I don't know much about the biochemistry here, I assume this is not something like GABA that can be directly supplemented. But maybe there are precursor nutritional and supplemental substances that can help these people upregulate how much of the glutamate molecule in question the body can produce.
> Now, a new study in The American Journal of Psychiatry has found that brains of autistic people have fewer of a specific kind of receptor for glutamate, the most common excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. The reduced availability of these receptors may be associated with various characteristics linked to autism.
Reduce receptors. This might suggest a _developmental_ or genetic link. Think of this more like "height" or a particular "facial feature" of a person.
> Reduce receptors. This might suggest a _developmental_ or genetic link. Think of this more like "height" or a particular "facial feature" of a person.
No. This isn't how it works at all. Receptor counts are extremely plastic, able to change within a weeks and in some cases hours. This is how you get drug tolerance.
Supplimentation would not rewrite SHANK3.
You can go to the dentist and get your teeth aligned, but there's a very good chance your children have similar issues.
For now, your best options are ESDM, occupational therapy, modified CBT, ABA, or neurofeedback, depending on your circumstances and presentation. Except for neurofeedback, these are behavioral approaches, so the architectural and neural activity variations aren't directly addressed.
To me it's kind of the biggest red flag here, if it's really about receptors then autism should be far more plastic than it is currently defined to be (which is kind of silly since at the moment any sign of plasticity puts you outside one of the hard criteria for an autism diagnosis - so almost definitionally, it can't be the answer).