The New Optimum Nutrition Bible

by Patrick Holford

  Allergies start young

  Children are like the canaries once used to check whether coal mines were safe from poisonous gases: they are very sensitive and react readily to substances. This is the first stage of the stress response (see this page). By paying attention, you can find out what does not suit your child. Many children react adversely to food additives, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, wheat, detergents, dust mites, or exhaust fumes. Some react to eggs, oranges, and other gluten grains like oats. Watch out for the following symptoms:

  Face: Rings around the eyes, “black” eyes, facial puffiness, constant sniffling, frequent colds, excessive mucus production, frequent earaches, tonsillitis

  Sugar and spice and all things nice.

  Skin: Itches, rashes, eczema, puffiness, or water retention

  Digestive: Colic, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach ache, gas

  Mental: Hyperactivity, poor concentration, being overemotional, sleeplessness, bed-wetting

  Respiratory: Coughing, frequent sore throats, swollen tongue or throat, asthma, respiratory infections

  All these are the classic signs of allergy. The good news is that children rapidly respond once the offending substances are removed. Try removing suspected foods or environmental allergens for ten days and see if the child improves. If the allergic reactions are severe, it is best to carry out what is known as an elimination/challenge investigation under the supervision of a qualified health professional. Also make sure that the child’s diet is not becoming too restrictive.

  Optimum nutrition, plus judicious use of supplements, can greatly decrease potential for an allergic reaction provided the offending items are removed. Often, after a couple of months, a child can tolerate a food that previously offended, perhaps eating it only every four days to prevent the body from “remembering” the food and learning to react again. For more on allergies read chapter 34.

  Kid-life crisis

  Childhood should be a happy thing—a time to learn, to play, and to have fun. Yet the trends show that something rather sinister is happening to many children. Learning difficulties, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, depression, and even suicide rates are rapidly increasing. More and more children are having more and more problems learning, behaving appropriately, and socializing.

  According to a survey by London’s City University, a quarter of all children “often” or “always” feel stressed. In the United States, there are now eight million children on Ritalin, a habit-forming amphetamine with many properties similar to cocaine. That’s 10 percent of all boys between the ages of six and fourteen! Alcohol abuse is up too, with one in six eleven-year-old girls drinking every week. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, incidence of hyperactivity is rapidly on the increase.

  Diagnoses of autism more than tripled between 1987 and 1999.3 While autism used to occur primarily “from birth,” or at least was detected within the first six months, over the past ten years there has been a dramatic increase in “late-onset” autism, most frequently diagnosed in the second year of life. This strongly suggests that something new is triggering this epidemic. Possible culprits include diet, vaccinations, and digestive disorders, including Crohn’s disease and celiac disease, both of which are also very much more common in children than they used to be.

  To understand these problems, I’d like to propose that we are looking at a spectrum of problems, from learning difficulties at one end, including dyslexia and dyspraxia, to autism at the other. Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum we can put so-called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This condition doesn’t really exist as a disease entity in the same way that diabetes or depression does. It’s more of a catchall category into which children with a variety of problems get put and then are far too often prescribed a drug like Ritalin.

  Symptoms such as poor coordination, inability to concentrate, mood swings, inappropriate emotional reactions, fatigue, depression, digestive problems, writing and reading difficulties, poor eye-to-hand coordination, and other visual perception problems, in varying degrees, are the hallmark of too many children. What all these have in common is the brain.

  The brain drain

  The brain is the most vulnerable organ of the body. Optimum nutrition during fetal development has a profound effect on the brain, learning, and behavior. Yet many of the most important nutrients for brain development, such as essential fats and fat-soluble vitamins and zinc, are commonly missing in the average twenty-first-century junk-food diet. These nutrients are also essential for digestive health. They have been replaced by high-sugar foods, highly processed fat, refined wheat, and dairy products.

  ESSENTIAL FATS AND ADHD

  Many children with ADHD have known symptoms of essential fatty acid deficiency, such as excessive thirst, dry skin, eczema, and asthma. It is also interesting that males, who have a much higher EFA requirement than females, are more commonly affected: four out of five ADHD sufferers are boys. Researchers have theorized that children with ADHD may be deficient in essential fatty acids not just because they have inadequate dietary intake (though this is not uncommon), but rather because their need is higher, because they absorb them poorly, or because they don’t convert them well into prostaglandins that help the brain communicate.4

  Research at Oxford University has proven the value of these essential fats in a double-blind trial involving forty-one children aged eight to twelve years with ADHD symptoms and specific learning difficulties. Those children receiving extra essential fats in supplements were both behaving and learning better within twelve weeks.5

  VITAMINS AND MINERALS AND ADHD

  It is of interest, then, that EFA conversion to prostaglandins can be inhibited by most of the foods that cause symptoms in children with ADHD, such as wheat and dairy products. Conversion is also hindered by deficiencies of the various vitamins and minerals needed for the enzymes that power the conversions, including vitamins B3 (niacin), B6, and C, and biotin, zinc, and magnesium. Zinc deficiency is common in children with learning difficulties.

