Right amount of....

[JohnBark]

What is a good starting amount of the following supplements for my 7 year old son with ADHD?

Magnesium (6x body weight)
Omega-3
Vitamin E (100 I.U.)
B-Complex
Calcium
Vitamin A
Multi-vitamin

Did I leave something out?

[catatonic]

John -
Your supplement list looks good. A couple of things to consider:

Does your multi contain trace minerals? This is generally advisable, since zinc is particularly important in small quantities. Copper and manganese as well.

If your multi-vitamin contains Vitamin A, you probably do not need to add a separate supplement, and may not wish to since Vitamin A is fat-soluble and therefore not easy to eliminate if you are giving excess. (The water-solubles are urinated out if there is more than the body can use.)

I also give my son a 500mg Evening Primrose Oil which contains 50mg GLA. You may do fine without it, but I like to cover all bases. GLA is a short-chain fatty acid used to build the Omega-6 long-chains. Omega-6 is pretty readily available via diet. However, in her book "The LCP Solution", Dr. Jacqueline Stordy recommends inclusion of a small amount of evening primrose oil, along with a starting dose of 480mg DHA. She instructs readers to use this dose for 3 months, at which time, you can experiment with reducing the amount of Omega-3 by half as a maintenance level.

The lecithin Madison mentions is a good idea. It is comprised entirely of phospholipids, which are present in and essential to every organ in the body and make up 25% of the brain's total weight. They're also used to produce the neurotransmitter choline, and increasing choline has been shown to help many cases of ADHD. (Hence the usefulness of the amino acid DMAE, which leads to increased acetylcholine levels.) We do lecithin every morning, either 2 Tbsp (approximately) included in a breakfast shake with protein powder, banana and pineapple juice (Feingold Stage 1) or sprinkled over a bowl of Crispix (also Feingold Stage 1) and a glass of juice with protein powder.

Between Feingold and supplements, my son remains (most of the time) easy to deal with around the house. He's not normally oppositional any more, nor prone to temper tantrums, and homework isn't a struggle at all. However, his behavior at school continues to be a problem (with too much talking and minding other people's business) and I'm hoping the psychologist will have an impact on that aspect. At least with home life no longer full of constant conflict, I can concentrate on the school behavior.

If your son suffers from any of the same problems my son did - bedwetting, temper tantrums, difficulty sleeping, migraines - I'd be curious to hear how your program affects those things. Most improved dramatically with the Feingold program, with supplements providing the "icing on the cake". Best of luck.

[JohnBark]

Catatonic,

My DS has temper tantrums and occasionally has wet the bed. But, the bed wetting is maybe once every other week. His temper tantrums are without question the BIGGEST problem for us. We are on day 16 of FG. Days 8, 9, 15 and 16 have been bad days for him. Days 8 and 9 were by far the worse I've seen since starting FG without supplements. Day 15 was bad, but not as bad as 8 or 9. And today is starting off on the wrong foot too. Mornings are always the worse!!!! By noon he is usually under control.

So at this point, I would say that FG hasn't worked for him yet. But, we are only 16 days into Stage 1. We still have another 2 to 4 weeks for Stage 1 to be complete. I am hoping and praying hard that FG works for him. I'll keep you updated. And thanks for looking over my supplement list.

[catatonic]

John -
Once you've finished Stage 1 (or before, if things are just too difficult) you might want to take a look at corn syrup. Many on the Feingold program avoid it. I know that it is a HUGE, ENORMOUS, AWFUL!!! temper tantrum trigger for my son. One Sprite and the next thing that happens will set him off... red in the face, shakes all over, screams, bangs his head on the wall. Not a pretty sight, believe me. I can't believe that a year ago, I dealt with that kind of behavior on a weekly basis and accepted it as a "normal" part of my son's behavior. In the past 7 months, my son has had 1 major tantrum and 2 minor ones (no head-banging). And corn syrup is the culprit. Just something to keep in mind when you get to the point where you're ready to "fine tune".

[swmom]

Catatonic -

RE: the evils of corn syrup. I think we may have something going on with corn syrup, too. Do you know if corn syrup goes by any other name? Things with fructose, high fructose seem to be troublesome for us.
Is fructose in the corn syrup family or related in any way?

Also - We've been on the calc/mag supplement and the omega 3 for a few weeks now and I'm in the process of increasing the amounts to where they need to be. I noticed in one of your replies that you need 100IUs of vitamin E in order for the omega 3 to be metabolized. We have vitamin E in our multivitamin but it's only 30 IU. Is 30 enough for a child or do we need to add 70IU to this? The 100IU is across the board?

Thanks very much for your help.

[swmom]

Catatonic -

RE: the evils of corn syrup. I think we may have something going on with corn syrup, too. Do you know if corn syrup goes by any other name? Things with fructose, high fructose seem to be troublesome for us.
Is fructose in the corn syrup family or related in any way?

Also - We've been on the calc/mag supplement and the omega 3 for a few weeks now and I'm in the process of increasing the amounts to where they need to be. I noticed in one of your replies that you need 100IUs of vitamin E in order for the omega 3 to be metabolized. We have vitamin E in our multivitamin but it's only 30 IU. Is 30 enough for a child or do we need to add 70IU to this? The 100IU is across the board?

Thanks very much for your help.

[swmom]

Cat -

Disregard the Vitamin E question. I just realized that
we're getting 68 IU with the omega 3 supplement(vit. E
is added) and then another 30 IU with our multivitamin.
I give her the equivalent of one teaspoon of the Nordic Naturals Complete Omega each day, which consists of the following:

DHA 490mg
EPA 740mg
GLA 220mg
Borage Oil 900mg
Other omega 3 366mg
Vitamin E 68IU

So, she's getting 2,716mg of the various omegas a day. We just started this amount this week so I suppose we'll continue for about 6 weeks and see if we've noticed any changes. Or should we go longer?

[catatonic]

swmom-
Your Omega supplement looks quite good, very comprehensive. Even so, don't expect rapid results. The experts say that it takes approximately 3 months to address an essential fatty acid deficiency. Although some people apparently experience fairly quick results -- as in just a couple of weeks -- I don't think that's common. I know we began seeing the effect at about 6 weeks. I'd plan on giving it the full 3 months, just in case your boy is on the slow end in terms of responding to the supplement.

Corn syrup does go by a variety of names. If I can find my comprehensive list, I'll post it, but with a two-year-old and a shredder in the same house, papers have a way of disappearing! The aliases that are most common are:

dextrose
maltodextrin
dextrins
malt barley
fructose (not always corn-derived, but often)
corn sweetener

Hopefully someone with a more in-depth list will add some more names to this list!

[swmom]

Thanks, Cat. That's an interesting list. We'll watch out for foods with those ingredients. Would it be a good idea to avoid corn altogether?

[catatonic]

We try to avoid corn completely, although not with the same fanatical dedication with which we avoid corn syrup. The corn syrup reaction is immediate and dramatic. With corn, it's a much slighter reaction. In fact, I probably never would even have noticed it if I hadn't eliminated the other REALLY bad things from his diet first. So we limit the corn as much as possible, but make exceptions...like popcorn while watching a movie or corn on the cob sometimes. Test it out and see if your girl reacts to corn products -- after first removing them for about 4 days to clean her system.

[swmom]

thanks, cat. I'm seeing more and more evidence of trouble with corn syrup. This morning, she ate a piece of candy(which she really doesn't eat unless it's Halloween!) because she's running in a 5K and her dad told it's good to eat a lot of sugar before a race(!). Well, within minutes she was in a fowl mood. Oh man.

I think we might be heading in a Feingold direction...