Welcome to From the Spectrum Podcast.
This is a podcast about autism.
It is my goal to explain what is autism.
I plan to use a mixture of scientific literature, personal experience, and opinion.
With opinion, I will explain why I feel the way I do and give examples.
I will provide links to various references for each episode.
For each episode, we will discuss various aspects of autism.
Before we begin, I'd like to highlight some more on the cause of autism.
I feel it necessary and worthy to explain more detail about the human biology.
Human disease or conditions or health impairments, whatever you want to call them, such as autism,
translates environmental signals that inform our genes on how to respond.
What conducts our biology?
Those environmental signals are electromagnetic fields.
We've discussed light as an electromagnetic strip.
This informs the body how to respond.
Disruption in our healthy environmental EMF signals creates the disease, impairments, etc.
Here we are talking about things like protein and DNA sequencing, electron transport chain,
and the mitochondria, the water metabolism, and processes within the cytochromes, healthy
or unhealthy cell development, cell life or cell death, etc.
Autism is our biological response to changes in EMF, the light source.
This ought to be of consideration when we explain.
When autism research explains, there are over 100 risk genes that cause autism that are
involved in autism.
And also, these over 100 risk genes doesn't mean you have autism.
Something about that does not add up.
For today's episode, we will cover why autism and ADHD are very distinct conditions and should
have caution before being comorbid diagnosis.
I want to say if the children observed by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger were observed
today, if they were alive today, they would have received an ADHD diagnosis, likely comorbid
with autism, and they would likely receive Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or ODD.
More on those in a bit.
Remember Erwin Schrodinger's comments on Leo Kanner?
Schrodinger said about Kanner.
Kanner thought what nobody has yet thought about that, which everybody sees.
If we look at autism and even the modern day ADHD condition, everybody can see something
is going on.
Something isn't exactly right for the children.
And mostly we think some sort of intervention needs to be implemented, some sort of help.
And remember Schrodinger's work very much explains the part that we began with about
the electromagnetic fields and how life uses light.
We cannot forget this.
Modern accreditations, or medicine, and society even, they can't have just a singular cause
for the autistic disturbances.
These so-called differences in socialness relative to social norms.
Either it lacks critical thinking and understanding, or it acts as a conveyor belt for prescription
medications.
Both reasons are wrong, and both are harmful.
If you zoom out and look at society, look at our children.
Something isn't right.
Now we can see that, that doesn't cause conflict.
But the reasons, that's for these modern day health conditions and these situations where
more and more diagnoses are occurring.
There are a couple things wrong and a couple of conflicts that these create for both the
lay public and professionals.
Neurodiverse is a touchy and maybe harmful movement.
People identify or claim to be here.
Society subordinates or subjects people as this and essentially it's just labeling people.
Something humans love to do.
People will say, oh that's just my OCD or oh that's just my ADHD.
Okay, so now what?
One, it's not even OCD when people are saying this loosely.
People will say this in the example of oh everything must be in a certain order.
I like it in alpha order or everything must be straightened up, just right.
That's not OCD, but people will just say this.
Now if you have to touch something a certain amount of times or until it feels right or
if it has to make a certain type of noise before you can move on, then yeah maybe that's OCD.
But people say this, they say oh that's just my OCD or oh I'm very OCD without having any
context or accuracy.
Also it is easy for people in society now to say oh that's just my ADHD.
Maybe they're forgetful or they have a hard time concentrating.
This is what we're going to parse out.
The ADHD in attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity and autism.
These are very distinct conditions.
Yet society comorbids these over half the time.
And I want to show, I want to clarify this distinct natures, the distinct characteristics
of autism versus ADHD.
These ought to be very rare.
Most importantly we need to remember criteria B3 of autism.
Now when we talk about Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger's and even some of the children before
them, the characteristic that showed up and made people think well something's different
here with this child.
It involved with them, the child being removed from the influence and the surrounding environment,
the lack of integration in society.
Some notes from Leo Kanner's first child he observed with autism.
Donald Triplett, his father said, Donald is happiest when he was alone.
He draws into a shell and lives within himself.
He is oblivious to everything around him.
When interfered with he becomes, he throws tantrums.
