Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

Eat fish? Yeah! Go Fish! GoFishn!

This isn't my usual beat, but I have a great site for you: GoFISHn.com. Like fish? Like to fish? Check out GoFISHn.com, and network with fellow ichthyologically inclined sportspeople. Swap fishing stories, and probably some fishing lies. Swap photos. Pick up tips. What a great encyclopedia they have, with comprehensive information on species, techniques, gear, and locations. Best of all, you can find a fishing guide. Full disclosure: This site belongs to my brother, and that's a great thing! The guy was born with gills. 

 

Adderall: Worth the Competitive Edge?

Walter Kirn details his experiences using the stimulant Adderall to get an edge in his work life. It's an interesting cautionary tale. So tempting, so tempting. See if he thought it was worth it...in today's New York Times Sunday magazine.

ADHD Tied to Poor Working Memory

“We think poor working memory is a characteristic present in many children and adults with ADHD,” said Schweitzer, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences [at the UC Davis M.I.N.D Institute].

 “Our study helps explain why working memory may be fine at one moment and poor at another, just as one day a child with ADHD seems to be able to learn and focus in class and on another day seems distracted and not paying attention,” Schweitzer said.

You can read more about this study at ScienceDaily. What differentiates this study from similar ones is that the investigators compared performances in the same children at different times. In general, studies like this compare just performance in children with ADHD to a control group of kids without the disorder. The original press release from UC Davis is here.

Meditation May Help Kids with ADHD

This is a report about a small, preliminary study suggesting that transcendental meditation may be valuable for kids with ADHD. Here's an excerpt from the news story at Reuters:

The current findings indicate that children with ADHD can not only learn the TM technique but also benefit from it, the researchers report in the online journal Current Issues in Education.

"The effect was much greater than we expected," lead researcher Sarina J. Grosswald, a cognitive learning specialist in Arlington, Virginia, said in a written statement.

"The children also showed improvements in attention, working memory, organization, and behavior regulation," she added.

The study included 10 children between the ages of 11 and 14 who were attending a school for students with language-related learning disabilities. All had been diagnosed with ADHD and, though most were taking medication, were having problems at school and home.

The students were taught the TM technique and then practiced it at school twice a day, for 10 minutes at a time.

And this is what the investigators themselves say in the original article, which is available as free full-text:

The results of this exploratory study indicate that Transcendental Meditation practice 1) can be learned and successfully practiced by children with ADHD, 2) has the potential to reduce stress, anxiety, and stress related ADHD symptoms within three months, and 3) may contribute to improved behavior regulation and executive function.

ADHD Treatment Lowers Risk of Smoking, Drinking in Teen Girls

Teens with ADHD are more likely than those without the attention disorder to smoke, drink alcohol, and use drugs. A new study from Boston and just published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine suggests that teen girls who receive medical treatment for ADHD are less likely than those who don't get ADHD meds to get involved with butts, booze, and drugs. The same team had already shown that boys who receive stimulant medication also benefit in this way. Here is a portion of the article about the study in ScienceDaily. (The Dr. Wilens quoted here is one of the investigatorsl.)

"Right now we can't say if the observed protective effect of stimulant treatment will continue into adulthood or disappear as it did in our studies in young men," Wilens explains. "But we suspect that the longer a girl is successfully treated for ADHD, the more likely she is to be at reduced risk for smoking and substance use or abuse. We can confidently say that stimulant treatment does not increase the risk of future substance abuse or smoking in girls with ADHD and at least delays the onset of cigarette smoking and substance abuse." Wilens is an associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School."

You can read the original article summary here.

Food Dyes and ADHD

As David Kohn writes in the Baltimore Sun, the debate about whether food dyes cause behavioral problems in some kids is heating up again. The concerns about dyes began back in the 1960s, and more pediatricians and neuroscientists think that these chemicals could cause problems for some kids. Activists have asked the FDA to review its policy and limit the use of dyes in common foods. This is a portion of Kohn's article:

"Scientists aren't sure how these chemicals might affect the brain. There are only eight artificial food dyes used in the U.S. To get specific colors, manufacturers mix them.

"All are made from petroleum or coal tar, and most are in the "azo" family, which means they contain a specific kind of nitrogen. Some researchers have found evidence that azo dyes interfere with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in the ability to focus and think clearly."

Many parents have anectodal evidence that removing dye-containing foods from their kids' diets have led to improvements with severe behavior problems. Still an unresolved issue, but interesting and ongoing. It sounds like it's worth a try.

How Ritalin Might Work in People with ADHD

Writing at PsychCentral, Rick Nauert explains some of the ongoing research into the ways that Ritalin works in the brain at various doses. For example, it seems that at therapeutic doses (the ones doctors typically use to treat ADHD), Ritalin works in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain, not in other areas, where over-stimulation and addiction could become problems.

St. John's Wort for ADHD: Don't Waste Your Time or Money

That seems to be the message from an article in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. St. John's wort is one of the top three alternative forms of therapy that parents choose for their kids with ADHD, and according to the results of this rather small trial, it doesn't seem to be effective. It's interesting that this study was conducted at Bastyr University in Washington state, where the focus is natural medicine.

American Heart Association Wants EKGs before Stimulant Meds for ADHD

The American Heart Association published a guideline yesterday in the journal Circulation, stating that it may be prudent to get an EKG (often called an ECG) before a child with ADHD gets a prescription for a stimulant medication like Ritalin or Adderall, for example. Some evidence suggests that ADHD is more common in kids with heart defects. Taking a stimulant drug has a similar effect on the heart as exercise, and it's possible that a child with a hidden heart defect could run into trouble with one of these medications. You can't read the article in Circulation without paying, but you can read a good synopsis intended for physicians. And Ron Winslow provides perspective in today's Wall Street Journal. Among the points he makes is that since 1999, less than 30 kids in the US have experienced sudden death while taking an ADHD drug, while 2.5 million kids are currently taking these meds. It may be a problem, but it's certainly a rare one.

ADHD in Girls Ups Risk of Eating Disorders

A small study suggests that girls with combined-type ADHD (inattentiveness plus hyperactivity/impulsiveness) may be at higher risk for an eating disorder than girls without this form of ADHD. The author mentions that in adolescence, girls may have more fallout from ADHD than boys do, and she mentions the high incidence of depression and anxiety that affects this group in adolescence.