Recently our psychologist who is also every bit of a DAN! dr. as our actual DAN! dr recommended that we try using Inositol for Sully's anxiety and OCD. She printed out a paper on some research that was done and when I got home from our appointment I did some further research on google. There have been a couple different papers written about the use of the B vitamin Inositol and how it could be used to treat OCD symptoms, anxiety, depression and many others. One particular paper concluded that there were no significant results on 9 autistic test subjects but that more testing is warrented. This appealed to me as there is no risk in trying this particular B (3) vitamin. I scanned quite a few different blog sites of parents of autistic children and the burden of proof was overwhelming. So many children were responding to Inositol and the results were amazing. We have come so far and made so much gain-much more than I could have ever dreamed of-with the use of supplements that it was worth a shot. My philosophy is: its worth a try as long as there is no risk. I picked up some 500mg capsules from our local health food store and started BOTH boys on 250mg 2 times a day. Within a week we were starting to see that Sully was much more calm and wasn't so high strung throughout the day. He was following directions more easily and actually would stay in time out without shouting. I also had decided to give it to Lochlan as well for mood regulation and just to see if it would have any calming effects on him. Lochlan too has been more managable and seems to be more easily redirected. I know it is still early to be so conclusive but I am hopeful as we continue that this supplement will continue to work for them. Below are some links to some of the research I came across on this vitamin. Some of the papers describe how Inositol can also be very helpful for hair pulling and skin picking!
http://westsuffolkpsych.homestead.com/Inositol.html
http://www.oralchelation.com/ingred/inositos.htm
http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=49840
http://autism.com/ari/newsletter/112/page2.pdf
