Ritalin?

The doctors advised me to start giving my son this drug. And im not too happy about it. (8years)

He´s not exactly hyperactive, but very bad at school in reading and writing because he can´t concentrate, but in other areas brilliant. Can build level 5 (highest)models no problem for example. so its a dilemma.

What do any of you know about this drug?

Thanks for any info.

For what its worth. Back when I was college I always use to take my roommate's ritalin when I had to study for a big exam. It makes you focus more on the tasks at hand.

You might want to check out Neurofeedback instead of ritalin to treat your son's ADD.

www.medscape.com...

www.drakeinstitute.com...

Please read my thread on a friend of mine who lost their child to Ritalin. Many people have u2u me about this as well it seems to be a hot topic. And one other member here was put on Ritalin as a child and has his own story of the drug.

www.abovepolitics.com...'

[edit on 5-3-2007 by Realtruth]

Please look up omega 3 and omega 6 fish oil dietary supplements available at the pharmacy in the vitamin section. Clinical Studies show these can increase concentration and decrease antisocial behavior from ADHD diagnosed patients.

NOT saying 100% NOT saying diagnosis is correct or wrong...

BUT these are natural and available in the food we eat or as supplements if you don't like oily fish.....

My own son bottom of class in maths won't read added the supplements a year ago loves maths not top of the class in math, but loves it. Reads star wars and other fiction books for recreation now. The change is simply amazing..

Just do the research and make your own choice don't give your child amphetamines unless there really is no alternative.

For info he was 8 then he is 9 now and both his cousins were diagnosed ADHD and took the damn stuff for years.....

m2c ......

[edit on 9-3-2007 by Deharg]

Thanks for the info everyone.

we´re going to try the omega 3 & 6 fish oil.

Im not giving my kid amphetamines, rather have him the way he is with bad results than "changed" and doing well.

Yep im confused as well, dunno why I have two different names on here, sometimes I come on as bicnarok sometimes as this, wierd.



maybe someone can sort that out

DO NOT GIVE HIM RITALIN!


When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with ADD. I was given Ritalin and soon after I began taking it, my attention span got worse, kinda. It did not help me focus on schoolwork, rather it made me obsessive with minor things like keeping my fingernails clean or something of that nature, and what attention I had suffered. In addition, it became impossible for me to eat or keep anything down. My parents finally took me off of it(against the doctors orders) when they began to fear for my health. I have pics of me as a child looking like an occupant of a third world country. Once I was off of it, my attention span was normal again, and my grades improved.

Just my experience, take it for what its worth.


[edit on 18-3-2007 by Nicotine1982]

Ritalin is nothing but a dangerous chemical masked as a 'medication' for a condition that was made up. It doesn't exist. Your child more than likely needs a proper diet and some herbal supplements.

PLEASE read these article on Newstarget.com. Society is being drugged into a stupor for nothing but money, power and control.

This is the link to the full list of articles:
Feature articles on Ritalin

Here are some of the articles. This information will make your head spin. We are all truly on our own when it comes to our health.

Neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman talks about the fraud of ADHD and the poisoning of U.S. children

Tenfold increase in Ritalin prescriptions for ADHD children sets off U.K. investigation


Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, has a simple cause: poor nutrition and food additives

Schoolchildren Are Increasingly Dosed With Both Ritalin and Anti-Psychotic Drugs, Says New Research

While scientists clash over the dangers of ADHD drugs, the U.S. government does nothing to protect children

Link proven between sugar consumption and hyperactivity, mental disorders in teens

Seems the general view here is that the drug is evil. I don't know much about it, but I had a friend that took it and it helped him alot. His grades went up, he was less hyper, etc.

The only negative side effect he complained about was how hard it was to get to sleep.

Just my two.

