INTRODUCTION - National Trust

So many children, particularly those with less severe developmental delays, will show
a steady improvement with the educational and behavioural approaches generally
available, and once they are in a program their parents become delighted with their
gains. There are not enough programs around, and not enough professionals familiar
with them; waiting lists are shockingly long. Behavioural approaches (“ABA”) seem
to offer the best hope at present, but there are many other innovative and sincere
approaches - the “Miller method”, “Giant Steps”, “floor time”, “sensory integration
therapy” which some professionals and parents feel are sometimes helpful. We need
much more research to make our decisions on evidence rather than hope or faith.
But for many children there seems to be no progress at all. A large proportion of
children develop epilepsy (seizures), and there is a group which becomes worse as
teenagers. When progress is bad, and this is very often when the child is very far
behind developmentally and the behaviour impossible to live with, it is tempting to
try unorthodox and quite unproven ways of helping. I would include chiropractors,
naturopaths, iridologists, and reflexologists amongst those only contribution to these
children and their families is the production of false hopes! If you are tempted to
follow these routes, I hope you will let me know so we can discuss worries.
8. What about diet, and vitamins ?
Because we do not know the “cause” of the autistic spectrum disorders it possible
that at least some cases are caused by biochemical disturbances in the brain. Many
biochemical disorders can respond to changes in diet -diabetes is a good example but
there are many others. There is evidence that some autistic people have biochemical
differences in their brains, so it is quite reasonable to experiment with substances that
might change brain chemistry - these may be vitamins, metals, other foodstuffs or
drugs.
Because many autistic children seem to have too much serotonin, and bananas are
very rich in this substance, it is probably wise to avoid this fruit -or at least to note
down very carefully any changes that seem to follow eating a lot of bananas. We
know that children short of iron concentrate poorly, so that any hyperactive or
inattentive child deserves the simple blood test to measure the ion-carrying protein
ferritin, or a course of iron tablets.
One theory suggests that some autistic people may absorb milk (casein) and wheat
(gluten) peptides which resemble natural neurotransmitters and have a bad effect on
brain function. Some parents keep their children on a diet free of milk and wheat -but
the evidence that this helps is lacking.
One expert on autism, Dr. Bernard Rimland, has published evidence that high doses
of vitamin B6 (thiamine) and aluminium have helped many autistic children; many
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