Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Kava, valerian, St John's wort, ginkgo, ginseng and the proprietary blends have not shown benefit for ADHD in trials that matched the amount in every capsule and kept both the person handing them out and the person rating behaviour unaware of who got what.
Those two design details are most of the story. Ordinary use has dose wobble and expectation running through it, and expectation is powerful, especially when a parent is hoping hard. Take both out and the apparent effect goes with them.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who squander are the brothers of Satan (Quran 17:27). Strong words, and they cover money and hope poured into something that has been tested and found empty.
إِنَّ ٱلۡمُبَذِّرِينَ كَانُوٓاْ إِخۡوَٰنَ ٱلشَّيَٰطِينِۖ وَكَانَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنُ لِرَبِّهِۦ كَفُورࣰ ا
those who squander are the brothers of Satan, and Satan is most ungrateful to his Lord
Qur’an 17:27read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
For a sense of scale, one of the more promising natural compound findings in ADHD came from a proof of concept trial of L-theanine with caffeine, which improved sustained attention in boys with the condition. Five participants completed it. That is the size of the evidence base people are leaning on when they reach for something off the shelf.
Kahathuduwa CN, Wakefield S, West BD, Blume J, Dassanayake TL, Weerasinghe VS, Mastergeorge A. (2020). Effects of L-theanine-caffeine combination on sustained attention and inhibitory control among children with ADHD: a proof-of-concept neuroimaging RCT.. Scientific reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Blinding removes hope from the measurement, and a good deal of apparent benefit turns out to have been hope.
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
Neurofeedback rests on a tidy idea: in ADHD the slower theta rhythm shows up when the faster beta rhythm should be running, so the training rewards you for shifting the balance. Knowing the idea is worth a few minutes, because it is what the brochure is built on.
One woman's ADHD symptoms climbed and her thinking slowed as each B12 injection wore off, then settled again after the next one. The deficiency came down one side of her family and the ADHD down the other.
Ask what someone takes that is not food, rather than asking what medications they are on. People do not file their supplements under drugs, so the usual question comes back empty.