After doing some reading, I wanted to revise my original post on what add is, I also realize that the original post wasn't very clear.

From what I gather, the brain is simply a machine that needs to be well maintained.

If any part of the machine doesn't get the necessary fuels, coolants or whatever, it won't work nearly as well. In ADDers, this lack of maintenance manifests itself in ADD symptoms, whether they be inattentive or hyperactivity.

I believe that neurochemicals such as norepinephrine serotonin and especially dopamine have a big part to do with everything related to your brain. It's just a matter of how much of each there is in the brain and how this special mix of variables work together in the most optimal way for your brain.

Amphetamines help alleviate ADD symptoms by having your brain soak in dopamine. Serotonin levels and I think norepinephrine levels are also affected. Dopamine play a big part in prefrontal cortex activity, which is largely responsible for attention and concentration.

Because the brain is so complex, naturally you would think that there could be a million ways for it to "break down." And this is why I think ADD is such a general condition; any of the processes in your brain could cause your brain to malfunction.

So therefore, it is not just the relativity of the levels of dopamine serotonin, and norepinephrine to each other, perhaps your brain's receptors don't "sense" their respective neurochemicals very well. This supports the theory on how Adderall works because instead of simply increasing dopamine, it binds to the dopamine transporter, leaving dopamine dwelling around the receptors, letting the receptors have more chances at soaking it in.

However, improving your ADD could be as simple as eating foods that synthesize dopamine and serotonin. This is because the cause of your ADD could be either not having the right level of one neurochemical, or not having the right relativity in levels between your neurochemicals, or it could be a problem in your brain's reception of neurochemicals, or something else.

It has been shown that eating foods high in bad carbs and low in protein and fat basically make people exhibit ADD-like symptoms. Sluggishness, lack of motivation, etc.

Therefore, if you really care about improving your ADD as much as possible, I think you should exhaust every bit of resource you can, instead of chalking it up to "your condition", or some study. We don't really know all there is to know about ADD, and perhaps some study provides evidence that some theory will not work, but you never know for sure, and it's always worth a shot, right?

In addition, I think the forum should take more interest in nootropics, as they have been shown to improve memory among other ADD benefits. I've tried some and they haven't been working too well, but many other people with ADD have reported a multitude of benefits. Like I said before, perhaps the best way to help your ADD is to find the one kink in your machine. You never know what that one kink is, so it'd be in your best interest to try everything.

Nootropics are varied and can affect your brain by increasing blood flow rate between your left and right hemimspheres or in special areas involved with memory/concentration, increasing oxygen absorption, or even dilating the blood vessels. Computer guys will understand a dilating blood vessel analogy with internet bandwidth. If your cable isn't large enough to transport many large-data packets of information efficiently, it will be slowed down. Marijuana is known to slow down blood flow rate in the brain. Other drugs such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine have also been shown to do the same. Vasodilators enlarge the blood vessels (the cables used to transport data... or oxygen and nutrients or whatever), letting more stuff through faster.

Also involved in how your brain works efficiently is how it absorbs glucose into ATP into brain energy. Actually, there's too many different things to put in this one post, but this link discusses many of the things:
http://www.antiaging-systems.com/extract/add.htm

A possible reason for why studies comparing benefits from one changed variable( such as eating a healthy diet, taking your vitamins, etc) is due to the theory that ADD is so varied and general. There is inattentive, hyperactive, and as I have stated, so many things can cause your brain to go wrong. And if that statement holds true, then taking vitamins might help only a small percentage of ADDers, while perhaps the other larger majority each need their own special solution.

This reason is counterintuitive because the scientific method of changing one variable might not apply here. All of us "ADDers" might actually just be a general label for many many more specific conditions, such as "magnesium deficient", "vitamin B deficient", "glucose absorption inefficient", "dopamine deficient", "dopamine receptor inefficient", etc etc.
Thus, I suppose that we should each treat ADD as our own individual problem, with its own unique solution. Don't treat the label ADD as "a condition," rather, treat it as it is, a general label for a varied, flexible, and general set of symptoms.

Oh, and my ADD brain left out one part. Because ADD may be counterintuitive in applying the scientific method, what we regard as a "scientific way of doing things" might not apply here.

