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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, has quickly become a rapidly increasing disorder among kids. The rate of occurrence of this disease has come out to be 10 % in recent surveys, which means every 10 children have one such child, who is affected by ADHD.
Dutch researches have disclosed that diet can be one of the sole reasons of this disorder. Reactions to certain foods, according to them, can be ADHD symptoms. Hence, they are in a process of encouraging and motivating parents and guardians of ADHD affected children to modify their diet to a special one, to check if any of the symptoms are relieved. This kind of a special diet will be called the Restricted Elimination Diet and it helps greatly in gradually eliminating, or at least reducing, the ADHD symptoms.
A study brought out in The Lancet speaks of this specially altered diet to have shown improvements in 78 % of children who were switched to it for a least of five weeks. They displayed lesser or less severe symptoms of the disorder. A few of them could do without their ADHD alleviating medications even.
The ADHD Research Center in the Netherlands conducted a practical activity wherein researchers split a group of 100 ADHD affected children into 2 sub- groups according to their ages, from 4 to 8 years. One of these groups had a diet which is supposed healthy for five weeks, while the other group had the Restricted Elimination Diet.
What is exactly this Restricted Elimination Diet? Well, as the name suggests, it is a diet restricting some foods in order to eliminate the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What foods are restricted? Processed foods are mainly the ones which are excluded from the diet; completely not allowed. Only whole foods, which include veggies, fruits, meat, rice, water, etc., were permitted. After continuing the diet for over 15 days, parents could tell if it was working. This could be found out by watching out for changes in the children’s behaviors and find out for any improvement regarding the symptoms that previously persisted.
There is a caution that needs to be taken care of while using such a diet for children. A doctor, or even a dietician, is very essential for supervision of the child. If there occur any ill effects from the diet, the doctor can immediately ask to stop the diet at once, to prevent further mishaps. Also, if children revert back to their previous diets, after spending some weeks or months on the Restricted Elimination Diet, can feel and see the lost ADHD symptoms reverting back to them too. Hence, a doctor is necessary to manifest each step of the child’s diet and daily meals.
In an interview, pediatrician David Berger notified that many of his patients have seen successful changes in their children after pursuing the elimination diet for advised duration of time. Even older patients of ADHD have keenly seen improvements, and the added credit goes to them treating this whole diet change like a science project where they necessarily take notes of what they ate and record how they feel after it.
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