A Tale of Autistic Blood - Article from Age of Autism, by Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

There is a very interesting article on the Age of Autism website, entitled "A Tale of Autistic Blood." The article contains a link to a fascinating video and slide show that compares the blood of six autistic children. I highly recommend you watch this and read the article (Click the title to go to the Age of Autism site and read the entire article). My comments about the article and video are posted below.

A Tale of Autistic Blood
By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

This may be the most important article about autism I’ve ever written. But first I need you to do a little work. I need you to go to this site (HERE) and watch the approximately five minute long video comparing the blood of six autistic children put together by Mark Squibb.

Marci's Response:
IMO, I believe this is another physiological marker of the multiple factors involved in autism and pretty much all of the comments posted are on track.

Stress will cause aggregation in preparation for clotting in case of injury. Think "fight or flight" - when you are preparing for battle or to run away, there is a significant chance you may get hurt. When the the balance of stress hormones is disrupted (shifted) due to high anxiety or panic, the body doesn't differentiate between real or perceived danger and prepares to clot. So thats ONE factor at work.

Heavy metals like lead and mercury (and aluminum which is not technically a "heavy" metal) also damage the circulatory system and lead to problems like Raynaud's Syndrome, atherosclerosis, hypertension, stroke, and aneurysm.

Metals and other toxins have something else in common - a single valence electron in their outermost ring. This makes them very attractive to each other - they don't like to be alone but like to travel in pairs so they will "hook up" with other toxins. This is one reason (along with impaired detoxification due to depletion of metallothionein) why our kids, once shot up (pun intended) with aluminum or thimerosal (flu vaccine, rhogam, etc.) become like magnets for other toxins. It's also why when chelating, mercury does not come out until after aluminum, antimony, and lead. The magnets (our children) hold onto the metals because their electrical charges have been altered. This was for me, probably the most fascinating thing about the video by Mark Squibb - he actually points out the alteration in electrical fields in the blood patterns of autistic children.

The comment about babesia (a bacteria associated with Lyme disease) is also correct, which is why adults with chronic Lyme exhibit many of the same behavioral and neurological issues as do children with "autism."

Infections in the blood (from systemic yeast, viruses, strep, staph, etc) will also cause clumping, as what is left of the immune system tries to kick in and fight off the infection. Remember that one of the first things the immune system does is to send extra blood (and oxygen) to the sight of injury or infection. This is part of the healing process and is why we get the swelling, heat, and itching when we get a minor cut or scrape. That's the body's attempt to heal.

The problem is, in our children there are so many different things to fight that their bodies become confused and shift over into autoimmunity. The analogy I use is like the old Space Invaders game where you start of shooting at one bad guy and it's relatively easy, but as things speed up, there are too many bad guys to shoot at accurately and you end up crashing and burning.

Finally, the genetic link is (again, IMO) often associated with metals (especially lead) that is passed from mother to child. In the family histories of my patients I frequently see higher than expected occurrance of things like stroke, blood clots, hypertension, bipolar disorder, heart-valve problems, and heavy bleeding/clotting with menses. All of these things, (and autoimmune thyroiditis) are associated with lead poisoning. When I check further, these parents and grandparents grew up with coal-burning stoves, lived near or worked in coal mines, or in some cases owned gas stations (before gasoline was unleaded.)

Very interesting article and video - thanks so much to the folks at Age of Autism for your wonderful work, and to my friend Lori for bringing this article to my attention!

Marci