We are, as you are undoubtedly aware if you book regularly, busy with a series examining the impact of diet for the effects of ADD ADHD. We have already looked at the desirability of your Low-GI diet; this was followed up with a discussion about nutrition and brain function. The last few articles inside series dealt with the negative impact of ‘sugar rushes’ and that which you can do to prevent them from occurring.

ADD ADHD

Using the next few articles we'll delve a bit deeper in the issue of how our diets can make a real difference along the way of conquering ADD ADHD. Before we are able to do that, however, we will have to take a brief go through the issue at the heart of ADD ADHD: Attention.

We are sometimes so used for an acronym that we completely forget what it stands for. I suspect this is often the case with ADD ADHD. This is a pity since the acronym accurately describes the problem that we are dealing with, a problem with paying attention, an ‘attention deficit’. The down sides that people dealing with ADD ADHD experience in relation to attention lies in two related but distinct areas:

• Some people find it very difficult to focus

• Other people find it very difficult to deal with distractions

So what is the gap between these two types of ‘attention deficits’? With the first the main problem is that someone still find it very difficult to ‘zone in’ on a particular topic, object or behavior regardless of the physical environment. He/she would find focusing equally difficult inside a crowded room or perhaps in a bare cubicle. With the second type the outside environment is the determining factor. People with a distraction problem end up watching it almost impossible to pay attention when they are placed in lively environments but sometimes do better when they are put into more ‘neutral’ settings.

The distinction made above between the two basic kinds of inattention may seem trivial however it cuts to the heart of how the brain pays attention and is also therefore a vital little bit of the puzzle with regards to dealing with ADD ADHD. This means that different people will require different things to improve their attention:

• Some men and women have to learn how to ‘tune’ in'. This could be compared by placing magnifying glass over a physical object. Everything will remain fuzzy until you manage to place the glass at precisely the right distance and angle.

• Other men and women will have to learn how to ‘tune out’. I'm a frequent flyer and i also always take a group of top quality noise cancelling headphones with me at night when I fly. Their effect borders around the miraculous. One flick of an switch and it is like the outside world ceases to exist. This is a good analogy of the sort of ‘tuning out’ that some people must learn to, the filtering from distractions to the extent that they become almost irrelevant.

There are many differing theories about ADD ADHD, only one thing that everybody is agreed on is the fact that at least some of its effects might be traced back to neurotransmitters within the brain not fulfilling their function properly. Neurotransmitters will be the chemicals that are responsible for carrying ‘messages’ between brain cells and it does not take a genius to work out that failures in this area could have serious consequences. Some consequences are perhaps too familiar to you: inattention, impulsiveness, daydreaming and hyperactivity. Other great tales. The interesting thing is that brain scientists are beginning to discover that failures of neurotransmitters associated with the types of inattention stated earlier (lack of focus and distractedness) occur in different parts of the brain.

The mind pays attention by 50 percent basic ways and you can perhaps already guess what happens these two ways are. You are top down (or willful goal oriented) attention. This is when set out to concentrate on completing a particular task (like looking over this article for example). Such a attention is centered in the prefrontal cortex (the so-called ‘executive centre’) of the brain.

ADD ADHD
Another type of attention has to do with the response of the brain to outside stimuli or distractions. It is sometimes called bottom up (reflexive stimulus responsive) attention. That's where the brain ‘snaps to attention’ due to influence of something in the environment. This type is centered in the totally different part of the brain namely the parietal cortex to the back of the brain.

This insight, namely that different types of attention emanate from many different parts of the brain, has interesting implications. It means, at the very least, that we will have to pay much closer attention (!) towards the kind of ‘attention deficit’ that we are dealing with when discussing a specific case of ADD ADHD. Let me profile this issue in a very bit more detail in the next article by discussing methods we can identify the several types of inattention. I will also begin to look in the role that nutrition can begin to play to combat them. View you then!