So many children and some adults present with a high level of activity and energy throughout their day, which is considered to be “hyperactivity”. While sometimes as an adult you may feel that being hyper can make you feel more productive, most times this high level of activity can be detrimental to your health.  For adults, this can stress your home life, your marriage, your ability to be focused and follow through with home or work projects and your health, such as your adrenal glands.  Then you may crave salty foods, sweets and most commonly lots of caffeine.

When it comes to hyperactivity in children, this impacts their success at school in order to sit still, pay attention and complete their work assignments, as well as pay attention to the details of their assignments in order to do them correctly.  At home, this hyperactivity affects their attention and focusing ability to complete morning and evening routines without needing reminders, and getting their homework done in a reasonable time frame (without having to pull teeth or have emotional outbursts from someone in the family).

So, we are going to look at two ways to calm these hyper kids:

First, we need to look at their diets, as a children with hyperactivity have a very active brain!

Adding red dye #40 or other food colorings, preservatives, artificial ingredients and sugar to their diet may make their symptoms worse.  This includes caffeine which is found in chocolate, and sugar free ingredients (which are chemicals that are not natural, that stimulate the brain even more).

If you eliminate these foods for a few weeks and you see grater calmness, then you are onto something.  A local practitioner here has told our clients that a 1/4 cup of juice is enough sugar for a kid to last all day. So, keep this in mind when trying to make some of these adjustments.

Secondly, we need to look at the child’s activity level!  Movement and muscle work are two powerful ways to regulate kids.

An example of home activities that would be helpful include physical activity in the morning, running club before school, swimming, and/or completing animal walks.

Kids cannot sit still and pay attention if their bodies are craving movement!  Most children in my practice that are hyperactive have under responsive vestibular systems.  So they need more input than their peers.  If this is the case- these kids need physical activity at home before doing homework and before bedtime so they can be calm enough to fall asleep.

I hope these suggestions are enlightening and helpful! Best of luck to you all!

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