There are lots of good reasons to try and follow a healthier diet.

You lose weight, you feel good, but the main reason to live a longer, happy, productive

life.

Sounds good, right?

And though it may sound deceptively easy, the devil is in the details.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

In today's show, we take a look at new research on autism, the Neurodevelopmental Disorder,

characterized by impaired social interaction, impaired verbal and nonverbal communication,

and restricted and repetitive behavior.

Before speculating about the reason for the quote unquote, explosive increase in autism,

one has to make sure the explosion is real.

In 1943, a famous paper was published, in which the child psychiatrist at Hopkins described

a series of children with so-called fascinating peculiarities.

He thought these characteristics formed a unique syndrome, he called autism, which seemed

rare at the time, but who knew how many were out there undiagnosed?

What causes it?

Autism is currently considered a multifactorial disorder resulting from both genetic and

non-genetic risk factors.

Yes, it can run in families, but genetic factors may account for only 10 to 20% of the

autism cases.

This is based on the fact that you can have identical twins with identical DNA, the same genes,

...