Glad I found you!

[austinana]

Hi all. New to this site and in information overload. Custodial grandmother to 10 yr old boy with ADHD. He is also very argumentative and aggressive (at home). Father was ADHD. Exposed to drugs and alcohol in womb. Adderall worked great but lost too much weight - doctor switched to Strattera. After nine months, multiple problems - nausea, personality changes, depression, etc. Currently on no meds and would like to keep it that way. He weighs about 75 lbs. We would like to start natural remedies. I am working on diet restrictions. Do you do diet first, then magnesium, then B complex, etc? Is there a starting order? Thanks for your help.

[rosyred45]

Hi, I welcomed you in your other post, so we can get down to business here

First, I am sorry to see your grandson is having problems. I hope that we can help you keep your sanity.

Next, I have my son on a feingold based diet.
www.feingold.org

(I say based because we can't afford the membership fee, which isn't much for the year based off of all the information and support that you are given through their organization.)

It has worked wonders. I can tell the difference in Mikey right off the bat. Sometimes it seems that nothing is working, and I almost give up, BUT I tread on hoping and praying and coming here looking for ideas.

Your doing the right thing by coming here, so you already have the ball rolling. It might seem over whelming at first, but you get the hang of it after a while.
Take care
Kaiti

[catatonic]

For us, what worked best was to start the diet (we also use the Feingold program, and it's been pretty darn near a MIRACLE!) and then add supplements. By sticking strictly to the diet, so many of the acting-out behaviors disappeared (particularly once corn syrup was eliminated) that it became clear we needed supplements to help with attentiveness since most of the other behaviors had vanished.

I guess it would depend on the type of dietary modifications you're going to use. With Feingold, there is a 6-week period (Stage 1) where you are basically detoxifying the body. At that point, it's probably best not to do anything but the diet. However, once you've cleared up a lot of that background noise -- the hyper and aggressive behaviors caused by foods -- it's simple to add supplements and at the same time make sure nothing in them is making behavior worse again.

So once your six weeks is done, get right on the fish oil. It takes as long as 12 weeks to correct a deficiency in essential fatty acids, so start fast and use plenty. After a week, add magnesium. To me, those are the two most critical items to add.

But I would definitely do the diet first. For us it made such a tremendous difference is my son's behavior that I felt like 20 tons of stress had been lifted off my shoulders. It made the rest so much easier. Even if you are not using Feingold, but some other form of dietary modification, I'd still think it's a good idea to wait several weeks until you can judge the effects of the diet. Then add other things.