  AUTISM: THE CASE FOR VITAMIN A

  Pediatrician Dr. Mary Megson from Richmond, Virginia, believes that many children with autistic-spectrum disorders are lacking in vitamin A. Otherwise known as retinol, vitamin A is essential for vision. It is also needed for building healthy cells in the gut and in the brain. There is no real doubt that something funny is going on in the digestive tracts of many of these children. Could this be related to vitamin A deficiency, she wondered?

  The best sources of vitamin A are breast milk, organ meats, milk fat, fish, and cod liver oil, none of which is prevalent in our modern diet. Instead, we have formula milk, fortified food, and multivitamins, many of which contain altered forms of retinol such as retinyl palmitate, which doesn’t work as well as the fish- or animal-derived retinol. What would happen, wondered Dr. Megson, if these children weren’t getting enough natural vitamin A?6 Not only would this affect the integrity of the digestive tract, potentially leading to allergies, but also it would affect the development of their brains and disturb vision. Both brain differences and visual defects have been detected in autistic children. The visual defects, she deduced, were an important clue, because lack of vitamin A would mean poor black and white vision, a symptom often seen in the relatives of autistic kids.

  If you were seeing without black and white, what you’d lose is shadow. Without shadow you’d lose 3-D and, as a consequence, you couldn’t tell people’s expressions so well. This might explain why autistic children tend not to look straight at you. They look to the side. Long thought to be a sign of poor socialization, this may in fact be the best way they can see people’s expressions because there are more black and white light receptors at the edge of the visual field than in the middle.

  Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and Dr. Mary Megson has, simply by giving cod liver oil containing natural, unadulterated vitamin A, reported rapid and dramatic improvements in autism, often within a week of th
e subjects’ starting cod liver oil.7

  Toxic foods

  Sugar

  A diet high in refined carbohydrates is not good for anyone, and many parents believe than eating sweets promotes hyperactivity and aggression in their children. Many studies do consistently report that hyperactive children have higher sugar consumption than other children,8 and reducing dietary sugar has been found to halve disciplinary actions in young offenders.9

  A study of 265 hyperactive children found that more than three-quarters displayed abnormal glucose tolerance.10 Glucose is the main fuel for the brain and body, and when blood glucose levels fluctuate wildly all day on a roller-coaster ride of refined carbohydrates, stimulants, sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks, juices, and little or no fiber to slow the glucose absorption, it is not surprising that levels of activity, concentration, focus, and behavior will also fluctuate wildly, as is seen in children with ADHD. The calming effect sometimes observed after sugar consumption may well be the initial normalization of blood sugar from a hypoglycemic state during which the brain and cognitive functions controlling behavior were starved of fuel.

  Wheat and milk

  Not only is breast milk best for essential fats and vitamin A; breast-feeding up to the age of at least four months is essential to limit a child’s chances of developing sensitivity to milk.

  In addition to these likely deficiencies, the most significant contributing factor in autism appears to be undesirable foods and chemicals that often reach the brain via the bloodstream because of faulty digestion and absorption. The most common offending foods are wheat, high in gluten, and dairy products containing casein. These proteins are difficult to digest and, especially if introduced too early in life, may result in an allergy. Fragments of these proteins, called peptides, can mimic chemicals in the brain called endorphins, so are often referred to as “exorphins.” These exporphin peptides have damaging opioid-like effects in the brain, leading to many of the symptoms found in children with behavioral problems. Researchers at the Autism Research Unit at Sunderland University (United Kingdom) have found increased levels of these peptides in the blood and urine of children with autism.11

  To understand how these common foods can be so harmful to sensitive individuals, we need to look at how they get into the body via the gut. Opioid peptides are derived from the incomplete digestion of proteins, particularly food containing gluten and casein. One such peptide (LAG), derived from gluten in wheat, is detected in 80 percent of autistic people.12 So the first problem is the poor digestion of proteins, which is what happens if you are zinc deficient. But even then, these partially digested protein fragments shouldn’t enter the bloodstream. So how do they? Vitamin A and essential fat deficiency is certainly one culprit, but there may be more.

  Improving children’s behavior and mental performance

  To test the effect of all these factors together, I designed a one-week experiment. Working with a British television news program, we selected a class of thirty children aged six to seven years in a London primary school and identified twelve children who were most disruptive and had learning difficulties.

  For one week the children and their parents were asked to not eat or drink foods containing added sugar or additives. The children were also asked to eat more fish and put seeds on their morning cereal. Seeds and fish are good sources of essential fats. In addition, they were given a fruit juice drink with added vitamins.

