Imagine that your four-year-old son, who’s been happily playing with his train engines for the last half-hour, takes a break to ask if he can please have a snack. You offer him his favorite crackers and some grapes. Within an hour, your son is now irritable, out of sorts and has thrown one of his engines across the room while yelling at it for not rolling properly. You want to soothe your little boy but can’t get near him because he begins screaming and kicking. The late Dr. Benjamin Feingold, a pediatrician and allergist who discovered that food additives can trigger behavior and learning problems in children, developed a low-additive diet in the 1960s. Parents who began using the diet Feingold outlined in his book Why Your Child is Hyperactive started the non-profit Feingold Association to share information and to develop programs to help new families successfully use the diet. Because it also covers non-food items that may cause sensitive children to react, the association calls it the Feingold Program. Children with food sensitivities react more strongly and to a smaller amount of a potentially harmful additive than another person might. Sensitivities are not allergies, which happen when the body considers the food a foreign substance and tries to fight it. “Many people confuse an allergy with a food sensitivity, but the two are not the same,” explains Jane Hersey, author of Why Can’t My Child Behave and Director of the Feingold Association. “Allergic people generally react to something that doesn’t bother most people, while some food additives appear to bother nearly everyone. The amount it takes to cause a reaction varies with each individual.” What these children eat can affect their behavior drastically. A recent study published in The Lancet found that food additives can trigger hyperactivity in a wide range of children, not only those diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Some symptoms of hyperactivity include irritability, aggressiveness, inability to concentrate and difficulty sleeping. “The effect is observed within two hours of ingestion,” says John Warner, one of the study’s researchers and a professor of Pediatrics and Head of Department at Imperial College, London. We can help with food sensitivities, testing and management. Give us a call and allow us to help.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:15:58 +0000
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