Most people think the brain is "sacred", immune to chemical attack. In fact the brain is the most complex and fragile organ of all, and food sensitivities often affect personality long before physical symptoms appear. Consider the area of cognitive skills, attention, and even raw intelligence. I've seen my daughter's IQ vary by 30 points (my own estimate) from one day to the next, depending on what she eats. Let's rewind to the beginning of 1999.
Although Mary exhibited no overt behavioral problems at home or in school, she was literally failing her classes. Her teacher reported wild day-to-day fluctuations in scholastic aptitude, and we noticed the same at home. Sometimes she read her primer without effort, but more often the simplest words represented formidable obstacles. She couldn't concentrate on anything. Every little stimulus represented a distraction, and if she sat in a room alone she would invent her own distractions, staring at her hands, playing with her pencil, etc. When we forced her to focus on the work she cried in despair. "I can't do it. It's too hard."
One night my Aunt took Mary out for dinner as a special treat and inadvertently performed an experiment for us. Mary ate grilled cheese and chocolate ice cream, a meal that contains yellow dyes in the cheese, preservatives in the bread, artificial everything in the margarine, preservatives and gums in the ice cream, wheat, dairy, and sugar everywhere! The next morning Mary could not write the numbers 1 to 20. She reflected some of the digits like a dyslexic, and writing a two-digit number was out of the question. We spent five minutes working on the number 16. She wrote 61, or reflected the 6, but couldn't write 16 - as though her hand had a mind of its own. We sent her off to school, though I'm not sure why. The next morning we asked her to perform the same task, and she whipped off all 20 numbers in a nice clean row and wondered why we were asking her to do such a silly thing.
With this compelling evidence in hand, We skipped the various drug regimens, which didn't work for John in any case, and placed her on the Feingold diet as well. This diet, described in an earlier article, avoids most of the 20th century additives, preservatives, and colors. Her dyslexia disappeared, and has not returned. To be fair, some traces linger. She still confuses b and d, in reading and writing, but by any standard test, she is not dyslexic, and she certainly would be if she ate processed foods.
Although her dyslexia was gone, she still exhibited wild fluctuations in concentration and intelligence. Some days she could read at her grade level, yet on other days standardized tests showed she was two years behind. What was causing these variations? We explored dozens of theories, to many to describe in this brief article. After 18 months of research, we still don't understand her disorder and its connection to foods. However, she performs better, and thinks more clearly, when she eats a healthier diet, low in sugar and free of chemical additives.
Kids with reading problems are rarely sent to a dietician; how did we ever stumble upon the food connection? The answer is her brother John, who has serious behavioral problems that would not yield to medication. We found that his symptoms were aggravated by certain foods, so we suspected the same would be true of her. Their diets are not identical, not even close, but they both react to various foods and food additives. I wonder -- if Mary were an only child, what would become of her? We would have spent money hand over fist on Hooked On Phonics, the Sylvan Learning Center, and so on. These are all fine programs, but of no use to Mary. I don't know if we would have discovered the food connection. I'm afraid she would have tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, until there was no point in trying any more. How many other well-behaved children are failing in school because they react to certain foods or food additives? Their parents are not likely to type "food additives" or "allergies" into a search engine -- they'll be extraordinarily lucky if they ever consider diet therapy at all.
If your child is "learning disabled", a label that means many different things, and if his or her abilities vary widely from one day to the next, food could be a factor. After consulting with your physician, you might consider some dietary changes, to see if it helps. One thing is sure - avoiding artificial additives and cutting back on sugar won't do any harm.