Certain Nutrients May Help Autistic Kids, Here’s Why

Mar 31 2026

(Illustration by Lumi Liu)

James Adams was on track to become a tenured engineering professor when his daughter was diagnosed with autism in 1994. Doctors told him she would likely need to be institutionalized.

Back then, autism was considered to have no effective treatment. Coincidentally, a medical conference his wife attended brought up the possibility of treating his daughter’s autism with supplements.

Adams was skeptical. But with no other choice, he began research.

He led a clinical trial involving 20 children, administering a supplement mixture to half the children over three months. The results were promising—children were improving in their sleep and gut symptoms.

“Autistic people seem to have a higher need for vitamins and minerals,” Adams, now the head of the autism research program at Arizona State University, told The Epoch Times. He’s been getting more promising results since.

Why do children with autism need more nutrients?

Higher Nutritional Demand

Most people with autism do not have broad nutritional deficiencies, but they are often deficient or have a greater need for a select few nutrients.

One key deficiency is vitamin B12. Postmortem research by Richard Deth, a professor of pharmaceutical science at Nova Southeastern University, found that the brains of children with autism showed vitamin B12 levels in the frontal cortex comparable to those of adults older than 50. Deficiencies in B12 can be critical during early brain development.

Another low nutrient in autistic children is sulfate, Adams said. Sulfate is necessary for removing toxins, reducing stress, and supporting brain development.

Meanwhile, their need for extra nutrients may also arise from inherited metabolic differences that affect how the body absorbs and processes nutrients, or from a cumulative burden of biological stressors that depletes nutritional reserves.

Most children with autism have higher oxidative stress, indicated by their low glutathione levels.

“Glutathione is the primary antioxidant in all cells of the body,” Deth said. “Children with autism have about a third less glutathione in their blood than typically developing children.”

When glutathione levels are low and oxidative stress is high, other necessary processes, such as methylation and sulfation, can be affected. Methylation is a process that children need to activate brain-developing genes. Sulfation helps the body identify and remove toxins.

Jill James, a pioneer in the biochemistry of autism, estimates that by measuring the chemicals involved in oxidative stress and methylation, researchers should be able to predict around 97 percent of children with autism—an indication of just how central these processes may be.

However, these metabolic deficits may be improved through nutrition.

Promising Nutrients

At the molecular level, nutrients rarely act in isolation but often interact with one another.

Most researchers in nutrition for autism emphasize that meaningful change usually results from a combination of interventions, not a single supplement. Still, several individual nutrients have been studied in controlled trials.

Vitamin B12

Dr. Robert Hendren, former executive director of the University of California, Davis, MIND Institute, conducted a trial in which 22 children with autism received vitamin B12 injections for 12 weeks.

Around half of the children showed improvements, with fewer repetitive behaviors, more social interactions, and better maintenance of eye contact, Hendren told The Epoch Times.

“Statistically, it made a difference, and almost all of the families that were in the study wanted to continue,” he said.

Deth recommends supplementation with methylcobalamin, the most biologically available form of vitamin B12, rather than cyanocobalamin, the more common commercial form, which often needs additional conversions in the body before it can be used.

5-MTHF

Vitamin B9, also known as folate, is involved in attention and brain development, and in reducing oxidative stress.

Folic acid, often seen on the market in fortified foods, is not the ready-to-use form for the body.

Research shows that 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF) is better absorbed than folic acid.

“It’s 5-MTHF that is certainly critical,” Deth said.

“If you take folic acid, for example, through wheat and flour and things like that … fortified with folate to prevent neural tube defects, that’s good. But at the same time, that folic acid is not ready to go to work, and it can compete with the ready-to-work folate.”

If folic acid is not converted, high doses can be harmful to the body, with research showing that it is linked with immune dysfunction.

Some children with autism appear to have antibodies that block folate from crossing into the brain.

In this subset of children, research by Dr. Daniel Rossignol and Dr. Richard Frye has shown that leucovorin—an easily absorbed active derivative of folic acid—can bypass the antibody blockade and lead to improvements in attention, verbal skills, and broader autistic symptoms.

