In 2003, 30,400 Australians had autism.
In 2009, 64,600 Australians had autism.
In 2012, 115,400 Australians had autism.
In just 9 years, the incidence rate has tripled. Some official US statistics say autism disorders now affect 1 in 68 people, and some much worse than that. This is an epidemic, but little seems to have been done about the prevention or making the public aware of the causes of these conditions. (See the UPDATE at the end of this article - new statistics just in, showing incidences now at 1 in 40 children).
Autism is not a completely genetically inherited trait. The huge increase in incidences over 1-2 generations cannot be scientifically explained just due to genetics. The increased awareness, leading to more diagnosing of this is not the reason either, especially when there actually is no medical test for a diagnosis - as it's based on subjective observations. The science of epigenetics, however, can explain the increase in autism disorders, by showing how environmental toxins and other environmental factors change our genetic expression to cause autism.
A new study published a few days ago (November 2017) has confirmed a large piece of the puzzle on one of the causes of autism – neurotoxic and heavy metal poisoning of the brains in every autistic person tested. In particular, the neurotoxic element aluminium was mentioned in this study entitled “Aluminium in brain tissue in autism”.
Tests were performed on brains of 10 deceased people with autism, to investigate aluminium toxicity. They tested 5 different lobes or areas of the brain for aluminium levels. What they found was shocking – 40% of all tissue samples showed aluminium levels as high, and 67% as having extremely high levels, across all brain regions. This study showed that aluminium is extremely toxic to the brain, was able to cross the blood-brain-barrier, and actually get inside the neurons (brain cells) to cause damage (ie, inflammation) in the brain.
The aluminium levels seen in the study were amongst the highest EVER seen in brain tissue tests. In fact, some of the tissues from children were equivalent to elderly patients with severe Alzheimer’s disease (a chronic inflammatory and degenerative condition, mostly seen in elderly people, and also linked to being caused by aluminium exposure over their entire life).
There are other toxic chemicals linked to causing autism, and other factors too, such as a reduced ability to detoxify environmental toxins, maternal exposure to toxins when pregnant, infections during pregnancy, nutritional deficiencies, gut infections, dysbiosis, and more.
For these environmental causes of autism, there are many things which can be done to reduce the risk, or to detoxify the body of these environmental toxins, and to reduce symptoms. Some easy tests can be done to check for possible heavy metal toxicity, whether for autism or other conditions. This is often done with an inexpensive hair test and other tests, which we can arrange at the clinic. A detailed report will show the results of levels of good minerals, as well as many heavy metals or toxic ones, or how well their body can detoxify (or not).
If you are interested in finding out more, please contact me, or the clinic for details.
UPDATE: Interesting timing - the CDC (Centres of Disease Control in the US) released a paper just today showing statistics of the incidences of autism and developmental delays in US children. I've read the report - and it's much worse than the statistics in my article, showing a huge increase in autism and developmental delays in just 2 years since the previous report.
The previous official report said autism was seen in 1 in every 68 children in 2012 to 2014. However in this report from 2014 to 2016, the rate has nearly doubled to 1 in 36! This rate is only for Caucasian children which was the worst result. When all ethnicities are included it's 1 in 40 US children with autism, which is still absolutely shocking.
But what is worse, but not mentioned in the news articles on this were the rates of developmental delays, which is at 7% of all children - this is one child in every 14! Of course these are the "official" rates, with the real rates likely to be even worse.
Something seriously needs to be done to 1) investigate and 2) stop and reverse this.