Types of ADHD

Article by Carole Gayle

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is defined as a chronic syndrome that causes age-inappropriate inattention, distractibility, impulsivity and restless overactivity. It shows in approximately 5 to 9 percent of the population of school age children, and in a smaller population of adults. This disorder shows more frequently in males than in females but recent studies show that adults have a near equal ratio between sexes.

ADHD has a wide variety of symptoms ranging from characteristics of inattention to hyperactive and impulsive behavior. Scientific studies and clinical finding led to the identification of the types of ADHD. Diagnosing different types of ADHD enabled clinicians to recognize different methods of treatment such as stimulant medications and behavioral therapies. ADHD is diagnosed through a diagnostic criteria called the DSM-IV. These criteria are endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) as well as the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This is also used to rule out other mental disorders that can usually be associated with ADHD such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, psychosis and autism.

Some examples of the characteristics of inattention include difficulty remembering and following directions, easy distractibility, difficulty sustaining attention in tasks and other play activities, not following or having a hard time obeying simple commands, appearing confused most of the time, inconsistent performance, sluggish, reluctant to engage in tasks requiring sustained mental effort, getting easily overwhelmed, difficulty working independently, poor study skills, and difficulty organizing tasks and activities. Children showing these symptoms are diagnosed, with the use of DSM-IV, to have the Predominantly Inattentive Type of ADHD.

Other children, on the other hand, are seen to have symptoms of the Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type of ADHD. In this type of ADHD, children are seen to have inappropriate behavior such as frequently getting into trouble, difficulty standing in lines, making inappropriate noises, irrational behavior, engaging in dangerous activities, beginning tasks without waiting for directions, getting easily bored or impatient, hurrying through tasks, disturbing others, and hurting or hitting others when upset.

In some cases, signs and symptoms in both the inattentive ADHD and hyperactive ADHD can be seen together. This is classified as the Combined ADHD. This type of ADHD is commonly seen as the child grows and the inattentive symptoms become developmentally significant. Other common characteristics of children with ADHD include procrastination, getting easily frustrated, overly reactive, having difficulty being disciplined, aggressive behavior, low self-esteem, poor handwriting, over sensitivity to stimuli, motivational difficulties, and school performance difficulties.

Another way of classifying ADHD is identified by a psychiatrist and expert clinician from Amen Clinics in the United States. It is done through brain scanning involving dyes and CT scans. He defined these types of ADHD as the Classic, inattentive ADHD type, Over-focused, Temporal Lobe, Limbic ADHD and the RING OF FIRE. The basis for these types of ADHD is the hallmark symptoms which include brief attention span, disorganized thinking, procrastination, distractibility and poor self-control. This method of classifying ADHD is not generally accepted since the procedure of diagnosing psychiatric problems in children and in adults has no scientific basis at present. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), however, admits that brain imaging techniques can be used in the near future for the diagnosis of other psychiatric disorders.

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Are Adhd Drugs Being Over-Prescribed?

Everyone has heard of ADHD and knows of the stigmatism associated with it, which is, the need for medical science to offer the drugs Ritalin, Adderall or Concerta, to name but a few, to help relieve the symptoms of those that suffer with it. But what you don’t often hear is that the side effects may, to some, be worse than the actual condition it is treating. ADHD meds are more commonplace today than ever.

Medicine can be a wonderful thing and it can make it easy to live with things that years ago would have resulted in death or institutionalization of the patient. However, modern day practitioners seem to have taken the approach of one size fits all when it comes to prescribing medication for things, in particular the ADHD drugs and ADHD meds.

It is a lot easier for the doctor to say the patient has ADHD and prescribe any of the many ADHD drugs than it might be to look at the causes of it for that particular patient and see if there might be a less medicinal approach, or at the very least a less harmful medicine that could actually benefit the patient in other ways.

ADHD drugs have become so commonplace that at parties they are more of a status symbol now days than the embarrassment that they used to be. Folks used to hide the fact that someone was taking ADHD meds and today they more or less flaunt the information.

Lately nutritional programs have proven to give some relief from the symptoms of ADHD and in some instances have allowed patients to cut down, modify or even completely remove the need for ADHD med and the ADHD drugs they have been prescribed for years.

