A Collection of Chronic Medical Conditions Common in Autistic and ADHD Adults [pdf] (2023)
allbrainsbelong.org
allbrainsbelong.org
The article is really bad. I do not suggest anyone take it seriously.
This comes from a part of social media where medical conditions are redefined in ways that make them sound more broad, generic, vague, and common than they really are. This is why this corner of the internet diagnoses themselves with many of these conditions together: The definitions they believe are like horoscopes where anyone who has non-specific symptoms or even psychosomatic conditions can match the definitions given. The result is groups of people on TikTok or Facebook groups who all think they have a list of 5 different medical conditions and who are all frustrated that actual specialists for those conditions won’t agree with their self diagnoses.
The document mixes science with pseudoscience. It was put together by someone who subscribes to the current social media trends that blend together real diagnoses in a way that have been distorted and stretched to become generic catch-all explanations for vague conditions
This mess where conditions like MCAS, hEDS, POTS, and ADHD are all swirled together into a cluster of co-diagnoses is becoming a huge problem on social media. Even the individual groups for these conditions are become sick of the trend of pushing them all as co-diagnosis. One example from the ME/CFS forums sampling the frustration with how people incorrectly self-diagnosing with all of these conditions as a cluster is becoming a problem for each individual condition: https://www.s4me.info/threads/problems-arising-for-pwme-from...
This should be flagged away as it's both misinformation and a document serving as a lead gen for their training services based on misinformation (see the link at the bottom of the document)
On that note, Wikipedia has a much better list than this PDF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_comorbid_to_autism. (This list is not without its flaws, but I at least find it easier to compensate for academic ignorance than magical thinking.)
Also related is differential diagnosis, which is a process by which clinicians distinguish between different diagnoses that have overlapping symptoms. (It's not a particular fancy technique, it's literally just the name for any approach that does that.)
Thank you.
I'm about to head out for lunch so this will have to be a shorter post but I'll touch on some of the major points.
* The progression of prevalence of hEDS over the years has gone from 1/50K, 1/15k, 1/5k, to 1/500 which is insane. Most people are using values from older studies so they think it is much rarer than it actually is.
* I don't see a strong distinction between hEDS and HSD, diagnosis appears to be mainly a matter of severity but due to that being rather random there isn't a clear distinction.
* The TNXB gene is overlooked because too many people have SNPs here and the assumption of the rarity of hEDS rules it out. It seems that number and type of TNXB SNPs as well as other RCCX genes also govern severity.
* If you look at long covid information the proportion of those who have hEDS/HSD is far higher than it should be. Dr Jessica Eccles has great research on this, I think the obvious explanation here is far more people have hEDS/HSD than have been diagnosed with it, and these conditions create a strong predisposition to ME/CFS/LongCovid.
* Average time to diagnosis is 20 years from the onset of symptoms, which is insane, but it gets worse when you consider that the vast majority with it never get diagnosed, so the average is really never.
I have a rather severe form of this and even I would have a hard time getting diagnosed with hEDS - I look too healthy. I've never been formally diagnosed but have a Whole Genome Sequence with the expected TNXB SNPs. Things that I've tried and worked;
* Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) is a great start (mentioned here in the pdf)
* Supplemental T3 as sub-clinical hypothyroidism is pretty common
* I think a combination of weak ligands like Modafinil and Amitriptyline can really help with dysautonomia
* I take low dose of semiglutide and this seems to help with the auto-immune aspect
* I take Ipa/ModGRF(no dac), BPC157/TB5, and VIP
* High dose TUDCA and high dose DIM
* Supplemental testosterone
* Zero sugar diet, including no fruit. I basically subsist on kale salads and steak.
HSD - Hypermobility spectrum disorder. "Hypermobility spectrum disorders are a group of heritable connective tissue disorders where joints are flexible enough to cause problems such as instability and pain."
hEDS is considered too rare and to actually diagnose someone with it would mess up their health insurance for a condition doctors don’t believe can be treated. So they avoid diagnosing it which creates prevalence data that feeds back into the initial assumptions.
My view of HSD is that it is just a milder hEDS and all the other problems still exist even if most are not detectable. Most people spend their lives being told nothing specific is wrong with them and how are they to know better, after all doesn’t everyone get tired from time to time. Because I’m good at stats I was able to figure out that either I’m the unluckiest person ever or there is a common cause.
Do you know your EBV/Lyme statuses?
History of other infections, and/or flu-like symptoms, low-level or otherwise?
