ADHD: It’s the food, stupid

QUOTE]ADHD is a genetic condition. One that our early, early ancestors prized. When a lion was chasing you, ADHD was a really good thing. People like myself who have ADHD, have not evolved to the modern environment quite yet. Our brains fire off thoughts faster than a M-16, while most of the people that have evolved just sit on the couch, eat junk food, and pack on the pounds in constant bliss. Diet can help your body fight diseases no doubt, but sometimes and mostly all the times diet can't really do much at all for trauma and one's Genes.[/QUOTE]

Google the word "Epigenetics". You'll be quite surprised. Information your body takes in about it's environment takes power over your genetic make up and actually CHANGE your DNA based upon your environmantal conditions. It's interesting.
 
I ate pretty much fresh fruit all night between working out and playing soccer, yet im still adhd as hell.
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what nutrients you take in will make a balance/equilibrium in your body. if you, say, stop eating A, and start eating B, it would take (i'm estimating) days to weeks to fully shift that equilibrium to the new diet.

if you eat healthy for one night, and notice improvement, it's placebo. if you don't notice improvement, it's because it wasn't supposed to work that way in the first place. these are long term body/digestive/neurological/etc processes.
 
^ Absolutely. Your body adjusts to achieve equilibruim for what you're putting in it. It takes a few weeks (around 2-4 depending) to fully achieve a new equilibrium to a healthy diet. That's why most people try a diet then get pissed and quit after 30 days because they didn't see the results they wanted. When I was a personal trainer I used to tell people to wait a good 3 months before they started guaging results.
 
A healthy diet cannot hurt anything but the wallet. I agree with the above poster who said this is more of another check and balance to filer out people from being mis diagnosed with ADD -- not a cure all.

Anyways, for a hint of humility about America's diet, check out this video, only 36 seconds long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOyebcrVWb4
 
id like to see the actual study. i hate to say it but if an unorganized test of guving school children different food counts as a study, thats some low ass standards.

it aint that i dont believe that diet can have such a serious effect, aint no question that it has a huge influence in how your mind and body works.

but im def. a lil suspicious of anyody who does a study on add and either finds that more people need drugs or that its basically not 'real'.

while i agree 100% that way, way too many kids here are on add meds, and that most of them prob. dont need it, in some people, add is a very real thing, caused by issues with how the brain works or dont work. u cant dismiss it as only a food reaction, cuz while for many ppl that may be true, theres still many of us out there who are really suffering from it as a very much tangible, real problem with the brains functioning, that diet or exercise dont just make it go away and medication changed our lives.

if you ever heard of SPECT scanning, its a brain scan that can see inside your head, to the areas that are and aint working how they should. things like depression, anxiety, bipolar, add, etc, can actually be seen , theyre physically there on the scan. its mad interesting, and its cool to me that now theres a way to do the same thing for mind related tests and studyibg that we can already do for the body. when someone has a back problem we can do mri's, xrays and ct scans. but for so long when it came to mental shit, it was just guessing, trial and error with tryin out meds, not knowing if they were truly needed, etc.

with a spect scan you can look at the brain and ssee certain spots and patterns and its crystal clear -- the dr can look at your scan and see "that dark spot in your temporal lobe is the area affected by add" , seeing that theres a physical issu in the way that part of your brain is working or not working, thats causing the problem. in the anterior cingulate gyrus there is something called a diamond pattern--the pattern that shows in ppl with ocd and serious anxiety. the prefrontal cortex, your brains main decision making area, basically the part of your brain responsible for guiding you to make mature, responsible, risk-avoiding type decisions, will show dark areas or "holes" ini activity in people with addictions and other impulsive destructive behavior. and so on....theres so much interesting shit about it, and its amazingly helpful to doctors workin with patients who got psych. issues.

so im hust saying while i believe theres so much "fake" add out there, symptoms that are from too much tv, too little discipline, the wrong food, too much sugar, etc, add is still a very real thing and in the people who truly affected by it, its a physical problem in the brain and nit just a set of negative symptoms that come from a poor diet.

