It's bad enough finding out that you have ADHD. Now the real fun begins. What do you do about it? How can you ever sort out all of the possible ADHD treatment options and decide which one or ones are the best for you?
In deciding about treatment, I always consider the following three questions:
- Is any treatment necessary?
- What are the benefits of the treatment?
- What are the side effects of the treatment?
In my opinion, treatment is not always necessary just because a person is diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Treatment should be considered when the ADHD is affecting work, school, or social performance.
In medical school, I was taught that medication was the mainstay, or in some people's opinion, the only effective ADHD treatment. However, after being in the trenches and treating ADHD kids and adults for 30+ years, I now believe that the best possible ADHD treatment involves a combination of the available treatment options.
Following are the most common ADHD treatment options:
DIETARY TREATMENTS
1. Sugar Excessive sugar is not healthy for anyone, because the excess calories lead to weight gain, which in turn increases your chance for Diabetes and Heart Disease. We all thought for years that sugar made kids more "hyper". I could have sworn that my own kids would "bounce off the walls" when they ate a lot of sweets.
Almost every teacher will tell you her classes respond to excess sweets by being hyperactive. Double blinded, placebo-controlled studies, repeated several times, showed no relationship between eating sugar and being more "hyper". The key here is that neither the doctor, teacher, parent, or child knew whether they were getting sugar or a non-sugar sweetener. In that situation, there was no difference in "hyperactivity" between the two groups.
In other words, in repeated studies, sugar did not result in hyperactive behavior.
2. Healthy Diet I highly recommend a low fat, low sugar diet for general health, but I know of no evidence to show that this directly helps ADHD.
3. Food Dyes and Additives Dr. Feingold, a pediatrician, did a lot of research on the effects of elimination of red and yellow dyes from a child's diet as a primary ADHD treatment. His studies showed a marked improvement in behavior with this diet and caused a lot of excitement in the medical and lay community.
However, many other researchers tried to duplicate his work. None could obtain the same positive results as Dr. Feingold. Most experts feel that the improvement that he noticed was related to the parent/s spending more time with the child, and not to the actual diet.
4. Vitamins, Mega-Vitamins, and Mineral Supplements Many of these are offered for sale in Health Food Stores and Online. There are many testimonials as to their effectiveness in ADHD treatment. While there are no good placebo-controlled, double-blinded studies, proving that these make a difference, there are hundreds of testimonials as to varying degrees of improvement with supplement treatment. In Medical School I was taught that Supplements were of no value, compared to just eating healthily. I am beginning to find a lot of patients--adults and kids--in my practice who benefit from supplements. Some take them alone, but many use the supplements along with traditional medication.
5. MEDITATION This is offered as an adjunctive ADHD treatment (meaning it is in addition to a main treatment). Many people find this an excellent way to get themselves "centered" and is very useful in reducing stress.
6. YOGA Like meditation, Yoga is offered by some instructors as an adjunctive treatment. Relief of some of the secondary symptoms of ADHD can often be obtained byt children's yoga groups. Some instructors have found that the classes not only are physically healthy, but also improve the child's self esteem.
So there we have the first 6 ADHD treatments. In Part II and Part III, I will discuss the other most common treatments. |
