The beginnings of this web site actually began years ago when we gave our son Ritalin during his elementary school years.
After several years of research, we now know much more about ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and the effects that Ritalin (and other drugs like it) have on the brain. And we know more about the treatment of ADHD without drugs.
What I know now, I would never have given my son Ritalin as research shows that long term use is ineffective and damaging to the body. See the video on this page: endadhd.com/adhd-medications
I urge you to review this site to educate yourself further about AD/HD. We are continually adding new information. Here are the action items I suggest you take:
Sign up for our newsletter (right column) and receive a research “White Paper” on AD/HD natural solutions and also a research report that proves alternative treatment with nutraceuticals are equivalent and safer than Ritalin treatment.
Join our national campaign and tell all your friends about this web site. We need to let people know that there are healthy effective alternatives.
For further information, purchase (and give to your doctor) the eBook that shows how you can effectively use alternative medicine methods to treat people with ADHD symptoms >> ADHD Alternative Treatment eBook
Also, feel free to leave comments that may help others.
Thank you for visiting the site.
Howard Jamison
P.S. View the video below for more information. I interviewed Dr. CE Gant and he talks about diagnosing and treating ADHD.
A new study has been conducted by Epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues among more than 300 Mexican-American children living in Central California’s agricultural Salinas Valley. Since they live in a farming community, the children are more likely than others to be exposed to the pesticides, but problems resulting from environmental exposure are often first seen in those with the highest exposure.
Eskenazi with her team have tested for levels of pesticide metabolites in the mother’s urine twice during the pregnancies and then again several times in the children after being born. Then the children were tested again at ages 3.5 yrs and 5 years for ADD and ADHD, using the mothers’ reports, behavior ratings and performance on standard computer tests.
Their findings showed that each tenfold increase in pesticide levels in the mothers’ urine was associated with a fivefold increase in attention problems. Boys were more affected than girls.
This study comes just three months after a Harvard study showed that a tenfold increase with pesticide levels was associated with a 55% increase in ADHD. Researchers believe that the children in the study were exposed to malathion through the food they were consuming.
A recent study conducted by Donald Light, a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, found about 85 percent of new drugs offer few, if any, new benefits.
The research titled, “Pharmaceuticals: A Two-Tier Market for Producing ‘Lemons’ and Serious Harm,” is an institutional analysis of the drug industry and how it works based on a range of independent sources and studies. The research paper was presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.
In one study of 111 final applications for drug approval, Light said 42 percent lacked adequately randomized trials, 40 percent had flawed testing of doses, 39 percent lacked evidence of clinical efficacy, and 49 percent raised concerns about adverse drug side effects.
“Sometimes, drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs’ benefits,” Light was quoted as saying. “Then, they spend two- to three-times more on marketing than research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It’s really a two-tier market for lemons.”
Who do you believe? Are conventional doctors or alternative doctors fraudulent?
This is important in determining how to overcome your ADHD symptoms.
Questionable and Deceptive Health Care Practices
This rift between large medical organizations which set policies as to what constitutes “accepted standards of care” is prototypic of the raging conflict between conventional and non-conventional or alternative medicine.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), being the “new kid on the block,” apparently treads lightly and seeks to merely “complement” conventional medicine in order to avoid a confrontation with conventional medicine, which sees any challenge to its supremacy as “unproven, unsafe, worthless, incompetent, unprofessional, improper, unlawful, fraudulent and felonious.” Most of NCCAMs projects and grants are aimed at research into indigenous healing practices such as herbal medicine, and very little is focused on functional medicine, the author’s field of expertise.
From the conventional medicine perspective, functional medicine practice is negligent and from the functional medicine perspective, conventional medicine practice is negligent because each group is violating the “accepted standards of care” of the other group. Therefore, each group appears to be fraudulent to the other.
Functional Medicine
Any outstanding doctor needs to be a great detective and should be using functional medicine to determine the cause of your ADHD symptoms.
Functional medicine is defined as “personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes, instead of symptoms, for serious chronic disease,” and functional medicine is popularly classified as a type of Alternative Medicine. Functional medicine relies heavily on investigating biochemical, nutritional, metabolic, toxicological, allergic, immune, hormonal, neurotransmitter and genetic variables using diagnostic laboratory testing of stool, urine, saliva, blood and hair samples.
Thus functional medicine seeks to determine the underlying causes of chronic disease, rather than palliative treatment of symptoms with medications or herbal products (see Diagram below, Conventional Medicine vs Functional Medicine Method of Establishing a Diagnosis).
Published online in July in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the study “Childhood and Adolescent-onset Psychiatric Disorders, Substance Use, and Failure to Graduate High School on Time” found that 32.3 percent of students with the combined type of ADHD — which incorporates hyperactive and inattentive symptoms — drop out of high school. Fifteen percent of teens with no psychiatric disorder drop out.
“Understanding the factors that contribute to dropping out of high school has major public-health implications, given that a third of youth in this country do not complete high school on time. Supporting mental-health interventions for students may have a significant impact on reducing high school dropout,” said study author Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics and an adolescent medicine specialist at UC Davis Children’s Hospital.
The study found that 29 percent of students who used tobacco failed to complete high school on time. Twenty percent of teens who used alcohol and 24.6 percent of teens who used drugs dropped out.
Existing literature suggests that poor educational performance contributes to smoking. If this is true, then breaking the connection between smoking and education may be essential to further reduction in the prevalence of smoking.
For 20 years, Dr. Sandy Newmark has specialized in successfully treating children diagnosed as having ADHD using methods other than psychostimulant medications.
Now he has put his best advice into a new book, ADHD Without Drugs: A Guide to the Natural Care of Children with ADHD.
This book is written for every adult who cares for or influences the care of children with ADHD: parents first and foremost, plus caregivers, coaches, counselors, educators, physicians, psychiatrists, social workers and therapists – anyone who wants to learn how to better help all children with ADHD succeed.
In the book, Dr. Newmark explains how to treat the whole child, not just the symptoms of ADHD, using safe and natural methods. His successful treatment strategies are written in plain language that parents can understand easily and implement immediately. He also dispels the myths and misinformation surrounding ADHD, as he explains the latest research concerning what ADHD actually is, what causes it, and how it can be treated.
For those children who do need conventional medical treatment, he presents a research-based evaluation of the benefits and risks of the most common ADHD medications.
Parents of any child suspected of or diagnosed with ADHD, even those already taking medication, will find this book invaluable for their child’s health, happiness, and success.
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