Is ADHD actually a sleep disorder?

[me/cfs 27931]

New Scientist article on the possibility that ADHD is a sleep disorder treatable with a narcolepsy med.

Is ADHD actually a sleep disorder? Stimulant drug improves symptoms
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ep-disorder-stimulant-drug-improves-symptoms/

A DRUG normally used to treat narcolepsy and excessive daytime sleepiness also seems to improve symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. The finding supports the idea that ADHD might be a sleep disorder.

One suggestion is that the circadian rhythm that controls our sleep-wake cycle over each 24 hour period may be misaligned in people with ADHD, causing them to be sleepy or alert at the wrong times.

This idea inspired Eric Konofal at Robert-Debré Hospital in Paris to try using a drug for narcolepsy and excessive daytime sleepiness to treat ADHD.

Mazindol mimics the effects of a brain chemical called orexin, which modulates wakefulness and appetite. It works as a stimulant to keep us awake, and is lacking in people with narcolepsy, who tend to fall asleep at inappropriate times.

In their clinical trial, Konofal and his colleagues gave either mazindol or a placebo to 85 adults aged between 18 and 65, all of whom had previously been diagnosed with ADHD. Within two weeks, ADHD symptoms had reduced by more than 50 per cent in just over half of those who tried the drug.

These results are better than those in trials using conventional ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin and Adderall

Mazindol is the first new ADHD drug for decades to work in a novel way, says Efron. “Since mazindol acts on a different neurochemical pathway, it could be useful for those who don’t respond to existing treatments.”

However, although mazindol improved many ADHD symptoms, it did not boost the quality of the volunteers’ sleep, nor reduce the daytime sleepiness they experienced. The team is planning larger trials and other experiments to better understand how the drug might be working.

 

[Never Give Up]

It is very impressive that their initial results were better than results for traditional ADHD drugs. It all makes perfect sense and it could have usefulness for PWME in whom circadian rhythm disturbance and AD are rife.

 

[Lolo]

I have been investigating salicylate intolerance and came across this which may be useful.
https://fedup.com.au/factsheets/symptom-factsheets/sleep-disturbance-and-insomnia
and
https://fedup.com.au/factsheets/symptom-factsheets/adhd-and-diet

 

[Basilico]

Really interesting article, @Webdog , thanks for posting.

My husband has ADD, and he has always been a night owl, and always had a painfully difficult time waking up in the morning. A few years ago, we found out he had an inverted cortisol pattern (low in morning, high at night), and i assumed that was the reason. It never occurred to me that it could be connected to the ADD.

Next time he goes to his doctor, he's going to bring this article and see if the doc would be willing to prescribe the meds mentioned in the article as a little test. He doesn't tolerate ADD meds, so if this could help him, that would be great.

 

[keenly]

No, it is a made up illness to make money for Big Pharma.

Any child given sugary, processed food can exhibit to so called symptoms of this pseudo illness.

 

[Undisclosed]

No, it is a made up illness to make money for Big Pharma.

Any child given sugary, processed food can exhibit to so called symptoms of this pseudo illness.

If you think that ADHD is a made up illness then you are ignorant of what ADHD is and have never encountered a child or an adult with ADHD.

My daughter had severe ADHD as child and she certainly wasn't making her symptoms up. As an adult she still has it but it's not so severe but it does interfere with her daily functioning.

Yes, it is over-diagnosed but talk to parents of children with it and you will understand it isn't made up.

You also appear to be ignorant of the research that demonstrates that neither sugary foods or additives are connected to ADHD.

 

[boombachi]

ADHD is difficulty maintaining or switching attention and retaining and/or retrieving information. Hyperactivity is what we ALL get with a sugar buzz (maybe not us specifically but any normal healthy person)

Hyperactivity alone is not an issue. It just means very active but not being able to concentrate and retain information or control impulses can be hugely disabling. I doubt it is over diagnosed but poorly understood by the general population.

 

[keenly]

If you think that ADHD is a made up illness then you are ignorant of what ADHD is and have never encountered a child or an adult with ADHD.

My daughter had severe ADHD as child and she certainly wasn't making her symptoms up. As an adult she still has it but it's not so severe but it does interfere with her daily functioning.

Yes, it is over-diagnosed but talk to parents of children with it and you will understand it isn't made up.

You also appear to be ignorant of the research that demonstrates that neither sugary foods or additives are connected to ADHD.