And if you think about ADHD and the inattention, the hyperactivity and impulsivity, surely
you can draw a connection here that autism is what's causing it.
However it's easy for others to say Donald doesn't even pay attention.
He should be paying attention or if somebody interferes with him and he is upset and throws
tantrums.
Well now people will say that's hyperactivity and impulsivity and he cannot control his
behaviors for this environment.
He needs to remain seated and pay attention.
Remember there are a couple of possibilities here that are influencing this within the
autistic phenotype.
One the outside world is chaotic for the autistic.
But two at the core of autism is that B3 criteria, that B3 symptom or trait, the phenotype,
whatever the language.
And we will show even how the human language was very confusing for the children back in
the 30s.
B3 remember is restricted, fixated interest, that are so called abnormal in intensity or
focus.
Strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed
or persuasive interest.
And remember in the Rates of Autism episode when we explained GM Piaget in 1923 captured.
He found that children had a visual thinking, imagery thinking ability.
And this is autism, this is what really made Temple Grandin stand out, the Thinking and
Pictures book.
The Piaget publishing predates Canner and Asperger's.
But Piaget was during a time with Eugen Bueller where it was more of a twilight peak.
However, I suspect Piaget thought maybe something else was happening here.
And we covered this, we covered the twilight peaks and these Thinking and Pictures capabilities.
The outside world is not as interesting.
So at the core of autism, the true characteristic is B3, restricted, fixated interest, that are
abnormal in intensity or focus.
From here, all the other characteristics branch off.
Remember we've discussed when we have time to intend to our B3, whatever fixated interest
we have, that helps B2, the adherence of inflexible schedules, needing that routine.
That lightens that up and we have a better ability to adapt to those schedules if we
have time for the fixated interest.
And let's not forget social communication and interaction, the entire criteria A, which
is what is mostly observed and thought to be autism.
But people have it backwards.
The A shows up because of the criteria B, that self-sufficiency.
Canner suggested it was an innate disorder.
Now we're going to read a little bit about Canner's children and Asperger's children
and letters from the parents at this time.
We will cover Donald Triplett, the first person ever diagnosed with autism.
What his father provides to Leo Canner is telling, this is what is missing today.
Society loves to lump things together, disintegrate everything, to straw a bunch of things at one
thing and it helps them, makes them feel better like they're doing something.
Oh, I'm helping this child.
They have this, this and this.
All of this makes sense to them.
Let's review some of the key symptoms or traits or characteristics, whatever you want to call
them, of autism and then of ADHD.
So criteria A we know, social communication and interaction.
A1, deficits in social emotional reciprocity, ranging from things like back and forth conversation
and a reduced sharing of interest or emotions or effect and the failure to respond.
A2, deficits in nonverbal communication behaviors.
Remember, a large part of the human communication is using social cues, things like eye contact
and hand movements, eye gaze where your eyes are looking, facial expressions and such.
A3, deficits in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships.
Now soon we'll have an episode on autism and relationships.
This has been finished but I keep putting it back because it seems like more and more
salient topics of autism has been hitting me lately.
Things like the cause of autism and autism research and this ADHD comorbid situation.
A3 captures this lack of interaction, this lack of imaginative play and sharing.
Remember some of my personal experiences, the things that I've mentioned about playing
games.
Make believe games is a child and it's going differently than what we established and
me getting upset, what you will see later as tantrums from the canner and Asperger's
kids.
But remember where this stems from, this stems from that rigid thinking patterns, the black
and white thinking patterns.
So now B, criteria B, restricted repetitive behavior, interest or activities.
B1, stereotype or repetitive motor movements or the use of objects or speech.
Things like echolalia or lining up and flipping toys.
B2, insistence on sameness, that inflexible adherence to routines or ritualized patterns
of verbal or nonverbal behavior.
Rules are rules and if they're changed, well that doesn't make sense.
Then B3, we've covered and then it ends with B4, hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input
or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment.
It's not hard to understand or see examples of sensory processing problems with the autistic
phenotype.
So a brief review of these is the social communication is poor, that's understandable for you as
well.
The schedules and the rules shifting, remember autism and adaptive responses.
