![\"Young](\"https:\/\/autism.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Untitled-design-3-700x441.jpg\")
<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div>Melanie Glock<\/a><\/span><\/span>2025-11-12T16:17:54-05:00<\/span>Sleep Disturbances and their Behavioral Correlates in Autistic Youth and Youth with Co-Occurring ADHD<\/a><\/h4>
Melanie Glock<\/a><\/span><\/span>2025-11-12T16:17:54-05:00<\/span>November 11th, 2025<\/span>|<\/span>Health<\/a>, Medical Care<\/a>, Neurological<\/a>, Research<\/a>, Research<\/a>, Sensory<\/a>, Webinar<\/a>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
ARI\u2019s free sleep disturbance questionnaire helps identify potential care strategies for sleep issues commonly associated with autism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> Sleep problems, like all others, call for actions aimed at understanding the underlying cause. The whole biomedical approach to chronically ill individuals invites a simple logic that I have described elsewhere in publications and videos. I call that logic \u201cprinciple-based medicine.\u201d It contrasts with \u201cname-it, blame-it, tame-it prescription pad medicine\u201d in that it rests on the scientific principles of individuality and rhythm.<\/p>\n Principle-based medicine is not a logic that you can quickly turn to at 4 a.m. when your child has been up screaming, stimming, giggling, bouncing, or all of the above for three hours. Still, I hope this list will offer you some useful guidelines for preventing or dealing with such nightmares of parenthood and child care.<\/p>\n<\/div> The individuality of every living thing is a fundamental scientific fact. The individual, not the disease, is the target of steps toward healing. Parents, therapists, and physicians aim to fill each child\u2019s unmet needs to avoid bad and get good things. Intuition, common sense, brief trials, lab tests, and every detail of each person\u2019s story help tailor the steps that favor Nature\u2019s buoyant impulse toward growth and healing. The bad things are toxins and allergens. The good things are nutrients, accessory nutritional factors, light, love, and rhythmic integration.<\/p>\n<\/div> The facts of rhythmic integration are the same for every one of us, no matter how special we may be in every other way. We all should be dancing to the same beat beginning with the day-night cycle of earth.<\/p>\n We can talk and think usefully about how various individuals fit within a spectrum. When it comes to needs we each have to mesh the rhythms of our bodies; the rules are just like those of music. Those rules permit a little give-and-take but not to the extent that you step on your dance partner\u2019s foot, march out of step, or sing off key.<\/p>\n When you are out of synch in the different rhythms of molecules, brain waves, heartbeats, respiration, digestion, and the 90-minute cycles of \u201cups and downs\u201d within the day-and-night cycles, something is wrong. Imagine the sound of an orchestra in which the vibrations of the strings, the beat of the drums, and the conductor\u2019s baton all fit together in ways that are right and the human ear can spot the trouble when something is out of synch.<\/p>\n Any sound other than quiet breathing coming from your child after bed time is trouble. Frequent or recurring crying, screaming, banging, giggling, or silly laughter is a signal to change something. Even just being awake after bed time is enough for you to consider the following options.<\/p>\n<\/div> The first consideration when we confront \u201cbehaviors\u201d in our kids is pain. The mostly likely origin of pain has to do with the digestive tract not moving food and feces \u201csouth\u201d in an orderly way. \u201cOrderly\u201d means waves\u2014rhythms, right? And the problem may be anywhere from the esophagus (as in reflux) to the anus, with cramps and constipation constituting the main expression of inflammation. The inflammation may be in the bowel itself or in the centers of the mid-brain where the regulatory (rhythmic) functions of the digestive system\u2014and all the other automatic functions of the body\u2014are controlled. Of all the excruciating pains that we humans may endure, intestinal cramps lead the list of the ones in which the causes turn out to be not nearly as scary as they feel but usually self-limited and benign.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that you are confronted with a child (or an adult) with a sleep problem in which periodic abdominal pain is a suspected factor. The safest bet would be to apply a magnesium cream or oil (which is not actually made with oil but feels so) to the skin. Two brands can be ordered on the Internet and others are available from pharmacies and suppliers of supplements to the autism community. Magnesium is absorbed through the skin and will help relieve cramping and \u201cneuromuscular irritability\u201d of many kinds found in the following list. (Note that this is my whole checklist, just so you get the whole \u201cup tight\u201d picture as it presents in people of various ages.)<\/p>\n The digestive tract and liver get up and work on the night shift. Sleep is affected when that work doesn\u2019t go smoothly for various reasons. One such reason is intestinal cramps. Intestinal cramps are, however, a subset of the long list (above) of crampy (\u201cup tight\u201d) symptoms of neuromuscular irritability that are common in many people living in modern industrialized societies.<\/p>\n The solution to the problem lies\u2014in part\u2014in supplementation with magnesium via lotions, baths of magnesium sufate (Epsom salts; one cup in a tub of warm water) or oral supplements that can be taken \u201cto bowel tolerance\u201d by starting with a daily dose of, say 150 mg at bedtime and working up until poops become too loose or frequent and then backing down to the point of comfort. A powdered form of magnesium citrate is found in the product called CALM. Magnesium is calming to the nervous system, but the aim of its use as I have described it is to ease painful muscle cramps in the intestine.