Facts About ADHD Medications - SSRIs

In this informational article concerning facts about ADHD medications we will walk through the world of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. You may recognized some of these popular prescription medications or know someone who has been prescribed these meds for depression or other common mental health conditions.

SSRIs slow the elimination of serotonin (feel good hormone) from the synapses. The use of these types of medication for treating ADHD is a fairly new concept, since they are primarily used for depression and certain anxiety related conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. Secondarily they may be prescribed for aggressive behaviors and anger.

We will briefly cover 6 different types of SSRIs. In the world of SSRIs what may work well for one person may not work for the other. SSRIs do not have a direct effect on ADHD symptoms, but have gained popularity by being prescribed in addition to stimulant ADHD medications. I like to refer to this practice as staking, which means taking additional prescription drugs to control or mask problematic symptoms possibly brought about by the original treatment. So let's investigate a few facts about ADHD medications; SSRIs.

Facts about ADHD Medications - SSRI Brand Names

* Zoloft: Zoloft has been around for a while now and is often prescribed for depression. This medication may be helpful for those facing the challenges of ADHD due to its ability to improve dopamine activity. This type of activity is similar to that produced by stimulant ADHD treatments making it an obvious choice to be taken in addition to these primary treatments. It is short term in duration.

* Prozac: I feel sure you have at least heard the name Prozac. It is the oldest SSRI in the United States. The debate has raged for years as to whether the benefits outweigh the side effects. One of those side effects is its propensity to interact adversely with a myriad of other prescription medications. Many doctors are still advocates of Prozac and believe it is a good option most of the time. This is primarily due to its duration, which is longer than other SSRIs.

* Paxil: This prescription med has a short duration and can cause serious side effects such as insomnia, dizziness, irritability, ataxia, and general malaise. These side effects may be a sign of discontinuation syndrome which Paxil has been linked with.

* Luvox: Luvox is a longer lasting SSRI, along the lines of Prozac. While comparable to Prozac it has fewer drug interactions.

* Celexa and Lexapro: These SSRIs have a longer duration than Zoloft and Paxil, have fewer side effects, and are less prone to drug interactions. Lexapro seems to be gaining favor with some doctors due to its strength and reduced risk of side effects.

Facts about ADHD Medications - Looking for Alternatives

Whether you are contemplating stimulant mediations (primary treatments) or SSRIs (secondary treatments) one can't help but notice the risk of side effects. For this reason many adults and parents of ADHD children alike are looking for alternative treatments. At the forefront of effective alternative treatment options is homeopathy. Homeopathic natural remedies for ADHD have been shown to be safe and effective at treating ADHD symptoms like hyperactivity, erratic behavior, and lack of concentration without placing your health at risk.

The Ugly Facts About ADHD Medication

You may be shocked to know that the FDA (The Food and Drug Administration) had to issue a warning to doctors and pediatricians across the nation about psychostimulant drugs used in ADHD medication. They have warned of possible heart complications and even a risk of severe psychiatric symptoms which may develop in children who have been prescribed with these drugs. One of the drugs Strattera has been associated with suicidal thoughts in some children and adolescents. I could only shake my head in disbelief when I discovered that Strattera is only for adults with ADHD!

Another ADHD drug, Adderall was withdrawn in Canada because of the dangerous side effects.

It is interesting to note that a ADHD child may well have a parent who is suffering or has suffered in the past from ADHD - some experts say that there is a 30% - 40% chance. There is a strong hereditary link.

What side effects are common in these psychostimulant drugs for children? The most widely prescribed are Attenta, Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta. Children may have sleep disorders and they may suffer from stomach upsets. There are also problems of irritability. The fact that a child has to undergo an electrocardiogram, just in case of possible cardiovascular problems should set off alarm bells ringing in parents' minds! Is the cure worse than the disease?

As regards heart related complications, the Pediatrics Journal claims there is a 20% chance of children reporting these problems if they are on these drugs. Fortunately heart attacks or seizures are rare. And yet we know that there has been an incredible spike in the numbers of children being prescribed these drugs.

