Though drugs can help manage the symptoms of ADHD, 20%-30% of kids either don’t respond or quit the drugs due to side effects. A safe, natural treatment that worked better would be a welcome breakthrough. This not noticed enough study may have found one.
ADHD affects at least 7.2% of school aged children globally. Though less discussed, its many challenges often continue into adulthood.
Drugs can help manage the symptoms in the short term, but long-term studies have suggested that drugs have no benefit over no treatment at all for reducing symptom severity or improving academic performance. Though they do little good, they may do significant harm. ADHD drugs can cause sleep disturbances, suppressed appetite and reduced height as an adult.
A 2018 double-blind study that lasted 10 weeks found that a broad-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement improved emotional regulation, aggression, inattention and general functioning in kids with ADHD.
Now the researchers have followed the kids to evaluate the effectiveness of the natural supplement in the long term.
The supplement included a broad spectrum of common vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, C, D, E, K, the B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, selenium and more. the kids were divided into 3 groups: those who continued the supplement without drugs, those who continued drugs without the supplement, and those who stopped both.
After one year, 84% of the children taking the multivitamin-mineral were responders, meaning they were much or very much improved, versus 50% of those who took the drugs. Only 21% of the kids who did no treatment were responders. That result for the multi is significantly better than the drugs.
Another remarkable result was that, at the end of one year, significantly more kids on the multi were remitters, meaning their ADHD scores were now in the healthy range. While 42% of the kids who continued on the drugs went into remission, 79% of those on the nutrients did.
There was still one more advantage to the multi over the drugs: no one using the multivitamin-mineral supplement reported an adverse event.
J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol. 2019;29(9):688-704.