ADHD Diet
Last week, The Patriot Ledger newspaper ran an article titled, “HEALTHY EATING: Nutrition intervention: Treating attention-deficit kids with food, vitamins – not drugs” by Joan Endyke. The focus of the article was treating children’s ADD/ADHD with a change in their diet rather than relying on ADHD medication. The author, a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition and food science, had specific strategies for an ADHD Diet. Here are a few mentioned in this article, I encourage you to read the complete article to see more suggestions:
- Add omega-3 fatty acids
- Provide extra dietary protein
- Limit sugar, soda, juice, candy and refined starches like white bagels and rice
The author mentioned that, “Preliminary – but promising – new research testing Ritalin against nutritional supplements in children with ADHD have found both to be equally effective”. Interested in reading this research, I e-mailed the author and asked how I could find out more about this study. She quickly wrote back that I could view the article on the PubMed site and search for “Outcome-based comparison of Ritalin versus food-supplement treated children with AD/HD”. The abstract is available at the PubMed site, but the full article is available at the Alternative Medicine Review site (Link to PDF).
