A Great Blog About ADHD and Food

This is a great blog I thought all of you might enjoy. This mom blogs about ADHD and diet. She is super funny and her posts are so helpful.

She posts about her daughters experiences with diet and her ADHD symptom. She also posts great recipes as well as shopping lists etc…

I recommend subscribe to her blog via email so you don’t miss a post! (It’s on the menu on the right hand side).

Check it out!

http://themullies.blogspot.com/

Gluten free pumpkin doughnuts

I found these gluten free pumpkin doughnuts surfing the net. I made them and they were so good! Johnny didn't have a reaction from them!

Here is the recipe and pictures!

 

http://awhittier.blogspot.com/2012/10/gluten-free-pumpkin-doughnuts.html

 

~Recover from ADD, ADHD, and depression without drugs~

Concurrent with this pharmaceutical boom, we have also seen the rise of the ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) diagnosis. According to the National Institute of Mental health, 3 to 5 percentof kids have ADHD, but some experts believe that figure could be as high as 10 percent. Yet there are no lab tests to confirm ADHD in children or adults. Instead, doctors rely on the patient's response to questions, the family's description of behavior problems and a school assessment. Once a diagnosis has been made and the patient is put on ADHD medication, the medications usually have troubling side effects. Those may include headaches, upset stomach, dizziness, toxic psychosis and even death, among others.

Many individuals are reporting that diagnoses for depression and ADHD - along with their attendant pharmaceutical treatments - are being handed out like candy. "I don't think you can make a diagnosis of depression in a 10-minute doctor visit, you just can't," said Dr. James Parker, a child psychiatrist at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. Frank Barnhill, M.D. is a family physician and author of "Mistaken for ADHD". He writes, "Insurance companies often try to squeeze the last penny of profit out of medical care and push doctors even harder to provide that care in less time and for lower costs."

Kerri Kasem knows this experience personally. The radio host was battling depression in her early 20s when she sought medical attention for it. "I'd get really high highs and really low lows," she says. "The doctors wanted to put me on drugs. I walked into an office and 20 minutes later, with him asking me just a couple questions, he told me I had ADD and he gave me Ritalin. He didn't ask me if I had any food allergies or 'What's your diet like?' There was not one question about my health."

Trusting his advice, she began taking Ritalin, but "at the end of one week, I was so sick that I gave him back his drugs... I felt ill." Kasem decided to have her blood tested and learned she had some pressing nutritional issues. "I was very low on iron, I didn't have enough vitamin D. I had all these deficiencies. So I started taking supplements. I got off the sugar completely and that included all the pastas and breads. All of a sudden, my brain started working a little better."She started taking supplements for the brain and noticed a marked improvement in her ability to focus. "My head was like a calculator; I was quick on my feet. I never had that before." This prompted her to research possible food allergies, and she discovered that she was allergic to gluten. After eliminating gluten, her thinking became even clearer. These changes proved to be a professional game changer for her too. "I can do radio!" she realized. "I wanted to do talk radio more than anything. It was something I wanted to do but I never thought I could." With her new focus, Kasem began interning at radio stations and taking classes. She's now been doing radio since 1997, and you can hear her on the K-pod and Sixx Sense. She is a wellness advocate who promotes natural approaches to disease such as juicing, and eating a plant-based diet. Kasem reflects, "There's always another option, despite what the doctors say."

Sources for this article include:

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/19/more-than-1-in-10-in-u-s-take-antidepressants/

http://thekpod.com/?p=2900

http://holisticvoice.org/kerri-kasem-vegan/

About the author:

Allison Biggar is a writer and filmmaker who believes in using the media to empower people to make a difference. Currently, she is directing a documentary on people who have cured themselves of disease naturally without drugs, surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035272_ADHD_depression_natural_remedies.html#ixzz1pTMpc2wh

~What's In Your Food?~

I just found this amazing site. Plug in the type of food or the brand and see what's in it. It has some fast food listed too.

Food Facts is your best source of the information you need to keep your diet safe and healthy. Here you'll find everything you need to know about what's really in your food: nutritional information on thousands of different products with their ingredients, food label information, nutrient content information, protein, fat and carb information AND you'll be able to track your own food allergies and sensitivities for things like peanut allergies, egg allergies, dairy allergies, gluten sensitivity and gluten content.

