We met with a neurofeedback provider on Saturday about our eg/pg ADHD DS6.5. She's a brain injury and brain tumor survivor and was quite adamant about diet being an essential component of NFT and possibly reducing/eliminating some ADHD components. Since our DS was born breech with torticollis and severe plagiocephaly, I got the big picture of what she was saying - despite it being a bit of a shock.

The NFT said that any food that could convert to alcohol (ie. most items in a Western diet) is affecting the brain. Well, I'm guessing that we're all familiar with the effects of alcohol from seeing others or how it affects us. I know Dr. Linda Silverman mentions about eliminating foods for treating ADHD in her book, Upside-Down Brilliance, but I haven't seen many other references to it. I know Thom Hartmann (book - Edison Gene) has suggested that the ADHD gene is a highly adaptive gene that can be traced 40,000 years ago and relates to hunting-gathering, but he never mentions the food and how it affects the brain to the extent this NFT said. I know the Paleo Diet is becoming more well known, though I just heard of it today, but it's not extensive as what the NFT recommended.

So now maybe you're wondering what this NFT recommended. I married a Brit and studied history before I had my son so I immediately made connections to Christopher Columbus and other explorers/discovers, 17th-century English sugar/spice trade, colonization, Native Americans and other indigenous peoples, and the history of food (i.e. New World to Old World), agriculture, and industrialization.

I had a BIG dumping of the cupboards yesterday to go cold turkey today since we've got a eg/pg DS 6.5. It's been interesting to say the least. We're meeting the NFT in a 1 1/2 wks for officially starting NFT.

Here's a list of the NO food:
Dairy (i.e. yogurt, cow's milk, cheese, etc. - breaks down into sugar and is the basis for alcohol)....so anything that converts to alcohol, cane sugar, artificial sweetener, maple syrup, honey, apples (hard cider), peaches, plums, pears (mead), dry fruit, grapes (wine), corn (whisky), potatoes (vodka), rice, oats, wheat, barley, rye, flour, soy

Here's a list of the YES food:
almond milk (unsweetened), citrus fruit, melons, berries, cherries, pineapple, bananas, avocado, olive oil, coconut, nuts, quinoa, fish/seafood, meats, eggs, vegetables (nothing that converts to alcohol), yams, sweet potatoes, and dark chocolate (60% or greater).

While I don't necessarily disagree that she's suggesting a desirable diet, the logic behind the specific suggestions is complete BS.

Here's a list of the NO food:
cheese, etc. - breaks down into sugar

Cheese is essentially carb-free, so only "breaks down into sugar" through gluconeogenesis - and if you're worried about that, then you may as well strike all proteins from your diet.

Here's a list of the YES food:
citrus fruit, melons, berries, cherries, pineapple, bananas

You can ferment all of those things on your tabletop. Heck, orange juice and fresh pineapple ferment just fine in the fridge, and contain detectable alcohol even when they don't taste "hard."

yams, sweet potatoes, and dark chocolate (60% or greater).

Sweet potatoes convert to alcohol, too. (In the lab, at least. In the body, unless you've got a massive Candida overgrowth, there's not that much endogenous ethanol production.)

60% dark chocolate is 37% sugar by weight - 16g of sugar per 43g of chocolate.

Bodies (and brains) are weird things, so it's entirely possible that you'll see positive results from that diet. But not because you're avoiding "foods that could convert to alcohol."

If I were trying that diet with my kid, I would be very, very careful to ensure that she got sufficient calories. It has the potential to be low carb (unless you *really* love quinoa), and low carb is great for hunger-free weight loss - which makes it hard for a kid who eats when hungry to eat enough. Really push the fats - no lean meats, oil on the veggies, etc.

I'm with AlexsMom. I saw your post earlier, and was trying to think of a polite way to say that your therapist is utterly full of it when it comes to diet. Food does not convert to alcohol in the body. It can convert to alcohol outside the body before you consume it, but your YES list is full of sugary items that do it just fine, and your NO list has some items that you couldn't ferment with the resources of a brewery.