Leucovorin gained wider public attention last year when HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited it as a potential treatment, though clinicians caution that the evidence currently supports its use only in one specific subgroup—patients with folate-blocking antibodies—not as a general intervention.

N-acetylcysteine

Glutathione is the body’s main defense against stress, but children with autism often have a depleted store. Insufficient glutathione can set back children’s development as the body uses up fuel stores for brain development and detoxification.

“N-acetylcysteine is the most common supplemented form of glutathione,” Deth said.

Because glutathione cannot be absorbed directly by cells, researchers have focused on its precursor: N-acetylcysteine, or NAC.

Meta-analyses of trials on NAC in children have found reductions in irritability and hyperactivity, as well as improvements in social awareness.

Other Nutrients

Vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and carnitine, an amino acid involved in energy metabolism, have also shown promise in improving behavioral symptoms.

Some children with autism do not have enough digestive enzymes, and supplementing the needed enzymes to break down food has likewise been shown to be helpful.

NAC is the precursor to cysteine, which contains sulfate, so supplementing it theoretically will raise the body’s sulfate levels. A clinical trial found that supplementing with glutathione, which is made from N-acetylcysteine, increased sulfate and other nutrients in the body.

Sulfate—for an average person—is primarily obtained from food that contains methionine and cysteine, such as animal products like meat and dairy.

Some studies have also recommended Epsom salt baths to help the body absorb sulfate through the skin.

Epsom salts are made of magnesium and sulfate, Adams explained. While several studies have made this recommendation, there has been little research testing its effects.

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One Size Does Not Fit All

A recurring concern among autism researchers is overgeneralization.

“There’s a saying in autism that if you’ve seen one child with autism, you’ve seen one child with autism; there are many different paths to get to where autism is,” Hendren said.

Hendren’s small trial on leucovorin, for example, did not find broad improvement across participants.

He attributes the stronger results in Frye’s work to better patient selection, specifically identifying children who test positive for folate-blocking antibodies before treatment begins.

“Their kids do better than just a random group of kids that were selected to come and test,” Hendren said.

Timing also matters. Children have a neurodevelopmental window that spans from conception to the first two years of life.

Dr. James Neuenschwander, who is board-certified in emergency medicine and integrative and holistic medicine, and the president of Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs, told The Epoch Times that younger children starting biomedical treatment tend to see much more dramatic improvements than older children.

“Depending on what age I start treating them, if I get a two-year-old, I’m gonna have a much better chance of recovering than if I get a 15-year-old.”

Changes in diet overall, such as going on a gluten-free and casein-free diet, have also been reported by some parents to create dramatic improvement, however evidence has mostly been anecdotal.

Hundreds and thousands of parents have gone to the MIND Institute. “Many of them said the single most important and helpful thing that they did was the casein and gluten-free diet,” Hendren said. However, other parents said they tried it for a month, and it did not make a difference.

Dr. Frances Kendall, a geneticist who treats children with autism, told The Epoch Times that there is not yet enough research for her to give a clinical recommendation to remove casein and gluten. Hendren said that research is fraught because it is very hard to design a clinical trial that can compare children on gluten- and casein-free diets with those who eat a usual diet, since gluten and casein are present in many foods and products.

Another Piece of the Puzzle

More than 25 years later, Adam’s daughter beat the original verdict. She did not need to spend her adult days institutionalized. Though she still has autism and intellectual disability, Adams said that she is happy and has been working part-time.

Nutrition has always been a fairly niche interest within the autism community, according to Hendren, who said it potentially fills in another piece to the overall well-being of children with autism.

“Behavioral treatments are great, but I don’t think they correct the metabolic process that slings people into autism,” he said.

“I hope people get a more broader look at how we can help the body be healthier.”

Marina Zhang

Marina Zhang is a health reporter for The Epoch Times. She covers both health news and in-depth features on emerging health issues. Marina holds a bachelor's degree in biomedicine from the University of Melbourne. Contact her at marina.zhang@epochtimes.com.