71. Does Your Child Need a Multivitamin?
In this episode of the Nourishing Autism Podcast, Brittyn explains her most asked question across all social media platforms: does my child need a multivitamin? She walks you through the necessity of supplementation for nutrient deficiencies, special diets, and gut issues, and offers advice on selecting the right multivitamin. She also discusses key nutrients to look for and potential pitfalls like artificial additives. Stay tuned until the end of the episode for a special announcement from Brittyn!
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Brittyn, a Registered Dietitian and autism sibling. I have a passion for helping parents of neurodivergent kids navigate nutrition and wellness for their child, one small step at a time. Here we'll explore practical nutrition tips, learn from top autism experts, break down the newest research, and share inspirational stories that will empower you to utilize nutrition to help your child feel their best and thrive.
Listen in while picking kids up from school, sitting in a therapy waiting room, taking a quick walk or wherever you find yourself, looking for some inspiration and a friend to guide you along this journey. This is Nourishing Autism.
Hey everybody welcome back to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. I'm Brittyn, I'm your host. I'm so excited you're here. Today we're going to be talking about a really common topic I get questions all the time. It's one of the most common DMs that shows up for me on Instagram, on Facebook, the comments on YouTube.
You guys, this is a really important topic and it is on multivitamins. So, if you have a child, the odds are you have considered giving them a multivitamin. You've probably questioned, is this necessary? What should I be looking for? Are the ones that I grab off the shelf, are they good enough?
I'm here to answer all of those questions and more, especially when it comes to autism because there are some things that we're looking for or that
we're looking to avoid that are very specific to autism.
I also have a fun special announcement that pertains to this topic that [00:03:00] I'll be talking about toward the end of the podcast, but for now, buckle
up, let's go, let's dive into multivitamins.
Now, my thought on any supplement is that it is a great way to fill a nutritional gap or meet a specific nutritional need or maybe help with a particular symptom. Do I think that every single person needs to be on a multivitamin? No. There's no black and white answer if everyone on the autism spectrum needs to be on a multivitamin.
Now, is it helpful? Probably, yes. The reason why, there are a few risk factors that we are looking at when it comes to nutrient deficiencies which
is a big reason why we're taking a multivitamin in the first place, to make sure that your child hits all of their nutritional needs. Now, if your child has a limited diet, they're a selective eater, and they're eating fewer than 20 foods,
I would say [00:04:00] even 30 foods. If you're listing out all the different options and it's fewer than 20 foods, or they're missing a food group, so they
don't eat any meat, they don't eat any vegetables, they don't eat any fruit, or maybe they eat just one or two things from those food groups. That is kind of a ping to me.
Hey, we are missing a big food group. The odds that we're missing some nutrients as well that are commonly found in that food group are pretty high. So that's where we want to start thinking, okay, is their diet limited? Are they missing out on big chunks of nutrition? Now, another reason why you might consider a multivitamin is if your child has tested
deficient for a certain nutrient or group of nutrients. The odds that you've done this kind of testing are probably pretty low. Some pediatricians will flat out decline testing for nutrient deficiencies just because their wheelhouse isn't nutrition. They are going to be looking at a different set of [00:05:00] labs.
Now they may be looking at iron or vitamin D, and those are great to look at, but we have vitamin A, all of our B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D, E, K, and
then we have other minerals that may also be deficient as well. And getting all of those drawn, not only is that a lot of blood, but it's also going to often be a big expense for you if you're going through insurance if you're just interested. The better option there and I won't get too far into lab testing, I'll have to save that for another episode.
The better option is to do an all inclusive micronutrient panel from an outside lab where you are going to pay out of pocket, but typically it's somewhere between 250 to like 400 dollars to get all of it versus going through a typical lab and you can't even guess how much they bill [00:06:00] for some of those and you getting stuck with a sneaky bill.
So just my personal thought, we'll definitely come back to that at another episode. But if your child has tested deficient for even one nutrient, that kind of gives us an idea. The odds that they may be deficient in other nutrients increases. Now, if your child follows a special diet, like a gluten free diet or a dairy free diet, you may also consider supplementation because, again, just like you're missing out on certain nutrients when we have gaps in food groups, you can also be missing out on nutrients if you're avoiding all grains or you're avoiding all dairy.
So we really want to keep that in mind as well. Now, that doesn't always mean that your child needs a multivitamin, it can mean they really need a specific supplement. So, for example, let's say that your child doesn't eat any meat. It puts them at risk for zinc deficiency, B12 deficiency, and [00:07:00] iron deficiency.
Those would be some things that we would want to pay attention to. So, yes, they would benefit from a multivitamin, especially if their diet is, you know, more limited than that, but you can supplement with individual nutrients as well. Now, other reasons why we may consider a multivitamin is maybe if your child has gut issues.
So, if your child is eating even a variety of foods in their diet and they have gut issues, like let's say chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation, it's
possible that they may not be absorbing 100 percent of the nutrients from their food if they have digestive issues. So we want to make sure that we're thinking, okay, how much are they absorbing too?