like i said i def believe add is way overdiagnosed and overmedicated esp in the us. but, i dont like to see articles that seem to believe it aint really "real" and is only a result of bad influences in diet and other shit related to the modern world. i got diagnosed with adult add after a lifetime of struggling with shit related to it, and when i got on a low dose of adderall it was like i was a new person. i didnt get high or stimulated at all, and i hate stimulants. it was just like i had been tryina drive with the e brake on for my whole life and suddenly it was off. so many things changed for the better, it was like i was in control again and stepped out of the quicksand i had been stuck in my whole life. i aint gonna keep goin cuz i dont wanna go off topic but i just had to put in my opinion that add shouldnt be dismissed. its very real for te ppl who arereally dealing with it, its just that so many of the ppl who supposedly have it, dont.

i think everyone can agree to, that its something that we need to understand better, and we need real unbiased research--not from the drug companies but also not from the people who dont 'believe' in it and think it can all just be fixed by not eating sugar or better discipine for kids, neither, u feel me?

to say that to someone like me with very real add with very real bad consequences on my life, to just eat a better diet and itll go away, would be like telling someone with a spinal tumor who needs fentanyl for the pain that he should just take Tylenol and eat inflammation-relieving foods because in a recent study, 65 percent of people with frequent backaches reported that stretching, tylenol, and a better diet made most of their pain stop. that make sense? (im a bad example since i eat a really healthy diet with almost nothing but 'whole' foods, but u get my point tho.) for wrongly diagnosed kids, who dont really have it but just hav the symptoms i do believe that makin changes like the article suggests could be helped by it. but iunno about that for the much less ppl with a real severe case that comes from a brain issue like i described before, u know?

anyways, thers alot lot more i could say here but i aint gona get into it unless anyone is interested.

i do think, tho, that anything that can get supposed add having kids off drugs anf managing the symptoms with something like diet, IS a great thing. its much different for an adult like me to be on adderall than it is for a lil kid whose brain is still growing.

and im all for keepin money out of the pharm. companies pockets. i just wanted to remind ppl not to totally dismiss the seriousness of a bad case of add or that sometimes meds can really really help a person.
 
Only 100 kids were in the sample, not all that big, but interesting. I think I'm gonna do my final abnormal child psych paper on this.. it only has to be 4 pages, why not


meh... the lancet isn't on my list of approved sources.. guess I'll have to find something else.. by 7pm.. anyone know if were shootin kids up with ketamine yet for depression? =p
 
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Splinterguitar69 said:
Google the word "Epigenetics". You'll be quite surprised. Information your body takes in about it's environment takes power over your genetic make up and actually CHANGE your DNA based upon your environmantal conditions. It's interesting.
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Maybe before you tell someone to google epigenetics you should take your own advice. "In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence,"

Phenotype is the way a gene is expressed, genotype is the actual set of genes that lead to expression. Read that last part real closely, other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence!

This article is bullshit.

"Diet has been shown to be a significant contributing factor to essentially every major disease known to humans"

Slimvictor how is diet a contributing factor to Huntington's and Haemophilia?
 
^ yeah, well, I was a bit careless in my wording, but I was referring to the diseases that are major causes of death in the world today (heart disease, various types of cancer, diabetes, etc.).

Still, diet has been shown to be helpful in treatment (or with respect to the progression / regression) of other diseases, even those not directly caused by diet.
Can you imagine a hemophiliac eating a diet based primarily on salmon, albacore tuna, garlic, onions, cayenne pepper, raisins, cherries, and prunes? All these foods thin the blood. It is relatively common for people taking blood-thinning medication who overeat foods such as these to get eye hemorrhages, for example.

As for Huntington's disease, diet might not cause the disease, but it is very important in treatment. (If you are interested here is some info. from Stanford's Huntington Outreach Project on the importance of diet: http://hopes.stanford.edu/n3541/managing-hd/lifestyle-and-hd/diet/about-diet-and-huntingtons-disease)

Diet is a key to health, and extremely relevant to getting, treating, and/or avoiding progression of most diseases. No two ways about it.
 
slimvictor said:
^ yeah, well, I was a bit careless in my wording, but I was referring to the diseases that are major causes of death in the world today (heart disease, various types of cancer, diabetes, etc.).

