Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
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.
The two lived in the same person without either causing the other. What made it findable was the timing, because difficulties that follow a cycle are pointing at something else with a cycle. If someone's bad weeks have a rhythm to them, write the rhythm down before deciding what it means.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We produce milk for you to drink from their bellies. And they have many other benefits (Quran 23:21). The body runs on what it is given, and when something basic is missing it shows somewhere.
وَإِنَّ لَكُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَنۡعَٰمِ لَعِبۡرَةࣰۖ نُّسۡقِيكُم مِّمَّا فِي بُطُونِهَا وَلَكُمۡ فِيهَا مَنَٰفِعُ كَثِيرَةࣱ وَمِنۡهَا تَأۡكُلُونَ
There is a lesson for you in livestock: We produce milk for you to drink from their bellies. And they have many other benefits: you eat them
Qur’an 23:21read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Correcting a genuine shortage is a different act from supplementing generally. A randomised trial of vitamin D with magnesium in children with ADHD who were deficient found improvements on mental health measures. It was small, and it was specifically in children who were short to begin with, which is exactly the situation where this sort of thing pays off.
Hemamy M, Pahlavani N, Amanollahi A, Islam SMS, McVicar J, Askari G, Malekahmadi M. (2021). The effect of vitamin D and magnesium supplementation on the mental health status of attention-deficit hyperactive children: a randomized controlled trial.. BMC pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
B12 is needed to keep the insulation on nerves and to make the brain's messenger chemicals, so being short of it really does slow thinking down.
When not to
Deficiency is diagnosed with a blood test and treated by a doctor, not guessed at from how someone seems.
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
Sixty two children took methylphenidate with either vitamin D or a placebo, and both groups improved. The two ADHD rating scales showed no difference between them, which leaves the positive headline resting on the clinician's judgement rather than on what parents reported.
Before committing to a course that runs into thousands, set the same money next to the other things it could buy. Tutoring, a proper assessment, a medication review and a well tested psychosocial programme all sit in the same envelope.
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.