ADHD
Nutritional medicine and functional medicine support for children and young people with ADHD
Families tend to arrive here for one of a few reasons.
The assessment is years away, and doing nothing in the meantime is not much of a plan.
The medication is working, but the appetite has gone and so has the sleep, and you have started to wonder what you have traded for it.
The medication has not worked, or has made things worse, and you are looking for another way in.
Or things are reasonably steady and you just want to understand what is driving it, because you have never quite believed that a brain wired differently is the whole story.
All of those are good reasons to talk to us. We look at what is actually going on in your child and deal with it.
You don’t need a diagnosis to work with us.
Plenty of the children we see have no label at all, or are still waiting for an assessment, or have been given a label that doesn't really explain anything. We work with the child in front of us.
What we look at
The physical things that affect attention, mood and self-regulation. Which of them matters most depends on the child.
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Nutrient status
Usually where the most is missing. Iron, ferritin, zinc, magnesium, the B vitamins, omega-3 fats, all of them needed for attention and impulse control.
Children with ADHD are routinely short of them, more so when a narrow diet or a stimulant has reduced the appetite.
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The gut
When the gut is in a mess, the brain is rarely far behind. Constipation, loose stools, pain and bloating all show up alongside the attention and the mood, and they are usually treated as separate problems.
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Sleep
A tired brain looks exactly like an inattentive one.
Plenty of children are being assessed for the second when the problem is the first, and the assessment does not ask how they sleep.
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Blood sugar
The afternoon crash, and the rage that comes with it, is not always behavioural. It follows what was eaten, when it was eaten, and how long ago, and it lands hardest at the end of a school day.
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Inflammation and mast cells
Immune activity is heavily involved in ADHD, and drives a great deal of what gets written off as behaviour. A child whose immune system is busy is a child who cannot settle to anything.
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The nervous system
A child stuck in fight or flight cannot concentrate.
The body is braced for threat, not schoolwork, and no amount of asking them to focus changes what the body is doing.
We work out which of these is driving it, and we start there.
How we work: foundations first
We work in a particular order.
Before we go anywhere near the deeper work, we get a child steady. That means calming the things that keep a child in a state of high alert and stop anything else working: the stress response and the adrenals behind it, inflammation, any infection, the mast cells that drive so many of the reactions we see, and the mineral balance the whole system runs on. Until those are settled, anything else we try tends not to last, and a child who is already flaring will often react badly to it.
There is no single starting point, because it depends entirely on the child.
If a child is badly constipated, we deal with that. If a child is inflamed and flaring, we settle that first. What we do not do is work in a fixed order regardless of the child, or pile everything on at once. This is why so many families arrive having tried a rigid protocol that made their child worse. Get the order wrong, or ask a child to tolerate too much before they are steady, and you can set them back months.
Once a child is stable, we go deeper: the gut, detoxification, methylation, whatever that particular child’s picture calls for.
Thirteen years and around 3,500 families have taught us where to start and, more to the point, what order to do things in. By the time they reach us, most of these children have already seen several different practitioners and specialists, each looking at one piece of the child rather than the whole of them.
We do not work in isolation
We work closely with a prescribing GP and other specialists who know these children well. If a child needs a medical assessment, a prescription or a specialist opinion, we say so, and we can usually help you get to the right person rather than back to the end of a waiting list.
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“Three star of the day awards in a single week”
Just to share some feedback from Alexander’s teacher, as I had a chance to ask her at pickup. She has noticed a huge improvement and he is concentrating so much better. She said he is very well behaved and no longer needs the fidget toy to concentrate during carpet time. He also brought home a third star of the day award this week for his phonics, which is amazing as it is the third in a week. So incredibly happy with the progress we are seeing, and we keep moving forward. I can't thank you enough for all of your support and motivation to help Alexander.
— C.M, Surrey
What working with us looks like
Everything is done online, so where you live makes no difference. Families work with us from all over the world.
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Fifteen minutes with one of our practitioners. Nothing to prepare, nothing to pay, and no obligation at the end of it. You tell us what has been happening, we tell you whether this is likely to help your child, and you decide from there whether you want to go further.
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Seventy five minutes on Zoom, after you have filled in a detailed questionnaire covering your child’s history, symptoms, diet, sleep, gut and everything that has been tried before. We go through all of it with you, and we leave you with the first few things to start on, chosen because they are what will settle your child soonest, rather than everything at once.
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Stool, urine, saliva or blood. Only where the result will actually change what we do, and only where it is realistic for your family.
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This is the opposite of a fixed protocol. At first we review every six to eight weeks, adapting the plan each time to how your child has responded. As they need less support, the reviews space out, because the aim is always to be doing less over time, not more. We build things up carefully rather than overwhelming a child, or a family, with too much at once. Depending on what the picture calls for, the work can include targeted nutritional support, amino acid therapy, phospholipid therapy, our Gut Restoration protocol, micro-immunotherapy, and the diet, lifestyle and environmental changes that do so much of the heavy lifting. We refer on where you need it.
Most families are with us for at least six months. It is patient work, and we would rather say so at the start.
Where to start
You do not have to decide anything today. Book a free fifteen minute call, tell one of our practitioners about your child, and they will tell you what they think, what it would involve and what it would cost. You can take it from there.