So we may consider a multivitamin if they do have gut issues. That is absolutely something that you could be exploring with your pediatrician. Again, talking about outside panels, doing a comprehensive stool panel. Are there elevated markers that may show a lot of [00:08:00] inflammation or something that indicates that
your child may not be absorbing all of their nutrients from food.
So those are just a few of the reasons why you may consider a multivitamin. If your child doesn't need any of those, you could still take one. It may just be some expensive urine. Some nutrients are going to be excreted through the urine, not all of them, but, water soluble vitamins like all of
our B vitamins and vitamin C, if you take too much, they will just be peed out.
So that's why we say expensive urine. If your child doesn't need it, your body will just spit it out. Your other vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, and K, those are fat soluble. And if you take large amounts of those, your body doesn't just pee them out. It stores it in fat. So we want to make sure that we're getting the right amounts, which leads me to what you should be looking for when it comes to a
multivitamin, because the odds that you just run inside Target or Walmart and grab a [00:09:00] vitamin
and it's going to be really a good one is actually pretty low. So I want to talk you through what to look for, and this can also be helpful for all of my listeners who are not in the United States, because if I just start name dropping different products, the odds that they're accessible to you are pretty low too, but I want you to understand what to be looking for so that you can make this choice
for your child. So we're going to go over five things that I really want you to be looking for and I'll throw in a few bonuses if I think they're necessary. So, number one, we want them to contain all of those fat soluble vitamins. We want them to contain vitamin A, D, E, and K. Those are fat soluble.
Next, we want to contain all of our B vitamins, or at least a majority of our B vitamins, with special attention to both folate and B12. And not only do we
want [00:10:00] them to contain those B vitamins, we also want them to contain the active versions of those B vitamins. What I mean by that, there are certain forms of B vitamins that are cheaper to make and synthesize in a lab.
But your body has to do extra work to be able to convert it into the form that you really need. There are also certain genetic mutations that can get in the way of your body actually doing this, and we see some of those that are increased in autism. One in particular being folate. So you may be familiar with folic acid in a supplement.
If you've ever been pregnant, you've probably been preached you need 800 micrograms of folic acid instead of the regular 400. So that's the normal amount for women and pregnant women. It's especially important for the prevention of spina
bifida and neural tube development, so it's really, really important.
Now, folic acid [00:11:00] is the lab synthesized form of folate. Folate is the B vitamin. Folic acid has to be converted in your body into another form to be able to actually use it, and that's called methylfolate. Your body has to use the methylfolate, or activated folate. So when we take folic acid, your body has to go through a few steps and uses some genes to be able to methylate it.
Now, we can just take the methylated form, and that is going to be the activated form. This is what I prefer for kids on the autism spectrum, unless you know that they are specifically sensitive to methylated vitamins. I have not seen a large percentage at all in the clients that I work with who are sensitive, but it is possible, so definitely keep that in mind.
If you notice an uptick in hyperactivity or something [00:12:00] like that, we would just take a step down and use something else called folinic acid, which is the a little bit
less methylated form, and some kids tolerate that better. But what I'm generally looking for is that most activated form. Same with B12.
There's something called cyanocobalamin, which is the inactive form. I like looking for methylcobalamin or adenosylcobalamin. We want the active B vitamins. We also want it to contain at least 100 percent of vitamin C. So making sure that we're hitting the mark there. And so now we've gotten all of our vitamins.
We've gotten all of our fat solubles, all of our water solubles, and then we want to start thinking about minerals too. And for my fourth point, we want vital minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc, iodine, chromium, molybdenum, if possible.
There are, lots of minerals that are very beneficial, but these would be the ones that I'd especially be looking at. [00:13:00] Now calcium, is an important one that you want in there. You will notice that I didn't say iron. Iron is a very important nutrient, very important mineral, but we don't want it in our multivitamin.
Now, iron competes for absorption with other minerals, and so it gets in the way of absorbing those, especially calcium. So, especially if you know that your child is low in iron, you actually want to take a separate iron supplement at a different time of day away from your multivitamin. So, just remember, yes, iron is incredibly important.
It's actually one of the top nutrient deficiencies. However, we do not want it in our multivitamin.
And then a few last points. We want them to be third party tested. We want to make sure that the manufacturing company is actually putting in it what they say they are. Now what's kind of spooky is that multivitamins are not regulated by the FDA. So if you [00:14:00] don't have third party testing, a company could put out a multivitamin and say something's in it, but we haven't tested it to see.
So we want to make sure that we have that check mark on third party testing. Lastly, we want to make sure that we don't have any ingredients that shouldn't be there, like artificial colors and flavors, or other allergenic ingredients, for example. Sometimes we can see dairy or gluten work its way into a supplement, and for kids who are sensitive, that is absolutely going to be a problem.
We don't need those nutrients in there anyway, so we want ideally to have this smallest ingredient list possible, no added artificial ingredients, especially. So that's what I'm looking for in general for a multivitamin. Now, everybody is unique in their nutritional needs, but this hopefully will help you at least get a good idea of what we are looking for.
