recent successes with fish oil dosage for kiddo with apraxia & autism

February 11, 2009

Hello parents,

I just thought I'd post about my past several months of experimenting

with fish oil dosages with my ASD/Apraxic son. Before I really became

an active member of this group, I followed the advice of our DAN

doctor and gave my son Cod Liver oil. Nothing much happened.

So, I started on Nordic Naturals EFAs and, nothing much. After about

two months, I added one, then two, EPAs and thought I saw some

improvements including increased pointing, more babbling, etc.

About three weeks ago, I upped the EPA to 3 capsules and, well, we've

had a really noticeable spurt in word approximations and clarity of

words as well as BRAND NEW sounds we've never heard before. He started

using " f " (wow) and now asks me for " fuh fries " when he's hungry. He

used to use mostly " neutral " vowel sounds (uh) so, bear, bus, beans,

etc. all sounded the same (ie, buh). He's gained dipthongs (/ai/ as in

hi! and bye; /ei/ as in say, hey; and /oi/ as in boy). This is not

just my imagination either as his teacher, both the school SLP and OT

as well as his ABA therapists have all noticed this big difference in

the last three weeks. I didn't ask anyone their opinions on his

language; their comments were all offered spontaneously.

I've done a fair bit of reading about this and there is *some*

evidence to suggest that kids with ASD benefit from a higher ratio of

EPA to EFA. I can dig through my articles and post.

My son just turned 5 and I was really beginning to wonder if we'd ever

get much more language out of him as his progress was painfully,

painfully slow. I now feel a lot more optimistic and am looking

forward to hearing more of what he has to say.

If you have a child with apraxia and ASD, don't give up. The formula I

used may not be right for everyone but if you *methodically*

experiment with dosages, you might just come up with a dosage that

works for your child. FYI, I didn't change anything else in his biomed

regime during this time as I was focused on figuring out the oils (and

also I can't keep up with all the costs of DAN!) so, I'm pretty sure

the changes are due to this fish oil ratio.

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