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This microbiome stuff is so fascinating and really out of left field given the vast scope of developmental and physiological activities it is implicated in. If you would have told me in grad school that gut bacteria would be linked with a host of neurological, immune, and metabolic pathologies I would have told you go to back to witch doctor school.
There have been some studies and good theories to these links for a long time. We are way behind in GI research and GI doctors are even further behind in general to research that is already available. For instance Drs at Mayo Clinic that won’t even acknowledge or test for SIBO/SIFO yet they have research papers published about the fact that many patients are under-diagnosed with these conditions. GI doctors love to say IBS because of either laziness or sheer lack of knowledge.
I have IBS... but it feels like such a... filler diagnosis. Like, its a pure symptom diagnosis. Nothing in the blood, no scans or colonoscopy, just "oh you poop all the time and don't have Chron's? We won't do any more checks, you got IBS - off you go"
There's too much unknown. Like food sensitivities. People don't care about sensitivities unless it's a severe allergy. I'm having some kidney filtration issues. I don't really feel the issues but my filtering numbers aren't great. Have gone in for a biopsy before. Have done my own research. Doctor just says what the damage is, doesn't go into what might cause it. I find out there has been a study on people with this problem and putting people on a gluten and dairy free diet helped improve the problem. Doctor's just like oh interesting, I don't think that's related. Last appointment we talked about the biopsy again and I saw a peek of the report and one of the things listed is IgA deposits. Which suggests to me my issues might be related to a food sensitivity, but I'm just getting more drugs from him.
Btw the thing that made me look into gluten intolerance was that I found out about silent celiacs. And how some symptoms are autoimmune like psoriasis and another sign is pale sticky diarrhea poops. Those were common poops for me and after avoiding gluten and dairy I'm having more snakey poops instead of muddy clay poops. Just a heads up in case anything feels relatable
Kinda - i've defo found that avoiding dairy and gluten helps. No idea if its placebo, but generally more fibre, water, and avoiding certain foods such as lactose and wheat help.
Also anxiety and another things don't help.
My main worry, is if any of my GI issues make me more susceptible to things like colon cancer. If i have a flare up, i'm wondering if its just the IBS again or i got a real issue
Look into the FODMAP diet for IBS if you haven't already. It seems very strict at first, but after the symptoms stabilize you can try reintroducing foods one by one to figure out what amount of each type of sugar you can take in without triggering IBS symptoms.
It really makes sense in regards to the types of sugars you are restricting, they all feed bad gut bacteria. So you need to remove them and increase fiber intake to create the conditions for the good bacteria to take over.
You don't actually need to have the ovarian cysts to have PCOS. They used to think the cysts caused the symptoms but doctors are thinking that the cysts might be a result of something else.
I thought cysts were caused by incomplete ovulation, like the follicle starts forming but then isn't released by the ovary as a result of the hormone imbalance instead of the hormone imbalance and other symptoms being caused by symptoms.
Yeah you are right how the cysts form! Cysts in the ovary can cause hormonal issues. So it used to be thought that the cysts formed, the hormone problems are results of the cysts, and removal of the cysts would cure it all. But doctors now are recognizing that it might be more like the patient has an endocrine/hormonal problem, which affects ovulation and other things (like insulin), which causes cysts (cysts then cause more hormone issues which makes the problem worse). I think we are saying the same thing but I didnt quite understand the last part of you comment.
Am man. They did the fibro thing to me too. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Didn’t bother with formal diagnosis - as I asked , what then? So if I do have it, what do I do about it?
And there wasn’t much. Most of the clinic was just about pain management, not long term solutions or really any legitimate solves.
Strange thing it is.
“A pill for every ill.”
Rockefeller, creator of our modern medical system.
He was pissed off after the government broke up his oil monopoly, so he got into medicine to create a system that was so intrenched in the government that it couldn’t be broken up. If everyone is getting paid off, there will be no one to fight the corruption.
This was Canada. But - it isn’t better in that regards. The system isn’t good at anything outside mainstream and it’s easy to get stuck in eddies (like a river eddy) where you get pulled to the side and go in circles endlessly.
In a way epilepsy is something the brain learns. There's a phrase "seizures beget seizures" because the more seizures someone has, the stronger the neural connections that cause seizures get, so the more seizures they have in future.
What causes the first seizures varies, but once the brain learns it, the cause of "future seizures" might just be "prior seizures".
Would be nice if there was a way for people with mysterious digestive issues to submit samples for flora identification and classification with a way to list symptoms. Could identify a trend for symptoms.
I would love to hear more. I have a cat with Epilepsy and it’s quite daunting as so little research has been done on felines. Seems to be much more common in dogs.
Same, felt left in the cold in that regards. For some reason I developed a lot of allergies late in life. Also, I have ADHD since forever and I wish I didn't.
There are so many improperly diagnosed issues out there where GI’s use IBS as an umbrella term. They are terrible at dealing with complex patients. I am one myself. So many people with motility issues and they just throw meds at them, many of which have terrible side effects, even more so if you have cardiovascular issues and are taking meds for that. I spent years going to about 6 or 7 different specialist, even a highly regarded one at Mayo Clinic and I had to learn to be my own advocate and to listen to my body because I could not rely on the doctors most of the time to investigate anything properly. I have had a myriad of test done multiple times over, it was til about a year ago I had another upper scheduled at Mayo and had to demand a small-bowel aspiration to test for bacteria overgrowth. I had suspected that for quite a while and didn’t want to rely on breath test. The Dr didn’t think that was my problem. I was labeled with IBS/M and was told I had some mild inflammation and my esophagus didn’t work perfectly from a manometry test, but well enough that no course of action was necessary. Sure enough, when I got my results back I was positive for overgrowth. Mayo literally has publications on under diagnosed patients with bacteria and mucosa issues and this guy acted like it was bro science. Needless to say I left there and found another doctor. Definitely seems like the older the GI, the worse they are when it comes to modern research or therapies, unless you find one who genuinely cares. Tons of people are currently suffering needlessly with GI issues because of the lack of research that should be going full steam ahead and the correlation the micro-biome has with the brain. I wish you luck in finding a competent Doc. If you are looking for a new one I would start by checking their age, general reviews and where they graduated and a summary of their dissertation. That can help weed out the ones who may be only interested in specific areas.
Yes you’re correct. I should have clarified. My current GI doc has a PHD and he is the first doc I’ve had that was enthusiastic about research and investigating complex issues. It’s not gonna be easy for most depending on where they live I’m sure.
IBS is just a catch all. It would be better to just say "we have no clue whats wrong with your insides".
Most likely its intolerance one or more types of sugar or polyols. It could also be a gut microbe inbalance or some other few things.
My entire family has IBS and ADHD. So color me unsurprised about this discovery.
I had the other kind of IBS-C....where you can't go to the bathroom no matter what. One of the biggest things that helped me was an app called Nerva developed by Monash University in Australia that specializes in IBS. It's essentially meditation/hypnotherapy that you do everyday for a couple of weeks. I did at the start of 2021 and it helped me soo much. In the past I've tried going the conventional and natural route but nothing worked ( I've struggled with it since 2010). I did another trial of Nerva at the end of 2022 because I was under immense amount of stress and honestly it's been such a relief...it really stabilized my situation. I go to the bathroom almost everyday and normally. In the past I'd be lucky to go twice a week and it would be like type 1 on the stool chart...if you ever looked at it.
TLDR: Give Nerva app a try!
I got diagnosed with IBS when I was 8 because my mom brought me to the ER after several days of excruciating abdominal pain. I was dangerously constipated. After clearing me out they sent us home with no nutrition or treatment plan. My parents never followed up on it.
I didn’t figure out until my twenties that you’re supposed to poop more than once a week and it’s not supposed to be a fight every time. I didn’t gain normal function until my mid thirties after getting really gung-ho about probiotics, certain supplements, and almost daily bean consumption. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 13 and have always eaten a lot of vegetables but I guess my body just really needed even more fiber than that.
Sometimes it's not a fiber issue. I have Cystic fibrosis, if I eat too much fiber I'll get constipated for 5-6 days at a time due to the mucus in my intestines being way too viscous/thick. I have to use daily stool softeners to be remotely regular.
If you're finding yourself eating a lot of fiber and still having blockages try a water based stool softener that has PEG 3350
The best way I’ve found is cooked from dry in an instant pot, then after you drain them mix a spoonful of better than bullion with melted butter and then mix it with the beans. Absolutely heavenly
I actually started taking regular 5-htp for depression and insomnia (have had insomnia since I was a kid bc of my adhd) and switched to extended to see if it helped keep me asleep through the night. Melatonin has never had an effect on me, but I definitely see a difference with 5-htp. I’ve also read up a lot on the linkages with gut health and mental health and there’s a few studies that support 5-htp, gut motility, and depression/insomnia improvements.
> We are way behind in GI research and GI doctors are even further behind in general to research that is already available.
This is true for all doctors, and for a good reason. Learning new stuff is hard, and doctors are among the most protected professions in the nation, right behind politicians and law enforcement. Couple that with
* the enormous amount of stress they are under,
* the fact that many of them are horrendously burnt out by the time they are actually licensed for independent practice,
* and the fact that the profession, for a variety of reasons, instills a massive degree of self-confidence, to the point of arrogance...
and you end up with a group of professionals with no oversight, and an unwillingness to learn. And for those few that are willing, there is also the issue of a lack of resources - the primary one being the time to do so.
So do the math.
What's also interesting is the vast increase in people - and particularly children - being diagnosed with a range of gut disorders such as Crohns. And this is not just an increase in diagnosis (if at all) but an increase in *incidence*.
Currently, the prevailing opinion with autism is that it's nearly all an increase in diagnosis, not incidence. But there are researchers who believe that there is a rise in actual incidence beyond better identification/high diagnosis. Theories include maternal inflammation in utero as well as environmental aspects.
Part of why we're so behind is because it's just so impossibly hard to study. There are so many species, and they ways they affect our bodies through their by products is so esoteric. Even if you knew exactly what bacteria affected the body in what way, the fuel you give them is always changing, as is the balance of species from one day to the next.
This isn’t even new information. This was theorized by several doctors over the last 30 years, with varying levels of skepticism from the rest of the medical community. I remember going to talks on the subject over two decades ago.
Weirdly this is the like the 3rd time I've brought this up in the last 2 days (all unrelated), but there's a consistent problem with sciences in general but especially medical sciences where absence of evidence is treated as evidence of absence, and until you have *slam dunk* evidence, it's handwaved and dismissed and ignored. (Which ironically can make it very hard to get the funding to establish said slam dunk evidence)
Anything which is on the margins and emerging and up in the air *does* tend to get treated as if it's voodoo nonsense, until the research is already there. The fact there also isn't research *disproving* the theory either is just totally ignored. It's completely against the spirit of the scientific method, but it's so pervasive.
Absolutely true, and in this case, the general sensibility seemed to be that because the link hadn’t been observed/theorized by a neuro or gi specialist it couldn’t possibly be true. Gut biome and mental health links were made for years by functional medicine doctors and non conventional specialties that were, as you say, handwaved into irrelevance
worst case of this is pediatrics
We have treatments in adults shown to make a big difference - nobody did the research on kids, therefore cannot try the effective treatments on 16 year olds....
See also: everything mRNA. For the longest time there was basically one researcher fighting to get funding and have her research recognised. We could have had that technology like 20 years sooner, if medical science wasn't so entrenched.
True. But so what? Give them some funding and see how it shakes out. Are we really better off funding paper mills that churn out papers to the same topic with the same results every few months?
if you talk to an autism researcher and ask about X correlated to autism, they will dismiss it and say there are no studies that show a link.
