ADHD: What About Nutritional Deficiencies?
The significance of all these nutrients in the context of ADHD is that they’re all necessary in appropriate amounts for normal brain function.
That we can feed this mind of ours is a wise passiveness.
—William Wordsworth, Expostulation and Reply
While the idea that ADHD is “caused” by diet is pretty well debunked, having an optimally-functioning brain is vitally important for people challenged with this condition. And that’s where there is a clear association between good nutrition and high functioning brain power.
Serotonin is one of the primary neurotransmitters that facilitates and regulates our ability to think, to pay attention, and to engage in higher mental functions. It also plays a strong role in our emotional state: when levels are out of balance people will fall into depression, mania, and a host of emotional symptoms between the two. It’s also the main neurotransmitter that’s boosted with stimulant medications.
Given the importance of this neurotransmitter in maintaining normal functioning of the brain and emotional systems, we would be remiss if we didn’t look at those ecological factors proven to affect serotonin levels or the ability of the brain to use serotonin.
Vitamin E: In a study published in 1992 in The Journal of Neurochemistry, researcher Dr. A Castano found that as little as two weeks on a vitamin-E deficient diet was enough to damage the serotonin-processing neurons in the brains of rats. This was corroborated in a study published in Brain Research in 1993.
Vitamin C: The body uses vitamin C in the process of manufacturing serotonin. While the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is 60 milligrams per day, this may be far less than optimal. One 10-year study reported in Beyond Prozac by Michael J. Norden, M.D., found that men who consumed 400 milligrams or more daily had 70 percent less mortality than men who consumed 50 milligrams.
Minerals: Lithium is the treatment of choice for people suffer¬ing from bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness). It’s also a naturally-occurring mineral found in varying levels in much soil. Scientists knew from their studies with sufferers of bipolar disorder that lithium tablets would increase serotonin levels, but were astounded when they looked at psychiatric and criminal statistics from those parts of the country where the soil lithium levels are so high as to be measurable in drinking water (principally in Texas). They discovered significantly lower levels of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, and a host of other psychiatric illnesses. A number of studies have all but proven that this is attributable only to the trace levels of lithium in the local food and water.
Similarly, chromium, zinc, manganese, copper, and iron are all minerals necessary for the manufacture and maintenance of proper brain levels of serotonin.
Vitamin B6: This vitamin is the most directly tied into the serotonin system, as it’s required to convert dietary L-tryptophan into serotonin. Studies have found that high levels of it are therapeutic in a number of serotonin-related disorders, including depression and seizures.
The significance of all these nutrients in the context of ADHD is that they’re all necessary in appropriate amounts for normal brain function. The way most people get them is through the foods they eat, yet much of our food has lost virtually all of its nutrients.
We take wheat, for example, strip out the germ (the budding plant at the center which has the highest levels of nutrients and vitamin E), the bran, and then chemically bleach the resulting starchy substance left. This destroys virtually all the nutrients except the starch, producing the nice, white flour that seems to be so loved by so many ADHD kids. Similarly, sugar cane juice has all its minerals and vitamins removed (the removed goo of its nutrients is molasses), and is then chemically bleached to remove whatever might have escaped the primary extraction process.
Cooking destroys many nutrients, and others are leached out of foods into cooking water which usually is thrown away.
The bottom line is that many experts in nutrition—and not just those from the “health food fringe”—believe that Americans are among the worst-nourished people in the industrial world because of our heavy reliance on processed foods.
Vitamins and minerals have been aggressively stripped from our soil and foods, and then trace amounts of a small spectrum of “essential” nutrients are added back (sometimes by requirement of law, so bad was the damage done to people in the early years of this century by eating processed food). This however, is no solution. People must eat a diet rich in raw or lightly cooked fruits, vegetables, and whole grains if they are to expect their bodies— and their brains— to function properly.