The diet may well be beneficial, but the way it was explained screams "QUACK" to me.

I am a firm believer in diet being a part of treatment for ADHD and other issues too. I have seen diet work wonders on my household.

But what you need to do is a proper scientific elimination diet, in australia I would recommend the royal prince alfred hospital elimination diet handbook, figure out what YOUR child can and can't tolerate and only eliminate those foods, and only with the support of a skilled dietician.

The most likely culprits are gluten, dairy and salicylates. But it could be amines, fructose, or various other things.

My eldest is: dairy, gluten free, extremely low salicylate, extremely low fructose and moderate amines. This child is a dramatically different child on her diet.

My middle child: just gluten and dairy free, she can gorge on the rest to no effect. This child lost the least foods and also has the least impact from a mistake, she's my most normal child.

Youngest child: is pretty much every thing free, she has a list of what she CAN eat that is shorter than what she can't... This child possibly has a genetic disorder and we are awaiting gene test results.

My husband is most like #2, I am most like #1. We are ALL much healthier and happier than we were 2 years ago.

For a child with a real problem diet alone is rarely enough.

Personally, living on that YES food diet would kill me right quick.

More generally, I would refer to what Mum3 and Alexsmom said, and to quackwatch.com.

None of what your practitioner said makes any sense.

DeeDee

Dr. Silverman recommended a high protein diet for our son; which he was already doing by his own overexcitiabilities with food

I wonder if your therapist was trying to alter the PH levels or some other blood chemistry. For example: Lemon's are acidic but they become alkaline in the body. Otherwise, I do not see the science behind her theory.

The only diet changes I've seen be recommended to help ADHD, that make sense, are things all kids should be doing anyway - less HFCS, less sugar in general, and more Omega-3's and Fish Oil.

ADHD is an issue of part of the brain developing slower/slightly abnormal. Food does not fix this. Medication does not *fix* this. The individual effected has to learn methods to alter their behavior. That's the only fix. Some find that medicine helps them, some find a better diet and exercise helps them, and some persue neurofeedback.

I really hate to see quackery promoted on these boards. Gluten-free diets are only helpful to people that are sensitive/allergic to gluten. Dairy-free diets are only helpful to people that are sensitive/allergic to dairy. These things have NOTHING TO DO WITH ADHD or any other neurological issue.

I second what epoh said above, as far as I know. I do know (from personal experience, parenting a daughter with severe and multiple allergies), that for a child who has food allergies or sensitivies (particularly a young child), exposure to foods that they are reactive to can lead to behavioral symptoms that *look* like ADHD.



In my research for my dd with food allergies, I've read about quite a few special diets, but haven't ever heard of the diet mentioned above. As other posters mentioned, it didn't seem to make sense to me. OTOH, I don't think that the OP posted with the intention of promoting quackery, rather she posted about what one practioner had recommended for her one child. We can all choose to read or not read the post, and choose to ignore or think about or possibly follow the info on the post depending on how we personally feel about it. I do appreciate that someone takes the time to post about their parenting experiences, because the reality is, my dd who has multiple food allergies is much healthier and happier today than she would ever have been if I hadn't had the chance to be exposed to alternative ideas via other parents posting online. Oddly enough, the ideas that have helped my dd most were quite controversial 10 years ago yet within the past five years her very traditional mainstream allergists have started recommending them to their patients (after previously ridiculing me for simply asking what they thought about them when dd was very young).

polarbear

My son is one of those extreme cases where diet has a huge effect on his ADHD-like symptoms. I have a scientific background (PhD in physics) and I have spent years investigating this. My husband and I would do all kinds of experiments on DS when he was 5 or 6. We would sit him down at the table and have have him write a few sentences. While he was writing, we would give him a trial food to munch on. Within a short period of time (10 minutes or so), his handwriting would change dramatically. Letters would suddenly be printed backwards. The spacing between letters would go haywire. And then he would start babbling at ninety miles an hour. You could just see his brain start to spin wildly. He is now older (12) and can feel and articulate when he has eaten something or been exposed to a chemical (like perfume) that makes him feel extremely jittery and impulsive.

