Digging deeper on ADHD

Dr Jenny Goodman calms a hyperactive child after discovering the true cause: mercury from his mother's fillings

Fergus was 9 years old when his parents brought him to see me many years ago. He was charming parents brought him to see me many years ago. He was charming and bright, but wildly hyperactive, and had a diagnosis of ADHD and a possible diagnosis of autism.

He knocked a few things off my desk in the consulting room, swung my stethoscope round his head, and generally ran around looking for something to do; bright kids with ADHD cannot tolerate boredom for a second. I tried to interact with him as much as with his parents so he could feel involved and not left out. But the conversation just wasn't exciting enough for him.

Fergus told me that he liked sports at school and had lots of friends, but he just hated sitting all day in the classroom. He was constantly told off for fidgeting.

This is only partly Fergus's problem; it is equally the problem of a school system that expects energetic young children to sit still all day when they actually need to be running about and climbing trees for most of the time, as nature intended. If they were free to do this, they would concentrate far better for the hour or two per day of academic studies, which is all that's really needed at age 9.

However, Fergus did need some help. Unlike most such children I see, he was already on a healthy diet; his mom and dad knew to keep him off sugar, and he willingly ate fruit and veg and a reasonable amount of protein and good fats. It is a very common observation that eating sugar exacerbates hyperactivity, but in Fergus's case this was not a root cause. I wanted to see if we could calm Fergus down sufficiently to make school life easier for him, but dietary changes were not going to do it; unusually, they were not needed.