What If We Have Autism All Wrong? What If It's an Advantage?

Do you remember your first computer? Really cool, right? Big box, BIG monitor, little screen, but thanks to that "new" machine (and AL Gore of course) you could surf the "web", send a note to your friend across the country and expect a reply the next day, and have more resources and tools at your fingertips than you ever thought imaginable. You could use your phone line to access a vast network of information within minutes.

Now what if you used that technology today? Dial up Internet, UGH! Ridiculously slow computing speeds. ARG! How frustrating would that be in our world of IM'ing, iPads, and smart phones. We now have instant access to everything... everyone... everywhere. We live in a world where information is processed at amazing speeds, and we can only expect in the years to come for it all to get faster ... more efficient ... more useful.

April is Autism Awareness Month, and today I want to pose to you this question: What if Autism is a processor upgrade?

We all know someone with Autism. Whether it's your child, your nephew, or your neighbor, it seems there are more and more children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder each year. The truth is there are. In the 1990's autism rates in children were 1 in 350, but today in 2012 new data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that 1 in 88 children in America has autism, and even more frightening 1in 54 boys will develop it. Now some of this is likely increased awareness and better diagnosis, but you'd have to be blind if you didn't believe we as a culture, a society, and even the human race didn't have a serious issue on our hand here. That's a higher rate than cancer.

Why are so many children developing autism? Why does it affect boys more than girls? What's causing it? How do we stop it? These are all extremely important questions, and they ALL are unanswerable with our current level of understanding. AND THERE MY FRIENDS LIES THE PROBLEM.

Albert Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them," and he's absolutely right. What if we have autism all wrong? What if autism isn't a disease at all, but more a shift... a response to the environment that we've created in our culture... in our society... in humanity?

New research from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL in England found that those with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) had a higher capacity than us "normal" adults to process information. In fact it's that ability that helps those with ASD excel at video gaming as children and IT jobs as adults. The leading researcher, professor Nilli Lavie says this:

"Our work on perceptual capacity in the typical adult brain suggests a clear explanation for the unique cognitive profile that people with autism show," she says. "People who have higher perceptual capacity are able to process more information from a scene, but this may also include some irrelevant information which they may find harder to ignore. Our research suggests autism does not involve a distractibility deficit but rather an information processing advantage."

What?!? Is this research saying those with ASD have an advantage? Yes, it is. Not only that, but those with autism have been shown to have a larger brain than the rest of the population. However, other markers clearly show a problem among this population. Children with autism have lower HDL (good cholesterol) levels and their essential fatty acid ratios are off. They're typically overweight (BMIs are too high), and they are at higher risk for diseases like diabetes and heart disease. No, most of us would not call autism an advantage... not in our world.

But wait! What if that's the problem. What if these children with amazing brains aren't able to use them because they don't have to tools. It would be like plugging a new super-fast computer processor into an old machine with old technology on an old dial-up Internet system. Do you think that processor would be used to its full potential? Do you think there would be frustration? A breakdown in communication? Inability to relate?

What if this ASD processing capacity is a natural response to our fast paced technology world? What if autism is a form of micro-evolution? What if the true problem is that we aren't giving our children the building blocks and tools they need to effectively develop, or what if the tools we are giving them are simply inadequate. The research already shows that Omega 3 fatty acid levels in autistic children are consistently low. What if there's more? Not enough pure and sufficient nutrients... too many toxic and deficient factors. What if God created these children EXACTLY the way he wanted them and for a very specific purpose, but we've muddied the water with our lifestyle choices and expectations for what "normal" is?

What can we do about it? Only a new level of thinking will bring about the answer.