Also, because it's so freaking general, the kink might not be in one of the factors, it could be in a combination of these factors. If you've taken a course in probability, you'll know that this is quite frightening. Let's say that there are just 20 possible kinks in your brain mechanics. Well, the number of possible combinations of ways to manipulate all these kinks is something like 20! (forgive me if I'm wrong, I forget this formula too), and 20! is equal to 20x19x18.. all the way to 2. That means there are just about a kazillion different combinations of ways that the kinks may work together to give you ADD symptoms. And those kazillion different combinations of kinks will take a whole lot of tinkering around to find the problem or combination of problems.

actually, what i just said was kind of dumb. I'd expect treatment to be plugging in most of the holes, instead of manipulating every single variable to be in exacting relativity to each other, except for the neurochemicals.

So if we made a list of every possible condition that can cause peopel to exhibit ADD like symptoms, and we treated every one, that just might do the trick.

In a earlier post on a similar thread, I mentioned more than once about listing the 12 working definitions.I will follow with the references when Im done at work.

This is one of the those "Good News"/"Bad News" kind of things.

The good news is here are the working definitions.

The bad news is that they're actually 3 more; bringing the total up to 15.

I'm not going to have time to write out the material included with each one of these,as Ive got to get back to the office. I will be happy to do that later on.

My reference here is again Sandra Rief's 2003 book.... The ADHD Book of lists.

This is on pages 3 and 4,under the heading: 1-1 (chapter 1/section 1)
DEFINTIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF ADHD

Here's the short version.When I have the time to include more info, I'll also include the references on p4.

"At this time,the majority of the scientific community believes the following:"

1)ADHD is a... neurobiological disorder...

2)ADHD is a ...chronic disorder...

3)ADHD is a...neurological inefficiency...

4)ADHD is a... performance disorder...

5)ADHD is ...a physiological disorder...

6)ADHD is a ...developmental delay...

7)ADHD is a...brain-based disorder...(this is the definition that agrees with Lynn Weiss's position on structural differences)

8)ADHD is a ...pattern or constellation of behaviors...

9)ADHD is a... dimensional disorder of human behaviors...

10)ADHD is ...the most common neurobehavioral disorder of childhood...

11)ADHD is a....developmental disorder of self-control...

12)ADHD...represents a condition that leads individuals to fall to the bottom of a normal distribution...

13)ADHD is a... medical condition...

14)ADHD is a...disability of inhibition...

15)ADHD is a...neuro-biological behavior disorder...


When I get done with work, I'll finish filling in the rest of the details and also give the references listed on p.4.

That's a broad spectrum of impairments,however, it does coincide with some of the things we've been talking about here.

Purerealm, while I'm a big believer in diet and exercise being critical to optimum functioning for anyone's brain, particularly someone with AD/HD, and while I don't doubt that there are a number of sub types of AD/HD caused by various genes, there also seem to be a number of common threads that do exhibit predictable behavioral patterns and experiences. There are also a whole class of medications that improve functioning in 80% or more of cases. I think it's important to recognize and be aware of differences, but I think losing sight of the commonalities would also be counterproductive.

No one could try every possible remedy or diet combination. Few could stick to it faithfully even if they did find the magic combination. I also fail to understand how structural brain differences or reduced glucose metabolism in specific parts of the brain specific to ADDers could all be accounted for by dietary flaws.

So yes, definately find what foods, nutrients and such work best for your body, exercise your body to improve your health and blood flow to the brain, but don't write off the collective information that has been gained by studying AD/HD as a specific neurobiological condition.

Scattered

I agree that diet and excercise are vital to good health.:)

The research on diet/nutrition dates back to the 1970's and doesn't support that as a clinical treatment.

I think there may have been a subgroup with food allergies and ADHD that might have shown improvement in treating the food allergies.

Either way, mainstream science doesnt support diet to treat ADHD.

Omega 3 long chain fatty acids (fish oils) have shown the most promise.To a lesser extent, I believe high protein diets have been suggested.

I recall hearing a presenter about 6 years ago discuss a "Harvard shake." He had done a post doc there. He was very careful not to say it was a treatment or to endorse it.

