I'd be interested in hearing what a (non-kooky) fringe scientist like Seth Roberts has to say on ADD.
It always seemed weird to me that huge amounts of people should be taking Speed on a daily basis. Has there been any research into treating ADD with stuff like low-carb diets, vitamin D, limiting EMF exposure, limiting videogames, fish oil, filtering chemicals out of drinking water? I'm just throwing those out there as hunches; I have no idea if they're scientifically valid.
I graduated with a degree in biochemistry hoping to get into the biotech/pharmaceutical industry, but was turned off by the emphasis on treaments instead of cures. Ritalin and Aderall seems analogous to taking pain killers to treat an open wound—masks the symptoms (pain) but doesn't address the cause (open wound).
With the explosion of ADD prescriptions, one has to wonder if our society/environment is causing this problem. Is it diet? HFCS? Modern parenting styles? The internet and information overload?
My cautious guess in the specific context of academia (where I am) is that unreasonable expectations may be one factor (though probably not the only one). Academics calibrate their norms by a handful of famous people who have relatively rare cognitive styles, and due to academic competitiveness there's strong pressure to match that.
There are plenty of people who are objectively normal, in the sense of having traits that fall comfortably around the median of the population, who in this context feel that they're pathologically abnormal, because they're using very high baselines: if you calibrate "normal" by the 90th percentile for some trait, and you're 50th-percentile, it's tempting to conclude that what's holding you back from being at the top of your field is a medical problem that should be treated. And maybe it still should; I'm not inherently against taking drugs to mentally enhance people's performance above normal levels (nootropics, etc.), but imo that's a separate discussion that should be had with open eyes.
> Ritalin and Aderall seems analogous to taking pain killers to treat an open wound—masks the symptoms (pain) but doesn't address the cause (open wound).
And how are you going to address the open wound? There’s no brain surgery for ADHD.
A better analogy is that of wearing glasses. Glasses don’t actually fix your eyesight, and you need them all the time, but they allow you to function normally. Medications used for ADHD treatment are exactly like that.
> With the explosion of ADD prescriptions
There’s an explosion of sensationalist reporting by general media. ADHD is still under-diagnosed in USA, and it’s even worse in Europe.
It’s exactly the same as the “explosion” of autism. No, the vaccines are not causing autism, just because there’s more data and a better awareness of the disorder.
So, I'm looking the wackload of comments here: most suggesting they suffer from some kind of ADHD, and then I see you statement:
ADHD is still under-diagnosed in USA, and it’s even worse in Europe.
At what point is the tipping point reached between the "defect" being addressed simply being the norm?
It’s exactly the same as the “explosion” of autism.
This explosion is also because the "autism spectrum" is so broad that it covers everything from the barely functioning severely brain impaired to people that are occasionally moody. At some point, the cause is part of the normal spectrum of human behavior and as such it's questionable whether any type of "treatment" is required at all - especially for children.
To extend your analogy: The problem is that we seem to be one of 2-3 prescriptions to everyone without prefect 20/10 vision, including those with 20/30 vision, color blindness and no eyes.
I'm skeptical of any "disorder" that classifies large sections of our population base as being "deficient". While I don't discount that ADHD does exist, I find it hard to believe that it does so at the levels you would suggest it would.
But if everyone is getting health problems from the factory down the road, maybe instead of only treating the problem with medication, we also shut down the factory causing the health problems.
I suppose if we can determine the exact combination of genes that causes ADHD, at some point we’ll be able to eliminate it completely, at least in first world countries. It’s not really an option right now.
I find the juxtaposition of "non-kooky" and "limiting EMF exposure"/"filtering chemicals" to be really odd. A lot of these may well be interesting, but those two in particular just scream pure kook at me.
it really is Speed. I'd be curious to see the percentage of the ADD drugs that are being crushed and snorted. As a kid, we used to snort Dexedrin and Ritalin and it's called the poor man's coke. You even get a heavier crash than bad coke. The same thing is happening with prescribed opiates. More people are taking them for other reasons than for the ones they were intended for. I already know that comment is going to go at the bottom of the page since I'm talking about experience and not scientific studies,but, it's my own experiments and empirical evidence.
It always seemed weird to me that huge amounts of people should be taking Speed on a daily basis. Has there been any research into treating ADD with stuff like low-carb diets, vitamin D, limiting EMF exposure, limiting videogames, fish oil, filtering chemicals out of drinking water? I'm just throwing those out there as hunches; I have no idea if they're scientifically valid.