Many doctors who treat Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder still consider diet treatments a fad. But there is evidence that some diets do work, especially when they are healthful and fit with a balanced lifestyle - both from scientific studies and from parents who see their children become suddenly better-behaved when the correct change is made in the diet. So if your child has a focusing and attention problem, it is worth your while to look carefully at this option.
Where diet is concerned different children have different needs, and you need to look at a range of issues and decide what would fit your child. Here are some of the things you should consider when you feel food habits may be the cause of your child’s problem behavior:
1. Having meals on time
Is she having all her meals on time? A healthful breakfast before school is proven to help children concentrate and behave better. The effect is even greater especially if they have any nutritional deficiencies. That is why so many students do noticeably better when their school starts a breakfast program. Meals in a breakfast program tend to be more healthful than home meals, and the children are more likely to eat.
Having an adequate lunch and supper is also important. Many hyperactive children have trouble sleeping, and eating sensibly can help with this. A filling meal eaten about two hours before bed, and perhaps some warm milk just before going to sleep, together with avoiding afternoon naps, will help your child sleep better at night.
She also needs regular exercise, especially if she is temperamentally energetic. Exercise helps concentration, and one common-sense recommendation for children with hyperactivity is to channelize all the extra energy into chores that require full-body movement. It’s a bad idea to let children watch TV long hours - too much TV alone is connected with lack of exercise, bad eating habits (partly from a tendency to overeat while watching TV, and partly because of child-targeted advertisements for junk foods), hyperactivity and inability to concentrate.
2. Eating the right foods
All natural ADD/ADHD treatment diets emphasize a healthful diet or supplementation with specific minerals and vitamins connected in some way to attention deficit or hyperactivity. A protein-rich, low-fat diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables - a normal healthful diet - can help children feel better physically and so behave better too. An ideal breakfast should be protein-rich, with milk, meats, or egg, with some cereal and fruits or vegetables. Lunch and supper for school-going children also need to be more substantial than just an apple or a plain sandwich.
If your child is deficient in iron, as many children tend to be, supplementation with iron tablets or syrups may improve his behavior. You can feed her natural iron-rich foods like liver, turkey, sardines, oysters, clam, beans, and lentils.
Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, found in fatty fish like tuna and mackerel or flax seed oil and kidney beans, are connected to normal brain functioning too. For children who refuse to eat fish or beans, you can give fish oil syrups or omega-3 fatty acid supplements.
3. Avoiding the wrong foods
Many people with ADD/ADHD avoid foods with any kind of artificial additive. They choose an organic diet, with lots of vegetables, fruits, whole grain cereals, and meats grown without pesticides or fungicides, and without added preservatives or colors. Preservatives, colorings, and other additives, found commonly in all packaged food, can cause hyperactivity in children who are sensitive to them.
A few children are allergic to common foods like milk and eggs, and one form this kind of allergy can take is hyperactivity. Sensitivity to sugar can cause hyperactivity if a child has too much plain sugar or sugary foods. If you suspect your child is hyperactive because of food allergies, you need to cut the suspected food in all its forms completely out of the diet for a couple of weeks to notice improvement. If you are correct and the hyperactivity is due to food allergies, the improvement is often dramatic.
If you are not sure how to go about finding what your child may be allergic to, you may need to get professional guidance. An exclusion diet can help find allergens, and if you do this with a nutritionist’s help, you can substitute other foods to compensate for the nutrients your child will lose when particular foods are removed from her diet.
4. Diet treatment junk
Never go for any extreme diet treatments that require you to control, for instance, all yellow or white foods, or those that will not fulfill your child’s normal need for calories. Such diets control hyperactivity by simply starving the child. They have little long-term benefit, and can do a lot of harm.
Remember that a big part of a sensible diet for anyone with ADD/ADHD is wholesome food. Also, whatever the diet you choose, your support and training for your child in other social and academic issues is a vital part of learning to live successfully with attention deficit and hyperactivity.
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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Drugs medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.