Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by nutritional weight and wellness. Let me start off by asking you a question. When you think of your diet and nutrition and nutrition impacting your health, what thoughts come to mind? Maybe you're

thinking about how it impacts your cholesterol or if it contributes to things like diabetes, obesity,

or even cancer. But for many, it's not as common sense to think about what kind of an impact does food

have on your brain. As you saw when you hit play on this episode, today's topic is how nutrition

impacts ADHD. We often think of ADHD as mostly affecting children, but actually 5% of adults have ADHD as well.

Many don't even know it. How would you know? Some of the symptoms will show up as things like distractibility, difficulty completing tasks, or a short attention span,

restlessness, poor time management, being disorganized, impulsive, or the tendency to procrastinate.

I heard somebody with ADHD explain it to me once. You know, it's like being in a TV control room with

several TVs on and just impossible to focus on anyone. What causes someone to have ADHD? Is it

genetics? Is it environmental factors? Many people say, my child is bound to have ADHD because I had ADHD problems as a kid, or maybe the other parent has ADHD.

You might also hear people say, well, my doctor said medication is the only solution to control a condition like this.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 70% of children, and this is in Minnesota

where we live, 70% of Minnesota children with ADHD were receiving medication treatment.

And a lot of the medications can come with unwanted side effects.

Things that can get pretty serious, like loss of appetite or trouble getting to sleep.

Understandably, these symptoms and side effects leave many adults and parents of children with ADHD seeking more natural

solutions. What if I told you there are ways to support your brain or your kiddo's brain

to make those ADHD symptoms less severe, make life a little bit easier for everybody. So today, we're going to share

how what you eat can affect ADHD negatively or positively. I'm Kara Carper. I'm a licensed

nutritionist. I have a master's degree in holistic health, and I'm also a certified nutrition specialist.

Holistic health, that just means taking into consideration all aspects of a person's life to support their health and well-being.

It's a mind-body spirit approach.

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