Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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Regulators let devices through by several different routes, and only some of them mean what a family assumes. A game cleared for further investigation has not passed the bar a medicine passes.

The word approval carries an authority that advertising borrows freely, and device pathways are shorter and lighter than the ones drugs travel. It is…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:27One line of research

The fair test for anything offered alongside medication is whether it adds something on top. In one small imaging study, cognitive training added to a stimulant left inhibition no better than the stimulant on its own.

Add on designs are unkind to hopeful ideas, which is exactly why they are worth running. About twenty children took part, so this is one small piece…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 22:78One line of research

Programmes built on tones through headphones and balance drills have not been shown to help ADHD. If a child does seem steadier during them, the likeliest reason is that something is occupying the part of them that goes looking for stimulation.

That effect is real enough, and it is cheap to get elsewhere. A walk, a job with the hands, background sound they choose themselves, all of it…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

If someone has genuine positional vertigo, get it treated, and do not expect the treatment to touch their ADHD. Both things can be true at the same time.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo often follows a sinus infection or a bang to the head, and it responds well to repositioning manoeuvres that…

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Breathing

Screens and attention

What worry does

Moving your body

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

Feelings and focus

Making it stick

Being seen and judged

Structure and routine

Treatment and medication

Obsessions and compulsions

Remembering to do it

Growing empathy

Breaking the worry loop

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When you use something to cope

Tolerate distress

Self-compassion

Emotions as signals

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Posture and how you carry yourself

Question the thought

When anger turns to harm

Facing it a step at a time

Staying regulated in conflict

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

Living with uncertainty

Shared spiritual life

Repair after rupture

The cost of avoiding

Get it out of your head

Knowing your partner

Let the wave come

Rest and pacing

Your worth is not conditional

Face it gently

Letting it out safely

Notice the pattern and flex

Your window of tolerance

Five minutes

Exercise, food and other supports

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 16:69

One line of research

Several professional bodies came together to say that vision therapy is not a treatment for ADHD. A joint statement like that is unusual, and it is worth quoting to a family word for word.

Convergence problems, where the eyes struggle to work together on something close up, are a little more common in ADHD and deserve treating in their…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 10:67One line of research

Sensory processing difficulties are real and worth accommodating, and they are not a standalone diagnosis. The proposal for one was turned down for lack of evidence that it stands apart from the conditions it appears with.

In practice it usually shows up alongside ADHD or autism, so it is best written up as a feature of the person: what they cannot tolerate, what they…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

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.

A scratchy seam or a stiff tag is a small thing that keeps announcing itself all day, and every announcement takes a piece of attention with it.…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 7:31One line of research

Weight across the body settles a lot of people and sends some of them to sleep quickly. It is a preference though, not a remedy, and for others it feels like being closed in.

If you try it, watch what actually happens rather than what is supposed to happen. Some people have wanted pressure, small dark spaces and being…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 25:47One line of research

Being told you are too sensitive is usually someone else's comfort talking. Feeling things strongly is not the problem to solve; what to do once the feeling has arrived is.

Both halves have to be said together. Validation on its own leaves a person flooded with permission and no handles. Teaching control on its own joins…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 13:28One line of research

Since 1994, supplements have not had to satisfy a regulator before going on sale. Nobody checked the bottle in your hand the way they check a prescription.

The gap is wider than most people expect. Drug factories get unannounced inspections and can be shut down on the spot; supplement makers do not face…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 5:88One line of research

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.

The same goes for the reassuring line about following good manufacturing practices, which describes what a company aims at rather than what an…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:168One line of research

Kava, valerian, St John's wort, ginkgo, ginseng and the proprietary blends have not shown benefit for ADHD in trials that matched the amount in every capsule and kept both the person handing them out and the person rating behaviour unaware of who got what.

Those two design details are most of the story. Ordinary use has dose wobble and expectation running through it, and expectation is powerful,…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:27One line of research

If a stimulant that was working suddenly is not, ask what else the person has started taking before deciding the dose needs to go up.

One woman's Adderall went flat while she was on a herbal supplement and came back to its usual self once she stopped it. Herbs can shift stomach…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 80:24One line of research

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…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 31:19One line of research

People with ADHD tend to have lower omega-3 in their blood, and bringing low levels up has been linked with some improvement in symptoms. No convincing difference has shown up between DHA and EPA for this.

Omega-3 comes mostly from oily fish and krill, and fish is exactly what many people with texture sensitivity will not eat. Whether the shortfall…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:114One line of research

If you are trying omega supplements, give them four to six weeks and then decide. Imaging work has picked up changes in how neurons communicate after around four weeks, which is fast as these things go.

Fixing the end point at the start protects you twice over. It takes the sting out of nothing happening by Thursday, and it stops an open ended habit…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:39One line of research

In one trial, children were given omegas with a multivitamin, omegas alone, or neither, and after fifteen weeks everybody got both. The omega groups gained on set shifting and attention, and the children who started with nothing caught up once they crossed over.

Two features of that design are worth understanding. Everyone receiving the treatment eventually shows that the improvement follows the treatment…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:141One line of research

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.

That shape repeats all over this literature, so it is worth learning to spot. When a study reports an effect on one measure and not another, the…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:12One line of research

People with ADHD are reported to run low on both tryptophan and homocysteine. Low homocysteine is a good thing to have, since it is the high version that damages hearts.

The reflex to correct any number under the reference range is worth resisting. Levels can be tested where there is a reason to test them. Eating a…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 55:8One line of research

Omega supplementation for ADHD began with encouraging results, including a Swedish study where about a quarter of inattentive children seemed to improve. Blinded, placebo controlled work did not reproduce it, and a Cochrane meta-analysis found no effect.

The manufacturers themselves largely moved on to other conditions, which tells you something. None of this makes omegas worthless, and levels do run…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:247One line of research