ADD Nutrition Connection

[Anonymous]

I was diagnosed as ADD a couple of years ago at age 44. Since then, I have been on a self imposed “Canada Food Guide” Diet. I follow the recommendations, watch my portions and allow myself 15% of my intake as “fun foods.” (a bit of frozen yogurt and a small baked treat each day). I have not eaten a fast food burger in over two years and avoid, chips, chocolate bars and pop. I spend 35 – 40 minutes exercising each day. The results have been incredible from my point of reference. My sleep habits, focus, concentration and work output have improved greatly. I have read close to 30 books (fiction, non-fiction, self-help, instructional texts) over this time. Although I believe medication is a God send for many, I was not ready to go that route until I exercised all of my options. Give diet and exercise a try, then consider meds if you don’t get the desired results.

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[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t advise putting the cart before the horse here. Both strategies are important  and

nobody should exclude one before trying the other. In fact, starting with the meds right away

will make it far easier to carry out any lifestyle changes you need and vastly improve your odds.

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[Anonymous]

The food guide is a great start. No doubt, eating well is key to managing ADD. The brain requires proper fuel to power itself. It can be hard however, to know how to eat well, with the dizzying array of commercials for self proclaimed “healthier” or “scentific” foods, checkout stand quick fix diet recommendations and news reports on nutrition research. News reports tend to cover nutrition studies as if they are the absolute word on the current health knowledge of a food product. Nutrition research changes its view as frequently as the weather changes, so it can be hard to rely on these sources. As the saying goes, moderation is likely best with anything.

Michael Pollan says it well in his book, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: An eater’s manifesto, “Eat food, not too much and mostly plants”. By food he means whole foods, not modified, synthetically produced or refined ingredients. As much as possible, avoid the packaged, modified food like products that occupy most aisles of grocery stores. Walk the perimeter of the grocery store for produce, dairy, meat and such. Although this is very difficult to do, it raises some awareness of what we are really consuming. I’m doing a poor job of explaining this, for those that are interested, look up Pollan’s book for an alternate view of food an eating.

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[Anonymous]

I’m 66 and was diagnosed about 4 years ago. I started on Ritalin minimal dose right away, had no sensation of taking anything but immediately my wife could see the results in my productivity – especially on the stuff I’m not keen about. I decided to just take it weekday mornings to kick the day off in the right direction and this seems to be a functional compromise. I was already on a fairly decent exercise plan of hiking on a chunk of the Bruce Trail (that happens to be across the road) in the winter, cycling and tennis in the summer all more or less 3 times a week. After the workshop today I think I’ll create a new structure to make this more frequent.

Rick mentioned (in the workshop today) having done a course called TMLP at Landmark Education and as it happened I had taken the same course several years before being diagnosed with ADD – it turned out that this course delivers training which could have come right out of Hallowell’s book D2D, as part of the non-medical methods of functioning with ADD, so a good part of my solution was already in hand.

I also keep a vision board on an easel right behind the computer screen and this has actually helped – especially as some of the items on the board have showed up in my real life!

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