LCP Solution: The Remarkable Nutritional Treatment for ADHD, Dyslexia, and Dyspraxia

by B. Jacqueline Stordy Ph.D., Malcolm J. Nicholl

Overview

This important new book documents a major breakthrough in the treatment of the three most widespread learning disabilities--ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia ("clumsy child syndrome"). Although these conditions have reached epidemic proportions, treatment has been limited to ineffective behavioral therapies or the controversial prescription drug Ritalin. Now Dr. B. Jacqueline Stordy, a leading researcher in the field, reveals a stunning new treatment based on a simple nutritional supplement: LCP (long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids). The LCP Solution is the first book to describe this new natural treatment and to explain how children (and adults) can incorporate it into their daily lives.

As a member of a family with a long history of dyslexia, Dr. Stordy discovered in a pioneering experiment that dyslexic and dyspraxic children who began taking a dietary supplement consisting of LCP experienced dramatic transformations in the quality of their lives. At the same time, parallel studies conducted at Purdue University came up with similar results with children who had ADHD. The effect of this dietary supplement was nothing short of revolutionary: after only a few weeks, dyslexic and ADHD children became calmer, more focused, easier to teach, while dyspraxics improved significantly in dexterity and balance, showing markedly less anxiety.

In The LCP Solution, Dr. Stordy documents how this life-changing treatment came about and explains step-by-step how sufferers of each of the three major conditions can use it to change their lives at home, at school, and at work. Illuminating, vividly presented, and authoritative in its findings, this book will revolutionize our approach to learning disabilities. LCPs are natural, simple to use, and amazing in their benefits. If you or someone you love suffers from a learning disability, this book is essential reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345446879
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/20/2001
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	354
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

B. Jacqueline Stordy, PhD, is an internationally recognized figure in the field of nutrition. She has served on advisory committees established by the British government and the European Community. For many years, she was senior lecturer of nutrition in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Surrey. She was also director of nutrition degrees at the University of Surrey, managing Europe’s largest undergraduate nutrition program. She is an affiliate member of the British Dietetic Association and a member of the Nutrition Society. She lives with her family in Guildford, England.

Malcolm J. Nicholl is a journalist who has written extensively on nutrition and education. His books include The Amazing Micro Diet, The Loser-Friendly Diet, and The Network Strategy. He is also the author, with Colin Rose, of Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century. He lives in San Diego, California.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION
 
My son is dyslexic. With the benefit of hindsight I’m sure that my father, an exceptionally bright and talented man, was also dyslexic. Other close family members have various learning disorders, and I believe I have a mild form of dyslexia myself. I hate to write, that’s for sure.
 
Learning disorders do run in families, and mine is no exception. It’s true, too, that many, many people with learning challenges are amazingly talented, creative, and entrepreneurial. They are people who have achieved the pinnacles of success in their chosen careers—whether politicians, scientists, businessmen, and, yes, even writers—in spite of having what might be considered an overwhelming handicap.
 
My personal experience has given me a valuable insight into the lives of those individuals who face the day-to-day ordeal of living with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, and dyspraxia. It has also instilled in me a genuine empathy and immense regard for all of those children whose lives are touched by a problem that has them offhandedly dismissed as unruly, dumb, lazy, or clumsy.
 
It’s especially distressing when the reality is that such youngsters begin life with the deck stacked against them, that they have a biological predisposition to their personal learning disorder. These youngsters have a genetic imprint making it so much harder for them to pay attention, to learn to read and write, to be coordinated, or to excel on the sports field.
 
There was a point when my personal and professional experiences interfaced, one of those “lightbulb” events—a crystallizing moment. It began when my son, James, at the age of seven, was identified as having dyslexia. He was obviously intelligent, but he was not performing in school to the level everyone expected. He had a phenomenal vocabulary, but his reading was not up to his age group and his spelling, quite frankly, could only be described as bizarre.
 
When he was diagnosed as dyslexic it made me think of my own challenges. Even today, I can vividly remember being asked, in primary school, to write a paragraph and panicking with every word I struggled to put on the page. As I got older, I managed to learn the rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar that seem to dyslexic children like the code of some secret society to which they have not been admitted. Verbally, I have never had any difficulty whatsoever. I spent more than thirty wonderful years teaching dietitians and nutritionists at the largest undergraduate program of its kind in Europe. I thoroughly enjoyed putting thoughts together into a constructive argument, as well as explaining sophisticated and complex scientific research. I still do. But I’ve always disliked writing, and that continues to be a real burden.
 