The side effects of these drugs are different from the different ADHD meds and range from tremors and nervousness to anxiety, dizziness and headache, dryness of the mouth and insomnia. Constipation, Diarrhea, unpleasant taste in the mouth, impotence and or any other drastic changes in the sex drive are further symptoms.

Sometimes patients have even reported psychosis and increased blood pressure. Nausea, vomiting and heart palpitations to name just a few of the COMMON side effects of the use of these drugs that are commonly used to cure the disease. Does that make the cure worse than the disease?

Look at some of the many signs of ADHD and see if you think that ADHD drugs or ADHD meds are called for.

Just a few things that a teacher might spot and say signal ADHD are, a loss of concentration, fidgeting, lack of focus, difficulty with instructions, easily distracted etc. I am not sure about you, but this also fits me to a tee when I was in school. Science seems to have a need to find an explanation for everything on the planet and to give everything a weird name and assign a drug to it to help control or cure it.

There may well be ADHD and there may be, in some cases, a need for ADHD drugs or ADHA meds, but I for one think that the general physician population and the public need to look farther into alternative options and medications that have less harmful side effects than to just take the easy way out and say that so and so has ADHD, let’s give him or her Ritalin. Remember, these folks will inherit the earth one day and be responsible for decisions about policy, shouldn’t they be clear headed?

Adhd Research – Four Facts Nobody Can Dismiss

What ADHD research has been done? Do we really know the causes of ADHD and why so many children are now allegedly suffering from this disorder? ADHD facts are hard to come by. There is an ocean of information on the web but very few hard ADHD facts, such as the best way to treat it. There is one startling fact that in the 1950s there were about 7,000 children in the USA who were suffering from some mental illness – now, fifty years on, there are 8 million children suffering from mental illness (mainly ADHD) and the vast majority of them are on ADHD medication.

Is there any ADHD research on the causes? What is the genetic link? Is ADHD overdiagnosed? These are questions that parents of ADHD children ask all the time and they can rarely get any satisfactory answers. As regards the staggering increase in ADHD, it may be that society has changed radically over half a century. Look at social and ethical values, technology advancement, expectations of parents, single parent families, both parents working, ‘TV parenting’ and a host of other changes which all could have a bearing on ADHD.

Here are four ADHD facts to bear in mind when trying to decide whether ADHD medication is really worth the expense and the worry about all the possible risks and side effects:-

1. A report in the New York Times states that doctors who had received some sort of reward (cash/holidays etc) from the big pharmaceutical companies were five times more likely to recommend ADHD drugs for children than those doctors who had received no such payment or other incentives. This may partly explain the mass medication of our children.

2. ADHD research does show that between 18% and 20% of teenagers who are diagnosed with ADHD are likely to end up as drug users. The main reason for this is quite simply that the most popular ADHD psychostimulant drugs (Dexadrine, Ritalin and Concerta) are addictive as the main ingredients are a cocktail of amphetamines. Latest research shows that the effects of these substances on mice is very similar to that of cocaine addiction.

3. In its 2005 report, the Partnership for a Drug Free America carried out a survey on 7,000 teenagers. About a third of these said that knew about close friends who were abusing their ADHD medications.

4. Why medicate a disorder? Especially when the medication does not actually cure the condition and can produce some alarming side effects. Parents genuinely want to know what the long term effects on children’s brains are/will be and are refusing to be fobbed off with glib answers from the medical community.

While parental and school support, diet and exercise can all help hyperactive children to cope and increase their attention span, parents want to know if there is some natural ADHD cure which will help to calm their children while not compromising their development. The link below will explain all there is to know about ADHD alternative therapy.

Solutions to ADHD

Article by Nathalie Fiset

It wasn’t a surprise to find out that Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) has ranked as one of the most frequent neurological impairments all over America as it mostly hits on children. The disorder has affected more or less five percent or in figures it is roughly 2 million of the entire population. As a justification, experts have hypothesized that in every American classroom you could anticipate to find a child suffering from ADHD.

Contrary to the common notion that it was a certain learning incapacity, ADHD obstruct the attention and attentiveness of the child therefore leading the child to perform poorly at school and in dealing with situations involving other people. ADHD has been deemed as a inexplicable and a disappointing incapacity because of the reality that specialists weren’t able to determine the definite grounds of the disorder. Yet solutions to ADHD have now been devised so as to aid the families of the suffering patient.

