Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
If a little helps then a lot must help more is not really a supplement thought. It is an addiction shaped thought that has wandered into the vitamin aisle.
Moderation tends not to be a natural strength with ADHD, and this is one place where that costs something. Name it early, before a safe dose has quietly crept up to one that is not. Decide the amount while you are calm, write the number down, and let the written number be the decision rather than something to reconsider every morning.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Go at a moderate pace (Quran 31:19). It is said about walking, which makes it easier to apply than a rule aimed at the soul.
وَٱقۡصِدۡ فِي مَشۡيِكَ وَٱغۡضُضۡ مِن صَوۡتِكَۚ إِنَّ أَنكَرَ ٱلۡأَصۡوَٰتِ لَصَوۡتُ ٱلۡحَمِيرِ
Go at a moderate pace and lower your voice, for the ugliest of all voices is the braying of asses.’
Qur’an 31:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The size of the gain is worth knowing before you double anything. A Cochrane review of physical activity and dietary interventions in children with overweight or obesity found small improvements in cognition and school achievement, on low certainty evidence. Small and uncertain is the honest shape of these benefits, and more of a small effect does not turn it into a large one.
Martin A, Booth JN, Laird Y, Sproule J, Reilly JJ, Saunders DH. (2018). Physical activity, diet and other behavioural interventions for improving cognition and school achievement in children and adolescents with obesity or overweight.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The creep is far easier to stop while it is still an idea than after it has become a habit.
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
Turn the socks inside out so the seam sits away from the toes, cut the label out and print the size onto the fabric instead, and look at seamless clothing. These cost pennies against a course of therapy and they work by teatime.
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.
Ask which direction a person's sensory difficulty runs before offering anything. Someone who is under responsive needs more input and someone who is over responsive needs less, and the wrong one makes the day harder.