Involuntary Eye Movement May Provide Definitive Diagnosis of ADHD 200
Zothecula writes: If a child who's simply very active is mistakenly diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), he can end up on pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin unnecessarily. The problem is, it can be quite difficult to determine if someone actually has ADHD, and misdiagnoses are common. Now, however, researchers from Tel Aviv University have announced that analyzing a patient's eye movements may be the key. "The researchers found a direct correlation between ADHD and the inability to suppress eye movement in the anticipation of visual stimuli. The research also reflected improved performance by participants taking methylphenidate, which normalized the suppression of involuntary eye movements to the average level of the control group."
The drugs are terrible (Score:5, Informative)
They put me on methylphenedate. Then they put me on Risperdone to control the psychosis induced by methylphenedate. The drugs are horrible. The only thing worse is Prednizone.
Phenotropil is effective in small doses, with fewer and less severe side effects. I did the pharmacology myself, with lots of Googling. Psychosis isn't a side effect--Phenotropil sharply controls, reduces, and prevents dementia--but INSOMNIA sure as hell is!
Okay, I found better drugs. But the drugs still have bad side effects. Let's face it: Insomnia is bad. I have always had delayed sleep phase disorder (self-diagnosis): if I don't rigidly discipline my sleep, any deviation causes me to stay awake. Stay up until 10:30? Become no longer tired, until 1-2am, then sleep until noon--and continue to do this until I somehow fix my sleep cycle, so I can't ever have a night out. On-call fucking sucks. And now, due to further conditioning, I not only can't sleep early, but I can't stay in bed past 7am; I'm sleep-deprived because my body refuses to get more than 4-6 hours of sleep!
I could take sleep drugs. Melatonin no longer works: after some occasional use, it now only works in high doses; and both high doses and chronic use cause my nuts to ache for extended periods, which I thought was just me sleeping on my side or something... until I found out melatonin affects testosterone production and can be bad for the testicles. Whoops. Valerian... I ran through a railroad crossing barrier. Ambien and Allegra I've seen do the same: you're incredibly fucking high, but you feel fine... until you crash into a parked car, or smile and nod while a pedestrian wanders in front of you. Thud.
That doesn't mean drugs are BAD; they're risk. You risk side effects against a disease. Is your ADHD worse than ... potential insomnia? Potential minor psychosis? Psychosis can be MAJOR if you're prone to dementia. Sleep drugs may not ruin your life; out of millions of cases, I know one person who almost died because Ambien affects him for 10 hours and he didn't know that. Of course you should take life-saving drugs, and life-enhancing drugs, if the side effects don't occur or are less bad than your symptoms.
I think we should drop back to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and floatation-REST as our first attempts for ADHD and Aspergers [nih.gov] and insomnia [circle.ubc.ca]. CBT is a particular sticking point in insomnia: bad sleep hygiene is terrible, and parents are horrible parents for forcing their kids into bed. Go to bed even if you're not tired? Fuck you, mom. If you're not asleep in 10 minutes, GET OUT OF BED. Don't do other things in bed. Wake your ass up in the morning; if you're tired, too bad. Get up. When you're sleepy, you'll sleep at night.
So yeah. Let's eject this ADHD magic pill bullshit. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, physical activity, and flotation-REST to start; move up to lighter drugs (lighter side effects, even if less effective), and then into the heavy shit (methylphenedate, adderall, drug cocktails). Throwing methylphenedate down someone's throat as a first option is like launching MIRV nukes three seconds after someone stands and shakes his fist at the UN table.
Re:I don't know what they're talking about (Score:5, Informative)
They need to be specific, this applies to ADHD-H. This does not apply to ADHD-I and is questionable with ADHD-C. I have ADHD-I and I have the problem that my eyes get sore from hyperfocusing to the extent that my body forgets to blink.
Besides, they already have a definitive diagnosis. A brain scan. Aside from the very obvious differences in brain wave patterns, the structure of the brain is physically different. ADHD-H will show the centre of the brain growing at an accelerated rate compared to the other areas of the brain. ADHD-I will show under development of the frontal and/or temporal lobes and a noted size difference in the rear of the brain (something on the right side rear is smaller)... I'm totally not awake so all the appropriate terms and thoughts in general aren't coming to me...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] --this lecture talks about it... it's split into a bunch of random pieces so I don't know which one the ADHD-I brain portion is in... that or there's a 3 hour video with it all (I think it's the same lecture)
Re:inb4 (Score:4, Informative)
It is overdiagnosed. I've seen kids with ADHD that can sit and play a videogame for 3 hours. They can watch a full-length movie no problem. But when it's time for homework or school, they "can't focus". THOSE kids DO NOT have ADHD.
And then I've seen kids that can't do any of those things. Every 5 minutes they HAVE to do something different. They can't watch a 30-minute TV show. Those are the real cases and need medication.