Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
The amount in a capsule can vary from bottle to bottle, and sometimes between capsules in the same bottle. Undeclared fillers have been found in them too.
This matters most when you are trying to work out whether something helps you. A good month followed by a flat one may be two different products rather than an effect wearing off. It also means that if you react badly to something, you cannot be confident about what you reacted to.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He made the daylight for seeing, for you to seek your Lord's bounty and to know how to count the years and calculate (Quran 17:12). Being able to measure what you are doing is presented as part of the gift, not as fussiness.
وَجَعَلۡنَا ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ ءَايَتَيۡنِۖ فَمَحَوۡنَآ ءَايَةَ ٱلَّيۡلِ وَجَعَلۡنَآ ءَايَةَ ٱلنَّهَارِ مُبۡصِرَةࣰ لِّتَبۡتَغُواْ فَضۡلࣰ ا مِّن رَّبِّكُمۡ وَلِتَعۡلَمُواْ عَدَدَ ٱلسِّنِينَ وَٱلۡحِسَابَۚ وَكُلَّ شَيۡءࣲ فَصَّلۡنَٰهُ تَفۡصِيلࣰ ا
We made the night and the day as two signs, then darkened the night and made the daylight for seeing, for you to seek your Lord’s bounty and to know how to count the years and calculate. We have explained everything in detail
Qur’an 17:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Zinc shows the problem nicely. Trials in the Middle East reported benefit for ADHD, while a placebo controlled trial in American children, testing zinc alone and added to amphetamine, found no clear symptom benefit. Whatever explains that difference, trials at least use a preparation of known content, which a shop bought bottle is not.
Arnold LE, Disilvestro RA, Bozzolo D, Bozzolo H, Crowl L, Fernandez S, Ramadan Y, Thompson S, Mo X, Abdel-Rasoul M, Joseph E. (2011). Zinc for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: placebo-controlled double-blind pilot trial alone and combined with amphetamine.. Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You cannot judge a dose that is not reliably the dose.
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
Try swapping the word picky for particular. A fair number of people with ADHD have more densely packed taste buds, so the bitterness in a sprout arrives at full volume.
More clinicians now raise supplements themselves, and more of them will suggest something like omegas. The shift matters less for what gets recommended and more for what it does to disclosure.
With EEG neurofeedback, the weaker the study, the better the results look. Six large trials using sham feedback, with parents and teachers kept unaware of who received what, found nothing beyond placebo.