Rachel Gow - Smart Foods for ADHD and Brain Health: How Nutrition Influences Cognitive Function, Behaviour and Mood

Smart Foods for
ADHD and Brain Health

How Nutrition Influences
Cognitive Function, Behaviour and Mood

Dr Rachel V. Gow

Forewords by Rory Bremner and Professor Robert H. Lustig

Rory Bremner, British comedian,
diagnosed with adult ADHD

In life, as in comedy, timing is everything.

Rachel Gows book comes at a time when mental health in general, and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) in particular, are at last receiving the kind of attention and understanding they deserve. In January 2018, the UK established the first All-Party Parliamentary Group on ADHD, to focus the attention of politicians and lawmakers on a condition that affects 1 in 20 of our children 500,000 in the UK, or roughly one in every classroom. This is a breakthrough moment.

Children and adults with ADHD can be amongst the most creative, energetic, brilliant, positive and influential members of society. Yet, undiagnosed, misunderstood or stigmatized, they can all too easily fall through the cracks, their energy seen as disruptive, their frustration and despair driving them to the margins self-diagnosing with drink or drugs, falling in with a bad crowd, moving from classroom to courtroom and becoming one of the 30 per cent or so of the prison population that is estimated to be diagnosably ADHD.

This may all seem depressing, but the challenge is incredibly exciting. Just imagine the transformation we could make with better understanding, treatment and management of this condition for society, of course, but most of all for the individuals concerned who are liberated, freed, able to realize their full potential.

And that potential is huge. Amongst the worlds greatest athletes and artists you will find people whose ADHD made them who they are restless, creative, determined, successful. Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Justin Timberlake and will.i.am all acknowledge this.

I think of ADHD as my best friend and my worst enemy: worst enemy in the sense that it isnt always fun to be disorganized, forgetful, easily distracted, impulsive or manic with half-completed tasks and an impossible backlog of commitments; but best friend in that it makes me who I am. It allows me to make those leaps of imagination or random connections that fire my creativity and gives me the energy, and an ADHD bonus this gifts me the secret weapon of hyperfocus . This is when the ADHD brain is fully engaged on something which stimulates and rewards it, to the exclusion of everything else distraction, discouragement, time itself.

Whats it like inside that ADHD head? Imagine sitting in an open-plan office, your computer constantly showing alerts, your phone vibrating with notifications and texts, the person next to you (on either side) speaking on the phone, a television on the wall showing sports highlights or breaking news and a fire engine going past. Thats what its like inside an ADHD mind a lot of the time. So how extraordinary, then, that the engaged ADHD mind also has the ability to cast all that aside and hyperfocus intensely, if the task excites it. The potential is incredible.

And now, at last, we are beginning to move away from the stigmatic caricature of naughty children and bad parents towards an understanding that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition. Brain MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans show us that areas of the brain which regulate our impulsivity and help us prioritize, organize and function effectively and efficiently are significantly less developed in ADHD children. We know that in ADHD people, dopamine that chemical, that neurotransmitter which stimulates and rewards the functioning brain is not being released at typical levels.

To this improvement in knowledge and understanding we must add nutrition, which is where Rachels book, and the research behind it, comes in. An understanding of the role nutrition plays in the development of our brains is so valuable. It gives us another weapon in the fight. It can positively influence the way our brains grow and develop.

And that, combined with other advances both in science and in understanding, is so exciting. I heartily welcome and recommend this book.

Professor Robert H. Lustig, MD, MSL

I dont have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but I remember the first time I heard the term. It was a Friday morning in March 1982, I was a paediatric resident at St Louis Childrens Hospital, and a visiting professor was giving Grand Rounds on this new disease state called Attention Deficit Disorder. The idea of brain dysfunction leading to altered cognition and behaviour wasnt new. In fact, amphetamine in the 1930s and methylphenidate in the 1950s were used to treat what was then known as hyperkinetic impulse disorder emphasis on the hyperkinetic. As I learned during my training, many of these early patients had other antecedents of brain dysfunction, such as perinatal asphyxia, cerebral palsy or brain tumours, or they were the offspring of alcohol or drug addicts. But then, in the early 1980s, kids were getting diagnosed with inattention, but without the hyperkinesis, and without any of the obvious antecedents. Is this a new disorder? What could be the cause? Why is this happening now? Why is the incidence increasing?

What was then an oddity is now fully 7.2 per cent of children and adolescents worldwide. However, there are hot spots of ADD. The UK has a 10 per cent prevalence, and the US is at 11 per cent, but with a wide range, from 5.6 per cent in Nevada to 18 per cent in Kentucky (Sayal et al . 2018). Moreover, ADD is not the only childhood mental health disorder. What about addiction, depression and anxiety? Theyve gone up on a parallel path in the paediatric age group, as their brains are still developing, and therefore are more vulnerable to all neurobehavioural disorders. Do you really think that a global insult affecting something as complex as the brain would only exhibit one symptom? And please lets not ignore the type 2 diabetes crisis that has overtaken the healthcare system of every civilized country, which started at the same time. So, what exposure started in developed countries in the late 1970s, and has migrated around the world, so that everyone in the world is now vulnerable?

You go up in your attic, and theres a wasp buzzing around. What are you going to do? Kill the wasp? Or get rid of the wasp nest? You have to work upstream of the problem if you are going to fix the cause. This is the challenge of public health. You know theres a root cause, but that cause may not be obvious. Treating the symptoms doesnt fix the cause. So whats the cause of our mental and metabolic health debacle? Can we identify what lies upstream and fix it before it is too late? Our survival as a society, and indeed as a species, depends on it.

The current UK and US prevalences of 10 per cent and 11 per cent for ADD and 8 per cent and 10.5 per cent for diabetes, mental and/or metabolic health disorders affect you directly (Diabetes UK 2020; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). Each of you either has ADD, has a child with ADD, or knows someone with ADD. And each of you has diabetes, has a parent with diabetes, or knows someone with diabetes. My daughter has ADD. Yes, knowing all that I know, she has ADD, I couldnt prevent it. And Rachel Gows son has ADD. She gave up her previous life as a real estate agent because of it. Her son brought her to the science, and shes done it. Shes got the degree, shes got the cred. Shes my friend and colleague. And she is now one of the leading lights showing us the way out of this public health nightmare.