Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Chiropractic neurologic organisation training, the kind involving manipulation of the skull, has no credible theory behind it for ADHD. The main harm is not the treatment itself but the months and the money that go into it.
Families meet this because it is marketed at them at the exact moment they are most willing to try anything. Naming it plainly, once, is usually kinder than staying diplomatic while another year goes by. A good question to leave with a parent is what would have to be true for this to work, and who has actually tested that.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those who squander are the brothers of Satan (Quran 17:27). Squandering is not only about money, and hope and time are harder to replace.
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
Even brain treatments with a serious rationale fail when they are properly tested. Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation, given to twenty six adults with ADHD in a sham controlled trial, produced no benefit over the sham. If a method with real physics behind it can come out flat, a theory nobody can even state clearly deserves nothing on trust.
Paz Y, Friedwald K, Levkovitz Y, Zangen A, Alyagon U, Nitzan U, Segev A, Maoz H, Koubi M, Bloch Y. (2018). Randomised sham-controlled study of high-frequency bilateral deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) to treat adult attention hyperactive disorder (ADHD): Negative results.. The world journal of biological psychiatry : the official journal of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Time and money spent on something that cannot work are time and money not spent on something that can.
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
Try swapping the word picky for particular. A fair number of people with ADHD have more densely packed taste buds, so the bitterness in a sprout arrives at full volume.
Keep something to eat and drink within reach for hard conversations. Handing someone a biscuit and a glass of water often settles a room faster than any instruction does.
One senior researcher in this field is approached by ADHD app startups roughly once a month and no longer takes part, on the view that the companies are not seriously trying to build something that works.