My aversion to writing reminds me of my father. He left school at an early age during the Great Depression. Later, in his twenties, he talked his way into a university engineering course, even though he didn’t have the appropriate qualifications. As I’ve subsequently discovered, that’s a typical dyslexic approach—verbal and convincing. My father was very entrepreneurial, and went on to successfully build his own business, notwithstanding his poor skills with the written word.
 
And then came James. When he was diagnosed as dyslexic, it prompted me to reflect not only about my father and myself, but also about my whole family history. Other close relatives are extremely intelligent, but nevertheless have signs of learning disorders that were never officially recognized. One day it occurred to me that relatives who had been breast-fed the longest were less affected by dyslexia than those who had not been breast-fed at all, or had been breast-fed for a relatively short period.
 
What was the connection?
 
Mother’s milk, of course, is the ultimate nourishment for a newborn baby, containing specific fatty acids critical, in particular, for brain and visual development. The brain itself is comprised of 60 percent fat and major components are the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPs) that are the primary focus of this book. These LCPs are, in effect, the building blocks of the all-important phospholipid membranes around and within nerve cells. Every human thought and every human action that originates inside the awesomely elaborate human brain can only occur when the brain receives the nutritional support of the LCPs. One of these LCPs, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), is also a major constituent of membranes in the cone and rod cells of the retina and is, therefore, vital for eyesight.
 
For a person to read and write effectively requires sensory input from vision, hearing, or touch, and central processing in the brain. The ability to write requires messages from the brain being relayed by motor nerves to the muscles of the hand. So, taking all of this into account, I began to wonder if some kind of disorder of fatty acid metabolism could be implicated in dyslexia. This was the trigger that initiated my investigation into the potential role of LCPs in learning disorders. My initial research with dyslexics led to further study with dyspraxic children (or as the condition is officially titled, developmental coordination disorder). At the same time, in the United States, pivotal research along the same lines, but with ADHD children, was under way at Purdue University, spearheaded by John Burgess and Laura Stevens.
 
Intriguingly, a common genetic basis to ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia is strongly indicated as all of these conditions tend to run in the same families and are often co-morbid—that is, they occur together. That common basis, in the studies conducted so far, strongly suggests a defect in fatty acid metabolism, and that these learning disorders can be improved when an individual is supplemented with LCPs. Studies at Oxford University, using brain scans to peer inside the active brains of dyslexic patients, have now provided support for this proposition.
 
In the wider world of research, other clues have emerged. There is now plentiful evidence of a deficiency of LCPs in the modern diet. This is the direct result of a change in our eating habits (through manufacturing processes and by choice), and a reduction in the numbers of mothers breast-feeding. Within the same time frame—the last one hundred years—corresponding to the decrease in LCP intake there has been a dramatic increase in learning disorders. Further studies—including double-blind, placebo-controlled trials—are already in progress, but I am confident that a doorway has been opened that can lead to a meaningful difference in the lives of the tens of millions of people afflicted with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia.
 
In this book I provide the scientific evidence gathered to date—much of it in just the last couple of years. I also share with you the experiences of health professionals in the field, and some of the touching stories of children whose lives have already been transformed as a result of LCP supplementation. In my view, there is compelling data indicating that a new solution to the problems experienced by many sufferers of ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia is now at hand. But that is not all. In addition, I provide other nutritional and educational information to help people with learning disorders and the families who support them.
 
—B. JACQUELINE STORDY, PH.D.
 
As far as I was concerned, kids with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder were the troublemakers who couldn’t sit still and who turned classrooms into chaos. Dyslexics were just children who couldn’t read very well, couldn’t construct sentences, wrote their letters backwards. Dyspraxia? Developmental coordination disorder? Like 95 percent of the population, I’d never heard of this condition, although I was familiar with extremely clumsy children who were the proverbial accidents waiting to happen.
 
