Am I at higher risk of getting cancer????????! !! !! !! !! !! !

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I found this information somewhere on WP, and it's scared the s**t out of me. I didn't know Autism had a deadly risk connected to it. How much more diabolical facts does Autism have linked to it??????

I thought Autism was just a neorological disability, end of story.

It's a correlation. Considering that no one knows what causes autism in the first place, I think you don't need to panic. Cancer is genetic, so if you have family members who have had cancer, you're more likely to get it (correlation, again) than someone with no history of cancer in their family.

Large heads and ASD's.

That's 3 in 18 chances for the gene in this limited sample. But what are the increased risks percentages associated with the gene? 20 % ,Double, Triple?


I wouldn't worry. Annual check ups spot cancer early on. Early on detection is the key to cure. What else can one do about it?

[quote]patients with classical autism or autism spectrum disorders and who have large heads should be offered genetic counseling and testing for PTEN mutations{/quote]
Is your head disproportionately large?

No my head is normal sized. Thank god, then.

Even if you were at higher risk of having cancer, there's a point past which worrying is useless.

I have higher risk of all kinds of disturbing crap, because my family has all kinds of things that run in it, and because I have physical conditions that can be potentially dangerous. The only way to deal with these things is to regularly screen for them, get treatment where it's possible (including preventative treatment), and to continue living your life. My basic philosophy, not just because of this but because of other things as well, is to live my life as if any day, any moment, could be my last, and in a way where I could be satisfied with what I've done my life if it happened to end at any particular time. I don't want to die, and I would fight to live (and to protect others' lives) if I had any way to do so, but at the same time I've basically made my peace with mortality as much as I can do.

I think that having actually come close to death several times due to medical issues, has oddly me more at peace with the possibilities than I would have been otherwise. During those moments, I've had it flash through my head that I could die, and then had it flash through my head that while I want to live, I'd be okay with either possibility. It's hard to explain, but it's given me a lot more ability to handle difficult situations without falling apart, and to go through life without being terrified of every possibility for danger. And going through life without being terrified of every possibility for danger is an important skill to learn at some point.

Limit your exposure to carcinogens, be healthy, don't worry about it. If it does happen, there are natural remedies, it's really... look, when people say "cancer" and you think "deadly disease that will make me waste away and die painfully within months," it's kind of similar to when you say "autism" and people think "terrible disease that leaves children locked inside their own heads fighting to get out and suffering constantly, a burden on their families." SOME CANCER SOMETIMES, depending on how you try to treat it and whether or not you're lucky, can mean a slow and painful death, but MOST cancer means an annoying growth and minor surgery if you want to bother with surgery at all. Most of the suffering associated with cancer is the side-effects from chemo: a fatal cancer left untreated isn't as gruesomely awful (though of course you still die, possibly sooner than if you'd had chemo, and of course it can still be painful or gruesome depending on where and what it is).

Also. This study says that out of a TINY sample size (notoriously unreliable-- small sample sizes give sensational results that are just statistical anomalies, not facts) of 18 people, 15 did NOT have an increased risk of cancer. 15/18 DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY any more than anyone else would. And three of them? Have a gene that might be behind an INCREASED RISK of cancer-- so they're not saying three out of eighteen got cancer, but three out of eighteen had an increased risk of it. And this wasn't autistics in general, either: this is big-headed autistics.

And wait! It gets even LESS alarming! They included not just autism but Rett syndrome, which is a genetic disease that sometimes presents with some of the same symptoms. So, did these three with the genetic mutation actually have autism or were they Rett angels? (Don't worry, you don't have Rett syndrome. If you're worried, look it up, but a diagnosis would surely have been made if you hade it.)

Besides. Chances are you'll get cancer ANYWAY. See above description and don't panic. Seriously, cancer gets portrayed really sensationalistically. Even a brain tumor doesn't necessarily mean your life is over.

Actually...

I know several women with Rett syndrome who were merely diagnosed with autism, Asperger's, or mental retardation as children. They were only diagnosed as adults, some of them after having children with more severe Rett's than their own. There is such a thing as mild Rett's, and it can manifest similarly to other forms of Rett's but with less intense traits and more likely to be diagnosed with something else.

But. (And this is the part where you likely don't hae to worry.) All of them had certain specific signs of Rett's, just less intensely than people with severe Rett's get them: A time of seemingly normal development after which they "regressed", experienced a slower growth in head size, and did a lot of hand-wringing with some loss of hand control. If you didn't have something approximating those traits, then you really likely don't have Rett's. But many girls with those traits are overlooked and simply diagnosed with autism, AS, or mental retardation, if those traits happen to be on the milder side. And then they are unlikely to be properly diagnosed with mild Rett's unless for some reason they're given the genetic test for Rett's (again, most often after having a child with more severe Rett's). They'll also likely have some of the other physical traits of Rett's as well.

So even though it's possible, it's unlikely.

