Posted on 12/15/2013 12:58:30 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating.
Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond.
But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous,” Dr. Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, said in a subsequent interview. “This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”
The rise of A.D.H.D. diagnoses and prescriptions for stimulants over the years coincided with a remarkably successful two-decade campaign by pharmaceutical companies to publicize the syndrome and promote the pills to doctors, educators and parents. With the children’s market booming, the industry is now employing similar marketing techniques as it focuses on adult A.D.H.D., which could become even more profitable.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ADD and ADHD are very real conditions that reflect the progressive loss of fully functional gray matter in the brain. Loss of gray matter is illuminated by mri in toddlers through to Alzheimer’s and other other neurodegenerative diseases. This pathology does not occur in other primates. ADD and ADHD are intermediate states in this progression. The higher incidence in males is related to the fact that testosterone increases the rate of iron retention (excess intracellular iron accumulation in the gray matter of both sexes). This iron accumulation begins with the first bottle of iron fortified formula milk and accelerates at puberty with increasing testosterone production.
Millions of children and adults struggle with symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a condition marked by problems with concentration, impulse control, organization, and memory. It can be a frustrating and difficult condition, stigmatizing and often isolating for those who suffer from it.
But what if some of those who’ve been diagnosed with ADHD are, in fact, suffering from another disorder altogether — a sleep disorder? That’s the provocative and important question posed in this commentary by a practicing psychiatrist with extensive experience treating patients with ADHD. Dr. Vatsal Thakkar, who is also a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center, makes a powerful argument for the need to consider sleep problems as a possible cause when evaluating patients for ADHD.
As Dr. Thakkar points out, many of the symptoms of ADHD are very often similar to symptoms of insufficient and disordered sleep for both children and adults. In children, the symptoms of ADHD and sleep deprivation can be indistinguishable. A diagnosis of ADHD in children frequently comes about after a child exhibits some or all of behavioral symptoms such as these:
Lack of focus: difficulty paying attention, problems listening, forgetfulness, disorganization
Agitated, excitable, impulsive behavior: excessive talking, inability to sit still, difficulty playing quietly, tendency to interrupt, difficulty sharing or waiting for one’s turn
These behaviors associated with ADHD interfere with a child’s social and intellectual development, causing problems with relationships with peers and adults, at school and at home. But what if ADHD isn’t always the underlying cause of these symptoms? Signs of poor quality and insufficient sleep in children can look remarkably like symptoms of ADHD, as a number of recent studies show. There’s particularly strong evidence that children with sleep-disordered breathing exhibit many of the same symptoms — and suffer many of the same behavioral problems — as children who’ve been diagnosed with ADHD.
Sleep-disordered breathing in children has been an area of growing interest among sleep scientists — with good reason. I’ve written about the dangers of sleep-disordered breathing in children, which is linked to a range of developmental and behavioral problems — problems that often mirror those associated with ADHD:
This study found that children with obstructive sleep apnea had higher rates of behavioral problems including difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, communication problems, and aggressiveness. These children were also more likely to have learning difficulties and low academic performance than those without sleep-disordered breathing.
This large-scale study of more than 11,000 children found that those with sleep-disordered breathing were significantly more likely to show signs of hyperactivity, trouble interacting with peers, and conduct issues including aggressiveness and inability to follow rules. The study examined the effects of sleep-disordered breathing on children as young as 6 months. Researchers found that very young children who experienced some form of sleep-disordered breathing were, by the age of 7, 40-100 percent more likely to have behavioral problems similar to those used to diagnose ADHD.
The liberal medical establishment always finds cures for diseases that have not been INVENTED yet.
It seems strange that when I was in school over 50 years ago we did not have anything like the “invented” mental problems of today.
BACK THEN IT WAS CALLED “BAD BEHAVIOR!” and was generally cured by a male (dad) who introduced the culprit to the “board of education” which was called a paddle.
