ADHD: The Diet Connection

Dr. Pessler’s study is the first to con­clu­sively say that diet is impli­cated in ADHD. In the NPR inter­view, Dr. Pessler did not mince words, “Food is the main cause of ADHD,” she said adding, “After the diet, they were just nor­mal chil­dren with nor­mal behav­ior. They were no longer more eas­ily dis­tracted, they were no more for­get­ful, there were no more temper-tantrums.” The study found that in 64 per­cent of chil­dren with ADHD, the symp­toms were caused by food. “It’s a hyper­sen­si­tiv­ity reac­tion to food,” Pessler said.

This is good news for par­ents and chil­dren who would like to avoid many of the adverse side effects asso­ci­ated with com­mon stim­u­lant drugs, like Ritalin, used to treat ADHD — and bad news for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that com­mon side effects from the drugs are sleep­less­ness (for which a doc­tor might also pre­scribe sleep­ing pills), headaches, stom­achaches, decreased appetite, and a long list of much more fright­en­ing (yet rarer) side effects, includ­ing feel­ing help­less, hope­less, or worth­less, and new or wors­en­ing depres­sion. But Pessler’s study indi­cates that up to two-thirds—or 2 of the 3 mil­lion chil­dren cur­rently med­icated for ADHD—may not need med­ica­tion at all. “With all chil­dren, we should start with diet research,” Pessler said.

There are also ques­tions about the long-term effects of stim­u­lant drugs and growth in chil­dren. After three years on Ritalin, chil­dren were about an inch shorter and 4.4 pounds lighter than their peers, accord­ing to a major study pub­lished in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2007. A 2010 study in the Journal of Pediatrics dis­puted these find­ings, but all the study’s authors had rela­tion­ships with drug com­pa­nies, some of which make stim­u­lants. According to Reuters, “The lead author, Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Biederman, was once called out by Iowa Senator Charles E. Grassley for the con­sult­ing fees he has received from such drug makers.”

This is just one exam­ple of how the pow­er­ful billion-dollar drug indus­try designs and inter­prets stud­ies to suit their inter­ests. Since the 1970s, researchers not tied to drug com­pa­nies have been draw­ing con­nec­tions between foods, food addi­tives, and the symp­toms asso­ci­ated with ADHD but many have been dis­missed or over­looked by con­ven­tional med­i­cine. One of the ear­li­est researchers in this field was Dr. Benjamin Feingold who cre­ated a spe­cific diet to address behav­ioral and devel­op­men­tal prob­lems in chil­dren. The Feingold diet, as it is now called, rec­om­mends remov­ing all food addi­tives, dyes, and preser­v­a­tives com­monly found in the major­ity of indus­trial foods.

There are a mul­ti­tude of cred­i­ble sci­en­tific stud­ies to indi­cate that diet plays a large role in the devel­op­ment of ADHD. One study found that the deple­tion of zinc and cop­per in chil­dren was more preva­lent in chil­dren with ADHD. Another study found that one par­tic­u­lar dye acts as a “cen­tral exci­ta­tory agent able to induce hyper­ki­netic behav­ior.” And yet another study sug­gests that the com­bi­na­tion of var­i­ous com­mon food addi­tives appears to have a neu­ro­toxic effect—pointing to the impor­tant fact that while low lev­els of indi­vid­ual food addi­tives may be regarded as safe for human con­sump­tion, we must also con­sider the com­bined effects of the vast array of food addi­tives that are now preva­lent in our food supply.

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