How could one of our most used medications be potentially the biggest contributor to Autism and we didn’t realize it?
When i talk with people about acetaminophen and the risk of autism there’s usually two responses so the first response and this is more in the generation of the parents is they’re open to and grateful for that information and they’re more of the generation realizing the risks with medications and overuse of medications and wanting to be more natural but then
With the grandparents uh sometimes the thinking is more well i gave my kids tylenol and they’re fine therefore tylenol cannot be you know a major factor contributing to autism or the autism epidemic so what we see there is this kind of you know false dichotomy and in terms of expecting a very all or nothing outcome with an exposure and we tend to have this type
Of black and white thinking sometimes that it either does or does not always but the fact of the matter is there’s many different inputs and any one input is going to increase or decrease all these other factors that are all connected with all these other factors and then ultimately you get the outcome so it’s not like a light switch you know being offer on it’s
It’s a much more multifactorial but let’s try to get away from that black and white thinking so let’s consider two examples so one let’s consider use of a seat belt so we would say not wearing a seatbelt in the car is a major risk factor for dying in a car accident now someone we would disagree with somebody saying oh well i didn’t wear a seatbelt this morning
And i didn’t die so therefore it is not a major risk factor we would say oh well that was just one exposure or one incident but if you look at repeated exposures the more and more driving instances without a seat belt the more and more risk we would also say well there’s all these other factors right how fast was traffic how how much congestion was there were
Their drunk drivers were there distracted drivers so again you have these two factors one what’s the repetition of exposure and two what are the other risk factors now let’s look at another example let’s look at unhealthy diets and obesity we would say that an unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for being obese even though you could eat unhealthy from time to
Time and not be obese but again with repeated exposure there’s more and more risk and there’s also other factors with that as well right so how much is a person exercising what are their genetics how hungry are they so for instance what’s not just the quantity of food with the quality of food and that can be affected by chronic stress or sleep deprivation that
Those both increase hunger but again we wouldn’t say oh one unhealthy diet is not the main factor since you can have one without the other and same thing with acetaminophen acetaminophen being the active ingredient in tylenol and generic infant fever reducers at least if they’re labeled less than six months that’s what the active ingredient is such as little
Remedies infant fever and pain reliever it’s the same medication acetaminophen so you look at the history of the autism epidemic and there was a basically you start with that increase in 1980 which is when the cdc came out with their warning about the connection with aspirin and ray’s syndrome so that’s when you start seeing aspirin being replaced by tylenol as
The medicine of choice for infant fever reduction so yes there are other risk factors for autism but tylenol seems to be a key player whether that’s uh lowering the threshold for autism or amplifying the negative effects of all the other risk factors you
Transcribed from video
Acetaminophen and Autism: a hard pill to swallow By the Autism Epidemic
