My Feingold Story
The story of my life on the Feingold Diet begins way back in the first grade, or perhaps even in Kindergarden. At that time, I spent my days at Yavneh Day School, a small private Jewish school in Los Gatos, CA. During that period, I displayed many behaviors that are indicative of ADD or ADHD. I was very bright, but I found it very difficult to sit through subjects that were not my favorite and didn't hold my attention well. I had a hard time sitting still and would tend to fidget in my seat. The most notable sign, however, was a hair-trigger temper that was easily set off by the teasing I would get from the fifth and sixth graders. I don't remember how it actually started, but I can only imagine that it did not take the "bullies" of the school (I say "bullies" in quotes because they really weren't bullies in the traditional sense. I was never physically assaulted or threatened that I can remember.) to realize that I was someone from whom they could get a reaction with their teasing and their insults. Once they realized that, I was never left alone. Every single time I encountered one of them, I'd get the same insult. The problem was that I took it as an attack and I responded in kind. Not the brightest idea for a first-grader to fly into a rage and try to beat up the fifth grader, but, as I said, I had a hair trigger temper.
Needless to say, this sort of reaction on my part did not endear me to the administration at my little school, and so I spent a great deal of time in the principal's office. Always being in trouble, however, did not inspire me to get better about not responding physically to the onslaught of teasing. In fact, I always (and to some extent still do, but my views on school administrators is something for another story) thought it was horribly unfair that I was always the one in trouble when they were the ones that always started the conflict.
At some point in early to mid first grade (and mostly at the insistence of the people at Yavneh), I was put on Ritalin (methylphenidate), a stimulant drug commonly prescribed for ADHD. I was taking a small dose, 5 mg twice a day, and although the teachers at Yavneh said it was working, my parents tell me that on weekends, they wouldn't be able to tell whether they'd given it to me or not, as they couldn't see a difference. My mother, especially, never liked the idea of me being on Ritalin as she is very much against unnecessary medication and she couldn't see any real changes in my behavior. In fact, the teachers at Yavneh, convinced that Ritalin was the answer said I should be on a higher dose. By mid second grade my mother had done more research and discovered the Feingold diet, which we decided to try out. One event in particular was absolutely convincing of the validity of this approach:
The event was a birthday party for one of the students at the school, the son of my Kindergarden teacher. My mother talked to her on the phone to find out what food would be there that I could eat. As we were on the way to the party, I was calm, rational (as rational as you can expect from a 7-year-old on the way to a birthday party), and sat peacefully in the car as my mother told me not to eat the candy, but that the cake and ice cream were fine. What we didn't know was that my former teacher had been, unable to get the vanilla ice cream she and my mom had talked about, but got pistachio instead, which was green. Artificial green. When my mother came to pick me up, I was a hyper motor-mouth and supposedly wasn't making a lot of sense as I talked. Worlds away from the calm kid I was on the way there. With that, my parents were convinced the diet worked.
Somewhere around this time I saw six different doctors to find out if I was really ADHD. Of the six, five said I was not ADHD but had sensory integration dysfunction. Only one of the doctors said I was probably ADHD, and the principal at Yavneh listened to this one. As such, the Yavneh people were convinced that Ritalin was the answer and wanted me to stay on it, and in fact to increase the dosage.
The end of Ritalin came in October of my third grade year. Since the teachers at Yavneh wanted me to take a higher dose, I went in on Monday and had a double dose of Ritalin. Then I went in on Tuesday and had a double dose of Ritalin. Both of these days were trouble free so of course everyone at Yavneh thought the Ritalin was working. Wednesday at Yavneh was pizza day, and on the Feingold Diet I had had to miss out on this for quite a while so I was overjoyed when, thanks to the fact that the double dose of Ritalin was working, I got to eat pizza with everyone else on Wednesday (along with my double dose of Ritalin). Well, shortly after eating the not-completely-natural pizza you can guess what happened. I was teased, I struck back, and that convinced my parents that the Ritalin was not helping at all.
As a humorous (in hindsight) end to the Ritalin saga, that weekend when I was taken off Ritalin, I was dizzy, had an upset stomach, and generally felt really crappy. My parents were worried that I was going through withdrawal and even called the doctor (who of course said I shouldn't be taken off the drug)... well it turned out I wasn't going through withdrawal, I was coming down with the flu.
Shortly thereafter I was removed from Yavneh, and I had a week off before I started attending the local public elementary school. I remember my father saying that being removed from Yavneh wasn't really the result of anything I'd done so I wasn't in trouble, and so I got a free week of vacation. I started my time in public school on Tuesday November 1st (why start on Halloween and have to see everyone else enjoying their artificially colored and flavored candy?).
My time in the public school system was not totally smooth, despite being on the diet. I was still in trouble frequently, especially in the early years, and usually for the same reasons as back at Yavneh, striking back easily when provoked. The circumstances, however, were different. Despite being in trouble a lot, I was not out-of-control like I had been before Feingold. As the new kid I was once again the target of all the bullies but now this was public school and things were different. When I struck back it wasn't an extreme reaction to one person teasing me, rather it was almost invariably a response to a situation where I felt I had no other way out, especially since experience had taught me that the school administration would not be coming to my defense. Over time, though, I got into less and less trouble. Junior high was easier than elementary school, and high school better yet.