Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Natural is not a regulated word: anyone can print it next to a picture of a leaf, on anything at all. Organic in the USDA sense does have a legal definition sitting behind it.
The same goes for the reassuring line about following good manufacturing practices, which describes what a company aims at rather than what an inspector found. An industry group setting its own standard is not an outside check. This is worth teaching a family once, because the skill keeps working long after any particular product is forgotten.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Eat what is good and lawful from the earth, and do not follow Satan's footsteps (Quran 2:168). Good and lawful is a judgement about the thing itself, and a picture on a box cannot settle it for you.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ كُلُواْ مِمَّا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ حَلَٰلࣰ ا طَيِّبࣰ ا وَلَا تَتَّبِعُواْ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمۡ عَدُوࣱّ مُّبِينٌ
People, eat what is good and lawful from the earth, and do not follow Satan’s footsteps, for he is your sworn enemy
Qur’an 2:168read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a network meta-analysis comparing drug, psychological and complementary treatments for ADHD in children and adolescents, stimulant medication outperformed dietary and alternative approaches on symptom outcomes. The shelf tells a warmer story than the comparison does. That is not a reason to dismiss what you eat, but it is a reason to hold the packaging lightly.
Catalá-López F, Hutton B, Núñez-Beltrán A, Page MJ, Ridao M, Macías Saint-Gerons D, Catalá MA, Tabarés-Seisdedos R, Moher D. (2017). The pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents: A systematic review with network meta-analyses of randomised trials.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Marketing words and regulated words look alike on a label and mean entirely different things.
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
When you read that a treatment worked, look for who judged the improvement and whether they knew what the child had been given. In much of this literature, they knew.
If someone has genuine positional vertigo, get it treated, and do not expect the treatment to touch their ADHD. Both things can be true at the same time.
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.