I've been on the hunt for possible mechanisms (for further study) as to why last year after trying an SSRI (escitalopram), to treat an anxiety disorder co-morbid to my ASD, that I ended up in the hospital in a hypertensive crisis. Was an all around terrible experience and I hope one day I can figure out WTF happened to me.
Interestingly the BP rise seemed to be mostly diastolic driven and I had crazy excessive urination which made me think about ADH/aldosterone/etc. Seeing ADH is potentially linked to ASD definitely catches my attention! Some of the alternative theories are, I am a MAO-A knockout (unlikely because of lack of intellectual disability), or possess a hyperfunctional SERT (also linked to ASD).
Really excited for the results of the whole genome sequencing I ordered to arrive.
ive been doing my own research for similar reasons (zoloft in my case), although i fortunately did not end up in a hospital. my girlfriend works with autistic children and swears i have ASD but I havent gotten around to being officially diagnosed, nor am i fully convinced of her claim.
if you dont mind sharing, what genome sequencing service did you use? granted i havent looked too far but a lot of services i saw were kinda sketchy. hope u find the answers u seek :)
Oh the popular WGS services are a borderline scam. I fell for their BS unfortunately so are out a few hundred euros. I don't expect to see results for 12 months or more (if ever).
In the end I found a local company that does WGS sequencing and they are a lot more reasonable to deal with, maybe 1.5-2x the price. So perhaps look for smaller providers, they are all just reselling time on the same Illumina machines.
In your case, just confirming, your blood pressure is otherwise normal and you experienced an episode of severe hypertension after starting Sertraline (zoloft)? No other contraindicated medications? No indications of a bipolar/mania or something of that nature? I've talked to maybe 3x other people now who've had similar experiences (after scouring the internet), and the only commonality I've found is ASD.
This is a bit of a pet project of mine, so if you want to chat about ASD shenanigans, please reach out to: asd.shenanigans@mailbox.org
I was a guinea pig in a clinical trial for a drug that was meant to help with social symptoms of autism, the mechanism of which had something to with vasopressin (I don't know the details): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9260643/ .
It didn't do anything for me and the study got cancelled after I'd been taking the drug for some months.
I’ve theorized in my book _Fat Gas_ that vasopressin levels are tied to elevated indoor CO2 levels.
Would not be at all surprised if these novel social conditions stem from not going outside enough and from poorly ventilated buildings (especially gyms and conference rooms) and transport (planes trains and automobiles each routinely exceed 1000 ppm from everybody’s lungs).
My nephew is on the spectrum (fairly severely). His mother and father are obsessed with air quality and used filtration and forced ERVs for the entire pregnancy and upbringing. Please do not make such strong medical claims without any scientific backing, it is quite harmful to kids with autism and their parents who are already overwhelmed with quackery.
If elevated CO2 increases vasopressin, and if increased vasopressin drives symptoms of autism, then wouldn't we see a large population with autism symptoms in the Midwest or anywhere that people are indoors all winter?
ASD diagnoses have skyrocketed in the past few decades (years?) with no clear cause. I'm just old enough to remember a childhood without cell phones - we didn't have a computer in my house until middle school but we were lower income than most of my friends - and people are definitely inside more and outside less than they were when I was 8 or 9 years old.
With respect, this does not sound rooted in factual basis. Anyone who has taken physiology and been educated in anesthesia knows that there are numerous factors and feedback loops that decouple your theory of a direct link between ambient pCO2 and "vasopressin levels".
I'd like to hear a more detailed explanation on how you feel it overrides compensatory mechanisms in ventilation, with subsequent breakdown in metabolic compensation of acidemia, and how you override negative feedback loops in the RAAS system including inhibition of ANP excretion, unless you theorize it is blunted at the renal level and natriuresis becomes down regulated in this scenario.
Or basically if you want to reframe how everyone sitting in a house has subclinical SIADH I would be eager to hear a more detailed explanation.
I carried a CO2 meter on a flight recently, to use CO2 as a proxy for COVID risk. The levels were quite high for the whole flight--over 1000 pretty much the whole time iirc and worse on the tarmac.
It's true for every other mode of transport but objectively false for planes in flight. However, I'd be curious to see the average when including time sitting on the ground, taxiing, etc., and how that much lower speed affects circulation.
Actually, roads and parking garage and driveways take up spaces that could be used for parks and greenery. You could have tramways with grassy cover, for example.