  Four out of the twelve children showed a dramatic improvement in behavior, concentration, reading, and writing. Reece was one of these children; at the beginning of the week he had real problems concentrating, sitting still, reading, and writing. By the end of the week, he had gone through a Jekyll and Hyde transformation. Examples of a writing test he was given at the beginning and end of the week appear on the next two pages. Not only did he write one and a half pages on the latter, compared with four lines on the former, but also his handwriting improved dramatically. His mother, who was skeptical about the trial, said, “I thought that nothing could calm this child down. We’d seen a psychologist but they didn’t help. He was very fidgety, he was hard to get into bed, hyperactive, and constantly on the go and with occasional tantrums. Now he’s a completely different child. He’s a lot calmer and he wants to do more at school. In two weeks his reading has gone up a level. He doesn’t get so overexcited and he’s much nicer to be with. We are definitely going to stick with the diet.”

  Of course, not everything can be blamed on diet and nutritional deficiencies. As with adults, modern living is also proving stressful for children. Too many children are pressured to perform in a century where the motto is “succeed and achieve.” Perhaps living out their parents’ dissatisfactions, they go from school, to piano, to extra coaching, with no time left to do nothing or to play. Combine these psychological pressures with poor diet, and too many children go over the edge into mental health problems. Some want to go further. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 276,000 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 will try to kill themselves each year. About 5,000 will succeed. More than ever, our children need love, support, and optimum nutrition.

  Supplements for children

  The best time to start supplementing a child’s diet is as soon as she is no longer being breast-fed (during breast-feeding, it’s the mother who needs supplements). I recommend that you start supplementing your child’s diet when she begins to rely more on solid food rather than breast milk as her main source of nutrients. This is usually around the age of six to nine months. The ideal daily supplement program, from weaning to the age of eleven, is shown in the chart on this page.

  Reece’s handwriting before

  and after one week of optimum nutrition.

  THE IDEAL DAILY SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM

  Choosing the right supplements

  Many companies formulate single multivitamin and mineral supplements that incorporate all the necessary nutrients especially for children (see Resources). The chart provided above gives you a guideline as to the levels of nutrients to look for. You can choose chewable (crushable in the early stages) or liquid formulas, depending on your (or your child’s) preferences.

  You should ideally give your child her supplement with breakfast, but certainly not last thing at night as the B vitamins can have a mild stimulatory effect. Children also tend to be more susceptible to vitamin toxicity than adults, and while the doses listed are well within any potentially toxic limits for even the most sensitive child, don’t be tempted to give more than the recommended levels unless under the direction and supervision of a nutritional therapist.

  Essential fats to boost IQ

  As long as your child is eating oily fish three times a week and a daily portion of seeds, she should be getting a good level of essential fats to help her brain develop and boost IQ. However, if she doesn’t eat fish or seeds every day, I recommend that you supplement her diet with an essential fatty acid formula. Look for one that contains both GLA (omega-6) and DHA and EPA (omega-3), which are the most important omega-3 fats for development (see Resources). The above chart gives you the rough quantities to aim for in a supplement, assuming the child is receiving the same again from seeds and the occasional fish.

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  Puberty, PMS, Menopause, and Andropause

  The transition from child to adult is no less easy biologically than psychologically At puberty, the body undergoes rapid changes focused on sexual development that require optimal nutrition to avoid “side effects.” These include acne, obesity, and eating, mental, and behavioral problems. These are common indications that the person is not adapting as well as possible to the changes.

  Both girls and boys need relatively more vitamins A, D, and B6, and biotin, zinc, calcium, magnesium, and essential fatty acids during puberty. In an assessment of nutritional needs (see this page), these nutrients are upped between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Once a child reaches fourteen, his nutritional needs are essentially the same as
those of adults, with a greater emphasis on these nutrients, plus an ongoing need for adequate protein because adolescents are still growing.

  Of these nutrients, zinc and magnesium are most often found to be lacking. Zinc is needed for sexual maturation by both sexes, but boys need more. The relative decline in the growth rate of boys during adolescence is probably partly due to suboptimal intake of zinc—what zinc they do have is taken for sexual maturation in preference to growth. Growth problems, “growing pains,” and acne are all possible indications of a lack of zinc.

  The teenage years are also associated with increasing “food freedom” and it is important that teenagers learn to nourish themselves. If they are not given nutrition education from school or their parents, they opt for food that tastes good, rather than food that does them good. The link between food and good skin and physical and mental strength needs to be emphasized, since these are all desired qualities. The key habits to encourage are:

  Eating seeds, perhaps a tablespoon of ground seeds on cereal—these are very rich in zinc, magnesium, and essential fatty acids.

  Eating fruit in preference to sweets and fatty, sugary snacks.

  Always having some vegetables with a meal; most schools have no idea how to make vegetables enticing, and teenagers often develop an aversion to them during their school years.

  Eating real meals rather than refueling on the move.