Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Consulting

Dietary and Other Interventions

In an effort to do everything possible to help their children, many parents continually seek new treatments.

Although an unproven treatment may help one child, it may not prove beneficial to another. To be accepted as a proven treatment, the treatment should undergo clinical trials, preferably randomized, double-blind trials, that would allow for a comparison between treatment and no treatment.

In the past, for example, Secretin was believed to be an effective intervention for children with autism. However, after careful, randomized,double-blind trials this intervention was found to have no effect, and was costly and carried health risks.

Following are some of the interventions that have been reported to have been helpful to some children but whose efficacy or safety has not been proven.

Dietary interventions are based on the idea that

1) food allergies cause symptoms of autism, and

2) an insufficiency of a specific vitamin or mineral may cause some autistic symptoms.

A diet that some parents have found was helpful to their autistic child is a gluten-free, casein-free diet. Gluten is a casein-like substance that is found in the seeds of various cereal plants—wheat, oat, rye, and barley. Casein is the principal protein in milk. Since gluten and milk are found in many of the foods we eat, following a gluten-free, casein-free diet is difficult.

A supplement that some parents feel is beneficial for an autistic child is Vitamin B6, taken with magnesium (which makes the vitamin effective). The result of research studies is mixed; some children respond positively, some negatively, some not at all or very little. It is possible to supplement a child with too much Vitamin B, and this can be neurotoxic.

If parents decide to try for a given period of time a special diet, they should be sure that the child’s nutritional status is measured carefully. Many children with ASD have significant sensory issues related to food, and these diets can be costly and frustrating for parents.