Wow, that's a lot of good info, and I actually read it all carefully(it's morning, and I'm fully focused as Adderall is in full effect). Bob, I wanted to ask, if the stimulant can be reduced down to zero, does that mean ADHD can be "cured"?I've been through quite a few sessions with a psychologist who specializes in ADHD, and we've ruled out other disorders(including thyroid issues). I had to bring my old grade school reports cards. It's funny, because i can still clearly remember comments from teachers(in my report cards, and parent/teacher interviews). "Steven constantly dissrupts class","Steven doesn't pay attention in class", "Steven constantly blurts things out, "Steven is smart, but doesn't apply himself". That last comment was frustrating to my parents because they couldn't understand why I didn't just settle down and work. I was told I was lazy, class clown fidgety, ants in my pants, I can go on and on. Anyway, my son requires my attention now, that trumps all! P.S. Only my mom calls me Steven, my wife too, when I'm in trouble. Haha
Last edited by syborg; 01-23-2011 at 11:08 AM.
Reason: IDIOT
Thanks for the advice on the Effexor withdrawals too. I'm sure it's not a good idea to withdrawal from something, while trying to begin ADHD treatment. The doc is ignoring me about the w/d symptoms anyway. He(current shrink) NEVER remembers who I am, has lost my file, twice, and is pretty quick with his Rx pad(quack!), so I'm pretty much on my own, scary! I don't have a "family Dr", as they are impossible to get when you move away from your hometown. I have an appointment with a pyschiatrist who only works with ADD/ADHD, but not til the end of April. He's a tough guy to see, being the only one in the city who specializes in the area. I figured I would go in "clean",(from Effexor) and he could help me find what medication is best for me. I will see him before I make any decisions on how to further treat ADHD. In the meantime, withdrawals are getting better and Adderall seems to be working well again. For some reason, when Adderall is "kicked in", the "brain zaps" subside, but are usually back by dinner time
Last edited by syborg; 01-23-2011 at 11:07 AM.
Reason: Old habbits die hard! Even with meds.
Syborg,
I'm doing lots of research and my available time for this project today may run out when I'm forced. I'll post what I have and continue later.
I'll answer your question within the context I think you ask "Can ADHD be cured?" No.
I have a theory that I think wraps the many conditions associated with the disorder. Theory returns a conditional yes on "Can ADHD be cured?"
Your post #15 this thread is among the most insightful I've had the privilege to read. You address the right things. That is, the things that should move everyone to get this disorder under control. Your post #15 helped me cement concrete a force that influences all of us either to our good or our ruin. Our environment especially the one we had when hatched and young.
I'm certain, that in some cases, ADHD children can be raised successfully without medications or psychiatric doctors. I feel perturbed when parents deny medical care for their suffering ADHD children that need medical care. And feel sorry for the parents because the decision they think will help their children will end up devastating their children.
Please read Marisuela's thread at http://www.healthboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=831209
Marisuela is making an intelligent informed decision to help her daughter without medication.
Let's rerun a quote from MedMD and label it.
MedMD.doc "The type and severity of symptoms vary greatly among people with ADHD. The severity of symptoms depends on the degree of abnormality in the brain, the presence of related conditions, and the individual's environment and response to that environment.
"Extract IUnknown to me: The severity of symptoms depends on the degree of abnormality in the brain, the presence of related conditions.
Compare MedMD.doc. with Marisuela.personage
A. Marisuela's daughter has the best possible environment
B. Her daughter responds to her loving full-time (with overtime) mother who takes parenting seriously. The family subscribes to high values and live accordingly.
IUnknown values-to-me have been weighed carefully by Marisuela. She has determined that the risks outweigh any possible benefits. For me to judge Marisuela would be totally out of line. I'll do it anyway. At age 18, Marisuela's daughter = well adjusted happy young adult who does funny things in public and gets everyone laughing just like Mom.
If the IUnknowns in the future begin to lean more on the severe side, Marisuela will seek medical help. I'll bet my life on it.
We focus heavily on the genetics and should. Like many other diseases, we are born high risk for ADHD. Worse yet, much worse, no one asked me who I wanted for parents. No reason too. I'd choose the ones I had. Besides I really got even with the old folks right proper. They regretted having me. Taught them a thing or two.
Our environment, especially the one we were raised, exerts the most force on who we are as adults. JaneWhite, who is smarter than hecks, as I'm sure you know, had a less than spectacular first marriage. Jane said, in more or less words, her ex is as ADHD as Jane. The parents of the "ex" provided no structure or guidance or medical care above and beyond needed to stay out of jail.