Every time when I drive to anywhere, I am surrounded by five lane stroads.
By removing all these spaces for cars, you could add back in green spaces. Houses with backyards can still exists, but they will be closer together. Parks will be closer and more accessible.
Plus you can design buildings to have green spaces, or at least support plants. Special consideration would be needed to make rooftop of buildings green, especially when you have to consider the weight and wind.
Space efficiency in urbanism is the key to reclaiming green spaces in our urban context.
You’ll have lower CO2 levels in a dense urban housing with windows open, than in a home in the middle of nowhere with the windows closed.
The issue isn’t the higher amount of CO2 in the ambient air in the cities (AIUI it is; marginally; but it doesn’t matter); it’s that CO2 is very good at concentrating in enclosed spaces.
The co2 level indoors is decided far more by whether you have the windows open (or perhaps if you're cooking) than whether you have people living close by to you.
When I was diagnosed with a neurological condition that was having mostly physical symptoms, the first-line defense was antidepressants. So-named because they were developed to relieve depression, but really what they do is inhibit absorption of serotonin and/or norepinephrine leaving more free in the body to act on myriad different bodily functions. In my case, it actually caused serious digestion issues. It really clicked for me how everything in your brain is a physical process. Not just motor function, but cognition and emotions are all physical functions of how a very complicated mess of molecules bounce off each other. Autism, Alzheimers, ALS are all just misfiring molecules inside your skull. And it is therefore a given that it is physically possible to realign them back into order somehow. We just need to find the right tool to do it.
Yes! This! We are our bodies, and our bodies are biochemical. I'm encouraged by growing awareness and acceptance of things like psilocybin-based treatment for PTSD. Psychobiology is fundamental to... everything a human can experience or be.
Of course there will be lots of molecules involved, but that doesn't make it any easier to understand let alone do something about it. In medicine and especially in psychology our functioning is a huge black box with only indirect knowledge about interactions with certain things at a very high level.
Doing quick search, there is also interactions between Vasopressin and salt and blood pressure. Could ASD be helped by reducing salt? or increasing salt?
I'm not knowledgeable enough to untangle all of the studies where these terms are also used, which I guess is part of the problem this paper is pointing out, that the terminology/naming is confusing.
Is this saying if you have blood pressure problems you might also be at risk of ASD.
Or opposite, if you have ASD, you might have more risk of blood pressure problems.
"The name AVP refers to the hormone’s role in
increasing vascular resistance and regulating blood pressure (via
AVP receptor"
"Given the emerging evidence for central AVP signaling abnormalities
in ASD, we would expect individuals with ASD, or a subgroup of them,
to be at increased risk of AVP-related medical conditions and
symptoms. "
You’re almost there. It’s saying that you’re at risk for central diabetes insipidus known to cause abnormal thirst and urination in like the next paragraph.
What I find hilarious is that the whole first paragraph is about things being named after scientists and then there’s an author named Gesundheit…now I need to look that up.
The article is proposing the latter. Low AVP could contribute to symptoms of ASD. If this is true, they expect a positive correlation between ASD and other better-known issues caused by low AVP.
> Could ASD be helped by reducing salt? or increasing salt?
Personal story here (N=1, not claiming anything other than that). My dad is clearly ASD, and has battled high blood pressure for as long as I can remember. He's now suffering the consequences of 40 years of absolute salt avoidance. 1) I never saw and reduction in the ASD over the past 40 years, 2) lack of salt never changed his blood pressure, and 3) now he's suffering other heath effects, but won't listen to me and only wants to do more of the same.
Avoiding table salt thoroughly could potentially lead to iodine deficiency. It was somewhat common in the past so most table salt over the past century has had iodine added to it to avoid this, but it's cropping back up a bit as people avoid salt or prefer to use "natural rock salts" common in fine cuisine, which are not reinforced with iodine.
My prediction: in fifty years, "low-salt" will have gone the way of "low-fat." Too late for millions of people whose health was injured and lives shortened by these terrible fads.
One thing I always found interesting is that inducing a fever in autistic people, in some of them it will reduce the severity of their autistic characteristics.
Oh, huh, I have always noted an odd ruddiness/doughiness as being common to certain ASD individuals I know. I always just attributed it to being overweight etc but I wonder if that’s the vasopressin fluid imbalance.
