When a baby is born, its digestive tract is sterile.  The first food the baby receives should be colostrum, a rich thick substance secreted from the mother's breast.  Colostrum coats the lining of the digestive tract to protect the sensitive mucous membranes from foreign substances.  It also introduces healthy, beneficial bacteria into the intestinal environment, and antibodies which help fight germs and infections.  Colostrum also contains concentrated nutrients which the infant needs after labor.  Until the infant has received colostrum, no other substance should be introduced into the baby's digestive system.  The combination of these concentrated nutrients, healthy bacteria, and immune factors give the baby the healthiest possible start in life.  Formula contains none of these factors.  In fact, giving formula before colostrum has been ingested can cause serious digestive problems in the infant, some of which may not be diagnosed until much later in life.  Since one of the triggers for ADD/ADHD is food allergies, we can see how many children who are formula fed rather than breastfed from the beginning of life start out with a compromised digestive system. The infant's intestinal walls, without colostrum to coat them, are not selective about what they let through into the blood stream.  When the baby takes formula, the large undigested protein molecules pass through into the blood and are immediately targeted by the baby's immune system as foreign matter, and the baby's body immediately makes antibodies to that particular food whether it be soy or cow's milk, which are the basis of most formulas.  Not knowing that this battle is going on inside the child's body, the parent continues to pump into them the very substance which is causing the allergic response.

Now the child's body will make antibodies to the many substances in formula so that from now on, an allergic reaction will take place anytime formula is taken. It may be mild at first and the symptoms might be something that you wouldn't even associate with a food allergy.  As the child gets older, the allergies have increased along with his behavioral adaptations.  For instance, if every time the baby drank formula, a couple of hours later they started to feel bad, they would develop some way of coping with the bad feeling. Perhaps they are fussy an hour after they eat at the time the parents expect them to go to sleep.  They don't feel good and can't go to sleep, so they get into the habit of staying awake.  They turn into a toddler who is always on the go, and never learned to relax.  They don't like to lay down for naps, they don't like to sit still and be held for very long because they'll get sleepy, or because when they get still they are forced to focus on how they don't feel good, which makes them fussier.  If a doctor or psychologist asked the parent whether the child is always on the go, the parent would say yes, and this would be interpreted as hyperactivity, when actually the child is propelled into constant activity because of how his body feels. That is just one scenario which shows how what's going on biologically can cause a child to behave in a way that is considered maladaptive.  Also, because a food allergy is a trigger than turns off the control center of the brain, the child who started out not taking naps because of a digestive upset is now running amuck because his mental chaperone...the pre-frontal cortex....is asleep and not monitoring his behavior.

The infant's digestive tract is designed to best metabolize a sugar called lactose.  Human breast milk has approximately twice the amount of lactose of cows milk.  There is also a specific kind of lactose best metabolized by infants.  Human breast milk contains a form of lactose known as beta-lactose, while cows' milk contains alpha-lactose.  Beta-lactose favors the development of healthy bacteria in the intestines while alpha-lactose favors the formation of unhealthy pathogenic bacteria.  In short, formula causes the formation of all kinds of unhealthy conditions which weaken the infant's immune system, and impair his ability to digest food and absorb vitamins and minerals.  Bottle-fed infants have lower levels of desirable bifides bacteria, higher levels of pathogenic microorganisms (including yeast and putrefactive bacteria) and have a lower (acidic) ph.  Remember that yeast is also a trigger for ADD/ADHD behaviors.

Breastfeeding has been proven to reduce the number of times a child must visit the doctor.

In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition says that "the early introduction of solid foods into the infant diet is the result of empiricism and competition, not of sound nutritional principles.  It is attended by certain dangers, which are not compensated for by any discernable advantages."

In other words, breastfeed your baby.  Don't give formula; and it is recommended that solids not be introduced until the child is at least nine months of age and has at least one tooth.  When solids are introduced, fruit should be the first thing given rather than cereal.  Cereal is usually highly allergenic.

So, a child who has been fed formula starts out in life with a disadvantage, and before he is very old he already has food allergies and a yeast condition.  Since there is a correlation between formula feeding and middle ear infections in children, it is also not surprising that there is also a correlation between antibiotic use and ADD/ADHD symptoms, since most children with ear infections are treated with antibiotics, and antibiotics also cause the intestinal tract to be overrun with yeast.

