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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
The gap between a mechanism and an outcome is the thing worth teaching, because it will still be useful when the next product appears. Ask what happened when it was compared with a dummy pill, with nobody knowing who had which. If the answer comes back as an explanation of biology rather than a result, you have your answer.
Eat and drink, but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people (Quran 7:31). Extravagance covers the money spent as much as the dose taken.
الأعراف
۞يَٰبَنِيٓ ءَادَمَ خُذُواْ زِينَتَكُمۡ عِندَ كُلِّ مَسۡجِدࣲ وَكُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ وَلَا تُسۡرِفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُسۡرِفِينَ
Children of Adam, dress well whenever you are at worship, and eat and drink [as We have permitted] but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people
Qur’an 7:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Zinc makes the point. In a placebo controlled double blind trial in American children with ADHD, zinc gave no clear symptom benefit either on its own or added to amphetamine, despite more encouraging results from trials elsewhere. A mineral with a plausible role in the brain still has to show up on the outcome.
Sarris J, Ravindran A, Yatham LN, Marx W, Rucklidge JJ, McIntyre RS, Akhondzadeh S, Benedetti F, Caneo C, Cramer H, Cribb L, de Manincor M, Dean O, Deslandes AC, Freeman MP, Gangadhar B, Harvey BH, Kasper S, Lake J, Lopresti A, Lu L, Metri NJ, Mischoulon D, Ng CH, Nishi D, Rahimi R, Seedat S, Sinclair J, Su KP, Zhang ZJ, Berk M. (2022). Clinician guidelines for the treatment of psychiatric disorders with nutraceuticals and phytoceuticals: The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) and Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) Taskforce.. 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.
A convincing account of how something might work is not evidence that it did.
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.
A child can learn a self control routine beautifully in the therapy room and not use it once all week at school. Knowing the steps and performing them under pressure are two different skills.
Ask what happens after the course ends, not only what happens during it. A gain that fades once the sessions stop was probably never a change in the person.