What if my child can’t swallow capsules?

Most supplements offered by Autism Coach are powdered in a capsule form. I was fortunate in being able to get my son to swallow pills, starting at around the age of four. He had taste sensitivities so pills were actually the easiest way to get the nutrients he needed into his body.

However, if your child is very young or is not able or unwilling to swallow pills you do have the option of opening capsules and blending them into room temperature or cool puddings, sauces, smoothies, or other liquids. Three supplements that lend themselves especially well to this and are highly beneficial for many autistic children are TMG, calcium and enzymes. TMG is an extremely effective detoxifier derived from beets and tastes sweet—it is available through Autism Coach in a pure powdered form. Most enzymes have a neutral taste and may be blended into many foods and drinks, sweet or salty. Phosphatidylserine has a pleasant taste and the gel caps could be squeezed out and mixed into non-dairy pudding.

E-Lyte electrolyte solution is a another wonderful product for children who cannot swallow pills. E-Lyte was specially developed to help autistic children and contains many of the minerals they have difficulty absorbing suspended in a liquid form. You may add E-Lyte to distilled water of salty broths. E-Lyte helps to correct electrolyte imbalance and promotes better absorption of nutrients. Many autistic children, due to digestive issues, are chronically dehydrated, and you may actually see significant improvements simply by addressing this issue. E-Lyte also offers a line of trace mineral products, also suspended in liquid, which may be added to citrus drinks or water and powdered vitamin C. Minerals which are highly recommended in the treatment of autism and are available in this liquid form include: selenium, zinc, magnesium and molybdenum.

For infants, Dr. Mary Megson recommends adding Cod Liver oil to their bottles, although you should be sure to get a pure brand, free of contaminants. For more information, see Dr. Mary Megson’s site at www.megson.com. Coconut milk is a good-tasting source of the beneficial fats that promote myelination. I use coconut milk in the muffins and pancakes I make for my son. Be sure to get a high-quality brand of whole (not skim) coconut milk.

Is a vitamin program worth the time and expense?

It is time consuming to prepare and administer vitamins and they do cost money. However, the returns on the investment may be repaid many times over. Any program that helps your child to have a more normal life will mean much less work and expense in the long-run—and perhaps even the short-run. My son is so much more alert and high functioning than he was before we started the vitamin program that the time I spend performing other therapies, care-giving, and supervision have dropped to close to the range of a non-autistic child. He sleeps through the night. He can bike to our neighborhood park by himself and play with friends. He going to be able to live independently and hold a job—if not much more.

Other therapies, such as behavioral modification and sensory integration can cost much more on a monthly basis than a supplement program—which is not to say that you should only choose one form of intervention. An intervention program giving you the greatest chances of positive outcome combines diet, supplementation, behavioral and integrative therapies. As a word of advice, I have found that the behavioral and integrative therapies are only as good as the practitioner and that talented therapists are often so in demand and charge so much that many parents can’t get or afford as much therapy as their child needs. I did a lot of my own therapy with my son at home—and hired college students to perform therapy when talented students were available and I could afford them. My son has derived tremendous benefits from behavioral modification, auditory integration and sensory integration — but the supplements he took at the same time as he received these therapies helped him to move ahead more quickly, providing more benefit for each therapy dollar spent. Adding the gluten and casein free diet to this protocol and using only natural fats and oils resulted in even greater strides forward.

What about the specialty multi-purpose supplements for autism?

I currently do not use or offer the “multi-purpose does-everything” supplements designed specially for autistic children, because my son is invariably sensitive to some ingredient or the product does not completely list the ingredients. For example, I never use any product that has “natural flavors” listed as an ingredient—to me this is hiding the true ingredients behind a government-approved label. Every product I have tried with “natural flavors” has not worked well for my son, who is probably adversely effected by the phenols in the flavorings. I don’t want my son consuming any ingredient that is not good for him, even if it is bundled in with other ingredients that are beneficial—this tends to diminish the positive effects of the supplement, obscuring whether or not the “good ingredients” would have worked for him.

Any tips for putting a supplement protocol into practice?

Introduce one supplement at a time and observe your child’s behavior. Start a journal or use a behavioral checklist to document your child behavior before introducing supplements. Write down how the child behaves after introducing the supplement. If you see improvements, add the supplement to your weekly supplement program—if there is no improvement or regression, discontinue it.* Give each supplement at least three days before deciding whether to continue with it, unless you see an immediately strong negative reaction.

Make sure you and your child are comfortable with swallowing pills before you attempt this program. You may want your child to practice swallowing a single supplement before investing in more. You know what your child can swallow. If a pill is too big, open the capsule and either pour it into smaller capsules or mix it into an acceptable food. If the supplement is in a tablet form, you can use a mortar and pestle to pulverize it and put it again into a capsule or mix it into food.

Make it a fun time when your child takes vitamins, by spending playing a game with him, reading to him, or performing some other enjoyable activity. Give the child food to eat in between vitamins (my son takes a bite of his snack between about every 5 vitamins) and plenty of liquid to wash them down. Once the child is proficient at swallowing vitamins, you can reward the child with an incentive if he finishes within a certain time (if you have a timer or clock the child can follow). I usually give my son 15 minutes to take his vitamins.

To cut down on preparation time, prepare a week’s worth of vitamins at a time, sorting them into freezer bags labeled with the day of the week and whether they are the AM or PM dosage. For example for Tuesday, you would have Tuesday AM freezer bag and a Tuesday PM freezer bag. I then staple them together to keep the bags for the day together. You could set aside a regular day and time to do this. For example, you could package the vitamins when you are unwinding in the evening while watching TV on Monday nights. You could then save and reuse the labeled bags every week.

Get a small mortar and pestle, available at health food and cooking stores. Use this for all supplements that must be converted into a different form for your child to be able to swallow them. Most autism coach supplements don’t need to be converted unless your child can’t swallow pills.

Get empty gelatin capsules or vegetarian “veggie” caps from your health food store. 00-size capsules seem to work well and hold more of the supplement—if these are too big for your child to swallow, try 0-size.

To halve the dosage for a single day’s worth of a supplements:

Take all the supplements whose dose you wish to cut in half for that day, open the capsule for each supplement and empty half of the capsule’s contents into the mortar bowl.

Close up the other the half of the capsule and put it in the freezer bag for the AM dose. Do this until each capsule you need for the day to halve the dosage has half emptied and put into the AM freezer bag.

Now you have a mortar filled with the remaining half the capsules. Use the pestle to thoroughly mix them up if any need to be ground into a powder and use your empty gelatin or veggie capsules to scoop up the vitamins in the mortar and encapsulate them.

Close up the capsules and put them in the PM freezer bag. Preparing groups of pills this way saves a significant amount of time.

To get your child to take pure cod liver oil (or other unpalatable liquids):

Get an empty bottle with a dropper from your local pharmacy.

Pour some the cod liver oil into the bottle.

Get an empty gelatin capsule and use the eye-dropper to fill the large half of the capsule to the top.

Close up the capsule and wipe off the outside of it with a paper towel.

Refrigerate the remainder of the cod liver oil in the bottle until you need it again.

If your child can swallow capsules, it is beneficial to have them drink the capsules down with either:

E-lyte electrolytes and water (see E-lyte) or with

Elyte liquid minerals and vitamin C in water or mixed in a citrus drink

The E-lyte products improve the absorption of nutrients.