Jane's parents on the other hand, took Jane (bull is unacceptable) by the horns and wrestled in good work ethics and a sense of responsibity expected from adults.
All of that being said, all that was said is why an unqualified "yes" can't be given to the "Can ADHD be cured?"
From NINDS
Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobehavioral disorder that affects 3-5 percent of all American children. Several components of the NIH support research on developmental disorders such as ADHD.
There is no "cure" for ADHD. Children with the disorder seldom outgrow it; however, some may find adaptive ways to accommodate the ADHD as they mature.
End NINDS
I got to go, but before going, about:" Accommodation" Certainly accounts for some of my improvements because I can link them directly to CBT. Tell you with even greater certainty that CBT was worthless before my neural network got its connectivity upgrade.
Later,
Bob
The Following User Says Thank You to addprogrammer For This Useful Post: syborg (01-24-2011)
Hi Bob, I see your really doing your home work as usual my friend and as always i have been following all of your threads as well as Thunor's and others as well. My question for you sir is did or do you have any side-effects taking Guanfacine? Im interested in doing a study on it for my son and possible trial. As usual my son is now taking a med that does nothing for him (Conserta) and my wife and i are still trying to find a Dr. that will put our son back on Vyvanse which he started out with shortly after he was diagnosed and did so well on it along with his Clonidine and Risperidol. I do appriciate any info you or anyone would like to share on the matter......once again I thank you all for being here to share your info,its a great help. Your friend RANDOL
As you noted I am being benefited nicely by guanfacine. Occasionally to rarely I experience light headed anxious in a plane (commercial jet) on landing. Its all in my head as is true with all brain bugs, I just know if we are going to wreak and burst into a ball of fire and flames, it will be now, within a few air miles of comfort and stationary.
So far my prophetic feelings have made a fool of me. Great.
On the "can it be cured?" question, I'm going to more or less agree with what Bob said. I do believe that my parents did a great job with me, given that I was born at least a decade before it even occurred to the mental health community that girls could be genuinely hyperactive.
And parents out there: I do wish I had been medicated at six, when I cried myself to sleep, wanting to be a good girl but not knowing how. Or at thirteen, still trying to fit in, tired of being told I was smart when I just couldn't get my assignments done in a timely manner, or even keep track of them. Or at seventeen, first time in college.
My parents did teach me basic discipline and most of the skills I most needed. I was medicated at nineteen, just for a couple of years, and in that time I learned the skills I hadn't been able to learn without it. At this point I do okay, even without medication, but it wasn't easy to get there, and I do still struggle with certain things.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to janewhite1 For This Useful Post: RANDOL (01-25-2011), syborg (01-25-2011)
I down loaded the Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 two days ago. I really like some of the new features. Somehow us geeks have not yet agreed on an international, platform independent (Operating System / Hardware type / Browser type) web page encoding standard. We do have a couple million "ours is the best way" to encode web pages. The team at Firefox included parsers for every "standard" that anyone with or without brains declared as best and got praise from at least one worshiper, two tops. FF even included Microsoft specific char sets developed when MS was destined crush all globally inferior standards and bring peace to all mankind by enforcing MS's will over all. Even MS specific standards worthless now will display nicely.
Being a geek, and being as stupid as the best of all geeks, I decided to query Health Boards through a FireFox 4.0 Beta 9 debug window just to see if I could see HB's IP address. After all, why not play while playing? I blew up my own freaking computer instead. I lost video then my OS crashed. I prayed. "God save me." God said, "I just blew you up for being wicked, do you really think I'm going to save you?" I replied that the "Devil made me do it." I heard no more voices and had no further visions and am now psychosis free. I'm cured.
The really cool, I mean cool to the 20 gadzillionst power. This thread on this board was returned twice in the first 20 hits on my search on "Effexor Withdrawals" using a Firefox search engine add-in.
I'm the man that got in the top 20 hits of all hits in the entire universe. As I bathed in my hour of fame, scooping up all the glory, I noted that Syborg's text, that new boy from Canada, ain't even American, tundry bugger, don't know nutin ... his text in this MY THREAD was getting the attention of all the bots.
Borgy, watch yourself.
Want to know what those high ranking hits on a new thread really mean? The billions getting their brains zapped senseless are querying "Effexor Withdrawals."
It is a wide spread (global) painful syndrome moving the masses to seek relief from Effexor withdrawal agony.
