There are known medical conditions that are more commonly associated with people on the autistic spectrum, these are known as co-morbid conditions. Some well known co-morbid conditions are anxiety, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and perhaps even sleep issues, but these are in my opinion conditions that are caused by the difficulties of controlling / living with autistic traits and are therefore not truly separate medical conditions in my opinion, then there are separately diagnosed co-morbid conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which are in my opinion autistic traits in themselves. Autism does however sometimes come bundled with other co-morbid conditions that some people may not expect such as epilepsy, bowel disease, neuroinflammation and immune disorders, tuberous sclerosis and more, please click here for more details on some co-morbid conditions that have been associated with autism.
So I thought I'd start a thread where people can discuss their experiences of co-morbid conditions, but please remember that even though these conditions are more common in aspies, there's lots of aspies that don't suffer from any co-morbid conditions that aren't directly linked to autistic traits. I will start....
My experience of co-morbid conditions:
Firstly I have been diagnosed with depression / anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder which are both very common co-morbid conditions even though depression / anxiety is in my opinion caused by the issues of dealing with autistic traits, while obsessive compulsive disorder is an autistic trait.
Like both my brothers when I was a very young child I used to suffer with epilepsy, I was too young to remember being affected myself, but I was old enough to remember my brother having epileptic fits as a slightly older child which was very frightening, once my brother started going blue before my mother cleared his airway and sometimes she got bitten. I also remember my mother speaking about how common epileptic fits / seizures were at my younger brother's special needs school. Apparently a few autistic children were so severe that they were having multiple seizures every single day and they even had to wear a padded helmet to help protect them. Both my brothers and I thankfully grew out of the condition, I stopped having fits when I was around 3 years old similarly to my slightly younger brother Daniel, but my youngest brother David didn't stop having fits until he was about 6 years old.
The following isn't listed as a possible autistic co-morbid condition in the article I linked to earlier, but I was told that it is sometimes related to autism. I was born with mild spasticity in my back, this has caused back pain as an adult and I have never been able to bend my back fully. Even as a child, the closest I could ever come to touching my toes was my knees.
I'm unsure whether this is possibly related to autism or not, but I was also born with a misshaped tongue which is particularly flat (not pointed) at the end. I was already extremely slow with speech development, but this further made it difficult for me to make certain sounds and I still have problems sounding my "R"s even today as an adult. When I was a child I was even scheduled for an operation to help correct the problem, although it was later cancelled because I started improving and making most sounds myself with the help of a specialised speech therapist.
I was extremely slow to develop as a very young child, especially with speech (which means I now have high functioning autism), I started improving as I got older, although I kept many autistic traits, but both my brothers still have very low functioning autism (they still have issues with speech as adults, they also can't read, write or count to 5 and will need 24/7 care for the rest of their lives). I'm wondering whether some of the co-morbid conditions that are not directly associated to autistic traits are more common with low functioning autism and maybe even high functioning autism as opposed to aspies with asperger's syndrome (aspies that weren't slow to develop speech as a young child).
Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any replies.
So I thought I'd start a thread where people can discuss their experiences of co-morbid conditions, but please remember that even though these conditions are more common in aspies, there's lots of aspies that don't suffer from any co-morbid conditions that aren't directly linked to autistic traits. I will start....
My experience of co-morbid conditions:
Firstly I have been diagnosed with depression / anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder which are both very common co-morbid conditions even though depression / anxiety is in my opinion caused by the issues of dealing with autistic traits, while obsessive compulsive disorder is an autistic trait.
Like both my brothers when I was a very young child I used to suffer with epilepsy, I was too young to remember being affected myself, but I was old enough to remember my brother having epileptic fits as a slightly older child which was very frightening, once my brother started going blue before my mother cleared his airway and sometimes she got bitten. I also remember my mother speaking about how common epileptic fits / seizures were at my younger brother's special needs school. Apparently a few autistic children were so severe that they were having multiple seizures every single day and they even had to wear a padded helmet to help protect them. Both my brothers and I thankfully grew out of the condition, I stopped having fits when I was around 3 years old similarly to my slightly younger brother Daniel, but my youngest brother David didn't stop having fits until he was about 6 years old.
The following isn't listed as a possible autistic co-morbid condition in the article I linked to earlier, but I was told that it is sometimes related to autism. I was born with mild spasticity in my back, this has caused back pain as an adult and I have never been able to bend my back fully. Even as a child, the closest I could ever come to touching my toes was my knees.
I'm unsure whether this is possibly related to autism or not, but I was also born with a misshaped tongue which is particularly flat (not pointed) at the end. I was already extremely slow with speech development, but this further made it difficult for me to make certain sounds and I still have problems sounding my "R"s even today as an adult. When I was a child I was even scheduled for an operation to help correct the problem, although it was later cancelled because I started improving and making most sounds myself with the help of a specialised speech therapist.
I was extremely slow to develop as a very young child, especially with speech (which means I now have high functioning autism), I started improving as I got older, although I kept many autistic traits, but both my brothers still have very low functioning autism (they still have issues with speech as adults, they also can't read, write or count to 5 and will need 24/7 care for the rest of their lives). I'm wondering whether some of the co-morbid conditions that are not directly associated to autistic traits are more common with low functioning autism and maybe even high functioning autism as opposed to aspies with asperger's syndrome (aspies that weren't slow to develop speech as a young child).
Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any replies.
