Tell us your dreams that are worth pressing on for…

Young men with early or heavy use of Marijuana appear to have a 70% greater risk of Testicular Cancer.  This risk is even higher the younger the age of first use.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research center in Seattle found an association with Nonseminoma, a fast growing and aggressive subtype of testicular cancer.  Of all testicular cancer, 40% is Nonseminoma and the rest are slower growing.

It appears that hormonal changes during puberty make young men more vulnerable.  The findings were independent of other known risk factors, such as family history, cigarette smoking and alcohol use.  It appears that the testes, like the brain, have receptors for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical component of marijuana.

I found this information very interesting.  In our center, we have seen so many young people with ADHD attempt to self-medicate with Marijuana.  It appears the dangers of Marijuana are greater than we initially understood.

ADHD Kids & Holiday Travel

The holidays create a special and different time for each of us. For kids they are special, and for kids with ADHD they are different, special and much, much more. As a parent of a child with ADD/ADHD you can make life easier for your child and certainly for yourself, if you take certain steps. They are not difficult, they may take a little time and may cost a bit of money [or may cost nothing at all], and they can pay dividends in the form of relaxation and a real good holiday.

The first step is to be aware that the holiday, even one spent at home, will make for a change in the life of your child. Most kids with ADHD don’t react well to change. It may make your kids behavior even more demonstrative. So know this fact; you have to prepare. Prepare yourself, prepare your child and prepare for your journey and your destination.

So let’s consider your child. Take away the surprise element and build on the anticipation aspect. Let your child in on most of the plan, if not everything, which is likely to happen. If they are going to travel, go through the rigmarole of the journey. If it’s by car, plane or train, take out a map and show your child the route. You could use a large piece of blank paper and do simple things like draw your house, draw Grandma’s house and draw the road. Let your child help. Let them have a cut out picture of your car and have the child ‘drive’ the car along the map. If there are stopping points en route, draw or cut out pictures for the McDonalds, restaurant, hotel, etc. as the place you plan to stop for a meal, toilet break, etc. The whole emphasis is on preparing your child for what is going to happen or is likely to happen. Remember the activity needs to be age appropriate. As an example, younger kids may work with crayons and paste, while older kids may prefer to put their project together on the computer.

Next, you will want to prepare your child for what will happen at your destination. If it’s a motel, explain the room, where the child will sleep, where they can play games, etc.  If it’s Grandma’s house, show your child a photo of their room, of the house and garden. Explain where the child can play, who will be in the house and anything likely to happen on the vacation.

Then there’s the actual journey.  Have plenty of ‘quiet’ activities at hand, so your child can have things to do. It might be following a homemade map, ticking off things they can see out the window, a handheld digital game, listening to a CD or MP3 player, and/or watching a video/DVD on a portable player.

So, preparation is the real key. Have a variety of activities planned and once the holiday is under way and your child behaves in an acceptable way, reward them frequently for their good behavior.  It is the best present at holiday time to give to your child; your thanks and love in recognition of their successful attitude, good behavior and achievement. A hug, a kiss and kind appreciative words (positive attention) are the best forms of reward and can carry the most significance.

Remember a child with ADHD loves security, attention and routine. You can decide if the attention they get is going to be positive or negative. If you change the routine as a result of a holiday, you need to take certain steps to help your child and yourself so that you both can have a fantastic time.

Do you have tips to manage kids with ADHD during the holidays?  Please share your tips by adding your comment on this blog.

Women Running Late

Adults ADHD in California – what is the main complaint?

Attention Disorder Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is believed to affect about 8% of children and about a half of these sufferers will continue with the disorder when they grow into adults. So ADHD is a significant part of the life of millions of people and of course their disorder will impact on their family, friends, teachers, fellow workers, etc.

In recent years rapid progress has been made particularly in dealing with adults who have ADHD. Professionals are better at diagnosis, understanding the full spectrum of the disorder, as well as treatments be it with medication, psychotherapy, coaching or other alternatives.

With adults, one of the major signs of their disorder is their inability tokeep appointments. They may hold down a steady job but being late on a number of occasions puts their employment at risk. Or it can show up in everyday life like meeting someone at a restaurant, attending a family gathering or even collecting your child after school. If the ADHD adult does not put systems and structures in place, then poor time-keeping may often be a feature of their lifestyle. But does not need to be so.

The interesting aspect about tardiness is that it can be overcome. It would be nice to say cured, however, we will have to settle for ways and means to reduce or eradicate your being-late behavior.