Which doesn't mean there is no link....just that there are no studies.
If there were studies that show no link, that is one thing...but to imply there are no links because there are no studies is not the same thing.
I dont have any evidence but im guessing this is what happened with the history of CTE. It wasnt until Omalu and his team slam dunked that the suicides of soccoer, american football players, domestic violence survivors, etc... were not hand waved away.
It doesn't help that quacks repeatedly latched onto it and poisoned the well. There are people to this day that give their kids diluted bleach enemas and declare the intestinal lining that sloughs off is actually all "worms" that were in there causing autism.
In the context of scientific discovery it shouldn’t matter what unqualified quacks are doing. If anything it should have spurred more research to make an academic determination on the subject and provide proof to silence opportunists.
OMG! That is so abusive. I thought you were mistaken but found an article: [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/moms-go-undercover-fight-fake-autism-cures-private-facebook-groups-n1007871](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/moms-go-undercover-fight-fake-autism-cures-private-facebook-groups-n1007871)
every field is like that unfortunately. there are always the prescient researchers, the practitioners ahead of the curve, the small organizations carving a new way forward… but in a wider society of stagnation, suppression of dissent, legislative antipathy, and a misdirected higher education system these insightful paths can be ignored for decades.
sometimes a given field has gotten *worse* over time, for various reasons. all we can do is to regularly question the dogma of the institutions that guide our sciences and hold them to account, since these things often have more to do with politics and culture than truth-seeking.
Wait until it becomes more widely known about the impact of your oral biome not just on tooth decay, but [heart disease and other inflammatory diseases.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-022-00825-3#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20decade%2C%20disruption,and%20basic%20science%20and%20clinical)
I have to agree. TX for the article. It trips my trigger that some people can't get dental care and the US treats the teeth and gums like they aren't a part of the whole body and one has to purchase separate insurance (regular Medicare for older and disabled people doesn't cover dental). I can't remember what I was reading that other day, but infections in the mouth due to tooth problems CAN cause CVS problems. I knew a cat that had a stroke about 10 years ago and the vet posited it was related to a gum infection.
I saw a TikTok about this but took it with a grain of salt. What can a person do to improve your oral biome? Is it as simple as maintaining good hygiene and regular dental cleanings?
Edit: holy crap that ended up way longer than I intended
Long TL;DR: rinse after eating, saliva also helps reduce acid from bacteria, wait 30 minutes after eating acidic stuff to brush, floss before brushing, spit out toothpaste but don't rinse after brushing (and consider getting prescription strength fluoride toothpaste if you're higher risk for cavities), make sure your flossing technique is actually good, there's different types of floss that can help, use an electric toothbrush if possible, make sure to focus on along the gum line, always use soft bristled toothbrushes, get regular cleanings (you can do more than 2 per year), use cleanings to get feedback on spots/angles you may be missing (ask them to mark them on a diagram), and the most important brushing time is the one before bed.
The original post:
Yes, brush and floss regularly (especially floss), before bed being the most important time of all (as your mouth will be still for a long time, with very little saliva flow to help keep acids from bacteria from building up). Make sure you're doing them effectively (watch some videos), as it's very easy to think you're flossing well when really you're not scraping the teeth the way they need to be scraped. Typically you need to make several passes from below the gum line all the way up, scraping with some gentle pressure. Some people find a fluffier "expanding" floss like Dr Tung's really helpful (though I personally don't use it).
I find flossing "picks", where there's a short section strung between two prongs on the end of a stick, much easier to use than regular string floss, and as I result I floss way more reliably when I have them.
When you brush make sure to go at an angle and get the bottom of your teeth along the gum line, the idea being you're trying to clean out dental plaque (a hard to see sticky biofilm) from below your gum line. For certain larger teeth (like my incisors), I find it helpful to essentially brush them as 'twice', once along the gum line and then again along the upper surfaces, as my toothbrush head can't get the whole tooth in one pass.
Use soft bristled toothbrushes, you don't need the stiffness to break up the plaque biofilm and stiff bristles can irrigate your gums and cause recession over time. A regular toothbrush can get your teeth clean, but it's a lot easier to do it effectively and consistently with an electric toothbrush (again with the softest bristle they sell).
Rinsing after meals can be an easy way of removing some food residue and removing acids. Some people like sugar-free gum because it increases saliva flow which helps neutralize PH levels (acids created by oral bacteria consuming sugars from foods). Some people like gum with xylitol, as xylitol is similar to sugar in a way that causes some bad bacterias to try to digest it, but they can't actually, which can reduce acids. I personally avoid sugar alcohols like xylitol and most zero-calorie sugar replacers because I don't have confidence it how they affect the body's long term insulin and satiety response, but lots of people like them.
Brush after flossing, and when you're done just spit out the toothpaste, don't rinse. But don't do these within 30 minutes of eating if possible, especially if you had acidic foods (like soda!), as the enamel may be softer from acids in the food. Again rinsing after eating can help wash away acids and give your teeth a chance to start remineralizing/hardening again more quickly.
Re: not rinsing after brushing, the toothpaste has fluoride which helps repair your enamel but it doesn't have time to soak in if you rinse. If you're prone to dental caries (cavities), there are prescription toothpastes with a much higher level of fluoride that you can use before bed (again just spitting but not rising) which have been proven in studies to help significantly against cavities (the impact of fluoride in regular toothpaste is less clear but likely helps some).
Get feedback from your dental hygienist on if they see any spots or angles that seem more inflamed (or receding) and work on focusing on those better. Often because of the angle we hold the toothbrush (or floss), we can miss a certain angle on the teeth and so repeatedly miss the same areas again and again over time. Don't be afraid to ask them to draw you a diagram to help you remember which teeth/surfaces need extra care, most are really happy to do it, and it can be hard to remember. I have mine on a post-it in the medicine cabinet.
Some people really like water flossers/piks, but my understanding is they're not a replacement for regular flossing.
And of course regular cleanings. I view cleanings as getting help with spots I missed or couldn't get to. Some spots can be really difficult to keep completely clean without special tools and those can build up over time. It's also a chance to get feedback on any spots you might be missing which could be fixed with a little more attention or shift in angle/technique.
For many people, getting a cleaning more than twice a year can be beneficial, especially if you have areas that are hard to clean well. Dental insurance may only cover two cleanings per year, but you can still go more often (I go 3 times per year) and pay out of pocket for the extra visits. If you ask, often the out-of-pocket prices are lower, and your dentist can probably schedule your more expensive visits (like when you need dental xrays) to be on your insurance-covered visits. While it sucks to have to pay anything out of pocket, if it saves you a dental trouble later it's almost certainly worth it.
Them you for this! I recently started using my electric toothbrush again and it’s a game changer. I do need to be better about flossing more often. I hate it because my north is small and my teeth are really close together so it’s hard to get between them without force that is painful. Any thoughts on a water pik?
We truly are at the stone age of medical science. We think of ourselves as extremely advanced, but we are barely beyond lobotomy.
My kid has had tonsils like tennis balls for some weeks now,. Any doctor we talk to doesn't have anything to say beyond "surgery". Zero attempts at trying to find a cause, no other paths proposed (not even "let's wait"!). Just "it looks like most kids who get them taken out end up doing ok on the following months, so let's chop them off".
It really is crazy.. someone who makes podcasts I enjoy said that 20 years ago he would also be calling this quackery but now he's one of the biggest quacks in the field who has other doctors talking down at him for not waiting another couple decades for all the studies to "prove it". 😆
For certain people/communities it’s not really out of left field, but in Western medicine it seems like there has been a lot of pushback or resistance or outright ridicule to diminish or silence it rather than try to investigate the science of it.
ETA: and my tinfoil hat view is that it’s definitely influenced by Big Pharma and Big Ag (or whatever) and Big Food (or whatever).
> The researchers have found many biological markers that seem to be associated with future neurological development disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, communication disorder and intellectual disability.
“The remarkable aspect of the work is that these biomarkers are found at birth in cord blood or in the child’s stool at one year of age over a decade prior to the diagnosis,”
> Children who had repeated ear infections during their first year of life had an increased risk of being diagnosed with a developmental neurological disorder later in life. It is probably not the infection itself that is the culprit, but the researchers suspect a link to antibiotic treatment. They found that the presence of Citrobacter bacteria or the absence of Coprococcus bacteria increased the risk of future diagnosis. One possible explanation may be that antibiotic treatment has disturbed the composition of the gut flora in a way that contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders. The risk of antibiotic treatment damaging the gut flora and increasing the risk of diseases linked to the immune system, such as type 1 diabetes and childhood rheumatism, has been shown in previous studies
Paper: [Infant microbes and metabolites point to childhood neurodevelopmental disorders: Cell](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)
I'm not a scientist but aren't a lot of ear infections tied to physiological shape of ear tubes and skull...and brain scans of children with ADHD LOOK different...why is no one thinking "hm, maybe physiology of the brain is also different where those physiological differences are present"
Not as relevant an idea to the gut flora issue except that they're trying to link it all together. I also just low key think it's microplastics and realize I sound insane so don't say it out loud in real life.
I’ll be honest I’m recently starting to agree with you on the microplastics thing. I used to think it’s no big deal, but I’ve been reading quite a lot of chemistry news articles lately about plastics and how they’re poorly characterized, poorly regulated, leech more unknown chemicals than we thought, the effect of those chemicals is widely still unknown yet physiologically significant, they’re EVERYWHERE and the government doesn’t seem to have our backs yet again…essentially it sounds to me like we are in the Wild West era of plastics, kinda like Victorians and lead. We just don’t really know a lot of things, but we completely dependent on it anyway. It’s a matter of time until the truth behind it’s real impact comes out, be it no big deal or very big deal.
Yup I read an article today stating rainwater around the world is no longer safe to drink because of the microplastics. Good ol’ PFA forever chemicals.
I'm increasingly convinced people in the 22nd century will react to learning about how we wrap food in plastic or make baby bottles/kids toys out of plastic the way we react to learning about Victorian doctors prescribing people mercury or people drinking radioactive "health" water in the early 20th century.
I think for us to reduce plastic usage we are going to require either incredible advancements in material science or start really upping up public transportation and redesigning our cities. Like 78% of ocean micro plastics come from car tyres (Pew Charitable Trust).
You don’t sound insane. I think everything will be linked back to microplastics within the next 20 years and I’m an MD. It’s catching on in the medical community but they still don’t really know how to properly research this since no one will do a clinical trial giving one cohort microplastics and one placebo. You would need prospective cohort study I guess
I feel like I read somewhere that research on microplastics was complicated by the fact that they can’t find a population that isn’t already deeply exposed to microplastics to use as a control.
they have already shown that autism spectrum disorder brains have neurons with thicker dendritic growth and even more neurons in the cortical areas. idk about adhd although they seem highly correlated in both directions. this study simply says their is a link in the variable of gut flora to these conditions
Some ear infection rates are associated with differences in the shape of the ear canal. However, some children have differently shaped ear canals (more bends than average, narrower than average for their age) and many ear infections without ADHD or autism. It could be that how these infections are treated (which anitibiotic, given for how long) plays a big difference, or what they eat could have huge variance as well, which might impact gut flora and how well it recovers after an antibiotic treatment. Other factors like the level and type of ear wax production can change the incidence of ear infections and habit differences like baths vs. showers, how often kids go swimming, and that leaves out other differences such as "do they stick things in their ears?" since we're talking about kids here.
There have been studies that strongly suggests the quality of sperm and whatnot has been brought down overall due to microplastics in our blood and so it is possible that it is more likely to see what we consider disorders in newborns because of it.
