'would-a-been nice' if they had suggested at least 1-food.
Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#12From an anecdotal perspective, I can tell you that diet has the most significant effect (either in aggravating or helping) ADD, this is great advice. With children, it's even worse since any effect that food would have would be multiplied because they're smaller (just like drugs are dosed way less)
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#13altering your child's diet without a doctor's supervision is inadvisable. WTF? I'm sure this is just a CYA, but the idea that most people need the advice of a medical professional to make dietary decisions is absurd. Sure, be careful about any radical fad diets, but adding or eliminating certain foods is quite safe. People do that all the time due to price fluctuations, availability and changing tastes with no ill ef…
[deleted]
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#14Some doctors attribute ADHD, particularly the inattentive sort, to actually be a manifestation of general allergic reactions which really just makes people tired, and triggers symptoms that would classify a person as having ADHD according to the DSM (Remember, the DSM generally makes no distinctions as to what causes a condition, it only diagnoses it.) They often try to treat the allergies first, which is generally a…
The conclusion of the original study is that it isn't an allergic reaction that is causing the symptoms, but that somehow restricted diets still work.
Their "few-foods diet" was rice, meat, vegetables, pears and water. Then, based on the needs of the individual kids, likes and dislikes (and maybe their known susceptibility to various allergens?), etc, potatoes, fruit and wheat were added.
You could try just sticking with the reduced few-foods diet for a month and see if symptoms improve.
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#15So they basically hypothesized ADHD is often a symptom of a food allergy, tested that premise and found some strong evidence for it. Just the kind of straightforward and useful study that somehow never seems to get funding.
Have a glance at the charts in the Lancet PDF (that erikpukinskis helpfully linked) to see the improvements versus the control group and the way that reintroducing high-sensitivity foods caused a regression:
http://marrym.web-log.nl/files/adhd-and-elimination-diet-rct...
Wow. If I was a NYTimes health reporter, I would start researching a story on how up-and-coming young families are requesting food allergy tests for their seemingly asymptomatic kids as a matter of course, because that's clearly going to be the trend now.
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#16altering your child's diet without a doctor's supervision is inadvisable. WTF? I'm sure this is just a CYA, but the idea that most people need the advice of a medical professional to make dietary decisions is absurd. Sure, be careful about any radical fad diets, but adding or eliminating certain foods is quite safe. People do that all the time due to price fluctuations, availability and changing tastes with no ill ef…
Yeah, I raised an eyebrow on that point as well. Funny how the doctor can state authoritatively that 64% of kids' ADHD symptoms can be traced to diet, but there are no specific details on what the relevant diet elements are. It's as if she wants to protect children by keeping parents ignorant.
Thankfully, the original study (linked to below) gives a summary.
The diet was composed for each kid individually, but the basic "few-foods" diet was rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water. Potatoes, fruits and wheat were added for some kids, at prescribed intervals.
They were following this protocol: http://www.springerlink.com/content/k7444741381w544k/fulltex...
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#17Filed under "no shit Sherlock".
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#18Full study here: http://www.adhdenvoeding.nl/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/P...
Here's a better summary article:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/diet-cha...
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I raised an eyebrow on that point as well. Funny how the doctor can state authoritatively that 64% of kids' ADHD symptoms can be traced to diet, but there are no specific details on what the relevant diet elements are. It's as if she wants to protect children by keeping parents ignorant.
Thankfully, the original study (linked to below) gives a summary. The diet was composed for each kid individually, but the basic "few-foods" diet was rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water. Potatoes, fruits and wheat were added for some kids, at prescribed intervals. They were following this protocol: http://www.springerlink.com/content/k7444741381w544k/fulltex...
The researchers did a food allergy panel to determine what foods were individually eliminated according to the subjects' Immunoglobulin G (IgG) response.
Interestingly, IgG is the longer-term response compared to the more immediate Immunoglobulin E response which causes the most dramatic allergy reactions such as rapid airway constriction.
The implication is that IgG type sensitivities are under-diagnosed because the symptoms are elusive and subtle, and ADHD often happens to be one of them.
Re: Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs
#20altering your child's diet without a doctor's supervision is inadvisable. WTF? I'm sure this is just a CYA, but the idea that most people need the advice of a medical professional to make dietary decisions is absurd. Sure, be careful about any radical fad diets, but adding or eliminating certain foods is quite safe. People do that all the time due to price fluctuations, availability and changing tastes with no ill ef…
This statement is necessary because the normal way people approach this problem is to declare one food the culprit, cut out that food, perceive that the problem has been cured, and declare success. There's a placebo affect, for one thing, which would be transmitted from parent to child through the parent's mood and expectations, plus there are random fluctuations in the child's behavior from day to day that will be attributed to whatever is foremost in the parent's mind, which in this case would be the alteration in diet.
People do this stuff all the time when cutting out gluten, starting to take fish oil, etc. It's really weird how someone will choose one thing at random out of all the alternatives, because that thing was pitched to them at just the right time by just the right person, and immediately start to believe it is a powerful force in their lives. There are dozens of dietary "miracle cures" for ailments ranging from depression to acne, and for each one, there are many people who swear by it. A trained doctor can be helpful in tempering expectations, reminding parents that short-term changes can't be taken seriously, and forcing a patient approach.
For instance, if peanut butter is cut from the kid's diet, and two days later the kid has a really bad day at school, many parents would jump to the conclusion that peanut butter was the only thing keeping the kid sane and start feeding it to him every day in every form they could think of. That would be a very bad thing if peanut butter was actually what was causing the problem. The doctor's job is to persuade the parents to be patient and evaluate the evidence more reasonably.