Sharon Guest Blogs: Supplements to reduce autism risk?

This Guest Blog Post is from Sharon Lai, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

Some believe that taking vitamins and other supplements could prevent autism. While this new research cannot not prove this theory, it does suggest that taking supplements could reduce the risk of your child getting autism. Study results suggest that taking supplements containing folic acid could reduce the risk of autism. Women who took folic acid “before and in early pregnancy were 39% less likely to have autistic children,” but the effect only happened when women took these supplements during six weeks before and six weeks after conception. These findings shed some light on a potential critical period in fetal development for reducing the risk of autism.