However, I would caution that some of what the NFT says sounds a little short on scientific basis. We have tried many things with our son: Feingold diet, low salicylates, etc. Ultimately we took him to a food allergy specialist about four years ago. He was diagnosed as being allergic to corn, wheat (gluten), eggs, dairy, and soy via skin prick testing and elimination diet. He also seems to be very sensitive to salicylates. It doesn't leave him with a whole lot of variety of foods, but the difference between him on the diet and not is huge! As a side note, he is extremely healthy during the school year, and never misses a day due to colds or the flu. It seems like if his diet was completely out of whack, we would see the results in his ability to fend off germs.

My current philosophy is that there are some kids who have "leaky guts" due to either food allergies/intolerances or an imbalance of good/bad bacteria which leads to an inflamed digestive system. When the digestive system is damaged, food is not broken down correctly and pieces of food (proteins) that are unprocessed get absorbed by the damaged digestive track. There is some research that these proteins can act like opiates on the brain. We are taking the approach of trying to heal his digestive system so that it functions better, with the hope that he will tolerate more foods.

Each kids is so very different. My child sounds a lot like MumofThree's eldest but may not resemble your child at all? It is just a question of whether you see any effects of food on his behavior or attention. You might try reading up on several things before your next meeting so that you can ask pointed questions to the NFT about the proposed diet.

Here is a quick link to a recent article on ABC news that might help:
ADHD From Allergy? Study Shows Benefit From Diet

I see that I cross-posted with Polarbear!

Here is another link that I found that is interesting:

SENG article on Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children

Here's a neat idea about heaty and cooling foods.  I keep it in mind if I feel short tempered and choose a cooling food when making a choice, it's probably hokum but maybe the mindfulness helps.
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/heaty.html

Also the converting thing, could it be about diabetes?  I have a family member who has diabetes and he says learning about a diabetic diet is strange.  Almost all foods count as proteins or sugars.  It's not just that diabetics should avoid sugar because you have to sugars to live, that's what your body makes energy out of (and protein I guess you make parts out of, or something).  But with diabetics if you get too much sugar- coma, if you get too little sugar-coma.  

I have read that gifteds might be similar to diabetics in food consumption because excess of thinking takes calories to operate, but it's not an active calorie usage,  it's kind of tricky.

Very interesting responses. Thanks. I do appreciate it. I take it no one has read, Healing Young Brains, because it has a similar list to what the NFT recommends and is back by science.

I'm not a scientist, though some males in my family are/were. I'm a historian/librarian. From a historical background, what the NFT said made some sense to me - we've been eating grains for sustenance, portability, availability, convenience (faster to cook pasta than to boil a chicken), and avoid contamination issues with food/drink. We don't live in an agrarian society anymore with the need for so many calories; we live in a digital age that is primarily sedentary or less active for most of us.

Thom Hartmann says the ADHD gene/Edison gene (which I think my son has - he has ADHD and my mother's side had a bunch of Edisons) is a highly adaptive gene, DRD4. The argument is that it's been around for 40,000 yrs and that it's been critical to humanity's development. The ADHD gene is tied to many artists, inventors, and innovators who carry the gene and is necessary for the future survival of humans.

I know it's not scientific, but I think my family carries the ADHD gene and that we're more susceptible to addictions than perhaps others. I've read that ADHD people have a much greater chance for substance abuse and other risky/negative behavior if the energy isn't channeled or something goes awry. As a parent, I'd do anything to avoid another member of my family being killed by drugs, drink, or smoking.

