I have a friend whose son was recently diagnosed with ADHD. She is completley relying on her family physician to guide her, and he wants to talk nothing but medications with her. I gave her the name of a doc who is more into herbal meds, but she wouldn't even call her. She has now decided to medicate her son. This infurates me!! I can't say anything to her, but I am having a hard time bitineg my tounge!! Can anyone reccomend some more natural ways of treating ADHD??

bump :)

Often times this sort of thing can be food allergy related. An elimination diet can help. Also eliminating additives, perservatives, chemicals of any sort can help.

I have a friend who took her son out of school to homeschool him because he was all doped up on meds. She took him off the meds and changed his diet and changed the way he learned at home as well. Not only did he shoot up in height because the meds were stunting his growth, but he is a kind, intelligent teenage boy that is thriving academically, emotionally, and physically now. He has been med free for about 4 years.

On a side note, my husband is psychologist and he sees all too often how meds are over used and the end all, cure all, to just plain, bad parenting. Harsh, but true.

I hope she gets the direction that she needs.

I was told by our pediatrician that our son has ADHD in February. It wasn't an official diagnosis, because I asked him not to complete the evaluation. He said that with what he read from the teachers at his school that he is fairly certain that my son has ADHD. That's all I needed to know. I figure without an official evaluation there is no way for anyone to push us into putting DS on meds.

I absolutely *refuse* to put my child on a drug that is stronger than cocaine. It is a controlled narcotic substance that I have to walk into the pedi's office every month to get a paper prescription to bring to my pharmacy to fill. They cannot fax the prescription over and they cannot email it, either. That right there puts my radar up.

My pediatrician sat there in the office telling me *not* to change his diet "because studies show that it doesn't help *at all*" and that "medication is the only thing we can do" and that "there are no natural remedies that can help".

I couldn't believe it. He had no other recommendations for me other than medication.

I have spent a lot of money at the health food store on supplements for DS. There is one that seems to work pretty well for him. It isn't a 100% turnaround for him. But it does seem to help. I am "testing" a homeopathic remedy right now.

If anyone has any links or information to share on natural remedies for ADHD, I would also be interested in seeing/hearing about it.

K

My pediatrician sat there in the office telling me *not* to change his diet "because studies show that it doesn't help *at all*" and that "medication is the only thing we can do" and that "there are no natural remedies that can help".

We must have gone to the same ped. That was almost exactly what he told us. We did put ds on adderall then (dec.) What an emotional rollercoaster we all went on with that. Stay far away from adderall. I thought I had lost the son that I once knew. We quit when school got out. My ds has been soo much better all around. He had gone from being a happy go lucky, innocent, absentminded boy to being a angst filled shadow of himself.

We started Straterra this week. The new ped says that there are not the awful side effects. So far she is right and its been a lot better. He is still very much himself and can concentrate too.

That all said, I would love to hear more about other's successes with a more natural approach. I would love to not have to medicate, but until we can find a successful alternative, we need to have ds able to focus on what he is doing for his safety and all of our sanity.

I highly recommend Children with Starving Brains for anyone dealing with anything on the autism spectrum, including ADD/ADHD.

Is ADHD actually *on* the autism spectrum?

I have never heard that before.

We just got back from a neuropsychology appt. this afternoon. I need to process the whole thing, though.

K

I believe the current consensus is that it is not "on" the spectrum but shares so many of the same characteristics that many of the "interventions" used for Autism spectrum are effective for ADD/ADHD. Children with Starving Brains is the best book I have read on the entire subject.

Well, the neuropsychologist says that Jeremy has some of the markers for ADHD, but not all of them. She is recommending an IQ test to get to the bottom of things. It is a #4 "something" IQ test. I can't remember what exactly she called it, but it seems like it had a certain name.

In the meantime Jeremy was recommended for a 3 week summer camp reading program at his school and they approved him for it. I am so happy about that. I am giving him the first 2.5 weeks of school vaca. off. Then he begins reading camp for 3 weeks. Then I'll be doing some things with him at home for about 3 weeks in August. I'll probably need to provide summer "homeschooling" for him right on up through school so he can retain more from the previous school year and not lose so much over the summer. We didn't have him in any summer programs last summer and we only did the local library's "summer reading program" which isn't enough for him.

Anyway, his teacher sent home what remained of his math workbook along with a few suggestions of what we could do (like joining the reading program at the library, having my him write post-cards when we go on vacation, etc.)

Sorry it took me so many weeks to update.

I am going to look for that book at the library (the starving brain one).

Thank you for all of the information on this thread.

kristin :)

Kristin,
My Josh was evaluated for that as well. Jsut so you know it isn't anythng they find in a blood test...it is a series of questionairres for like 20 minutes and that is how they determine.
It is a good tool, but you know better than anyone if he relaly needs soemthing for it or not.

I went ahead and accepted the prescription and took it myself...I was pretty wired for a couple hours then came down. Not an exciting thing to give my son. So I cut them in half. He rarely takes them so I too will be researching this to look for healthy alternatives.

Will update when/if I find anything supportive.

Quite honeslty, I think boys function differently~From watching my oldest son, he was similar to Josh in behavior...he is not a functioning adult. His boss has emailed me a couple times praising him and letting me know that he adores my son and sees him being a leader.

So I went with my heart with that son and he is doing ok.....

Well just in time:)
Today I received my newsletter from a fellow herbalist and there is an article about natural ADHD remedies.
Go to the medicine mom's section:)

http://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/herbalnotes_aug_05.html

Hi. This is my first post on this forum, but I want to tell you my experience.

My son is 5. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 4 (much too young in my opinion). I have a really hard time accepting that diagnosis. Yes, he has behavioral and at time attention issues, but they seem to arise when he is doing something that is difficult for him. I do believe he has sensory issues. These seem to affect his fine motor skills, and subsequently when he is asked to do some fine motor skill activities in preschool, his behaviors do spiral out of control. But, we also have noticed that its worse in certain seasons, etc. Its not an all the time thing.

Here are things we have done. 1. Changed his diet. We have eliminated dairy and artificial sweeteners, limited sugars, limited artificial colors, preservatives, etc. (as best as we can). We are trying to eliminate all of the white stuff and replace it with whole grains, etc.

2. We noticed his behavior spiraled out of control for the 2 weeks following his last flouride treatment at the dentist. His toothpaste is now a natural, non-flouride toothpaste.

3. Supplementation - We give him 1 tsp. of flaxseed oil daily. We put ground flaxseed on his peanut butter sandwiches. He takes a combination magnesium-calcium supplement. He also takes a daily multi-vitamin and another supplement that is for attention problems. It has more magnesium in it as well as grapeseed extract and some other things, but I can't remember exactly what at the moment.

4. He receives Occupational Therapy for his SI. We have found that a sensory diet of jumping on a trampoline, chewing bubble gum, regular heavy lifting really helps.

5. We just started a nightly massage using lavendar, sage, rosemary and chamomille. Not sure if this is helping, but he loves it and I figure its a great way to respond to him.

6. We went to a homeopath about a week ago and started a new remedy with him. I really have my fingers crossed on this one. But, it could take months to see the results from it. That's okay.

That's it in a nutshell. I can tell you that we immediately saw some improvement once we changed his diet. My ped (who lets the decision of meds come from us) said that as far as diet goes, there is no body of evidence supporting it, but its all on a bell curve so there will always be outliers who respond to that treatment. Personally, I do believe that diet plays an important part.

Hope that helps.

Lynne