The mom described the fact that she had suffered from attention problem for most of her life and wanted to try methyl B-12 for herself as well. I prescribed methyl B-12 injections for her as well. About 6 weeks later we had a follow up, her child was doing fine and I decided to ask mom about her experiences. She expressed that she wasn’t feeling a big difference in attention at this point but she noticed that when she looked people in the eye she didn’t get a headache.

I thought that was very interesting and asked her to explain that some more. She said that all of her life she had fleeting eye contact and when she would look someone in the eye she would get head pain in the back of her head. I thought that was very interesting because many of the older children I have worked with or children who can verbalize or gesture how they feel almost universally indicate that their head feels better with methyl B-12 therapy.

Once individual would actually pat himself on the head as an indication that he wanted the methyl B-12 therapy. I thought about this later and tried to figure out what is going on with her. The visual cortex is at the back of the head. Visual information comes in through the eyes and is transferred to the back of the head. When she would make eye contact it was causing pain in the visual cortex and this is one reason why she was not able to hold an eye gaze for a prolonged period of time.

I though about young kids who have fleeting eye contact and how this may be why some kids have poor awareness of what is going on in their environment and how their social skills can be affected. If it causes pain to look someone in the eye then they are going to be missing those visual cues, the facial expression cues that are needed in order to have that one on one, human to human interaction. We see a lot of things in Autism with children on the spectrum that aren’t always easily explainable. When we have adults who can step forward and say “hey that’s how I feel” or “I get a headache when I look someone in the eyes and it was improved by methyl B-12 therapy” and when we have parents come back and report better eye contact after starting methyl B-12 therapy.

You have to wonder if there are more kids on the spectrum who are having the eye contact problem and avoiding eye contact because it is causing some headache or some type of physical pain. I thought it was very interesting, one more piece of the puzzle. Hopefully this can be something you can relate to with your own child.