The Biomechanical Connection to Autism

My decade long experience leads me to believe there is a direct causal relationship.

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A little while back I saw a post by Cranium Autist talking about how she felt her autism was improving.

And it was like a bell went off in my head.

Maybe that is sort of what I went through? Maybe i’d sort of become autistic?

As I didn’t have another good word to describe it. Basically i’d gone from a person that connected with people and made friends easily his whole adult life to a person that couldn’t do it to save his life.

Then i came back.

Then i got worse again.

Then I yo-yo’d back and forth for years till recently.

For the past few years i’ve been straightline improving.

Today I wanna talk about how I think autism might just be a symptom of biomechanical collapse.

What is Autism?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication.

The CDC estimates that approximately 1 in 36 children in the United States has been identified with ASD, a significant increase from previous decades.

Medical consensus suggests autism has genetic roots, with environmental factors potentially playing a contributing role. The prevailing view is that autism involves differences in brain development and function that begin before birth. Many experts believe it results from a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental triggers.

However, this explanation has never fully addressed why autism rates have increased so dramatically in recent decades. If autism is primarily genetic, why are we seeing such a rapid rise? Genetic conditions don't typically show such dramatic population-level increases in such short timeframes.

Setting Some Context on Who I Was Before Collapse

To understand my perspective, you need to know who I was before my biomechanical collapse. In my 20s and early 30s, I was very social - a pretty natural people person. I had an intuitive ability to read others and respond appropriately to social cues.

This social fluency enabled me to travel extensively (to ~90 countries), typically on my own, and adapt quickly to new environments. By age 35, I had lived in 10 different countries, making friends easily wherever I went. My social circles were diverse - from intellectuals and nerds to highly popular, extroverted types.

Building and maintaining relationships came naturally. I didn't have to think about how to interact with people - I just did it.

I could read emotional states, understand unspoken social rules, and navigate complex social situations with ease. These are precisely the skills that those with autism often find challenging.

Collapse Impaired My Ability to Build Relationships

Everything changed in 2014 when a dentist in Vietnam drilled my molars flat. Within months, my social abilities deteriorated dramatically. It wasn't just that I became less social - it was as if I had transformed into a different person entirely.

I found myself suddenly struggling with social interactions that had previously been effortless. Reading people became difficult. I couldn't naturally sense what they were feeling or thinking, which made appropriate social responses nearly impossible.

At work, I remember consciously thinking, "I need to find a friend here," and making deliberate efforts to connect - something I'd never had to do before.

Despite these efforts, people seemed uninterested in developing relationships with me. My attempts at connection often came across as awkward or forced.

I noticed myself missing social cues, struggling with eye contact, and feeling overwhelmed in group settings. My speech patterns changed - I would sometimes ramble on topics of interest to me without noticing others' disengagement. In retrospect, these are all characteristics associated with autism spectrum conditions.

The most striking aspect was that this transformation happened in months, not years or decades. My social abilities deteriorated in lockstep with the physical changes in my skull and posture following the dental work.

As I Got Better, My Ability to Build Relationships Improved

When I began correcting my biomechanical issues, my social abilities returned - again, without conscious effort. As my skull began to "reinflate" and my posture improved, I found myself naturally reading people better and responding appropriately.

The change was so dramatic that instead of me trying to arrange social activities, people began inviting me to join them. My natural sense of humor returned, and I became more "fun" to be around without trying to be.

My ability to understand subtle emotional cues improved dramatically. I could sense when someone was uncomfortable, happy, or upset without them saying anything. This intuitive understanding of others' emotional states - precisely what's often impaired in autism - returned in tandem with my physical improvements.

The correlation was tight: as my biomechanical structure improved, my social abilities improved in lockstep. It wasn't that I was learning new social skills - they were returning naturally as my physical structure corrected.

Cycling Back and Forth Allowed Me to See It as a Pattern

Between 2014 and today, I've gone through at least 4-5 cycles of collapse and recovery as I experimented with different approaches. Each time, I watched my social abilities decline and improve in perfect correlation with my biomechanical state.

When my structure was compromised, I displayed many characteristics associated with autism - difficulty reading social cues, challenges with appropriate reciprocal conversation, hyperfocus on specific interests, and discomfort in social settings.

When my structure improved, these characteristics diminished or disappeared entirely.

What's fascinating is how my relationship with social interaction has evolved through this process. Now that I'm in a sustained period of improvement, I no longer feel the desperate need for social connection that characterized my "collapse" periods. I'm comfortable declining invitations because I'd rather work on my goals. This isn't social avoidance - it's a confident choice made without anxiety.

This pattern has convinced me that what we observe as autism-like characteristics is intimately connected to biomechanical structure, which is in turn typically dental in root cause.

Closing Thoughts

After experiencing these dramatic shifts in social ability that correlated perfectly with the health of my structure, i came to conclude that there is definitely a direct causal relationship.

And although i never called it ‘autism’ all of those years… the more i read about autism, the more I think that that is exactly what happened to me.

• Difficulty with social cues and reciprocal conversation

• Challenges building and maintaining relationships

• Altered speech patterns and communication styles

These are all standard characteristics of autism and they are exactly how I felt when I was not doing well.

Also i noticed that many autistics children have some type of distortion in their skull like the child above.

How does distortion in the skull occur?

I have a feeling they are gonna figure out it is almost ALWAYS through these biomechanics. And never genetic.

Anyway, i am far from an expert on autism and i’m sure some folks that are far more familiar with it are yelling at their screens right now calling me an ‘idiot’. lol

But I anyway want to plant the idea with the hopes that others explore it further. If we can fix autism through a mouthguard… we will be helping a lot of lives.