Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Food colouring is the one narrow exception in this area. Large studies suggest it may mildly wind up some very young children, so a trial removal in a preschooler is a reasonable thing to do.
Keep it in proportion though. This is a minor irritant in a subset of little children, nowhere near the sweeping dietary cause that was claimed decades ago, and it is not a treatment for ADHD. Saying that plainly tends to keep families listening, which is worth more than winning the argument about diet.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Eat what is good and lawful from the earth (Quran 2:168). From the earth is a sensible thing to aim at, without turning it into a cure.
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
Signals found in one group often shrink when they are looked for elsewhere. Zinc is the standing example: trials in the Middle East reported benefit for ADHD, while a placebo controlled trial in American children, testing it alone and added to amphetamine, found no clear benefit. Expect a colouring effect to be similarly modest, and judge your own child rather than the headline.
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
A small, real effect in a few young children is worth acting on and not worth building a plan around.
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
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.
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.
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.