Perhaps you are familiar with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), but what is the attention deficit disorder without hyperactivity?
Attention Deficit Disorder without hyperactivity is known as ADD.
You perhaps heard in your childhood, or for your child, a teacher saying “smart and well-behaved kid, but constantly dreaming or distracted during the class.”
Perhaps you never heard it, but you caught yourself multiple times daydreaming, not paying attention, disorganized, or unable to finish anything on time.
If it is the case, read on.
What Is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Inattentive?
ADHD – Inattentive is formally known as ADD. It is ADHD without hyperactivity. Often developing early in childhood, it’s easy to be confused as a parent as to the difference.
Hence, if children or adults are not bouncing off the walls, it’s easy for these individuals to get labeled as “distracted.”
The education system and society, in general, are prompt labeling people without even suspecting a condition.
Hence, most “ADD” cases are not identified, and millions of children go through life undiagnosed. They can develop low self-esteem, frustrations, and mild to severe depression if not monitored.
Therefore, it is essential to be aware and observe these behavioral patterns and discuss them with your primary care physician or pediatrician. A diagnosis is the first step to a potentially better life.
There are many different symptoms associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – inattentive. Thus, it can be difficult to get to the root cause and address the problem.
How to Address This Disorder?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – Inattentive (ADD) is defined by conventional medicine as a brain disorder with an ongoing pattern of inattention triggered by the environment.
Typically, what conventional medicine addresses, is the symptomatic inattention pattern. To manage that pattern, the treatments implemented involve medication to alleviate the symptoms.
If medication can help some patients and reduce the symptoms, in most cases, it is not the only option available to help solve the problem.
Medication for ADD may enhance attention, but will not be effective with time management, disorganization, or forgetfulness.
Truth is that the conventional approach to ADD does not look into the root causes.
Consequently, the entire toolbox available to patients is not considered and the toll on patients’ life is huge.
For functional medicine, what is essential is to determine the root cause that triggers inattention.
Actually, if people get distracted and cannot complete a task on time or by following rules or guidance, the problem is attention.
How Can Functional Neurology Help with ADD?
Functional Neurology is a natural approach to ADD by looking into lifestyle and habits.
Imagine an approach where life coaching helps through a series of natural hacks to improve your life.
Your body responds to trauma and exposure to environmental agents, and functional medicine looks into these elements as the basis to reset the brain.
The concept of lifestyle encompasses:
- Eating healthy foods
- Reduce sugar
- Getting physical exercise
- Getting intellectual exercise
- Reduce screen time exposure
- Getting the recommended amount of sleep
The power of living a healthy lifestyle should never be omitted or underestimated in any ADD case.
Here are three examples of how functional medicine can help.
Nutrition Plays a Big Role
Eating healthier does not mean to completely deprive yourself of foods you enjoy.
It’s not forcing you to eat what you do not like either. It’s being aware of what is good for you, and what should be avoided or restricted.
From Omega 3 fatty acids, low sugar content, higher protein intake, a healthy diet is the best adjunct to any treatment. If you are treated for ADD and you follow a medication protocol, try to prefer lower saturated fatty foods.
Certain types of fat can slow down the absorption of the medication. Hence, fats can impact the effectiveness of your treatment.
The best diet for a person with ADD is also low in sugar. Ultimately, any food that is high in sugar and processed should be avoided.
Remember as a general rule, any diet that includes various types of organic foods is best, to steer away from unnecessary toxins that increase inflammation.
Brain Function
One major step to positive results with ADD is to address the visual stimulation and cognitive function. And, neurofeedback helps understand these specific patterns for each patient with ADD.
Pain-free and non-invasive, neurofeedback is a direct self-training of the brain function. It helps the functional medicine practitioner to observe the patient’s brain in action at various moments.
During a short session, the method measures the electrical brain activity and offers rewards when the brain self-regulates itself.
As a result, patients learn to focus and stay-on-task and self-regulate their emotions.
Ultimately, brain exercises help to set a series of milestones that patients may have skipped in their natural development. Or, those that could have been missed in contact with society or education systems.
Setting Strategies & Goals
Functional coaching is a great way to achieve goals and improve. It’s a way to break away from the traditional perception that ‘poor planning ability’ is a curse that only medication can help alleviate.
Decisions and behaviors are a big part of the path to results. Based on life-hacks and tweaks, coaching can help patients to clarify and put the strategies in place to help progress.
Ultimately, patients learn how to be mindful and accept themselves without producing judgment.
Typically, life is made of successes and misses, good and bad days.
We all know that.
So, why would expectations be different when dealing with ADD?
Coaching helps to enhance the successes and avoid turning a process into torture with the sanction of judgment.
In other words, functional coaching encompasses people’s nature while providing guidance for self-help without producing shame.
For instance, if a patient wants to eat a slice of pizza and ends up eating the entire pizza, coaching reviews the path that led to that decision. Plus, it offers perspectives, and helps the patient come up with a plan to change the decision for future similar situations.
What Are Your Takeaways?
Whatever the goals are, people with ADD should not be locked to a lifelong sentence of sadness. Medication itself will not fix the root cause that triggers inattention.
Therefore, functional medicine and functional neurology offers a large toolbox that can work as a valuable adjunct to conventional medicine.
Functional Neurology explores the brain function and the root causes that lead to dysfunctions.
Through in-depth, non-invasive analysis, functional medicine and functional Neurology practitioners are able to develop personalized holistic health plans. Remember great medical care is personalized care that produces visible results.
How do you want to address your ADD?
