Natural ADD Treatment
Dear Doctor,
We have read what you have said about ADD and treatment. We have discovered that certain foods cause our children to be ADD.
We also have placed them on a vitamin which seems to help. We have thought of medication, but we wanted to know what you thought about more natural ways of helping children with ADD.
Health Conscious
Dear Health Conscious,
It pains me to burst your bubble. So far there is not one shred of clear and irrefutable evidence that any "natural" substance will help or cure ADD.
Further, there is no evidence, whatever, that diet is implicated. Many studies, including ones on sugar, have not supported a clear link between diet and attention deficit behavior. It also seems to me to be an artificial differentiation to label "natural" versus, I assume, "unnatural" remedies.
In a sense, the medical remedy of using psychostimulants is nothing more than a more efficient dose of something like caffeine or other "natural" substance.
Therefore, is Ritalin or its kin "unnatural". There is, alas, very clear evidence that psychostimulants do control behavior labeled as ADD.
I often quarrel with our fascination with controlling such behavior and suggest everything from curriculum to discipline patterns might be contributing, but facts are facts, and the medications do work.
That they are overused and too rapidly accessed is, in my view, not debatable, but that has nothing to do with their efficacy. When it comes to alternative solutions, evidence may not be on your side, but who am I to quarrel with what has worked for you.
Psychology has always respected the N of one, that is that one case which seems, against the evidence, to respond to one treatment or another. There have been children who, in my opinion, appeared adversely affected by sugar. There are anecdotal reports of those for whom grains or dairy products would seem to be culprits.
These are possibly true but not supported with solid and controlled research. Children, often on very stringent treatment diets have assured me they are cheating regularly but simply keep the details from their parents.
Their parents often assert, with equal vigor, that the diet is working wonders. What do I get out of all of this?
Faith, what we believe, is important and an undisputed treatment tool.
Tags: attention deficit, control behavior, controlled research, helping children, irrefutable evidence, medical remedy, ritalin
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