So, even if you have breastfed your child from the very beginning of life and never given formula, if he/she has ever taken antibiotics, then it is certain that yeast is one of the problems causing the ADD/ADHD symptoms.  Sometimes babies are exclusively breastfed, but solids are introduced at three or four months of age at a time when babies are not able to digest them well.  To top it off, the first food mothers are encouraged to give their babies is cereal.  Grains are highly allergenic to many people.  Fruit is the first substance that should be given, and even that should not be given until there is at least one tooth and the child is at least 9 months old.  Fruit is the most easily digested food.

So, while I definitely believe that it is possible to teach children to deal with differences in temperament and to change their behavioral adaptations to the physical factors prompting them, we can hardly blame them for behaving badly when we have been pumping them full of substances which have caused the very behavioral adaptations we are now seeking to extinguish.

Also, there is the issue that most children in this country are malnourished.  Yes, I said malnourished.  It is a fact that most children with ADD/ADHD symptoms have multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies.  Calcium, magnesium, zinc, and B6 are some that children with these symptoms have been found to be deficient in.  The diets of most children do not consist of real food - fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, and in some instances, meat.  Most children eat cookies, candy, soda, pasteurized fruit juice, (which cause B6 deficiency through their digestion and metabolism), white flour pasta and bread,  koolaid,  chips, and convenience foods.

Also, we must remember that, since candida yeast releases 42 different toxins into the blood stream, these toxins can have a variety of effects, one of which is to turn off the control center.  But they can also force the child into more behavioral adaptations, so we have two problems coupled together.....the child has learned poor behavior as a coping mechanism, and when you remove the biological problems which prompted the behaviors, some of those behaviors may still persist because they are not a simple response anymore, they are a conditioned response.  The child may continue to behave badly simply because they have learned to do it.  Although fixing the biological problems should cause rapid improvement in the child's behavior, some learned behaviors are still going to persist.  We often have to teach the child all over again how to behave and how to learn.  So this requires much patience on the part of the parent.  It also requires, in many circumstances, that parents MUST change their parenting style.  This is the hardest thing to do.  Parents often have expectations about how children are "supposed" to behave which don't contribute to healthy self-esteem and success.  Often parents must also change their expectations.

Lastly, sometimes I am convinced that ADD/ADHD symptoms are sometimes simply the result a poor fit between the temperament of the child and the parenting style of the parent.  The child is high need, and the parent has expectations that children are supposed to behave a certain way, and when this child needs more than the parent is comfortable giving, that child's needs are ignored or, at the very least, inadequately met.  The acting out is often an attempt to get those needs met.  We can't blame them for that.

According to Dr. Aletha Solter of the Aware Parenting Institute, hyperactivity is one of the control patterns that children develop to avoid confronting their painful feeling due to stress or trauma.  Just as we give babies a pacifier so they will be quiet without dealing with what is causing them to cry, or an adult takes drugs or alcohol to keep from facing emotional issues in their lives, hyperactivity, or constant physical motion, distracts the child from painful, pent-up feelings which he does not know how to deal with, or has not been allowed to deal with through crying or raging.  See my Aware Parenting Pages and Growing Up Healthy and Unhindered to find out how to rear children in an emotionally healthy way so they do not develop control patterns.

Please understand, I am NOT saying that every parent with an ADD/ADHD child was a bad parent because they fed their child bad foods and didn't adequately meet their emotional needs.  Natural, loving, gentle, effective parenting methods are not taught in this country.  Parents care for their children in the same way they were cared for by their own parents, or according to the accepted customs and norms for their culture.  Even in the church, there are "accepted" customs for caring for children, most of which arise from misinterpretation of scripture.  Consequently, there is often not support in the church for the sensitive, attachment-oriented parenting that focuses on meeting the needs of the child so that they can learn good behavior.  Also, we all grew up eating according to the four food groups or the food pyramid, both of which do NOT represent how a healthy person ought to eat.  So I am not blaming parents for not knowing what to do, but I hope that as parents become aware that our present systems of parenting, nutrition, and healthcare are flawed, they will seek more perfect ways of living.
 

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