Is it possible that some of us are genetically wired to withstand only a certain amount of stuff (chemicals - acid/sugars/proteins, whatever) to our bodies and minds? Perhaps some of us are more sensitive to the environment and what we eat and drink than others - from a genetic perspective? I'm not a scientist, but I can tell you that this is true with me - and been the case for years.

Personally, I don't think our bodies have the immune/sensory systems to deal with the onslaught of chemicals in our food/environment and our bodies maybe cannot adapt to it, but I'm not a scientist. Yet I can say that since I grew up in the 70s/early 80s, the amount of additives, preservatives, sugars, and salt has exploded in our food/drink. It's only been within the last 20-30 yrs that we've gotten so much into our food/drink supply; and I only drink water and two cups of tea a day.

I flipped through that book using Amazon's Look Inside. "One of the most common medical conditions we see in children and adults does not exist, according to conventional medicine" is not the kind of statement one normally sees in a book grounded in scientific research. Nor "patients are usually helped by [...] homeopathy." (If you flip through the bibliography, it's short on research published in reputable journals.)

People have historically eaten grains because you can support a higher population density on grain than on non-grain food sources. (Grain gives you more calories per acre of land.)

I personally feel better on a lower-grain, lower-carb diet, so I'm not knocking the desirability of figuring out a diet that works for you (or for your kid). But in my experience, diet is a very personal thing, and I would hesitate to recommend any particular diet as ideal for all people in any given group. A base for trial and error, sure. But not something to be accepted as gospel.

I read something in a library book years ago about eating what your racial ancestors ate.  Not broadly as in the caveman diet I read about online these days, but more specific to the continent and region your ancestors lived, be it goats or seafood or rice or corn.   The useful ADHD gene you mention reminds me of a Facebook quote attributed to Temple Gradine, "where would we be without the autism gene?  We'd still be sitting around in caves, socializing, getting nothing done".  

AlexsMom - I agree that food is a personal thing. I'm not here to preach. Everyone has to make their own choices/decisions; think for themselves; and do their own research and/or truth seeking. I didn't mean to offend anyone here.

I just read Healing Young Brains chapters on nutrition and toxicity and was shocked as well as what the NFT said. I had never thought about diet so extensively before. I don't think most people due today since our lives are usually busy.

I honestly didn't have an idea how diet was maybe a factor in my son's situation - which is most likely due to his genetic makeup/neurological wiring. There may be other parents on this site who don't know or would not have considered how someone's genetic makeup/neurological wiring may play affect a child and what cellular level or neurotransmitter level it may reach.

Like I said I'm a historian/librarian - my reasoning/thinking/perspective is quite different to scientists and let's leave it at that.

La Texican - exactly! I love Temple Grandin. Love the quote .

I also think that, in addition to food, making sure the child gets enough sleep is vital. And also gets enough daily exercise. Too much sitting around, I think, can contribute to ADHD. My kids don't have ADD/ADHD but I think sleep and exercise are important too.

I wasn't offended - on the contrary, I was attempting to avoid giving offense.

Oh good. Nobody trying to be mean, just differing wildly. My kind of town. CD, let us know how your child does over time, K?

DeeDee

This is interesting, my NFT basically said no other simultaneous treatment, medication or therapy is necessary for the NFT to work, in fact he advised not changing anything until we completed the NFT, so I am curious about your therapist saying the diet change is an essential part.

HOWEVER, my NFT also mentioned something about the “racing thoughts” (which cause or exacerbate anxiety)that he observed in my DD’s brain mapping were consistent with what he sees in the recovering addicts/alcoholics that he treats. He said that he often sees these signs in children of alcoholics. Alcoholism does run in her dad’s family so I thought it was plausible and yet I wonder if there is something to the connection between her brain wiring showing alcohol traits and her diet (she has been a sugar and grain fiend all her life). Or maybe people with that type of brain wiring are just more prone to addictions…We don’t know cause and effect but it is an interesting observation. Also, I have been wondering about candida overgrowth, it makes sense (in my non-scientific brain) because we give our kids antibiotics when they are sick but we don't give them pro biotics to replace the balance. It would seem then, that they could easily be dealing with a candida overgrowth that could expedite fermentation in the gut - no?