Kids are kids they are suppose to be hyper. Today, parents (teachers) don't like that they want all children to be little robots and sit quitely never thinking for themselves and doing exactly what they are told. Kids don't get the time off they need to play it's pathetic. I know several teachers wanted me to do something like that to my son, years ago but I just told them to deal with it. He's a child leave him alone. I never put him on anything. Somehow he seemed to make the A or B honor roll. Hum did that without medicines. The doctor even metioned it to me once. I said I would let him know if it gets to the point I can't handle him. It never got there. Medicines are bad for both the liver and stomach.

Originally posted by Zanzibar
Seems the general view here is that the drug is evil. I don't know much about it, but I had a friend that took it and it helped him alot. His grades went up, he was less hyper, etc.

The only negative side effect he complained about was how hard it was to get to sleep.

Just my two.

Yes, the drugs are designed to work that way. They dull your senses so you're less hyper, and then they damage your brain and pump your body full of chemicals to cause more damage that requires higher does of medication. It's a snowball effect.

Most every medical condition can be alleviated with proper diet and herbal supplements.

Our food is one of the main sources that cause these "conditions". Want to know what's in our food? Call me paranoid... but I honestly think that YES... they ARE out to get us.


Hidden Dangerous Ingredients in Foods
www.newstarget.com...


Real Reason Processed Meats are Dangerous to your Health
www.newstarget.com...


Everyday groceries contain ingredients that cause chronic diseases
www.newstarget.com...

Originally posted by annestacey

and then they damage your brain

I agree with everything else you've said except this. My friend didn't seem to have a damaged brain, unless being able to concentrate and learn are classed as being damaging.

Or do you mean that his brain wasn't like this before, so having it changed is damaging?

I only have an onlookers perspective of the effect and I'm not going to pretend that I know what it's like. What I do know is that this drug changed his life for the better, surely that's a good thing?

My brother was hyperactive as a child (they didn't call it ADHD back then) and yet was super-intelligent. He was disruptive in class and his grades were always bad. Eventually, he had been "asked to leave" quite a number of schools as the teachers said he was "uncontrollable" and "disruptive". The doctors prescribed Ritalin. My parents refused and instead put the whole family on a health regime. Basically, we cut out all colourants, flavourants, preservatives and wheat. He graduated top of his class and also had provincial colours for hockey and cricket. He is now 33 and is general manager of the firm he works for. The change in diet changed our lives and definitely for the better. I have carried on this dietary lifestyle myself now that I am married and out of the house but sometimes find myself eating/drinking something that contains flavourants or similar and I end up with a migraine of note! Tartrazine is the worst of them but most of the pre-packed food that we eat nowadays contains a number of colourants, flavourants and preservatives so you need to eat organically grown fruit and vegetables, no canned or frozen or pre-made foods of any description and definitely no sweets or chocolates or crisps or cooldrink (except PURE fruit juice that you extract yourself). Also, the Omega supplements are a must.

As far as foods are concerned, they can cause ADHD symptoms. My cousin is allergic to food coloring. When he ingests more than his body can handel he displays multiple symtems that are identical to children with ADHD. Also, when he has had massive amounts of sugar with these colorings (soda), he displays autistic results. I suggest getting anyone diagnosed with ADHD an allergy test.

hmm this is a very interesting piece of information allergies and ADHD.

Thanks for the info.

Originally posted by AlphaAnuOmega
As far as foods are concerned, they can cause ADHD symptoms. My cousin is allergic to food coloring. When he ingests more than his body can handel he displays multiple symtems that are identical to children with ADHD. Also, when he has had massive amounts of sugar with these colorings (soda), he displays autistic results. I suggest getting anyone diagnosed with ADHD an allergy test.

Originally posted by Zanzibar

Originally posted by annestacey

and then they damage your brain

I agree with everything else you've said except this. My friend didn't seem to have a damaged brain, unless being able to concentrate and learn are classed as being damaging.

Or do you mean that his brain wasn't like this before, so having it changed is damaging?

I only have an onlookers perspective of the effect and I'm not going to pretend that I know what it's like. What I do know is that this drug changed his life for the better, surely that's a good thing?

