Men's Fitness Advisor » Healing medicine

ADD/ADHD Medications: Handle With Care

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:08:07 +0000

It’s not only people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who function better after taking ADD/ADHD drugs. These powerful stimulants will have the same effect on all of us, ADD/ADHD or not. So why shouldn’t all of us pop in a pill everyday to help us feel more cheerful and focused and energetic?

Because though ADD/ADHD drugs are effective for a variety of conditions, they have a history of abuse, addiction and deadly side effects.

Before you take these medicines or give them to your child, you need to know the benefits, and weigh them against the side-effects and the risks of abuse and addiction. Here are some things you should know:
The benefits
Amphetamines (the class of drugs to which most ADD/ADHD medications like Adderall and Vyvanse belong) and methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, Daytrana) have been around since the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1930s they first began to be used medically – as decongestants and inhalers for people suffering from asthma and colds. Up to the 1950s, they were even available over the counter as ‘pep’ pills to help increase energy and concentration (one marketing slogan was that two pills were better than a month’s vacation), and to treat obesity, chronic fatigue, depression, and daytime sleepiness, and to counter overdoses of sleeping pills.

From the 1960s, they have been widely prescribed for overactive and distractible children who are not able to cope in normal classrooms – those with ‘minimal brain dysfunction’, as it was then called, or what is now known as Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The drug has a calming and ‘focusing’ effect on these children, and helps them sit in their place, listen and get better grades (at least a short while!).
Dangerous side-effects
But amphetamines (Adderall and Vyvanse) and the milder methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, Daytrana) have always been problem drugs.

Some minor side-effects from these drugs are reduced appetite, nausea, increase in blood pressure and heartbeat and sometimes skin rashes. If you or your child is taking this medicine for ADD/ADHD or anything else, your doctor may help you to manage these side-effects.

There are more serious problems when the drug is taken over a long time. In animal studies, rats treated with Ritalin in the period corresponding to childhood in humans were more likely to be depressed as adults. Long-term abuse of this drug can lead to psychosis, malnutrition, slowing growth (for children), severe itching, dyskinesia (excessive repetition of movements and meaningless tasks), and heart trouble.
A high risk of abuse
You need to be especially careful with ADD/ADHD drugs because they are addictive. When taken in large doses, orally or through injection or smoking, they can produce a feeling of euphoria, and once you have this experience you are likely to go the same way as addicts with worse substances like cocaine – do anything to get high again.

It’s not so safe in smaller doses either. If you take them for over months or years for staying awake or for loosing weight, you might become dependent on the drug, and have withdrawal symptoms if you try to stop them. Those taking the drugs without a doctor’s prescription and supervision are more likely to get addicted, and this will not just be depraved losers looking for a ‘high’. Those likely to abuse Ritalin, Adderall, and other drugs for ADD/ADHD are likely to be people just like us – overburdened with family and work responsibilities, who feel they need just a little bit more energy and concentration to get by.

Even in the 1930s, when the drug first came into the market, it was abused by people who pulled out the strip containing the drug from the inhaler Benzedrine and either chewed it or put it into their coffee.

By the 1960s, all over the world, the problems with amphetamine and methylphenidate misuse became well-known. The police noticed an increase in crime due to drug abuse, and doctors noticed more people coming for emergency treatment for drug overdoses. There were also celebrity cases like the death of British cyclist Tim Simpson due to an overdose of amphetamines and the British Prime Minister Eden’s dependence on amphetamine during the Suez Crisis (which was said to have affected his judgment).

Most governments tried to increase control over the drug: in the United States, the drug was placed in Schedule 2 of Controlled Substances Act of 1971 – the category of drugs which have acknowledged medical uses but are addictive and likely to be abused. Sweden experimented with loose controls for a while during the late 1960s, on the ground that most people would be responsible enough not to abuse the drugs. But as the number of addicts and crimes and deaths connected with drug abuse increased, Sweden quickly returned to stricter controls.

Recently, what is new is that from 1990, prescriptions for methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, Daytrana) and various forms of amphetamines (Adderall, Vyvanse) alone have risen more than five-fold – mainly for what is called Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. While the abuse profile of amphetamines and methylphenidate is similar to other Schedule 2 drugs, what is different is that these drugs are now being prescribed mainly for children.

A few children will definitely benefit from these drugs, but these medicines have become so widely available, and there is so much ignorance about their potential for abuse and addiction, that there is danger of an epidemic of abuse. We need to make sure that medicines are given only to children who really need them – not use them as a shortcut to controlling children who are bored, or unhappy, or simply too playful for the modern classroom. We also need to make sure that there is awareness of the dangers of self-medicating with these drugs to study, party, lose weight, or get a high.

Acupuncture Treatment: An Increasingly Successful Treatment For Pain And Fatigue

admin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:22:41 +0000

Acupuncture therapy is a form of traditional Chinese Medicine whose origins goes back for over thousands of years. Acupuncture therapy is based on Taoist spiritual philosophies, which believe that human body is comprised of a constant flow of spiritual energy called qi (chee), and that we can naturally heal ourselves by properly channeling this force. Acupuncture is accomplished by inserting specially created needles into specific meridian points of the body which unblock any negative qi. This results in the desired beneficial and healing effects. Acupuncture is increasingly used for pain management, an alternative therapy for chronic fatigue and is even used to combat drug addiction.

