66 What is Autism?
high doses. This is one of the fundamental principles (the six principles)
that James Wilson established in 1956 [37,38]. A simple and obvious exam-
ple is sugar. Sugar, or more precisely glucose, is an essential chemical for
life. Almost all the life forms on earth need glucose for survival and glyco-
lytic and Krebs cycle are integrated cycles of life where all the pathways that
make up the engine of life run via the glycolytic pathway. But, if a human
consumes too much sugar it will lead to diabetes, obesity, and cancer. High
consumption of sugar is toxic to both men and women, it is harmful for
liver, it leads to insulin resistance, disturbs hormonal balance, releases
dopamine in the brain, it is the leading cause of obesity and cancer, and
leads to high cholesterol and increased incidence of heart attacks. When a
pregnant woman develops gestational diabetes during pregnancy (meaning
her sugar level goes above the normal range), it can result in an overweight
newborn that can develop serious illnesses after birth [39,40]. This is what
happens when one consumes glucose – one of the most fundamental chem-
icals of life that perhaps evolved at the beginning of life and yet it can cause
havoc when too much is consumed. Let us now discuss other chemicals
that life on this earth consumes and has been consuming for over 4 billion
years, yet has learned to balance. If we consume all the elemental food in
balance it is fine, but if over or under consumed, it will result in adverse
outcomes. Another, basic molecule that almost all life on earth consumes is
alcohol. Here we are not referring to fermented ethanol but the molecules
that result from glycolysis in our cells after glucose molecules are split into
two. Our metabolic pathways efficiently consume alcohol molecules and
convert them to energy. External consumption of alcohol is immediately
utilized and converted into energy as long as the amount is sufficiently low.
This molecule is so powerful that it has access to every cell in our body.
However, exposure to this basic molecule after a certain threshold results
in depression of brain functions and at high enough doses can result in
death. We have discussed fetal alcohol syndrome already in Chapter 1. One
more glaring example would be folic acid, which is found in green plants
such as spinach. Folic acid deficiency can result in serious chromosomal
breakage. This is due to massive incorporation of uracil into the DNA.
Children born to folic acid deficient mothers have serious neural tube
defect and are at increased risk of autism [41].Synthetic Chemicals Lack Coevolutionary Adaptation
All the life forms on earth, all the flower and fauna on the planet, have a coevo-
lutionary history except for the recently created synthetic chemicals. The
majority of life forms lack the metabolic pathways to detoxify these chemicals
[2–15,24–30].