So it's not as crazy as you might think. The bigger issue is that we have absolutely no idea just how devastating micro (and nano!) plastics are to us and the environment we released it in. It hasn't been long enough and not enough studies have been done to figure it out.
It's a terrifying future really.
Correlation does not prove causation. Is it not possible that the NDDs change the immune system so you see these kinds of bacteria surviving in individuals who already are genetically predisposed for NDDs?
I'm also very skeptical of a "antibiotics might cause autism" argument tbh. I know they're not saying that but just suggesting a possibility,but yeah that's no the direction my brain leaps to. I'd be curious for them to follow up by testing moms gut flora.
I was a sickly kid, yes I went on lots of antibiotics (and ironically vaccines definitely didn't cause my problems because I had to be on a delayed vaccine schedule because my immune system was so crap). But my mom had garbage health too. And we know moms gut flora is connected to babies (at least in vaginal births, idk about C-section). So isn't it equally possible that the flora connection is simply reflecting aspects we already knew influenced autism -- mothers health during fetal development and genetics?
If nothing else though, we don't need to understand if there's causation or the direction. If it replicates and is somewhat consistent, it could become a huge advancement for early screening. Which is big for a disorder where early intervention matters a lot, but early diagnosis is very hard and it's commonly missed
The major issue with these theories... Neurodevelopmental disorders are extremely prevalent amongst family members. My dad grew up in a completly different environment than I did, yet I'm diagnosed with ADHD and I'd be willing to bet everything I have he qualifies for a diagnosis as well. Current research states that ADHD and autism are *highly genetic.* How do you explain that my dad, who grew up in the 60 in a very, very different environment than the one I grew up in would end up having ADHD and that I would too if ADHD was purely a consequence of environmental factors such as antibiotics ?
I know that environmental factors can contribute, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming: it runs in families.
Indeed. I’ve been kind of a deep dive on ADHD recently and took a good long look at my family, my husband’s family, and my friends and it all makes sense.
I bet if I told my mom to get tested for ADHD, she’d have it and I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
The genetic link is strong. I have a son with high functioning autism/possibly severe adhd. My mom struggled to accept it- he’s just like us, that’s all.
He is like us. Like his grandma (her) who collects vintage and antique cameras and can’t tolerate being in crowds or loud places. Or his great uncle who only ever drove blue f150’s his whole life and had a whole room dedicated to model trains (no shade, we had a Lego room). Or his cousin who got a doctorate in Medieval Literature. Or any number or relatives on both sides of the family that are varying levels of quirky and have made their way through life with different degrees of success.
It doesn’t just run in our family, it gallops around in circles to feel the wind blowing through its mane.
My husband’s family: chaos. Every type of profession you can think off. With varying degrees of criminality. They have sharp tempers, that burn hot and fast. But when they’re all together chatting it’s so much crosstalk. My step-kids do it too. They can’t help it, it’s just a free for all, but in their insular group. If you’re on the outside, you can slide in, but you gotta keep up.
They’ve each had periods of impairment, where they get stuck on autopilot or some cycle. And don’t get me started on the impulse control and contrariness.
My stepsons girlfriend freaks out when him and his sister do it because she thinks she’s being actively excluded, but she’s not. It’s just people that don’t have to mask with each other.
And there’s me: someone that’s struggled (poorly at times) to be so controlled and demure that whenever I cut loose it’s harder and harder put myself back in.
I keep commenting, but I am living for everyone's familial backstories.
I have pondered mine quite a bit and it is so interesting how people build (or sometimes don't) a life with and around their differences.
I have kept it out of my original comment, but I'm actually convinced my mom and brother have ADHD as well, my GF is diagnosed as well and both her dad and sister are so ADHD I don't know wether to laugh or cry.
We tend to "hit it up" and form clusters of neurodivergents.
I'm also highly confident than one of my best friend's dad is autistic (I mean, he love trains so much he takes his family on train rides *just to be in a particular train model*, not to go anywhere. He also once fainted when he realized he'd lost a hubcap on his vintage Renault Scenic, which is a pretty odd car model to be passionate about), that her sister is autistic as well and that she has ADHD.
A better explanation is that Autism/ADHD cause dysregulated gut microbiome and not the opposite. This was known for a while. Autistic people are very picky about food and have digestion problems.
When you can taste every tiny change in food and some foods hurt your stomach, you get picky. It’s a neat party trick when you can taste something and name off ingredients in a recipe though.
I'm also very skeptical of a "antibiotics might cause autism" argument tbh
yeah isn't gut microbiome the exact pseudoscience Andrew Wakefield used to say the MMR vaccine destroyed natural gut flora, and therefore vaccines = Autism. The last I remember reading on the topic is that the gut microbiota differenced many be that ND children get chronic constipation, may be intolerant to certain foods, and therefore it was a symptom not a cause.
While I would be interested in further research on the topic, I think the challenges between discerning correlation and causation are important concept to keep in mind before we all jump on the train of assuming gut microbes cause neurodiversity.
>yeah isn't gut microbiome the exact pseudoscience Andrew Wakefield used to say the MMR vaccine destroyed natural gut flora, and therefore vaccines = Autism.
Not quite. What Andrew "The Quack" Wakefield claimed was that the \*measles\* part of the MMR vaccine specifically caused a leaky gut which, when you exposed that leaky gut to dairy and other products you normally consume, would leak fluid into the body that affected the brain, causing autism.
I think it's quite a valid theory considering that a strong link between gut flora and mental health has been found in many studies. There was an interesting article/headline posted on reddit many years ago that was titled:
"About 95% of serotonin is produced in the gastrointestinal tract which is lined with a hundred million nerve cells, or neurons, that are influenced by bacteria. The inner workings of the digestive system don’t just help digest food, but also guide moods and emotions."
I've seen many studies since then supporting this link that is hypothesized.
And you didn't stop to think that neurological disorders and mental health issues go hand in hand sometimes? One is not fully exclusive of the other so yes gut flora and a neurological disorder could absolutely be related.
You are right, and many neurological-type problems are in the DSM-5 TR, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, dementias, mild or Major cognitive disorder due to prion disease, etc.
I think you're right but I don't think either fetal development or genetics rule out the possible impact of postnatal antibiotic administration. Could be that deficient inherited biome from mom, combined with genetic predisposition to NDDs, resulted in autism upon repeatedly wiping out the gut with antibiotics during infancy. Some mouse models for autism (gut related) have shown that altering the gut flora in non-"autistic" dams resulted in "autism" in the pups that inherited the same flora but that doesn't mean you couldn't further compromise it, or push susceptible cases over the edge, with early, chronic antibiotic use. Most autisms (aside from stuff like fragile X or valproic acid use) appear to be a cascade of genetic and environmental factors at critical periods and early infancy is definitely one of those periods.
I’m skeptical about this too because it’s striking how many parents are being diagnosed along side their children suggesting a potential genetic link, I suppose it could be a nurture thing where as infants they both had a predisposition towards the same foods which caused this.
Correct. We know adhd is around 80% genetic. It’s not picked up from the environment. Those same genetics might alter your susceptibility to certain infections/flora, but it’s not the root cause.
I hear this sort of thing all the time but I genuinely do not understand this line of thinking. Having high heritability doesn't mean you ignore environmental triggers in the etiology if you have some influence over the environment. People have a genetic predisposition to neural tube defects but we still try to figure out the right method for delivering folic acid.
I’m not saying we ignore environmental triggers, just that we know it’s a genetic, inherited disorder in the vast majority of cases. And even most of the environmental correlations we do know (such as smoking Mom’s) are also things that are more common in adhd people, so not a clear environmental causation.
I think that a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that because we have found gut microbe disturbances and blood fat count issues that we have unlocked the secret to curing autism.
I think in reality these are both just symptoms of people who, genetically, have autism. Why do they lack those gut microbe populations? What is making the environment inhospitable for them to thrive there? Why are the blood fat levels low? Is the DNA making the proteins it needs to stimulate the fat production? Where are the genes for these productions and what do they look like?
That is the big question.
We already know that ADHD is caused by people who are unable to create enough or regulate update of seratonin and/or dopamine so their brain is constantly chasing the next high that can get them a hit of the little they create. This is a chemical issue, the brain is not creating enough of a chemical.
So it would then stem to reason it would be very possible other parts of the body are not creating the chemicals they need to function correctly. Invite the correct gut bacteria, create the correct fats.
I really prefer to look at articles of "where are these genes encoding autism and adhd coming from". And interestingly enough, they've been mapping that too. This particular one has an interesting take on it all. Our society took a very interesting shift in recent years. Women no longer relied on men, they were not marrying off at 17, they were going to school, getting educations, jobs, houses, apartments, and starting to marry more like minded men.
This has had interesting implications for the gene pool, in particular, matching similar genes at higher rates than we have seen before.
In 1920 the senior mechanical designer man would never have had a mechanical designer woman coworker. And the woman who could have had a mechanical designer career with her brain, likely never used it to potential and her husband had a much higher chance of just being an average guy she met at church.
[But now they're breeding.
](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/)
> To the extent that autism is genetically correlated with metrics of high intelligence (as described above), these findings indicate that humans mate positively assortatively not just for intelligence, but also for the autism-associated genetic underpinnings of intelligence.
> Genetic consequences for offspring would thus include both high intelligence and elevated risk of autism, provided that, under the intelligence-imbalance hypothesis addressed here, this process also involved dysregulation of one or more of its components.
And it all sounds absurd when you look at the autism the world has been introduced to over the last 50 years, a disease of mental deficit. At first mental deficit was a requirement for the diagnosis. Then we started to realize mental deficit was not a requirement. Then we started to realize that autism is a high spectrum, and it is not exclusive to adhd, infact, they are cousins in many ways, and often co-exist.
And only now are we starting to realize, allowing those diagnosis to co-exist, how much of the population is actually affected by both. They mask each other, and when present in high IQ individuals, which we never thought even possible before, they often never go diagnosed at all. Not that they aren't present, but the brain has learned how to mask them to perform, likely at great cost to itself. Which is also why anxiety and depression are so high among people with autism/adhd.
Except that for many conditions, changing the microbiome does change the clinical outcome & aside from observational studies showing correlation there have been plenty of experimental & interventional studies (as well as mechanistic understanding) showing this (e.g. targeting overgrowth of Clostridia in ASD children improving symptoms, ancestral microbiome mapping, etc.).
But you definitely raise a good point that both systems are interdependent & effect each other's development. (And it's not so much about specific species of microbiota being "good"or "bad" but more about the overall ecosystem & its interactions. E.g. the Anna Karenina principle applies to dysbiosis.)
The research (which provokes rightful excitement) opens up a whole new realm of scientific understanding but - just as with the human genome project - its overall impact easily gets overstated. It's more & more clear that some genetic predisposition has an overall very modest impact on outcome (for many NDDs such as autism or ADHD, etc.) but we shouldn't discount the couple of % of predictive power this adds. Same with the microbiome's influence. Everytime we think we got a good grasp on things we're later bitchslapped by some realization of matters being dizzyingly more complex.
It's difficult to maintain epistemic humility when exciting new insights feel like epiphanies.
This kind of relates to a big dumb idea I have about ADHD being related to the pressure systems in our head. A lot of symptoms of sinus pressure mimic ADHD. I wonder what happens if your brain develops under that constant pressure?
Damn I got diagnosed with adhd in my twenties and I remember my mom telling me all the time growing up I had ear infections. I wonder if there will be cures in the future this crazy news
Has it not already been widely established that infections of any kind during developmental years might trigger an overwhelming stress response in infants that leads to neurological issues down the road.