I think a lot of similar conditions have hEDS as the predisposition but are triggered differently. Some people need a bigger trigger than others.
This is something everyone cites when I point out that high-cholesterol diets are unhealthy. I get it, cutting out cholesterol foods isn’t fun. But it’s simply not good for you to eat a high cholesterol diet. It WILL increase your blood cholesterol (go vegan for eight weeks and retest - I’ll bet you any amount of money your blood cholesterol drops) and WILL increase your risk for heart disease.
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is severely over-diagnosed right now by providers who are unqualified to diagnose it, a few charlatans who sell incorrect diagnoses as a specialty to serve a demand, and scores of TikTokers who think they understand better than the specialists.
> and this one simple fact is sufficient to explain a the prevalence of a whole zoo of seemingly unrelated conditions.
This is precisely why it's being over-diagnosed: The internet culture definition of Ehlers-Danlos has become the latest catch-all to explain a host of unrelated symptoms. Patients who are frustrated with a lack of answers stumble upon Facebook groups, Reddit posts, TikTok videos, YouTube talking heads, or other social media outlets where non-medical people explain that Ehlers-Danlos can explain almost any vague symptom you have.
This has become a big problem for Ehlers-Danlos specialists because it's getting hard to identify the correct referrals from all of the self-diagnosed patients demanding referrals from their doctors.
> There is an incentive to keep hEDS as a 'rare' disease as the US has extra grants for disease in this classification and this has put pressure on diagnostic criteria which was made more strict so fewer people would be diagnosed with it.
Sorry, there is no conspiracy to withhold diagnoses from people. Doctors aren't getting together and conspiring to stop patients from getting the right diagnosis so they can collect more grants.
This conspiracy doesn't even make sense. Doctors and researchers do not financially benefit from keeping diagnoses down. If they wanted more funding, they would be working hard to get more people diagnosed. More people getting diagnosed means more money flowing in from insurance companies and it becomes a higher priority for grants. Not the other way around!
> * The progression of prevalence of hEDS over the years has gone from 1/50K, 1/15k, 1/5k, to 1/500 which is insane.
Even the Ehlers-Danlos society, which leans toward the more generous diagnostic criteria, does not claim that hEDS is 1 in 500 [https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/]
There are some populations where you can find higher incidence, but 1 in 500 is not true at all.
Names of papers:
1. Diagnosed prevalence of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and hypermobility spectrum disorder in Wales, UK: a national electronic cohort study and case–control comparison.
2. The lack of clinical distinction between the hypermobility type of Ehlers‐Danlos syndrome and the joint hypermobility syndrome (a.k.a. hypermobility syndrome).
3. Utilization of the 2017 diagnostic criteria for hEDS by the Toronto GoodHope Ehlers–Danlos syndrome clinic: A retrospective review
I know doctors would rather make out that this is a social phenomena and not gross medical incompetence but the reality is way more people have hEDS than have been diagnosed with it, someone is far more likely to find out they have hEDS from TikTok than they are from a doctor. Doctors are not doing their job.
Sorry, but you’re just sharing bad information.
The prevalence of hEDS is not 1:500 by any reasonable source.
I know I won’t convince you because your posts have many layers of information sourced from the alternative medicine world of TikTok and TikTok-adjacent sickfluencers, but I hope I can at least convince other people reading this to pursue higher quality sources and be skeptical of HN commenters who make claims about under-diagnosis based on conspiracy theories.
> * The progression of prevalence of hEDS over the years has gone from 1/50K, 1/15k, 1/5k, to 1/500 which is insane.
The prevalence of hEDS is not 1/500. I am not using outdated criteria, I am using the currently accepted numbers.
I'm really not interested in this conversation where you introduce conspiracy theories or try to act like you were talking about different conditions.
But I ask;
* What’s the prevalence of HSD?
* Is there a meaningful difference between hEDS and HSD, i.e. how does one tell them apart except by severity?
* And would a history of 1/150K (1960s) to 1/50K (1980s) to 1/15K (1990s) to 1/5K (2000s) not suggest a prior history of under diagnosis? How can you be so sure that this time they have it right?
Nope, most of you are just ineffective, which is almost worse.
Unless you learned basic typography that is.
This eyesore looks like it was done in Word & Co.
What a pity, given what a treasure trove this is.
As someone with a partner who has ADHD I think this should be mandatory reading for any GP.
This is not a scientific contribution. It's basically a pamphlet for a group of people selling "neurodiversity trainings" for organizations.
