Practices

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…