Are you aware of the published reports stating ADHD makes over $10 BILLION for pharmaceutical companies??

https://www.cchrint.org/2015/12/09/how-adhd-became-a-multi-billion-dollar-industry/

Did you know The 87-year-old American psychiatrist, Dr.Leon Eisenberg, made a statement to the German magazine Der Spiegel, a couple of months before his death that ADHD is a fictitious disease, which they put together for the benefit of drug companies in the new disease classification in the American Psychiatry Association’s DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases) (from the Journal, Indian Academy of Clinical Medicine l Vol. 14, No. 3-4 l July-December, 2013)?

 

[Basilico]

No, it is a made up illness to make money for Big Pharma.

Any child given sugary, processed food can exhibit to so called symptoms of this pseudo illness.

My husband grew up in Italy, where his mother cooked every meal from scratch. He did not eat anything sugary or processed. In fact, he actually hates sweet stuff, desserts and candy make him nauseous. And even now with all our health problems, we still cook almost all our meals from scratch using high quality organic ingredients.

It was not until he was an adult and living with me in the US that he realized he had ADD because it is not a recognized diagnosis in Italy. His whole life he suffered and forced himself to cope with it through his sheer willpower.

In the US, he saw a psychiatrist, who confirmed his diagnosis, and prescribed ADD meds. When my husband took the first pill, he said it was a mind-blowing experience, because for the first time he understood how insanely chaotic his brain was.

On medication, he said he was able to have linear thoughts, just think about one thing at a time which he’d never done before in his life. Normally he thinks of many things simultaneously in a somewhat confusing mess. On meds, it’s like being alone in a quiet room, focusing on one task, off meds it’s like trying to think about, fix, and deal with 10 unrelated problems in the center of a crazy party with blasting music.

He ultimately doesn't tolerate those meds and hasn't been able to take them in years. If he were able to cure his CFS tomorrow, he still wouldn't be able to hold down a traditional job because his ADD is too extreme. It also causes symptoms that are sometimes similar to OCD; when he gets a thought in his head, he can't think about anything else until he researches or deals with that thought.

On the positive side, he absorbs and remembers information like a sponge, he has a scary high level of intelligence (he's never been tested, but I think it's likely his IQ is extremely high), and he has an extremely creative and out of the box approach to problem solving and can come up with novel solutions to any problem.

His ADD is very much real, and something he must fight against every day of his life. You claiming that it is a diagnosis that doesn't exist is the same as claiming CFS doesn't exist...extremely ignorant and just plain wrong.



Big Pharma makes tons of money on blood pressure medicines...does this mean that blood pressure/heart problems don't exist???

 

[Basilico]

Did you know The 87-year-old American psychiatrist, Dr.Leon Eisenberg, made a statement to the German magazine Der Spiegel, a couple of months before his death that ADHD is a fictitious disease, which they put together for the benefit of drug companies in the new disease classification in the American Psychiatry Association’s DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases) (from the Journal, Indian Academy of Clinical Medicine l Vol. 14, No. 3-4 l July-December, 2013)?

@keenly , you have a habit of posting replies from quacks that are unsupported (your Jack Kruse threads) and that you, yourself, don't actually seem to understand very clearly. I don't see a difference between saying that ADD is a made up disorder or that CFS is a made up disorder.

Please, please, please think about how you would feel if someone started claiming that the health conditions you struggle with day in and day out don't exist.

 

[boombachi]

Overmedication is not the same as a diagnosis being made up. There is a school of thought that ADHD is at the extreme end of a continuum of normal variations in brain wiring/chemistry. That could apply to all psychiatric diagnosis since none of them have agreed biomarkers (apologies if there are some that I am not aware of).

None of this means that it is not debilitating to be one of those individuals at the extreme end. Medication is not the answer for everyone but they should be able to make an informed decision.

keenly you may be right that children may be being medicated unnecessarily for all manner of conditions but that doesn't mean there aren't those who have left school with no qualifications because they couldn't manage their impulses or focus on lessons and access to medication may have helped them.

 

[Manganus]

No, it is a made up illness to make money for Big Pharma.

Any child given sugary, processed food can exhibit to so called symptoms of this pseudo illness.

So you say!

And what's your proposition?

