The common cold doesn’t get any tests other than a checklist of symptoms, yet I’ve never heard anybody deny it exists.
Not really. Stimulants help everybody with concentration and mental processing. This is why people drink so much coffee, why fighter pilots take amphetamines, and why there’s such a big black market for Ritalin and Adderal on college campuses.
There really is a different physiological response. People who don’t have ADD/ADHD (even though they’re under the same heading now) actually do mellow on speed. Someone who doesn’t will be more focused but is NOT going be more calm and mellow. They’re going to be wired out of their face. I remember before I started take an timed release formulation that actually worked, if I took a higher dose than normal (immediate release + short half life = frequent dosing), it would put me to sleep. One time at work I had to go out to my car and take a 20 min cat nap until it wore off enough that I could go back in.
Speak for yourself-- Caffeine kills my attention span, and it’s not my impression that it helps most other people, either. People take stimulants because they keep you awake. At most, I could buy that for an addict, withdrawal symptoms might hamper concentration more than the drug itself, but that still doesn’t mean you’ll have better concentration than a non-addict.
So the large percentage who are misdiagnosed and overmedicated don’t have ADHD. At this point that sounds like the “true Scotsman” argument. Somewhere there is a fuzzy line between “very active” and “hyperactive”, between easily bored and Attention Deficit.
As for the common cold: there are known viruses, they can be isolated, the symptoms are obvious - it’s just not worth the doctors’ while to do a test for the cold. For AIDs, for smallpox, for measles, rubella, whooping cough, tuberculosis, hepatitis, many other specific diseases with known causes - there is a test and it is worth the doctor’s while to test it if there is a doubt.
Again, the concern is not “there is not physical test”. The concern is that because there is no test, the diagnosis is a subjective scorecard. Consequently, kids who do not really have a problem get a biased diagnosis and drugs that are a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste of a childhood.
For the ones that need the help and get it- good.
Pediatric medicine can be a lot different than it is for adults, so I don’t know how this works in normal kids, but I would imagine that if you give a normal kid speed he or she isn’t going to like it and unless it’s being forced on them is going to object.
Aside from that, although virtually anyone with an MD can technically prescribe anything, like the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If your kid is unruly and you go to a primary care dr. who doesn’t have the good sense to refer you out, then sure, what you’re going get is someone with no real understanding reading the DSM IV.whatever and winging it. But a practitioner with an understanding of the disorder will know what that list of symptoms means and what to look for based on clinical experience. There’s a big difference between those two situations.
Correct. Otherwise college kids would just drink coffee to stay up. Being college kids, with more access and more knowledge of psychoactive drugs, they choose–and pay a lot more hard-to-find cash, which tells you something–Adderal, Ritalin, etc. because the drugs do, somehow, concentrate and focus one’s attention. “Stimulants” covers a lot of ground. It really is quite extraordinary, and quite noticeably different.
In my case, (adult) ADD was underdiagnosed.
I’m curious about the heritablility statistics.
If - as I suspect - at least some folk diagnosed with ADD/ADHD are little more than poorly behaved, and lacking good role models, appropriate discipline, boundaries, and stimulation, then it would would not surprise me that when such folk had children those children would be similarly lacking.
I wish to be clear that I do not for one instant suggest that NO ONE has ADHD. But, as with many mental/emotional/behavioral conditions, the line between pathology and personality can be blurry.
It’s very blurry because there are epigenetic changes that are induced by environmental factors. For example, rats that lick their pups more frequently have young that have the gene coding for a glucocorticoid receptor methylated.Certain methylation patterns turn a gene off which means that the receptor it codes for is expressed in lower volume.
But that receptor is central in the stress response because it pulls the stress hormone cortisol out of circulation. So if you have less of the receptor you’ll have an exaggerated stress response and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it. So do you call that inheritance or environment?
Leo Bloom, I don’t think the fact that college students do something is proof, or even very strong evidence, that it is effective. As you might have noticed, college students can be phenomenally stupid.
Heritability statistics are based on studies of separated twins, which is about as close as you can get to controlling for environmental factors.
Interesting stuff. Thanks, all.
There’s even more to it since it looks like these markers can be inherited as well. If that turns out to be true, genetics will have come full circle back to Lamarckism. Here’s a very good article that covers epigenetics in a nutshell - From Great Grandma to You