Ever wonder about the explosive rise in autism to the point where one in every 62 children in the USA currently has autism?

Some experts say it was always this way; the diagnosis was simply missed back in the 1960s and 70s and the explosive rise is due to “better diagnosis” now.

But think about that explanation; does “better diagnosis” make any sense?

The 1/62 children statistic only includes children with obvious autism, not subtle cases. So what these “better diagnosis” experts are saying is that parents, teachers and pediatricians in the 1970s simply missed the diagnosis of an obviously impaired child.

The “better diagnosis” explanation for the explosive rise in autism has no face validity. It makes no sense.

No, something changed from the 1970s to now, something in the environment because genetic diseases do not explosively increase in incidence over 30 years.

One thing that changed over that same time period was blood level of a steroid hormone, vitamin D.

As we avoided the sun in the last 30 years, due to sun-avoidance, sunblock, video games, and fear of letting our children outside alone, blood levels of the sunshine vitamin decreased dramatically, exactly in unison with the explosive rise in autism.

Few people know that vitamin D is not a vitamin. It cannot be obtained by diet; it is a pre-hormone made in via sunlight. It’s then turned into a powerful steroid hormone with profound effects on brain development.

Several groundbreaking studies about vitamin D and autism have just been published. The firs, by a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Bruce Ames, discovered that activated vitamin D directly regulates at least six proteins that are abnormal in autism.

They discovered that vitamin D explains the serotonin paradox, which is the long-known fact that some autistic individuals tend to have high levels of serotonin in their blood but low serotonin levels in their brain.

They also confirmed what I have written in my recent book about estrogen salvaging vitamin D enzymes by making the enzymes more efficient, so fewer girls have autism than boys.

The second study includes the famed Professor Christopher Gillberg of the Gillberg Neuropsychiatric Hospital. It is the first family study of autism and vitamin D. Family studies are important because they allow you to compare an autistic person’s vitamin D levels with the levels of his family—not just a community control group—and get an idea if vitamin D levels may be partially genetic.

They measured vitamin D levels in 40 autistic individuals, and found their average vitamin D level in the autistic individuals was about half that of their siblings and parents.

The most likely cause of their findings is that at birth, autistic individuals have low vitamin D blood levels for genetic reasons, as I explain in my book, Autism Causes, Prevention and Treatment: Vitamin D Deficiency and the Explosive Rise of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The third recent study, by Khalid Saad and colleagues, compared the vitamin D blood levels of 122 Egyptian children with autism to 100 typically developing children.

The vitamin D blood level of autistic individuals was half that of typically developing children.

Very importantly, they also found that vitamin D blood levels directly correlate with the severity of the autism (the lower the vitamin D levels, the worse the autism).

More exciting, they gave the autistic children high-dose vitamin D3 for 3 months.

Collectively, 80% of the autistic children significantly improved with vitamin D treatment, with improved outcomes on problematic behaviors, eye contact, and attention span. This is the first scientific study proving that high-dose vitamin D improves core symptoms of autism.

Autism Causes, Prevention and Treatment: Vitamin D Deficiency and the Explosive Rise of Autism Spectrum Disorder, explains hundreds of studies, all involving the link between vitamin D and autism.

Virtually all of the studies are directly relevant to the prevention or treatment of autism. If you know anyone with autism, have them or their caregivers read this book.