<\/p>\n<\/div> None of the steps I have outlined so far are specific to the autism spectrum. The point of view of ARI is to steer away from a pill-for-an-ill approach that tries to match a drug or other remedy to a disease or a symptom. Nevertheless, you might expect an article on sleep problems to suggest a sleeping pill. Would one ever give a sleeping pill (tranquilizer, sedative, or antihistamine) to a child with a sleep problem? Sure! Before surgery or dentistry, for special procedures and traveling problems, and in other unusual circumstances.<\/p>\n However, caution must be exercised against treating pain with sedation! Heavy tranquilizers and antipsychotic medication are misplaced without very careful consideration of pain as the cause of sleep problems and other \u201cbehaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div> Melatonin has a very high rating among treatments rated by thousands of parents responding to ARI\u2019s parent surveys (www.AutismTreatmentSurvey.com). Its rating of 8.3 to 1 means that for every child in whom a negative effect was noted, more than eight benefited. No sedative, tranquillizer, antipsychotic or anticonvulsant comes anywhere close to such a rating and none of them are as safe as melatonin.<\/p>\n Benefits may be seen in some children given daytime doses, and with larger doses than might be considered needed for its role in supporting normal sleep. The high rating therefore includes a mix of children in whom the main result was improved sleep and others who had a wide-ranging set of positive responses.<\/p>\n As is the case with addressing unmet needs for magnesium, melatonin promotes real sleep. It is not a sedative but is produced normally in a sudden release from the brain in a burst that looks like a steeple when graphed over a 24-hour period. The peak of the steeple comes in the hours following midnight and acts as a kind of synchronizing signal, antioxidant gift and an anti-cancer aid to cells throughout the body.<\/p>\n Doses required to produce such a peak in a young adult may be less than 1 mg. If tiny doses (0.1 mg) are escalated slowly, occasional children and adults may benefit safely from daily intakes up to 20 mg! Responses to it can be evaluated over a matter of days. A very positive response with better sleep or many other benefits would justify continuing the trial, and a negative response or no response would dictate abandoning the trial.<\/p>\n<\/div> (in sequence\u2014not mixed together!)<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div> A dose of Alka Seltzer Gold followed in at least 20 minutes by a dose of activated charcoal provides information gained from seeing it work that is worth almost as much as the relief it provides. The equivalent of \u201cAlka-Gold\u201d comes in the form of tri-salts \u2014sodium, magnesium, and potassium bicarbonate powder and capsules\u2014from various nutritional supplement suppliers and compounding pharmacies. Alka Seltzer Gold (not Cold) contains only sodium and potassium bicarbonate. Not to be taken immediately after a large meal, it is safe and makes just about everything better. It is absorbed from the intestine quickly into the bloodstream and results in a slight, transient adjustment (called an alkaline tide) of the acidity that is associated with just about everything that goes wrong with us acutely and chronically when we are sick.<\/p>\n A quarter of an Alka Seltzer Gold tablet for a toddler or two tablets for an adult, dissolved in a glass of water, is safe when given once or twice in a day to see its effect. In the context of sleep problems its first use is just to see if it does work. If it does\u2014in, say, less than 35 minutes\u2014then you\u2019ve learned a lot and done some good. What you have learned is that there was something that didn\u2019t agree with the person to whom it was administered. The good you have done is to find a temporary solution to the problem and take steps based on what you have learned.<\/p>\n Unless the Alka Seltzer Gold is an instant success by itself, the next step in the sequence comes with the administration of activated charcoal. It comes as tablets (crushable) or encapsulated in doses of 100 to 560 mg. For individuals who cannot swallow capsules, the powder can be taken carefully from the capsules to avoid getting the powder on your clothing. It is, however, washable. If administered as a powder it must first be mixed in water. (Grape juice frozen concentrate\u2014 undiluted or minimally diluted\u2014is a vehicle for children needing a strong disguise of taste and color, provided they can tolerate an exceptional bit of sugar.) A recipient who is likely to chew a capsule should be given the charcoal as a liquid suspension (water or juice) to avoid the risk of inhaling the fine black powder.<\/p>\n Many parents and individuals with problems discover from the use of charcoal for die-off reactions that it works\u2014as just described\u2014under circumstances that include just having a \u201cbad day\u201d or reactions to stresses such as allergenic foods, too much sugar, or alcohol, not enough sleep, or even just being hungry and irritable. Similar to Alka Seltzer Gold or its generic equivalent, activated charcoal works as a kind of panacea.<\/p>\n<\/i>learn more<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>Sleep Problems and Autism: One Treatment Does Not Fit All<\/h2>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div>Rhythmic integration: We all have the same need<\/h2><\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>Pain<\/h3><\/div>
Skeletal muscle:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Other muscles:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Central nervous system:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Peripheral nervous system:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Other:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div>Pills<\/h2><\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>Melatonin<\/h3><\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>Alka Seltzer Gold and activated charcoal<\/p>\n