Caffeine, again, can contribute to dehydration, which in turn will interfere with proper synthesis of neurotransmitters. It also uses up a lot of vitamin C. These things could exacerbate ADD as a result, but I have found that I have no problem with moderate amounts of caffeine so long as I drink enough water & have enough C in my diet. You can take C supplements- but many of these can cause diarrhea, which will then increase other deficiencies & exacerbate dehydration. C supplements are best taken on a full stomach. Smaller doses taken 4X per day are better than one large dose, since this gets pissed away in a few hours. Frankly, I find that just eating well (which will naturally insure a steady intake of C) to be much less of a hassle than taking supplements 4X per day.
I’ve never heard of apples & milk causing inordinate drowsiness, except when milk is heated to release the tryptophan. I suppose a person who has difficulty digesting milk might be fatigued by the alcohols created by its fermentation. Most milk digestion problems can be corrected by having a little bit of cardamom or nutmeg along with it. When cold milk hits stomach acid, it curdles into little chunks of cheese. These chunks have a poor surface-to-mass ratio. The enzymes only work on the surface, so the lactose in the middle has plenty of time to ferment. I discovered this when I was experimenting with making Indian dessert cheeses.
I had several different pots of milk boiling, and added different flavorings to each. When I added lemon juice to curdle them, the ones containing cardamom and nutmeg refused to curdle. I had heard that Ayurveda reccommends those spices for people having a hard time with milk, and I think that this explains it. Nutmeg and cardamom contain chemicals which keep milk proteins from coagulating. This enables the milk to remain a liquid in the stomach, which causes it to digest very fast. My only dietary rule is a paraphrase of Aleister Crowley: “Eat what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
I keep my digestion strong with Yoga, & have resolved most of my neurotic anxieties with psychoanalysis & introspection & giving/receiving love. I’m lacto-ovo-vegetarian by preference, but am not rigid. One time early on I pissed someone off by being too preachy about my diet. I went out and ate a Whopper as penance, then made sure they knew & had my apology. Alienating your friends is worse for your health than anything you can eat. If a friend is unaware of my preference, and lovingly offers me food with meat in it, I eat it as a gift from God & never have a problem afterwards, which is interesting- because when I have eaten meat simply because it would be inconvenient to get something else, I feel it in my stomach like a lump for a while afterwards. More specifically for ADD, there are a few dietary things that I have found very helpful. I discovered them myself, and don’t know if they’ll work for everybody. See the “herbal/nutritional cures for A.D.D.?” thread to read about it, & some interesting conversations about it.
You should know that scientists haven’t found any connection between diet and ADD. But science is always looking for statistical relationships. There may be very complex relationships they don’t see. so keep an open mind, and pay close attention to how foods make YOUR body feel. I think my thinking about diet is this: ADD’s are impulsive, and emotional. So you probably want to avoid anything that will jolt the brain with anything. This would mean avoiding caffeine, white sugar, drugs, alcohol. These things can interfere with your medication. If you aren’t on medication, you may want to consume these things for the pharmacological effect they have on your brain.
I just wanted to get some thoughts on dieting. Anyone here have any success on any of them? I tried Atkins for three days and I couldn’t even think straight. If it wasn’t the lack of carbs wreaking havoc on my brain, then it was trying to make any sense out of Dr. Atkins book. I’ve tried it all in the past Ang and just signed up on Ediets.com to get a healthier eating plan for being a veg and all. When I say tried it all I mean it… everything from starvation to puking to laxatives to Scarsdale to Weight watchers. After it all, I would say the only thing that really works is moderation and going by (what we have here) is the Canada food guide.
Well, the proof is in the (low carb) pudding, and I’m a believer…no matter what the calorie in/calorie out people say, I know, from years of painful experience, is that I can eat 800 daily calories of high carb and not lose a ounce, or I can eat 2400 calories a day (or more) of low carb and drop weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds a week. And feel great. And have better skin texture, and stronger nails, and feel great. And have lower blood pressure and blood sugar back in normal range. Which is often the case when comparison of diets is done. The low fat, the low carb, the low everything, most use some statistics to show that they have everything working correctly.
Personally, i think the low-carb diets are a decent idea. i also think it makes sense, just in terms of trends, that the diet pendulum is now swinging back in a different direction after 20 years of high-carb low-fat thought. the first diet book ever written, at the end of the 19th century, recommended a low-carb diet. not that that proves anything, i just found it interesting. i can understand that it seems like nutritional heresy to a lot of people, since the prevailing teachings of the last generation have been in favor of the opposite. The best way to lose weight is to cut back on calories (but not too much) and engage in a regular cardio/strength training program.
I can only offer anecdotal evidence; when I am on the no-carb *way-of-life*, my HDL is in the mid-range, my LDL is quite *low*, and my triglycerides are normal. My BP is within the acceptable level, and my blood-sugar levels stabilize in the optimal range. When eating what the experts call a healthy diet, my doctor tells me to lower my LDL numbers (impossible – if you stop eating cholesterol-laden foods, your body produces the stuff), my BP rises, and I gain weight. Further proof that “healthy diet” is not a universal thing.
On the other extreme we find populations living in deserts, the Arctic or similar marginal habitats and who have spent more than seven hours a day hunting or gathering [2]. The very high level of physical exercise exerted by the Tarahumara Mayans of Mexico [7] can hardly be considered representative for traditional human populations. Physical activity undoubtedly exerts a number of potentially beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors, including reduction of blood pressure, body weight and waist to hip ratio, and elevation of HDL (good) cholesterol [8]. Higher levels of physical activity are furthermore prospectively associated with lower mortality [9-10]. Besides its possible genuine effects, exercise may facilitate an adequate intake of essential nutrients by way of increased energy expenditure .