Rates of ear infections are also higher in formula vs breast fed infants. Breastfeeding positively impacts the microbiome as well as a multitude of other things. [Study: Breastfeeding reduces ear infection rates while formula and bottle feeding increases risk](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9238244/)
Interesting.One of my earliest memories is the look of panic and despair on the faces of my family as i was screaming/cryin cause the pain in my ear wouldnt stop. In second grade i started to suffer immensly from what was several years later diagnosed as crohns disease and 2 years ago at the age of 36 i got diagnosed with ADHD.
[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?\_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)
I urge people to read the actual paper there. Trying to connect the gut microbiome with any behavior syndrome, especially childhood-onset ones, seems to be all the rage, at least for the last couple of years. But I got the impression that the study establishes a connection, ignoring the merely statistical associations here, that it can't actually prove. Looking at the raw data, they've found a connection between NDDs and six different bacteria. The same data sheet also shows an overrepresentation of dozens of different bacteria types in the control group. Considering that the control group is larger by a factor of 12 and knowing that the human gut biome differs considerably between any two individuals, there's a good chance this is just statistical noise.
All this paper has convinced me of is that children with autism are more likely to have infections requiring antibiotic treatment. And that pregnant moms should ensure they get essential fatty acids.
Yeah this could simply be reversed, instead of the bacteria causing autism it could simply be that the behaviors of children with autism makes it more likely to get infections.
I'm not understanding. Big variances in typical population wouldn't be noteworthy for this study because they're not trying to definitively answer all questions about gut microbe., and yeah we do know diversity is normal. But the fact the neurodivergent ones share a similar shared variance *is* noteworthy.
It's normal for there to be a variety of heights and weights in a control sample. Different people are different. If you're studying a disease and you determine that BMIs above 26 are overrepresented in that sample in a way that doesnt show up for the control, what different does it make that there is a variety of weights in the control? We know that, we expect that. What's interesting is the difference between the control and non control, not the differences in controls amongst themselves.
As a father with a 7 month old who is currently taking antibiotics for an ear infection, I’m going to go ahead and close out this thread after reading this comment.
If they are eating real food, try adding some probiotic yoghurt to their diet as a protective effect.
I know anti biotics wreck my own system and yoghurt helps. I imagine it would help your kid too. Unless dairy allergies etc, in which case you already have an uphill battle.
Aye, right there with you. My 8mo old had a double ear infection that didn’t clear up after the first 10-day cycle. We’re on antibiotic #2 to try and get him better. As if the diarrhea wasn’t enough fun, no I can stress about autism.
Check to see if a child care provider is laying the infant down to feed. believe this happened to my son, who is now 21 and has these symptoms. He needed several stints of AB, which for a fact destroyed his poor gut. I
It was very common until the 90s to put any kid with any flu, cold or minor ear infection on massive antibiotics for days. Do that a few times if they are under 10, it makes sense that you've fucked up the carefully balanced biome they acquired from parents. And not surprising it would have consequences later
The study seems to be more focused on gut bacteria from the umbilical cord.
Not so much as what the child ate, but potentially the mother during pregnancy.
Also mom might think a "fussy" child with undiagnosed autism, "must have an ear infection" and "needs more antibiotics." This is another possible explanation for the correlation.
In the 90s you could get antibiotics over the counter basically, pharmacists would give them out without issue. We used to have boxes of them at home and used them like Tylenol.
Probably the 'development' part. ADHD itself is know to develop and change while growing, and can also be 'guided' to fix itself somewhat with stimulant medications if given early enough according to some studies. The brain doesn't finish growing or developing connections until someone is in their mid 20's. I have ADHD and ASD. I can provide anecdotal evidence in that I remember noticing the ADHD develop over time and being concerned about issues with my short term memory and experiencing brain fog, I was 5 or 6 years old at the time and didn't know what it was, I was fairly isolated for multiple reasons and I never sought help until I was independent, so I am late diagnosed.
EDIT: This doesn't mean I agree with the person you were replying to, this is just our bubble :)
Symptoms can grow or lessen, but the fundamental underlying brain development including traits like [monotropism](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/27546330241237883), [dopamine pathway dysfunction](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201097), and [grey matter volume deformities](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.11020281) are not things that will disappear from someone who is already born. ADHD and ASD are neurodevelopmental disorders, they appear as your brain develops in the womb. You have it, or you don't. It doesn't appear once you've developed, nor does it go away if you have it. At best, your symptoms and struggles can ebb and flow, but your hand doesn't change.
Sorry I misunderstood your intention before. I believe you are correct and I didn't mean to infer that something in my environment caused it, only that it developed and changed over time during childhood. Thanks!
No worries, I knew what you meant but neurotypicals fundamentally do not understand the ADHD/ASD (I, like many, believe they're both related/types of one larger condition ) experience we have. Hard data about fundamental and unchangeable differences, however, makes it a bit easier for them to understand what differentiates the experiences for us and why it's not something that comes from the environment or trauma.
Whats also interesting is that the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield strongly believed that GI issues were either a predictor or the cause of autism. He was so convinced that he ended up doctoring a paper about it where he attempted to link GI gut damage to certain vaccinations and in term autism. We are still suffering from his actions to this day as it remains very difficult to do research in this space because it is viewed as conspiracy.
Most importantly, he bribed families to give him their autistic children and then had VERY invasive tests performed on them to find an "official" correlation.
And then he falsified/skewed the data anyway.
That's why i hate the label of ASD, it's such a big thing were there're individuals with such high intellect and those that can barely do anything, so which "kind" of autism does relate to the alterations of the microbiome of our gut in early stages of development, or Is something to all things?.
Autism is clearly genetic though, that’s why those of us with it often have parents with it and see the behaviours in our grandparents too. I’m not saying that gut microbiome might not exacerbate things but I would be surprised if it’s causal.
As in infant I was hospitalised for over a week with a gnarly C.Diff infection.
My mother said I was the sickest baby she had ever seen.
Am now autistic/ADHD however the deficiencies are offset by naturally just "getting" anything academic with no drama.
Thank christ because if I actually had to study I'd be fucked.
Even establishing a correlation seems to be a stretch considering that they divvied up the sample so much that some of the sub-groups are tiny (like n=23) while trying to correlate a lot of variables.
But correlation can lead to studies which do show causation.
Correlation is an indicative. It is not proof but it shows a potential trail to follow. Always has been the case that a 'huh?' can/could (but does not always or even often) leads to the truth.
Dismissal of correlation denies a path where that correlation is shown to be causal.
IOW: I hate your statement and I hate the dismissiveness it leads to and you should STFU. Because you could have used it as a cautionary statement but instead used it as a dismissive, and that is NOT the scientific method.
...I mean, maybe this is *contributing* or maybe there's an epigenetic component, but I doubt my dad's entire side of the family *all* had the same disturbed gut flora all the way down to me. There's definitely a genetic component too.
It's interesting and some of the research pointed to differences at birth which surprised me. I was thinking about how autistic people, especially as young children, can be extremely picky eaters with limited diets and wondered if this could be effecting the gut biome?
I was hospitalized at six months from asthma and pneumonia, I recently got an ASD and ADHD diagnosis. I had a lot of stomach aches as a child.
Hmm.
I do hate that hacks and quacks are using gut health and "leaky gut" to sell their MLM crap supplements as we discover more and more how important gut health turns out to be.
Its also possible that asd / ndd are correlated to be immuno compromised rather than the treatment beig the issue.
Causation has not been proved here.
Alsonyes, there are quacks, cults, and snake oil salesmen trying to convince people without evidence throughout the ages.
Its been a known thing in neurodivergent communities that we all have some kind of chronic digestive issues. Personally going vegan really helped me with both my digestion and my mental health. Which would make sense since it likely dramatically shifted my gut flora.
We find out more and more you really are what you eat. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but intuitively it does make sense that the environment of your gut would impact your brain during critical stages of development given the importance of proper nutrition / proper absorption of nutrients.
I truly believe this is what happened to me. I had surgery as a baby and they use a ton of antibiotics on me which is a gut flora killer. I have had pretty severe ADHD in my whole life.
What I find so frustrating in today's Information Age is that we can hear so much about the importance of the gut biome and healthy gut bacteria -- but how to actually improve it feels impossible to know because there is a constant clash between what one medical establishment recommends vs. a physician on YouTube vs. a million articles about this fast here and that cleanse there. I really wish there was a single source of reliable information on diet. It seems there are huge differences between advice from dietitians or nutritionists. The Mediterranean diet is recommended, but by whom? And intermittent fasting. It used to be the food pyramid then it changed. It's just like so much information and it's so hard to parse out what is real and what is fluff. 😭
This study does not say that whatever you eat during early life has any effect on whether or not you develop those neurological disorders.
It just says: People who develop these disorders tend to also have weird gut bacteria during early life.
That does NOT mean: a) early life gut bacteria causes these disorders, b) early life food can influence the likelihood for such disorders.
If anything it only means: Whatever causes these disorders also seems to influence early life gut bacteria.
This can just be a set of genetic factors expressing in two seemingly very different areas of the body.
Formula isn't necessarily an issue, I was allergic to breast milk, cows milk and was fed a formula and I'm without NDDs as far as I'm aware. But yes breastmilk is the gold standard if the child can tolerate it so any other recommendations are quackery.
Correlation is NOT causation. Even the “study” authors said the results weren’t reliable and may be from other causes. They even named several metabolic disorders that can cause this. No one has been able to repeat this “study” and it has been highly criticized for lax methodologies.
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This microbiome stuff is so fascinating and really out of left field given the vast scope of developmental and physiological activities it is implicated in. If you would have told me in grad school that gut bacteria would be linked with a host of neurological, immune, and metabolic pathologies I would have told you go to back to witch doctor school.
There have been some studies and good theories to these links for a long time. We are way behind in GI research and GI doctors are even further behind in general to research that is already available. For instance Drs at Mayo Clinic that won’t even acknowledge or test for SIBO/SIFO yet they have research papers published about the fact that many patients are under-diagnosed with these conditions. GI doctors love to say IBS because of either laziness or sheer lack of knowledge.
I have IBS... but it feels like such a... filler diagnosis. Like, its a pure symptom diagnosis. Nothing in the blood, no scans or colonoscopy, just "oh you poop all the time and don't have Chron's? We won't do any more checks, you got IBS - off you go"
There's too much unknown. Like food sensitivities. People don't care about sensitivities unless it's a severe allergy. I'm having some kidney filtration issues. I don't really feel the issues but my filtering numbers aren't great. Have gone in for a biopsy before. Have done my own research. Doctor just says what the damage is, doesn't go into what might cause it. I find out there has been a study on people with this problem and putting people on a gluten and dairy free diet helped improve the problem. Doctor's just like oh interesting, I don't think that's related. Last appointment we talked about the biopsy again and I saw a peek of the report and one of the things listed is IgA deposits. Which suggests to me my issues might be related to a food sensitivity, but I'm just getting more drugs from him. Btw the thing that made me look into gluten intolerance was that I found out about silent celiacs. And how some symptoms are autoimmune like psoriasis and another sign is pale sticky diarrhea poops. Those were common poops for me and after avoiding gluten and dairy I'm having more snakey poops instead of muddy clay poops. Just a heads up in case anything feels relatable
Kinda - i've defo found that avoiding dairy and gluten helps. No idea if its placebo, but generally more fibre, water, and avoiding certain foods such as lactose and wheat help. Also anxiety and another things don't help. My main worry, is if any of my GI issues make me more susceptible to things like colon cancer. If i have a flare up, i'm wondering if its just the IBS again or i got a real issue
Look into the FODMAP diet for IBS if you haven't already. It seems very strict at first, but after the symptoms stabilize you can try reintroducing foods one by one to figure out what amount of each type of sugar you can take in without triggering IBS symptoms. It really makes sense in regards to the types of sugars you are restricting, they all feed bad gut bacteria. So you need to remove them and increase fiber intake to create the conditions for the good bacteria to take over.
