i need help im in panic attack about thinking this

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i'm afraid to die because i'm thinking about this link it makes me anxious i need to know if this true or not

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/ ... er-average

Looks like scaremongering to me in all honesty with the way that it's written. I bet you could interview the same amount of NTs and get similar results because they're too lazy or stubborn to go to the doctors and don't know they have health problems.

My nan is 87 and she's autistic, still going pretty well so I'm not worried. She might be a bit deaf and forgets her her glasses all the time but she's well enough to complain all the time, obsess over her chickens and be super OCD clean.

The women in my family are all autistic and we're all fine, some rather varying autistic traits, some high functioning and some low functioning but nevertheless autistic. Plenty of my aunts are over 50 and are fine in good health.

I don't worry anyway because there was a UK documentary a while ago about old people finding out all this time they were autistic and no wonder they had learning difficulties and stuff like that.

I hope that's some reassurance for your panic attack.

In addition to what's already been said, it's worth noting that the article referenced side-causes for the purported decrease in life span--things that are generally either preventable or manageable. It's not ASD by itself.

If you have depression, please talk to your doc about medicine to help manage it since that's a substantial risk factor. Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses and you'll reduce the risks, the same as anyone.

Yeah this doesn't mean autism itself causes a reduced lifespan.

The way they calculate these things is by how much at risk a certain demographic is.

If you live in a place with an increased crime rate, that automatically lowers life span according to these kinds of calculations.

Same with having to drive a car long distance to work. The more you drive, the more chance of getting into a fatal accident, therefore driving lowers life expectancy.

Don't stress, the design of that study was not without faults. Life expectancy was discussed in this thread previously:

viewtopic.php?t=322323 and also here:

http://autism.lovetoknow.com/How_Long_D ... eople_Live

I have previously commented on flaws in the Swedish study and the way the results were misreported in the press:

The article quotes only a cited percentage as the mean of the sample - not at all the same thing as life expectancy. Unfortunately we can't draw all that much from the mean without knowing the nature of the distribution coupled with the rate of standard error (as well as the sampling technique).

Everything in life involves risks. There is no guarentee of anything. People with no risk drop dead young and people who do every vice known to man manage to survive to old age - see Keith Richards

All one can do is lower thier personal risk and make the best out of the life you do have, however long that is going to be.

87% of more than half of medical studies carried out between 1995 and 2015 show a 45.6345% chance of a lower/higher/better/worse* situation after 10/20/30/45.565 years* for anyone who works in/eats/has ___ medical condition/weighs/comes from* and is aged between/earns/lives in (you get the idea)*

* - delete as applicable

A made up one could be like this:
If you are between 18 and 57 and eat tomato sauce on Tuesdays, Thursdays BUT NOT Sundays you are 20% less likely to _______ than females who have worked in the retail sector for over 15 years who eat Avocados on Wedsneday before 12 noon, but 55% more likely to __________ than Old Age Pensioners over the age of 95 who drink Earl Grey Tea on Saturday afternoons.


Many studies, sadly, start out with an answer and they try to make the figures to match the answer that they want to have at the end.

Well I am capable of looking after myself, so I'm not likely to wonder into a lake and drown.

NTs get health issues too. Nearly every NT I know has some sort of physical ailment, like diabetis, arthritis, prone to migraines, the list goes on.

Don't believe everything you read. I don't know why they churn out all these studies and articles about how life-threatening autism is. It annoys me. I always thought autism was just a neurological disorder that just affected the brain, until I came here and read all these physical health-related things being common among the autistic.

Stuff like that should be taken with a grain of salt. I make a point of not believing everything that I read.

Me too. You have to be extra sceptical about scare stories of this kind put into the media by charities and institutions that solicit donations from the public. They often exaggerate problems hoping to benefit from increased funding and donations. Unfortunately we have a media that also likes sensational headlines (increases sales) rather than careful scientific scrutiny. Beware of believing unscientific hype which typically comes with cliched word use like "study proves" "research shows" and other dogmatic terms about one single study where the focus is only on the result the experimenters were after. And always look at who funds what, so far as you can, this can be very illuminating. Scientific method and the mode of data analysis is another factor but often is too complex for manipulations to be spotted even by well qualified reviewers. And very well qualified experimenters have been found to have made very basic errors in the basic design of their experiment - the famous example of this was the Women's HRT study which went unchallenged for years until a scientist realised that the findings were unsupportable because of the methodology.

This sounds more sensationalist to me than good, sound medical news.

No matter how flawed or sensationalist the study is I can not see how the basic idea that if you are autistic you have greater odds of not living as long as the average person is flawed. Bieng part a very small minority with the bullying and mistreatment, descrimination, non understanding , and just plain old certain things are just harder for us causes a lot of autistics stress. Sensory overload is stressful. Stress often leads to mental and physical illness which often shortens life, it is really that simple. Of course there are a lot of risk factors that cause stress and cause certain groups of NT's to have shorter then average/normal/mean lives the most people. And some of those are the same factors that put autistics at risk. That does not negate the factors leading to generally shorter lives for autistics.

The above not change the fact that you are at risk, does not mean defiantly you. There are other factors that might negate if not revert the autism related factors. The "autism risk" is all the more reason to make the best out of every moment you do have.

Dude, your 26 ! , stop worrying about what might happen in 50 odd years time. Save your energy for things that are making a difference to your life at the moment.