B6 and Magnesium Vitamin Therapy for AS?

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Hi. I'm Molly. I'm new here. My son was just dx with AS and he's going to see a specialist and a therapist to help him with his socialization. He's 13 and my sister suggested it years ago but there was so little information out there and I guess as a mom I didn't want to say that there was something wrong with one of my kids.

Anyway, I've read a little about vitamin therapy for AS and was wondering if anyone else has heard of or tried this. What do you all know about it and can you send me in the right direction for more information. TIA!

That got a little discussion recently, here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... ic&t=27481

To expand on what I said there, I've seen b-6 used in one clinical trial for ADHD. It was said to be effective, but only at enormous dosage -- for a 50-pound kid, 375-750 times what the RDA is for a 150-pound adult -- which is high enough that it is very likely to cause nerve damage if maintained for long. Aspie kids tend to have some deficiencies -- magnesium and b-6 among them -- but fixing the deficiency shouldn't take more than 1-2 times the RDA for magnesium and 5-10 times the RDA for b-6. I give my kid those, along with a number of other vitamins and some anti-oxidants. And, while they probably make him healthier, they don't have a dramatic impact on his AS. 100 milligrams of DMAE a day has had very noticeable effects on concentration and focus, but everything else has been much more ambiguous.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

My son takes 400 mg Vit C, 250mg Vit B, Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate 50mg, 100mg DMAE, #00 mcg Biotin, 1000 mcg B-12 and 800 mcg Folic Acid with breakfast; 500mg Vit C, 90mg Zinc, 10mg maganese, 300IU Vit E, at Dinner; at night to help him he takes Calcium, 200/Magnesium, 150mg; Evening Primrose and a Nordic fish oil tablet. These are prescribed by a physician. My son is the same age. Hope this helps. The night time regime has really helped calm him before bedtime and I do give him 3mg Melatonin when he does have trouble sleeping, it works!

P-5-P is an easily utilized form of vitamin b-6, in case anyone was wondering what that long name's about. 50 milligrams is equivalent to 25 times the RDA of regular b-6.

Oh thank you for the replies.

Geek I did a search before I posted this and couldn't find what I was looking for. Thanks for the thread, I'll take a look at it. Bryan also was dx adhd (not hyper active but they said it's the blanket dx) so maybe these thing will help. This may sound silly, but as I said we're really new to this. He's only seen the therapist at this point and will see the dr on April 5. What is DMAE?

Again, thank you both for the info. My head is absolutely swimming right now trying to find out all I can about AS. I seem to keep seeing the same information everywhere I look.

a product called attentive child has 100mg of DMAE in it.

DMAE is dimethylaminoethanol, a substance naturally found in fish.

DMAE appears to be used by the central nervous system in the manufacture of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. It may also act as an anti-oxidant in the brain, and help the condition of cell membranes there. You can find some basic information on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylethanolamine

More interesting is the research done with kids. Most of the studies were done between 1958 and 1976, the main ones being:
(1) Oettinger L. The use of Deanol in the treatment of disorders of behavior in children. J Pediat.1958;53:761-675.
(2) Pfeiffer GC. Parasympathetic neurohormones. possible precursors and effect on behavior. Int Review of Neurobiology. 1959;195-244.
(3) Geller SJ. Comparison of a tranquilizer and a psychic energizer. JAMA 1960;174:89-92.
(4) Coleman N, Dexheimer P, Dimascio A, Redman W, Finnerty, R. Deanol in the treatment of hyperkinetic children. Psychosomatics. 1976;17:68-72.

These studies are not all available on the web, but if you do a search for something like "Dexheimer" + "Deanol" you should be able to find lots of references to the 4th paper, for example.

DMAE was used as a treatment for "hyperkinetic" kids, with symptoms of what we would now call ADHD or AS/HFA. In those days it was marketed as "Deanol" or "Deaner," had FDA approval, and was covered by a patent. The FDA then changed its requirements for drug approval, and made companies go through some additional trials to retain approval for drugs already on the market. Because the patent on Deanol as a treatment for "hyperkinetic" children had expired, no pharmaceutical company was interested in paying for the trials, when it would gain them no possible advantage in the market -- competitors would freeload off their research and sell it as an unpatented generic just as easily as they could. So it disappeared from the pharmacies. In the 1980s it was looked at for treating Tourette's Syndrome and tics, but there was no money in it, so it has gotten little attention since.

However, because it is a natural substance, it can still be sold as a food supplement, and most health food stores carry it. It's $5-$10 for a bottle of 100 milligram capsules, and 100 milligrams a day is the same dose used successfully in at least one of the studies I cited, so you're only looking at a cost of 5 to 10 cents a day. It helps my kid a lot, both in terms of concentration (makes home schooling a LOT less painful) and a bit with general mood and behavior. No telling whether it will do as well for your kid, but it seems worth a try.