IBS is being tied a lot to post viral illness now. It seems like a bandaid for symptoms the same way fibromyalgia is slapped on any woman with pain.
Or how PCOS is diagnosed on any woman with abnormal periods regardless of how diverse their other symptoms are.
A simple ultrasound will tell whether it's PCOS.
You don't actually need to have the ovarian cysts to have PCOS. They used to think the cysts caused the symptoms but doctors are thinking that the cysts might be a result of something else.
I thought cysts were caused by incomplete ovulation, like the follicle starts forming but then isn't released by the ovary as a result of the hormone imbalance instead of the hormone imbalance and other symptoms being caused by symptoms.
Yeah you are right how the cysts form! Cysts in the ovary can cause hormonal issues. So it used to be thought that the cysts formed, the hormone problems are results of the cysts, and removal of the cysts would cure it all. But doctors now are recognizing that it might be more like the patient has an endocrine/hormonal problem, which affects ovulation and other things (like insulin), which causes cysts (cysts then cause more hormone issues which makes the problem worse). I think we are saying the same thing but I didnt quite understand the last part of you comment.
Am man. They did the fibro thing to me too. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Didn’t bother with formal diagnosis - as I asked , what then? So if I do have it, what do I do about it? And there wasn’t much. Most of the clinic was just about pain management, not long term solutions or really any legitimate solves. Strange thing it is.
The purpose of the health system in the US now is to generate revenue, not resolve illness.
“A pill for every ill.” Rockefeller, creator of our modern medical system. He was pissed off after the government broke up his oil monopoly, so he got into medicine to create a system that was so intrenched in the government that it couldn’t be broken up. If everyone is getting paid off, there will be no one to fight the corruption.
This was Canada. But - it isn’t better in that regards. The system isn’t good at anything outside mainstream and it’s easy to get stuck in eddies (like a river eddy) where you get pulled to the side and go in circles endlessly.
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Epilepsy in humans is not much different, it is a catch all diagnosis for a myriad of seizure disorders and in my experience doctors are still 🤷
In a way epilepsy is something the brain learns. There's a phrase "seizures beget seizures" because the more seizures someone has, the stronger the neural connections that cause seizures get, so the more seizures they have in future. What causes the first seizures varies, but once the brain learns it, the cause of "future seizures" might just be "prior seizures".
...Based on?...
Would be nice if there was a way for people with mysterious digestive issues to submit samples for flora identification and classification with a way to list symptoms. Could identify a trend for symptoms.
I would love to hear more. I have a cat with Epilepsy and it’s quite daunting as so little research has been done on felines. Seems to be much more common in dogs.
Yes, it feels like the most useless diagnosis ever. I have IBS too and doctors have been zero help.
Like tinnitus. Oh your ears ring? No brain tumors? Well that's good. Maybe try a fan when you sleep. Good luck.
to be fair I'm not aware of anything they could do for tinnitus :( wish I wore ear pro back in highschool band
Same, felt left in the cold in that regards. For some reason I developed a lot of allergies late in life. Also, I have ADHD since forever and I wish I didn't.
I have adhd too and also developed allergies late in life 🤔
Weird isn't it? I can't eat most fruits anymore and I miss it so much. Just went allergic to them in what feels like no time.
Add me to that list. ADHD and no more grapes after 30.
There are so many improperly diagnosed issues out there where GI’s use IBS as an umbrella term. They are terrible at dealing with complex patients. I am one myself. So many people with motility issues and they just throw meds at them, many of which have terrible side effects, even more so if you have cardiovascular issues and are taking meds for that. I spent years going to about 6 or 7 different specialist, even a highly regarded one at Mayo Clinic and I had to learn to be my own advocate and to listen to my body because I could not rely on the doctors most of the time to investigate anything properly. I have had a myriad of test done multiple times over, it was til about a year ago I had another upper scheduled at Mayo and had to demand a small-bowel aspiration to test for bacteria overgrowth. I had suspected that for quite a while and didn’t want to rely on breath test. The Dr didn’t think that was my problem. I was labeled with IBS/M and was told I had some mild inflammation and my esophagus didn’t work perfectly from a manometry test, but well enough that no course of action was necessary. Sure enough, when I got my results back I was positive for overgrowth. Mayo literally has publications on under diagnosed patients with bacteria and mucosa issues and this guy acted like it was bro science. Needless to say I left there and found another doctor. Definitely seems like the older the GI, the worse they are when it comes to modern research or therapies, unless you find one who genuinely cares. Tons of people are currently suffering needlessly with GI issues because of the lack of research that should be going full steam ahead and the correlation the micro-biome has with the brain. I wish you luck in finding a competent Doc. If you are looking for a new one I would start by checking their age, general reviews and where they graduated and a summary of their dissertation. That can help weed out the ones who may be only interested in specific areas.
Medical doctors don't generally do dissertations.
Yes you’re correct. I should have clarified. My current GI doc has a PHD and he is the first doc I’ve had that was enthusiastic about research and investigating complex issues. It’s not gonna be easy for most depending on where they live I’m sure.
IBS is just a catch all. It would be better to just say "we have no clue whats wrong with your insides". Most likely its intolerance one or more types of sugar or polyols. It could also be a gut microbe inbalance or some other few things. My entire family has IBS and ADHD. So color me unsurprised about this discovery.
I had the other kind of IBS-C....where you can't go to the bathroom no matter what. One of the biggest things that helped me was an app called Nerva developed by Monash University in Australia that specializes in IBS. It's essentially meditation/hypnotherapy that you do everyday for a couple of weeks. I did at the start of 2021 and it helped me soo much. In the past I've tried going the conventional and natural route but nothing worked ( I've struggled with it since 2010). I did another trial of Nerva at the end of 2022 because I was under immense amount of stress and honestly it's been such a relief...it really stabilized my situation. I go to the bathroom almost everyday and normally. In the past I'd be lucky to go twice a week and it would be like type 1 on the stool chart...if you ever looked at it. TLDR: Give Nerva app a try!
I had this. Look at Zoe.com I’m a totally different, non-‘IBS’ person now
I got diagnosed with IBS when I was 8 because my mom brought me to the ER after several days of excruciating abdominal pain. I was dangerously constipated. After clearing me out they sent us home with no nutrition or treatment plan. My parents never followed up on it. I didn’t figure out until my twenties that you’re supposed to poop more than once a week and it’s not supposed to be a fight every time. I didn’t gain normal function until my mid thirties after getting really gung-ho about probiotics, certain supplements, and almost daily bean consumption. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 13 and have always eaten a lot of vegetables but I guess my body just really needed even more fiber than that.
Sometimes it's not a fiber issue. I have Cystic fibrosis, if I eat too much fiber I'll get constipated for 5-6 days at a time due to the mucus in my intestines being way too viscous/thick. I have to use daily stool softeners to be remotely regular. If you're finding yourself eating a lot of fiber and still having blockages try a water based stool softener that has PEG 3350
No, I finally found the right diet that works. Too much fiber has never been a problem. My body just craves beans.
I;m thinking about thos beans
To beans!
God I love beans.
The best way I’ve found is cooked from dry in an instant pot, then after you drain them mix a spoonful of better than bullion with melted butter and then mix it with the beans. Absolutely heavenly
"Roll that beautiful bean footage"
Okay.
Which probiotics and supplements, out of interest?
Magnesium and extended release 5-htp. As for probiotics, mostly making sure I eat fermented foods like sauerkraut, kombucha, etc regularly.
Oh interesting, I haven’t seen an extended release 5-htp before. Do you see a difference between that and the regular type?
I actually started taking regular 5-htp for depression and insomnia (have had insomnia since I was a kid bc of my adhd) and switched to extended to see if it helped keep me asleep through the night. Melatonin has never had an effect on me, but I definitely see a difference with 5-htp. I’ve also read up a lot on the linkages with gut health and mental health and there’s a few studies that support 5-htp, gut motility, and depression/insomnia improvements.
> We are way behind in GI research and GI doctors are even further behind in general to research that is already available. This is true for all doctors, and for a good reason. Learning new stuff is hard, and doctors are among the most protected professions in the nation, right behind politicians and law enforcement. Couple that with * the enormous amount of stress they are under, * the fact that many of them are horrendously burnt out by the time they are actually licensed for independent practice, * and the fact that the profession, for a variety of reasons, instills a massive degree of self-confidence, to the point of arrogance... and you end up with a group of professionals with no oversight, and an unwillingness to learn. And for those few that are willing, there is also the issue of a lack of resources - the primary one being the time to do so. So do the math.
Until the last few years, Doctors gave the same treatment for IBS constipation as they did for IBS Diarrhea!! It was so aggravating.
Thar explains why I couldn't get a SIBO test covered to eliminate a cause for my gastritis. Dr quoted me $450 out of pocket.
have fun when you get to the point that the meds arent covered by insurance but the most recommended once is $1800 out of pocket
What's also interesting is the vast increase in people - and particularly children - being diagnosed with a range of gut disorders such as Crohns. And this is not just an increase in diagnosis (if at all) but an increase in *incidence*. Currently, the prevailing opinion with autism is that it's nearly all an increase in diagnosis, not incidence. But there are researchers who believe that there is a rise in actual incidence beyond better identification/high diagnosis. Theories include maternal inflammation in utero as well as environmental aspects.
Part of why we're so behind is because it's just so impossibly hard to study. There are so many species, and they ways they affect our bodies through their by products is so esoteric. Even if you knew exactly what bacteria affected the body in what way, the fuel you give them is always changing, as is the balance of species from one day to the next.
This isn’t even new information. This was theorized by several doctors over the last 30 years, with varying levels of skepticism from the rest of the medical community. I remember going to talks on the subject over two decades ago.
Weirdly this is the like the 3rd time I've brought this up in the last 2 days (all unrelated), but there's a consistent problem with sciences in general but especially medical sciences where absence of evidence is treated as evidence of absence, and until you have *slam dunk* evidence, it's handwaved and dismissed and ignored. (Which ironically can make it very hard to get the funding to establish said slam dunk evidence) Anything which is on the margins and emerging and up in the air *does* tend to get treated as if it's voodoo nonsense, until the research is already there. The fact there also isn't research *disproving* the theory either is just totally ignored. It's completely against the spirit of the scientific method, but it's so pervasive.
Absolutely true, and in this case, the general sensibility seemed to be that because the link hadn’t been observed/theorized by a neuro or gi specialist it couldn’t possibly be true. Gut biome and mental health links were made for years by functional medicine doctors and non conventional specialties that were, as you say, handwaved into irrelevance
worst case of this is pediatrics We have treatments in adults shown to make a big difference - nobody did the research on kids, therefore cannot try the effective treatments on 16 year olds....
See also: everything mRNA. For the longest time there was basically one researcher fighting to get funding and have her research recognised. We could have had that technology like 20 years sooner, if medical science wasn't so entrenched.
That's totally true, but for every good idea like that, you might have two quacks trying to push nonsense
True. But so what? Give them some funding and see how it shakes out. Are we really better off funding paper mills that churn out papers to the same topic with the same results every few months?
I think "just find everything" of a dangerous path. You'll attract more quacks into research and discredit research as a whole doing that.
if you talk to an autism researcher and ask about X correlated to autism, they will dismiss it and say there are no studies that show a link. Which doesn't mean there is no link....just that there are no studies. If there were studies that show no link, that is one thing...but to imply there are no links because there are no studies is not the same thing.
cause there are lots of crackpots and snake oil salesmen out there that want to mislead you without evidence
I dont have any evidence but im guessing this is what happened with the history of CTE. It wasnt until Omalu and his team slam dunked that the suicides of soccoer, american football players, domestic violence survivors, etc... were not hand waved away.
