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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Allergies turn up more often alongside ADHD than chance would predict. Worth mentioning your allergy history at an assessment even when nobody asks, since the two seem to travel together.

The likeliest explanation is not that one causes the other. It is that some of the same underlying wiring makes both more likely in the same person.…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 80:24One line of research

Some foods are formulated to be hard to stop eating. That is a design brief rather than a flaw in you, and it goes some way to explaining why one particular snack is the one you think about at eleven at night.

Knowing this moves the fight somewhere you can win it. Willpower at the moment of craving is a poor bet, and a decision made in the shop is a much…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:172One line of research

Here is a question that costs nothing: has anyone in your family been told their vitamin D was low? It runs in families through genes, skin tone, where you live and how much time anyone spends outside.

The clinician telling this story found out only afterwards that his mother, father and brother had all been low. Nobody had mentioned it, because it…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 15:22One line of research

Even where a herb has good evidence behind it, that evidence belongs to the plant and not to the bottle in your hand. Testing keeps turning up products that do not contain what the label says.

This part of the argument does not depend on whether herbal remedies work. You could accept every claim made for a plant and still be left with the…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuel

There is more about your body than the practices: the your body area has the themes and the courses too.

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 80:24

One line of research

Own brand products from large retailers were among the worst performers in these tests. A big name on the packet is not a quality check, however much it feels like one.

Own label goods are usually made under contract on thin margins with no independent verification of what comes out the other end. So the reassurance…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:66One line of research

People often turn to herbal remedies hoping to avoid side effects. Plants are chemistry too, and some of them interact with prescribed medication in ways that matter.

A plant extract is not one substance, it is a mixture of many, which gives it more places to interact rather than fewer. Origin has nothing to do…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Around seven in ten people who use herbal products never mention it to their doctor. Not out of secrecy, mostly because a tea or a gummy does not feel like it belongs on a list of medications.

The useful move is to answer a wider question than the one you were asked. When someone asks what medication you take, tell them what else you take…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 106:4One line of research

Your gut is not just plumbing. It makes many of the same chemicals your brain runs on and it is in constant conversation with your nervous system, which is part of why a bad stretch of digestion and a low mood so often turn up together.

If your stomach has been unsettled for weeks and your mood has slid over the same weeks, you do not have to work out which one is the real problem.…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Put a rubber band round your water bottle for each refill you want to get through today, and slide one off each time you finish it. Nothing to remember, nothing to buy, and you can see where you are at a glance.

Tracking anything in your head is hard when your head is already full, and harder still when concentration is one of the things that has taken a hit.…

A minuteFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:10One line of research

Where ADHD and disordered eating meet, the pattern is more often bingeing, or bingeing and purging, than strict restriction. Restriction tends to travel with over-control, while bingeing travels with impulse and reward seeking.

This matters because the questions asked at assessment are usually the restriction ones, so a binge pattern can sit unnoticed for years. If you…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 7:32One line of research

Most claims about food and behaviour rest on weak studies. The ones worth taking seriously give each person both the real thing and a dummy at different times, with nobody knowing which is which, so that hope and expectation cannot do the work.

The food colouring trials are the standard example. Around 150 children each received drinks containing a preservative plus one of two dye mixes, or…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 25:67One line of research

The same brand of sweets is often made with plant based colours in one country and artificial ones in another. If a company can make it without the dyes elsewhere, the dyes are not essential to the food.

Nine artificial colours are approved in the US, and the volume approved for use rose roughly fivefold between 1950 and 2012. One of them, Red No. 3,…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:67One line of research

Skin prick and IgE blood tests find real allergies. The IgG food sensitivity panels sold direct to families have not been shown to measure sensitivity at all, and they tend to come back with a long list of foods to avoid.

IgG antibodies mostly show that you have eaten something, not that it harms you, which is why the results look alarming and change so little when…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 25:67One line of research

A real food allergy shows itself on the body: a rash, a swollen or inflamed throat, something you can see. Behaviour on its own does not identify one, although behaviour often improves once a genuine allergy is dealt with.

One child's attention and mood went back to her usual level once berries came out of her diet, and what made that findable was the rash and the sore…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 55:11One line of research

The studies linking pesticide levels to ADHD are tangled up with income, since families least able to buy organic differ in plenty of other ways too. If organic food is affordable for you, fine. If it is not, you are not failing your child.

In one study of 1,140 children, 94% had detectable pesticide in their urine, and ADHD was about twice as common among those with higher…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 36:35One line of research

Most eating advice quietly assumes a budget. Fresh food is expensive and does not keep, so a household relying on food assistance ends up buying what lasts, and what lasts comes in tins and packets.

If money is the constraint, say it out loud rather than nodding along and then failing quietly at home. The advice can be rebuilt around what is…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:184One line of research

Put an actual number on it: how many coffees, teas, energy drinks and colas in a normal day. Without that number, your sleep problems, your anxiety and how well a medication is working are all being read against an unknown.

People underestimate this, partly because it feels embarrassing and partly because a large takeaway cup is often two or three servings. Count across…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:99One line of research

Stimulants sharpen focus in almost anyone, so responding well to one does not confirm you have ADHD. The diagnosis comes from your history and how you function, not from a trial of tablets.

This cuts both ways. Someone can be handed a diagnosis on the strength of a good response, and someone else can be doubted because their response was…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:81One line of research

Food and movement are powerful, and hardly anyone keeps them up as prescribed. So the question is not what works best on paper. It is what you will still be doing in six weeks.

Roughly a third of people follow a prescription exactly as it is written, and keeping to a diet or an activity plan goes worse than that. Which means…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

Pick one small change and leave the rest alone. A full overhaul asks the most of you at the point when you have the least to give, and it usually collapses in the second week.

One change, small enough to be almost boring, kept for a month. Then another. It feels slow while you are in it, and it is the version that tends to…

Five minutesFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:114One line of research