Jeremy, a second grader, began having sudden “anger spells” when he was in pre-school, at the age of four. His achievement levels in reading and other basic school subjects were also low, and his teachers were concerned about his attention span. When they recommended Ritalin, Jeremy’s mother, Susannah, brought him to see me at the Tahoma Clinic in the hopes of an alternative. She’d noticed some strange symptoms on Jeremy––dark under eye circles and horizontal creases on his lower eyelids––and she wondered if he had allergies.

She was right. Nearly all children diagnosed as “hyperactive” have allergies and sensitivities, especially food allergies.

I learned about the link between allergy and sensitivity and attention deficit disorder back in 1979 when I read Dr. James C. Breneman’s book Basics of Food Allergy.

There are many ways to identify food sensitivity. Physicians and other health-care practitioners have found that elimination diets, certain types of skin tests, blood tests, muscle testing, electrodermal testing, and radionics are all helpful in the identification of food sensitivity. Not all techniques work for everyone, and food sensitivity testing and evaluation can be just asindividual as the food sensitivities themselves.

Treatments for these sensitivities are also very individualizedand can include an array of techniques. Dr. Breneman’s technique involves following an elimination diet. During the first week, you’ll eat only foods that are less likely to cause allergies (Dr. Breneman had his patients eat things like rice, spinach, and beef). Then you add back the foods you normally eat, one at a time to see if they cause your symptoms to return.

If you’d rather explore other testing options, contact the American Academy for Environmental Medicine (www.aaem.com) for a list of physicians near you who are skilled in allergy screening and treatment.

It turned out that Jeremy was sensitive to milk and dairy products, wheat, soy, oranges, and 27 other foods. With the help of a nutritionist, Susannah put together a temporary diet plan for Jeremy while desensitization was done. It took seven months to complete Jeremy’s desensitization. During this time, he also began taking a multiple-vitamin/mineral combination along with 50 milligrams of vitamin B6 and 100 milligrams of magnesium per day.

By the third grade, Jeremy’s behavior was described by his teachers as “not hyperactive at all, just normal and bright.” His “anger spells” were gone entirely. He caught up in all his subjects, and by theend of the year he had started to excel.

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