There has been a theory put forth by a fellow named Dr. Feingold that says that much of what is diagnosed as learning disabilities with respect to hyperactivity is related to diet. He especially targets synthetic food colouring and flavouring.
What is interesting is that he also mentions foods that contain "salicylates." This is a substance that appears in some of the the following very innocuous seeming foods:
almonds
cucumbers
peppers
tomatoes
coffee
berries
There are more foods on the list. But, very few people would be sensitive to all of them. The idea is to cut them all out for two weeks and see if there is a difference and then add them back in one at a time.
The jury is out on the accuracy of this theory. And, it is supposed to help children more than adults.
I have two step children that have food sensitivities. One in particular is sensitive to several of the foods on the list above as well as many artificial preservative and colourings. You can watch a complete change in his personality after he eats one of the foods that he is sensitive to. He becomes hyper and a bit belligerent. A few hours later he crashes and usually has a temper tantrum over some small issue. You wouldn't expect that from a green pepper. We are still trying to figure out by trial and error what is safe for him.
This diet is very simple and non-invasive. If it doesn't work in your case, then continue looking for another solution. Personally, I think start with the least invasive possibilities and work out from there.
You can do a Google search on Fiengold and start reading.
Personally, I despise IDEs because they always slow me down. I've noticed that the best programmers never seem to use them.
A quality that I have noticed in the programmers that I admire is that they remain open minded about their techniques and tools. Periodically surveying what is available to see if they can improve upon what they have.
IDE's have come along way in the last few years. You might be suprised. Using an integrated debugger will not erode one's ability to write and understand good code. If you haven't already thought carefully about the code before it comes time to debug it, then doing so while adding print statements won't help you.
My background is primarly UNIX (but with emacs:-) Recently I have found an excellent IDE. The debugger is well written and poses very little impact on the application. So, I always run the app via the debugger. Any time I need to know what is happening I can drop into and immediately get any information you could get from a print statement. Should I need to make a code change, the IDE supports incremental linking and can rebuild in short order. It's a very efficient workflow.
That being said, another sign of a good programmer is not jumping on every band wagon. If you have found an effective workflow, then stick with it. Just don't fall into the trap of writing off a whole class of tools forever, and then call it strength of character.
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What is interesting is that he also mentions foods that contain "salicylates." This is a substance that appears in some of the the following very innocuous seeming foods:
There are more foods on the list. But, very few people would be sensitive to all of them. The idea is to cut them all out for two weeks and see if there is a difference and then add them back in one at a time.
The jury is out on the accuracy of this theory. And, it is supposed to help children more than adults.
I have two step children that have food sensitivities. One in particular is sensitive to several of the foods on the list above as well as many artificial preservative and colourings. You can watch a complete change in his personality after he eats one of the foods that he is sensitive to. He becomes hyper and a bit belligerent. A few hours later he crashes and usually has a temper tantrum over some small issue. You wouldn't expect that from a green pepper. We are still trying to figure out by trial and error what is safe for him.
This diet is very simple and non-invasive. If it doesn't work in your case, then continue looking for another solution. Personally, I think start with the least invasive possibilities and work out from there.
You can do a Google search on Fiengold and start reading.
Good luck!
Personally, I despise IDEs because they always slow me down. I've noticed that the best programmers never seem to use them. A quality that I have noticed in the programmers that I admire is that they remain open minded about their techniques and tools. Periodically surveying what is available to see if they can improve upon what they have. IDE's have come along way in the last few years. You might be suprised. Using an integrated debugger will not erode one's ability to write and understand good code. If you haven't already thought carefully about the code before it comes time to debug it, then doing so while adding print statements won't help you. My background is primarly UNIX (but with emacs:-) Recently I have found an excellent IDE. The debugger is well written and poses very little impact on the application. So, I always run the app via the debugger. Any time I need to know what is happening I can drop into and immediately get any information you could get from a print statement. Should I need to make a code change, the IDE supports incremental linking and can rebuild in short order. It's a very efficient workflow. That being said, another sign of a good programmer is not jumping on every band wagon. If you have found an effective workflow, then stick with it. Just don't fall into the trap of writing off a whole class of tools forever, and then call it strength of character.