attend

[sarahsmom]

Has anyone tried Attend?

[catatonic]

This product is marketed very aggressively, so questions about it come up regularly. I haven't used it personally, but I have a couple of reservations about using it.

First is its inclusion of raw neural matter (parasympathetic ganglia, hypothalamus, corticohypothalamic axis). The obvious risk of these is prion damage (i.e. mad cow disease) from bovine sources. Products are not supposed to contain bovine nerve tissue anymore, but I'm not confident there aren't equal risks associated with consuming any neural matter of this type. I won't put it to the test on my family.

Second is its reliance on homeopathic ingredients. I find the science supporting homeopathy to be weak and unconvincing. Clinically, homeopathic remedies have failed to out-perform placebos in every double-blind trial they've been tested in. I find there's solid evidence for the role nutritional deficienciees play in ADHD, and these are only correctable through the use of therapeutic doses of the appropriate nutrients, and a homeopathic remedy is incapable of doing this.

Third is that while many of the non-homeopathic ingredients are entirely appropriate for treatment of ADHD, they are present in sub-therapeutic quantities. You simply can't get enough of them from Attend. Omega-3 (EPA and DHA), for example, must be provided at the level of several grams per day, tyrosine at about 1,500mg per day, DMAE a minimum of 400mg daily, ginkgo about 100 - 250mg standardized extract daily, magnesium normally in the range of 200 - 450mg, calcium twice as much as magnesium, phosphatidylcholine at least 1,000mg, GABA about 500mg, methionine 500mg.

If you start adding all this up, you'll see that Attend would have to be roughly the size of a golf ball to contain therapeutic quantities of the relevant ingredients. (I'm deeply suspicious of the fact that they do not publish specific quantities for each ingredient.) Many of the listed ingredients are amino acids, and you can provide general supplementation of these more cheaply, easily, and in larger amounts simply by purchasing any commercial protein powder and stirring a scoop into juice at breakfast.

It's possible that simply by combining enough different things that may help with ADHD, you'll get results. I don't know. But if you do decide to try this, I hope you'll share your results. Alternatively, you might want to look at the article from Alternative Medicine Review that compared a nutritional treatment program with Ritalin therapy and found them equally effective. The article contains a specific list of all supplements used and their quantities.

www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/8/3/319.pdf