adhd and dairy products? | ADHD Information

i read somewhere some years ago that there was a defined link between what they called 'juvenile delinquency' and milk consumption. it seems that kids who had found there way into an institutional situation due to their behaviour typically drank more glasses of milk each day than a similar group of 'well-behaved' students.

i'm not sure where the study came from, but it was published in OMNI or some other science based publication i frequently read.

Wow, that's really interesting about the food sensitivity! I had no idea that dairy could cause problem behaviors in people. I have been drinking rice milk for years bc I never liked the taste of cow's milk.

Gypsy- I have to take a lactase pill every time I eat chocolate. Otherwise, I cant digest it and get an upset tummy. I took my 5 year old daughter off of all milk products. She has ADHD and has not been officially diagnosed because my husband doesnt think it exist, and our peidatrician wants to wait until she starts kindergarden before any meds. But anyway, my daughter is actually allergic to milk and if she even gets a little, her behavior and emotions change. She has been suffering from ecezema for years, and now that I took her off of it, her ecezema has improved tremendously. She will begin EFA's this week, we are still looking for something that taste good.Wow this is the first time i've heard of something like this.

Maybe I should cut back on my milk intake from the 12 litres a week i'm currently drinking....
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i'm not sure where the study came from, but it was published in OMNI or some other science based publication i frequently read.

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Wow... it's a wonder I didn't end up in jail by the time I was 18. I drank milk like it was going out of style. Even in university, I drank a full litre a day. LOL.

I read somewhere a while ago that the benefits of calcium are overrated. We don't need nearly as much as the nutritionists try to tell us. Taking your kids off milk is probably actually not a bad idea - lactose is a sugar, just like any other sugar, and milk of course is loaded with it.

sometimes a direct correlation between trends is not a direct cause/effect relationship. i.e. just because you drank lots of milk doesn't neccessarily mean you will be a "delinquent", even if a significant number of "delinquents" (i wish i had a better term) tend to drink more milk than the average teenager.

one thing that occurs to me now is that the kids studied were probably mostly, if not all, boys.

i don't drink milk and have not liked to for years. not even in my cereal(which i rarely eat anyway). a little cream in the coffee.

but what about cheese? is it all dairy? though cheese is concentrated milk, it has been through a transformation that does change its characteristics somewhat from plain milk.

Cheese has far less lactose per serving than milk does. A typical serving of milk is 1 cup, whereas a typical serving of cheese is about an 8th of that.

Cheese still contains a lot of calcium though, because as you said, it basically concentrated milk. But much of the sugar .... burns off, or ferments, or something, I guess.... in the process. Don't quote me on that... but one thing is certain -- a serving of cheese has far less sugar than a serving of milk.
I understand that milk allergies are common among ADHD kids. My son had a severe milk allergy as an infant, and I have just recently learned that in older kids the allergy can appear as behavior problems and difficulty with writing. I just read a book on this, and we are testing him this week. It seems that people with food allergies will sometimes avoid the problem food, but other people with food allergies become addicted to the offending food and crave it. Chocoholic,

The dairy/ADHD connection with kids is usually a dairy sensitivity vs. a dairy allergy. Unless you are allergic to milk, allergy testing will not show up positive. Testing for sensitivites is done differently.

My 8 year old turns into a terror when he is on milk. He's been off for a year. We used it recently and the crazy behavior came back.

If your interested in milk alternatives so that you get your calcium you can try the well known ones: soy or rice milk. My son won't use them so we give him Vances non-dairy. It tastes very close to cow milk. You can find it at: vancesfoods.com

We are lactose intollerant too but that has nothing to do with the sensitivity related to behavior.

Simi
< =""> Weird... I'm not sure why doctor's would say that.

Personally, I LOVED milk when I was a kid. My parents could barely keep any in the house. I even used to sneak sips of my dad's coffee cream.

Chocoholic...did they specify that the children are on meds when their doctors recommended no dairy products? I'm thinking maybe some meds don't work well with dairy products? Just a thought.

BTW, do you have difficulty eating that chocolate (when you do have it) that you love so much?

GypsyWomyn38446.6878009259I saw on the parents of kids with add board that many were saying that their children's docs told them to have the kids avoid dairy products.

Does anyone know why?

I generally avoid them bc I am lactose intolerant. But, I do try to get a small amount of daily cheese or yogurt (digested with the help of a lactase enzyme pill) for calcium.