anyone know of a nutritional way to treat the symptoms of ADD?

Question

i really don't want to go the medication route. also i heard there are certain vitamins you can take...any suggestions?

Answer 1

A good multi vitamin and mineral will help some. Minerals are critical and they are deficient in our SAD (Standard American Diet). Most critical for ADD or ADHD are Zinc & Magnesium. Liquid supplements are far superior. Try Natural Vitality's CALM magnesium supplement.

Omega 3 fats are helpful. Get a bottle of liquid flax seed oil (Barlean's) and start adding it to everything - salad dressing, muffins, oatmeal (instead of butter), veggies.

Herbs, Etc. out of Santa Fe makes a product called "Kidalin" available in orange or cherry, that helps somewhat. Main ingredient, I think, is catnip. Some companies make available online. Try it and if it works for your child you can order direct from the company for less. Or get your local health food store to order it for you.

Try an elimination diet to see what your child may be reacting to. I have a friend whose son goes absolutely bonkers if he has anything with red dye in it. It's like he's a different person. Another friend took her 3 kids off milk and gave them only goat's milk and stopped their bedwetting totally. When the goat dried up and she gave them just one gallon of grocery store cow milk they started wetting the bed again.

Kudos to you for trying everything you can to stay off the meds if possible. I have a grandson who became suicidal after taking them. And had choking spells and depressed and would not eat.

Answer 2

Low-carb diets are extremely harmful to the human body. At least 60% of the diet should be from carbs...but cut back on anything with "high fructose corn syrup" in it, and also try whole grains instead of bleached wheat flour. Besides that-it's good to avoid medication, but considering millions of kids are misdiagnosed with ADD(which may or may not be real), i'd suggest just making sure you're keeping a good line on your child. America has moved to a system where we're blaming everything else on a misbehaving a child, so maybe just give them a good thwack upside the back of the head every so often. Remember...there's a broad line between discipline and abuse.

Answer 3

yeah, i agree, i think that the meds they put kids on are the worst thing for a kid.
I have a few friends who have had incredible success with their ADD and ADHD kids with a particular supplement. The website is www.healthforwellness.net which talks a bit about the supplement. It is geared for overall health and not just for ADD or one particular condition, so you might want to look into it jsut from a nutrition point of view but i know it's helped a lot of people with ADD type issues. You can go to www.testimonialpage.com, there might be some success stories there, but if not, I can tell you about some friends of mine who have seen some serious results with this and ADD.

Answer 4

Careful about cereal with food colorings or added sugars. Careful about koolaid and drinks containing artificial colors.
Careful with chocolate and anything else containing stimulants like caffeine.
Now the big issues. A schedule that they can count on day to day. Firm rules that don't depend on mom and dads mood. Rules that stand and are what they are with reasonable consequences. They don't change because you really wanted him or her not to miss a friends party, etc.... good grades in school mean more rewards.
Use lots of praise for things well done.
Also alternative learning. If the child has problems with spelling, take them to a piece of concrete and drag their finger over the roughness spelling the words. Tell them to focus on remembering how the word felt and try to "feel" yourself writing it out when you need to spell it at school.
Also, before you put the child in any situation clearly explain how the situation works and proper behavior. If you need to, hold their chin gently in your hand when you are telling them and make eye contact and always brag on them lots when they do well.

Answer 5

DMAE has been tried
Essential Fatty Acids and DHA have helped some
Phosphatidyl Serine may be effective
B50 Complex with Cal-Mag-Zinc tablets
Magnets have been tried
Pycnogenol has been helpful

The Pill Book Guide to Natural Medicines - Murray
Prescription for Natural Cures - Balch & Stengler
Magnet Therapy - Lawrence & Rosch

Answer 6

The chemicals in your environment effect the chemicals in your brain. People with add are extremely sensitive to environmental toxins in foods, cleaners and personal products. I have helped many people switch to safe products with great results plus what I show people is usually less expensive and easier to obtain. Pygnoginal is a good supplement to take but GSE is even more powerful. Over 80% of ADD can be corrected with just these simple steps, I would list brand names but I do not want to be accused of advertising.

