Growing up involves many different things. When it comes to our bodies, how our brains and nerves grow, and the way they can get hurt along the way, sets the stage for our health and how easily we might get sick later in life.

For example, the physical side of growing up includes how our body changes over time, especially our brain, nerves, senses, and movements. Our brains and nerves do a massive amount of building and shaping during early childhood, but they actually keep growing and maturing well into adulthood. However, if this growth gets disrupted by bad genes, severe stress, or environmental toxins, the brain struggles to keep things balanced. This disruption increases the chances of developing conditions like ADHD or Autism early on, or diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's later in life.

Our health and how we grow are trapped in a lifelong loop where each constantly changes the other. If someone's brain or nervous system is damaged, it can cause slow physical movements or trouble processing senses like sight and sound. On the other hand, things like bad illness or a stressful environment can actually change how the brain develops. Health researchers have proven that our risk for getting sick comes down to this exact mix of the genes we are born with and the world we live in.

Getting sick as an adult isn't just random bad luck; it is actually the final result of how your brain and nerves have been growing since childhood. Our lifelong health is deeply tied to how our bodies, minds, and social lives interact and shape each other as we age. As an autistic adult myself, I can understand this insight. As a child I struggled with socializing, learning, and to understand how important it was to take care of my body (I wouldn't eat and do proper hygiene). But as I aged all of that changed, the way I think, socialize, and how my body reacts to my diagnosis.

Now, my question is: How can early help and brain therapies change someone's growth path for the better and stop them from getting severely sick later in life? I ask this question because, as a child that struggled at home and at school, I've never received early help and support. It was recently, that I've learned about my ADHD and Autism diagnosis. To get diagnosed at this late in my adulthood, it affected my brain and nervous system. I had and still have many questions.

![Basic information about ADHD & Autism and how they overlap] (https://share.google/nRXvAp42o9iSy0Hu7)