I hear what you are saying, however I beg to disagree.

Why do they do animal studies and then say that they don't prove that
much?

Why do we have to wait until Ritalin is "proven" deadly and
terrible? Has it been "proven" safe? It most certainly has not.
What happened to "First, do no harm?" This study is one of the
biggest "red flag" studies that I have ever seen on this topic.
This study also gives the lie to the brain imaging studies "proving"
the physical differences in the ADD brain. All or almost all of the
children who Zamet(?) showed to have ADD brains were long time
Ritalin or other drug, or some combination of drug users.

Why don't we move heaven and earth to find a dozen different
approaches instead of "behavior in a pill?"

Since artifical food coloring has been proven to be harmful to the
overwhelming majority of ADHD children, why don't we move heaven and
earth to get it out of our children's schools and bodies? Our 13
year old son was ADD city until third grade when we found out about
his artifical food color intolerance. When given food coloring he
became violent and out of control(we only found out about it inthe
first place because his third grade Rebbi made a "no junk" campaine
for the month of Cheshbon). He was very extreme and I do not
believe that Ritalin alone would have controlled him. However,
removing artifical food color, chocolate, soy, cow's milk, and
turmeric from his diet did control him(it was NOT easy). I gave the
menahel a bottle of vitamin C candies so he would not feel left out
when the other boys got junk. He just finished eighth grade and is
going to the yeshiva katana here in Telstone. The main factor that
we choose the local yeshiva as opposed to any other school is so he
can eat at home. I don't have to say what dining room food is
like. But we are just a family of lone crackpots, so the schools
don't want to hear about it. If a quarter of the parents would come
in and request a food color free school grounds, you are talking
about changing the world in a small meaningful step. If the doctors
and social workers would start educating the menahelim, staff, and
parents, children's lives would change.

I feel like I am rewritting John Lennon's song Imagen. Only he did
not have a line in there about imagen a world with no LSD and
marijuana.