Anybody have a more non-medical-background summary?
The website it’s hosted on is trying to sell neurodiversity trainings to businesses. They link to YouTube videos of their webinars when they cite their “lived experiences” as their background credentials.
This is really bad information. I suggest not getting involved in this side of medical misinformation that springs primarily from parts of social media but is being dressed up as if it’s just a helpful medical resource.
The explanation is much more simple: Adderall is amphetamine, which has functional overlap with how pseudoephedrine (aka Sudafed) works. They are both norepinephrine releasing agents.
Pseudoephedrine is considered a substituted amphetamine in chemistry lingo.
You should try harder to treat autistic people like people, instead of mocking and dismissing things you can't be bothered to try understanding. Comorbidity is a very real thing. Autistic people do have high incidence of comorbid conditions. Your narrow view of the world does not represent universal truth. Hypochondria is common among autistic people, because they commonly have real issues. When everyone refuses to take you seriously, you have to find your own answers. You're the problem here, bud.
I hope you decide to keep that opinion to yourself in the future and not tell people that what they are experiencing isn't real.
> Just has a new thing wrong with them weekly
So, you see multiple people experiencing a new medical ailment or symptom "every week" and think all these people are faking an issue so well it fools a doctor? What about my severe plaque psoriasis, T-1 Diabetes, and POTS?
Am I just imagining the giant red inflamed scaly patches of skin on each one of my joints?
Am I just psychosomatically making my body not produce insulin?
Im just making up that my blood pressure drops so low from standing too fast that I get tunnel vision?
Your opinion causes people like me to spend 20 years of their life to hide and ignore the problems they experience until they are so bad we can't function as human beings anymore. And the sad part of it is, if we (the patients) actually understood what we were dealing with early on in life, a lot of these problems can be avoided.
It's a shame so many people share your ignorant opinion and tendency to shame what you can't understand, you'll never comprehend how deeply that effects the people you are saying it about.
Thing is with those conditions is that there's an objective test you can take, with symptoms that are hard to talk yourself into with other people on the internet
ADHD, not so much
So you're one of those "I can't see it so therefore they're making it up" people. No point in continuing the discussion with you then
You said it, not me
> You said it, not me
No shit, can't believe we're wasting electricity on this kind of bot output.
A habit of moving the attention in a way that is possibly unhealthy, unuseful and probably discordant to what's common and normal.
One solution is to change that habit with drugs or therapy.
Another solution is to gain a greater understanding of your attention. Thus gaining a new freedom to move your attention in whatever way, rather than suffering the governance of habit.
The meditation people (Buddhists etc) study attention. They have some impressive methods and such. It's worth looking.
They become more familiar with it, thus replacing habit with intelligence.
This leads to increased power and freedom, among other things.
Have you ever tried talking to an autistic person?
But I don't think it should be confounded with medical advice or treated as causal to neurodiversity or called mandatory. Probably why that person is getting downvoted.
Stay away from us to their own benefit, of course.
Sufficiently-developed attention gives you insight into how your brain is constructing what you perceive as reality, leading to a reduction in ego, permanent reduction in baseline suffering, and a pervading sense of unity with the rest of the universe.
Ever notice how some people don't get 'stuck' in their negative habits and brain loops? Like they can just let them go. If they get feedback from the world they can take it seriously and act on it, instead of digging in their heels and getting resentful. Being able to do this reliably and under stress in the wide variety of life circumstances, and getting closer and closer to doing it in real-time, is the goal.
This statement is not self explanatory and reeks of performative profoundness, care to elaborate?
> Habit is a bigger deal than you think.
Feels like we're just adding the element of mystery to the profoundness to imply you have a deeper understanding than someone else in an attempt to get out of defending your position.
I hope not, I genuinely would rather find out you do actually have the answer to all my issues!
As for the actual method of meditation, for a toddler? Well that's tricky.
I imagine that you'd have to turn it into a toy or a game.
Interesting question.
It's a tough thing but from what I have seen, pursuing the diagnoses on this list makes life worse for the vast majority of people who choose to do so. There is a rapidly expanding cottage industry of charlatans who will diagnose and treat these things, and others who post about them online and feed the cycle. I'll admit spectrum bias, since I see the ones who come to the ER with concern about these issues and they skew hard in a certain direction but this is overall not a good thing.
They don’t want to be: most just want to be recognized as what they are long enough to find the path out. or any optimization.