Still, diet has been shown to be helpful in treatment (or with respect to the progression / regression) of other diseases, even those not directly caused by diet.
Can you imagine a hemophiliac eating a diet based primarily on salmon, albacore tuna, garlic, onions, cayenne pepper, raisins, cherries, and prunes? All these foods thin the blood. It is relatively common for people taking blood-thinning medication who overeat foods such as these to get eye hemorrhages, for example.

As for Huntington's disease, diet might not cause the disease, but it is very important in treatment. (If you are interested here is some info. from Stanford's Huntington Outreach Project on the importance of diet: http://hopes.stanford.edu/n3541/managing-hd/lifestyle-and-hd/diet/about-diet-and-huntingtons-disease)

Diet is a key to health, and extremely relevant to getting, treating, and/or avoiding progression of most diseases. No two ways about it.
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I agree with most of that. That said, it isn't often that diet is the soul tertiary treatment for a disease; rather it is more often used as you described it, a secondary preventative measure against certain symptoms. Anecdotally, I have autism so I know that diet can exacerbate the symptoms of a syndrome, but that doesn't allow me to believe that diet causes ADHD. ADHD: it's much more complicated then that stupid(reference to title)
 
Just watched a movie how at John Hopkins Uni they treat epilepsy with diet and how docs were more willing to do surgery than try the diet. It might be extreme but it often is like that. I mean what does epilepsy have with diet? I would never guess that diet alone can treat most cases.
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Epilepsy is treated dietarily by drastically reducing carbohydrate content. This causes the body to produce ketones- acetone, cheifly among them, which is a 'natural' antiepileptic drug.
 
The study looks legit, but I haven't read the full thing yet. Here's a preview:

The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9764, Pages 494 - 503, 5 February 2011 <Previous Article|Next Article>doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62227-1Cite or Link Using DOIEffects of a restricted elimination diet on the behaviour of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (INCA study): a randomised controlled trial
Original Text
Dr Lidy M Pelsser MSc a , Klaas Frankena PhD b, Jan Toorman MD c, Prof Huub F Savelkoul PhD b, Prof Anthony E Dubois MD d, Rob Rodrigues Pereira MD e, Ton A Haagen MD f, Nanda N Rommelse PhD g, Prof Jan K Buitelaar MD g
Summary
Background
The effects of a restricted elimination diet in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have mainly been investigated in selected subgroups of patients. We aimed to investigate whether there is a connection between diet and behaviour in an unselected group of children.
Methods
The Impact of Nutrition on Children with ADHD (INCA) study was a randomised controlled trial that consisted of an open-label phase with masked measurements followed by a double-blind crossover phase. Patients in the Netherlands and Belgium were enrolled via announcements in medical health centres and through media announcements. Randomisation in both phases was individually done by random sampling. In the open-label phase (first phase), children aged 4—8 years who were diagnosed with ADHD were randomly assigned to 5 weeks of a restricted elimination diet (diet group) or to instructions for a healthy diet (control group). Thereafter, the clinical responders (those with an improvement of at least 40% on the ADHD rating scale [ARS]) from the diet group proceeded with a 4-week double-blind crossover food challenge phase (second phase), in which high-IgG or low-IgG foods (classified on the basis of every child's individual IgG blood test results) were added to the diet. During the first phase, only the assessing paediatrician was masked to group allocation. During the second phase (challenge phase), all persons involved were masked to challenge allocation. Primary endpoints were the change in ARS score between baseline and the end of the first phase (masked paediatrician) and between the end of the first phase and the second phase (double-blind), and the abbreviated Conners' scale (ACS) score (unmasked) between the same timepoints. Secondary endpoints included food-specific IgG levels at baseline related to the behaviour of the diet group responders after IgG-based food challenges. The primary analyses were intention to treat for the first phase and per protocol for the second phase. INCA is registered as an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial, number ISRCTN 76063113.
Findings
Between Nov 4, 2008, and Sept 29, 2009, 100 children were enrolled and randomly assigned to the control group (n=50) or the diet group (n=50). Between baseline and the end of the first phase, the difference between the diet group and the control group in the mean ARS total score was 23·7 (95% CI 18·6—28·8; p<0·0001) according to the masked ratings. The difference between groups in the mean ACS score between the same timepoints was 11·8 (95% CI 9·2—14·5; p<0·0001). The ARS total score increased in clinical responders after the challenge by 20·8 (95% CI 14·3—27·3; p<0·0001) and the ACS score increased by 11·6 (7·7—15·4; p<0·0001). In the challenge phase, after challenges with either high-IgG or low-IgG foods, relapse of ADHD symptoms occurred in 19 of 30 (63%) children, independent of the IgG blood levels. There were no harms or adverse events reported in both phases.
Interpretation
A strictly supervised restricted elimination diet is a valuable instrument to assess whether ADHD is induced by food. The prescription of diets on the basis of IgG blood tests should be discouraged.
Funding
Foundation of Child and Behaviour, Foundation Nuts Ohra, Foundation for Children's Welfare Stamps Netherlands, and the KF Hein Foundation.
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This better not catch on, I don't want to be force-fed rodent food before they're willing to give me the real medication.
 