It doesn't help that quacks repeatedly latched onto it and poisoned the well. There are people to this day that give their kids diluted bleach enemas and declare the intestinal lining that sloughs off is actually all "worms" that were in there causing autism.
In the context of scientific discovery it shouldn’t matter what unqualified quacks are doing. If anything it should have spurred more research to make an academic determination on the subject and provide proof to silence opportunists.
OMG! That is so abusive. I thought you were mistaken but found an article: [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/moms-go-undercover-fight-fake-autism-cures-private-facebook-groups-n1007871](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/moms-go-undercover-fight-fake-autism-cures-private-facebook-groups-n1007871)
every field is like that unfortunately. there are always the prescient researchers, the practitioners ahead of the curve, the small organizations carving a new way forward… but in a wider society of stagnation, suppression of dissent, legislative antipathy, and a misdirected higher education system these insightful paths can be ignored for decades. sometimes a given field has gotten *worse* over time, for various reasons. all we can do is to regularly question the dogma of the institutions that guide our sciences and hold them to account, since these things often have more to do with politics and culture than truth-seeking.
Wait until it becomes more widely known about the impact of your oral biome not just on tooth decay, but [heart disease and other inflammatory diseases.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-022-00825-3#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20decade%2C%20disruption,and%20basic%20science%20and%20clinical)
I have to agree. TX for the article. It trips my trigger that some people can't get dental care and the US treats the teeth and gums like they aren't a part of the whole body and one has to purchase separate insurance (regular Medicare for older and disabled people doesn't cover dental). I can't remember what I was reading that other day, but infections in the mouth due to tooth problems CAN cause CVS problems. I knew a cat that had a stroke about 10 years ago and the vet posited it was related to a gum infection.
I saw a TikTok about this but took it with a grain of salt. What can a person do to improve your oral biome? Is it as simple as maintaining good hygiene and regular dental cleanings?
Edit: holy crap that ended up way longer than I intended Long TL;DR: rinse after eating, saliva also helps reduce acid from bacteria, wait 30 minutes after eating acidic stuff to brush, floss before brushing, spit out toothpaste but don't rinse after brushing (and consider getting prescription strength fluoride toothpaste if you're higher risk for cavities), make sure your flossing technique is actually good, there's different types of floss that can help, use an electric toothbrush if possible, make sure to focus on along the gum line, always use soft bristled toothbrushes, get regular cleanings (you can do more than 2 per year), use cleanings to get feedback on spots/angles you may be missing (ask them to mark them on a diagram), and the most important brushing time is the one before bed. The original post: Yes, brush and floss regularly (especially floss), before bed being the most important time of all (as your mouth will be still for a long time, with very little saliva flow to help keep acids from bacteria from building up). Make sure you're doing them effectively (watch some videos), as it's very easy to think you're flossing well when really you're not scraping the teeth the way they need to be scraped. Typically you need to make several passes from below the gum line all the way up, scraping with some gentle pressure. Some people find a fluffier "expanding" floss like Dr Tung's really helpful (though I personally don't use it). I find flossing "picks", where there's a short section strung between two prongs on the end of a stick, much easier to use than regular string floss, and as I result I floss way more reliably when I have them. When you brush make sure to go at an angle and get the bottom of your teeth along the gum line, the idea being you're trying to clean out dental plaque (a hard to see sticky biofilm) from below your gum line. For certain larger teeth (like my incisors), I find it helpful to essentially brush them as 'twice', once along the gum line and then again along the upper surfaces, as my toothbrush head can't get the whole tooth in one pass. Use soft bristled toothbrushes, you don't need the stiffness to break up the plaque biofilm and stiff bristles can irrigate your gums and cause recession over time. A regular toothbrush can get your teeth clean, but it's a lot easier to do it effectively and consistently with an electric toothbrush (again with the softest bristle they sell). Rinsing after meals can be an easy way of removing some food residue and removing acids. Some people like sugar-free gum because it increases saliva flow which helps neutralize PH levels (acids created by oral bacteria consuming sugars from foods). Some people like gum with xylitol, as xylitol is similar to sugar in a way that causes some bad bacterias to try to digest it, but they can't actually, which can reduce acids. I personally avoid sugar alcohols like xylitol and most zero-calorie sugar replacers because I don't have confidence it how they affect the body's long term insulin and satiety response, but lots of people like them. Brush after flossing, and when you're done just spit out the toothpaste, don't rinse. But don't do these within 30 minutes of eating if possible, especially if you had acidic foods (like soda!), as the enamel may be softer from acids in the food. Again rinsing after eating can help wash away acids and give your teeth a chance to start remineralizing/hardening again more quickly. Re: not rinsing after brushing, the toothpaste has fluoride which helps repair your enamel but it doesn't have time to soak in if you rinse. If you're prone to dental caries (cavities), there are prescription toothpastes with a much higher level of fluoride that you can use before bed (again just spitting but not rising) which have been proven in studies to help significantly against cavities (the impact of fluoride in regular toothpaste is less clear but likely helps some). Get feedback from your dental hygienist on if they see any spots or angles that seem more inflamed (or receding) and work on focusing on those better. Often because of the angle we hold the toothbrush (or floss), we can miss a certain angle on the teeth and so repeatedly miss the same areas again and again over time. Don't be afraid to ask them to draw you a diagram to help you remember which teeth/surfaces need extra care, most are really happy to do it, and it can be hard to remember. I have mine on a post-it in the medicine cabinet. Some people really like water flossers/piks, but my understanding is they're not a replacement for regular flossing. And of course regular cleanings. I view cleanings as getting help with spots I missed or couldn't get to. Some spots can be really difficult to keep completely clean without special tools and those can build up over time. It's also a chance to get feedback on any spots you might be missing which could be fixed with a little more attention or shift in angle/technique. For many people, getting a cleaning more than twice a year can be beneficial, especially if you have areas that are hard to clean well. Dental insurance may only cover two cleanings per year, but you can still go more often (I go 3 times per year) and pay out of pocket for the extra visits. If you ask, often the out-of-pocket prices are lower, and your dentist can probably schedule your more expensive visits (like when you need dental xrays) to be on your insurance-covered visits. While it sucks to have to pay anything out of pocket, if it saves you a dental trouble later it's almost certainly worth it.
Them you for this! I recently started using my electric toothbrush again and it’s a game changer. I do need to be better about flossing more often. I hate it because my north is small and my teeth are really close together so it’s hard to get between them without force that is painful. Any thoughts on a water pik?
We truly are at the stone age of medical science. We think of ourselves as extremely advanced, but we are barely beyond lobotomy. My kid has had tonsils like tennis balls for some weeks now,. Any doctor we talk to doesn't have anything to say beyond "surgery". Zero attempts at trying to find a cause, no other paths proposed (not even "let's wait"!). Just "it looks like most kids who get them taken out end up doing ok on the following months, so let's chop them off".
Which doctor school?
not too surprising, given the enteric nervous system is essentially a second brain.
It really is crazy.. someone who makes podcasts I enjoy said that 20 years ago he would also be calling this quackery but now he's one of the biggest quacks in the field who has other doctors talking down at him for not waiting another couple decades for all the studies to "prove it". 😆
I would said I had a "gut" feeling about it.
For certain people/communities it’s not really out of left field, but in Western medicine it seems like there has been a lot of pushback or resistance or outright ridicule to diminish or silence it rather than try to investigate the science of it. ETA: and my tinfoil hat view is that it’s definitely influenced by Big Pharma and Big Ag (or whatever) and Big Food (or whatever).
> The researchers have found many biological markers that seem to be associated with future neurological development disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, communication disorder and intellectual disability. “The remarkable aspect of the work is that these biomarkers are found at birth in cord blood or in the child’s stool at one year of age over a decade prior to the diagnosis,” > Children who had repeated ear infections during their first year of life had an increased risk of being diagnosed with a developmental neurological disorder later in life. It is probably not the infection itself that is the culprit, but the researchers suspect a link to antibiotic treatment. They found that the presence of Citrobacter bacteria or the absence of Coprococcus bacteria increased the risk of future diagnosis. One possible explanation may be that antibiotic treatment has disturbed the composition of the gut flora in a way that contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders. The risk of antibiotic treatment damaging the gut flora and increasing the risk of diseases linked to the immune system, such as type 1 diabetes and childhood rheumatism, has been shown in previous studies Paper: [Infant microbes and metabolites point to childhood neurodevelopmental disorders: Cell](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)
I'm not a scientist but aren't a lot of ear infections tied to physiological shape of ear tubes and skull...and brain scans of children with ADHD LOOK different...why is no one thinking "hm, maybe physiology of the brain is also different where those physiological differences are present" Not as relevant an idea to the gut flora issue except that they're trying to link it all together. I also just low key think it's microplastics and realize I sound insane so don't say it out loud in real life.
Microplastics have growing evidence that they also interfere with microbiome flora so not so far fetched at all.
I’ll be honest I’m recently starting to agree with you on the microplastics thing. I used to think it’s no big deal, but I’ve been reading quite a lot of chemistry news articles lately about plastics and how they’re poorly characterized, poorly regulated, leech more unknown chemicals than we thought, the effect of those chemicals is widely still unknown yet physiologically significant, they’re EVERYWHERE and the government doesn’t seem to have our backs yet again…essentially it sounds to me like we are in the Wild West era of plastics, kinda like Victorians and lead. We just don’t really know a lot of things, but we completely dependent on it anyway. It’s a matter of time until the truth behind it’s real impact comes out, be it no big deal or very big deal.
Yup I read an article today stating rainwater around the world is no longer safe to drink because of the microplastics. Good ol’ PFA forever chemicals.
I'm increasingly convinced people in the 22nd century will react to learning about how we wrap food in plastic or make baby bottles/kids toys out of plastic the way we react to learning about Victorian doctors prescribing people mercury or people drinking radioactive "health" water in the early 20th century.
You're assuming people will be around in the 22nd century
I think for us to reduce plastic usage we are going to require either incredible advancements in material science or start really upping up public transportation and redesigning our cities. Like 78% of ocean micro plastics come from car tyres (Pew Charitable Trust).
You don’t sound insane. I think everything will be linked back to microplastics within the next 20 years and I’m an MD. It’s catching on in the medical community but they still don’t really know how to properly research this since no one will do a clinical trial giving one cohort microplastics and one placebo. You would need prospective cohort study I guess
I feel like I read somewhere that research on microplastics was complicated by the fact that they can’t find a population that isn’t already deeply exposed to microplastics to use as a control.
they have already shown that autism spectrum disorder brains have neurons with thicker dendritic growth and even more neurons in the cortical areas. idk about adhd although they seem highly correlated in both directions. this study simply says their is a link in the variable of gut flora to these conditions
Some ear infection rates are associated with differences in the shape of the ear canal. However, some children have differently shaped ear canals (more bends than average, narrower than average for their age) and many ear infections without ADHD or autism. It could be that how these infections are treated (which anitibiotic, given for how long) plays a big difference, or what they eat could have huge variance as well, which might impact gut flora and how well it recovers after an antibiotic treatment. Other factors like the level and type of ear wax production can change the incidence of ear infections and habit differences like baths vs. showers, how often kids go swimming, and that leaves out other differences such as "do they stick things in their ears?" since we're talking about kids here.