Michael Phelps the Olympics swimming champion has recently been added to the list of famous people who suffered from ADHD when he was a child. While this is very positive for children with ADHD to identify with a successful role model, there is too much hype in some circles claiming that ADHD can be an advantage! We know that Michael Phelps did not become successful because he had ADHD! We do not know to what extent Michael Phelps suffered from ADHD.

Many parents, just like me, are turning to ADHD natural medicine especially when they know that there are too many risks involved in conventional ADHD medications. They are looking for natural herbal remedies which will both stimulate the brain (to help keep it focused) and reduce hyperactivity. At the same time, the herbs will soothe and calm the child.

You may want to check out the link below which will tell you all you need to know about how effective natural remedies are in treating ADHD and that they are a perfectly valid alternative to conventional ADHD medication- without any of the nasty side effects. And a lot cheaper!

Chewable and Liquid ADHD Medication

Your doctor has just handed you a prescription for the attention deficit disorder medication methylin. You've just received a different form of methylphenidate. In other words, you've just received a prescription that has the same chemical compound as Ritalin with one major difference. The medicine you're about to take to your pharmacy comes in two forms: liquid or chewable.

Parents of children who can't swallow pills are tremendously thankful for these forms of the stimulant. Ironically, this same medication that you use to treat your child's ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is the very same one used in adults to treat narcolepsy. This is the disease where people fall asleep for seemingly no reason.

Methylin, in most cases, should be taken two to three times daily. For the most part, your child will probably be administered a dosage of anywhere from 10 mg to potentially 60 mg per day. This will be divided into two and possibly three dosages. Your last dose, by the way, shouldn't be taken after 6 p.m., because it can interfere with sleep.

If your child is taking the chewable variety of the medicine encourage her to drink an entire, full glass of water after chewing the medication. Ensuring that the medication is downed with at least eight ounces of water helps to prevent any possible choking.

Many parents, when giving their children liquid medications -- especially over-the-counter -- depend on the household "teaspoon" as a measurement. Try not to do this. As tempting as this may be, if you're administering the liquid form of Methylin, use a regular "dosing spoon" for a more accurate delivery.

You may want to instead even use a regular measuring cup or even an oral syringe for measurement.

It doesn't matter whether you take the medication with your meal or not. However, it is important that you follow your doctor's instructions -- and the directions on the label -- when using methylin. Otherwise, you may not get the best results from it.

Of course the exact doses of Methylin will vary depending on a number of factors, not the least of which of them is the age of the person the medication is prescribed for. Your child's dose may also vary depending upon if she's already tried several other alternatives for treating her ADD/ADHD. And of course, the last variable in dosing amounts will hinge on any other prescription medications she may be currently receiving.

Yes, every prescription medication (and over-the-counter ones too!) come with some type of side effects. Those of Methylin include nervousness, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, stomach pain and weight loss.

ADHD Drugs For Kids - Good News And Bad News!

It is always better to start with the good news which has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was a joint study sponsored both by the FDA and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

This reports on a very large study which confirms that the common ADHD drugs for kids do not put them at increased risk of having a heart attack or having other cardiac events. The research also included the likelihood of strokes or sudden death and the conclusions were the same. The study could not find any difference in those kids taking the drugs and those who were not taking them. It seems that the only problem is for those children who are already suffering from some cardiac problem.

The bad news is about possible conflicts of interest in some of the studies done on ADHD which are sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies. Is there a conflict of interest? Can the results be totally unbiased? This is a very difficult area. The recent news concerns three Harvard professors who are psychiatrists and have worked on ADHD and are widely respected.

They are suspected of having a conflict of interest in having received large sums of money over the years and not having disclosed this. This is a violation of the Harvard rules on conflicts of interest. However, the issue may be only about reporting their funding and may be of course a mere bureaucratic fly in the ointment.

But this points up the fact that very often, the pharmaceutical companies are doing everything in their power to discredit the natural remedies for ADHD, especially the homeopathic remedies. We know that they have actually sponsored studies to show that homeopathy supposedly does not work or is totally ineffective. They should look at figures for the cholera epidemic in London last century when homeopathy saved thousands of lives!