We don't have those adaptive responses that others have.
Remember the neurobiology up through the medial prefrontal cortex and the ACC areas.
This is well researched in autism in the routines and the ability to be sensitive to things
in our environment.
Now if you think about it, before we even review ADHD, you might think of someone with
ADHD who is very chaotic in their environment.
They are constantly moving around, fidgeting, they are getting in trouble, they can't sit
still, they're not paying attention and so forth.
But we've covered these autistic phenotypes that can lead to those behaviors.
See this is what we need to really parse out.
The criteria that autistic phenotype can cause many problems in the environment as the
autistic are navigating the environment that will show up with similar features of ADHD
or ODD.
And we have to really understand that autism causes this.
Autism gives us those maladaptive responses or a lack of adaptive responses that chaotic
outside world that presents an overwhelming feeling.
Remember the autism and anxiety episode.
We highlighted those three key features in anxiety.
Avoidance, the physiological response and valence, attaching an emotion or outcome positive
or negative to whatever situation the living organism is navigating.
OK, some of the ADHD symptoms, starting with criteria A in attention.
A1 often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes.
B, often has difficulty sustaining attention in task or play activities.
C, often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
D, often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores or
duties.
E, often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities.
F, often avoids dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require substantial
mental effort.
G, often loses things necessary for tasks or activities.
H, is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
I, is often forgetful in daily activities.
OK, criteria 2, which is hyperactivity and impulsivity.
A, often fidgets with or taps hands or feet or squirms in seat.
B, often leaves seats in situations when remaining seated is expected.
C, often runs about or climbs in situations where it is inappropriate.
D, often unable to play or engage in leisure activities quietly.
E, is often on the go or driven by a motor.
F, often talks excessively.
G, often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.
H, often has difficulty waiting his or her turn.
I, often interrupts or intrudes on others.
OK, that's a lot of symptoms.
There's a requirement.
You must have 6 of inattention to be diagnosis inattentive or 6 of the hyperactivity impulsivity
to be diagnosed with that.
So this is important too.
You can have an ADHD diagnosis with just the inattentive type or just the hyperactivity
impulsivity type.
And there are different specifiers.
OK, not really important.
What is important is these symptoms get lumped together and people cannot discriminate them
properly.
Which is why the Erwin Schrodinger quote on Leo Kanner fits today.
We lack a Leo Kanner.
Let's parse this out.
ADHD1A often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes.
1, we are already innate.
We are already within our self.
And remember, are you even interesting?
And that does not dismiss who this other person might be or what their role might be.
Be it an educator or even a parent or a friend, a supervisor.
These things can have tremendous challenges.
B, often has difficult sustaining attention in tasks or play activities.
This is criteria A and B3.
The social communication and interaction, the autism in relationships are already a challenge.
Plus, plus we lump in B3 when we have a different restricted or fixated interest at the moment.
Remember the autism social communication highlight of leisurely back and forth or shared imaginative
play or interest.
Is the autistic inattentive or is the autistic bored?
Checked out.
And then probably the easiest one with the inattention of ADHD is C.
Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
This is, the whole reason autism exists.
This from the little children back in the 30s with Canter and Asperger's.
It seemed like they weren't there.
1D often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork.
Remember neuroplasticity with the autistic phenotype.
Massive amounts of things and expectations go bad.
This becomes expected as we navigate society or navigate a school building or school day.
We expect, well things here are going to be overwhelming.
It's not going to go right.
There's going to be a lot of things that don't make sense.
And remember the closeness to perfectionism.
Perfectionism tracks heavily with the autistic phenotype.
And I think this exists because of those self sufficiency.
Remember the comparison to B movie.
We are just very self efficient on our inside with our thoughts and our imagination.
And don't underestimate the amount of time we spend with this so called innate ability.
We have the ability to perfect this.
However, once we integrate with society, other people and other environments, obviously,
there are a lot of external stimuli coming into play.
And another potential factor is we want to fit in, but in our ability to fit in.
Not from what society says or not how society says we ought to.
Which can explain 1F as well.
And this is a huge distinction between autism and ADHD.
