The Incident of the Blue Icee

I decided to repost this for those of you who may have missed it the first time.

We took Ryan to see a movie when he was 5 years old. As most kids do, he wanted popcorn and a blue icee. So as a wonderful mother, I complied, much to his delight. After the movie, as we were leaving the theater, he starting jumping and running with wonderful enthusiasm. I took it as a happy boy who loved the movie. But- as we continued to the car and then in to the car, he just physically could not keep himself still – AT ALL. By this time, I was very used to his inability to sit still, but this was more than his usual activity.

We got home, and he just literally became a whirling dervish. I asked him if he was feeling OK, and of course he said quickly, “yeah, I gots lots of energy!” Whirling around the house, I got him outside, a little afraid that he would break something, and he just continued to whirl around the yard. OK – this just wasn’t normal. I could not get him to calm down. After an hour or so, he slowly came back down to earth and crashed landed on the couch. My thought was that maybe sitting in a theater watching a movie for almost 2 hours was just a little too much for him to sit still and he had extra energy that he just had to get out.

A few months later, we repeated the entire process. New movie, blue icee, crazy energy and behavior. At this point I thought that maybe there was something going on with what he had eaten or drunk. An idea of an experiment started rattling around in my brain. What if it were the blue icee causing the problem? Next time, I decided to do the same thing to see what happened. (You may be thinking, why would a mother do an experiment on her own child. Trust me, “all” parents of kids with ADHD do experiments on their kids to find out why and how things happen)

Next movie – blue ice, major craziness.

Next movie – no blue icee, no major craziness.

What was with the blue icee? Sugar? Or chemicals in the blue food coloring?

Just a theory of mine – but I believe it was the food coloring.

But a short word about sugar first. Most if not all medical practitioners will tell you that sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. And most if not all parents will say the opposite. Seriously – I’ve seen first hand in my own kids when they ate sugar, had crazy energy, and then crash. There might be science behind the idea that sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity, but come on – parents should be the go to on this one! That said, the energy behind Ryan’s behavior after the icee was something else entirely.

Back to food coloring. There have been numerous studies done on the relationship between food dye and hyperactivity in children. All you have to do is google it. I encourage you to do so. I’m sure that it affects all children differently. But, if a child has ADHD, it’s quite a recipe for an explosion. Ryan’s napalm is blue dye specifically. Many kids have problems with other dye colors, primarily red.

Since the discovery of the issue with the blue icee, Ryan has stayed away from anything that has blue dye in it. When he was younger and something blue was offered to him, he would just innocently say that he couldn’t have it because it made him crazy. He would have M&M’s and take out all the blue ones, and give them to me. He refused blue popsicles and would scrape blue icing off birthday cakes. Now that he’s older, he knows that it messes more with his brain’s hyperactivity vs his body’s hyperactivity. But he still stays away from it.

Evaluating your child’s diet for chemicals and removing what you can is important. Eating as clean as possible is the best solution. And if you need to use food dye for a cake icing or other baked goods, try to choose the natural plant based dyes that are available. I’ll discuss diet and eating clean in a later blog.