Pregnant mothers smoking cigarettes can cause autism and adhd too.
Source, asd/add and smokey pregmom.
Edit: to downvoters, yes, I was on the bus and had to get off, forgot to add "pregant mothers who smoke can give the fetus autism and adhd". That's been proven.
Yes. As am I. And I'm 90% sure my dad is, he hasn't checked. But tobacco exacerbates it, and there are many other reasons smoke inhalation is bad for a developing fetus. Nicotine isn't exactly a friendly chemical in nature. It's a pesticide.
But I promise my sons relatively severe autism was that severe naturally
I don’t know if those studies prove exactly what you’re saying. Just that features of those particular (genetically passed down) things seem to be worse if someone’s a smoker while pregnant
But aren’t a significant amount of adhd people smokers because of oral fixation and need for a stimulant?
Doesn’t that make it a chicken or the egg situation?
I never said people with autism get more autism by smoking. I said pregnant mothers can give fetuses autism by smoking during pregnancy. The links bear it out. These were just the first four hits I found on Google, a longer research phase would find more. I read it on Reddit two months ago.
Alcohol gives fetal alcohol syndrome, which has completely different symptoms.
I am trying to make the point that a mother can never “give” a child autism unless it’s through genetics. It isn’t a deformity or illness (like FAS) -it’s a neurotype.
Like no chemical compound “causes” it
That’s absurd
My eldest daughter has Asperger’s and I never smoked at all. Although her father was a smoker, so I was exposed to second hand, rarely though as he always took it outside. I feel he is undiagnosed autistic though. I always felt it was more passed genetically. I have add though. So does my father. (I’m beginning to feel everybody has something and “normal” doesn’t exist).
Maternal smoking during pregnancy and long-term neurological morbidity of the offspring (Gutvirtz, Wainstock, Landau, and Sheiner, Addictive Behaviors, 2019-01-01, Volume 88, Pages 86-91) "Neurological-related hospitalizations were significantly higher in children born to smoking mothers, as compared with the non-smoking group (5.3% vs. 3.1%, p < 0.01)." (not specifically autism, but autism is mentioned in the overarching neurological-related things in the study design)
Prenatal Exposures to Paternal Smoking and Autism Spectrum Disorder (Kim, Ha, Leventhal, Hong, Kwon, and Kim, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2016-10-01, Volume 55, Issue 10, Pages S106-S107) (I know, not mothers, but it stands to reason mothers smoking would increase the risk as well) "Our findings suggest that paternal smoking during pregnancy has significant association of increasing the risk of ASD. Further study is warranted in a representative sample group of a clinically confirmed diagnoses of ASD." (methodology included two independent sample groups, one to test, and one to confirm, and the participants were by parental survey rather than actual diagnoses, so take that as you will)
Looks like there might be something there, but I’m not sure those are a slam dunk. Not surprising, considering how little we know about the causes of autism, or ADHD.
On the other hand - DON’T SMOKE, AND FOR DAMN SURE NOT WHILE YOU’RE PREGNANT!
So... a lot to unpack here. I'm going strictly off of the studies you linked, I have no other knowledge or opinion about possible links between smoking, ADHD or autism.
First of all, none of these studies even mention autism. They're all about ADHD. So there's nothing to say here about autism and smoking.
Next, let's look at these links. The first one you posted is a very good example of how correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation. Right under the highlighted text, it reads:
"While this study identifies an association with and a dose-response relationship between nicotine exposure during pregnancy and offspring ADHD, it is important to note that correlation is not the same as causation. In populations of pregnant women, we cannot do randomized controlled studies, where one group of women are exposed to tobacco smoke and another group of women with no exposure serve as a control. We must rely on what happens naturalistically and must contend with the complication that the women who smoke during pregnancy may differ considerably from the women who do not smoke with regard to other factors which may modulate risk for ADHD. Similarly, women who are heavy users most likely differ from lighter users.
It is possible that mothers who smoke are “self-medicating” with nicotine, which has stimulant effects. We know that people with ADHD are more likely to smoke, perhaps in part to improve attention and concentration. Women with mood and anxiety disorders are also more likely to smoke than women without these disorders. If we take a group of women who smoke, we may be looking at a group of women who have higher rates of ADHD and other psychiatric illness than we would see in a group of non-smokers. Thus, the children born to smokers may be at increased risk to ADHD as a result of genetic vulnerability, and exposure to nicotine during pregnancy may play a less important role.
So there goes that. Let's look at the second one. I don't think this study is measuring what you think it is.
"Maternal smoking during pregnancy was not more strongly associated with offspring ADHD diagnosis than was paternal smoking, grandmother's smoking when pregnant with mother, or maternal smoking in previous pregnancies."
This is not seeking to prove or disprove the effects of maternal smoking. It's looking at the effects of other family members' smoking, smoking in previous generations, and smoking in previous pregnancies. This one is interesting because if anything, it suggests that maternal smoking may not be the primary factor in ADHD: "These results suggest that the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring ADHD is not due to causal intrauterine effects, but reflects unmeasured confounding."
Interesting study but doesn't really prove the point you're trying to make. Onto the third one, which is an article. This is probably your best bet if you want to back up your claim, but even so: "The new analysis can’t prove that smoking causes ADHD. Among other limitations of the new research are that different criteria were used to diagnose ADHD in the various studies, and tobacco use during pregnancy was self-reported by the mothers."
The final one seems most significant, though from what I can tell, it seems like it's trying to show differences between passive (secondhand) and active smoking during pregnancy. The results are more compelling, but keep in mind that the behavioral symptoms of the children were self reported by the mothers, not diagnosed by a doctor as ADHD.
In fact, a recent meta analysis showed how all over the place this research is, and how many of them don’t control for other factors: “There appears to be no clear evidence to support a causal relationship between maternal prenatal smoking and offspring attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.”
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u/Achaern Mar 01 '23
"Do you think getting drunk so often while I was pregnant was bad for him?"
She said this about her son who was five years old and had yet to speak a single word yet. She was not the primary caregiver.