Pam

For me, and I have done a fair bit of research into autism, the high cholesterol is a symptom of autism, not a cause. The cause is variously, and in no particular order, genetic susceptibility, toxins (mercury, vaccinations), weakened immune system (caused by antibiotics), food intolerances (particularly to casein and gluten), gender (males are more susceptible than females).

A classic scenario for autism is that most babies are born with some mercury load from their mother's amalgams, which will affect their immune system and thyroid (two of my three children were born hypothyroid); the weakened immune system will lead to repeated upper respiratory infections in the first two years, leading to repeated courses of antibiotics, which cause yeast and weaken the immune system further. The vaccines further increase the child's mercury burden, and the MMR at 18 months is often the toxic tipping point - more than the body can take. The weakened immune system, the yeast infections, the mercury load all then conspire to bring about autism. Many think of autism as essentially a gut condition - the child craves the very foods (carbohydrates and dairy) that feed the yeast, which produce neurotoxins and cause autistic behaviour. Everything is interrelated, but mercury is quite very probably the main cause of autism.

High cholesterol is not implicated as a cause of autism, at least not in the material I have read. I see a hormone specialist who is very knowlegeable about thyroid / adrenals, and for him, high cholesterol is 80% due to low thyroid, 20% diet. Low thyroid is common in autistic children as in mercury toxic people. I have read that autism and mercury toxicity (or chronic fatigue as the doctors like to call it) are essentially the same thing - children are worse affected because their neurological connections are not yet formed and the mercury wreaks havoc on the developing brain.

I would say that the varying degrees of disability suffered by your children is a reflection of the variable nature of mercury toxicity and how it presents differently in everyone, according to genetic weakness and the degree of toxicity.

Certainly, it would be worth getting hair analyses done for them to see whether mercury is a factor, and whether you should chelate them, as they do on autism_mercury. Don't stress about the cholesterol - that would correct itself as the mercury burden comes down and thyroid function improves.

Hope this helps.

Nicola