They also have a blog...http://blog.foodfacts.com/

~MSG~

For those of you who are not seeing results with cutting out  wheat, dairy, or soy, you might want to look at MSG. I just read this book. In Bad Taste MSG Syndrome. I believe MSG is why Johnny can’t eat and In-N-Out Burger (Here’s the post to what happened to him ). I called and asked if there was any soy wheat or dairy in his fries or protein style burger and the said no, but they would not answer the question about MSG. Doing my own research I found their Meat, special sauce, and ketchup have MSG in them.

Second only to salt and pepper in popularity, MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a chemical used to hide unpleasant or stale tastes. It causes toxic, not allergenic, reaction in all people, adversely affecting the digestive, circulatory, and central nervous systems. This book covers the chemical's history, the medical symptoms of toxicity, dangers in its use (it is frequently present in restaurant and prepared grocery foods), strategies shoppers can use to avoid it, a restaurant guide that lists specific menu items from fast food chains, and recipes that avoid MSG. This controversial treatment is highly recommended.

Study: Diet May Help ADHD Kids More Than Drugs

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/12/134456594/study-diet-may-help-adhd-kids-more-than-drugs
(Hi, it's me Christin...I encourage you to click on the link and read through some of the hundreds of comments made on this story...very inspiring)

Hyperactivity. Fidgeting. Inattention. Impulsivity. If your child has one or more of these qualities on a regular basis, you may be told that he or she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If so, they'd be among about 10 percent of children in the United States.

Kids with ADHD can be restless and difficult to handle. Many of them are treated with drugs, but a new study says food may be the key. Published in The Lancet journal, the study suggests that with a very restrictive diet, kids with ADHD could experience a significant reduction in symptoms.
The study's lead author, Dr. Lidy Pelsser of the ADHD Research Centre in the Netherlands, writes in The Lancet that the disorder is triggered in many cases by external factors — and those can be treated through changes to one's environment.

"ADHD, it's just a couple of symptoms — it's not a disease," the Dutch researcher tells All Things Considered weekend host Guy Raz.

The way we think about — and treat — these behaviors is wrong, Pelsser says. "There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, 'OK, we have got those symptoms, now let's start looking for a cause.' "

Pelsser compares ADHD to eczema. "The skin is affected, but a lot of people get eczema because of a latex allergy or because they are eating a pineapple or strawberries."

According to Pelsser, 64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. Researchers determined that by starting kids on a very elaborate diet, then restricting it over a few weeks' time.

"It's only five weeks," Pelsser says. "If it is the diet, then we start to find out which foods are causing the problems."

Teachers and doctors who worked with children in the study reported marked changes in behavior. "In fact, they were flabbergasted," Pelsser says.

"After the diet, they were just normal children with normal behavior," she says. No longer were they easily distracted or forgetful, and the temper tantrums subsided.

Some teachers said they never thought it would work, Pelsser says. "It was so strange," she says, "that a diet would change the behavior of a child as thoroughly as they saw it. It was a miracle, a teacher said. "But diet is not the solution for all children with ADHD, Pelsser cautions. "In all children, we should start with diet research," she says. If a child's behavior doesn't change, then drugs may still be necessary. "But now we are giving them all drugs, and I think that's a huge mistake," she says.

Also, Pelsser warns, altering your child's diet without a doctor's supervision is inadvisable.

"We have got good news — that food is the main cause of ADHD," she says. "We've got bad news — that we have to train physicians to monitor this procedure because it cannot be done by a physician who is not trained."

Slow Cooker Baked Beans and Corn Bread

The cold and rain that we’ve had the last few days has inspired me to drag out the Crockpot. I love to cook in the slow cooker because not only is it super easy…the smell in the house is amazing.

The kinds and I are going to be in and out all day so I thought this recipe would be perfect.

 

2 cups dried beans (navy or pinto)

1/2 pound bacon (or left over ham or a hammock )

1 onion, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic finely chopped

3 tablespoons molasses

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup of hot water

Soak beans overnight in water. Drain and rinse.

Toss the rest of the ingredient into the slow cooker and let it cook for most of the day. All slow cookers are different. My mom’s you have to leave on high to get it to boil—mine will boil on low and sometime burn on high. So set yours accordingly. You may have to add a little water throughout the day.
 

For the corn bread I use a gluten free mix by Red Mills. Sometimes I doctor it up by adding a small can of chilies, or a half of can of drained corn, or even some piece of diced ham.

If I know we are going to eat the corn bread muffins with honey I just make it plain.

* One thing I’ve noticed about this mix is I have to add more liquid than it calls for. Every single time...so make sure the batter isn't too thick when you make it.