Does the food my child eat be feeding his ADHD?

Danielle - posted on 04/02/2012 ( 1 mom has responded )

My sister told me about one of her friends brothers had ADHD and the doctor's thought it was aslo Autism, but later down the line they came to find out that the foods the little boy was eating was making his ADHD worse. They apparently found this diet called The Feingold diet. And after about a month of following the program ADHD symptoms subsided and Autism was not even a factor anymore. I kind of scanned the internet about it and found alot of information. I started looking at all the labels on my son's foods (he is a very picky eater so what he eats is very limited) and I found almost everything he was eating had BHT, BHA, Artifical flavoring, dyes or sweeteners and High fructose corn syrup. Which this Feingold diet says if you cut all this stuff out ADHD symptoms will decrease and there would be no need to medicate your ADHD diagnoised child. If you buy the program packet you get a shopping listfor tons of stores with food you can eat and should stay away from. Fast food and other restaurant guides and cookbooks. I don't know if I should spend the $80 on this unless I find out it is really going to help. I don't take my son back to he therapist for another 2 weeks, I will talk with her about this. My son eating habits are poor. He is very picky and we just cant make things and hope he will eat them we dont have money to waste on food he won't eat. My son was just put on Kapvay .1mg just last thursday. The only change we have seen is he is not fighting us to go to bed at night and he sleeps through the night instead of tossing and turning all though the night and being restless. He use to wake up with dark circles under his eyes from not sleeping enough. The last 2 days he has not had dark circles. He hasn't been running in circles to much, but I still don't see much of a difference in his hyperiness. Today I am trying to give him foods that don't contain all those things and see if there is a difference from yesterday when he drank a sunny d (which is on Feingold's list of foods to stay away from) along with Mrs. Buttersworth syrup has High Fructose corn syrup. He was bouncing of the walls.



My husband and I are trying to figure out if there is anything to this Feingold diet. Because of how our son acts and how he really acts up after a meal. Our son's therapist wants to have him tested for Autism, but his peds says it's not needed. Only signs is he was, not anymore speech delayed, but is still in a pre-school program because he was speeched delayed. He is a very talkive 4 yr old now, knows his ABC"S can count to 40.His teacher doesn't believe autism is a factor either, just severe ADHD. But when I told the therapist that, she got all defensive and said " well they are not psychiatrists". She said Im in denial about my son possibliy having autism, but If autism was a factor why didnt anyone else who is trained to teach children with these issues pick it up when I questioned autism when he was tested for speech delays? He has had 3 IEP's which are meeting with our local special needs school programs (in Michigan it's called MISD) All those people said Autism is not a factor with him that I should look out for ADHD symptoms (I was told this when my son was 3 yrs old, about the ADHD) and that the only signs of autism he had was the speech delay and being obessed with things such as stop signs(but I also read that obessiveness is ADHD as well) My son never started talking then stopped. He just never started forming words until after he had tubes put in his ears when he was 18 months old. He had really bad inner ear iinfections. And his ENT believe the speech delay came from that.



I am also wondering if these Psychiatrists/Therapist are the people I should continue to go to. They asked me what kind of medicaid I had, I told them. Then I told them that in May I will have BC/BS and the therapist gave me a funny look like it was a bad thing. Once I get my BC/BS I was thinking of talking to his PEDS about changing.



I don't know who to trust right now. I have a handful of people from his teachers whom have worked with him since september and work with all types fo special needs child to all his old teacher from MISD, along with frends I have whom have children that are autisic and they all say NO our son is not. But then I have this doctor who says yes, he needs the testing, even if I believe it's not needed and my Peds say it's not needed. I feel they just want to test him because of the type of insurance I have and don't want to say a 4 yr old is ADHD and have him on meds.



Any feedback would be wonderful. Anhyone ever tried the Feingold diet or anything to it's effect? Thanks ladies for your advice :)