Posts Tagged ‘Child and Adolescent’

There is a lot of polemic about children with symptoms of ADD and ADHD and candies. Whilst I normally do not recommend any sugar for children with hyperactivity, they do normally get one day per week when they can eat some sweet stuff. It is important that it’s just sugar, and no chemical additives, as these tend to upset the system for a couple of days at least – Sugar only gives effects for 24 hours.

Dr. Mercola writes about healthy choices in chocolate:

Few snack foods evoke as much passion and desire as chocolate.

And if you have children, Halloween provides you with a wide assortment of sugary chocolate temptations — all part of this family fun event.

Regardless of whether or not it’s Halloween… if you’re a chocolate lover, the idea of giving it up even for health reasons is often not an option you consider.

As far as your kids go… well, most kids love chocolate. Asking them not to eat any from their Halloween trick-or-treat stashes is pretty much wishful thinking.

Believe it or not, this is one instance when you can have your chocolate and eat it too… more and more studies confirm some types of chocolate are actually very good for you.

Since I realize many people simply refuse to give up their chocolate, and there are actually healthy versions of chocolate, I put my team to task to create guidelines to help you select and eat chocolate at a healthy level.

Especially at Halloween time, this could help give you some direction for the healthiest chocolate for you and your kids.

I do feel it’s important to remind you about wholesome foods like organic vegetables and fruits that provide you with healthy nutrients — without the sugar content of most chocolates.

With Halloween just around the corner, the potential for you and your family to consume even more chocolate is simply a reality that you will have to contend with. However, if you follow the guidelines my staff and I created for you, you can now enjoy one of your passions, and boost your health at the same time.

If you’re a chocolate lover, or even occasionally indulge, I strongly recommend you follow these guidelines… which will allow you to enjoy your chocolate and help you protect your health at the same time.

• Find chocolate made from the least destructive processing techniques — Organic is always best as over-processing reduces your healthy nutrients and can introduce lead contamination.
• Restrict your intake to dark, organic chocolate — Consuming chocolate as close to its original raw state (unprocessed cacao) provides you the best health benefits.
• Avoid chocolate made from milk or milk byproducts — Adding milk to the chocolate process can diminish your antioxidant benefits.
• Select chocolate with low sugar content — Sugar can seriously impact your immune system
• Consume chocolate in moderation — When you eat too much chocolate, you potentially diminish and defeat any health benefits due to the sugar.
• Avoid chocolate if you’re struggling with a health challenge — Sugar can suppress your immune system.
• Choose a chocolate made to the highest standards of social and environmental responsibility — Fair Trade certification should be part of your selection process.

I’ll get into more details on each of these selection and consumption criteria in just a minute…

But first do this — very thoroughly…

In addition to the above guidelines, there are certain “spooky” ingredients you should stay far away from when choosing your chocolate.

If you have kids, you might want to take a closer look at the chocolate they bring home from Halloween trick-or-treating. Not an easy task, I realize… but these ingredients are just plain bad for you.

Even many so-called “natural” chocolates may contain some of these unhealthy ingredients — avoid them at all costs…

• Trans fat — An artery-clogging type of fat that forms when vegetable oils are hardened into margarine or shortening.
• High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) — Contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals, and leeches micronutrients from your body. Raises your blood sugar levels beyond acceptability, and leads to insulin resistance and weight gain. It really is a metabolic poison and, in many ways, acts identical to alcohol with chronic exposure when eaten in high amounts.
• Artificial sweeteners — Never allow anything “artificial” in your chocolate.
• Soy proteins — Unfermented soy can cause digestive distress and a weakened immune system.
• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) — An excitotoxin, which over-excites your cells to the point of damage or total destruction. Can potentially cause brain damage and other disabilities to varying degrees.
• Preservatives and stabilizers — Avoid anything artificial and look for only organic ingredients.
• Milk or milk byproducts — Could impact how well you absorb the healthy antioxidants in the chocolate.

The bottom line — you need to carefully read the label on chocolate packages. By ‘reading’ the label, I mean, ‘thoroughly scrutinize the nutrition facts and ingredients’. Not just a cursory glance.

To enjoy the healthiest chocolate possible, always look for selections with wholesome, organic ingredients — artificial ingredients are just too risky. (…)

Source: http://products.mercola.com/organic-dark-chocolate/

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It seems that the coordination of the left brain and the rigth brain is a crucial factor in the occurrence of the symptoms of ADD, ADHD and of dyslexia.

An Israelian mother discovered a way to help her 17 year old dyslexic son, and found out the underlying technique to help other children too. Neurological pathways in the brain seems to play an important role, whereby the coordination between left and right brain is developed by certain exercises.

Let’s first have a look at what Nili, the mother says about what she discovered and how she uses it; Mother and son in the meantime have trained over 1,000 practitioners in Israel and the UK, and their method is now taught at Bar Ilan University. A pilot study was undertaken in Newport, England with excellent results and in November, a new course for practitioners opens in Irvine California.

Some of the exercises we can use to stimulate the coordination between the right and left brain hemisphere are listed here:

1 Cook’s Hook Up
2 The Cross Crawl
3 The Cortices Technique

1 Cook’s Hook Up

To do the Cook’s Hook-Up, sit comfortably in a chair. Place your feet flat on the floor. Put your left foot onto the top of your right knee. Place your right hand on your left ankle, and place your left hand on the ball of your left foot near your toes. Close your eyes, place your tongue on the roof of your mouth one quarter of an inch behind your teeth. Breathe normally, and hold this position for 30 seconds to a minute.