What do you change about your lifestyle with that test result? I have a child with ASD, and also drinks mad amounts of water. But I didn't see any treatment plan if this deficiency is confirmed.
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I've been on the hunt for possible mechanisms (for further study) as to why last year after trying an SSRI (escitalopram), to treat an anxiety disorder co-morbid to my ASD, that I ended up in the hospital in a hypertensive crisis. Was an all around terrible experience and I hope one day I can figure out WTF happened to me.
Interestingly the BP rise seemed to be mostly diastolic driven and I had crazy excessive urination which made me think about ADH/aldosterone/etc. Seeing ADH is potentially linked to ASD definitely catches my attention! Some of the alternative theories are, I am a MAO-A knockout (unlikely because of lack of intellectual disability), or possess a hyperfunctional SERT (also linked to ASD).
Really excited for the results of the whole genome sequencing I ordered to arrive.
In the end I found a local company that does WGS sequencing and they are a lot more reasonable to deal with, maybe 1.5-2x the price. So perhaps look for smaller providers, they are all just reselling time on the same Illumina machines.
In your case, just confirming, your blood pressure is otherwise normal and you experienced an episode of severe hypertension after starting Sertraline (zoloft)? No other contraindicated medications? No indications of a bipolar/mania or something of that nature? I've talked to maybe 3x other people now who've had similar experiences (after scouring the internet), and the only commonality I've found is ASD.
This is a bit of a pet project of mine, so if you want to chat about ASD shenanigans, please reach out to: asd.shenanigans@mailbox.org
It didn't do anything for me and the study got cancelled after I'd been taking the drug for some months.
Would not be at all surprised if these novel social conditions stem from not going outside enough and from poorly ventilated buildings (especially gyms and conference rooms) and transport (planes trains and automobiles each routinely exceed 1000 ppm from everybody’s lungs).
It seems like a plausible theory.
I'd like to hear a more detailed explanation on how you feel it overrides compensatory mechanisms in ventilation, with subsequent breakdown in metabolic compensation of acidemia, and how you override negative feedback loops in the RAAS system including inhibition of ANP excretion, unless you theorize it is blunted at the renal level and natriuresis becomes down regulated in this scenario.
Or basically if you want to reframe how everyone sitting in a house has subclinical SIADH I would be eager to hear a more detailed explanation.
Deleted Comment
Every time when I drive to anywhere, I am surrounded by five lane stroads.
By removing all these spaces for cars, you could add back in green spaces. Houses with backyards can still exists, but they will be closer together. Parks will be closer and more accessible.
Plus you can design buildings to have green spaces, or at least support plants. Special consideration would be needed to make rooftop of buildings green, especially when you have to consider the weight and wind.
Space efficiency in urbanism is the key to reclaiming green spaces in our urban context.
The issue isn’t the higher amount of CO2 in the ambient air in the cities (AIUI it is; marginally; but it doesn’t matter); it’s that CO2 is very good at concentrating in enclosed spaces.
The co2 level indoors is decided far more by whether you have the windows open (or perhaps if you're cooking) than whether you have people living close by to you.
It looks like naming thing is not just a problem for programmers.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to untangle all of the studies where these terms are also used, which I guess is part of the problem this paper is pointing out, that the terminology/naming is confusing.
Is this saying if you have blood pressure problems you might also be at risk of ASD.
Or opposite, if you have ASD, you might have more risk of blood pressure problems.
"The name AVP refers to the hormone’s role in increasing vascular resistance and regulating blood pressure (via AVP receptor"
"Given the emerging evidence for central AVP signaling abnormalities in ASD, we would expect individuals with ASD, or a subgroup of them, to be at increased risk of AVP-related medical conditions and symptoms. "
What I find hilarious is that the whole first paragraph is about things being named after scientists and then there’s an author named Gesundheit…now I need to look that up.
Deleted Comment
Personal story here (N=1, not claiming anything other than that). My dad is clearly ASD, and has battled high blood pressure for as long as I can remember. He's now suffering the consequences of 40 years of absolute salt avoidance. 1) I never saw and reduction in the ASD over the past 40 years, 2) lack of salt never changed his blood pressure, and 3) now he's suffering other heath effects, but won't listen to me and only wants to do more of the same.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2017/septemb...
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/05/hormone-reduc...
So you can Google that and see how that is treated and tested for.