Something Causes Autism: Mercury and autism research...

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Mercury and autism research...

A hit on PubMed that looks interesting, titled 'Mercury and autism: accelerating evidence?' Unfortunately I don't have access to more than the abstract.

According to the abstract (authored by Mutter J, Naumann J, Schneider R, Walach H and Haley B at the Institute for Environmental Medicine and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Freiburg, Germany), the links between mercury exposure and autism are real.

The abstract notes: 'Recently, it was found that autistic children had a higher mercury exposure during pregnancy due to maternal dental amalgam and thimerosal-containing immunoglobulin shots.' Furthermore, 'In vitro, mercury and thimerosal in levels found several days after vaccination inhibit methionine synthetase (MS) by 50%. Normal function of MS is crucial in biochemical steps necessary for brain development, attention and production of glutathione, an important antioxidative and detoxifying agent. Repetitive doses of thimerosal leads to neurobehavioral deteriorations in autoimmune susceptible mice, increased oxidative stress and decreased intracellular levels of glutathione in vitro. [...] Promising treatments of autism involve detoxification of mercury, and supplementation of deficient metabolites.'

It's interesting to read the point about neurobehavioural deterioration in 'autoimmune susceptible mice'. There are a few autoimmune issues in my family history (for instance eczema and allergies). But you have to look at the most recent generation to find any autism.

Something causes autism.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16264412

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Milli's story

My girl got a mercury-containing version of the Hep B jab when she was only hours old.

We took her home to an environment we now feel to have been laden with heavy metals and pesticides (the latter from prior inhabitants as I never use sprays). The local suburb had a coal smelter. The childcare centres all had treated pine.

She seemed to develop normally, though with a stiff neck but floppy lower body. However she began to use words at an appropriate time and learned to walk (though her gait was stilted). Progress stagnated and then began to go backward from about 14 months on. She was assessed at around two and found to be autistic; from that point after we switched diets to be gluten/casein free her ability to drink and eat began to collapse, she stopped recognising people and spent most of each day and a lot of each night crying and hitting her hands on walls. Words became scrambled and then completely disappeared. One day I looked into her eyes and there was nobody there.

We'd been seeing plenty of doctors, but had lately heard about a 'biomedical' approach, so took her to see a practitioner. A hair test showed aluminium and other heavy metals among the highest the lab had seen. Alas, before we could begin serious treatment she had 4 days refusing food or liquid, and the situation was suddenly dire. The biomedical paediatrician was a 6 hour drive away. We were on our own.

I decided to try one more thing before taking her to hospital, and that was chelation using alpha lipoic acid following protocols in a book called Children With Starving Brains.

I made sure to give a mineral supplement alongside. The local paediatricians refused to take part or oversee, and told me the hair test was 'fringe dweller stuff', so I followed the book.

In two days she could swallow properly for the first time in close to 18 months. We were syringing her vitamin tonic and she went very still and quiet and swallowed each mouthful normally. (It was only at that point that we realised why she hadn't been eating or drinking for so long.) Two weeks later her lopsided gait had normalised. Around that time I was putting her in the car when she took hold of my head, turned it to face her and laughed, looking into my eyes for the first time in ages.

What helped Milli? Aside from chelation with alpha lipoic acid we saw improvements with the following:

- fish oil
- vitamin B-12 injections
- mineral/vitamin tonic Hi Vita in liquid form
- probiotics

When her hair test had first showed the highest percentile for aluminium, I'd had our 2 water sources (bore and tank) and her rice milk tested. Both waters were within safe limits. The rice milk, according to the technician, appeared to have 'hundreds of times higher' levels of aluminium than the safe level for drinking water. It seems likely to me that Milli's 'leaky' gut was unable to seal out aluminium from that source. Naturally after her hair result and the lab test on water and rice milk I removed all tetra packages from the house.

So what causes autism?

I don't know. But it does seem to me inescapable that heavy metals have a part to play, in which case vaccinal mercury from her newborn Hep B jab must remain on the suspect list.

I've since read that mercury depletes B-12 (which makes gut lining). Other demyelating agents may be involved. Unless we stop looking to blame individuals via their genes, we'll never know the causes.