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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There is no brain scan, EEG trace or blood test that can tell you whether someone has ADHD. Anything sold as an objective biological test for it is promising more than the science can give.

Group differences do exist, including in the theta to beta balance, but a difference that appears when you average hundreds of people cannot identify…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:247One line of research

Balance difficulties do turn up more often in ADHD, by something like half again. That is a fact about company, not about cause, and it does not turn balance training into a treatment.

Plenty of things could sit behind a link like that. More falls and knocks, more risk taken, or genetics feeding both at once. Working on balance…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:12One line of research

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.

That changes what is going on at the table. A child is not refusing in order to be difficult, they are tasting something stronger than you are.…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 80:24One line of research

The amount in a capsule can vary from bottle to bottle, and sometimes between capsules in the same bottle. Undeclared fillers have been found in them too.

This matters most when you are trying to work out whether something helps you. A good month followed by a flat one may be two different products…

A minuteExercise, food and other supports

There is more about focus, starting, and adhd than the practices: the focus, starting, and adhd area has the themes and the courses too.

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 17:12

One line of research

Kava can damage the liver at a high enough dose, badly enough that some countries have banned it. Herbal is not a synonym for gentle.

The unnerving part is how quiet liver damage is. Someone self medicating anxiety with kava can be accumulating harm and feel nothing at all until it…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:81One line of research

Vitamin C cannot really be stockpiled, since the excess leaves in your urine. A, D, E and K are stored in fat, so a large daily dose keeps adding to itself.

Vitamin D is where this bites at the moment, after a lot of people started taking big amounts on their own during the pandemic years. If you are…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 7:31One line of research

Omega supplements thin the blood, so they usually do not belong alongside warfarin. Bruising easily is often the first thing anyone notices.

One clinician worked out that her husband's bruising came from taking omegas on top of his Coumadin, and it settled once his doctor told him to stop.…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20One line of research

If fish oil gives you those horrible repeats all afternoon, that is a fixable problem rather than a reason to stop. Keep the capsules in the freezer, ask about an enteric coated version, or try a flavoured liquid.

Sticking with something usually fails for small unglamorous reasons like this. Someone with a sensitive palate will not last four weeks with an…

A minuteExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Neurofeedback rests on a tidy idea: in ADHD the slower theta rhythm shows up when the faster beta rhythm should be running, so the training rewards you for shifting the balance. Knowing the idea is worth a few minutes, because it is what the brochure is built on.

Electrodes sit on the scalp, a screen animates when the signal moves the wanted way, and the person practises staying in a state of relaxed…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:191One line of research

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.

Neurofeedback tends to look decent while it is being delivered and then drift back, and the studies that followed people afterwards did not find…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 13:11One line of research

Before committing to a course that runs into thousands, set the same money next to the other things it could buy. Tutoring, a proper assessment, a medication review and a well tested psychosocial programme all sit in the same envelope.

Neurofeedback courses often run for a month or more, insurers rarely pay, and the training of whoever delivers it varies a great deal. The cost is…

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

When you read that a treatment worked, look for who judged the improvement and whether they knew what the child had been given. In much of this literature, they knew.

The design to look for is a sham condition, where everybody goes through the same routine and only some receive the active ingredient, with the…

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

Brain training games make you better at the game. Sadly, that improvement tends to stay inside the game.

Sorting shapes faster or planning a conveyor belt more smoothly comes from learning the task, not from stretching a capacity, so the classroom and…

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

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

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…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One 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

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

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.

Part of why it works is that nobody has to be told how. A person too wound up to follow a breathing exercise can still take a sip and chew. Sharing…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:57One line of research