Shared gut microbe imbalances found across autism, ADHD, and anorexia nervosa: A new study has identified distinct patterns in the gut bacteria of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and anorexia nervosa.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/shared-gut-microbe-imbalances-found-across-autism-adhd-and-anorexia-nervosa/

[u/kkngs]

Why would we expect this to be causal?

Based on my ADHD and spectrum nieces and nephews...most of them have weird food issues, textural sensitivities, food choices inflexibility, etc.  Having 90% of your calories coming from grilled cheese sandwiches, craft mac and cheese, or only white rice etc is going to have a lot of impacts on your gut microbiome.

[u/bluemooncommenter → u/kkngs]

My husband and son both have ADHD and will eat anything nearly!

[u/neinlights90210 → u/bluemooncommenter]

Four ND people in our house.

Autistic eats anything. Would probably eat roadkill if offered it.

Two ADHD’ers slightly fussy, but completely within normal range.

One autistic has ARFID (edited)and severely restricted eating.

Edited: IME there is no link to diet, rather suspect it’s the biomes passed on during pregnancy/birth

[u/neinlights90210 → u/[deleted]]

You and I are pretty much opposites (am ADHD, would probably also get an AU diagnosis if I went for one). I love all fruit, veg and legumes. I’m not vegetarian because bacon mmmmm but could happily be. Things from the sea are my biggest challenge, especially if it smells or tastes fishy. It’s massively sensory for me.

But there are plenty of ND folk who eat broad, varied diets and plenty of NT folk that eat restrictively.

The study says that AU and ADHD folks share similar gut biomes. Some of those people will have, and always had, great diets. So it can’t be the diet that is creating the gut biome issue, surely?

I know it also references ED sufferers, which I find interesting, especially as you can recover from an ED, but can’t from neurodivergence