It sounded like a protein shake of some kind.That was 6 years ago, and I havent heard anymore about it since .

If something like that were to actually work, it would be highly publicized. As of right now, they're not supported for use as a treatment.

To make more, or even having more neurotransmitters might not be the answer to ADHD...and to do this with supplements is even more of a stretch. It probably isn't as simple as put nutrient or chemical enhancer in digestive tract.

After I realized I was severely depressed last year, I began an exercise regimen along with a healthy, high-fiber, high-protein eating plan. After six months, I was very fit but still severely depressed, on the verge of a breakdown - and still suffering from ADD. That leads me to believe that while it may help, the "change your eating and you'll change your ADD" is not only insufficient advice, but perhaps even dangerous advice.

Cancer patients may also benefit from a healthy eating plan. It does not help their cancer.

That said, I found your post interesting and will be looking into some of the subjects you mentioned. Thanks for posting your opinion, and I hope you don't mind my disagreeing.

Hey, purerealm:

That’s some interesting chain of logic you’ve put together; you may believe there’s something malfunctioning in your own brain, but I don’t see the evidence in what you’ve written.

Coherent logical systems are just an exercise, though. There are an infinite number of correctly structured logical systems, each consistent and thus provably reasonable. As they say, that and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee.

You really need something else to give you assurance that you’re on the right track, that your system of logic is coherent, consistent and also correctly describes your reality.

There are only a few ways to get that independent validation: you can test the logical system in actual use (so if we all eat correctly and AD/HD disappears, we might consider that a positive sign), we can look for a correlation with other logical systems that are themselves independently confirmed (if, for example, magic brain scans showing how nutrition and AD/HD are related became available), or you can try to find flaws in the arguments structure, playing devil’s advocate in several possible ways.

I’ll be taking that last bus today, if that’s OK.

What struck me immediately about your logical structure is that the brain doesn’t work anything like the logic describes. The entire class of theories about how dopamine and common AD/HD drugs interact (basically, all theories that include the idea of the brain ‘soaking’ in a sea of neurotransmitters) are fatally flawed.

No scientific work that we’ve seen establishes anything like the action you describe, so there is some doubt about the validity of assuming such actions exist, let alone drawing conclusions about operations that depend on such actions.

But we can go much further than that; we know how the brain works, in it’s basic form, and anyone who chooses to study the same materials we have looked at can have the same knowledge we do.

The fundamental operation of neurons and the nature of neural structures is generally well understood; we are working only from commonly accepted theory dating back as much as thirty years or more. What isn’t often done is an integration of that soundly established science with the higher level picture of the brain that we usually use to discuss things like AD/HD.

We did that, over several years, but again, there’s no particular magic involved, just a rigorous application of ordinary, sound scientific principles. You do have to throw out most of the common myths that we grow up believing about how our brains work, and in fact most of the assumptions in your chain of logic wind up on the trash heap with them.

But the picture that emerges is much brighter than the one your logic paints; for one thing, the operation of the brain is not subject to the kind of deterministic flaws you mention, because it doesn’t work like any conventional machine (or even the most bizarre and advanced computers).

The brain is a remarkable example of a mechanism that doesn’t fail in the way you describe, under almost any reasonable conditions. (We’re not talking about gross defects, like accidents or gunshots and so on. We’re talking about normally evolved brains, subject to all of the normal vagaries of being born and growing up in a modern world.)

So the standard failure analysis you cite isn’t applicable, and you can put that sort of worry to rest as well. (Technically factorials go all the way to 1, BTW.) We aren’t built like the kind of machines with which we’re all familiar, and as a result, it’s not even possible to build much of what you posit using neurons.

So regardless of how pretty your logical system might be, it just isn’t likely to describe what’s really going on. I do applaud your instinct that there is something relatively simple and concrete at work, though, because if our work is proven correct, that’s exactly the case.

It isn’t anything that you would ordinarily expect; we’ve spent quite a bit of time finding that piece ourselves, and we weren’t looking for AD/HD at all. But it certainly is not nutrition, or actually a flaw of any kind. It’s just a different kind of brain structure, concocted with the same old tools in a perfectly legitimate way, that happens to turn a lot of stuff upside down.

Have fun.

--Tom and Kay