Keeping the eyes closed, the tongue up, place both feet flat on the floor and bring just your fingertips together like a teepee in front of you. Hold this position for 30 seconds to a minute, breathing naturally.

When you are finished, open your eyes.

 

 

 

 

(Courtesy of Dr. Jerry V. Teplitz, www.teplitz.com)

2 The Cross Crawl

Imagine an exaggerated march step, done on the spot with exaggerated arm swing and vigorous step. Touch hand or elbow to the opposite knee to emphasise the rhythmic crossover. Left arm to right knee and vice versa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch a video demonstration here:

 

3 The Cortices Technique

This is an explanation of the technique:

And watch this to see a great example of how to apply these and other brain coordination techniques:

Every morning starts like this at Sunrise School in Bali. The Star of the Day’s first ‘job’ is to lead the class in tapping cortices. We all know about the benefits of BodyTalk at Sunrise…pun intended.

Barbara has seen significant changes in the children’s ability to concentrate, work more harmoniously together and stay happy and content. If they have a problem, or an injury, they know how to balance their own cortices, or their friend will do it for them, and they immediately feel better. This is a technique that will serve them their whole of their lives. They know that they have a tool that they can use on themselves, and their friends and family that will automatically bring the body back to a state of increased ease and balance.

Balancing the cortices resets the nervous system back to growth and healing, and out of flight or flight. Most people get stuck in fight or flight…. and we then ‘cope’ with the stress, which internalizes the energy we would have been using to ‘run or fight’, and send it into the body, which is highly detrimental to our health.

When you balance your cortices, you are balancing the right-left sides of the brain (the right brain= big picture, intuition, imagination, creativity with the left brain= logic, linear, reasoning, details). We need both parts to work together similtaneously so that we are able to use our ‘whole brain’, and therefor be many times more balanced, and effective in all we do. Often in life we get stuck in the details and the logic and loose sight of the big picture.

(Source: Laura Hanes, http://www.bodytalkspace.com)

Omega 3 fatty acids are a vital building blocks for our brain, and many children suffering from symptoms of ADD and ADHD actually have a shortage of essential building blocks in their body.

Why does the ADD/ADHD brain have an extra need for Omega-3 fatty acids?
The brain has the most active metabolism of all the organs in the body, and it uses enormous amounts of energy; it never is completely at rest. The more active the metabolism, the more free radicals, and the brain thus has one of the highest rates of free radical production. These free radicals destroy the connections between the cells, the cells themselves and the structure of the brain. The brain starts to function less and less effectively, if it has not enough resources to repair itself.

If you are deficient in Omega-3 fatty acids, your brain changes it’s structure already within 2 weeks.

The role of sugar in Omega-3 deficiency
Apart from the role sugar plays in the blood sugar level, it also increases free radical generation. Sugar produces cross linking of the proteins in all cells, which means that the free radicals can do much more damage in a much bigger group of cells. Through the influence of free radicals, your cells age faster; and your braincells are even more prone to this process. Research at the University of Connecticut in 1986 by Dr. Jane Goldman showed that sugar, equal to one Coke, produces a significant decline in mental performance. (Students were making twice as many mistakes on tests.)

Other vitamins and minerals also play a role in the health of our brain, and particularly in children with symptoms of ADD and ADHD, one can often find shortages of essential micro-elements and vitamins. On the other hand, ADHD and ADD symptoms have been linked to an overload of toxic substances suchs as lead in the blood of the affected children. Apart from lead, also aspartame, MSG, pesticides, herbicides in food, aluminum in deodorants, fluoride in the water and mercury in vaccines have been proven to have a major role in brain toxicity and brain function decline.

What does this mean in everyday life?
Make sure your child does not eat refined sugar is the obvious step one, because it is easy to do. Avoid aspartame and other additives, buy and eat organic fruit and vegetables, be very cautious with vaccines and get yourself very well informed about the risks and the benefits of every single vaccination.
Give your kid a healthy balanced diet, and give additional nutrients as needed, but be very aware of food colorings and other additives that hide in vitamin pills and other supplements! They will probably increase the symptoms of ADD and ADHD: the detrimental effect of these substances is manyfold bigger than the beneficial effects of the essential nutrients your child is probably lacking.

If you like this article, please share it on one or more of the social bookmarking sites below; that way you help other parents with children suffering from symptoms of ADD and ADHD, to find this information!
I look forward to read your comments, experiences and questions!

Image by Kriss Szkurlatowski

EFT is a very interesting tool to treat symptoms of ADD and ADHD. The reason why it works is getting clearer and clearer, and it is getting more and more known that our DNA, cells and our brain are not 100% responsible for defining who we are and how we behave. Cells are capable of changing their behaviour completely, based on the input from their environment, and that makes it also easier to understand why a stress relief method like EFT works wonders with so many different ailments and issues.

My friend Maria, the GP, read a book by Dr. Servan-Schreiber, I think it’s some 600 pages thick or so – very scientific and she loved it. What is great, is that it convinced her that EFT is a scientific way to treat stress-related diseases, which, in her words, are almost ALL diseases and ailments!

I’ve read the book “The Biology of Belief” by Dr. Bruce Lipton, a bit easier to digest I think, and just as interesting maybe.. It makes it certainly more easy to explain why EFT works, for those people who will not see without believing .

An interesting article I found is posted below: Dr. Grohol talks about the way our brain is wired, and about the possible ways to influence the actual outcome. Enjoy, comment, share…!

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Everything Has a Neurobiological Correlate (psychcentral.com)