 

[Undisclosed]

Are you aware of the published reports stating ADHD makes over $10 BILLION for pharmaceutical companies??

https://www.cchrint.org/2015/12/09/how-adhd-became-a-multi-billion-dollar-industry/

Did you know The 87-year-old American psychiatrist, Dr.Leon Eisenberg, made a statement to the German magazine Der Spiegel, a couple of months before his death that ADHD is a fictitious disease, which they put together for the benefit of drug companies in the new disease classification in the American Psychiatry Association’s DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases) (from the Journal, Indian Academy of Clinical Medicine l Vol. 14, No. 3-4 l July-December, 2013)?

Just because Big Pharma makes a ton of money from drugs for ADHD doesn't mean that ADHD doesn't exist. They make a ton of money from all sorts of drugs for cancer, does that mean cancer doesn't exist?

Are you aware that Dr Mercola, who sells all sorts of alternative therapies, makes about:

$9.8 million per year from Mercola.com LLC
$5.2 million per year from Mercola.com Health Resources LLC
$320,000 per year from Mercola Consulting Services LLC

Now I could apply your thinking to Big Alternative Therapy -- Mercola makes millions therefore ... . Since he makes a truckload of money from selling health products why not lump him in with Big Pharma.

Meds making people money, Alternative therapies making people money -- what does it all mean?

So one person says that ADHD was made up, one person claims that CFS comes from aliens -- must be true because one person said so.

There is something physically going on with children with real ADHD -- if you give a child with ADHD ritalin it calms them down -- ritalin is a central nervous stimulant -- it should stimulate a child but it has an opposite effect. Like I said, ritalin is probably over-prescribed but for some children it would be cruel not to give it to them. Why don't you research ADHD prior to making ignorant comments about something you obviously know nothing about.

Do you like it when people dismiss and trivialize ME/CFS?

 

[Undisclosed]

Just curious @keenly do you believe HIV/AIDS exists

 

[keenly]

Just curious @keenly do you believe HIV/AIDS exists

Just curious have you watched the House of Numbers documentary?

 

[Undisclosed]

Just curious have you watched the House of Numbers documentary?

I guess you have answered my question that you don't believe that HIV/AIDS exists.

No, I haven't watched that particular AIDS-denialist documentary but have heard of it. I just googled it and apparently it is, well, to put it bluntly, a pile of steaming turds, full of lies etc etc.

Here are some links for those who want to follow up how bad this documentary actually is:

http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/

There is an interview with Christine Maggiore, who talks about her difficult decision to go against medical advice by refusing Aids medication, medication, and how much better she felt as a result. What the film doesn’t tell you, as you shout at the screen, is that Christine Maggiore’s daughter Eliza Jane died of Aids and PCP pneumonia three years ago, at the age of three, and, as I reported nine months ago, Christine Maggiore herself died two days after Christmas 2008 of pneumonia, aged 52 (the film finally acknowledges her death in the last 2 seconds of the film, at the end of the lengthy credits, in small letters).

https://mylespower.co.uk/2013/05/20/vital-information-missing-in-the-documentary-house-of-numbers/

Christine was not some random uninformed woman off of the street. She was the founder of the AIDS denialist organisation, Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives. The organisation believes that AIDS is not a major problem in Africa and that the current epidemic is nothing more than fearmongering by the pharmaceutical industry. They also believe that HIV tests are inaccurate and helped develop legal strategies for 50 HIV positive mothers to avoid having their children tested or treated for HIV. Unlike a lot of people with crazy views out there, Christine stood by hers. Whilst pregnant, Christine refused to take antiretroviral medication which would have reduced the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV during her pregnancies. She also breast-fed her children even though she was aware of studies that show that HIV can be transmitted from mother to child through breastfeeding. She also refused to get her children tested for HIV. She publicly stated on American TV that both of her children had “excellent records of health” and “they’ve never had respiratory problems, flues, intractable cold, ear infections, nothing. So, our choices, however radical they may seem, are extremely well-founded.” Seven weeks after making these statements her daughter died from an AIDS related illness.

https://mylespower.co.uk/2013/05/20/vital-information-missing-in-the-documentary-house-of-numbers/

I recently watched a documentary film suggested by one of my subscribers called 'House of Numbers'. The documentary consists of interviews with scientists and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) denialists, discussing the link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS, the severity of AIDS in South Africa and, unbelievably, whether or not HIV exists at all. The film was directed and produced by, and starred, Canadian-born Brent Leung (a psychology graduate from the University of British Columbia). The documentary is poor, even from a technical standpoint. It is poorly organised, unfocussed and repeatedly - and comedically - punctuated by clips of Brent in strange locations. Brent's level of knowledge and understanding, and that of some of the people featured in the film, is comical bordering on the absurd. At one point Brent implied that the only proof we have for the existence of the HIV is pictures of the virus. In the future I am going to talk about some of the scientific inaccuracies of the documentary but first I would like to talk about a woman who featured in the film and how it shows Brent's dishonesty.

