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Diet and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

By Natural-Life.ca | June 28th, 2009

News Post Category: Big Pharma, Junk Food, Product Labels

From Harvard Health:

Diet alone probably isn’t the driving force behind the multiple behavioral and cognitive symptoms that plague children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But several studies have renewed interest in whether certain foods and additives might affect particular symptoms in a subset of children with ADHD.

All of the qualifiers in the previous sentence are intentional. Traditional research finds no support for radical diets like the Feingold diet — which eliminates nearly all processed foods as well as many fruits and vegetables — for the majority of children with ADHD. And there is no easy way to identify the few children who might benefit from diets that prohibit particular foods.

Yet parents — and some researchers — wonder if more modest dietary changes could supplement standard multimodal treatment that includes behavioral therapy and other evidence-based psychotherapies, school support, medication, and parent education. Here’s a brief review of the evidence on the dietary interventions that have received the most mainstream attention.

Full story: Diet and ADD