Alternative Treatments | ADHD Information

Several factors keep me from wanting to rely on meds: cost, health, etc. I am very interested in finding alternative treatment methods (as I'm sure most here are as well).

In my research I've found this site: http://diet-studies.com/adhd.html#Harding2003... I found Item #32 particularly interesting.

See what you think, if you're interested. Hope it helps some of us that may be looking into alternatives.Yep, poor diet and nutrition can cause issues.  ADD is a problem with low dopamine levels, and since my diet was poor, I worried I wasn't getting enough of the amino acid building blocks for it.

I started looking for supplements and found out it was made Phenylethlene (sp), an essential amino acid.

I was all gungho about buying some, then found out it's in nutrasweet and I get quite enough swilling down diet pop.  Doh!

However, even the best case scenario, diet is responsible for only a minority of ADD cases.  If you can solve it with diet, that's great, but that's not the cause (or solution) to most cases.  Not say it shouldn't be overlooked, of course.

While I agree that a lot of the symptoms that relate to ADHD can be attributed to poor nutrition or nutritional deficiencies, I do not believe this is the direct cause of ADHD. That was a great site and very interesting to read! I would like to see a study that takes 1000 children and 1000 adults for example and then see what the outcome would be. A larger study is more indicative of truer results.

I consider myself to be one of the crunchiest granola type people around. I am very holistic and very much into alternative and nutritional therapies. However, since we already eat a very healthy diet that is 95% free of additives, sugar, preservatives etc and we also control our carbs, and take a patented supplement that is proven to be absorbed, I still didn't notice that much difference. I do notice more of a difference in my two year old however, but just not for myself which is unfortunate. So ya know when I am on medications it is truly because for me that was a last resort!

But I do think anyone diagnosed with ADHD should also take a good long look at their diet and exercise habits, since modifying the diet and increasing daily activities can certainly help.

Just my two cents!