i've been reading up on it and

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it seems alot of the symptoms of AS stem from a dopamine dysfunction where the brain produces abnormally low levels of it naturally.
and having been reading about the effects of dopamine it seems to make a great deal of sense and explains some things.

so i'm wondering, why haven't they come up with a medication yet to specifically deal with that?
i'm not saying we should all take that to a negative extreme and induce a dopmine overload by going out and doing something stupid like cocaine, but there's got to be an effective way to utilize that information.

the scientific evidence is conflicting. They have too much dopamine, the same amount of dopamine as NT, they don't have enough dopamine...blah blah blah.

and you can't just pump people full of dopamine. It can aggravate autism in people significantly

in which case maybe they should do some testing. studies also show a decrease in cortisol. it's a wonder we haven't found a way to help make it more manageable let alone make any conclusive findings on it's 'cause and effect when looking from a realistic standpoint it seems like it should be well within possibility.

or maybe they haven't tried yet because it hasn't been deemed all too marketable. the world revolves around money these days. sad but true. if the market's not big enough, if it's not profitable, to merit production and research into such products, then such things generally never see the light of day.

look at HIV for example they've actually found people who have immunity to the virus that could be worked toward a definitive cure, but the medical companies are making too much money selling these dying people the multitudes of pills that only contain the spread and prolong the inevitable. and so the components of such peoples genealogy that are immune and the idea and process to which these might be put towards scientifical beneficial ends are withheld by privateers for monetary reasons.

or so i've heard. and it is entirely likely considering there's enough genetic variance world-wide that someone could very well have a mutation in their genetic sequence that could consequentially give them some resistance or total immunity to the virus.

Quite apart from my resistance to the idea that my personality is chemical, I'm not sure I want to lose the advantages. While I might not enjoy being unpopular and uncomfortable, I do enjoy my intellect, objectivity and capacities for focus and hard work.

They actually have come up with a medication that addresses that and I'm pretty sure you don't want to take it. The medication is Risperdal and it eases some of the problems of the autism spectrum such as self-injury, aggressiveness and sometimes OCD behaviour. It is also used as an anti-psychotic- it was actually developed as an anti-psychotic and it's use in the autism spectrum is a new development (perhaps based on this research you came across) and off-label. It comes with some pretty scary side effects. It can cause PERMANENT neurological damage of tardive dyskenesia, which persists even after the drug is stopped. And it screws with the metabolism so horribly that catastrophic weight gain has happened to some people. (I don't use "catastrophic" lightly. Some children have gained 50 pounds in a couple months. Imagine that kind of weight gain in a child, not an adult). I think there are some law suits pending.

Maybe a pharmaceutical company will eventually come up with a less terrifying way to modulate dopamine. Until then, it is truly a last resort for those whose self injury or attacks against others are at a such a dangerous level that the potential side effects are a fair trade.

The dopamine theory of neurological/psychiatric disorders got started over two decades ago. A variety of drugs, like Risperdal, were developed, and dopamine levels were tested in mice and humans.

But dopamine does so many different things in different parts of the brain, and its action is modulated by other neurotransmitters, that simply "raising dopamine levels" is not sufficient except in extreme cases of self-injury or psychosis, where the benefits outweigh the risks. Note: I was on Rsiperdol briefly and didn't react well to it at all, so was taken off it.

Since dopamine is manufactured in the body from the amino acid tyrosine (tyrosine -> L-dopa -> dopamine), you can try to see what elevated dopamine levels do to you by taking a tyrosine supplement (available OTC in the U.S.) in varying quantities and at different times of day.

Meanwhile, there is evidence that neurotransmitter levels and hormone levels are different in Aspies, that brain structures are different, that metabolism of amino acids is different, etc. Exactly how all this fits together, and what other pieces of the puzzle are missing, remains to be seen.

It’s not like I know something nobody else does, because I don’t, but have you considered the possibility that there is a physical difference as oppose to a chemical one as in hardware not software?

You can't pump people full of dopamine anyway. It doesn't pass the blood-brain barrier and all you'd end up with would be dopamine-rich urine.

They do use L-Dopa for Parkinson's patients; that's the precursor, and it does pass the blood-brain barrier.

ADHDers have too little dopamine. Schizophrenics have too much. And yet they give neuroleptics to people with ADHD... don't ask me how THAT works. (Well, actually, I know how it works: The side effects make you sit down, shut up, and possibly drool.)

You may be right about there being a dopamine difference in autistics, but even if there is, and we could prove it, we wouldn't really know what it means. It could be the body compensating for some other difference; it could be fundamental but be part of a very much larger picture; it could be incidental and a result of the usual environment that autistics have being different from the typical NT environment. It could just be because we have ADHD at greater rates than the general population.

With complicated things like autism, it's never just one neurotransmitter, never just neurotransmitters, and never purely cognitive...

You know there's something amiss with a theory when you take dopamine antagonists and your autistic symptoms aren't as bad. Seriously, I talk to and interact with my mother a lot more since taking Seroquel. Plus, my head isn't as jumbled with constant messed up and obsessive thoughts, other than my thinking about that one interest (which it doesn't affect).

Look towards white matter dysfunction young man, and you will see stuff that makes more sense.

I like anti-psychotics.