Bob, Thank you for the info my friend,it helps alot and to know that Guanfacine is working for you is great to hear. To Jane, I think even that great people like you,Thunor and Bob came out of your childhood's better than most that didnt have the meds and i really respect yall for doing what you do in doing reserch on meds and the illness. For myself i am also learning and trying to understand the aspects of ADHD for my 6yr old son and it isnt easy but im still not going to quit on him or his illness. Thanks again everyone......
My brother and I did fairly well as children, likely as a function of our general intelligence (school was never a challenge, despite our tendency to daydream the day away), and a very strong mother. I still, to this day, feel real regret at the hell we visited on my mother, though she always handled herself with grace, even while standing over us for hours making sure the homework got done.
I feel that it was probably this general veneer of competence that kept us from being diagnosed until so late in our lives, when ADHD had well and truly destroyed what may well have been happy and successful lives. We're now, in our late 30s, starting to get things together, but are still at the level of development of non-ADHD persons in their late teens or early 20s.
I'm honestly ambivalent about medicating ADHD kids, despite the data. I've heard the self reports of my girlfriend's kids, and they tended to dislike the feeling that came along with the meds. Further, I've found that many of the unmedicated adult ADHD sufferers I've heard from avoid the medication due to what it made them feel like as children, even though their experience as adults would be much different.
This is not to say that medicating children is necessarily dangerous or counter-productive, but with my own kids (if I had any) I would prefer to structure their lives in such a way that they could succeed without meds for as long as possible, and include skills training for kids with ADHD.
I firmly believe that medication is one of the pillars of ADHD recovery, and it should never be summarily dismissed, especially in the case of adults who don't have the structure and safety of a strong parental environment on which to lean. Children, however, may have the benefit of good parents to insulate them from the need for meds, if not forever, then for as long as they can.
As a side note: I've spent some time thinking about my stance regarding medicating children with ADHD thanks to Bob and the very convincing case he presented recently, I haven't yet come to any solid conclusions. It's important, though, to bear in mind that this is my own personal opinion, and should in no way be considered authoritative.
The Following User Says Thank You to Thunor For This Useful Post: RANDOL (01-25-2011)
Thunor, Once again you have gained my support and respect and as far as medicating kids i also agree with you but also disagree. As you said,building a good structure system is a great benefit for the younger kids like my son and others his age with ADHD. In some few case's like my son,my wife and i too have a structure system but it isnt enough to help him when he isnt on medication then his education is effected and that hurts him in the long run. Im sure you know what im talking about my friend but anyways thank you again,your always a big help.
BOB I agree with you my friend and no apologies,I like to hear straight forward what yall have to say. I look forward to your next nero correlates my friend. By the way have you got snowed in out your way?
One of the lines I've been pursuing is "if ADHD is a genetic disorder, show me the buggy chromosomes."
I searched "ADHD chromosome" or similar in medical research search engines that returned over 300 web pages that I read from over 60 web sites many in the .edu, .gov, .org, and .net domains (nothing to sell). I dead ended. None of them pointed me to the buggy chromosome.
Then ... about 15 hours ago ... paydirt.
A recently published study has the dirt I wanted.
I must name names for validation. I do not quote any of my source material.
Source: The Study was conducted by scientists at Cardiff University (Wales, UK) and was published in The Lancet.
The research/study was funded by the Wellcome Trust (UK based), with additional support from Action Medical Research, the Medical Research Council and the European Union.
No pharmaceutical funding.
My Summary of Study Results (I do not quote any source articles):
The study found rare CNVs were about twice as common in children with ADHD compared to the control sample.
CNV = Copy Number Variants. Definition: The number of copies of a particular genetic sequence different than presumed normal. CNVs detected in children with ADHD are chromosome abnormalities involving the addition or subtraction of an entire chromosome or set of chromosomes.
CNV's can result in serious genetic disease. For example, three copies of chromosome 21 results in Down syndrome.
CNVs detected in children with ADHD were duplicated or deleted stretches of chomosome 16.
Note: The particular region on chromosome 16 has been previously implicated to other major psychiatric disorders and spans a number of genes including one known to play a role in the development of the brain.
The researchers at Cardiff University are the first to find direct evidence that ADHD is a genetic disorder. My source reports are dated September 30, 2010. Four months ago.
The study results were replicated using another larger ADHD group and another larger control group.
"If ADHD is a genetic disorder, show me the buggy chromosomes."
The brilliant scientists at Cardiff University did just that.
Relevance: The study will help [reasonable] people see ADHD as a neurodevelopmental disorder, like autism, instead of a behavior problem.
No amount of evidence scientific or otherwise will move those that want to believe "ADHD is disorder invented by drug companies so they can sell speed legally."