Then there are people employed by them to act as Facebook characters who are there simply to praise their drugs to the skies. As we can see it is very often difficult to see the wood for the trees.

The fact is that ADHD drugs for kids are controversial because their side effects and long term health risks are not at all clear. There is a lack of research in this area or at least it is not readily available.

This is why the ADHD homeopathic remedies are so popular now because there are simply no side effects and there is no chance that your child will be approached to sell his meds either. These are just some of the advantages of choosing an alternative to ADHD drugs for kids. Why not check out what the others are by visiting my website.

What's the Best Test For ADHD?

If your child is showing signs of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, you may be wondering how health practitioners test for ADHD. The truth is that there are actually many tests to diagnose ADD and ADHD and that the best practitioners use a combination of these tests to determine whether or not a child has ADHD.

A good test for ADHD will involve information from several sources, including parents, teachers, and the child himself if he is old enough. For this reason, ADHD is difficult to diagnose in preschool-aged children. A different set of tests is required to officially diagnose very young children with ADHD, so we will set that scenario aside for this brief article.

Different practitioners use different tests to diagnose ADD and ADHD, but the best of these tests are formulated specifically for ADD and ADHD instead of a wide variety of possible behavioural disorders. The tests will be administered to the child, and they will also include questionnaires for teachers and parents.

Most often, specially trained professionals will rely not only on written information provided by caregivers and the child herself, but also on interviews. This combination of methods ensures that a practitioner is making the clearest, most accurate diagnosis possible.

There are a few things you should know when going through a test for ADHD with your child. First of all, if your physician or psychologist is not taking his time with the test or is not using information from a variety of resources, he is not doing his job thoroughly enough. Either press him to be as thorough and accurate as possible or take your child elsewhere. Secondly, understand that even the most careful, deliberate professional can make a mistake when it comes to diagnosing ADHD because the diagnosis relies so much on information from third parties.

To lessen the possibility of an ADHD misdiagnosis, keep track of his behaviour very carefully for a period of several weeks or even months. If possible, have the child's teacher keep a log of the times the child's ADHD symptoms interfere with his functioning in the classroom or on the playground. Keep the same type of log whenever you are with your child; write down the date, time, and a detailed description of the incident whenever the child is showing excessive hyperactivity or impulsivity. Having such information written down will help your doctor make the most accurate diagnosis possible.

Lastly, you need to realize that as a parent, it's up to you what you do with a diagnosis once it is made. Chances are likely that if your child is diagnosed with ADHD, your physician will suggest starting a medication regimen. Understand, though, that there are other options out there, even if your child is only borderline ADHD or shows some of its symptoms without being diagnosed with the disorder.

Look into all your options, including homeopathic therapy, before having your child put on potentially harmful medications. Unlike traditional medications, homeopathic remedies have no side effects and are safe even for children who are borderline ADHD or who may just be more hyperactive or impulsive than normal children. After you have gone to all the trouble of a test for ADHD, don't throw it out the window by blindly following wherever your doctor leads. Be sure that you know what you are getting your child into, and don't be afraid to go against the grain by trying alternative therapies. You'll be glad you put in the extra time to do the research on better options for your child's health.

ADHD Test - SPECT Test

Chiropractors with training in functional neurology use functional neurological examinations to give you a comprehensive picture of your child's brain function, its weaknesses, and its strengths. In some cases, however, these instruments fail to yield helpful results. When this happens, your child will have to go through advanced imaging techniques like Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography, or SPECT tests.

SPECT tests examine your child's metabolism by tracking the amount of blood that enters the brain, which enables the clinician to observe your child's brain activity. Active regions of the brain need more blood to fuel them, while inactive regions require less blood. Through SPECT tests, the clinician can identify any overactive or underactive regions of the brain, and determine which regions are functioning normally. This information, together with your child's medical history and the results of other tests, can give the clinician a detailed picture of what may be causing your child's condition and how it can best be treated.

