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Nat's avatar

I am so sorry about this, sleep deprivation is no fun :( In terms of mechanisms this fits with the findings of impaired (brain) glucose and glycogen in autism, as the lunar phases are known to affect metabolism, sometimes dramatically. I wonder if having some uncooked starch before bedtime would help with this during full moon? It is a very slowly digestible carbohydrate that 'slow drips' energy throughout the night to prevent sudden dips in brain glucose during the night. Btw nocturnal hypoglycaemia is a known cause of nighttime psychotic episodes, have a look at this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6380808/

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Caroline Seyedi's avatar

Firstly, I’d like to thank you Jane for creating this awareness for severe autism. Too much awareness is changing the focus from this level of disability to the higher functioning more able end of understanding autism and excluding / ignoring the devastating affects this disability can have on families, relationships and mental health outcomes of everyone connected with and caring for a child or adult loved one experiencing life this way. Yes a disability not a condition! I believe when experienced at the level of severe delayed development, causing emotional, mental, physical and spiritual distress to all involved, it is a disability. In my experience this doesn’t mean the child or adult does not have the potential to develop and for their projectory to positively change, I believe and have experienced it can with my daughter and seen this in other children severely affected but research needs to be looked at holistically and the dots joined up to see the big picture and interventions need to be individualised and parents involved for any progress to be made in understanding autism and how it potentially may develop so that the best possible outcomes for each individual can be achieved. I’m currently writing my first book on my experiences and reflective understandings to address all this.

Pertaining to this post….The moon affects us all and it makes sense that our severely autistic children would be more sensitive to the magnetic field of the moon cycles and their behaviour is their way of communicating how they are experiencing these. Often unable to filter sensory information typically and experiencing sensory overload due to a disregulated nervous system which affects the gut and immune system balance, causing leaky gut and opioid affects in the brain, in order to understand how and why our children behave as they do we need to explore research holistically, join the dots and create a big picture to find the answers we are looking for.

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