The problem with the way a lot of these syndromes are defined is that you rarely hear about the outliers. Down's syndrome is thought of as always causing an intellectual disability, and yet people with it can sometimes have IQs ranging from borderline to above average, while having trisomy 21 and all the physical traits. (I've actually read the journal articles in some cases, although I don't have them handy.) Similar things are true of some of the other syndromes out there. And that's not even counting things like genetic mosaics, where some of the genes have the mutation for whatever the condition is, and some of the genes don't, and the person's expression of the syndrome can be milder or just different than usual because of the presence of some unmutated genes. There was a guy with Williams syndrome who had the gene and everything, and the facial characteristics, who had to take his profile off a Williams Syndrome association website, because he was in college and had no intellectual disability and some parents loathed him for it, weirdly enough. (Like they thought that somehow he had no right to say he had it, even though he really obviously did, just because he was able to go through college and stuff, and because he lacked some of the more common cognitive profiles out there. And that right there is one of the reasons you don't hear about the "outliers" too much.)

None of this is intended to scare anyone more, it's just important to me that people have more accurate information than most people are given about these kinds of conditions. And one of the things people are told the least about are the people with milder forms, or higher IQs, etc., than you normally hear about as the "only possible form" that a condition can take. It's much like autism, actually, where at one point in time it was thought that you had to have an intellectual disability and be unable to talk to be autistic, and therefore when people learned to talk they were pronounced cured, and thus nobody had to deal with their existence because they "weren't autistic anymore anyway". Many conditions are first defined by the severe forms and then only later are milder forms discovered. (Autism is not such a condition, though, because plenty (and by some definitions, most or all) of Kanner's patients had what would now be called high functioning autism. Then people considered low functioning were added in, and that became the stereotype until more recently.)

ETA: Oh, and "Rett angel"?? Eww. I've never liked the whole thing where some of the parents of kids with these syndromes call them "angels". They're not angels, they're kids, at least until they're adults, then they're adults. But they're people, at any rate, their whole lives through, and aren't angels. I understand you were probably just repeating the term you heard, but it grosses me out anyway. Possibly because I've been put into the "overidealized disabled person" mold by people in some parts of my life, and I just can't stomach anything that smacks of the "holy innocent" stereotype.

Cancer is my fourth biggest OCD thought. Weird, no one else seems to even think about it.

Well, my dad's got cancer and I know I'm very much like him. I don't worry too much, though. We all have to go someday one way or another. As long as it's not too early (I want to see my grandchildren) that's OK. Remember cancer is mostly a condition associated with inefficient immune system. Keeping your immune system strong with good diet, exercise routines and good attitude will probably keep most illnesses at bay. I heard optimism boost immune system more than any supplement can. People at all ages get small cancers all the time but the immune system find and fix them.

So, stop worrying and go for a jog. It's more important to have high quality life.

It was always my main OCD worry for years and I still, 38 years later, have severe bouts of 'cancer worry'. Since the worries first started I've lost over 10 members of my family to cancer and some very close friends but even though I've sat and watched my dad die peacefully and felt comforted for a while that it's not that terrible a death, just death, it creeps back up on you. I think it's just the nature of OCD and the not knowing if or when you might get it that makes it worse.

A GP once told me they'd rather die of cancer than anything else such as an accident because you have a chance to say goodbye. It doesn't lessen the grief or the sadness and anger but it is true.

Tiffinity.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize just how strongly people would react. I am aware that the people I was referring to are not angels, but I thought anything would be less insulting than person-first language. Clearly that was an error. If in future I have occasion to refer to them, should I call them women with Rett syndrome?

I can't speak for everyone's level of offense or anything. But I don't tend to care that much about whether someone's using person-first language or not. (About the only time I care is when people try to force me to use person-first language, that irritates me. But if they're using it without forcing anyone else to use it I barely even notice, let alone care. I'll also call any person what they want to be called as long as I remember to call them that.) And I think with conditions where the name of the condition makes person-first language easier to use, then it's better to just use it than to hunt around for an inevitably-awkward way to say it without doing that. But again, I'm one person, I can't speak for anyone else, at all.

Well I don't have a genetic gene carrying cancer through my family.

But I'm not going to believe the next stupid crap I hear about Autism any more (I don't mean the advice I've just read - I mean whatever new stereotype or myth what I find) . My family has told me so. I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia and mild AS, and that's all there is to it. It's a developmental condition in my brain, causing me to find a few things difficult in life, more so than NTs, and that is it. I was never physically behind my peers. OK, my intellectual development has always been slightly under average, but all this is to do with my brain, not my physical health. I am fed up with frightening myself with weird things I suddenly see on the internet about Autism, stuff what I have never heard of before about Autism. I will probably more likely get Alzheimer's when I'm old, since it does run in my family. But that is nothing to do with having Autism - I will get it whether I have Autism or not. My NT cousins and my NT brother have just the same chances getting all these illnesses as I have.

Thanks for the advice - that has helped too.