She’s a post-doc in neuroscience, and she has posted in the past about various psychoactive medications and how they work.    She writes about the two major classes of ADHD drugs, [...]]]> I’ve been reading blogging by Scicurious (formerly of Neurotopia at Science Blogs, now at a blog called either “Neurotic Psychology” or “Scicurious”, I’m not sure which.

She’s a post-doc in neuroscience, and she has posted in the past about various psychoactive medications and how they work.    She writes about the two major classes of ADHD drugs, Amphetamine, and Methylphenidate, as well as SSRI’s.  If you’re on any of these meds you should check out her posts.

A few weeks back, a feature recently ran in the Shelby Star in which a reader wrote in asking about whether the Feingold Diet might work for her son’s ADHD.  The columnist, John Rosemond, replied that while many mental health professionals believe that the diet is ineffective because of, you know, insufficient evidence.  But, [...]]]>

A few weeks back, a feature recently ran in the Shelby Star in which a reader wrote in asking about whether the Feingold Diet might work for her son’s ADHD.  The columnist, John Rosemond, replied that while many mental health professionals believe that the diet is ineffective because of, you know, insufficient evidence.  But, he says, that’s only “true as far as it goes” — because studies address averages, and even if the participants didn’t improve “on average”, the study might not report that some of the participants did improve.

Well, actually, studies usually do contain that information.  In order to be worth anything, a scientific study must publish all of its data — this is so that readers of that study can evaluate it properly, and so that the study can be replicated by other researchers.  This is a core underpinning of the scientific method.  Any reputable study of the efficacy of the Feingold diet for ADHD treatment would need to indicate how many subjects participated, how many of those participants were diagnosed with ADHD, and how that diagnosis was reached.  The participants with ADHD would be divided into two groups, one using the diet, and one not (to be even more rigorous, the study might then compare these two groups to non-ADHD control groups both on and off the diet).  Finally, the published results would need to indicate exactly how many of the ADHD participants — both on the diet and off — experienced alleviation of their symptoms, and how many did not.

But even more concerning is that the columnist asserts that “perhaps the most convincing evidence” for the efficacy of the Feingold Diet is the testimony of parents.  Sure, the “ADHD Establishment” likes to “dismiss these claims as unscientific”, but “the issue boils down to one fundamental question: Why would these parents say their kids’ behavior improved if it didn’t?”

Mr Rosemond, meet the placebo effect.

For whatever reason, the human brain is subject to “expectancy”, which basically means that it’s prone to producing the results it expects.  In other words, if someone gives you a sugar pill for a head cold, and tells you it will make you feel better, there’s a decent chance your sniffles will clear up.  This person has set you up to expect that you will feel better, and you do.

In fact, human beings are so sensitive to expectancy that if the person giving you the sugar pill believes it will make you feel better, there’s a good chance that you will pick up on this intuitively, in fact you may feel better because of what someone else expects.

This is why clinical trials are required to be double-blind.  A certain number of patients are on the real medication, and a certain number are on the placebo.  The clinicians administering the pills have no idea who is getting what medication.  The only people who know are the researchers, who at the end of the study compare the efficacy of the medication to the efficacy of the placebo.

In the case of the Feingold parents, there are a couple of why the parents in question might report improved behavior.  The first is that they are expecting to see improved behavior, and they interpret their child’s behavior as improving whether it actually is or not.  The second is that the children themselves have been told that this new diet will improve their behavior.  The expectancy has been set up — and their behavior really does improve.

I’m not saying any of this to bash the Feingold diet.  There may not be a lot of scientific validity to back it up, but that could in part be due to the complications of studying something like diet and psychological symptoms.  I certainly support anyone who wants to eliminate synthetic additives from their food.  Furthermore, there’s along and proud history of physicians using the placebo effect to help their patients — in the days before modern pharmacology, it was often the only thing that could.  The Feingold Diet won’t hurt you, or your child, and if it genuinely makes your family’s life better, scientific validity might not be your top concern.

However, before you try Feingold, you may want to make sure that it doesn’t lead to behaviors that do cause harm.  Check out Stephen Barrett’s article on the potential pitfalls.

If you missed that post, let me fill you in (ha!): thanks to my ADD meds, I had seven #%$^ing cavities at [...]]]> I just spent an hour and a half getting four cavities filled. All of them were between my teeth. These are in addition to the three that I had filled in December.

If you missed that post, let me fill you in (ha!): thanks to my ADD meds, I had seven #%$^ing cavities at my last check-up.

If you’ve taken brain drugs, at all, ever, you will know that dry mouth is a common side effect. In many cases this is a simple annoyance — you feel thirsty a lot and have to drink more water so you have to pee more. However, saliva is also an important part of your body’s defenses against tooth decay. If your saliva production is impacted enough, it can’t get rid of nasty bacteria in your mouth, and cavities can result.

In my case, the ADD meds might be the tipping point, since I’m also on meds for depression and allergies. Antihistamines, and especially decongestants, work in part by drying out the mucus membranes. It would be great if this could be limited to where it’s needed, like nasal and sinus passages. Instead, it gets all of ‘em — including the mouth.

