Don’t Blame it on the Dads

The rates of autism have reached an all time high.  One in eighty eight children have some form of autism says a recent government report.  That is insane! Sure some of the increase is due to the fact that we are getting better at diagnosing autism but that is not the whole story.  Parents and researchers have been scrambling to find the reason so many kids are afflicted with this disorder.  The most recent finding is that a child is at higher risk of developing autism if their dad is over the age of 35 when they were conceived.
What concerns me the most over this recent finding is that I see and hear people taking a collective sigh of relief.  “Oh, OK ,its because of older dads.” I don’t think we can rest easy here.  I believe that this generation of kids have reached the tipping point.  Their little bodies are saying ENOUGH!  You can not load me up with dozens of vaccines when my immune system is not even fully developed, eat a diet full of processed junk food or produce with pesticides, breath polluted air and drink water with contaminants without thinking and believing that it is all collectively doing something to my DNA. OK so they maybe wouldn’t be that articulate but I am speaking for them.
As a ‘future parent’,what you eat, breath and surround yourself with does effect the DNA that you pass on to make your baby and I don’t mean just the time around conception but the months and years leading up to that magic moment.  Until recently, scientists and doctors used to think that you could not influence your genetic makeup.  If you had a gene that said you are at a higher risk of developing a certain cancer, the thinking was there was nothing you could do to stop it.  We know a lot more now. What you eat can turn off and on some genes. Really!  How cool is that.  So perhaps the reason babies are at risk when their dads are older is that the collection of chemicals, pesticides, and toxins have built up in their system so much that it effected the DNA in their sperm.
Babies are the most vulnerable of all humans.  As such, they will be the first to show signs of distress, illness and symptoms of a society that has become so toxic that it changes our genetic expression.  As parents, or “wanna be” parents the food we choose to eat can have a profound impact on our offspring. Let’s make healthy choices not only for ourselves but for future generations.