I will toss out this anecdote about food and ADHD. I have ADHD that was untreated as a child but have experimented in recent years with diet. One thing that made a notable difference to me was cutting out all bread (wheat, basically).
I found after a week of not eating it that my thinking and mood was �smoother� not in a dramatic sense, but in a consistently more stable sense. Like my mind was better balanced. Also, when I would occasionally break the diet and eat a sandwich, I noticed almost immediately a mild tingling seemingly behind my eyes and an increased fuzziness in my brain from that point forward if I continued eating bread.
I�ve done this trial multiple times with the same results so I believe the results are valid at least in my case.
The flip side to this is that certain things partially medicate ADHD symptoms, so drinking caffeine for me helps with some of the symptoms. If I cut out caffeine, I get the benefits of a more stable mood and better rest, but then my ADHD symptoms worsen.
Another somewhat related story is that if I eat anything with ginko biloba I get mild to severe panic attacks. It was quite scary since I'd never had a true panic attack before in my life--the kind that make you want to run in mental fright out the door away from yourself, basically--and it took several episodes to make the connection that it was the ginko biloba (I was eating health bars with ginko in them). It's something worth remembering because today with all the herbs and heatlh food being promoted with all sorts of ingredients whose effects have not been well studied.
Last edited by Pru; 03/22/11 11:05 AM. Reason: additional info