So kids, if you’re on ADD meds (or allergy meds or anti-depressants or whatever), please keep close tabs on your teeth. Floss and brush after every meal, if you can. If you can’t, just floss. If you can’t do that, consider a gum of breath mint with xylitol, a chemical that stimulates saliva production. In order to work, the product needs to have a lot of xylitol, so be sure to go with a high-octane product like Epic.

If I save just one person from the holy-$#^%-I-have-how-many-cavities experience, it will be … well, not worth it, but definitely less traumatic.

“Attention” [...]]]> I’ve blogged before about the seasonal aspects of my ADD.  Unsurprisingly, things have been even worse since the return to Standard Time (ptui!) and the loss of another hour of light in the afternoon.  I’ve been more tried, more hungry, more spacey … and paradoxically, less able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

“Attention” is a neurological state that’s heavily dependent on dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical.  Dopamine, in turn, is heavily dependent on a number of factors, including sunlight.  Most people are aware of seasonal and weather impacts on their mood and habits, but for some people, these effects can be extreme.  I obviously fall into the second camp.

My doc and I decided to up my Vyvanse from 50 to 60 mgs.  My hope is that this will improve my concentration, attention, and ability to take initiative.  He also advised me to spend time in my art studio from 4 pm until 7 pm ever day.  If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that my art studio is equipped with a full-spectrum daylight bulbs.  My doc says it takes 5 or 6 “average” 150-watt bulbs to produce a therapeutic amount of light.  I already had four, and I knew my two overhead lights would put me into therapeutic territory; this was a major impetus for getting off my ass and hanging the lights.

Finally, he advised me to start taking melatonin before bed.

Today is the first day I’ve managed to be in my studio right at 4 pm.  I’ve got to admit it feels pretty good. I am noticing, however, just how hard it is for me to stay in one place for more than an hour.  My inclination is to jump up and go do something, and come back, and jump up and do something else, and come back … it’s so annoying when you have to fight ADD tendencies in order to treat ADD.

In general I’ve been sleeping better, but it does seem harder to get up in the morning.  Whether this is the melatonin or the increasing dimness of my bedroom I’m not sure.  Tomorrow will be my seventh day on the new regime.  Maybe things will settle in and get better.

Well, my perfectionism was not in vain, because I won the contest!  Yay!  You can check out [...]]]> Last week over at Well-Ordered Chaos I wrote about perfectionism and ADD.  I had spent 20 hours writing a lens for a Squidoo contest, even though I deliberately picked a topic that I thought would be easy and quick.

Well, my perfectionism was not in vain, because I won the contest!  Yay!  You can check out my lens here.

You start by putting [...]]]> Yesterday I hung a light in my art studio.  Just an ordinary shop light, soft wired, hung from basic ceiling hooks, with daylight corrected bulbs instead of standard florescent tubes.  It’s the kind of thing that should take half an hour.

But when you have dyscalculia and ADD, it goes something like this:

You start by putting on your new stay-cool air-flow respirator mask, which you bought because most masks are so hot you don’t wear them.  You mentioned this to your sister once.  She used to do did OSHA compliance for a mining company and put the fear of Fear into you about what particulate matter does to your lungs, especially to asthmatic lungs.  So when you found the stay-cool respirator at the hardware store you bought it, congratulating yourself on your mad self-care skillz.

You notice that your respirator smells obnoxiously of plastic.  You ponder the irony of your respirator protecting you from particulate matter while exposing your to volatile organic off-gassing.

Then you stare at the ceiling for awhile, trying to figure out where you should put your light.  You have two lights, and your space is 11 feet by 11 feet … and if you want your lights to be evenly spaced from the edges of the space, you have to divide 11 by 3 …  so you get out your tape measure and stare at all the little black lines that divide up all the feet and inches.

They all look the same.

Finally you just say “screw it” and take a guess at where to stick your damn light.  Whenever you try to take measurements and do division, you mess it up anyway, so guessing is probably safer, right? Right.

You decide you want the light to hang about one foot away from, and perpendicular to, the wall behind your studio table.  You measure about a foot away from the wall (you hope), and drill your first hole.

You get a ton of plaster dust in your eyes.

Cursing mildly, you go out to the shed to get your safety glasses.

Since your drill bit didn’t hit a stud, so you use a ceiling drywall anchor and start screwing in the bolt.  Nothing seems to be happening.  You look up “how to mount a ceiling hook” on the internet and find a video that tells you how to do it.  The only thing you were getting wrong is that you weren’t pulling gently on the bolt as you were screwing it in, so the anchor was just turning along with the bolt.  You try again, pulling gently this time, and turn your hook until it’s flush with the ceiling.  You have achieved a ceiling hook! So far so good.

You congratulate yourself on your mad manly handy skillz.

You look at the box the light fixture came in.  It says the light is 6 feet long with a 5 foot cord.  A five foot cord … oh, right, you’ll need the extension cord from the fridge, which is too short so it hangs awkwardly anyway, and you got a longer cord to replace it back in July, but you haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Cursing mildly, you stop drilling holes in the ceiling in order to take the short chord down and replace it with the longer one that does fit, so you can use the shorter one for your light.  This requires you to pry cable clips out of the wall to get the old cord off, and to hammer new ones into the wall to put the new cord on.  This takes about an hour.

