What causes autism?

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in this discussion, you can discuss your theories about the risk factors and causes for autism.

I believe it is a combination of genetics and other factors. For me, my father was 40 years old and thought to be mildly autistic and my mother said she lost weight during her entire pregnancy with me. She says the doctor had her on nausea medication and she was sick and depressed while carrying me. I was a small baby and very pale in color. I got sick easily and cried allot. My development was slow and speech was delayed. So, here is my list of possibilities:

1. Genetics- Father autistic
2. Father over the age of 35.
3. Poor prenatal and postnatal nutrition.
4. Mother given medication while pregnant.
5. Poor nurturing as a baby. Mother suffered from depression.

It's hard to say for sure what is causation and what is simply correlation when it comes to stuff like that. Not much of it applies to me personally. Maybe the possible causes are too extensive to pin down.

For me personally what stands out is:
I was premature.
Was born cyanotic.
And had a series of complications during the first few months.

Did any or all of that cause my autism? Who knows?

Grrrr

I believe its cause is similar to other disorders' proposed cause: a combination of nature and nurture, with severity of the disorder depending on a lot of different factors, hence the variation of symptoms. I definitely believe there's a strong genetic component though. I also believe parents' age could be a factor as well. My mom was 33 and my dad was about 40-41 when I was conceived.

Antibiotic induced intestinal dysbiosis, ingested environmental toxins, poor diet, & likely a genetic predisposition/fault in the enteric nervous system. (and maybe that lack of synaptic pruning in the brain as some research has pointed towards) Fortunately it's treatable via diet, detox/cleansing, and probiotics.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I have my own theory. My theory is that it is genetic and the reason we are seeing an increase in prevalence and severity is because there are many many genes governing it and for the first time they are allowed to start glomming together after a few hundred years of loosening restrictions on mate restrictions in westernized countries. Thats right, I think that the end of arranged marriages is what is causing the increase.

Think about it. When a marriage is arranged, especially in the past, it was strictly a social status and financial arrangement. Very little thought was given to the compatability of personality, similar traits, or interests in common. It wasn't considerred because honestly, there wasn't a ton of interaction anyway because men and women had their "place". So you would get an extravert with an introvert. A logical person with an empathizer. Someone a little eccentric might be married off to a jock. Sure, sometimes two similar people might be married, but in general, not much thought really given to that portion of the deal.

Nowadays the primary things most people look for is similarity of interests, personality traits, etc... rarely do you find an extroverted jock marrying the eccentric artist. It happens, but more often than not... we pick people like ourselves. The result is these genes coming together and getting all lumped together and you get autism and maybe even some other things like mood disorders or adhd and the like. Two impulsive impatient people decide to get married... what do you think the offspring will be like?

I have one child with severe ADHD and another with mid functioning autism. If you go back through my family and my husbands family for a few generations... you find TRAITS of it everywhere and it seems to increase in severity as you get closer and closer to my children. And yes, my husband and I got married because we finally each found a partner that we could tolerate for a long period of time! I started thinking about that and it occurred to me that it could be a very strange self selective breeding that is occurring. If dogs can be bred to have a better sense of smell, why couldn't humans self select, inadvertently, for things like autism or adhd?

It runs in my family, so I think it's genetic for me. My cousins son is aspie too.

There most likely really is a multitude of ways for an autistic phenotype to manifest. Same is true for ADHD phenotypes, and LD phenotypes as well. If we JUST look at easily identifiable genetic disorders...take a look at how many children/people with these rare genetic disorders also have ASD/LD/ADHD comorbidities.

http://www.rarechromo.org/html/DisorderGuides.asp

And this is not even taking into account smaller undetectable mutations and/or epigenetics (caused from gene/environment interaction).

EDIT:
For example here is a disorder I randomly opened from the site:
http://www.rarechromo.org/information/C ... 20FTNW.pdf
These children/adults have a relatively normal physical appearance, and some aren't even affected by the microdeletion at all (this is probably where epigenetics plays a role)...but others are and they can express varying degrees of ASD/ADHD/intellectual disabilities/learning disabilities/epilepsy in addition to subtle physical changes.