Feb. 17, 2006 - ADD/ADHD

Well, not that its any surprise, but its come to my attention yet again that I am dealing with some major ADD/ADHD "symptoms" in my family.  Not only the boys but myself as well.  The girls, not so much. 

I am not the type to jump on any bandwagon ~ but its easier to label something rather than to say everytime... "I'm having issues with not being able to keep my attention on any one thing, focusing long enough to read a paper (even on ADD!), staying in my seat or not incessantly fidgeting, getting so distracted while doing any one project that I end up having 5 things started and never remember to finish any of them.... "  etc.  Just saying that Jaedin is fidgety or distractible or Kainan is a little hyper or I'm a little forgetful doesn't even begin to cover it.

This "issue" has come up time and time again, at different times for different reasons.  Mainly because there seem to be times when it gets so out of hand that we're not getting through a day without major frustrations.  This is above and beyond a little "spacey-ness" or distractions. 

At any rate, I was reminded today that I wanted to look up information on this topic ~ specifically what I can do diet wise to help adjust the majority of the symptoms.  I tend to believe that (at least in our case) most of the symptoms are able to be at least minimized by changes in diet.  Most of which I have realized we need to do anyway for yet other reasons that have recently popped up.

I have so far come across this site with symptoms, and a recipe page with lists of beneficial foods.   I'm open to hearing about anyone else's experience with this issue ~ especially things you may have done and in what ways they have helped.  Please share any sites you may have as well.

On this page (which I've just read through briefly thus far) I found this odd and new to me claim under the recipe for a kids shake made with coffee:

"This protein shake is helpful for a lot of people. For many small kids, and many adults, this recipe works about as well as a small dose of Ritalin (100 mg of caffeine is roughly the same as 5 mg of Ritalin). So many who might just take a small dose of Ritalin might get away with just doing this."

And This page has not only info on diet changes and effects on ADD type things, but there are a ton of links at the bottom as well that I will be off to check out...

We are not interested in (or in a position to get into) medications for this right now, so we are looking for alternate methods of dealing with this.