Kol Tuv
Nachum

--- In ADD_ADHD_LD@yahoogroups.com, Michael Adler <mickya@...> wrote:
>
> I greatly appreciate Nachums concerns in giving Ritalin and other
drugs to kids and adolescents, and believe that there is a lot of
over prescribing of these medications however I would like to try to
keep the situation in proportion - firstly please note the author of
the research's own statement about the relevance of the results to
present day clinical practice :Thanos notes that the findings from
this study cannot be directly
> extrapolated to treatment regimes used for ADHD. Also, these studies
> were done in healthy animals, not in rodent models of ADHD.
> My attitude to treatment of ADD and ADHD is to be very aware of the
problems associated with drug treatment, the importance of correct
diagnosis, and also the problems of not treating kids who have good
responses to Ritalin. Some may respond better or the same to
alternative treatments - but not all - and as the response is usually
much slower than the response to Ritalin there are situations where
this can be problematic.
> Ritalin is not anywhere near a perfect solution - but it has helped
and is still helping many kids succeed and have good self images
where they would otherwise be likely to fail - drop out and maybe
fall into crime and drug taking.
> Louise
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Nachum
> To: ADD_ADHD_LD@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 2:57 AM
> Subject: [ADD_ADHD_LD] Do common treatments for ADHD increase
risk of drug abuse?
>
>
> First off to say, "the brain's reward pathways are definitely
> influenced by methylphenidate" in the second paragraph has got to
be
> the
> understatement of the month. How about saying warped, posioned,
or
> corrupted,
> but the word influenced is profuond for what it is trying not to
say.
>
> A second point. I remember having seen a study several years ago
> showing that
> adult monkeys who were given Ritalin as babies had less interest
in
> self
> administring cocaine. So on the one hand that sounds good. Less
> interst in
> drugs, less drug addiction. On the other hand the researchers
said
> something
> smells bad here. This is "good times in a pill," a monkey that
does
> not want
> it is showing a sign of something going haywire in it's brain. A
> similiar
> study in rats who under went a "forced swim challenge," showed
that
> the rats
> that where medicated as babies "gave up" sooner and drown. A
forced
> swim
> challenge is when a rat is dropped into a bucket of water and
timed
> how long
> they will swim until it gives up on life and drowns. Giving up on
the
> forced
> swim is used as an indication of a loss of interest in life and
> depression.
> One advantage that a depressed rat under these circumstances has
over
> a human
> child is that he just sits being depressed in his little cage
until
> someone
> drops him into a bucket of water and ends it all for him. A
depressed
> human
> child has a whole medical profession pushing one drug after the
next
> on him.
> The following article is detailing long term harm that Ritalin
will
> do to a
> child's brain. If you throw a little Prozac, Clonidine,
Risperdal,
> and Valpro
> into the mix, with some food artificial food color, MSG, Splenda,
and
> a lack of
> essentail nutrients you now have a designer, glow in the dark
child.
>
> Our bodies are built to health themselves. We just need to work
on
> eliminating
> the toxins and giving the basic building blocks we need to build
> health.
>
> Kol Tuv
> Nachum
>
> Do common treatments for ADHD increase risk of drug abuse?
>
> Parents, doctors, and others have wondered whether common
treatments
> for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inadvertently
> predispose adolescents to future drug abuse.
> The answer may depend on the age at which treatment is started and
> how long it lasts, say the authors of a new brain-imaging and
> behavioral study conducted in animals at the U.S. Department of
> Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. The results appear in the
> June 5, 2007 online issue of the journal Pharmacology,
Biochemistry
> and Behavior.
>
> "Our study shows that the brain's reward pathways are definitely
> influenced by methylphenidate, one of the stimulant drugs commonly
> used to treat ADHD," said Brookhaven researcher Panayotis (Peter)
> Thanos, lead author of the study. "But the brain chemistry
changes we
> observed suggest that the developmental stage at which treatment
> begins and the duration of treatment are important variables that
> need further study."
>
> In the study, rats were given methylphenidate mixed with distilled
> water beginning one month after birth -- early adolescence for
rats.
> Animals received either 1 or 2 milligrams methylphenidate per
> kilogram of body weight, consistent with clinical doses given to
> children with ADHD. A control group of rats was handled under
> identical conditions but given plain water.
>
> After two months of treatment, and again after eight months, the
> scientists performed positron emission tomography (PET) scans to
> measure the levels of dopamine D2 receptors, a type of brain
receptor
> important for experiencing reward and pleasure that has been
linked
> to pleasure and drug abuse. After the eight-month treatment,
animals
> were also tested for their propensity to self-administer cocaine.
>
> Rats given the 2mg/kg dose of methylphenidate were significantly
less
> likely to press a lever to self-administer cocaine, and received
> fewer self-initiated infusions of the drug following eight months
of
> treatment than the lower-dose group or the control rats.
>
> The changes observed in brain chemistry were specific to the age
and
> duration of methylphenidate treatment: Specifically, after two
months
> of treatment, brain scans revealed that both groups of treated
rats
> had lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors in their brains than did
> control animals.
>
> In contrast, after eight months of treatment, the brain scans
> revealed elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors in treated rats
> compared with controls, with the higher-dose treatment group
showing
> the highest level of D2 receptors. In the control group, D2
receptor
> levels declined with age.
>
> Research at Brookhaven and elsewhere has suggested that low
levels of
> dopamine D2 receptors may increase the likelihood of drug abuse,
> while elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors may attenuate the
> propensity to abuse drugs.
>
> "This new study provides evidence that chronic methylphenidate
> treatment begun in adolescence affects the brain's dopamine D2
> receptor levels, and thus the brain's reward circuitry,
differently
> depending on the age and treatment duration," Thanos said. The
> scientists' observation of lower rates of cocaine self-
administration
> in the animals treated for eight months with a 2kg/mg dose of
> methylphenidate supports this idea.
>
> However, the observation of lower levels of D2 receptors after two
> months of treatment suggests that shorter lengths of treatment or
the
> age at which treatment is evaluated could result in different
> effects. "Lower dopamine D2 receptor levels following short-term
> treatment could make the animals more vulnerable to drug self-
> administration during early adulthood," Thanos
said. "Unfortunately,
> we cannot compare cocaine self-administration following eight
months
> of treatment with that obtained after two months of treatment in
the
> same animals, since animals were not tested for cocaine self-
> administration at this earlier time," Thanos said. "We wanted to
> avoid any confounding effect that might have resulted from cocaine
> exposure during this early developmental stage," he explained.
>
> Evaluating the effect of treatment duration is one avenue the
> researchers are exploring in follow-up studies "to help assess
> optimal duration of treatment regimes to minimize adverse effects
on
> the propensity to abuse drugs," Thanos said.
>
> Thanos notes that the findings from this study cannot be directly
> extrapolated to treatment regimes used for ADHD. Also, these
studies
> were done in healthy animals, not in rodent models of ADHD. All
> experiments were conducted in conformity with the National
Academy of
> Sciences Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and
Brookhaven
> National Laboratory Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
> protocols.
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>