Cause theorys, Which one do you believe? whats your theory?

Post Reply New Topic

ok, there are a lot of theorys out there, trying to find out what causes Autism, so, what do you believe in? and whats your Own personal theory?

im 50/50 genetic and medicine.

you see, when i was younger than two, i have TERRIBLE, ear infections, and was constantly on Penicillin, eventually they just put tubes in my ears. While i was at camp, i asked 3 boys if they ever had ear infections (there were only 4 people at camp, This is a camp for Autstic teens) and one boy said he went through the same thing as me when he was younger.

apperantly Ear Infections are common in ASD kids, but also common in NT kids. soo its a flawed theory.

whats your opinion

PS: the Poll is Vague, so if you want to Explain please comment and specify what you picked

I think that it's mostly genetics. But that's not to say that environmental factors don't play a role in causing genes to be expressed or welling to determine how they will be expressed.

My mom had trouble under birth I didn get air for sometime and was turning blue. So brain damage for me.

Annoying you can't really sue nurses for not doing their job properly, sad to think about I could have been smarter and normal.

Maybe there is no cause.
I think it's possible it's just one of those things that happens, it definitely has a strong genetic link connecting it to people, but I'm getting a little tired and annoyed with the "caused by gene" that everybody is using for everything, eventually it feels like people are kind of saying car accidents are caused by the street.

Eliminate the gene and it'll eliminate the Autism, or eliminate the street and it'll eliminate the death-rate that happens there.
What if we need the road, or the gene.
Since even twins may not share Autism it gets really hard to say there's a cause.
What is the cause for the exact pattern of your finger prints, or blood vessels in your retinas.
Both of these things can be used for identification, so what gene causes that exact pattern?

What if there is no cause, it's just one of the many vagaries of growth and human development. After all we're talking about 25-30 trillion neurons. That can make for a lot of variables, far nore than we have of fingerprint ridges or even retinal capillaries.

At one end of the extreme there's the well adjusted NT (perhaps) and at the other end is embryonic death, with brain development usually being somewhere in between.
Maybe it's a simple as - if the development and processing gets too noticeably far from NeuroTypical, in our current human ignorance we're lumping it all under a single label which we gradually divide up. Asperger's, Autism, ASD, Pervasive Developmental Disorder.

We're noticing patterns, and lumping things into categories because that's what humans are supremely excellent at doing.
But that does not necessarily mean that they had the same cause.
We'd have to know what causes a normal brain pattern to develop to be able to determine what is outside of the margins of what evolution thinks is normal.

Most people that drive down a freeway, drive in the ruts, but NOT because they're supposed to drive in ruts, or even that driving in ruts is right or good or desired.
They drive in ruts because most people drive in a certain area of a lane which is what cause the ruts.
The ruts did not cause the people to drive there.

Maybe Autism and related is a problem, maybe nature is broken in Autism, maybe Autism is a major malfunction, maybe it's wrong and bad and harmful.
One thing is certain, as long as humans think Autism is a Problem, they'll keep looking for Causes.

Failed Nazi experiment.

A combination of factors, probably a genetic mutation creates the potential and environmental factors finish the job. I haven't really studied it, but it has to be complicated. Science has figured out so much about human development that if the question had a simple answer, we'd have some firm ideas about it by now.

I've wondered whether this whole business is just a type of auto-immune disorder that somehow attacks the adrenals, affecting the "fight-or-flight" response, and results in the "fear of everything" --

Intimacy -- no touching, eye contact, dating, friendships
Change -- doing things the same way so as to not embarrass oneself while trying something new
Success -- how many of us have been told "You're so smart, you just need to apply yourself."
Humiliation -- socializing, dating, doing anything in front of others, speaking up

Possibly the mutism, stimming and shutdowns are ways of trying to calm the fear. All this begs the question of whether the condition I'm diagnosed with is even the same thing as "classic autism" I wonder whether grouping Asperger's into that group was the right way to go, and they are actually two very different disorders with some similar traits.

Consider, for a moment: if we were in the majority, we wouldn't care less about causes. When you change your perspective, everything suddenly looks different...

Webalina, you might enjoy this: Book of Lamentations. Your remarks reminded me of this article, which I consider a great critique of the current state of psychology.

B19, I'd wager that if you polled enough autists, you'd find plenty with a special interest in psychology, who would science the heck out of the causes of what we now call neurotypicality, except there's no such thing anymore. See the link above.

Could it be a combination of a few of the things mentioned, or possibly other things as well.

Webalina, my understanding of the difference between Asperger's and "Classic Autism" is with only two of the several dozen possible symptoms: No Significant Delays in Cognitive Development; and No Significant Delays in Language Development
With Autistic people having generally "caught up" in reaching their "individual development" with Aperger's by the time of early adulthood if not sooner.

