“Some guys have all the luck...Some guys do nothing but complain”, this is how a popular song goes. Well, it may not be true at all and some guys really have all the bad luck. I have been investigating the link between neurodiversity (ADHD, ASD, giftedness, etc.) and health problems. In my view neurodiverse people aren’t sick per se, but merely have a different operating system and partially perhaps also different bodies. These people are evolutionary hunter-gatherer types and are genetically slightly different from evolutionary farmer-herder types. The pathology may arise due to evolutionary mismatch, in particular living in a farmer-herder society.
I have argued that this may explain why neurodiverse people have a high risk of suffering from insomnia (higher sensitivity and sensory overload), gastrointestinal problems and food allergies (wheat and dairy, which are “farmer-herder” foods) and postpartum depression (lack of alloparenting support).
Neurodiverse people generally suffer from several comorbidities, like social anxiety and depression. What is less known, there is also a host of physical conditions that neurodiverse people often have.
I have researched some links I have frequently come across in my work:
Higher risk for these mental conditions
- Depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation
- Bipolar disorder
- Anxiety (in particular social anxiety)
- Addictions
- ADHD
Higher risk for these medical conditions
- Insomnia
- Fatigue
- Anemia
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Eating disorders
- Hyper/hypothyroidism
- Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- Postpartum depression
- Allergies
- Cancer
This would confirm Ruth Kampinki’s “hyper-brain - hyper body” theory and associate it with evolutionary hunter-gatherer types. I would like to point out that many of these phenomena can be observed in living hunter-gatherers who live in reservations or can’t really pursue their traditional lifestyle. Both Native Americans and Australian Aborigines have high rates of addiction and cancer, for example.
I am hopeful that the hunter-gatherer hypothesis will shed some light on the ailments of neurodiverse people and help make their lives better. Some guys don’t just complain, they may be really worse off. And perhaps it's really time to de-pathologize neurodiversity and understand the typical symptoms as secondary phenomena.
Here are some related web clippings:
Based on the 69 autistic children born to these women, the researchers calculated that women with anemia are 44 percent more likely to have a child on the spectrum than those who are not anemic. Anemia also ups the odds of ADHD by 37 percent, and of intellectual disability by 120 percent.
The children with the most severe iron deficiencies were also the most inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive. This led the researchers to conclude that "low iron stores may explain as much as 30% of ADHD severity.
Numerous studies indicate gastrointestinal (GI) problems are unusually common among people with autism. For example, a 2014 study suggests that children with autism are about four times as likely as other children to have symptoms such as constipation, diarrhea or abdominal discomfort.
A surprising number of genes associated with autism also have links to cancer.
Autoimmune conditions previously reported in association with autism include type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, and celiac disease.
A personal history and a maternal history of autoimmune disease were associated with an increased risk of ADHD. The previously reported association between type 1 diabetes and ADHD was confirmed. In addition, specific parental autoimmune diseases were associated with ADHD in offspring
Most major psychiatric disorders have been linked in some way to the immune system, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression (e.g., [2]. Although perhaps less well known, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has also been associated with immune alterations.
Researchers say they've found an association between autism spectrum disorder and allergic conditions in children—especially food allergies—in the largest study looking at the issue to date, but noted more research is needed before fully understanding any possible link between the 2 conditions
Severe hypothyroidism in the mother was associated with almost 4-times the risk of the baby being diagnosed with autism as compared to women with normal thyroid tests.
The prevalences of PMDD, PPD and climacteric scores were high in women with ADHD. This is the first study in women with ADHD that suggests that female ADHD patients suffer from significant PMDD symptoms, experience PPD during the first childbirth, and experience more severe climacteric symptoms.
Indigenous Australians were 2.8 times as likely to be diagnosed with liver cancer, 2.2 times as likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer, 2.0 times as likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer and 1.9 times as likely to be diagnosed with cancer of unknown primary site as their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Native American people have higher rates of getting lung, colorectal, liver, stomach, and kidney cancers compared to non-Hispanic White people in the United States.
Comments
Post a Comment