Acupuncture methodologies found their way to Europe and the United States in the early 1900s. They have been gaining acceptance over the years. Acupuncture first became mainstream in France and then spread through other European countries. Acupuncture became more acceptable in the United States during the 1970s after President Nixon’s visit to China.

One widespread use of this acupuncture treatment is for the alleviation of arthritic symptoms. Acupuncture is becoming more popular as a non-pharmaceutical treatment for arthritis. Acupuncture may provide a substitute for analgesic drugs, which may have addictive properties and may cause unwanted side effects. The philosophy behind using acupuncture to treat arthritis is that arthritis is caused by blockages of the qi energy, the life-force of the body. Precisely placed needles are used to release these blockages, thus giving relief to the painful symptoms.

Acupuncture has served as a extremely successful treatment for chronic fatigue. It accomplishes this by opening up the flow of qi energy. This creates a positive energy field that flows through and around the body. The body can then tap into this energy, revitalizing the body and bringing alertness to the mind.

Acupuncture has also been used as a successful treatment for addiction. It has been used to help smokers stop smoking, to help alcoholics quit drinking, and has even been successful for heroin users! This is because the change in qi energy can result in subtle changes the brain chemistry that control addictive behavior.

Acupuncture’s popularity will grow for years and years to come and with good reason I can offer from my personal experience! Acupuncture is such an incredible natural treatment for pain, fatigue and even addiction and it can offer little to no side effects.

Time Management Skills for ADD/ADHD Adults: 6 Strategies to Success

admin — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:45:51 +0000

For adults with ADD/ADHD, with distractions every way we turn, sensible time management does not come naturally. But it is a skill that we can learn. It is not easy, and it may mean unlearning a lot of old habits, but it can be done, and it can change your life.

Here are a few strategies I’ve learnt to help me manage my time productively, and I hope they help you too:

1. Focus on what is important

This is the most critical – before you can take even the first baby steps towards good time management, you must know what it is that is really important to you. There are things which are urgent and important, which should take first priority, and the things which are important, which should be a close second. Then there are things which are urgent but not important (maybe some meetings and phone calls), which you should try to cut down on, and then those things which are not urgent and not important, which are simply a waste of time. My guess is that a lot of us with ADD/ADHD spend a lot of time on this fourth category of not urgent and not important things, but things interesting for some reason, like that sitcom rerun on TV. This is the path to ruin.

Learn to focus on what is important. For me, once I worked things out, it was my son who at four was not talking, and who doctors suspected was autistic. As another mother of an autistic adult told me, the problem with an autistic child is that his needs are important, but never urgent. But your life depends on how you manage to do things which are vitally important but not at all urgent.

2. Keep things simple

This is essential if you want to focus on what is important. For me, I found that simple scheduling helped: I spent one part of the day cooking, and after that never had much work in the kitchen. Once this urgent and important work was over, I could spend my time on other really important things: my son or my freelance job. And when I was with my son also, I learnt to keep my goals simple – enjoyment for him and for me, and learning through what he enjoyed, rather than elaborate activities which he was not willing to do and which left us both feeling defeated.

3. Use a year planner

Try to get one with lots of space for each day, week, month and year, and use it the way it is supposed to be used – don’t let it be just another place to make a list of groceries or jot down random thoughts. Keep your planning for a time during the day when you are relaxed and have at least fifteen minutes free. Make your goals for the day and the week, month, and year, and look at your planner frequently through the day to remind yourself of what you need to be doing. Again, keep it simple, don’t overplan. Jot down the most important things you need to get done rather than a schedule for the whole day.

4. Delegate

Train the people who help you to do things the way you like them to be done, and then leave them to do it. Don’t fuss over small mistakes they make – and don’t pretend to yourself that you could do it so much better if you did it yourself. If you did it yourself, you would spend all your time doing it, and the really important things in your life would not get done. So get others to help you, and leave them to do the things you assign to them.

5. Keep things neat

A cluttered desk (or office, or house) shows a cluttered mind. Spend some time organizing once a day or at least once a week. Many of us adults with ADD/ADHD may average four hours a week just searching for our keys, and this is something we need to avoid. I found that after I had got the domestic help to clean up, the job of keeping things in their place took me only some ten minutes every night before I went to bed. But I could wake up with a clear mind to an orderly house – a joy!

6. Don’t aim for perfection

If you do, things will never get done. All my life I found myself scrambling to put things together at the last minute, not because I did not work on them earlier, but because whenever I did I could think of so many better ways to do what I had to do that I never did much, and when the deadline loomed I was forced to do whatever I could do. Keep shorter deadlines for yourself and tell others – this may help you stick to them.

In short – decide what you want, and how you can get it, and then go get it – keeping the process as simple as possible. This is the key to conquering ADD/ADHD.