In my opinion and apparently in many other professionals' opinions (Re: DSM-V) two (2) symptoms out of a list of 80 to 150 symptoms isn't really significantly enough to create (or maybe maintain) a completely different diagnosis especially since for most of a persons life (as adults) there are no regular differences.
Asperger's is generally considered more "mild" but that is more because the more dramatic, was kind of arbitrarily Dx'd as Autism but with no real concrete indicators of what "should" be the difference.
And indeed Asperger's is one of three subsets of Autism Spectrum Disorders.

***
A widely held belief of ASD is neuron migration, which happens during the first few weeks after conception. Or rather mis-migration. Neurons have a length (unlike some other cells which might be more of a blob), meaning they're connected at a starting point and grow to the second connection point. It's thought that some don't go where they're supposed to meaning a lesser quantity connecting two areas which means less transmission, or perhaps processing power would be a convenient way to look at it.
So some areas don't function as well as NeuroTypicals.
Which is why Autism is considered a Neurological disorder rather than a psychological disorder, the causes and effects are very physical within the brain.

Sometimes the mis-migrating neurons may go to another place in surprising quantities, meaning massive connections or, again, "processing power," which (imo) is the reason for the Savant part of "Autistic/Savant."
An Autistic person may have extraordinary gifts because of this, in ways that no NeuroTypical could ever dream of having.
Outright Geniuses in music, math, sciences and perhaps in any other way too.
Autistics generally have a brain about a 1/2 pound larger than NTs avg. of 3-3.5lbs, meaning they might also have more neurons over all.

Often over-migration also happens in one or more sensory areas, meaning input there can literally be painful response to lights, touch, sound, taste etc.

***
There does appear to be a link between Autism and Immune system but it's hard to be certain whether this means impaired immune response or hyper-immune response, or perhaps either way, depending on the person and/or immune sub-system.

***
You are right, Autism is a Spectrum Disorder.
Spectrum which means technically everybody is on it, but Disorder meaning it's kind of ignored unless it causes significant problems in life activities as compared to whatever is considered "mostly" normal.
The line is actually a bit arbitrary but that's why we have doctors and specialists and even Judges, if need be, to work it out.

***
Artificially pathologizing traits wont really become a problem (imo). If the traits are unnoticeable to most people you wont be required by law to wear some kind of a gold star like the Jews in Nazi Germany (unless we get a Nazi America which is pretty unlikely).
Many people in the medical and research areas can actually become sometimes a bit callous about patients whining all the time, and their attitudes seem to drift more towards, "If ya ain't bleeding from yur eyeballs get outta my office!" rather that the other way around.
For the most part nobody really cares if you want to stay home Saturday nights, or if you stim, or if you have a hobby you really, really like, they're not trying to make you into a disease, they're trying to understand something nearly invisible that has caused a lot of people a lot of grief when it goes too far for their health and happiness.

***
In my opinion, (emergency triage aside) everyone that has something that causes significant problems in daily life activities should have those issues addressed genuinely and in good faith, regardless of of how an ignorant layperson may think it's imaginary.

Mostly genetic.

... though I'm sure if I spoke to my biological mother since my diagnosis (or at any point in the last 18 years lol) she'd attribute my retardedness to the MMR vaccine. This would be easier than looking in the mirror and considering that mother and boy have an awful lot more in common than she might care to accept.

When I was a child, my (recently diagnosed with Asperger's) uncle's strangeness was attributed to complications during birth... or maybe head trauma as a child. Nobody would dare consider that he might have an inherited neurological disorder because... hey! We're all normal, aren't we? LOL.

Totally genetic. If anyone has been told they were dropped on their head as a child they might want to have a good, long look at their parents and grandparents.

I'm just glad that by the looks of it there's a good chance of getting the answer in my lifetime. Maybe a genetic test? Imagine that!

Before you go wishing for a genetic test for ASD, look deeply into the complex ethical issues around prenatal genetic testing. Having a test for a disorder without a cure puts people in a difficult situation, and tests often generate false positives and false negatives. Like they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I say "other" because several of those theories may play a part.

I certainly think Autism has a strong environmental factor because we didn't have this explosion of Autism in western nations until recently. Infant development is such a fragile thing, and who knows how much we influence it by what we are exposed to. Having a genetic predisposition doesn't mean you WILL have something in life.

It's the same nonsense as peanut allergies. So prevalent in the USA, but we didn't hear of it 20 years ago. It has to be caused by something, but there is no logical reason why in certain countries you'd have an explosion in peanut sensitivity for totally natural or genetic reasons.

Those of us who have had our genes tested for CFS, found that many of us have the same defects as autistic kids, that is before l knew about my ASD. Both have the same biochemical problems with methylation and detoxing. These things can he fixed with diet and especially with biologically active b12 and folate and huge improvement in gut and brain function achieved.