In a conference conducted by National Institutes of Health Consensus Development together with the American Academy of Pediatrics in the year 2000, they have reported that ADHD has no identified genetic basis.

A well-known neurologist asserted that ADHD may have been a thousand distinct scenarios which are known for the same name. There’s also another neurologist who said that ADHD may result to an umbrella term for numerous linked disorder that is why it is significant to find a solution for ADHD. Due to the fact that different specialists offer various solutions to ADHD as well as with varying assertions regarding the disorder that results to a cloud of confusion for the parents and the patients themselves.

The American Psychiatric Association formulated 14 signs and symptoms which if ever eight symptoms might be present the patient could then be classified as ADD/ADHD.

The first sign would be the twitching of the hands and the feet, or wriggling while they are seated. Often times they are experiencing obscurity to remain seated when mandated to do so. One possible problem that needs solution in ADHD is their tendency to be diverted by off the point stimulus. They are basically impatient in most activities they are venturing in like when they are playing games, more often than not waiting for their turn is the least thing that they could do.

In school activities, they reveal the answers prior to the completion of the question. Experts must also formulate a solution to the ADHD patients’ trouble in getting on with instructions and with their trouble to play quietly resulting to them talking extremely. They also have this tendency to interfere with another person.

More often than not they don’t listen to what other people were saying and that they tend to forget the significant duties which are given to them. Perhaps, one of the most alarming things that an ADHD patient does is when they engage in dangerous activities without thinking of the possible effect of their action.

Solutions to ADHDWith these symptoms laid down, experts have now formulated solutions to ADHD which would be useful for the parents and the educators of the ADHD patients that they would no longer feel entangled with their situation.

According to the specialists the existence of stimulant drugs as a solution to ADHD were only giving short-range benefits, with a reliability from around 60 to 80% that it could lessen the hyperactivity, distractedness and impulsivity of the child.

The long-term problems weren’t really solved by these medications such as academic accomplishments and their rebellious actions. An example of the ADHD medication was the Ritalin.

Another solution to ADHD was counseling and therapy with the patient and with their respective families. This act further identifies the other emotional troubles which would then lead to the assistance of the child to organize and to study his skills. What the experts and the parents oftentimes overlook was the fact that it shouldn’t only be the physiological aspect of the person that should experience a treatment but as their mental aspect.

Some other people take as solution to ADHD the natural or alternative treatments while the others prefer the meditation method wherein they exhaust the mind’s capacity to be flexible in order to revise their inner thoughts. At any rate this segment of the ADHD needs further research to be able to give a better and more effective form of treatment.

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Diet Plan for Adhd Control Very Important for Controlling Adhd

Diet for adhd

ADHD is often caused by irregular eating habits. It has been shown in a number of cases that the diet has a direct influence on attention deficiency hyper-activity disorder. It is responsible for the detection of the disease, and for its dissemination and in many cases a healthy diet can contribute to the incidence of ADHD in children. An ADHD Diet Plan is for all children and especially for those already diagnosed with the disease.

It is never easy to make a diet for a child. But if the child has ADHD, it would be him, a world of good to change to a specific ADHD diet plan. Under such a plan, you must first find out the extent of ADHD in childhood. If the child is a small form of the disease, you need not be hard, but also nutrition. But if the disease is more pronounced, a good diet is very important.

adhd diet plans

First, the current eating habits to your child. Reduce intake of foods, artificial colors and flavorings. Also prevent your child from eating something he or she may be allergic. And finally, reduce the intake of sugar to a minimum.

If this is in the implementation of the new ADHD nutrition plan. Make sure that part of the whole foods in the diet. Then cut out the radio-food and fast food. Make sure your child has many grains such as corn, barley and wheat. Chocolate and sweets intake must also go. Raw foods should be limited to only fresh fruit and vegetables.

good adhd diet

A good diet plan ADHD, if it’s correct, the results in about 8-12 weeks. So a little bit and make sure that your child eats properly. It is very important to ensure adequate nutrition plan ADHD. There are a number of myths associated with ADHD nutrition. For example, it is generally believed that omega-3-fatty acids is good for ADHD patients. While omega-3-fatty acids is good for the people in general, there is evidence that they contribute to the reduction of ADHD. So, if you want a genuine ADHD nutrition plan, make sure you know the requirements and then only with diet.