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Children With Autism 40 Times More Likely to Die From Injury, Study Says

A new study shows that children with disabilities are 40 times more likely to die from accidental injury than other children, and those with autism die at an average age of 36, CNN Health reports. The most common fatal injury among children with autism is drowning.

The number of children with autism has increased by an alarming rate over the last 20 years, and currently official rates from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that at least 1 in 50 children have autism.

Tragically, there is no definitive answer to what’s causing autism in the first place — and we need to find out, as three decades ago, autism affected only 1 in 10,000 children. With research frantically exploring countless avenues, some substantive causes have come to the surface, with mounting information pointing toward excessive exposures to toxins from multiple sources.

Recent research also reveals that increases in autistic disorder correspond with the introduction of vaccines using human fetal cell lines and retroviral contaminants. Other research shows that children with autism have distinctly different microbiomes compared to healthy children, with fewer healthy bacteria and markedly higher levels of toxic volatile organic compounds.

Autism or not, the link between your gut and brain is firmly established — as many parents with autistic children have discovered. That’s why I support the GAPS Nutritional program, which addresses poor gut health due to poor diet and toxic exposures. Designed to restore the integrity of your gut lining, this program has been found to help with autism, as well as a number of other disorders.