Published on 12, July, 2020
Don't hate me for asking this question.
I went down a bit of a research rabbit hole earlier, I suffer from stress and the occasional digestive issues as well as being ND.
I was reading about gut biology/bacteria etc, when I came across an article about how the gut bacteria in autistic people can differ in make up,some research says it could be due to a restricted diet others point the finger at other factors.
While down this rabbit hole I read an article about infants/babies that are given high doses of antibiotics have a higher prevalence of developing ASD. This seemed like a genuine well researched and linked article and not the "vaccine" horror that went around. Part of it was to do with the antibiotics killing off the gut bacteria in early development.
My son who is autistic went into hospital at around six weeks old and was given very high doses of antibiotics, so I wondered if there was any truth to it or has it already been debunked.
I'm not trying to scare anyone off antibiotics as my son probably wouldn't have survived without them.
Anyway, here's the link if anyone is interested. Does anyone use probiotics etc and do you find them of benefit?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9355470/
Gut problems and autism seem to be linked, but I suspect it is mostly in the direction of autism tending to cause gut problems rather than the other way round, The gut is highly innervated and genetic alleles affecting neuronal development in the brain (causal to autism) are quite likely to affect the development of the gut's nervous system too. This is not to say that things, such as probiotics or anti-inflammatories, that alleviate gut problems might not also have a knock-on effect on the expression of autistic traits. This is certainly possible.