So over 35 million people have died of a non-existent disease -- all those kaposi's sarcoma's, fungal pneumonia's were down to bad diet or something? Do some real research. I knew a family with two boys, both who had haemophilia as did their father. They all received tainted blood products. They died. I wonder what they died of if it wasn't HIV infection.

How about we make this easy, are there any illnesses/diseases that you actually think exist on their own merit? Or are you going to marginalize and dismiss all illnesses?

As an ex-Registered Nurse I am not going to deny and trivialize illness nor am I going to waste my time watching bat shit crazy videos.

 

[keenly]

I guess you have answered my question that you don't believe that HIV/AIDS exists.

No, I haven't watched that particular AIDS-denialist documentary but have heard of it. I just googled it and apparently it is, well, to put it bluntly, a pile of steaming turds, full of lies etc etc.

Here are some links for those who want to follow up how bad this documentary actually is:

http://www.badscience.net/2009/09/house-of-numbers/



https://mylespower.co.uk/2013/05/20/vital-information-missing-in-the-documentary-house-of-numbers/



https://mylespower.co.uk/2013/05/20/vital-information-missing-in-the-documentary-house-of-numbers/



So over 35 million people have died of a non-existent disease -- all those kaposi's sarcoma's, fungal pneumonia's were down to bad diet or something? Do some real research. I knew a family with two boys, both who had haemophilia as did their father. They all received tainted blood products. They died. I wonder what they died of if it wasn't HIV infection.

How about we make this easy, are there any illnesses/diseases that you actually think exist on their own merit? Or are you going to marginalize and dismiss all illnesses?

As an ex-Registered Nurse I am not going to deny and trivialize illness nor am I going to waste my time watching bat shit crazy videos.

WOW
That is your response to a simple question.

So hostile.

 

[MEPatient345]

Ah.. c'mon everyone. Let's be nice to each other eh?

Relating to the original topic of ADHD. I recently had a qEEG done and the neuroscientist said my brain had elevated alpha and beta activity across multiple areas, similar to the patterns seen in ADHD patients. So I think there may be some overlap between our ME brain activity, with ADHD. I have problems like @boombachi mentioned.. maintaining and switching attention, retaining and retrieving information, all documented by cognitive testing. I did not have ADHD prior to getting sick.

Is mazindol a drug in trials, that is not currently on the market? I wonder if it would help some of us..

These are some of the studies he referenced.
1. Billiot, K. M., Budzynski, T. H., & Andrasik, F. (1997). EEG Patterns and
chronic fatigue syndrome. Journal of Neurotherapy, 2(2), 20-30.
2. Clarke, A. R., Barry, R. J., Dupuy, F. E., McCarthy, R., Selikowitz, M. &
Johnstone, S. J. (2013). Excess beta activity in the EEG of children with
attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A disorder of arousal? International
Journal of Psychophysiology, 89(3), 314-319.
3. Clarke, A. R., Barry, R. J., McCarthy, R., & Selikowitz, M. (2001). Excess
beta activity in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: an
atypical electrophysiological group. Psychiatry Research, 103(2-3), 205-218.
4. Hermens, D. F., Soei, E., Clarke, S. D., Kohn, M. R., Gordon, E. & Williams,
L. M. (2005). Resting EEG theta activity predicts cognitive performance in
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Pediatric Neurology, 32, 248-256.
5. Koehler, S., Lauer, P., Schreppel, T., Jacob, C., Heine, M., Boreatti-Hümmer,
A., Fallgatter, A. J. & Herrmann, M. J. (2009). Increased EEG power density
in alpha and theta bands in adult ADHD patients. Journal of Neural
Transmission, 116, 97-104.

 

[Undisclosed]

WOW
That is your response to a simple question.

So hostile.

It makes me very angry when I read about people denying that HIV exists. Trust me, if I said what I wanted to say I would probably have to ban myself.

 

[keenly]

It makes me very angry when I read about people denying that HIV exists. Trust me, if I said what I wanted to say I would probably have to ban myself.

WOW

You must not like Liam Scheff then.

Why is Dr. Kary Mullis not accurate? He was there from the start. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1994 for inventing the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).


No matter what your views will not change, so have a nice day.

God bless those challenging the system.