Basilico
Florida
- Messages
- 948
@keenly , still waiting for a reply to this:
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???