Yes, there is information that suggests the medication damages the brain.

Psychiatric Drugs: Chemical Warfare on Humans - interview with Robert Whitaker

If you give someone an antidepressant, and that tries to keep serotonin levels too high in the brain, it does exactly the opposite. It stops producing as much serotonin as it normally does and it reduces the number of serotonin receptors in the brain. So someone who is on an antidepressant, after a time ends up with an abnormally low level of serotonin receptors in the brain. And here's what Hyman concluded about this: After these changes happened, the patient's brain is functioning in a way that is "qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state." So what Stephen Hyman, former head of the NIMH, has done is present a paradigm for how these drugs affect the brain that shows that they're inducing a pathological state.

SS: So the paradox is there's no evidence for modern psychiatry's claim that there is any pathological biochemical imbalance in the brain that causes mental illness, but if you treat people with these new wonder drugs, that is what creates a pathological imbalance?

RW: Yes, these drugs disrupt normal brain chemistry. That's the real paradox here. And the real tragedy is, that even as we peddle these drugs as chemical balancers, chemical fixers, in truth we're doing precisely the opposite. We're taking a brain that has no known abnormal brain chemistry, and by placing people on the drugs, we're perturbing that normal chemistry. Here's how Barry Jacobs, a Princeton neuroscientist, describes what happens to a person given an SSRI antidepressant. "These drugs," he said, "alter the level of synaptic transmission beyond the physiologic range achieved under normal environmental biological conditions. Thus, any behavioral or physiologic change produced under these conditions might more appropriately be considered pathologic rather than reflective of the normal biological role of serotonin."

Here is another article:
Do Antidepressants Cure or Create Abnormal Brain States? (PLoS Medicine)

Originally posted by AlphaAnuOmega
As far as foods are concerned, they can cause ADHD symptoms. My cousin is allergic to food coloring. When he ingests more than his body can handel he displays multiple symtems that are identical to children with ADHD. Also, when he has had massive amounts of sugar with these colorings (soda), he displays autistic results. I suggest getting anyone diagnosed with ADHD an allergy test.

This article describes a study done that shows eating a bag of doritos and drinking a diet pepsi causes neurological damage. It's the result of mixing aspartame, MSG and two common food colorings. We really do have to stay away from the junk food. It is DESIGNED to dumb us all down into oblivion where we can no longer think for ourselves.

Fitzgerald: We looked at some of the studies done in the later part of 2005, examining the synergistic reactions between aspartame -- the synthetic sweetener that is found in thousands of products now -- and MSG, along with two common food colorings. This was a study done in England at a university in the later part of 2005. The result was found that when MSG, aspartame and these two food colorings were mixed together, they create a synergy that kills nerve cells. It causes neurological damage. We are only now at the threshold of medical science beginning to do any systematic examination of synergies.

Mike: Just to put in a real-world example of that, I would like to add that you can get that combination by drinking a Diet Pepsi and eating a bag of Doritos.

Fitzgerald: Absolutely. It is a children's meal. In fact, these researchers, at the University of Liverpool, wanted to examine what children commonly consume every day. That is why they picked aspartame, MSG and these two food colors, because they are so commonly found in all of the junk drinks and foods that children consume. The results should alarm us all.

Interview with Randall Fitzgerald, author of The Hundred-Year Lie, on the prevalence of toxic chemicals

I think that medicine, like many others, is over-prescribed. You might want to really look into diet - limiting sugar and things that contain red dyes. I know from experience as a parent that foods with heavy red dyes and/or lots of sugar make my kids hyper and just not very pleasant. There's alot you can change with diet, and you may want to bring your son to a naturopath to get some alternative guidance. Good luck and kudos to you for not just medicating him. I think that alot of kids these days are simply medicated in an effort to keep them in line (think the children on the conveyor belt to the meat grinder in Pink Floyd The Wall.) I don't want that for my kid...

Thanks for sharing your experiences info and advice. Definetly not drugging my kid up.