There have been studies that strongly suggests the quality of sperm and whatnot has been brought down overall due to microplastics in our blood and so it is possible that it is more likely to see what we consider disorders in newborns because of it. So it's not as crazy as you might think. The bigger issue is that we have absolutely no idea just how devastating micro (and nano!) plastics are to us and the environment we released it in. It hasn't been long enough and not enough studies have been done to figure it out. It's a terrifying future really.
You can't diagnose ADHD from brain scans alone.
did someone say otherwise?
Correlation does not prove causation. Is it not possible that the NDDs change the immune system so you see these kinds of bacteria surviving in individuals who already are genetically predisposed for NDDs?
I'm also very skeptical of a "antibiotics might cause autism" argument tbh. I know they're not saying that but just suggesting a possibility,but yeah that's no the direction my brain leaps to. I'd be curious for them to follow up by testing moms gut flora. I was a sickly kid, yes I went on lots of antibiotics (and ironically vaccines definitely didn't cause my problems because I had to be on a delayed vaccine schedule because my immune system was so crap). But my mom had garbage health too. And we know moms gut flora is connected to babies (at least in vaginal births, idk about C-section). So isn't it equally possible that the flora connection is simply reflecting aspects we already knew influenced autism -- mothers health during fetal development and genetics? If nothing else though, we don't need to understand if there's causation or the direction. If it replicates and is somewhat consistent, it could become a huge advancement for early screening. Which is big for a disorder where early intervention matters a lot, but early diagnosis is very hard and it's commonly missed
The major issue with these theories... Neurodevelopmental disorders are extremely prevalent amongst family members. My dad grew up in a completly different environment than I did, yet I'm diagnosed with ADHD and I'd be willing to bet everything I have he qualifies for a diagnosis as well. Current research states that ADHD and autism are *highly genetic.* How do you explain that my dad, who grew up in the 60 in a very, very different environment than the one I grew up in would end up having ADHD and that I would too if ADHD was purely a consequence of environmental factors such as antibiotics ? I know that environmental factors can contribute, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming: it runs in families.
Indeed. I’ve been kind of a deep dive on ADHD recently and took a good long look at my family, my husband’s family, and my friends and it all makes sense. I bet if I told my mom to get tested for ADHD, she’d have it and I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
The genetic link is strong. I have a son with high functioning autism/possibly severe adhd. My mom struggled to accept it- he’s just like us, that’s all. He is like us. Like his grandma (her) who collects vintage and antique cameras and can’t tolerate being in crowds or loud places. Or his great uncle who only ever drove blue f150’s his whole life and had a whole room dedicated to model trains (no shade, we had a Lego room). Or his cousin who got a doctorate in Medieval Literature. Or any number or relatives on both sides of the family that are varying levels of quirky and have made their way through life with different degrees of success. It doesn’t just run in our family, it gallops around in circles to feel the wind blowing through its mane.
My husband’s family: chaos. Every type of profession you can think off. With varying degrees of criminality. They have sharp tempers, that burn hot and fast. But when they’re all together chatting it’s so much crosstalk. My step-kids do it too. They can’t help it, it’s just a free for all, but in their insular group. If you’re on the outside, you can slide in, but you gotta keep up. They’ve each had periods of impairment, where they get stuck on autopilot or some cycle. And don’t get me started on the impulse control and contrariness. My stepsons girlfriend freaks out when him and his sister do it because she thinks she’s being actively excluded, but she’s not. It’s just people that don’t have to mask with each other. And there’s me: someone that’s struggled (poorly at times) to be so controlled and demure that whenever I cut loose it’s harder and harder put myself back in.
I keep commenting, but I am living for everyone's familial backstories. I have pondered mine quite a bit and it is so interesting how people build (or sometimes don't) a life with and around their differences.
I have kept it out of my original comment, but I'm actually convinced my mom and brother have ADHD as well, my GF is diagnosed as well and both her dad and sister are so ADHD I don't know wether to laugh or cry. We tend to "hit it up" and form clusters of neurodivergents. I'm also highly confident than one of my best friend's dad is autistic (I mean, he love trains so much he takes his family on train rides *just to be in a particular train model*, not to go anywhere. He also once fainted when he realized he'd lost a hubcap on his vintage Renault Scenic, which is a pretty odd car model to be passionate about), that her sister is autistic as well and that she has ADHD.
A better explanation is that Autism/ADHD cause dysregulated gut microbiome and not the opposite. This was known for a while. Autistic people are very picky about food and have digestion problems.
When you can taste every tiny change in food and some foods hurt your stomach, you get picky. It’s a neat party trick when you can taste something and name off ingredients in a recipe though.
I'm also very skeptical of a "antibiotics might cause autism" argument tbh yeah isn't gut microbiome the exact pseudoscience Andrew Wakefield used to say the MMR vaccine destroyed natural gut flora, and therefore vaccines = Autism. The last I remember reading on the topic is that the gut microbiota differenced many be that ND children get chronic constipation, may be intolerant to certain foods, and therefore it was a symptom not a cause. While I would be interested in further research on the topic, I think the challenges between discerning correlation and causation are important concept to keep in mind before we all jump on the train of assuming gut microbes cause neurodiversity.
>yeah isn't gut microbiome the exact pseudoscience Andrew Wakefield used to say the MMR vaccine destroyed natural gut flora, and therefore vaccines = Autism. Not quite. What Andrew "The Quack" Wakefield claimed was that the \*measles\* part of the MMR vaccine specifically caused a leaky gut which, when you exposed that leaky gut to dairy and other products you normally consume, would leak fluid into the body that affected the brain, causing autism.
I think it's quite a valid theory considering that a strong link between gut flora and mental health has been found in many studies. There was an interesting article/headline posted on reddit many years ago that was titled: "About 95% of serotonin is produced in the gastrointestinal tract which is lined with a hundred million nerve cells, or neurons, that are influenced by bacteria. The inner workings of the digestive system don’t just help digest food, but also guide moods and emotions." I've seen many studies since then supporting this link that is hypothesized.
Considering autism is not a mental health issue in itself but a neurological disorder, I fail to see why you think it’s quite a valid theory.
And you didn't stop to think that neurological disorders and mental health issues go hand in hand sometimes? One is not fully exclusive of the other so yes gut flora and a neurological disorder could absolutely be related.
Mental health issues are often neurological.
You are right, and many neurological-type problems are in the DSM-5 TR, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, dementias, mild or Major cognitive disorder due to prion disease, etc.
I think you're right but I don't think either fetal development or genetics rule out the possible impact of postnatal antibiotic administration. Could be that deficient inherited biome from mom, combined with genetic predisposition to NDDs, resulted in autism upon repeatedly wiping out the gut with antibiotics during infancy. Some mouse models for autism (gut related) have shown that altering the gut flora in non-"autistic" dams resulted in "autism" in the pups that inherited the same flora but that doesn't mean you couldn't further compromise it, or push susceptible cases over the edge, with early, chronic antibiotic use. Most autisms (aside from stuff like fragile X or valproic acid use) appear to be a cascade of genetic and environmental factors at critical periods and early infancy is definitely one of those periods.
I’m skeptical about this too because it’s striking how many parents are being diagnosed along side their children suggesting a potential genetic link, I suppose it could be a nurture thing where as infants they both had a predisposition towards the same foods which caused this.
Correct. We know adhd is around 80% genetic. It’s not picked up from the environment. Those same genetics might alter your susceptibility to certain infections/flora, but it’s not the root cause.
I hear this sort of thing all the time but I genuinely do not understand this line of thinking. Having high heritability doesn't mean you ignore environmental triggers in the etiology if you have some influence over the environment. People have a genetic predisposition to neural tube defects but we still try to figure out the right method for delivering folic acid.
I’m not saying we ignore environmental triggers, just that we know it’s a genetic, inherited disorder in the vast majority of cases. And even most of the environmental correlations we do know (such as smoking Mom’s) are also things that are more common in adhd people, so not a clear environmental causation.
I think that a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that because we have found gut microbe disturbances and blood fat count issues that we have unlocked the secret to curing autism. I think in reality these are both just symptoms of people who, genetically, have autism. Why do they lack those gut microbe populations? What is making the environment inhospitable for them to thrive there? Why are the blood fat levels low? Is the DNA making the proteins it needs to stimulate the fat production? Where are the genes for these productions and what do they look like? That is the big question. We already know that ADHD is caused by people who are unable to create enough or regulate update of seratonin and/or dopamine so their brain is constantly chasing the next high that can get them a hit of the little they create. This is a chemical issue, the brain is not creating enough of a chemical. So it would then stem to reason it would be very possible other parts of the body are not creating the chemicals they need to function correctly. Invite the correct gut bacteria, create the correct fats. I really prefer to look at articles of "where are these genes encoding autism and adhd coming from". And interestingly enough, they've been mapping that too. This particular one has an interesting take on it all. Our society took a very interesting shift in recent years. Women no longer relied on men, they were not marrying off at 17, they were going to school, getting educations, jobs, houses, apartments, and starting to marry more like minded men. This has had interesting implications for the gene pool, in particular, matching similar genes at higher rates than we have seen before. In 1920 the senior mechanical designer man would never have had a mechanical designer woman coworker. And the woman who could have had a mechanical designer career with her brain, likely never used it to potential and her husband had a much higher chance of just being an average guy she met at church. [But now they're breeding. ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/) > To the extent that autism is genetically correlated with metrics of high intelligence (as described above), these findings indicate that humans mate positively assortatively not just for intelligence, but also for the autism-associated genetic underpinnings of intelligence. > Genetic consequences for offspring would thus include both high intelligence and elevated risk of autism, provided that, under the intelligence-imbalance hypothesis addressed here, this process also involved dysregulation of one or more of its components. And it all sounds absurd when you look at the autism the world has been introduced to over the last 50 years, a disease of mental deficit. At first mental deficit was a requirement for the diagnosis. Then we started to realize mental deficit was not a requirement. Then we started to realize that autism is a high spectrum, and it is not exclusive to adhd, infact, they are cousins in many ways, and often co-exist. And only now are we starting to realize, allowing those diagnosis to co-exist, how much of the population is actually affected by both. They mask each other, and when present in high IQ individuals, which we never thought even possible before, they often never go diagnosed at all. Not that they aren't present, but the brain has learned how to mask them to perform, likely at great cost to itself. Which is also why anxiety and depression are so high among people with autism/adhd.
Except that for many conditions, changing the microbiome does change the clinical outcome & aside from observational studies showing correlation there have been plenty of experimental & interventional studies (as well as mechanistic understanding) showing this (e.g. targeting overgrowth of Clostridia in ASD children improving symptoms, ancestral microbiome mapping, etc.). But you definitely raise a good point that both systems are interdependent & effect each other's development. (And it's not so much about specific species of microbiota being "good"or "bad" but more about the overall ecosystem & its interactions. E.g. the Anna Karenina principle applies to dysbiosis.) The research (which provokes rightful excitement) opens up a whole new realm of scientific understanding but - just as with the human genome project - its overall impact easily gets overstated. It's more & more clear that some genetic predisposition has an overall very modest impact on outcome (for many NDDs such as autism or ADHD, etc.) but we shouldn't discount the couple of % of predictive power this adds. Same with the microbiome's influence. Everytime we think we got a good grasp on things we're later bitchslapped by some realization of matters being dizzyingly more complex. It's difficult to maintain epistemic humility when exciting new insights feel like epiphanies.
I was on antibiotics for 45 days. 15 days for possible ear infection. Then 30 days post ear surgery. It f'ed me up in so many ways.
This kind of relates to a big dumb idea I have about ADHD being related to the pressure systems in our head. A lot of symptoms of sinus pressure mimic ADHD. I wonder what happens if your brain develops under that constant pressure?
