Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Three

Thanks for joining me on my series of posts about our daughter, H-Bob, and our discovery of her dyslexia and the effects of her diet. If you'd like, here are links to parts one and two. Today we delve into the issue of diet which kept surfacing everywhere I turned while researching learning disabilities and attention issues.

July 2011 

Since the concept of diet being more than just what one puts..or doesn't put...into their mouth kept haunting me, I started to maintain a food journal, just for kicks, recording what H-Bob ate and what moods, attention span, cognitive abilities she expressed. Simultaneously I began to read everything I could about diet and ADHD. At this point I had already come to terms that all of our children had exhibited ADHD symptoms and had different learning patterns that enabled them to learn better in a homeschooling situation. But H-Bob combined all of the other three children’s most difficult traits into one bundled-up child. Not only did she maintain a short attention span when it came to reading-type work (even though we had a partial explanation for that with her vision difficulties), she also had intense phobias that would change from time to time along with other conditions that would fall under the label of compulsive disorders. At time she would have tics involving various parts of her body (the current one was blinking her eyes which was getting quite intense). There were violent mood swings with extreme bouts of crying over melancholy music or recalling sad memories. She really was the poster-child of a difficult child to raise.

So as I began to actually record these items, we began to realize how intensely they controlled her life. There were many many books and on-line sites that I gleaned information from. The evidence was overwhelming. Children experiencing these conditions seemed to be directly affected by their diet. These issues would drastically improve once they eliminated foods that they could not tolerate, cleaned up their systems of toxins, and began supplementation with DHA and EPA Omega 3 fatty acids. But how could this be true and not once have had it cross my information path? I’m a pretty well-read person and this had been completely under the radar to me. Even the fact that her pediatrition never threw out this information floors me.

Here is a list of some of the most compelling books I read through that summer while standing in the gardening watering and simultaneously trying to read a book in the other hand.

The Kid-Friendly ADHD and Autism Cookbook - best concise explanation of how dairy, gluten, and sugar can affect your child. 


Digestive Wellness - a more in-depth read detailing how digestive issues can have a far-reaching affect on all body systems.


Healing the New Childhood Epidemics - very detailed information on special diets, intolerances, nutritional deficiencies, and toxicity and the role they play in ADHD, autism, Aspergers, and dyslexia.


The Ultra Mind Solution - another very detailed book on nutrition that applies mainly to adults and the concept that diet is a contributing factor to any and all conditions detrimental to one's health and overall well-being. 


The LCP Solution - this provided more support for the role of Omega 3 in the diet and the effects of its deficiency. 


Brain Allergies - an older book that first opened my eyes as to how food sensitiveness can provoke psychological responses. 


Changing the Course of Autism - this book is specifically targeted at those on the autistic spectrum, but the diet, nutritional deficiencies, and toxicity issues are still applicable to dyslexics. 

So much information crammed into so many different books all to be inhaled and interpreted into what I began to feel was a very short window in order to begin to consider drastic changes in our diet. I must say that various encounters with friends whom I learned were making dietary changes for various reasons gave me the hope to travel down this path and that just perhaps we weren't alone.

Next up...the results of our food journaling...and what we discovered.


 

Links to and part four.