User:Shulae
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My name is Shula Edelkind, and I am the Research Librarian and Webmaster for the Feingold Association, a nonprofit organization teaching people how to do the Feingold Program, aka Feingold diet.
My affiliation began as a mom whose son had ADHD, Tourette Syndrome, asthma, and frequent ear aches. Medication (Ritalin, then Cylert) had made him worse and by then he was in the bottom 2% of height for his age, and was having hallucinations. They were a side effect of Cylert, but the doc was sure they were seizures. We were going to the neurologist every month, but he was just getting worse; I was under pressure to add Tegretol to his meds, but when he started having 30 different motor and vocal tics, the neurologist took him off all medications. That was back in 1982 when Tourette Sydrome was a little-known disorder, so he wasn't diagnosed for most of a year ... the Year from Hell...
Today TS is quite common and every pediatrician can diagnose it. Oddly, some people call it a genetic disorder, but since there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic, there must be a different cause. Stimulant medication can trigger tics and at one time doctors would not prescribe them if there was any family history of tics. Now that better medications are available for TS, doctors just say the children would eventually develop the tics anyway, so it doesn't matter.
A generation ago, stimulant drug use was rare, and so was TS. But today, every 5th child is taking the drugs, and all children are exposed to increased amounts of synthetic colorings (shown in research to increase random neuron firing). TS has mysteriously become common. So a child who has some genetic weakness in screening out extra neuron firing, is at risk. Why protect him when we can medicate him?
Sorry for the rant .... anyway, I heard about the Feingold diet on a TV talk show, and my doctor told me not to bother because it didn't work "except for 2% of kids" and he said it would be hard ... but since I had no other treatment available, I decided to try it. In 4 days, I had a child with normal behavior. He still had TS, but we didn't expect that to change. We soon realized that he no longer had ear aches, no long wet the bed, no longer had asthma ... and by the end of the year he no longer had any more TS. The TS has been in "permanent remission" for over 20 years, except for a brief time he was off-diet. Oh yes -- and he is a respectable 5'8" tall college graduate, studying for an advanced degree in mechanical engineering, and about to be married.
Anyway, 20 years ago I began to volunteer a little for Feingold, and eventually became one of the few full time staff. I convinced them that they needed a website, so I got the job (in those days I didn't even know how to do email, so I learned on the job, as I am doing now). I decided that we needed to collect the research looking at diet and behavior - so I got that job too. And to do it better, I went back to school to study bio-psychology and graduated in 1998. I decided we needed to have a free email newsletter available for anyone interested - so I got that job, too. I decided we needed to send product alerts to our members by email, rather than making them wait until they got their next monthly paper newsletter - so I got that job too. I decided we needed to consolidate some of our information into an informational booklet (the "Blue Book") - so I got that job too. I do need to stop thinking up new things for me to do.
Oh yes - one more thing. I am still trying to find out where the "2% of kids" idea comes from. Apparently, this is what doctors are taught. It is written in the medical textbooks older than 1999, but not in the newer ones, where "Feingold" is usually not mentioned at all. Yet, no research supports the 2% idea; it is just a made-up number. All the well-done research in the past two decades shows that over 70% of children benefit from dietary intervention. Some of them still need more help ... and certain supplements such as fish oil, B6+Magnesium, etc., look promising. Some still need tutoring to catch up, or behavioral modification to unlearn certain behaviors, and sometimes even a small amount of medication may have to be used. But Feingold moms will tell you -- improving your children's diet is the place to start.
