The First Line of Defense Against ADHD: Eliminate Grains and Dairy

by Heidi Stevenson

21 February 2010

Modern medicine's first, second, and last approach to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been to push drugs on children. Worse, those drugs are related to the street drug methamphetamine, which is known to cause brain damage, including shrinkage of gray matter. They offer children nothing beneficial, increasing the likelihood of failing in school 10½ times more than undrugged ADHD children, and increasing diastolic blood pressure by 19 percent. This obviously isn't the way to treat these children—and now, even adults are being prescribed the same drugs.

ADHD has become more and more common in the last couple of decades, along with a host of other life-disrupting conditions in children. Suggestions that it's simply genetic are specious. Nowadays, virtually everyone knows children who are diagnosed with ADHD, though 40 years ago, it was rare, almost unheard of. Children who just couldn't settle down in school, who were disruptive, unruly, overly-active, couldn't focus—they existed, but they were rarely out-of-control in the same manner as ADHD kids.

Prevention and Treatment Fall To The Parents

It makes no sense that children are born with ADHD. That's the good news. Something must be triggering it, and if that's so, then it stands to reason that these children can be helped, especially if help comes early.

Since modern medicine seems uninterested in actually helping these children or trying to find what's causing ADHD, then it falls to the parents. That's an enormous burden—but the option is the burden of caring for an ADHD child. There are certainly no easy answers. Some, though, have found help through nutrition.

The first order of defense is a good offense, and ADHD is no exception. It would be better to never discover that your child could have developed ADHD—and that possibility exists.

Look at the picture above. It's a corn-based cereal full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. It almost certainly included genetically modified corn, with a built-in insecticide. It has BHT (butylated hydroxy toluene), used to extend shelf-life, effectively by disguising rancid fat. Then, a few artificial vitamins are added to the mess to give an impression of being a healthy food.

If you're giving it to your child, or any other cereal-in-a-box, then you're feeding your child poison. If your child is lucky, then a strong innate constitution will prevent the worst sort of damage. If not, your child may be faced with life-blunting ADHD and digestive disorders.

Corn flakes and all other breakfast cerials of any sort are horrific on the digestive system and blood glucose levels. They cause diabetes and damage the digestive tract, making it impossible to absorb adequate nutrition. Many children go into sugar highs, hyperactivity, and rages. Eating this stuff is worse than eating pure sugar. At least, with pure sugar, your body isn't facing the chemical onslaught of rancid fat and GM grains.

The Starting Point in Treating ADHD—Grains

The beginning of treating an ADHD child is to feed real food. At an absolute minimum, remove all processed grains. That includes added sugars and sugar-like substances, such as high fructose corn syrup. Frankly, without doing that, there's really no point in even trying to help a child diagnosed as ADHD. The blood's sugar spikes will keep your child's body in a state of havoc, swinging between hyperactive highs and near-collapses—near-collapse because his antics will make you give in to a sugary treat, so he'll have another sugar spike, sending him back into the sugar-spike-sugar-drought cycle.

The bottom line here is that most children with developmental disorders, including ADHD, have an inflammatory bowel condition. In fact, it's likely that more than half of all celiac sufferers, people who cannot tolerate gluten, have neurological disorders. So, if you want to see your ADHD child get well, then removing every trace of gluten from her diet is necessary.

The only way to assure that gluten is removed is by eliminating all grains. No exceptions. Sure, whole grains are better than processed grains, but it's only a matter of degree. Whole grains aren't good for the gluten-sensitive; they're simply not as bad. That includes spelt, a primitive form of wheat with less gluten, but it isn't gluten-free. Virtually all processed foods must be removed, too, because nearly all have added gluten.

Even "good" grains, like oats or quinoa (pronounced keen wah), are better than most others—but just as with whole grains, it's merely a matter of degree.

If your child has ADHD and you want to heal the condition, then you and she must bite the bullet. There can be no halfway measures. The chances are that your child's digestive system is damaged. It will take time and commitment to give it a chance to heal. Several months without any grains of any sort—not even for a reward or a birthday cake—will be necessary.

Without question, it will be tough. However, if you want to give your child a chance to heal, there's no easy way. There's also no way to promise that this will be the magic bullet. Be aware, too, that even the smallest bit of cheating can undo it all.

