ADHD and mind altering drugs continued

Submitted by carolewilliams on May 3, 2006 - 11:39.

I received this in my in box today which is quite condemning, just wondering if anybody has any comments in the continuing debate for parents managing ADHD. Remembering that the UK always follows the USA.  There must be another way!

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An extensive article published in USA Today  revealed that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recorded 45 child deaths attributed to new anti-psychotic drugs, yet experts say the death toll could easily be as high as 450,  as only 1 to 10% of adverse reactions are ever reported to the FDA. Equally alarming is that the number of anti-psychotic drugs prescribed for 2 to 18-year-olds grew from under 500,000 in 1995, to approximately 2.5 million in 2002  —  a 400% increase, while sales of anti-psychotic drugs have soared 1,500%, from $500 million in 1991 to more than $8 billion in 2003.  

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Fish v. Drugs for Children And Criminals

Submitted by tonyplant on April 16, 2006 - 13:27.

 

When most of us think about Eating Our Way To Happiness we tend to think delicious doesn't exist on the same spectrum as nutritious. There are several T.V. advertising campaigns promising happiness in association with foodstuffs at present. Pop Quiz. Do you think that these foodstuffs are vegetables or confectionery? Nutrient-dense or nutrient-poor? How much truth is there in this advertising?

Does it matter? Well, according to research conducted in prisons, the nutritional profile of what we eat may matter a great deal. Physiologist Bernard Gesch had lead this research in UK prisons and is quoted as claiming that:

Research suggests that we may have seriously under-estimated the importance of nutrition for our social behaviour. Since the 1950s there has been a ten-fold increase in offences. How else can we explain that but by diet? It is not down to genetics. The main change over that period has been in nutrients.

Gesch's trials with supplements in a prison population indicated that inmates responded with a drop by more than a third in their level of antisocial behaviour (as measured by assaults and similar transgressions) relative to their previous records. For some, this raises questions about the link between diet and behaviour, and the link between violence and free will. Gesch was interviewed on the topic for the New York Times [behind a paywall] and argues:

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The Link Between Love and Horseradish

Submitted by tonyplant on April 11, 2006 - 17:56.

Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti is one of my favourite bloggers. The guy would be a menance to traffic if he had a radio spot and I have long since given up drinking anything while reading his posts - I've had too many unexpected returns of tea/coffee/ginger beer that have burned or severely irritated my nose.

Matthew writes on a number of topics. He is an avid gamer and has made recommendations that make frequent appearances in both my own gift wish-lists (seriously, you still don't use these?) and my purchasing decisions for others.

One of Matthew's most frequent topics is his son, aka The Squirrelly. You will have a rough idea of Matthew's robust approach to parenting if I quote from the account of a recent check-up at the paediatrician:

So, yes, we're having the standard toddler War Of The Wills, but, fortunately, The Squirrelly is exceptionally easy-going. His tantrums are infrequent, and rarely last more than a handful of seconds. When we took him in for his two-year checkup, the pediatrician asked "does he ever have tantrums that last longer than half an hour?" and we were all, like, "Half and hour?! [edited] no -- if he did we would have just left him in your elevator, sprinted back to the car, and driven to Ontario at 85 miles an hour."

I've been reading the blog for some time, but it was only today that I came across the post where Matthew announced that he had attended an assessment centre where he and his wife were advised that The Squirrelly is probably on the autistic spectrum. The post has an anecdote about eating horseradish: it's poignant, funny and remarkably tender.

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Allostasis, Sleep and Happiness

Submitted by tonyplant on March 3, 2006 - 11:55.

Following on from allostasis and happiness I've been thinking about the contribution of sleep to allostasis (and therefore, well-being). The Times carried a summary of El-Sheik's research into sleep quality in children. The more that children are exposed to parental conflicts, the worse they sleep. And, the worse children sleep, the more likely they are to be tired when awake, have difficulty focusing and be irritable and badly behaved. All of which sounds like it could make a contribution to a diagnosis of ADHD, particularly the need to have the behaviour documented in a variety of settings. And, as the children would be tired for most of the day, I think that that criterion would be met.

I wrote about the diabetic children with uncontrolled ketoacidosis who prompted Salvador Minuchin to say that "behavioral events among family members can be measured in the bloodstream of other family members". It seems as if that could also be adapted to "behavioural events among family members can be measured in the diagnoses of other family members".

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Allostasis and Happiness

Submitted by tonyplant on March 2, 2006 - 17:47.

I've been reading a lot about allostasis and allostatic load lately. Primarily because I am trying to understand where happiness and its beneficial effects fit in. Leading advocates of the concept claim that it makes sense of why some societies (such as the UK, the rest of Europe and the US) are experiencing a surge in the numbers of people who are developing obsesity, metabolic disorders (e.g., Syndrome X or type II diabetes) or addictions. At its highest level, allostasis implies that social policies have a critical impact on how we experience our lives, and therefore influence our resilience and ability to withstand disease and to recover from illness.

I've borrowed this following explanation of allostasis from Dr. Salt's summary of a classic paper:

[stress has] many mechanisms, but among the most prominent are the manifestations of physiological stress responses as a result of living and working conditions, inter-personal conflict, as well as the sense of control of one’s environment and optimism/pessimism toward the future. "Allostatic load" refers to the cost of adaptation to a stressful environment, which elicits repeated and sometimes prolonged adaptive responses ("allostasis") that preserve homeostasis in the short run but can cause wear- and-tear on the body and brain. Functional symptoms and syndromes, decreased cognitive function during aging, abdominal obesity, increased risk for hypertension and cardiovascular disease, insulin-dependent diabetes and decreased immune responses are all manifestations of allostatic load.

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Is Television The Thief of Time and Happiness?

Submitted by tonyplant on January 2, 2006 - 17:12.

For most of my life I have practised happiness less than I’ve practised the piano, and the piano averages out at around three minutes per week. Like most of us, I know the activities that make a significant contribution to both my immediate and longer-term happiness, but I used to think that it was frivolous/selfish to devote any time or resources to them. I have, of course, never applied this sort of critical thinking to the time I used to spend watching television. I’m sure there’s some vague provision in the Magna Carta that establishes a man’s right to veg out in front of the TV while normal household chaos rages around him.

 

When I was growing up, there were programmes that gamely exhorted us to adopt more creative behaviours. Indeed, one show in the series Why Don’t You Turn Off Your Television Set and Do Something Less Boring? featured my brother and his friends swinging on branches round a local pond (you made your own entertainment in those days). But those were cosy admonitions that didn’t threaten us with cognitive dissolution or the wrecking of our health. However, a recurrent theme in the BBC’s recent Honey, We’re Killing the Kids is that notwithstanding the debate over the impact of advertising on children, excessive T.V. watching is a remarkable power for harm. And there seems to be a proliferation of websites full of jeremiads against television watching and its impact on our lives: sites like Turn Off Your T.V. and Limit T.V..

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