You can be proactive with physical reminders. Your email program on your computer will react if you have added details of an appointment. You can get up in the morning and turn on your computer and see your whole day. Bingo, the details come up as to where you have to be today and at what time.

Lugging your computer around everywhere may pose some problems. Some alternative choices that can help are mobile phones, clock radios and portable email receivers which can all be programmed to make a sound and/or show a text message which will remind you of your appointments and schedule. Get into the habit of giving yourself these physical reminders. And don’t be afraid of being early. If lateness is a an issue, set your arrival time to a bit earlier which will help guarantee you will not be late.

One relevant point is to check the reason or reasons as to why you are late. If you can look beneath the lateness and find its true cause, you may be able to remove or alter your being late. Are you late for work because you dislike your job? If that’s the case you may want to try to find work which is more stimulating.

Not having an interesting job is pretty much the same as not wanting to go to a meeting or get-together. We all have to go to places and events we’d rather avoid, yet once you know why you are turning up late, (as an example- you have little interest in your destination), you can tackle your lack of enthusiasm. Find out why you are late and then do something practical to challenge or remove that cause.

The good thing, if that’s the expression, about being late is that the problem can be managed. Sit down with pen and paper and plan your week. List the appointments you have for the next few days. Make notes about how you will travel and when you will depart. Put this plan in a prominent place. Check it daily and follow your own directions. You can be on time every time.

If you find it difficult to tackle this on your own, a professional specializing in ADHD can help you move beyond where you are stuck and help you reach your goals.

Business Women with Deadline

ADHD Symptoms

The ADHD brain has problems doing all sorts of things and we’ve really only just starting to find this out. The ability of scientists such as neurologists and neuroscientists to take photos of the human brain and then analyze what is happening, means we are better able to discuss, define and treat people with ADHD.

The brain is divided into sections and one of these is known as the pre-frontal cortex. Photo imaging or a kind of x-ray of the brain shows that there are differences in the structure of parts of the brain between someone with ADHD and someone who does not have the disorder. Knowing these differences is a major step towards better understanding and thus the treatment of the patient be they a child or an adult.

Referring back to that part of the brain known as the pre-frontal cortex, we know that this part of the brain is linked with executive functioning which manages the following activities – problem solving, attention, reasoning and planning. Now with imaging you can see that the brain of a person with ADHD is likely to have problems with the above activities and will need help.

If the ADHD brain has problems when it comes to planning, then the life of that person will have potential difficulties and hardships. Planning takes the ability to prioritize, forward think, manage time, and factor in consequences.  If you can’t prioritize or you get times confused by thinking that five minutes is really an hour or two, then planning successfully is difficult to impossible. You simply don’t consider  how to successfully judge the real time it takes to complete a task.

Likewise with paying attention, reasoning and solving problems. With the ADHD brain these tasks can be difficult when a person is not interested.

Because ADHD with children tends to get more publicity than the disorder experienced by adults, we need to understand that the brain of a small growing child can be shown to be different when you consider an ADHD child or a child without ADHD.

ADHD symptoms don’t disappear as children grow into adults, the symptoms tend to change from being seen externally to being experienced internally. It is important to understand that distractibility can be an on-going problem for ADHD sufferers.

Distractibility is the primary reason and clear illustration as to why ADHD brains cannot fixate or think logically when it comes to time. When the brain is not functioning normally, when the chemical balance inside the brain may be an imbalance, then the ADHD child or adult gets their timing skills out of line. They think they have been working on a task for a few minutes when in fact they have been absorbed for much longer.

Medication and cognitive behavior therapy have long been a part of helping those with ADHD. Both these methods of treatment can be prescribed to assist the sufferer to better manage their time-keeping.

Rewarding positive behavior is one typical form of treatment. Setting simple tasks, staying with the ADHD sufferer to keep them on track and then rewarding them for using time-keeping successfully is another way to improve the performances of a person with ADHD.

There is a high incidence of both children and adults with sleep disorder problems who also have ADD/ADHD.

In a study by Ronald Chervin, a neurologist at the University of Michigan, he found that 30% of boys younger than 8 years of age that snored were identified with hyperactivity, while only 9% of non-snorers were found to be hyperactive.

The study is not suggesting that sleep disorders cause ADHD. The study rather reminds us that children can express daytime sleepiness as hyperactivity as a way to stay awake and adults can express daytime sleepiness as irritability or loopyness.