Now, with timid and cowed males we call today’s men, real dads don’t exist any more. Worse yet, these testosterone filled mothers (man haters) raise their families (without dad) in the manner that is expected by today’s society....complete with physiological counselling and drugs to “zone” out the little brats during their entire stint at the public school system and at home.
How many of you readers older than 60 ever heard of any of these current cures and problems while you went to school? How many ever knew of anyone in school that went to a “shrink?” I would say very, very few.
This study found that children with obstructive sleep apnea had higher rates of behavioral problems including difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, communication problems, and aggressiveness. These children were also more likely to have learning difficulties and low academic performance than those without sleep-disordered breathing.
This large-scale study of more than 11,000 children found that those with sleep-disordered breathing were significantly more likely to show signs of hyperactivity, trouble interacting with peers, and conduct issues including aggressiveness and inability to follow rules. The study examined the effects of sleep-disordered breathing on children as young as 6 months. Researchers found that very young children who experienced some form of sleep-disordered breathing were, by the age of 7, 40-100 percent more likely to have behavioral problems similar to those used to diagnose ADHD.
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True one of my kids had a neuropsych and dx of ADHD. She snored like a train when she did sleep. Her tonsils shrunk at the end of latency and all the ADHD symptoms went away.
My pet theory is change in bedding in winter.
Before the seventies most children slept in unheated rooms with heave wool blankets and heavy batting comforters and wool crochet blankets. In impoverished homes a few wool coats were thrown on top.
The weight pressed the kids and was good for their sensory pro-reception. Then synthetics came into style. Way too ligh.
In facilities today bouncy behavior is dealt with sand weighted blankets.
Thanks. That’s a factor I hadn’t considered before. Sounds quite reasonable.
You would be amazed how much you're loved when you give a name to a disorder. Be careful, though, next time you hear someone diagnosed with fybromyalgia and you snicker!
In one my masters classes I had to do research on this. One interesting article said the problem in a majority of cases it wasn’t ADD but DAD. No father or absent dad in the home; when a responsible male role model was introduced most behaviors declined or disappeared completely.
Almost all my ADHD students over the years were from single parent homes.
I’m going to check this out. Mt son stopped napping at 14 months and sleeps from 7 pm to 7 am; however, he snores very loudly.
Why is it worse now than when we were growing up in the 50s and 60s?
Your Science posting is “spot on” but the author for the magazine article may have missed the insights of the researchers entirely. Progressive Brain Iron loading is an accepted fact and acknowledged by these researchers. There is a monstrous paradox here. The dopaminergic cells within the substantia nigra pars compacta appear to be iron loaded within the cytosol with lipofuscin bound iron that contributes nothing the to the ordinary function of iron in catalyzing the formation of dopamine and the other neural transmitters. Lipofuscin bound iron may comprise up to 60% of the total cell weight before the cells dies. Dosing these cells with iron will produce more neural transmitters at the cost of accelerating the aging of these cells. The hypothesized iron deficiency is related to the ongoing deficient insulin mediated uptake of transferrin bound iron that is able to routinely catalyze the neural transmitters. This iron will be dribbled out of an iron replete liver every night for five years or more from a modern human (iron replete) who consumes no iron in his diet for the next five years. Our daily iron losses are believed to be about one mg and we can store up to 35 grams of excess iron in our liver and other tissues.
http://www.ajnr.org/content/33/9/1810.long
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24080959
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22392846
MFC is sensitive to brain iron in GM regions and detects age-related iron increases known to occur from adolescence to adulthood. MFC may be more sensitive than R2 to iron-related changes occurring within specific brain regions.
During typical development and aging, brain iron concentration is extremely low at birth but progressively accumulates until the end of the fourth decade of life with varying rates depending on the region. Starting from the first few years of life, the highest iron concentrations occur in the basal ganglia.
In Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, regional elevations in iron concentration are found, whereas iron is deficient in restless legs syndrome as well as in preliminary findings on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (8 – 11).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3371302/#R8
The FDA mandates iron supplementation in flour, baked goods, and formula milk. High fructose corn syrup and fructose from fruit accelerate the iron loading process.
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