The brain’s growth is mostly complete by adolescence, but a lot of its vital connections are still being made during the teen years. Next to infancy, adolescence is a period that requires a nutritious diet for healthy brain growth, especially if this brain has ADHD. Diets of the average teenager, however, tend to be sorely deficient in important nutrients and fatty acids. Teens either eat foods with high levels of hydrogenated fats and saturated fats, or they restrict their food intake in order to stay trim. Here are some ADHD diet tips to help your teenager develop healthy eating habits.
Exciting news for parents who want their kids to try an ADHD diet! A new study confirms once more that ADHD symptoms can be reduced by eliminating foods that trigger them. The study on the restricted elimination diet (RED) was recently published in The Lancet, with very promising results.
Getting your child to give up favorite foods for an ADHD diet is tricky, and the holiday season might make it more difficult. The last few weeks of the year will be filled with dinner parties, family reunions, and other types of gatherings centered on food. Your child might feel left out when cousins enjoy forbidden holiday treats, and relatives won’t understand why he or she can’t have just one tiny cookie. It may not be a good idea to take a break from your child’s diet and start from scratch after a few weeks, but here are some tips that will make eating a fun occasion for your child during the holidays.
Last week, I talked about how the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has skyrocketed over the last few years, and posited some possible explanations for this phenomenon. While some might argue that ADHD awareness and overeager doctors contributed to this increase, a new study published in the journal Pediatrics finds that diet and lifestyle parallels the high rate of childhood ADHD cases today.
We’ve long suspected that the typical Western diet might be the reason why so many children are diagnosed with ADHD today. The brain requires a healthy number of nutrients, essential fatty acids, and amino acids to release and regulate neurotransmitters (brain chemicals responsible for mood, attention, concentration, and impulse control). Although these nutrients can be obtained from a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, the typical Western diet has little room for such healthy options. Why? This type of diet prioritizes the convenience of cooking rather than nutritional value. Unfortunately, these fast food meals are high in fat, refined sugar, and sodium, and offer few nutrients in return. Can such a diet be responsible for the increase of ADHD epidemic among children and teens today?
Many allergies cause itchy skin or watery eyes, but some allergic reactions manifest themselves in hyperactive, even violent behavior. Allergy specialist Dr. Doris Rapp has worked with children for decades and is quite appalled to see so many of them being using off-label drugs (drugs that have not been fully evaluated for their safety) for their ADHD symptoms. Many cases of ADHD, she says, are actually due to allergic reactions to food, mold, dust, or chemicals. Watch this amazing video to see exactly how certain foods make a dramatic difference in a child’s behavior.
It’s quite shocking to see how eating the wrong food has such a profound effect on a child’s personality, outlook, and behavior. It’s just as amazing to know that getting rid of the allergenic substance was enough to turn a screaming, flailing child into a calm, peaceful one.
There are two ways to find out if your child’s ADHD symptoms are caused by allergies. The first is through a specialized allergy testing, which is only available among alternative medical practitioners. However, these tests have a serious limitation – although they can confirm any brain-based allergic reactions, they cannot identify exactly what food or substance your child is allergic to. The best way to go about doing this is to go on the allergy diet proposed by Dr. Rapp, also known as the rotation diet. It might be difficult to get used to the rhythm of a rotation diet at first, but you can stop it as soon as you have identified the food your child is allergic to. Start by rotating wheat products and dairy products as these contain gluten and casein, two proteins that are notorious for their impact on behavior and brain activity.
If your child is anything like the children you’ve seen in the video, and if nothing you have done made a difference in your child’s behavior, try to pick up a copy of Dr. Rapp’s book “Is This Your Child?”. This 600-page book is one of the comprehensive resources on allergies, ADHD, and other realistic solutions that will get rid of your child’s problematic behavior.
ADHD cannot be diagnosed by checking off a laundry list of symptoms because many disorders often cause similar problems. Celiac disease is one such overlooked disorder. You might have been aware that food intolerances and intestinal problems have a hand in causing ADHD symptoms. Celiac disease is a condition where a person is intolerant to the plant protein gluten, which is found in wheat and wheat products. When a child with celiac disease eats pizza, pasta, or any food with wheat in it, the immune system reacts by damaging the upper region of the small intestine. The initial damage only amounts to minor inflammation but if the child continues to eat foods with gluten, painful symptoms and impaired nutrient absorption can occur.
In our Article Library, you’ll find several discussions on various nutritional interventions for ADHD. Although vitamin C is known more for its immune-boosting and antioxidant properties, some studies suggest that it may play an important role in managing hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. Before you get excited and start buying vitamin C supplements, take note that vitamin C works more as a secondary treatment that boosts the efficacy of supplements and dietary methods; in other words, it should not be used as a single, stand-alone treatment. Although some of its speculative benefits still need to be confirmed by further studies, it seems like maintaining or increasing vitamin C levels can reduce ADHD symptoms in five ways:
Getting your kids started on a gluten-free casein-free diet (GFCF) or the Feingold Diet can be difficult. After all, these diets forbid children from eating candy, cookies, pizza, and other foods they love. ADHD diets make cooking and doing the groceries difficult for parents too; gone are the days when you can just buy bags of potato chips or whip up a plate of pasta to ease your children’s hunger pangs. But you don’t have to come up with gourmet dishes to cook for ADHD kids, and implementing an ADHD diet does not mean restricting your children to bland, uninteresting food while their friends feast on tasty morsels. With the help of these ADHD cookbooks, your kids can eat delicious, nutritious meals without becoming uncontrollably hyperactive and inattentive after.
Yet another useful guide for parents who are unfamiliar with the GFCF diet. This book also contains advice on where to buy GFCF foods, tips on avoiding cross-contamination, understanding ingredients labels, and how to make the GFCF diet work for your child and your family.
In the UnRitalin Solution, we place a lot of importance on diet and proper nutrition as a key to overcoming ADHD. Research shows that artificial additives and certain other food substances can aggravate the trademark symptoms of ADHD, including inattention and hyperactive behavior. These foods cause adverse reactions that impact the brain wave patterns in specific areas of the brain, which in turn triggers the ADHD-like symptoms.
Although very few researchers have looked into the actual mechanisms by which food allergies affect ADHD symptoms, a small study done in 1997 was able to document the phenomenon well. Researchers from Australia’s Institute for Child Health Research investigated the changes in brainwave patterns when participants with ADHD ate foods they were allergic too. The results are very telling and support the theory that an intolerance to certain foods are responsible for ADHD-like behaviors.