I know none of this is scientifically proven to the satisfaction of the masses (yet) but for some people the scientifically proven answer just isn’t an option (in our case the meds just didn’t work).


I did this after reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, then I spent a few hours reading labels at the grocery store and came home with water and salad. My family was not pleased, lol.

I tend to naturally choose more of the foods on the yes list so yay for me I guess. My DD would probably be fine on that diet, she might just eat nothing but chocolate until she had a sugar coma 


So I guess its Irish whiskey, potatoes and Polish sausage for me then…:-D
I love the Temple Grandin Quote too…although way too many of the spectrum kids I know aren’t really getting much done other than mastering videogames 

ROFL!! ah, that would be me too. The kids like it better when their dad shops

I think this is an important point (and it just happens to align well with my abhorrence for misdiagnoses... sigh).

Food sensitivities can look like ADHD - so I think trying these diets can be helpful to rule these things out on your way to a correct diagnosis.

Epoh - when you say "slower" development, is that actually ADHD as well, or is that just developmental? To me the condition is only truly ADHD when there is a long term brain abnormality that isn't resolved with time and "catch up" development (but then again, I'm not a doctor - I could be wrong).

Take my son, for instance: he's just been assessed as not having CAPD, because he's outgrown his audio processing delays. He had an audio developmental delay, not the actual disorder. Is it the same for ADHD?

You can grow out of CAPD. My son age 9 is hearing impaired and he has CAPD. With the specialized testing the audiologist/PhD did at age 7 for CAPD, she said that his auditory processing system in his brain was immature but intact. She feels he will "catch up" with that when he is a teenager. We are also doing piano and will this year start viola, if that helps at all.

Ok - end of week 1 - I have to say - this restrictive diet is making a difference. My retired FL parents are visiting for the summer and even they noted that my DS6.5 is not as angry/tantrum prone/irritable. My father even noticed. This is a person who wouldn't notice if I permed my hair!

I've been analyzing this diet all week; my formal science education ended in high school so I'm doing this from a layperson perspective. Here's what I think:

ADHD are at greater risk for addictions than the general population, from what I understand. They're novelty seekers. I think as soon as food hits the tongue and palate, a message is sent to the brain.

Serotonin includes the regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep. Serotonin also has some cognitive functions, including memory and learning.

Serotonin levels are affected by diet. If we compare what Native Americans or other indigenous tribes (or even rural poor in Africa/Asia) today, you'll find differences in the what/how people eat. Millet is actually older than rice or wheat, but when humans moved from being hunter/gatherers to city/states they specialized labor and developed new crops to avoid spending days hunting/gathering. So there is a connection with food, history, and our diet today.

From a historian's perspective, I think hunter/gatherers were much more in tune with food, and how it affected the mind, body, spirit/universe. You needed to know in order to survive; food provided sustenance and perhaps not so tied to emotion like it is today. With the rise of city/states, you no longer needed to know the ins/outs of mind, body, universe/spirit. City/states enabled division of labor and specialization of work so you no longer had to retain such knowledge.

I came across these 2010 articles on rice, alcohol, diet, and how it's adapted from Neolithic times and affecting China today:
http://phys.org/news183153307.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090123164359.htm

The issue is that rice takes up a lot of land and water and scientists are trying to find alternative crops to feed people and not use up so many resources.

I've lived all my life on cow's milk and cow products. I never thought about alternative milks and the history or why some people (Asians and Africans in particular) have remained lactose-intolerant today. I'm finding it fascinating.