Answer 7

Not really..... ADD is a neurological problem --- rather like a bad wiring job. It is controlable thru medication, that helps a child concentrate. Otherwise, their learning day is like there are bees all around them and they are unable to get past the bees. Parents who are unwilling to put their kids on meds are doing them a big disfavor -- ---- we treat diabetes with med, but some won't give their child a chance to be treated with meds. And these poor kids are doomed to failure in school, and in life..... I have seen F students in school become A students on medication. I have seen kids that were uncontrolable without meds become proud of their ability to be great and accomplish things they were not able to accomplish before. It is as if the tree were not growing straight, and we braced it until it was finished growing. Lady, I taught school for 30 years, and had on average 150 kids per year. Do the math. I never had a kid who was unhappy about taking his medications, and they told me so. And interestingly these kids never were the ones to go for illegal drugs --- they were so proud of their accomplishments, no way would they risk something stupid.... For some in the beginning, they became a little tired. It passed. Even had one kid up his own dosage, then two weeks later he told his mom. They checked with the doc, and he was fine with it. Jeremy graduated college. As a kid in my 8th grade class, prior to meds, he could barely do a half a page of easy math..... At his present level of accomplishment, there was no way he was going to get thru h.s. For some kids, the physician played with the "cocktail" of medications until the kid felt good about what he could do. I talked with many on a weekly basis to monitor each kid's work until we agreed he was doing just fine. All kids took the meds thru the summmer....... I wish I could show you "before" and "after " accomplishments. And all the crap you will read about food, sugar, starches is just that --- crap.

Answer 8

It probably has more to do with the way we spend our time, TV and video games that require the attention span of only a few seconds seems to train the brain to that format.

Try reading, then think about what you have read, and write in your own words a summary.

What I do not like about today's textbooks is the Christmas tree format they have, look at the texts of old they were not so flashy.

Answer 9

My ADD 'child' is now 32 yrs old. I had to put her in pre-school at 4 yrs old JUST to be able to get her prescription meds for her ADD/ADHD. By the time she was ready to start kindergarden, she was taking 90mg Ridalin 4x's daily! :-(

I found out about Dr Goldstein's diet for ADD children. I eliminated all sugars, red & yellow food colorings, etc from her diet. no chocolate, no caffeine. I cooked everything from scratch, period, using whole wheat flour, honey, no preservatives whatsoever. By taking care of what my child put in her mouth, we were able to drop her ritalin to 20mg 3x's daily.

Yes, your child deserves to have the added 'help' that medication will give her/him. S/he truly can NOT grasp hold of what is going on in their mind, nor stop the whirlwind tho'ts that are running thru as quickly as they do WITHOUT some sort of intervention method!

Back in the mid-70's when she needed something to help her 'mind slow down'as she would put it, there wasn't much available 'naturally', EXCEPT watching what went into her mouth.

Nowdays, there are many different avenues that you can check out. Please be willing to listen to what your child has to say regarding what may or may not be helping her/him.

April G, I applaud how supportive you are regarding your ADD students. I am a bit surprised though, that of all your students, not one of them disliked taking their medication! My daughter fought taking her medication from age 8 yrs! As she put it, the medicine 'made her feel funny', and she hated the burnt-out feeling she'd get as the medicine wore off. In fact, as an adult, she refuses to use ANY medication, pharmaceutical nor natural to help her with her ADD symptoms. She still to this day watches the foods she puts into her body, but that is all that she will do as far as any kind of 'medicating' for her problem.

In short, please utilize any method available to help your child adapt and conquer the problems that this disease will surely cause her.

Answer 10

One thing that has been proven to work is a capsule called EYE Q it contains omega oils and essential fatty acids. It has been used with many children who also have poor concentration and are not able to sit still for short periods of time