Diets for Kids with ADHD

I've read that it's really important to give kids with ADHD omega fats. You can buy the little flavored balls at whole foods that kids seems to like a lot.

Hope that helps!

You should talk to the pediatrician about this. My friend's son has ADHD but it's not diet related. I mean, he's a typical child who bounces off the walls with too much sugar, but he has zero food allergies so restricting his diet wasn't necessary. One of my neighbor's kids couldn't have anything with certain colored dyes in them, but milk, wheat and sugar in moderation wasn't a problem.
It depends on the individual child. Also, what times of day kids eat can make a difference.
I would talk to a nutritionist with a referral from the pediatrician.

Just my opinion.

Best wishes.

Cutting down on sugar, milk, and wheat should help. Cutting down on artificial preservatives, flavors and colors should help even more. Check out the Fieldgold diet (feingold.org). My sister was hyperactive (ADHD). As soon as my parents took away artificial color, artificial flavors and preservatives she was much better. Each person has different trigger foods. The Fiengold diet can help you identify the foods.
Good luck!

It has been found that many kids who are deemed ADD and ADHD have high food sensitivities to sugar and food coloring/additives and gluten. NAET has a great program to go through surrogate testing - easier on younger kids - or regular testing and its non invasive - NMT - neuroscensory muscle testing.

We go to Dr David Tam of Lombard - www.naet.com to find a practitioner in your area.

Good luck!

Having founded an organization for children with disabilities, I come in contact with many families who follow this program and swear by it.
http://www.feingold.org/

Regards,

R.
Celebrate Differences

Talk to your Developmental Pediatrician or your Child phsyciatrist for a good treatment plan. ADHD is best treated with medical care, cognative behaviroal or play therapy, speech and occupational therapy, social skills classes, and educational and behavioral interventions at home and school, with plenty of hard work from your child's doctor, your child's therapists, you and your child.

If your case managing doctor thinks that diet plays any role at all, they will instruct you about what to do. I work as an educational advocate and know a great many parents whose children have ADHD. I know no one for whom this is more than a passing fad that they tried or for whom this was first line treatment.

M.

I was just reading a book by Dr. William Sears that talks about this very thing...he calls it N.D.D., or "nutritient deficiency disease" and presents his argument that it is the real reason behind kids having ADHD, etc. I am sorry I can't remember the exact title but you could probably google it, I found it on Amazon.com. He recommends essentially the following:

1. Eliminate all simple sugars, and most especially foods containing high fructose corn syrup. If you have to use something as a sweetener, stick with stevia, agave syrup, honey. No artificial sweeteners either (aspartame, etc.)
2. No hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. No MSG. No artificial colorings or flavorings.
3. Add in Omega 3 fatty acids - either in fish, eggs, as flax seed oil or fish oil supplements, or other supplements.
4. Lots of fresh fruits, veggies, and whole grains, plus organic yogurt. Basically real food, as opposed to processed stuff.

If you can find it, I think it is a worthwhile read in that it has a lot of good info, and even has some recipes for breakfasts, snacks, etc. that would be recommended. Start reading labels on things and making sure they don't contain all that yucky stuff.

ADHD occurs when they lack salmon in their diet, which is Omega 3's. When I first heard that both my children have this I cut down sugar in take like buying Cheerios or Raison Bran (better than the sugar coated cereals), bought sugar free syrups, started making more fish, etc....What they didn't eat I bought vitamins to cover what they didn't like to eat. The eating healthy helps, but it take years to see any differences. Both children were diagonosed when they were in first and second grades. Teachers finally are noticing a difference since last year when they were in 2nd and 3rd grade. Today, my 3rd and 4th graders are a lot happy then they were in the past. They still need medication but I notice they are better behaved as the years go by. Doctors say by Middle school the children will not need the medication...so I believe my choosing healthier snacks it is helping little by little. The children did eat healthy before, but they lacked the tuna and salmon.

