Moms Talk: Can a Restricted Diet Help Kids with ADHD?

The British medical journal The Lancet last month published the findings of a study that could prove a link between childhood ADHD and a restricted diet.

In the study, called Impact of Nutrition on Children with ADHD, researchers assessed 100 children diagnosed with ADHD in the Netherlands and Belgium between the ages of four and eight.

According to the study's summary, the children in the first phase were split into two groups. The control group was given a healthy diet and the other group was given a diet with certain food items eliminated over the course of five weeks.

In the second phase of the study, the children who showed improvement of at least 40 percent on the ADHD rating scale were included in another four-week session. The children were given foods that produced high or low immunoglobin (igG) rates according to their individual blood work. The behavior of the children after eating such foods was assessed by the researchers.

The study found, ultimately, that "a strictly supervised restricted elimination diet is a valuable instrument to assess whether ADHD is induced by food."

So parents, what do you think? If your child has ADHD, have you noticed that eating (or not eating) certain foods can help them better manage their behavior? Do you think a healthy diet is a better approach to managing ADHD than using medication, or is medicating a child sometimes necessary?

Please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comments section below.