The Feingold Diet

We have been doing Feingold for 7 months+ and it has saved our LIFE! Our 4 yr old DD was just going crazy last summer and I finally found the solution. It's more work, but so worth it. Do you really want to be putting petroleum into his and your body? That's what artificial colors and flavors and the preservatives BHA, BHT and TBHQ are made of! They are neurotoxins. My dd became an amazing little girl once we started FG and EVERYONE could see the change in just a matter of a week! For a 10 yr old it could take longer - up to 6 wks, but it's SO worth it! The meds that he's on probably are covered in dyes too and so that most likely effecting him too. Look up www.Feingold.org and start by reading labels and avoiding non organic milk and bread since those items tend to have a lot of unlabeled preservatives. Get rid of the salicylates and watch for changes. Things may get worse for awhile with detox or not...we didn't go through detox, but our dd didn't get it that much. Email me with any questions as I will never leave FG and be eternally grateful for the peace that it has given my house. You'll be amazed at how many health problems are cause or exasperated by the foods/additives that FG removes. It helped my husband's ADD and migraines as well.

H.

Our pediatrician, Dr. Deborah Bain of Healthy Kids Pediatrics in Frisco has had great success treating ADHD through nutrition. She even helped wean her own son off of meds with a diet change.

Good luck! You can do this!

http://www.healthykidspediatrics.com/

I have so many friends with kids like this - the older they get, the more medication they needed. Many of them are teachers or nutritional consultants and have added safe supplementation (designed for kids) and have them off meds within 3 months or so. That's without removing all kinds of things from the kids' diets other than obvious things like too much soda & sugar. But not major food eliminations. Happy to give you more info.

I put my ADHD daughter on the Feingold diet when she was about 12 yrs old. It helped. Her grades in school went up one letter, and she seemed less irritable. We did not have her on meds after age 6. It wasn't until she was in her teens we realized she had no memories prior to age 6. Could only have been the meds. She's was such a bright, smart child. If I were dealing with this problem today, I would explore the gluten-free diet. Many have found that has a dramatic affect on their ADHD children. Another thing we did was have her evaluated by an optometrist who specialized in Vision Therapy. That really helped our daughter tremendously.

We follow it as closely as we can naturally before I even knew what the Feingold Diet was because my middle daughter has Autism and (as recently officially diagnosed) associated ADD. Let's just say that when she has too much of the things that are recommended to be eliminated? Yeah, her behaviors worsen dramatically and her moods become dramatic and like a roller coaster. She has crying jags, anger issues, and melts down into screaming fests. She just loses control. It upsets her when this happens so she willingly avoids the things that set her off now.

However, simply avoiding the chemically processed dyes, high fructose corn syrup, highly processed fillers, and the other stuff and following the diet didn't eliminate all of the behaviors. There's still (for her) the Autism and ADD, the symptoms are just not as bad. So she does get Intuniv (not a stimulant since she's not hyperactive). That's been an amazing addition for her and we're seeing dramatic and continued improvements for her with it. But I don't think her medication would work if we didn't mostly follow Feingold.

There's a Facebook page for the Feingold Diet.

I agree with Lori B. about Dr. Bain. Dr. Bain knew that we wanted to do more and she also directed us to Brainworx in Plano. We have seen such a change in our son.

We did Feingold for about 6 months when my son was in 2nd grade. We did see some improvement although minor. It was pretty expensive to buy only products that didn't contain certain additives, certain colorings, certain enzymes (grapes, apples, etc.) It took me months to determine which products I could buy and which I could not. The cost differential is pretty substantial and some things are nearly impossible to find unless you want to buy online and also pay shipping. We either had to have everyone in the family on it (costly) or single him out and segregate all the food.

It helped a little - but it also added a level of aggravation, frustration and difficultly for my son. If he went to a friend's house he's have to bring his own cookies and couldn't eat lunch with the friend, he couldn't partake in typical birthday party fare, any party, BBQ, gathering became a major issue. If we had seen a huge difference in my son we would have continued. (My friend's son is autistic and he does amazingly well on a gluten, addititve free diet - so I can understand completely why she goes through all the aggravation.)

We did learn through the process that my son is senstiive to artifical colorings and not really to other additives. So now we try to avoid brightly colored foods and things along those lines. But try to find a slurpee in the middle of a hot summer day that doesn't have artificial colorings...

My son is now finishing 6th grade. He's also on focalin - still on only 10mg because it seems to work - we've never increased his dose and he's now 5'7" and more than 150 lbs. When he goes off it then back on it (after vacations, when school starts in Sept) he is cranky at first. He'll get a headache late afternoon when it begins to wear off. But when he's on it steadily through the school year he doesn't have a crankiness or the late afternoon headaches. We've also found that keeping him hydrated and making sure he has healthy late afternoon snacks as the meds wear off helps alot too. We've learned to get out in front of the need to eat & drink as it wears off.

I know two families who are pretty strict adherants of Feingold. Both of them began to follow it for their daughters. I've had both daughters in my Sunday school classes and I can tell you it's not working as well as they think it is. Both girls are still not able to really focus - one has significant language based learning disabilities to the extent that she's a year behind in school. My son also has language based learning issues - but since we decided to keep him on the medication and not waver (we had years where we let him go off the medicine for a few months as a "trial") he's done wonderfully. For the first time in his life he's in the middle of the average score for language skills assessement and reading level - he used to be in the bottom 5%. HUGE! I attribute that greatly to the steadiness of his medication which enables him to stay on task. He also now realizes the difference in his ability to focus - as a matter of fact we almost forgot his medicine this morning - but on the way out the door (for his first final exam ever) he stopped and asked for his medicine. He used to fight it and thought he was the only kid taking medicine - now he's old enough to realize how much it helps him.

I used to be resistant to the idea of having to give him medicine. But I realized that I use coffee as a way to address my ADD ( I have a huge problem focusing) and many people use other drugs like smoking pot or taking speed to help them zero-in on their tasks. Better he's using controlled medication to assist him in paying attention and staying focused, than it is to have him begin to self-medicate one day in the future.

I know there are a lot of people who have negative ideas about "chemicals" and using artificial stuff like pharmaceuticals. But there are so many instances where it's beneficial - such as my mom who had her thyroid removed as a teen taking synthroid for the last 65+ years to replace the thyroid hormone, diabetics taking synthetic insulin and other drugs that helps the insulin to be processed more gradually. Consider an insulin pump. It's very aritificial - but it releases a low steady does of insulin all day long and is much closesr to how the body should do it naturally if it could.

When something is not working correctly in our bodies and there is a way to address it and make our bodies function more normally why wouldn't we do that? Clearly people who struggle with staying on task, paying attention, etc. do better when they have a chemical aide to keep their mind on track. Chemistry is not bad when used properly. Let's face it, our body is made of chemicals, water is H20 - a chemcial compound.

I would be interested to see if Feingold works better for you than it did for us - and how the practicality of it works out. Please let us know!