I want to go over one quick thing, which is actually taking a multivitamin. [00:15:00] I would strongly encourage you, if your child has a limited diet, to not mix it in a preferred beverage or preferred food. The reason why is because if it changes the color or the taste or the texture, they may lose trust in that food.
So when it comes down to multivitamins, we want to make sure that we have a separate regimented way of taking them. I like recommending the syringe method where your child is taking it through a medicine syringe mixed in some kind of liquid if your child can't take a capsule. Capsule, when it comes to, or when it comes to sensory needs and aversions, capsules can be one of the best options, but for younger kids, powders mixed in a
liquid using the syringe method generally is the best way to take a supplement.
Now, I want to announce something really exciting that I haven't talked about much because it has been a process. And when I say that, I truly mean [00:16:00] it, but I am so excited. If you follow me on Instagram, a month or two ago, I also announced this kind off the cuff just
because I'm so excited about it and it's been kind of a secret for the past few years.
Now it is not ready yet, because I am such a perfectionist when it comes to the supplement, that I keep tweaking and tweaking, because it's just not right yet.. Now, the importance of this multivitamin, what I'm striving for is for it to be a sensory friendly multivitamin that a child could take with severe sensory aversions, that they could get in the most important nutrients, and that we're also not fire hosing them with like ten thousands of percent of a certain nutrient like many multivitamins do.
Like I said, that is just some very expensive urine. So, that is what we are working on. I'm really excited because I actually, I had planned on recording this episode anyway, and just
kind of talking about the [00:17:00] importance of multivitamins, who may benefit from one, and then all of a sudden I got my next sample in.
And I thought, you know, I wonder if I could just open the next sample on my podcast. So if you're watching on YouTube, you're going to see me open this. If you are listening on an Apple podcast, you can imagine what I'm doing. I'll also be posting more information on Instagram that you can check out.
You can follow us at Nourishing Autism Podcasts on Instagram. So I'm going to go ahead and open this box. I'm going to move my keyboard and we are going to open up this box. Now I made one big change to this multivitamin in this last round that is going to change the color to make it more disguisable
because previously the color was bright, bright yellow, which you'll find in many [00:18:00] multivitamins.
And the smell was a little bit more intense than what I wanted. So I've changed that.
They've sent me four different samples here and I'm gonna open this first one. Wow, it barely smells like anything. Yay. Okay. Oh my gosh. This is a big deal. Okay, I can drastically see the difference between the two. So my last one, it was, like I said, bright, bright yellow. I actually can show you all who are watching.
It is this bright yellow color. When you mix it, I'll have to mix it later, but I'm so excited. It's here in this little vial. I want to try this.
Ooh, I can already tell you, I just took a taste of the powder. This may be the winner. I'm so excited. [00:19:00] Okay, there's a second option. I'm just gonna taste the powder. Now this is not mixing into a multivitamin, or into water or fluid. That one's a little less sweet, which actually may be a good thing. I think we have our winners. Now, if you want to get on the waitlist for the multivitamin that hopefully we're releasing at the end of the year, I would love for you to jump on it. You can follow us on Instagram @ SpectrumSciences. And you will be able to find the waitlist where you can add your name so that you will be one of the first ones.
We are going to have a limited batch for the first batch of a supplement that we launch. And so I'd love for you to be one of the first people to get it. So, be sure to do that. We'll also put the waitlist in the show notes and you can follow Spectrum Sciences there. on Instagram. I am so excited you [00:20:00] guys.
I am a little stunned to be maybe looking at the final version of this vitamin that we've been working on since, it was my partner who
reached out to me when I had Sam, which was November of 2022. So we've been working on this for almost two years, and it's really exciting to see it come to fruition.
So, anyway, I hope this podcast was extremely helpful for you if you are navigating trying out a multivitamin to try and find one
that is going to support your child's needs in the best way. And if you're looking for a multivitamin for a child on the autism spectrum and you want it to be sensory
friendly because you haven't had luck getting any other nutrient or any other vitamin in them, definitely get on the wait list for Spectrum Sciences.
I can't wait to launch it. Again, we're hoping for the end of the year, but I have to make sure it is perfect. And [00:21:00] so, bear with me while I make sure that it is the perfect supplement for your kiddos. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have an awesome rest of your week, and I will see you on the next episode of the Nourishing Autism Podcast.
Transcribed by Descript
About Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD
Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, is a distinguished Registered Dietitian and Autism Nutrition Expert, known for her innovative, sensory-friendly feeding approach to nutrition for children on the autism spectrum. As the founder of the Nourishing Autism Collective, and as an autism sibling herself, Brittyn brings both professional expertise and personal understanding to her work. She empowers families with her expert guidance, helping children receive essential nutrients for optimal health and development. Her strategies are tailored to the unique dietary needs and sensory preferences of each child.
Brittyn's influence extends beyond her membership site through her active social media presence and her popular podcast, 'Nourishing Autism'. Her educational content on Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms has established her as a leading voice in autism nutrition, providing valuable resources, practical advice, and a supportive community for parents and professionals.