Check into Dr. Ben Feingold. I am reading his book now from the library. It's about hyperactive kids and their reactions to food colors and additives and salitacites (sp?). Anyways, we have just started taking away colors from our daughter's diet and have seen a big improvement in her behavior. She can have sugar and be a normal 4 yr old. If she has something with color, she is angry, violent and off the wall crazy. We are teaching her that "fake colors" make her crazy and she is understanding that even when she wants something like candy. I am finding candies that she can eat that are just natural colors and flavors. Try just that and see if he does any better. We have not committed to the Feingold diet yet, but are seeing the positive effects from getting the fake stuff out of her diet. Understand that we didn't give her a lot of fake stuff, but she got them with M&Ms while potty training and it was like we had a different child. I wish you the best.

ADHD or not, I don't give children large amounts of sugar or dye. So only natural fruit juices that don't have dye added and no extra sugars.

I just came in from the fair and watched a lady offer every one of her kids cotton candy. Pure sugar! If it doesn't hurt anything else, it will eat their teeth!

you dont want to cut down you want to eliminate these things for 3 to 4 weeks at least an see if any symptoms improve. then you bring them back one at a time into your childs diet and see if there is a change in behavior. If there is you know that particular food is not for him and do your best to avoid it completely. I nannnied for a family who didnt feed their kids dairy of wheat ( and therefore they ate minimal sugar) when they ate these things they were COMPLETELY different children! it was amazing to see the difference!!!

what really helped my brother-in-law was cutting out sugar and junk food. It was hard for them (their aunt used to make them carob candy that they traded their halloween candy for, for example) but it helped keep him off of mood-altering drugs, if that's what you're looking for.

Finding food allergies, did really help my nephew. It turned out, he was allergic to wheat. Cutting out sugar helped the most. (including simple cards like white pasta, which does the same thing to your body.) They began charting everything he ate for one week and kept the nutrition labels. They couldn't believe how much sugar and simple carbs he was consuming! They also cut out artificial dyes and super processed food. He is doing SO much better!

I'm not really following any diet with my son, but I have dramatically cut down his sugar intake and he gets no artificial colors, it has seemed to help quite a bit. I try to go all natural with him. We definitely still have our moments, but I have seen improvement. I haven't tried cutting back milk or wheat, so I'm not sure about that.

I agree with the poster below that reccommended the website www.feingold.com. You want to cut out as many dyes and preservatives as possible.
You may also want to look into natural and organic foods as well. Processed foods just aren't good for anyone.
Lastly, check out chiropractic. My son has autism. We started chiropractic with him last year (13.5mo ago). His communication abilities have shot through the roof since then. We, as a family, have only seen good changes since starting. :)

Please let me know if I can help you in any
other way or if you'd like a reference to a great chiropractor.

L.

A different "thought" to consider so I'm not really answering the exact question asked. My 8th grader has been routinely characterized as having ADHD "symptoms" by several teachers. We had her tested by a neuropsych that specializes in learning / developmental issues when she was going from a Transition first grade into regular first grade. He gave us some great info that you may want to think about. He said that no child should even be considered ADHD until they are actually in school all day (so many places not til 1st grade) and there is evidence that learning is being affected by the inability to focus and/or sit still. He said to label or medicate a change prior to that makes no sense to him since ADHD is really suppose to be a diagnosis related to learning impairments. He also stressed, as a few other posters did, that changing how information is communicated or the atmosphere that the child is in, is what really is critical. For example, keeping an ADHD child focused on reading a book may require allowing that child to wear headphones to drown out distracting noise or to sit a 3 sided "box" (with no top for lighting purposes) on the desk so the child can tuck the book and his/her head into it so no visual distractions. He also suggested that keeping choices limited to 2 and giving a visual and touch "cue" is helpful for kids with ADHD. So if a discipline situation, hold out one hand and say choice one is to keep doing the bad behavior and face a consequence of losing the gameboy for a week and then hold out the other hand and say choice two is to stop the bad behavior and keep the gameboy. Have the child touch the hand and restate the choice that the hand represents. We have come a very long way with our 8th grader just using these types of techniques and abosolutely no medications or special diets. And believe it or not, she made the National Junior Honor Society last school year. What progress she has made but she still requires utilizing ideas like the above. (I know ever child is different so I'm not saying the other ideas are not valid, just giving you some additional ideas not already mentioned.) Good luck!