Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
The fair test for anything offered alongside medication is whether it adds something on top. In one small imaging study, cognitive training added to a stimulant left inhibition no better than the stimulant on its own.
Add on designs are unkind to hopeful ideas, which is exactly why they are worth running. About twenty children took part, so this is one small piece rather than a verdict, and it points where most of this evidence points. If an extra takes hours of a child's week and a chunk of the family budget while the measured outcome sits still, that is worth knowing before anyone signs up for a term of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He has placed no hardship in your religion (Quran 22:78). Piling effort onto a child's week that changes nothing is a hardship worth lifting.
وَجَٰهِدُواْ فِي ٱللَّهِ حَقَّ جِهَادِهِۦۚ هُوَ ٱجۡتَبَىٰكُمۡ وَمَا جَعَلَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فِي ٱلدِّينِ مِنۡ حَرَجࣲۚ مِّلَّةَ أَبِيكُمۡ إِبۡرَٰهِيمَۚ هُوَ سَمَّىٰكُمُ ٱلۡمُسۡلِمِينَ مِن قَبۡلُ وَفِي هَٰذَا لِيَكُونَ ٱلرَّسُولُ شَهِيدًا عَلَيۡكُمۡ وَتَكُونُواْ شُهَدَآءَ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِۚ فَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتُواْ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَٱعۡتَصِمُواْ بِٱللَّهِ هُوَ مَوۡلَىٰكُمۡۖ فَنِعۡمَ ٱلۡمَوۡلَىٰ وَنِعۡمَ ٱلنَّصِيرُ
Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion, the faith of your forefather Abraham. God has called you Muslims––both in the past and in this [message]––so that the Messenger can bear witness about you and so that you can bear witness about other people. So keep up the prayer, give the prescribed alms, and seek refuge in God: He is your protector––an excellent protector and an excellent helper
Qur’an 22:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The wider picture is mixed rather than empty. A meta-analysis of cognitive training in ADHD found effects on core symptoms mostly vanished under blinded ratings, while a trial that trained several executive functions inside a computer game, controlling for motivation and time on task, did find some improvement in children with ADHD. Careful designs sometimes show a little, and a little is not the same as a treatment.
Cortese S, Ferrin M, Brandeis D, Buitelaar J, Daley D, Dittmann RW, Holtmann M, Santosh P, Stevenson J, Stringaris A, Zuddas A, Sonuga-Barke EJ, European ADHD Guidelines Group (EAGG). (2015). Cognitive training for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: meta-analysis of clinical and neuropsychological outcomes from randomized controlled trials.. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry doi
Dovis S, Van der Oord S, Wiers RW, Prins PJ. (2015). Improving executive functioning in children with ADHD: training multiple executive functions within the context of a computer game. a randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An addition earns its place only when things go better with it than they did without it.
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
In one trial, children were given omegas with a multivitamin, omegas alone, or neither, and after fifteen weeks everybody got both. The omega groups gained on set shifting and attention, and the children who started with nothing caught up once they crossed over.
Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.
Balance difficulties do turn up more often in ADHD, by something like half again. That is a fact about company, not about cause, and it does not turn balance training into a treatment.