Then, Dr. Jacqueline Stordy, a scientist I’d known and respected for more than a decade, told me about her fascinating research and that of other experts in the field. I was immediately hooked. As a professional writer since my teens, I was intrigued by the thought of investigating the painful predicament of individuals who found it hard to read the simple sentences of a tabloid newspaper, or to construct a brief, legible letter.
 
So much of society today is based on the ability to acquire and use information, to read books, surf the Internet, write reports, correspond quickly and efficiently not just office to office but country to country—and all at the press of a button. What was it like to be disenfranchised from this world? What was it like to be isolated from communicating effectively with one’s peers? Interesting questions. Interesting subject. From a purely objective standpoint I was curious and anxious to learn more. Unlike Dr. Stordy, I had had no direct personal experience of any of these learning disorders. But what started as an academic and journalistic exercise became much more. When you hear the heart-wrenching stories of parents struggling to come to terms with their children’s learning handicaps, you cannot help but experience an emotional charge. You ask yourself, “How on earth do they cope? How do they manage?
 
By and large, the unsung heroes are the parents, who see beyond their own child’s learning disorder and rise to the challenge. Parents who dedicate themselves to searching out the best approach for their child, who know that beyond the frustrating inability of the moment is a child with long-term, lifelong potential. The determination and resilience of these parents impressed and awed me. But when I fully investigated the work of Dr. Stordy and so many other professional researchers—at highly respected universities and hospitals—new emotions came into force. For now there is hope. Hope that children with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia can have their conditions vastly improved.
 
To my knowledge, this is the first book that has identified and tackled the overlap and interconnection between ADHD, dyslexia, and the lesser-known disorder of dyspraxia, which is much more prevalent than you might imagine. It really took the discovery of a nutritional solution to these distressing problems to highlight the commonalties. Dr. Stordy is the first to say that we are at the beginning, and that all of the answers are by no means available. Finding the ultimate solution is, as she so expressively puts it, like constructing “a three-dimensional jigsaw.” But now there are significant indicators that the kind of supplementation with LCPs advocated by Dr. Stordy and her colleagues is more than merely promising. It’s exciting, and it’s a phenomenal advance that gives great new hope to everyone who is “learning challenged.”
 
—MALCOLM J NICHOLL
 

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
1.	All in the Family	1
	The Disorders	19
2.	ADHD--What We Know So Far	21
3.	Dyslexia--What It Is	47
4.	Dyspraxia--The "Unknown" Disorder	66
	The Science	77
5.	The Fats of Life	79
6.	The Breakthrough Research	103
	The Plan	129
7.	Supplements--The Simple Answer	131
8.	Watch What You Eat	161
9.	Making Life Easier	183
	Putting It Together	215
10.	Doctors Speak Out	217
11.	Networking	232
12.	Real-Life Results	264
	Bibliography	301
Appendix	List of References Specifically for Medical Professionals	323
	Index	000

What People are Saying About This

Christiane Northrup

This book is must reading not only for those suffering from ADHD and related disorders, but also for everyone interested in optimal brain health at any age. (Christiane Northrup, M.D. Author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom)

Editorial Reviews

The dramatic increase in learning disorders in children has prompted researchers to investigate underlying causes and try to identify effective, natural treatments. What they discovered is that people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, and dyspraxia all seem to have a defect in fatty acid metabolism, which can be treated with foods and supplements rich in long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPs). In this well-written book, British nutritionist Stordy clearly explains how LCPs are essential for proper brain development, why harmful fats have such a negative impact on brain function, and why the typical American diet is so deficient in the healthy fats found in cold-water fish and algae. Along with information about the latest scientific research and about strategies to help children cope with learning disorders, Stordy provides real-life stories of the dramatic results that have been achieved by adding supplements. Because LCPs are so crucial during pregnancy and childhood, Stordy also discusses the leading recommended brands of supplements currently available. Marcia Zimmerman's The A.D.D. Solution (LJ 7/99) also emphasizes the advantages of diet therapy over harmful medications like Ritalin, but Stordy focuses more cogently on "the single most important element in promoting a child's ability to overcome a learning disadvantage." Highly recommended for public, academic, and medical libraries.--Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"This book is must reading not only for those suffering from ADHD and related disorders, but also for everyone interested in optimal brain health at any age."
—CHRISTIANE NORTHRUP, M.D.
   Author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

From the Publisher