The good news is that, once healed, the celiac sufferer can regain health. Often, it's possible to add small amounts of relatively good grains back into the diet, but that's a matter for then. Right now, what's needed is to completely eliminate grains from the diet.

The Second Nutritional Item in Treating ADHD—Dairy Products

Along with gluten sensitivity, many ADHD children also suffer from casein sensitivity. It's a protein found in milk, but it's also added to a wide array of other foods. So, as with gluten, most processed foods need to be removed from the diet to avoid casein.

Like gluten, casein sensitivity probably wasn't often triggered until either the advent of modern agribusiness diets or another assault, such as vaccinations or environmental toxin—or both. Casein is a food additive in a huge array of prepared foods, including ones labeled as vegan or milk-free. Cool Whip, a whipped cream substitute, is an example. Its packages state that it's a "non-dairy whipped topping", yet it contains casein, and has contained it since the product was first manufactured.

ADHD Links With Autism

Many people, including me, consider ADHD to belong to the autism spectrum disorders. The symptoms of ADHD are ones that many, perhaps most, autistic children also share. It has also become rampant during the same timespan as autism and other neurological disorders. The growing belief in the same dietary connections to casein and gluten, with studies backing it up, is another indication of a link.

The GFCF (gluten-free casein-free) diet is attempted with many autistic children, and frequently with significant improvement in their symptoms. The implication in ADHD is that both gluten and casein should be removed from the diet at the same time. That is, of course, difficult—but perhaps not so much worse than it would seem at first glance.

The bottom line for either a gluten-free or casein-free diet is that virtually all prepared foods must be eliminated. Once that's done, then the logistics aren't as difficult.

My concern in trying either a gluten-free or a casein-free diet is that the possibility of a child being sensitive to both does exist, and there's no way of knowing beforehand. So, I fear that a parent may go to the trouble of applying first one diet, and then the other, without success, when applying both at the same time might have resulted in dramatic benefits.

So, I must recommend that, if a parent of an ADHD child wants to try applying either the gluten-free or casein-free diet, then both should be applied at the same time. If full restriction can be achieved for just a couple of weeks, improvement is likely to be seen. I suspect that most people who see no improvement have not been able to completely eliminate both gluten and casein from the diet. Even the tiniest amount can cause a reversion until healing has been achieved.

Omega-3 Fats

There's a lot of buzz about omega-3 fats in terms of neurological disorders. My view is that a deranged digestive system cannot assimilate foods and nutrients properly. Therefore, I do not believe that it's possible to determine whether there's a true omega-3 deficiency until the digestive tract has healed. On the other hand, it's possible that omega-3 fats could be very beneficial, but that very high doses would be beneficial in a deranged gut. An adequate amount might be ingested—but the toxicity of its origin, usually mercury and other heavy metals, might do more harm than good.

Therefore, I cannot recommend that omega-3 fats be added to a child's diet until a GFCF diet has first been attempted.

The Diet Solution

One final concern is likely to trouble many parents. It's the idea that milk and grains are necessary in a good diet. That is a modern myth, promulgated by Agribusiness. Those are relatively cheap products to produce, especially in the modern age of factory farming. That's why they're so pervasive in modern foodstuffs. (I can't really consider modern prepared and factory-farmed stuff to be real food.)

The fact is that neither dairy nor grains are necessary in a good diet, nor are they natural foods for most humans. The only milk natural to humans is mother's milk. Once weaned, it's never again required. For hunter-gatherers, grains are both difficult to harvest and prepare. They are not natural foods. Though they can have a place in most people's diets in a small way, eating them as the bulk of our food was destined to cause problems.

Today, we're seeing those problems bloom in our own children. We're seeing a massive pandemic of neurological and digestive disorders. If you want to see whether your child's neurological health can be improved, there's no easy way. But, wouldn't you rather struggle with a GFCF diet before letting modern medicine have its way with your children by drugging them with chemicals that cannot make them better, will likely blunt their lives and health, and carry grave risks?

Even better, wouldn't eliminating, or severely limiting, gluten and casein in your child's diet from the time of weaning be the best option of all? Perhaps children could avoid ADHD altogether.

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