Just make sure and give it early in the day, as it intensifies dreams, and can make them start before one is fully asleep. Taken before noon, that shouldn't be a problem.

Interesting explanation, very good! Thank you. This is an interesting thread.

Yah, my son was diagnosed ADHD, given the hard drugs and all and had horrible reactions. After we lost our insurance, my husband retired from the military, we lost our psychiatrist (just as well). It gave us the incentive to go to UCLA for an official diagnosis on the "autism spectrum" high-functioning, which happens to be Aspergers. We had it pretty much down by that time it was just a matter of getting the schools and docs to understand what our son was going through and get help. Unfortunately it took us until he was 10.

In the 4th study I cited, and I believe one of the others, the standard of effectiveness which they used was Ritalin, and they found DMAE to be approximately as effective. Choline is often considered to be a member of the b-vitamin complex, and we felt a lot better about giving our kid something which was a couple of atoms away from being a b-vitamin (DMAE) than something which was a couple of atoms away from being meth (Ritalin). He's got a pretty solid case of OCD, and the tics that go with it, which make him a poor candidate for Ritalin anyway. But he's done really well with DMAE and some extra vitamins and minerals, and, if anything, his OCD has diminished. I hadn't really thought about it lately, but he used to regularly complain about unwanted thoughts getting stuck in his head, and he hasn't done that for months.

I'm sure Bryan has a little of OCD as well but again we won't know the full spectrum of his issues until we see the actual doctor on the 12th. I did order the Attentive Child which has the DMAE and some other vitamins. Here is the the list of vitamins in it:

Magnesium (from magnesium aspartate) 120 mg 30%
Zinc (as zinc picolinate) 2 mg 15%
L-Aspartate (from magnesium aspartate) 310 mg **
DMAE (as DMAE bitartrate) 100 mg **
Leci-PS® Soybean Extract 50 mg **
Yielding 40% Phosphatidylserine 20 mg **
Phosphatidylcholine 6 mg **
Phosphatidylethanolamine 3.5 mg **
Phosphatidylinositol 1.5 mg **
Grape Seed Extract 15 mg **

Plus I will get him a mulit-vitamin. Hopefully this will at least help with the ADD.

This is the one we use (in the chewable wafer form), but the magnesium isn't enough for the age/weight of my son, so we add in one MagOx pill. I was in our health food store yesterday and did actually find a bottle of DMAE (nothing else, just DMAE) 100mg. I didn't get it as I am trying to cut down on how many pills he has to swallow and the AttentiveChild wafers chew like candy. Just another source for you.

Snug, how do you know how much magnesium he should have? Bryan is 13 and weighs about 135-140 lbs. I agree. I don't want Bryan to have to take too many pills either.

I am really ready to go to the doctor. lol I should be asking him all these questions. I am just trying to gather as much as I can from more experienced moms dealing with the same thing till I get in there.

I appreciate all the time you ladies are taking with me!

Molly- We follow the 240mg recommendation and try to get as close to that as we can. I think your son should be getting close to 400mg daily. Here is a link to recommendations based on age (typical weights assumed). Scroll down the page for the info.

http://www.healthandage.com/html/res/co ... iumcs.html

You also have to take into account how much he is getting in his diet. He could be getting a lot of magnesium within the foods he normally eats. I know some protein bars (which we use) also contain magnesium, so I have to watch closely not to give too much in the way of supplementation on a daily basis.

there is a website Autism.tv (I don't know if that's the exact address) and if you go to the Defeat Autism Now category you can view different conferences where they specifically talk about different vitamin therapies, diets, etc. I viewed one where the speaker was Bernard Rimland and he spoke specifically about his research w/ B-6/magnesium. Dr. Rimland worked with Kirkman Labs and came up with a specific vitamin for autistic children that is high in B-6, it's called super nu-thera. I ordered it and it came yesterday so we will see what happens. My son is 10 yrs. old and he will take a dose of that in addition to cod liver oil. Hope this helps!!

This might not have anything to do with the topic, but my son's developmental ped recommended Coromega (it's omega3s in an orange paste that tastes like baby aspirin) and a multivitamin. She says that the omega 3 helps the brain process input, and I have to say that he really has made improvements following her recommendations, with therapies as well as health tips.

She also recommended Nordic Omega 3-6-9 for my husband, so we both take it. I feel a lot less anxiety, and he seems a lot more alert. I have to admit that while I was pregnant, I did not eat anything with Omega3 at all.