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It is a known fact that dietary supplements can help one recover from certain diseases—or at least prevent them. These dietary supplements provide a person the necessary nutrients that he should be getting from the food he takes in. Unfortunately, since not everyone gets the proper food, not everyone gets the proper nutrition he would need to protect himself from health risks. Dietary supplements, as the name already suggests, complements the nutrients taken from food. Of course, people are not required to take dietary supplements, but it can certainly boost their defense against diseases. The nutrients from supplements can also enhance one's bodily functions; since the body is getting sufficient nutrients, it can work at optimum efficiency. People with weak immune systems (those who are prone to disease) or those who are constantly in a stressful environment (which makes them prone to diseases) normally take dietary supplements.
But dietary supplements should be more than just a “supplement.” According to various studies, dietary supplements can be used to treat autism spectrum disorders. This claim is contested by several experts and organization, but the truth is there is no actual study that can proof that it is not true. After all, no one knows what causes autism. Autism as a brain disorder is the long-standing belief of experts, but even they have said that external factors might have bee the trigger to autism.
In any case, how can dietary supplements treat autism spectrum disorders?
Remember that autism spectrum disorders consist of a number of symptoms. For instance, an autistic child often suffers from leaky gut. An autistic child also suffers from poor pain recognition. These symptoms, however, are localized; this means the causes of these symptoms are different for every area. The leaky gut is caused organisms in the gut that cannot be removed since an autistic child's gut does not function in full efficiency. Therefore, supplements can help remedy this by providing the child with the proper substances can eliminate these organisms.
Common supplements given to autistic children include fatty acids, probiotics, and certain enzymes. Enzymes help the body break down food, preventing proteins from entering the blood stream. These proteins, if undigested, can become very hazardous—a fact proven by several researches during the 1990. In particular, the gluten and casein can produce harmful toxins that can inflame certain brain functions. With these enzymes, proteins can easily be broken down.
The essence of giving supplements to autistic child is to assist them in areas where they are not particularly able. Due to their limited body function efficacy, what should come normally to them doesn't. They do not produce natural enzymes that can digest proteins; they do not have antibodies to help them against foreign substances from entering the body. By treating the symptoms, there is a great chance that the status of an autistic child will vastly improve, therefore treating autism spectrum disorders. Of course, the chance of total recover would be larger if it is done with other treatments.
To start, we need to look at the reasons for behavior. According to behavioral approaches, most of the behavior we see results from one of three reasons: a request, seeking attention, or a sensory reason. Let's look deeper at these three reasons for behavior and the ways we currently handle them.
Handling a request is fairly straightforward. To put it very simply, a request is usually something externally controlled by both reinforcing appropriate requests and not reinforcing inappropriate ones, such as a tantrum.
For negative attention-seeking behaviors, we can eliminate the behavior by not giving the negative behavior attention and give attention for desired behavior - very straightforward, and again, usually externally controlled.
The sensory reasons arise from both the external and internal events that a child experiences through the five senses, and may or may not be externally controlled. In all of these situations, our internal responses - our feelings and thoughts about events fire us into action. In stressful situations, the resulting "knee jerk" reactions are often difficult to manage with a purely behavioral approach for a few reasons:
1. Thoughts and feelings are often lightning-fast, internally-controlled events, therefore difficult to manage through external behavioral modifications.
2. Thoughts and feelings can't be measured, and as a result, behavioral approaches simply don't address them. It doesn't mean that these things don t exist or aren't important. It just means that they're left out of the equation.
3. Behavioral approaches address the cause and consequence of behaviors the beginning and the end. But internal responses (i.e. thoughts and feelings) happen in the moments between the cause and the consequence. By not dealing with thoughts, feelings and solutions at these moments, we leave a child to figure out solutions on his or her own.
4. Children on the autism spectrum have a limited ability to adapt to new or changing situations, solve problems, compare past to present, or see possibilities. Because of this, if a child never learns how to think through a challenging situation during the emotional moments, when faced with it again, the same behavior will probably repeat itself, no matter what the consequence, or how many times they've been through it before.
This situation calls for tools to deal with overwhelming thoughts, feelings and strategies in the moment before the tantrum, not just consequences after.
In the book The Explosive Child, Ross Greene talks about this situation. This book applies to any disorders that have limitations in problem solving and executive thought, including all PDDs, such as Asperger's Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and all autism spectrum disorders. ADD, ADHD, and various other developmental disabilities also share these problem-solving / executive thought issues and can benefit from using this approach, according to Dr. Greene.
In the book, first we pick our battles carefully, and then talk through our thought process out loud. This way our children can hear us think through situations before tantrums. This also creates a memory of how they triumphed in the situation without resorting to negative behaviors.
Progress is made in small increments, but as time goes on, tantrums should decrease, and you can even start to ask your child to contribute ideas about solving problems during those emotional moments. In doing this, you help your child learn how to solve problems and become confident about handling new, changing, or challenging situations. You'll combine the best of all worlds, to the benefit of your child.
Copyright 2005, Sandra Sinclair