Randy,
Controlling moderate to severe ADHD requires medication.
"The neuro correlate:" The internal operations of the neurons outputting dopamine and norepinephrine are being governed by an instruction set that is missing entire pages or has duplicate pages. Each neuron, actually every cell in our bodies, have a copy of the entire DNA code.
I doubt if "a fix" is possible short of some form of stem cell technology. Anyone with info on DNA "upgrades" please post.
I think many of us can develop "overrides" or skills that enable us to compensate for the deficit and that possibly may mean a functional life without medication.
Thanks for the info, Bob! Fortunately, you're looking at legitimate sources, as the Lancet is peer reviewed, and as such, studies it publishes would have a lot of validity. It's not some random website trying to sell a supplement, publishing its own 'science.'
I will try to find a copy of the study, as this line of research is something I'd like to follow.
Ultimately, I have a feeling we're going to learn that what we know as ADHD is actually several different disorders that share similar symptoms. My reasoning is that, while we know that ADHD is often genetic, and passed from parents to children, other issues such as lack of oxygen or brain damage in vitro are likely also causes of ADHD. I suspect environmental and nutritional factors will also be found to be at fault in some cases, after all, they're finding that Parkinson's is often caused by pesticide exposure. Additionally, I think we'll find that there are several different genetic variations that lead to the various types of ADHD; a genetic variation that leads to primarily inattentive may be different from one that leads to hyperactive or combined type.
I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime, but I have faith that the real causes of ADHD will be found, and that we will ultimately be able to cure it, rather than simply treating with stimulants to bring us to a functional level. That is, unless ADHD continues to be the 'flavour of the week' with doctors, and it's overdiagnosed to the point that it loses all credibility.
Just a mid-morning ramble, I guess. After all, I need something to justify procrastinating on my homework.
The Following User Says Thank You to Thunor For This Useful Post: RANDOL (02-07-2011)
The study proves it. The genetic flavoring of ADHD, that is. Check it out: The Cardiff University study showed CNS's of different types in the ADHD subject groups. The study, and the replication study groups, did NOT share the same chromosome abnormalities. They shared twice the CNV's with highest CNV concentrations on chromosome 16.
I'm going with multiple causes too. Let's clump all genetic causes ADHD into one genetic cause. Let's add "other issues such as lack of oxygen or brain damage in vitro are likely also causes of ADHD" as another cause. Pesticide and heavy metal poisoning as a third cause.
I believe brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation is my cause of ADHD.
Rh compatibility almost killed me at birth. I went without oxygen for so long the doctors thought serious brain damage had resulted. They were amazed that I apparently did not sustain any brain damage. I did.
My wife and I were watching old 8mm movies of me at an age I barely remember - between 3 & 5 yo. I always had one eye - my left eye - shut as I ran around playing outdoors. Why was my left eye always shut when outdoors exposed to bright sun light? Brain damage. I can't remember having one eye shut in sun light. However, some of my very earliest memories are of an inability to concentrate or selectively control my attention. I just could not do it.
In my case, I'll bet the neural network controls are physically damaged. Network controllers have neural correlates in the prefrontal cortex. The damaged controllers are the cause of my neurotransmission problems. I'll further bet abnormal chromosomes are not the primary cause and possibly not even a factor in my ADHD. Maybe.
I agree with everything you stated.
Bob
The Following User Says Thank You to addprogrammer For This Useful Post: RANDOL (02-07-2011)
I think everyone should have to have education or in short, everybody should be educated. Those who have mental illnesses like add/adhd should have education. Those who have physical illnesses like blindness should have education. And those who have financial illnesses should also have the right to education. Everyone of us should be educated. That is why those who have illnesses have their corresponding institution to teach education and at the same time treat the illness. < edited >
Last edited by hb-mod; 02-04-2011 at 01:37 AM.
Reason: Please do not post unapproved website links- Posting Policy. (Some "Approved" websites in "Resources" tab- bottom screen)
BOB, So what you are saying is that too much dopamine and norepinephrine is being released and which is causing the increased activity? This is good stuff lol. Thanks Bob
Bob, Me too at a young age had the one eye thing go on but to this day i still do it but very little with me always wearing sunglasses's outside lol but no brain damage here. Most of it was due to a scar on my eye which my eye Dr. says he doesnt know how it happend due to no tearing on the surface which leaves a jucy mystery lol, though I would share input thanks
__________________
Randy
The Following User Says Thank You to RANDOL For This Useful Post: addprogrammer (02-07-2011)