CD, I agree that food history is fascinating in principle, and I'm not shocked that a dietary change made a difference. I just think that without a rigorous elimination diet-- where you track carefully what you took out, and add back in only one thing at a time-- you can't tell what you eliminated that made the difference.

The theory behind the "eat like your ancestors" diets leaves much to be desired, in my opinion. They lived short and mostly horrible lives. Not that healthy. Not that in tune with anything I want to replicate in my own existence.

DeeDee

CD - as I said before diet has had a profound effect in my family, particularly for my child with the most issues. But I really strongly believe that you need to do a proper scientific elimination diet. Even prehaps reading the online portions from the handbook we have used might help you :

http://www.sswahs.nsw.gov.au/rpa/allergy/resources/foodintol/handbook.cfm

My personal take on all of the more out there things that seem to help with ADHD and / or ASD is that these are people who are both physically and mentally very sensitive. It's easy to upset their apple cart and see a negative effect from things that just don't impact other people (diet, electromagnetic fields, whatever). It's easy to think diet has "cured" ADHD. Personally I think that is rarely the case. But you can eliminate a stressor that is exacerbating everything and see significant day to day improvements as a result. For us (and anecdotally I think it's quite common) the diet has had the biggest impact on hyperactive/impulsive/mood related issues, not so much on the inattentive portion.

I'm not saying diet has 'cured' my son's ADHD. I'm saying that diet has been a contributing factor in my son's ADHD and I have seen some results from the elimination diet. Genetics is another contributing factor in my son's ADHD. Neurological wiring is also contributing factor in my son's ADHD. Creating a stable, calm, stress-free environment helps to improve my son's ADHD. So there are many factors at hand with ADHD or probably any disorder.

If you read, Healing Young Brains, they suggest that neurofeedback seems to work best in treating ADHD if you take a multi-modality/holistic approach to treating the mind, body. NFT isn't a magic cure. If the environment remains chaotic, NFT will likely not work or be as affective as it potentially could - because our brains/bodies interact with our environment.

My DS6.5 was born with severe sensory processing as well as torticollis (neck) and severe plagiocephaly (head). We learn to regulate how we think, act, behave from our senses, brain/neurological wiring, and environment. If our sense of taste, smell, hearing, sight is compromised (as it was with my son), then our development and perception of reality is altered.

Without vision therapy, my son's visual processing deficits could not have been overcome. No drugs would have restored it, period, because visual processing is based on how the eyes, brain, and body interact with one's environment. It's an individualized process on how you interpret the world based on how your brain and body works.

I'll say again that I'm a historian and operate on a different reasoning/perspective. That's me. I can't speak for others.

Not completely, but substantially off topic... re: the caveman diet, now researchers are beginning to look at what microbes are in our guts, which ones adapted to what your ancestors on continent x were eating, that now either hinder or help digestion in your present day gut.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/ancient-humans-vegetarians-paleolithic-diet_n_1695228.html

eats, leaves and bugs!

The new paleo-diet seems to be to eat only what was available back then (which makes you avoid processed foods and fillers anyway). And the other ancestor diet, the one I mentioned, says it's better to eat according to your race because your family evolved over thousands of years to thrive on a set of nutrition that's in your regional cuisine. There's another fad diet I like better, "the bodies many cries for water" by someone Batman (really, that's his last name). No it's not, it's Batmanghelidj. He argues that you need to drink more actual water, not just coffee, tea, and juice that contains water.
Now I treat drinks more like a snack and water more like a drink. But I snack on coffee a lot.

Anyway I just end up eating whatever tastes good. Sometimes I get a pang of conscience and quit eating anything that had eyeballs for a while.