When you have the correct extension cord, you’re ready to install your second ceiling hook.  You look at your ceiling hook and realize that you have a wood screw, not a drywall bolt and anchor.  Cursing mildly, you go to the shed to get a drywall bolt and a ceiling anchor.

You drill another hole.  You still get plaster dust in your eyes, because the safety glasses don’t fit when you’re also wearing a respirator.  You decide that you can live without your eyes, but not without your lungs.  You ponder the irony of going blind while installing a light in your art studio.

You put your drywall anchor on your bolt, and insert it into the ceiling.  As you’re jiggling it into position, it somehow pops out of your hand and up into the ceiling cavity.

Cursing mildly, you go out to the shed to get yet another ceiling anchor and bolt. To be safe, you get two more of each, so you can hang the second light when you’re done with the first one.

You screw the anchor and the hook to the bolt.  You insert it in the freshly-drilled hole, this time taking care that it won’t get lost in the ceiling.  You congratulate yourself on your manly handiness.

You descend from your stepladder and pick up the light.  You carefully climb the stepladder with your precious burden.  You hang it carefully on one of your ceiling hooks and let it dangle while you climb down and reposition the ladder.

You grab the other end of the light fixture and climb the stepladder again.

The light doesn’t reach.

You stare at the light, then at your ceiling hooks, then at the box the light came in.  You take the light down off the first hook, and then it hits you:

1) With one end resting on the floor, the light comes up to your ribcage.

2) You are 5 feet, four inches tall.

3) If the light were, in fact, six feet tall, it would be taller than you — kinda like your 6′2″ husband.

4) The light is not as tall as you.

5) If you had stopped to consider any of this, even for thirty seconds, you would know that this is no damn six foot light!

You take a deep breath.

You look at the box again.  It does, indeed, have a 6 on it … in order to explain that the light fixture as a 6 INCH reflector.

You take another deep breath.  Cursing mildly isn’t going to cut it this time.  Invoking the spirit of your grandfather, you start cursing like a sailor, a longshoreman, AND a truck driver.   The cats run for the hills.  Wine glasses shatter.  Paint peels off the walls.  But you feel a little better.

You go into the living room to illustrate to your husband that the light is not 6 feet long.  “What, you didn’t measure it?” he asks.

“... no …“

“What?” he asks.

“NOTHING!” you say.  Cursing mildly, you go back to your studio with your FOUR FOOT LONG light fixture.

You measure FOUR FEET away from your first ceiling hook.  You don’t hit a stud, so you put a drywall anchor onto the bolt and start turning the hook.  You hit something solid.  You probe the area with a pencil, and find that a few inches above the drywall, there is indeed a mysterious solid object.  Further probing reveals that it ends after a quarter of an inch or so.  Well, the hole needs to be enlarged anyway, so you enlarge it in that direction, and insert the anchor.  Once again you hit something solid, and as you try to move the bolt around, it vanishes into the ceiling.

Cursing mildly, you descend the ladder and get another ceiling hook, bolt, and anchor.  This time you don’t lose the hook, but after fifteen minutes of trying, you can’t get it to go in straight.  Cursing rather more strongly, you screw it in so it’s not quite flush.

You hang the light, successfully this time, and move onto the second light.  You drill your first hole … and realize that with the anchors you’ve lost in the ceiling, you need to go out to the shed to get more.  Cursing vitriolically, you obtain your hardware and install it.  You hang your second light within half an hour.  Your first light took three hours.

You go into the living room and say to your husband, “I need you to tell me that I’m not a total idiot.  And that measuring things is stupid.  And that it’s a useless, pissant skill that nobody cares about.”

Your husband is silent for a moment.  Possibly he is contemplating your friend whose job it is to keep the International Space Station from falling out of the sky.

“Um … I love you?” he says.

FINIS

* The answer is “Lime green pocket watch”.  Gibbering in a corner is also acceptable.

Nutrition bars are a good thing when you’re out hiking and you need energy.  They are not a good thing if you have ADD [...]]]> I overslept this morning and didn’t have time to eat breakfast.  I had to gulp down a nutrition bar on my way to the gym.  A nutrition bar with lots of sugar.

Nutrition bars are a good thing when you’re out hiking and you need energy.  They are not a good thing if you have ADD and you eat them for breakfast.  If I have sugar first thing in the morning, especially unbuffered by any sort of fiber, my brain suffers for the rest of the day.

I was supposed to run errands, so some work online, and start soup for dinner by the later afternoon.  Instead, I wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out whether I could get some charitable donations picked up (after two hours I finally *gasp* JUST CALLED THEM).  Then I got distracted by my online work.  Then it was already 6:30 and I’d forgotten to start the soup.  Since the soup uses dried beans, it needs several hours to simmer, which means …. NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Thank the gods I have eggs, nature’s emergency back-up meal.