ADHD 1F suggests people avoid tasks that sustain or that need mental effort along sustaining
mental effort.
And this is very different between autism and ADHD.
With autism, there's a lot of things that don't make sense on the outside.
Remember we are integrating different forms of speech and communication and sensory processing
and trying to make sense, trying to create order with that disorder from the environment.
At the core of human advancement is speech and language.
This is how we advance and sustain our species.
The conveyance of information and instruction.
With ADHD, it should appear that this is more of a concentration or that inattentive problem.
And remember B3, the fixated interest that are so called abnormal.
The key here is, is it interesting or not?
And as society saying the autistic must give effort and attention here to whatever that
project or task is.
Then jumping up to H is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
Well we know the sensory processing.
This is understood by the lay public and the professionals.
There's a sensory processing phenomena here.
Which also explains down to the hyperactivity and impulsivity A. Often fidgets with or taps
hands or feet and squirms.
This will be highlighted in the canner paper.
This is highlighted in my personal experience.
And this is part of that stereotypy motor movements.
This occurs in the autistic phenotype.
Under the excitation inhibition imbalance.
The overly excitation is generating these motor movements that metabolic energy going
on within us.
B often leaves C in situations when remaining seating is expected back to the sensory processing
problem.
Things get overwhelmed and if you're a child, especially if you're a child, you have no
idea how to communicate this.
Especially if social communication and interaction is already a problem.
The sensory processing is lumped into this hyperactivity and impulsivity language.
Same with E. Often on the go or driven by a motor.
Well it depends on if it's the motor movements, the excitation inhibition or downstream from
the sensory processing phenomena.
Now I will say that both autism and ADHD are well researched problems in the striatum.
We've covered the striatum pretty frequently.
It's a place where motor movements and motivation converge and they produce a behavior.
You also probably know that ticks Tourette's are highly involved here too.
The problem is, since ADHD is kind of a buzzword, it's at the forefront of society's attention.
They just think these motor movements are hyperactivity impulsivity.
If we look at Fritz V, the first child in Asperger Autistic Psychopathy, he was very
fidgety and could not control his motor movements.
With Asperger's syndrome, there is a lot more conduct problems than what Leo Kanner
saw.
Today, that's a go to ADHD diagnosis and something like the ODD or Conduct Disorder.
And then also there are some contrasts, some major contrasts here.
Back to the inattention.
Often fails to give close attention.
Well if you have B3, if it's a restricted fixated interest, then how could you have both?
Or often has difficulty sustaining attention and task.
If you have B3, that core of autism, this is very much a contradiction, a complete opposite.
And to sum up ADHD and inattention, items A, B, C and F could have many different reasons
why this would occur.
There are many different scenarios that causes this with all humans.
Now I understand, just because we're forcing out the difference between autism and ADHD,
but the ADHD requirement, you must have them for different environments and in a certain
length of time criteria B, the hyperactivity and impulsivity.
Most of these are just typical responses.
When the human has reached a sympathetic nervous system, when our alert and stress system is
responding a little bit too much.
In social environments, the classroom or a playground, whatever the case, this happens
for the autistic phenotype.
It happens quite easily.
When I see or whenever I hear children, or does anyone really diagnose autism and ADHD
inattention, nothing about this makes sense.
This is almost impossible.
This is also true with the autism and ADHD diagnosis, with the hyperactivity, impulsivity
specifier.
Yet, there are so many cases of this.
This is our paradigm.
This is our shift.
ADHD today is a buzzword.
ADHD is a hot topic.
One, there are prescription medications, a whole plethora of them, a whole menu of options
now, before it was Adderall and then Mesofenodate.
But now it's mostly mesofenodate, concerta, vivants.
You have all of these prescription options and it's easy to get these.
And society, the manufacturers are running out.
They can't keep up with demand.
This is a problem.
This ADHD diagnosis is a conveyor belt for this prescription medication.
We think that children, or even the adolescents and adults, they can't navigate this modern
world with the changes in light source and the time removed from the sunlight to the
artificial light and all of the non-native EMFs.
Everything is changing.
Now, instead of addressing the problem, we're just going to throw prescription medications
out at it.
Throw prescription medications out towards the public.
