Autism rates have risen from one in 10,000 children 30 years ago to one in 50 today, according to the CDC.1 That’s a jump of 20,000%. During the same time period, one vitamin deficiency has increased dramatically as well.2 Now, two new studies have linked the two trends. Researchers at the University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute studied blood samples from over 4,200 pregnant women and the children born from their pregnancies. They analyzed the samples for vitamin D. And they tested the children for autism spectrum disorder. They found that vitamin D-deficient mothers were almost four times as likely to have autistic children. Dr. John McGrath is a professor of epidemiology and developmental neurobiology at the University of Queensland. He led the research. Recommended for You: Shocking Way to Reverse Age-Related Vision Loss If you’ve ever worried about your eyesight… If it’s getting harder to read small print… Or see well in dim light…
Or make out signs while you’re driving… Then you need to watch this short video about a group of senior-age veterans who used a unique natural substance to reverse vision loss, see better in the dark, and reclaim better eyesight. And a study from Harvard Medical School backs up their results. If you want good vision that can last a lifetime… Click here to get all of the details. “The result of this study suggests that prenatal vitamin D supplements may reduce the incidence of autism,” Dr. McGrath said. The research was recently published in Molecular Psychiatry.3 In another recent study, scientists gave vitamin D supplements or a placebo to 109 autistic children for four months. The children ranged in age from 3 to 10. The researchers reported that “autism symptoms of the children improved significantly” in the group given vitamin D. The placebo group showed no improvement. The study recently was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.4
The children were given 300 IUs of vitamin D per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of bodyweight daily, up to 5,000 IUs. The studies are strong evidence that vitamin D both prevents and treats autism. Why Vitamin D Fights Autism Researchers believe vitamin D increases production of serotonin. It’s a chemical neurotransmitter that regulates mood, appetite, sleep, blood clotting, digestion, memory, and other functions. It’s also necessary for normal brain development. Serotonin is critical to brain cell growth. A shortage of it can lead to many of the classic symptoms of autism. They include lack of impulse control and inability to develop socialization skills.5 How to Make Sure You Have Enough Vitamin D Vitamin D is now the most common nutritional deficiency in both children and adults.6 The British Medical Journal reports that 40% of adults over 50 don’t get enough vitamin D. About half of children are deficient. In light of the new findings linking lack of vitamin D to autism, it’s crucial that pregnant women and children get enough of the nutrient.
But vitamin D is important to everybody’s health. Besides autism, vitamin D deficiency is linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and osteoporosis.7 Have your doctor check your vitamin D level. The optimal range is 50-80 ng/mL.8 If you test low, there are three ways you can naturally increase your levels:9 Get 20 minutes of sunlight each day with your arms and legs exposed. You don’t have to do it all in one session. It’s best to get sun between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Increase your intake of foods high in vitamin D. They include anchovies, wild-caught salmon, pastured eggs, mushrooms, grass-fed beef, liver, and pork. Take a vitamin D3 supplement. We recommend a dosage of 5,000 IUs a day. After a month of getting more sunlight, eating vitamin D-rich foods, or taking a supplement, ask your doctor to test you again to make sure your levels have increased to at least 50 ng/mL.Forward this article here or Share on Facebook. Reading Books Extends Your Life, Yale Study Finds
This Vitamin Helps Prevent Metabolic Syndrome, Study Finds The Right Kind of Brain Training Keeps Seniors DrivingResearch shows that women who have low vitamin D levels at 20 weeks pregnant are more likely to give birth to a child that has autistic traits emerge at some point during their young childhood. The study has sparked immediate concern for a great number of people and has also outlined the importance of vitamin D supplements during pregnancy. Vitamin D is naturally found in abundance in the sun, but doctors will not recommend prolonged exposure, due to the increased risk of skin cancer. So, pregnant women especially should be looking to enhance their vitamin D levels another way, for example via certain foods, or through the use of supplements. It’s this vitamin that is vital for maintaining strong bones and has also been linked to brain growth too. Professor John McGrath from the University of Queensland’s Brain Institute led the research into Vitamin D and its connection to autism, alongside Dr. Henning Tiemeier from the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
McGrath commented, “This study provides further evidence that low vitamin D is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.” He also explained that there is a good chance that taking supplements will reduce the possibility of autism. There are other conditions as well as autism that can be linked to a vitamin D deficiency including asthma, reduced bone density, and schizophrenia. So it’s vital that healthy levels of vitamin D are maintained during pregnancy to ensure the baby gets the best start in life that it possibly can. Another study at the Murdoch Children’s Institute found a new link between vitamin D and food allergy.Generally, autism is characterized by abnormal immunology, altered oxidative stress and even genetic ab-normality in addition to behavioral problems. Medical research data has shown a fact that vitamin D deficiency is ubiquity in children with autism. Since a long time, autism is always the focus of medical community and mass scientists are dedicated to discover effective therapy for autism treatment.
Vitamin D, except for the role in regulating immunity and glutathione, can largely control genome as well as traditional action on calcium and phosphate regulation. It’s recently reported that vitamin D supplementation could improve the behavioral manifestations in autistic child, which illustrated that vitamin D was involved in the pathogenesis of autism. Vitamin is an necessary organic substance for humans and animals to maintain normal physiological functions, playing an important role in human growth, metabolism, and development process. Compared with other vitamins, main source of vitamin D depends on its own synthesis, that is, the amount of obtained from food is relatively less. Autism is an inflammatory disease, so vitamin D may play an anti-inflammatory effect through controlling natural immunity and acquiring immunity regulation. The study found children with autism serum could have a higher proinflammatory chemokine MCP-1, indicating the existence of inflammatory changes in autism.
More than 160 kinds of autoantibodies exist in human autoimmune diseases and multiple brain-related autoantibodies have been found in children with autism, such as anti-GAD65 antibody, anti-MAG antibody, etc. The level of autoantibodies is connected with autism severity, which shows autoimmune problems also exist in autism patients. Therefore, vitamin D supplement might reduce the autoantibody in autism as well as generate immune tolerance and restore normal function of the brain. As is seen, autism has been recognized as a hereditary disease for a long time, so geneticists have spared no effort to explore the common genetic mutation that causes autism but they didn’t make it. Although historical genetic condition did not change significantly, vitamin D deficiency within the worldwide has become more serious in recent years; incidence of autism in recent years may be significantly higher. Autism prevalence and ecological studies of the sun’s ultraviolet irradiation amount could be related together, because the amount of solar ultraviolet radiation is negatively correlated to autism prevalence, which may due to vitamin D deficiency during pregnant period especially the late pregnant development period.