New news, eat better and decrease your risk of having a child with ADHD
By Dr. Alan Kadish NMD
The old adage of eat well and live well is being resurrected in this very interested study. In the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry their study checked a chemical level associated with ADHD. In a nutshell the higher the fat and or sugar intake, during your pregnancy, the higher your child’s risk for ADHD.
As medicine gets better at looking at the signaling molecules we continually find that the use of natural unprocessed food products is almost an essential way to live. We probably can endure some level of food insults, but not if your pregnant ! Think of this exercise as “would you add a bit of water to your gas tank to move the needle ?”.
What’s your next step if your considering a pregnancy or are pregnant ? Eat a diet high in the proper fats with loads of great fresh veggies and limited lean proteins. There is such an overwhelming scientific move towards this conclusion that we all should consider this as a roadmap.
Clearly there are many ways to get to the goal and there is no ideal one diet for everyone. One of the major considerations is to know what works and does not work food wise for you. Do you bloat or have gas following a meal….what’s the cause. Are there certain meals that leave you feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world ? It’s critical to know your body reacts to different fuel.
Two helpful means include doing a food elimination and or an allergy test. This can assist you in pinning down the better choices. There are many allergy tests and only a few can really answer your question. The 50+ year old scratch test is NOT one of them. Much more sensitive blood tests are available.
Want to craft your diet for high efficiency and feeling great all the time ?
Call us and let’s work together to find you answers. 541.773.3191
Unhealthy diet during pregnancy could be linked to ADHD
King’s College London News, 08/20/2016
New research led by scientists from King’s College London and the University of Bristol has found that a high–fat, high–sugar diet during pregnancy may be linked to symptoms of ADHD in children who show conduct problems early in life. Published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, this study is the first to indicate that epigenetic changes evident at birth may explain the link between unhealthy diet, conduct problems and ADHD. In this new study of participants from the Bristol–based ‘Children of the 90s’ cohort, 83 children with early–onset conduct problems were compared with 81 children who had low levels of conduct problems. The researchers assessed how the mothers’ nutrition affected epigenetic changes (or DNA methylation) of IGF2, a gene involved in fetal development and the brain development of areas implicated in ADHD – the cerebellum and hippocampus. Notably, DNA methylation of IGF2 had previously been found in children of mothers who were exposed to famine in the Netherlands during World War II. The researchers from King’s and Bristol found that poor prenatal nutrition, comprising high fat and sugar diets of processed food and confectionary, was associated with higher IGF2 methylation in children with early onset conduct problems and those with low conduct problems. Higher IGF2 methylation was also associated with higher ADHD symptoms between the ages of 7 and 13, but only for children who showed an early onset of conduct problems. Dr Edward Barker from King’s College London said: ‘Our finding that poor prenatal nutrition was associated with higher IGF2 methylation highlights the critical importance of a healthy diet during pregnancy. ‘These results suggest that promoting a healthy prenatal diet may ultimately lower ADHD symptoms and conduct problems in children. This is encouraging given that nutritional and epigenetic risk factors can be altered.’
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