Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article had scientists wondering about the relationship between eating disorders and autistic traits. It seems eating disorders are common in autistic people, so things like anorexia, bulimia, pica, and probably the most common-to-autism one, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (an example being the "white foods diet" of milk, cheese, macaroni, bread, etc). I have an answer as to why, albeit not one that would be acceptable to publish in a research paper without, y'know, actual data to support it.
To be autistic is to live in a world unsuited to you. In most cases, that world rejects you, whether you try hard to fit in or not. The rules of this world are typically not made clear to you, but you're expected to understand them and follow them. Anything less than perfect compliance is followed by closed doors, weakened relationships, and even outright punishments.
Being put under that kind of stress is painful and stressful for any human, naturally. Add in the garbage food that's endemic to the US diet, things loaded with pesticides, herbicides, food coloring, and nutrition-less white flour and sugar, and your experience gets worse and worse. Your senses malfunction. You have a harder time focusing, and thus succeeding in school. It all becomes this maelstrom of exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and eventually, depression. You have no control over yourself or your life.
No human thrives without some control over themselves and their lives... and eating disorders can provide exactly that. You can't control the people at school, or the expectations put on you at home, but you can generally control what you put in your mouth. So that's what some people do.
This study seems to have addressed the question of whether autistic traits precede eating disorder traits (not surprisingly: yes). This would follow with the understanding of autism as an innate, from birth, condition. Eating disorders, on the other hand, tend to develop later, in childhood at earliest.
The other notable thing about this study, to me, was its note that the interventions typically used for eating disorders don't help autistic sufferers nearly as much as they do everyone else. There are biological factors and processes that likely figure into this, such as the fact that some people don't digest dairy and gluten properly. Instead of turning it into energy, their bodies turn it into an opioid, which... naturally, does not go well.
I hope to see more research like this in the future. While there are many comorbid conditions with autism, eating disorders are remarkably common, and make our lives and our parents' lives much worse. With work, we might understand how to treat these so meals never have to be a battle.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
Today's article had scientists wondering about the relationship between eating disorders and autistic traits. It seems eating disorders are common in autistic people, so things like anorexia, bulimia, pica, and probably the most common-to-autism one, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (an example being the "white foods diet" of milk, cheese, macaroni, bread, etc). I have an answer as to why, albeit not one that would be acceptable to publish in a research paper without, y'know, actual data to support it.
To be autistic is to live in a world unsuited to you. In most cases, that world rejects you, whether you try hard to fit in or not. The rules of this world are typically not made clear to you, but you're expected to understand them and follow them. Anything less than perfect compliance is followed by closed doors, weakened relationships, and even outright punishments.
Being put under that kind of stress is painful and stressful for any human, naturally. Add in the garbage food that's endemic to the US diet, things loaded with pesticides, herbicides, food coloring, and nutrition-less white flour and sugar, and your experience gets worse and worse. Your senses malfunction. You have a harder time focusing, and thus succeeding in school. It all becomes this maelstrom of exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and eventually, depression. You have no control over yourself or your life.
No human thrives without some control over themselves and their lives... and eating disorders can provide exactly that. You can't control the people at school, or the expectations put on you at home, but you can generally control what you put in your mouth. So that's what some people do.
This study seems to have addressed the question of whether autistic traits precede eating disorder traits (not surprisingly: yes). This would follow with the understanding of autism as an innate, from birth, condition. Eating disorders, on the other hand, tend to develop later, in childhood at earliest.
The other notable thing about this study, to me, was its note that the interventions typically used for eating disorders don't help autistic sufferers nearly as much as they do everyone else. There are biological factors and processes that likely figure into this, such as the fact that some people don't digest dairy and gluten properly. Instead of turning it into energy, their bodies turn it into an opioid, which... naturally, does not go well.
I hope to see more research like this in the future. While there are many comorbid conditions with autism, eating disorders are remarkably common, and make our lives and our parents' lives much worse. With work, we might understand how to treat these so meals never have to be a battle.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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