This is my first post here too!

I've never heard of chiropractic for treating ADHD, but I can understand your concerns about medication. A lot of parents are hesitant about putting a young child on meds.

Have you considered diet? I've found that a diet that emphasizes lean protein and plenty of water helps. I also try to avoid carbs as much as possible.

There have also been recent studies that a gluten and casein free diet can have positive effects on ADHD. I eat gluten free for health reasons and try to limit dairy.

Does your son have any allergies? If so, I would consider a dietary change more carefully. You might also want to read "Is This Your Child" by Doris Rapp. It's about allergies and how they can be detected and how they can affect a child, including behavior.

Hope this helps.

Brenda

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I have not heard of chiropratic care for ADD, but I do believe it is a care source of care for many conditions. My family has had chiropractic care for many conditions and have had great success. My daughter (9y/o) was dignosised w/ADD and anxiety at 5. After trying more than 12 medications and many combinations, I started looking for other treatments. After using an intergrative doctor (her blood test through the PCP did not show any allergies), we found she had many food allergies and a yeast overgrowth in her intestines and adreanal glands. We stopped the ADD and anxiety medication and started oral Nystain to kill the yeast and the SCD diet to address the food allergies and to reframe from feeding the yeast. I did not see a great improvement in her behavior until month 3, then it was shocking!! She was completly different...bright, alive, outgoing, confident, attentive, able to remember, focus, followed directions, etc! She was the child I knew she was. Her physical health also greatly improved. She always had bowel issues. No longer. We have now been doing the diet for 7 months and could not be happier. Honestly, it is challenging in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature. She has become very in tune with her body and talks to her friends about the importance of health and nutrition. If you are interested in the diet you can check it out online at www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info.

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We also had a hard time dealing with the idea of medicating our son. He is not hyperactive he needs a lot of help concentrating and getting his thoughts to paper. We didn't try Chiropractic but our doctor had given us studies that steered us away from bothering with it. I'd suggest you get a REALLY good ADHD doctor who is up-to-date on all of the possible treatments, just the average pediatrician is not nearly good enough. Go out of your insurance network if you have to. I'd suggest seeking out a specialized center like ADHD Health and Wellness Centers. We went there and our doctor was so well educated about ADHD she was able to discuss in great detail the pros and cons of any alternative treatment we considered and tried no matter how many we googled. Some alternative treatments do work for a small percentage of kids, you'll want to try those with the best track record first. We are lucky enough to also live close to the Hallowell Center in Lexington and they offer a number of alternative treatments: http://www.drhallowell.com/the-hallowell-centers/complementary-and-alternative-treatment-programs/ Some of which we may try one day. I have to say that in the end after over a year of trying alternative treatments our son was still falling further behind in school and we had to ask ourselves "is our fear of meds so bad that we are willing to let our son totally fail"? It took a few tries to find the right dose of Ritalin LA but it has been so effective that every time he has a new teacher they always tell us that he doesn't have any problems and doesn't need meds. That is until we send him to school without meds and then the teachers always say they are totally impressed at how well the meds help our son succeed in school. He's still on the lower end of his class but now he only needs very minor accommodations to keep him on track. So we now have a totally different attitude about meds, if they work and there are no side effects they are more than worth it. Sorry this is way off track from your original question but its so important to find a GREAT ADHD doctor when first trying to figure out how to treat your son. It made all the difference for us and how we handle our son.

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So Chiropractors do massages. How would that help? I have never even heard of this therapy. Relaxing helps, but save some money and go see a massage therapist. I hate to be bias, but it is what it is.

I didn't bother reading the replies to this, but I am sure they say if you want to avoid medication other ways exist.

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I had read a lot about chiropractic care online for ADHD kids so we tried it. Our chiro said sometimes it helps sometimes not so much, all kids are different. He said if you don't see a difference after 6 visits it's not going to help. So we did the 6 visits and we didn't see any change at all. My son really liked it (he's 5) but at $30 a pop we stopped it. I would recommend trying it though, it may work for your child. I was very very against medicating my son so I tried everything before we eventually did. he is on a gluten free/preservative/dye/high fructose corn syrup free diet which is a HUGE help. I would HIGHLY recommend everyone try the diet before meds. Yes he's now on 10 mg of metydate but that's only after we tried everything else. He is still on the strict diet b/c his symptoms shine right through the meds if he strays from his diet.

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