New to alternatives

[seansmom]

My son is 10 years old and 67 pounds. He is taking 27mg of Concerta each day. I have recently added a multi vitamin and liquid flax seed oil to his diet for the Omega 3s. I am confused to what else I should add. Does he need to take a DHA supplement? What is DMAE for? He is not the greatest pill swallower in the world which is why I am giving him the liquid flax seed oil. He has a quick temper and in the afternoons he can be quit moody and oppositional when the concerta starts to wear off. Should I be adding Magnesium? Evening of Primrose to help the absorbtion of the Flax Oil? Please give me some direction.

[foley]

Primrose oil is a good thing to add.

You might want to try removing salicylates from his diet too. You could either check out some of the links on the board, or try the Feingold program. www.feingold.org which basically does all the research for you and gives you a food list targeted to your area.

My personal experience was after a horrible 2 years of fiddling with med trials, joing the feingold program as a last desperate attempt, and being rather wowed by the results.

After a year on FG we corrected his Omega Fatty Acid deficiency and it was like the icing on the FG cake.

BTW we had quite a scare recently when my DS reverted back to his oppositional self--we had switched omega supplements and found that my DS really needed the GLA (found in primrose & borage oil) to utilize his omega 3's. Something to keep in mind if you're not seeing great success with just Omega 3.

Also a good multivimin and mineral supplement helps too. My DS hates to swallow pills too so we keep it to a minimum.

HTH
Foley

[catatonic]

Hi Seansmom -
I found that changing my son's diet had the biggest impact on his nasty personality issues. The vitamins make an impact as well, but I don't know if I would have seen it had I not changed his diet first.

Moody and oppositional is not fun. Following the Feingold diet has helped us so much. Supplements really give the diet a kick in the **** to make things go even better. Not perfect, don't get me wrong, but I can enjoy his company again, when for a while I dreaded it.

On the supplements specifically:

DMAE is an amino acid that is used to build the neurotransmitter choline. In the pre-Ritalin era, it was the treatment of choice for hyperactivity. A recent study of children with ADHD concluded that DMAE was a successful treatment for 76% of the boys, a rate that rivals that of the stimulants. We use 250mg per day. Supposedly, it will not interact in a harmful way with stimulant medications, but I could not find specific literature on that topic. There is an excellent DMAE summary at www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/substances_view/1,1525,10023,00.html

Your son probably does not need flax seed oil as well as fish oil, since the two basically address the same issue of Omega-3 essential fatty acids. Fish oil is more readily available to the body, but flax seed oil is easier to take and doesn't give you fish burps.

If you want to keep down the number of pills you use, buy a good multi-vitamin that contains trace minerals (zinc, copper, manganese) as well as sufficient B-vitamins (50mg B6 and B1 and 400mcg folic acid) and at least 100 IU of Vitamin E.

If you pick your multi well, you should need only to add magnesium. Magnesium is absolutely, critically important and at your son's body weight you ought to give him 400mg daily. Source Naturals makes a good magnesium called Ultra-Mag that comes in 400mg tablets and they're not expensive. Unfortunately, they're REALLY big.

Powdered magnesium is an option. You only have to stir in the neighborhood of 1/4 tsp into a glass of juice. Check out the powdered magnesium oxide at www.herbaladvisor.com (Note that unless you want to give more like 1 1/2 tsp and provide very large quantities of Vitamin C at the same time, you don't want to get magnesium ascorbate. I avoid magnesium citrate because everyone in our family gets loose bowels from it.)

However you decide to give it, USE MAGNESIUM!!! Magnesium is critically important to brain function. You ought to take it as well. It will help protect you from stroke and Alzheimers and all kinds of other equally horrible things.