It's so easy to go into your PCP, talk about inattention problems, or my child has inattention
problems.
He can't sit still.
Okay, try this medication.
That's our first line.
When people get diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and the whole smorgasbord within the
DSM, a couple of anxiety situations, ODD, remember oppositional defiant disorder.
This is the absolute worst diagnosis.
Only a human creation would do such a thing.
Tell a child, tell a parent, tell a loved one, a guardian that, oh, your child has oppositional
defiant disorder.
I've seen parents just totally have the hope sucked out of them.
Hearing these words, oh, their ODD is suffocating, suffocating their hope.
It's not enough for a child for the accurate occasions of having ADHD and having that hyperactivity
and impulsivity having troubles controlling oneself as they navigate the environment.
They must have ODD as well, or conduct disorder as well.
It's not enough that the hyperactivity and impulsivity can explain it.
It's just, here, let's still want these other symptoms or these other diagnoses too.
Because we don't want a singular thing to explain any one thing.
We just want to throw multiple diagnoses out at these conditions, at our living situation,
and call it good.
This makes the provider feel good about whatever it is they're doing.
They think they are helping, and it calms them, oh, I'm doing my job.
This is the training.
This is what training and the paradigm says.
He or she meets symptoms for six diagnoses.
Autism, ADHD, general and anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, ODD.
What is the purpose?
Are we helping or not helping?
It's not good enough that a child has autism and they have troubles with integrating themselves
in play or in the classroom.
Remember autism and education.
There are many contrasts, at least four contrasts, for the autistic phenotype in the classroom.
It's not good enough that that explains the condition.
But we have to lump all of these other things onto it.
What are we actually doing?
And after the B3 episode, I hope you have more understanding about the core of autism
and that innate ability, that innate condition that we are restricted on fixated interests
that are either abnormal or perfect in intensity or focus.
Here's the conundrum.
The DSM labels B3 as restricted fixated interest that are abnormal in intensity or focus.
And the DSM also labels ADHD with an inattention subcategory.
Is it abnormal intensity or focus or is it inattention?
As we wrap up today, I hope you can parse out the differences between autism and ADHD.
Now it's true that there are some overlap here, but that overlap is explained by obvious
situations.
In addition, there are many contrasts here.
It does not make sense on why so many people are co-morbid.
These are very distinct conditions.
Before we wrap up, we will have a future episode covering Leo Cantor's Autistic Disturbances
of Effective Contact and Hans Asperger's Autistic Psychopathy.
We will see that many of these children have autism and only autism.
And you will see that some of these symptoms described in the 1930s would classify as ADHD
today.
In the 30s with Leo Cantor and Hans Asperger, it was just fine.
It was accepted to just have one condition.
One condition can explain the phenotype, such as Donald Triplett being self-satisfied or
when he was interfered with had temper tantrums which were destructive.
Today, that means something totally different than just autism.
But in reality, it's just autism.
If you are listening to the episode or listening to the podcast, please feel free to leave
a review or rating.
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And I very much appreciate your feedback.
You can contact me on X at rps47586 or Facebook or email info.fromthespectrum.com.
I'm happy to say that in Apple Podcast, there are many higher rankings in six or seven different
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For the podcast, I am very pleased to announce that information.
I appreciate you listening.
I appreciate your interaction on X.
I hope that you are learning about autism.
Autism is hard to parse out because we are so saturated with views and opinions and people
not knowing exactly what is going on.
And before we end, I just want to remind that the cause of autism seems pretty clear to
me.
It's very clear to me now as we both zoom out and look at the time frame and then also
zoom in and look at the cause.
I think this is very obvious, but it has little traction.
Research is going in the wrong direction.
And the cause of autism is jumping up and down, waving a flag.
Look at me.
Look here.
All of this research is pointing to something in our biological processing, delight, water,
magnetism, the items we use, the proteins are involved, all of our biological components.
Something has changed.
Nothing was added.
Something changed.
And that change appears to be the change from sunlight and the solar spectra, the 280 to
3100 nanometers, to the isolated artificial light as the electromagnetic field that drives
human and living organisms on Earth.
Thank you for listening to From the Spectrum podcast.