Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Supplements are not checked before they go on sale, so what is in the bottle may not match the label. Look for a third party mark such as USP or NSF before you buy.
This is not about whether a given supplement helps. It is about the plainer question of whether you are getting the dose written on the front, since without pre market checks nobody has verified that for you. Independent verification schemes exist for exactly this and the mark is easy to find once you know to look. When a clinician specifies pharmaceutical grade for something like melatonin, those two words are carrying the weight of this whole problem.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not contribute to your destruction with your own hands (Quran 2:195). Taking something unverified in the hope it helps is worth a second thought on those grounds.
وَأَنفِقُواْ فِي سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا تُلۡقُواْ بِأَيۡدِيكُمۡ إِلَى ٱلتَّهۡلُكَةِ وَأَحۡسِنُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
Spend in God’s cause: do not contribute to your destruction with your own hands, but do good, for God loves those who do good
Qur’an 2:195read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
International clinician guidelines from the WFSBP and CANMAT taskforce, drawing on thirty one academics and clinicians across fifteen countries, set out where nutraceutical and plant based treatments in psychiatry have evidence and where they do not. Some have a reasonable case and many do not, and the guidelines are explicit about which is which. Worth reading before spending, since the marketing will not make that distinction for you.
Sarris J, Ravindran A, Yatham LN, Marx W, Rucklidge JJ, McIntyre RS, Akhondzadeh S, Benedetti F, Caneo C, Cramer H, Cribb L, de Manincor M, Dean O, Deslandes AC, Freeman MP, Gangadhar B, Harvey BH, Kasper S, Lake J, Lopresti A, Lu L, Metri NJ, Mischoulon D, Ng CH, Nishi D, Rahimi R, Seedat S, Sinclair J, Su KP, Zhang ZJ, Berk M. (2022). Clinician guidelines for the treatment of psychiatric disorders with nutraceuticals and phytoceuticals: The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) and Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) Taskforce.. The world journal of biological psychiatry : the official journal of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Nobody checks the contents before sale, so the only assurance you have is whoever checked it afterwards.
When not to
Tell your doctor about anything you are taking, since supplements can interact with prescribed medication.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The point of explaining ADHD to a parent is to produce a particular kind of parent: one who is kind about it, quick to forgive the day's failures, and willing to make a nuisance of themselves at school.
Showing a teenager live pictures of activity in one targeted part of their own brain has been tried once, in a small trial, and it looked encouraging. That was around a dozen young people, and nobody has repeated it yet.
Better usually means smaller, rarer, or shorter. Pick something you can count, like losing your keys twice a week instead of every day.