I agree with DeeDee and others on this point. Over the years I've read a lot about all sorts of different "diets" (plus know quite a few folks who've tried different diets for themselves and their kids. FWIW, I think that sometimes what happens when a person tries a special diet such as paleo, gfcf, salicylate-free, etc and sees a positive benefit, rather than the benefit coming from the specific diet, it's a happenstance that the foods that were problematic for that individual are no longer part of their diet, and sometimes it's simply a person taking a closer look at what they are eating on a meal-by-meal basis. I've also known a few families where I suspect a really good elimination diet could have helped pinpoint problem foods who instead gave up because they looked at the issue as "let's try gfcf because that might work" and not seeing any kind of positive changes.

For a child who seems to have behavior symptoms related to food, my recommendation is to simplify their diet to the point you know exactly what ingredients are going into each meal and snack, and keep a very detailed food/behavior diary.

polarbear

my favorite food rule is eat things that look like what they are.
that eliminates alot of processed foods and chemical preservatives and sugary drinks.
i think keeping in mind the placebo effect and that few people only change a diet when dealing with behavior issues.
Parenting a kid with ADHD and especially a gifted one is complicated and is about the long haul.
keeping a too stringent diet may sap off parental energy that will be needed later for other things. also to broad a diet change may miss something simple that is a specific trigger. (some red dyes in drinks and red icing were a trigger for us for instance).
but go with what works for now. keep and open mind about what might work better in the future is what worked for us most of the time.

CD I am sorry if you thought I was suggesting you believe diet to have cured your son, it's clear you don't! I am just always excessively cautious in talking about diet - that it's been a very useful tool for us, but not a stand alone solution.

It can be either slow - the child 'grows out' of having ADHD, which does happen, or things are happening that are 'abnormal' for lack of a better term - in which case the ADHD is life-long. Given that my husband still has ADHD as an adult, it's not likely my son will out grow his either.

There have actually been some good peer-reviewed studies showing that food allergies and sensitivities may truly play a role in ADHD symptoms for some, but not all, children. I think some people upthread mentioned this. However, as others suggested, the way to go about figuring out if this is an issue for your child would indeed be to keep a systematic diary and do a systematic elimination diet, starting with the most common offenders (dairy, soy, corn, wheat, fish, nuts--I think that's right, but I'm no expert). I too am very suspicious of the "converts to sugar" advice.

Though there are many investigations of brain areas effected by ADHD, brain imaging has yielded inconclusive results with one specific deficit, abnormality or even a localized area of over/under stimulation in patients with ADHD.

I see that ADHD is a symptom itself of maybe even the slightest "quirks " in the brain. These may be a result of genetics, brain injury, overstimulation of the modern world, fetal stress, etc. Therefore, different treatments will work differently. Some kids do "grow out" of at least the criterian that any struggles they have impede their functioning

The brain is so complex that it cannot be examined/categorized/diagnosed with the same certainty as, say, a heart defect. There is so much we don't know.

That's a good way of putting it. I need to let go of the idea that ADHD can be simplified.

A friend of mine has a child with the classic, easy to recognize, stare-you-in-the-face, no doubt whatsoever, version of ADHD, whereas my son... not so much. Is it still ADHD? Probably. Or put it this way: it's ADHD as we know it today.

I just reread the entire thread and there were so many comments that I wanted to quote and type "yes!! yes!!" underneath (lol). This is such an interesting and complex topic and I don't think there's a perfect solution.

During the school year I was making DS8 (ADHD combined) breakfast shakes. His teacher said she noticed he was more awake in class: on non-shake days he yawned a lot more and had a lot less energy.

This is what I used:

Almond milk (LOVE this stuff )
Yogurt
Protein powder (whey isolate, not concentrate)
Blueberries
Raspberries
Cranberries
Banana
Vitamin D drop
Flax oil

Fyi he's tested negative for celiac (the leaky gut theory fascinates me - as does the bacterial autism theory: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/autism-enigma.html My son spent the first ten days of his life drinking "doctor ok'd" antibiotic laced breast milk thanks to a massive c-section incision infection I had... don't get me started on that). Anyway. He's also tested negative for allergies, gluten, and we've tried food elimination).

Anyway, the shakes made a difference for him