Once again the myth that ADHD does not exist is busted…..

By Redaksi Web
Harian Global — Published: Saturday, 04 July 2009

Hundreds of variations in genes which more frequently occur among attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) sufferers have been identified by researchers, many of which were known about previously as crucial for behavior and learning.

The variations seen have a broader impact on DNA structure, involving copy number variations (CNVs) which involve repeated or missing stretches of DNA. Many diseases, including schizophrenia and autism, are known to involve CNVs.

Psychiatrist Josephine Elia, M.D., said: “Because the gene alterations we found are involved in the development of the nervous system, they may eventually guide researchers to better targets in designing early intervention for children with ADHD.”

We all know that individuals with Attention Deficit Disorder are challenged with more than attention or multi-tasking; and yet the premise of the article is accurate in expressing how the speed of technology can affect individuals with Attention Deficit Disorder.  Read the article and let us know your thoughts and feelings…

By Bridgitt Robertson  

Atlanta Web Examiner  - Published: February 28, 2009

Are you experiencing short attention spans? Do you have difficulty empathizing with others? Well, according to one neuroscientist, this might be the result of your visits to social networking sites like Facebook.

According to Professor Greenfield, a neuroscientist at Lincoln college, “It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.”  Methylphenidate, or Ritalin, prescriptions have also increased in the US. Interestingly, college students in the U.S. who were already on Ritalin, Prozac and other psych meds and in need of additional counseling rose from 7% in 1992 to 18% in 2000. Could there be a link to their online activities?

Some experts suggest that excessive exposure to new digital technology can be problematic for the brain’s ability to respond. In fact, there are some studies that suggest that not everyone can handle multitasking and that the demands of today’s technologies may result in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

While we applause the vast technological changes taking place in our society, some experts say that such technologies prevent us from paying full attention to one thing. That technologies like instant messenging and Twitter require quick responses versus depth and sublety in our thinking.

According to Dr. Greenfield, who spoke of one Facebook user claiming 900 friends,”that you can’t see or hear other people makes it easier to reveal yourself in a way that you might not be comfortable with. You become less conscious of the individuals involved [including yourself], less inhibited, less embarrassed and less concerned about how you will be evaluated.”

Given the brain’s exposure to roughly eight hours of technology every day, it is likely that our high-tech revolution will have some sort of impact on our behavior. In fact, initial results indicate important links between extensive brain exposure to new technology and mental disorders.

So the next time your attention span is short or you feel you’re lacking emphathy, perhaps that’s the time to turn off the computer and your other electronic gadgets and go outside and get some good fresh air.

Youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were shown to have brain development delayed an average of three years compared to children without the disorder according to research done in a 2007 study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).   Of particular interest to parents is the finding that the most prominent delay was in the frontal cortex in ADHD kids. The frontal cortex is important because it regulates our ability to control thinking, attention and planning. These frontal areas also are believed to support the brains ability to suppress inappropriate actions and thoughts, focus attention, remember things from moment-to-moment, work for reward, and control movement – many of these functions are often disturbed in people with ADHD. 

Not surprisingly to parents of hyperactive ADHD kids, the NIMH study also found that the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement, emerged as the only area that matured faster than normal in the youth with ADHD (on average 5 years ahead of their non-ADHD peers). This gives us a better picture of the mismatch between increased motor activity combined with a decreased ability to focus, plan and inhibit thoughts and actions in kids with ADHD.

This sounds very familiar to me as I think of what ADHD in children often looks like in real life. One child told me that “my body is a Ferrari and my mind sometimes feels like a tricycle.”  Sometimes ADHD kids seem to put the gas pedal to the metal while other times getting them to move is like trying to push a car uphill with the emergency brake on.  This mismatch between motor ability and executive function should come as a relief to parents of ADHD kids looking for better insight into the origins of childhood ADHD.

There is hope. Parents should know that it is believed that stimulant medication, the front line defense for treating ADHD, is believed to assist the brain in this delicate balancing act between focus, action and inhibition of the prefrontal regions of the brain.  Helping your child understand the biological realities of ADHD can go a long way in increasing your child’s self-esteem.  Remember, we can only work with the assets our children have not those which are neurologically unavailable at the time.

NIH/National Institute of Mental Health (2007, November 13).  Brain Matures A Few Years Late In ADHD, But Follows Normal Pattern. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 29, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com  /releases/2007/11/071112172200.htm