Eau de Credulity: DAN!'s secret sauce?

One of the items on the shopping list for the autism-is-toxicity parents attending the recent DAN! conference was oxytocin nasal spray. Oxytocin hasn't been a common item for discussion on the biomed parent bulletin boards, so it was a little surprising to Autism Diva to see it as one of the next big things coming out of the DAN! conference. So, Autism Diva did what lots of netizens would do, she went and googled "oxytocin nasal spray" to see what was out there in the way of information for the hoi-polloi.

This is interesting

Researchers are currently looking at how oxytocin nasal spray promotes harmony and trust (see, for example, Nose spray lowers stress during spats and Trust in a bottle). They have also been conducting experiments designed to use it in the treatment of autism [...]. Results have been mixed in the short-term. And they are not yet looking at long-term effects, which past experience suggests can be quite severe.

If you spray oxytocin up your nose, it floods your brain. However, at the same time it floods your brain, it enters your blood taking messages all over the body. Where your body would deliver it with precision to the place it is needed, this shotgun approach affects many unintended functions of the body and alters the brain.

Originally developed to encourage mothers’ milk production, oxytocin nasal spray has been around for decades and has been used in various experiments. It has had some unfortunate side effects. For example, when a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder used it for 4 weeks, the patient showed clear improvement of that disorder. However, the patient also developed severe memory disturbances (oxytocin apparently helps mothers forget the pain of childbirth), psychotic symptoms, and marked changes in blood sodium levels, which may have masked the obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

In other oxytocin nasal spray experiments, vigor was reduced after treatment, and blood glucose, insulin, and glucagon levels increased. (Higher blood sugar levels are associated with diabetes.) Rare side effects included convulsions (seizures), unexpected bleeding or contractions of the uterus, nasal irritation, runny nose, tearing of the eyes, and mental disturbances.

Here’s the warning that accompanies an oxytocin nasal spray prescription:

The presence of other medical problems may affect the use of oxytocin. Make sure you tell your doctor if you have any other medical problems, especially: Heart disease, hypertension and kidney disease

Oxytocin (pitocin) has been widely used to induce labor for decades. Yet, even there it has done a lot of (mostly unacknowledged) harm. Forced oxytocin can increase the pain of delivery, necessitating medication that actually slows delivery. Its wide use has even been linked with the rise in autism.

Artificial manipulation of hormones can have far ranging effects. Even replacing testosterone, estrogen and other hormones, which decrease as we age, has proven risky. For this reason, it is wise not to raise a hormone above a normal level. Disease would be the most likely outcome from blasting your nose regularly with oxytocin spray.

[...]

There’s also a domino effect from hormonal manipulation that results in excess. All the inter-related neurochemicals tend to adjust themselves, creating unknown side effects or even countering the desired effect. For example, hormone replacement therapy is given to prevent osteoporosis, but longer-term studies reveal an increase in strokes and cancer among patients using this therapy. Moreover, one hormone can mimic the effects of another hormone. Soaking the brain artificially with oxytocin activates brain centers designed to be turned-on only by another hormone, vasopressin. Nature prevents such mix-ups with pinpointed release. A researcher's goal may be simply to increase trust, but the vasopressin centers that may inadvertently be activated decrease body temperature and increase heart rate. Nature is more precise; that’s why all man-made drugs have side effects.

(Emphasis added)

So, it's a bad idea to radomly mess with these brain/body hormones if you are an adult, but it must be OK to give oxytocin nasal-spray to atypical children with communication problems? One mom was complaining on a web bulletin board that the oxytocin nasal spray she got from a compounding pharma-cy didn't seem to have the right amount of drug in it per supposedly-metered spray, and the dosage of the drug seemed to change over the weeks she used it on her son. The spray bottle thing was going dry after a couple of weeks and it was supposed to last a month. Drat that problem with the dosing-of-experimental drugs on small children!

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The nasal spray meant for nursing mothers is one oxytocin angle. Another is the oxytocin cologne thing ... one has to wonder if there were "biomed" hucksters at the DAN! conference who had drenched themselves in the stuff. It looks like they can sell these parents ANYTHING!




One can only hope that brassica tea and the low-oxalate diet don't have as many side effects, outright dangers, and potential for abuse by quacks and multi-level marketers as so many of the other "biomed" cures for autism do, and that parents will stay away from oxytocin nasal spray and IV chelation among others, and that more kids aren't harmed than have been already by "autism biomed."


Autism Diva
no quack zone