The ever growing list of autism links

Autism Daddy has a great blog. If you have a kid on the spectrum you should try it out, the link is on my sidebar.  He once posted a list from the biology files, a blog that hasn’t been active since 2012. I pulled some from that list and added some new ones to make this list.

Every so often there is a new finding about what could possibly be linked to autism. The list just gets longer and longer. Some have been disproven, like refrigerator mothers, some are ridiculous theories and some are controversial but, every time a new link comes out it gives some parent another reason to feel guilty.

The point of this isn't to make you feel more guilty. I wrote this list to help you realize that as each new link is published that it is just one in a long list of possibilities, many of which you have no control over.

1. Refrigerator Mothers
2. Parents making stuff up so they don’t have to be responsible to teach their kids. Seriously a
    psychiatrist actually wrote about this.
3. Vaccines
4. Mercury
5. Environmental Chemicals
6. Older fathers
7. Older mothers
8. Depressed or stressed moms
9. Prematurity
10. Sibling with Autism
11. Low Birthweight
12. High Birthweight
13. Overweight mother
14. Baby with a big head
15. Being a twin
16. Smoking during pregnancy
17. Diabetes during pregnancy
18. ANY birth complication
19. Being born in the summer
20. Being second born
21. Being a later born
22. IVF
23. Born too close together
24. Genes
25. Immune system problems in the mother
26. Hyperinsulinemia and Diabetes
27. Impaired brain connections
28. Impaired sugar metabolism
29. Biomarkers
30. Clomid
31. Terbutaline
32. Glycine
33. Mitochondrial disorders
34. Regulation of the gene
35. Living near a freeway
36. Too little oxytocin
37. Too much androgen
38. Lyme Disease
39. Antidepressants
40. Pregnant mom caught in a hurricane strike zone
41. Sibling majors in science or engineering in college
42. Emigrating at time of pregnancy