I just draw the line at cutting out red meat, rice/pasta and peppers/tomatoes. I could live without them, but what kind of life would that be?!
 
I just draw the line at cutting out red meat, rice/pasta and peppers/tomatoes. I could live without them, but what kind of life would that be?!
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That is what people always think.
Then, if they actually try a new diet they find dozens of new foods that are delicious. More than that, however, they appreciate the fact that their health problems are lessened or cured (assuming that the diet was appropriate for them).

My favorite foods were fried chicken, sushi, and ice cream, and I became a vegan for health reasons. It was hard at first, but I discovered the pleasure of eating well-prepared vegetables, found new veggies, grains and beans that I love, and basically adjusted to a new diet. I also got over my allergies and asthma, and felt much, much better every day of my life. I never would have discovered my love for quinoa, lentils, or burdock root with my old diet. Now, I occasionally get a craving for fried chicken or sushi (and I allow myself to eat these foods when I crave them), but I love to feel good every day instead of feeling sick.

You don't need to cut out anything 100% - cutting back significantly is almost always enough to make a huge difference. You could eat all the red meat, rice, pasta, peppers, and tomatoes you wanted one day a week, and if you stuck to the diet the other 6 days, you would almost certainly see a huge improvement (if the diet were right for you).

More than anything, seeing a major difference in my health, and feeling more energy all day, every day, made me really glad that I had changed my diet.
At this point, I have trouble understanding how eating any food would be worth feeling low every day, with asthma and allergies lowering my quality of life.

It would be very difficult if it were just a question of what we are used to, but food is also culture, which makes it nearly impossible for most people. Still, now that I have experienced the difference that diet makes in the way I feel = the way I live, I could never go back to regularly eating the offending foods.
 
could it only work with ADHD and not with ADD? i was vegetarian for 3years, i do not eat a lot food with additive, every day i take vitamin b and omega 3....it does not really improve my condition...
 
^ I don't know how you decided on that particular diet and supplementation protocol, but I would recommend choosing a diet based on a doctor's advice, or at the very least educating yourself extensively about the current research on diet with respect to ADD.
If you simply tried some diet that you heard was good, there is no reason to think that it would help.

There are many kinds of vegetarians. Some eat highly processed foods every day, and then wonder why they are not healthy. They often blame "being vegetarian"8)

It takes education and effort to be a healthy vegetarian (as well as a healthy omnivore).
 
Having ADHD and a.d.d I can vouch that for a few hours after eating a proper meal my ad(h)d symtoms are reduced. But after a few hours there right back up there
 
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