groups had started investigating the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in the disease and had been able to find that lineages with variants in genes related to mitochondria and energy homoeostasis were far more likely to have or develop Alzheimer's. I haven't kept an eye on progress in that line of research, but it is in line with what is being reported/speculated here.
Finally, a couple of years ago I ran into the father of someone I went to middle school with and I learned that he was a biochemist. Somehow the conversation wound around to the challenge of understanding neurodegenerative diseases. I asked him for his take on a disease that only presents after 60ish years. His immediate answer was DNA damage during mitosis. But neuron's don't divide. And then it hit me. There IS something that is still dividing inside the neurons! It is the mitochondria! The other possibility is the astrocytes, the microglia, or some other mitotic cell population in the brain, but the mitochondria really stand out as fitting both the fact the neurons don't divide and the instinct from a veteran biochemist that something that takes so long to appear must be related to DNA damage.