Learning and Behavioral Problems in Children; Food, Nutrition & Diet Revision

The wrong food choices, adverse food chemistry and food allergy contribute to learning and behavioral problems in children. Whenever children are sick or influenced by food and/or airborne chemicals, their brain function is compromised and symptoms include disturbances of sensing, feeling, remembering and acting. Their learning is impaired and their behavior may be disturbed. The intention of compassionate biological management is to restore orderly, normal functioning of the child by careful environmental and food input control.

Stephen J. Gislason MD

Learning is an attempt to modify brain function. A biological view regards mental states and behavior as products of brain function. Teaching is an intentional effort to constructively alter the brain function of students in a lasting fashion. While information is the pedagogical input to the student's brain, food and air may be regarded as the main input of chemical information into the student's body-brain system.

If the food supply is biologically inappropriate or a child is hypersensitive and reacts inappropriately to food, dysfunction and disease are the result. The increased presence of non-nutrient molecules in the blood stream in the form of additive, contaminants, toxins, and intoxicants makes brain dysfunction more likely and more difficult to interpret.

What's wrong in the food supply?

Standard food rules suggest that children eat from the four food groups: milk, eggs, meat, and whole grain cereals as staple foods. Is this good advice? Official food selection advice misdirects a significant number of children into illness and behavioral problems caused by food allergy to these staple foods. Boxed cereal and milk is a common breakfast. The cereal has been nutritionally fortified, and so has the milk; nutrient intake may be satisfactory by nutrient accounting, but what about the impact of the food on the child as a whole? We find that milk and wheat allergy is common in children and may cause both physical symptoms and contributes to learning and behavioral problems. A peanut butter-jam sandwich and a carton of milk must be the most common school lunch, followed by the most common afternoon symptoms - flushing, congestion, fatigue, irritability, and inability to concentrate.

During the first year of life, the infant diet is the most powerful determinant of the growth and development of the child and food allergy is the most common health problem. We have learned that breast feeding is best and that the feeding of solid foods is best delayed to 6 months or longer to reduce the chance of food allergy.

Allergy in infancy is expressed as crying, colic, vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, eczema and cold-like respiratory congestion. Some infants with food allergy become seriously ill and fail to thrive unless their allergy is recognized and corrected. Allergy to cow's milk protein is the dominant problem during the first year. Infants who develop food allergy in their first year may "outgrow" the first effects but tend to grow into children with more pervasive health, behavior and learning problems unless their diet is properly managed.

What is Food Allergy?

Food allergy is a complex series of events which involves the interaction of food materials with the immune system inside the child's body. The effects can be multiple and symptoms can stretch out over time, involving the child in a series of repeating health problems. We refer to delayed patterns of food allergy as the "great imitator", since immune responses to food materials can produce the symptoms of many diseases. The most common problems are sore throats, ear infections, lymph node swelling, digestive disorders, skin eruptions, especially eczema and hives, respiratory problems from runny noses to asthma or pneumonia, headaches, muscle and joint pains, and abdominal pains.

We recognize the association of physical symptoms with emotional, behavioral and learning disturbances. The emotional-behavioral problems we see in children with faulty diets range from depression to attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity. The earliest disturbances are often irritability, moodiness, and sleep disorders, especially nightmares and night terrors. Some children are hyperactive and become difficult to manage at home and later in school; they tend to be impulsive, easily distracted, and may be unusually aggressive or prone to anger and tantrums. Other children wilt and withdraw, often with chronic or recurrent symptoms such as headache, stomach aches, leg pains, sore throats, middle ear infections and complaints of general malaise and fatigue. The depressed children express grave self-doubts and occasionally alarming thoughts that life is not worth living. At school, learning difficulties are caused by inattention, memory loss, distractibility and often the inability to carry out instructions without constant reminders.

The trials and tribulations of parents are many, and often parents feel guilty and confused about their children's emotional and behavioral problems when expertise in behavioral management would make no difference at all. The disturbed children have body input problems or food problems. Food allergic illness is associated with behavioral disturbances which grow by a natural evolution of dysfunction and social maladaptation into major life problems. There are many ways for food problems to interfere with a child's normal functioning and to promote disease. We assume that several problems interact in a complex manner to produce the symptoms and dysfunction that we seek to remedy.

Brief Note on Delayed Pattern Food Allergy

In this section we are discussing delayed food allergy, not the more obvious immediate food allergic reactions. Delayed patterns of food allergy are not so obvious and generally go unrecognized. Allergy skin tests do not show this problem nor do blood tests for antibodies such as RAST or ELIZA. Delayed patterns of food allergy are responsible for causing specific diseases such as asthma and eczema and also common but ill-defined illness patterns in children.

The Alpha Nutrition Program is proposed to help solve learning and behavior problems in children. The Alpha Nutrition tends to solve food allergy problems, generates healthy eating practices, and encourages a return to adaptive self-regulation. In families, this is only possible if everyone cooperates and everyone succeeds at getting better. A tall order. A healthy mind requires correct, coherent, consistent molecular input to the brain.

It is always necessary, therefore, to correct nutritional problems by complete diet revision using the the Alpha Nutrition Program. A children's rescue starter pack combines this program with the Book of Children in printed or eBook format with a 500 Gram jar of Alpha ENF, our complete nutrition, food replacement formula.