Food Coloring and ADHD?

Since the early 70's there has been a suspected link between artificial food coloring and the inability for children to concentrate. In 2005, Americans consumed 18.7 million pounds of artificial food dye. That is almost triple the 6.4 million pounds consumed in 1985. The more processing that we subject our food to the further it gets from the natural form that God designed for to give us nutrients. As an example, instead of eating fish that gives us essential fats to provide a healthy immune system and healthy brain tissue, it is chopped up and the healthy parts are either removed or destroyed by cooking it in high heat. Now instead of improving the health of the brain, we have fed the body altered fats that actually cause damage to the sensitive brain tissue.

Nutrition has been a much talked about topic in the popular media, but often that is all that it is "talk". I will attempt to take a look at some practical and maybe sometimes radical changes that your family can do to improve the health of every member.


To read an article on the topic of food coloring additives from the ICPA go here.

Great News Article on Chiropractic and ADHD

Here is a video of a news article on how chiropractic can help children with ADHD. Dr. Rosen is a wonderful doctor, he was one of my instructors when I was studying with the ICPA.

The point that is being made is that if there is spinal misalignment that is irritating the nervous system, the results of that can look like what is commonly called ADHD. The child is irritable, agitated, cannot sit still, has a hard time concentrating, all of the classic symptoms of ADHD. Think about how annoying it can be to have something caught between your teeth. It is all that you can think of and your tongue just continues to go to that spot almost without thinking about it. Now just imagine how you would behave if there were always something that was irritating the nerves in your back. That signal of irritation continually being transmitted to your brain over and over again.

Often parents think that the nervous system cannot be the source of their child's distracted or hyperactive behavior because they never complain about pain in their back or any where else for that matter. One of the biggest misunderstandings about chiropractic care is that it is just for the relief of pain. The focus of chiropractic is not the relief of pain. That is often a pleasant side-effect, but not the main result. What we are trying to do is to remove spinal misalignments so that the nervous system can function the way that it was designed. What are some of the functions of the nervous system? Sensory (everything that we think of with the five senses, including pain), motor (provides the stimulus to contract muscles, both muscles like the biceps and also the muscles in the stomach), and autonomic (which means that it controls all of those bodily functions that we don't think about but are necessary for us to live). The pain sensing fibers of the nerve only make-up about 10% of the nervous system. In other words approximately 90% of the time that a nerve is being irritated by a spinal misalignment there is no pain involved.

A child may have no pain at all, but yet be experiencing irritation on their nervous system that is effecting other parts of their body.

Chiropractic Care and ADHD

I just came across a great case study demonstrating the connection between the misaligned structure of the spine and the function of the nervous system. To summarize the study, a 5 year old who had been diagnosed with ADHD and unsuccessfully treated with Ritalin, Adderall and Haldol presented to a chiropractor. Upon x-ray examination it was revealed that the curve of the 5 year old's neck was reversed from what it should have been. After 27 visits with the chiropractor, the young boy's pediatrician stated that he no longer displayed behaviors associated with ADHD. Follow up x-rays, after 35 visits over 8 weeks, show that the normal curve was restored to the neck.

This is a great example of the kind of results that chiropractors see when we care for children. Imagine the difference that chiropractic care has made in the life of that little boy and his family.

Here is the article for you to read if you like.