At the start of a SPECT test, your child will be injected with a safe chemical compound that travels through the bloodstream and eventually reaches the brain. The chemical compound is composed of a radioactive isotope which emits pulses of brain energy and lights up the active regions of the brain. A special camera then takes an image and transfers it to software that automatically reconstructs a 3D image of your child's brain. The printed picture that you receive will show you the regions of the brain that have normal activity, high activity, and low activity. Aside from making it easy to identify which regions are over-stimulated or under-stimulated, this information helps the clinician compare the image to SPECT images of brains afflicted with ADHD and other neurological disorders.

A child undergoing a SPECT test will have to experience two brain scans over a four-day period. During the first brain scan, the clinician will obtain a baseline view of the child's brain function by putting him or her at rest. For the second scan, the child will be asked to perform a concentration task to yield an image of the brain at work. The second brain scan will give the clinician an overall picture of brain activity, showing which areas are working properly and which areas are dysfunctional.

Aside from detecting ADHD, SPECT tests are incredibly useful in guiding treatment. Not all treatments have immediate effects on children, and determining a treatment plan that works can take several weeks or months. By using SPECT tests to see how well the brain responds to certain treatments, it is easier for the clinician to track the child's progress or make any modifications to the treatment plan.

The main disadvantage to SPECT tests is that they are available only in very few clinics. Hospitals do not have the technology for SPECT testing because mainstream medicine has yet to utilize this instrument. Only Dr. Daniel Amen of the Amen Clinics in the United States performs SPECT tests, and a full evaluation will set you back $3,000. For these reasons, SPECT testing is only recommended if other ADHD tests fail to provide useful information, or if you have the money to travel to an Amen clinic.

Personality Test Can Identify Individuals With Inattentive ADHD

Inattentive ADHD (ADHD-I) is different in many ways from the most commonly known type of ADHD which is called Hyperactive/impulsive ADHD or ADHD-HI. It is also different from the combined type of ADHD which is a combination of the Inattentive and Hyperactive type of ADHD.

Some ADHD experts have found it more expedient, for the purpose of deciding treatment, predicting adult outcomes, and classification purposes, to just treat the inattentive ADHD subtype as if they were the same as the combined subtype of ADHD but this is short sighted. Individuals with inattentive ADHD have different outcomes from the other subtypes of ADHD, may respond differently to ADHD treatment and may require different interventions than the other subtypes of ADHD.

Researchers are working on sorting out the specific genes that are involved in each subtype of Attention Deficity Hyperactivity Disorder and it is looking, increasingly, like the genes at work in inattentive ADHD are somewhat different than the genes at work in the other subtypes of ADHD. Only by finding the specific genes involved in inattentive ADHD, will ADHD-I get the validation that is needed. In the mean time, there has been work done using personality tests and other tests to arrive at an ADHD subtype diagnosis.

Personality tests can very accurately diagnose inattentive ADHD, combined type ADHD, and ADHD with conduct disorder. Individuals with ADHD-I are significantly less likely to be hyperactive and they are less likely to be exhibit outward signs of hostility, anger, oppositional behavior or aggression. Two studies just published indicate that temperament and activity level can very accurately predict the subtype diagnosis for ADHD. One study performed in Spain found that a personality inventory that measured Activity and Aggression allowed the researcher to properly classify 76 percent of individuals with ADHD-I.

Another study performed in England and just published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry looked at Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) personality traits, temperament and activity level of preschoolers and found that increased activity and emotionality accurate predicted the diagnosis of individuals with ODD and Combined type or hyperactive / impulsive subtype.

Behavioral checklist can provide a broad synopsis of the most prominent symptoms of individuals with Attention deficity disorder. Personality test add to the diagnostic picture and more sophisticated test such as functional MRI, functional brain scans, and computer test that measure activity and attention such as the ADHD Quotient system can flesh out the diagnoses even more thoroughly.

We may not need to wait for a genetic marker for Inattentive ADHD. It appears that personality tests as well as other diagnostic tools are readily available now and allow us to accurately distinguish between all the subtypes of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Inattentive type may not respond as well to the same treatment as Combined type or the Hyperactive Impulsive subtype but we will not fully understand this subtype of until individuals with ADHD-I are appropriately screened, identified and a correct diagnosis is made.