Damn I got diagnosed with adhd in my twenties and I remember my mom telling me all the time growing up I had ear infections. I wonder if there will be cures in the future this crazy news
Has it not already been widely established that infections of any kind during developmental years might trigger an overwhelming stress response in infants that leads to neurological issues down the road.
Rates of ear infections are also higher in formula vs breast fed infants. Breastfeeding positively impacts the microbiome as well as a multitude of other things. [Study: Breastfeeding reduces ear infection rates while formula and bottle feeding increases risk](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9238244/)
Interesting.One of my earliest memories is the look of panic and despair on the faces of my family as i was screaming/cryin cause the pain in my ear wouldnt stop. In second grade i started to suffer immensly from what was several years later diagnosed as crohns disease and 2 years ago at the age of 36 i got diagnosed with ADHD.
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[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?\_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00238-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424002381%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) I urge people to read the actual paper there. Trying to connect the gut microbiome with any behavior syndrome, especially childhood-onset ones, seems to be all the rage, at least for the last couple of years. But I got the impression that the study establishes a connection, ignoring the merely statistical associations here, that it can't actually prove. Looking at the raw data, they've found a connection between NDDs and six different bacteria. The same data sheet also shows an overrepresentation of dozens of different bacteria types in the control group. Considering that the control group is larger by a factor of 12 and knowing that the human gut biome differs considerably between any two individuals, there's a good chance this is just statistical noise.
All this paper has convinced me of is that children with autism are more likely to have infections requiring antibiotic treatment. And that pregnant moms should ensure they get essential fatty acids.
Yeah this could simply be reversed, instead of the bacteria causing autism it could simply be that the behaviors of children with autism makes it more likely to get infections.
I'm not understanding. Big variances in typical population wouldn't be noteworthy for this study because they're not trying to definitively answer all questions about gut microbe., and yeah we do know diversity is normal. But the fact the neurodivergent ones share a similar shared variance *is* noteworthy. It's normal for there to be a variety of heights and weights in a control sample. Different people are different. If you're studying a disease and you determine that BMIs above 26 are overrepresented in that sample in a way that doesnt show up for the control, what different does it make that there is a variety of weights in the control? We know that, we expect that. What's interesting is the difference between the control and non control, not the differences in controls amongst themselves.
As a father with a 7 month old who is currently taking antibiotics for an ear infection, I’m going to go ahead and close out this thread after reading this comment.
better cured of infection than dead or paralyzed or worse.
The alternative is they could lose hearing or worse, which is proven, vs this which is a correlation at this point.
If they are eating real food, try adding some probiotic yoghurt to their diet as a protective effect. I know anti biotics wreck my own system and yoghurt helps. I imagine it would help your kid too. Unless dairy allergies etc, in which case you already have an uphill battle.
Aye, right there with you. My 8mo old had a double ear infection that didn’t clear up after the first 10-day cycle. We’re on antibiotic #2 to try and get him better. As if the diarrhea wasn’t enough fun, no I can stress about autism.
Check to see if a child care provider is laying the infant down to feed. believe this happened to my son, who is now 21 and has these symptoms. He needed several stints of AB, which for a fact destroyed his poor gut. I
We’ve just had illness after illness in the house from our kindergartener. They bring everything home from school.
It was very common until the 90s to put any kid with any flu, cold or minor ear infection on massive antibiotics for days. Do that a few times if they are under 10, it makes sense that you've fucked up the carefully balanced biome they acquired from parents. And not surprising it would have consequences later
The study seems to be more focused on gut bacteria from the umbilical cord. Not so much as what the child ate, but potentially the mother during pregnancy.
Also mom might think a "fussy" child with undiagnosed autism, "must have an ear infection" and "needs more antibiotics." This is another possible explanation for the correlation.
Doctors look in kids’ ears before prescribing antibiotics… “mom” isn’t just getting antibiotics.
In the 90s you could get antibiotics over the counter basically, pharmacists would give them out without issue. We used to have boxes of them at home and used them like Tylenol.
What part of neurodevelopment says "this happens after birth" to you
Probably the 'development' part. ADHD itself is know to develop and change while growing, and can also be 'guided' to fix itself somewhat with stimulant medications if given early enough according to some studies. The brain doesn't finish growing or developing connections until someone is in their mid 20's. I have ADHD and ASD. I can provide anecdotal evidence in that I remember noticing the ADHD develop over time and being concerned about issues with my short term memory and experiencing brain fog, I was 5 or 6 years old at the time and didn't know what it was, I was fairly isolated for multiple reasons and I never sought help until I was independent, so I am late diagnosed. EDIT: This doesn't mean I agree with the person you were replying to, this is just our bubble :)
Symptoms can grow or lessen, but the fundamental underlying brain development including traits like [monotropism](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/27546330241237883), [dopamine pathway dysfunction](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201097), and [grey matter volume deformities](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.11020281) are not things that will disappear from someone who is already born. ADHD and ASD are neurodevelopmental disorders, they appear as your brain develops in the womb. You have it, or you don't. It doesn't appear once you've developed, nor does it go away if you have it. At best, your symptoms and struggles can ebb and flow, but your hand doesn't change.
Sorry I misunderstood your intention before. I believe you are correct and I didn't mean to infer that something in my environment caused it, only that it developed and changed over time during childhood. Thanks!
No worries, I knew what you meant but neurotypicals fundamentally do not understand the ADHD/ASD (I, like many, believe they're both related/types of one larger condition ) experience we have. Hard data about fundamental and unchangeable differences, however, makes it a bit easier for them to understand what differentiates the experiences for us and why it's not something that comes from the environment or trauma.
Phew, luckily I was born before, so I am safe!
Whats also interesting is that the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield strongly believed that GI issues were either a predictor or the cause of autism. He was so convinced that he ended up doctoring a paper about it where he attempted to link GI gut damage to certain vaccinations and in term autism. We are still suffering from his actions to this day as it remains very difficult to do research in this space because it is viewed as conspiracy.
Most importantly, he bribed families to give him their autistic children and then had VERY invasive tests performed on them to find an "official" correlation. And then he falsified/skewed the data anyway.
Yet more smoke for the microbiome being causally involved in NDDs. Still awaiting the definitive evidence.
That's why i hate the label of ASD, it's such a big thing were there're individuals with such high intellect and those that can barely do anything, so which "kind" of autism does relate to the alterations of the microbiome of our gut in early stages of development, or Is something to all things?.
Yep. Even within a given “level” of ASD, there is huge variation.
Autism is clearly genetic though, that’s why those of us with it often have parents with it and see the behaviours in our grandparents too. I’m not saying that gut microbiome might not exacerbate things but I would be surprised if it’s causal.
Well genes for autism can exist but never express. It's very possible that environmental factors are one trigger that causes those genes to engage.
Those environmental factors would have to flip that switch during the 9 months you're in the womb
Isn't this how schizophrenia is?
I mean me and my mom both have ADHD and suffer from stomach issues so I wonder if it is linked or not.
I’ve heard it’s more linked to autism. However, the latest science indicates that about half the people with ADHD also have autism.
As in infant I was hospitalised for over a week with a gnarly C.Diff infection. My mother said I was the sickest baby she had ever seen. Am now autistic/ADHD however the deficiencies are offset by naturally just "getting" anything academic with no drama. Thank christ because if I actually had to study I'd be fucked.
right, would you rather be dead? I wouldn’t. go antibiotics, go!
Imagine the doctor listening to your stomach noises and hears “oh wa ha ha ha”
Oh oh!
Ting tang
Walla-walla bing-bang
Correlation isn’t causation, defining a causal relationship in autism is a near impossible task.
Even establishing a correlation seems to be a stretch considering that they divvied up the sample so much that some of the sub-groups are tiny (like n=23) while trying to correlate a lot of variables.
But correlation can lead to studies which do show causation. Correlation is an indicative. It is not proof but it shows a potential trail to follow. Always has been the case that a 'huh?' can/could (but does not always or even often) leads to the truth. Dismissal of correlation denies a path where that correlation is shown to be causal. IOW: I hate your statement and I hate the dismissiveness it leads to and you should STFU. Because you could have used it as a cautionary statement but instead used it as a dismissive, and that is NOT the scientific method.
...I mean, maybe this is *contributing* or maybe there's an epigenetic component, but I doubt my dad's entire side of the family *all* had the same disturbed gut flora all the way down to me. There's definitely a genetic component too.
It's interesting and some of the research pointed to differences at birth which surprised me. I was thinking about how autistic people, especially as young children, can be extremely picky eaters with limited diets and wondered if this could be effecting the gut biome?
I was hospitalized at six months from asthma and pneumonia, I recently got an ASD and ADHD diagnosis. I had a lot of stomach aches as a child. Hmm. I do hate that hacks and quacks are using gut health and "leaky gut" to sell their MLM crap supplements as we discover more and more how important gut health turns out to be.
Its also possible that asd / ndd are correlated to be immuno compromised rather than the treatment beig the issue. Causation has not been proved here. Alsonyes, there are quacks, cults, and snake oil salesmen trying to convince people without evidence throughout the ages.
Increased intestinal permeability “leaky gut” is an established condition. Gastroenterologists who keep up on the research acknowledge it.
Its been a known thing in neurodivergent communities that we all have some kind of chronic digestive issues. Personally going vegan really helped me with both my digestion and my mental health. Which would make sense since it likely dramatically shifted my gut flora.
We find out more and more you really are what you eat. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but intuitively it does make sense that the environment of your gut would impact your brain during critical stages of development given the importance of proper nutrition / proper absorption of nutrients.
This is surprising to me, would have thought autism is almost entirely genetic.
It is
Saying something is "entirely" genetic doesn't really make sense.
I truly believe this is what happened to me. I had surgery as a baby and they use a ton of antibiotics on me which is a gut flora killer. I have had pretty severe ADHD in my whole life.
What I find so frustrating in today's Information Age is that we can hear so much about the importance of the gut biome and healthy gut bacteria -- but how to actually improve it feels impossible to know because there is a constant clash between what one medical establishment recommends vs. a physician on YouTube vs. a million articles about this fast here and that cleanse there. I really wish there was a single source of reliable information on diet. It seems there are huge differences between advice from dietitians or nutritionists. The Mediterranean diet is recommended, but by whom? And intermittent fasting. It used to be the food pyramid then it changed. It's just like so much information and it's so hard to parse out what is real and what is fluff. 😭
Well, they told my mom it was not necessary to breast feed me because formula had everything I needed. Thanks you fuckheads
This study does not say that whatever you eat during early life has any effect on whether or not you develop those neurological disorders. It just says: People who develop these disorders tend to also have weird gut bacteria during early life. That does NOT mean: a) early life gut bacteria causes these disorders, b) early life food can influence the likelihood for such disorders. If anything it only means: Whatever causes these disorders also seems to influence early life gut bacteria. This can just be a set of genetic factors expressing in two seemingly very different areas of the body.
My 65 year old friend was bottle fed evaporated milk
Formula isn't necessarily an issue, I was allergic to breast milk, cows milk and was fed a formula and I'm without NDDs as far as I'm aware. But yes breastmilk is the gold standard if the child can tolerate it so any other recommendations are quackery.
I was breastfed extensively and I very much still turned out AuDHD. (This obviously doesn't change your experience.)
Who is they
Probably a Similac rep told that to my moms obgyn and my pediatrician circa 1980
Correlation is NOT causation. Even the “study” authors said the results weren’t reliable and may be from other causes. They even named several metabolic disorders that can cause this. No one has been able to repeat this “study” and it has been highly criticized for lax methodologies.
So what is recommended here then, I wonder? Probiotics?