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.
“A lot of people have been concerned that the Atkins diet will cause cholesterol levels to go through the roof,” Dansinger said. “But we found that total cholesterol dropped by about 3 percent, and low density lipoprotein went down about 8 percent.” Although neither of those changes are statistically significant, Dansinger said those numbers are more than offset by a 15 percent rise in protective cholesterol — high density lipoprotein. “That was significant,” he said. Another concern addressed by the study is whether very high carbohydrate diets, such as Ornish, increase the risk of diabetes by overtaxing insulin production.
Take a woman of 30 years old who stands 5’6″ who is in normal health, weighs 181 pounds, and moderately active. Here calories out are in the area of 2150. If she takes in less calories then she puts out she would drop weight. The recommendation from some sources for calorie reduction in this case would be about 1850 calories. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is suppose to insure you are still getting what you require. Interesting note is that a couple of experiments on both rodents and monkeys seem to indicate a possible increase in longevity by as little as a decrease of 10% calories compared to a control group.
I have read with interest all the posts on dieting and wanting to lose weight. It does not matter what diet you try, none will work if you have not got yourself together. How many of you and those around you have dieted only to put the weight back on at a not too later date? Why are there all these Diet/Good Food shops around?. They have all jumped on a weakness shown by human beings and are ripping us off with high priced, high marked up goods. They are preying on your weakness. Wake up !!!! Get your inner self right, build your self esteem, eat good nutritional food and exercise (in moderation) regularly and you won’t need to spend all that money on synthetics only to fill the pockets of corporate profiteers.
I do not agree that it is the hosts’ reponsibility to know and remember the special dietary needs/restrictions of each one of their guests, or that not to do so is a slight. I do think that it is wise to include a variety of foods so that given the wide variety of diets – chosen or inflicted because of health reasons – that people can choose some things they can eat and enjoy. This does not mean that they have to be catered to on an individual basis. You said that you could have picked things you could eat if you had gone through the buffet line yourself, so I don’t see how you figure that “vegetarians were slighted in planning” the meal. Would it have been nice for you to have something substantial – a vegetarian main course – to eat? Yes.
There are Diets and There are Diets! * A diet is a weigh of life. * It’s something most of us do religiously: We eat what we want and pray we don’t gain weight. * A diet is what you go on when not only can’t you fit into the store’s dresses, you can’t fit into the dressing room. * One guideline applies to fat and thin people alike: If you’re thin, don’t eat fast. If you’re fat, don’t eat…fast. * The problem with curbing our appetites is that most of us do it at the drive in window of McDonalds. * The most fattening thing you can put in an ice cream sundae is a spoon. * The biggest drawback to fasting for seven days is that it makes one weak. * Above all, dieters are advised to avoid Pepsi, the pause that refreshes.
