[QUOTE=cndij]Wyatt's Mom, were you taking the CalmPRT or a different Rhodiola? The reason I ask is that I had a similar reaction (almost like caffeine overload) when I first took PS myself, and the CalmPRT has PS in it. I got a very detailed response from Coach1, about how the PS could re-activate dulled adrenal receptors at first. I started taking it again and those feelings went away in less than a week.
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The first I'd say 2 days or so of putting my son on PS last summer, saw him similarly "hyperactive" and "hypersensitive" - weepy and more emotional. After I'd say 3-4 days he became more calm. My layman's theory is that since his system was SO low in serine, when he got an intense dose with the 100mg PS, it did infact act like an engine running on fumes, fully gased up - he 'sputtered' and 'jolted' a few times at first as his system adjusted to the higher levels of PS. But once his levels topped off, his 'engine' ran more smoothly. So yes, I can attest to a rough start on PS but soon thereafter, he "mellowed out". I call PS his "happy pill" because it DOES make him "sunnier" and smilier and happier. He almost never smiled for years before PS so it was a godsend for him/us. Didn't help him with his "ADHD" but turns out, he's got anxiety more than ADHD, so that makes sense in hindsight.
Yes the CalmPRT has both rhodeola and PS in it. I was also told by my ND that rhodeola works in weird ways - a small dose is stimulatory; while a large does is calming. I don't have the exact # for what constitutes high/low doses, that's why I rely on my ND to help me out sometimes. :-)
Wyatt's Mom, were you taking the CalmPRT or a different Rhodiola? The reason I ask is that I had a similar reaction (almost like caffeine overload) when I first took PS myself, and the CalmPRT has PS in it. I got a very detailed response from Coach1, about how the PS could re-activate dulled adrenal receptors at first. I started taking it again and those feelings went away in less than a week.
Coach1, thanks for your input. You stated this very simply yet to the point. This lends me to an article I recently came across about, basically, hugging kids more, and this will decrease their hyperactivity. While this may sound corny, I believe there is truth in here somewhere. And honestly, does it matter if there is any scientific 'proof' that we should hug our kids more? I sure hope not! Hugging makes us feel better - um, perchance cortisol levels at work here? So the more relaxed we can make our kids feel (adhd or otherwise) the more calm they will be. Makes sense. Corny but makes sense.
So ... have you hugged your kid today? ;-)
Oh, I can hear it now, "A (big long) Hug a Day keeps ADHD Away". Can't hurt?!?
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Can maternal anxiety lead to ADHD? Our health correspondent is sure that nurture — as well as nature — is responsible for ADHDWhen I met Sarah Mercer, 27, she was at the end of her tether. Her daughter Tia, 7, frequently launched savage attacks on her older sibling Paige, an even-tempered nine-year-old who gave little cause for offence. Tia “hated” her mother and said she would like to kill her. Well known in her neighbourhood as a “terror”, she exhibited many of the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — distracted concentration, inability to sit still, poor social skills — as well as an oppositional conduct disorder.
Increasingly, stimulant medications such as Ritalin are prescribed to such children — paradoxically, hyperactive children are made less so by “uppers” (amphetamine-based pills). Whereas only 6,000 British children took these drugs in 1994, 345,000 were doing so in 2003. The power of drug companies was shown by the decision to let children over 8 continue to be prescribed Prozac for depression, albeit accompanied by counselling.
Sarah was determined not to travel down the biochemical road. She tried the usual alternatives, from parenting classes to a supernanny-style “naughty” chair, to sending Tia for group play at the Child Mental Health Unit. None of them worked.
Conventional psychiatric wisdom is that they wouldn’t make much difference because Tia has a genetic disease. ADHD “is a common, highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder”, according to Eric Taylor, Britain’s leading ADHD child psychiatrist. As we shall see, this assertion is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific evidence (indeed, America’s highly regarded National Institute of Health finds no evidence that ADHD is a biological brain disorder).
In listening to Tia’s history, a very plausible alternative to genes emerged for why she is so different from Paige. During the pregnancy with Tia, Sarah’s husband became increasingly angry, drunken and violent. Three months after the birth, driven into a depression for which she was given pills, Sarah finally made the decision to leave him. While it was a great relief to escape from such a troubled relationship, Sarah is in no doubt that when she was pregnant with Tia and during her first year, she was much less able to relate to her than to Paige, with whom she had bonded strongly.
This is consistent with two important bodies of scientific literature that are gradually coming increasingly into the public eye. A large study of Danish mums recently showed that maternal anxiety and distress during pregnancy increases the risk of low birth weight because it causes high levels of cortisol, the fight-flight hormone, in offspring. The anxiety-inducing high cortisol levels are passed through the placenta to the foetus. This makes the child at greater risk of being jumpy and overexcitable, jammed in a state of permanent preparation to deal with threat. In several studies, the effect has been shown to endure long after the birth.
Boys whose mothers were emotionally troubled during late pregnancy were significantly more likely to have ADHD when followed up at 3, 5, 7 and 9. A study of 7,000 offspring of mothers who had been anxious in the third trimester were twice as likely to have ADHD. Tia’s story is also consistent with the second body of evidence: disturbed early relating between mother and baby can contribute to ADHD. Offspring of mothers who are measured as intrusive or overstimulating when the infant is six months old are more likely to have ADHD when aged 3 and 11.
A further strong clue that genes are not the key comes from studies of children who have been removed from severely maltreating parents. Those placed in institutions, where the care is liable to be impersonal and inconsistent, are at much higher risk of the illness than those taken into foster care with relatively nurturant, substitute parents. That quality of care is vital is also suggested by the fact that offspring of single parents — more likely be overstretched and harassed, as Sarah was — are three times more liable to have ADHD.
This evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to high cortisol levels creates a wired, overexcitable personality. Subsequently, if mother is not tuned into her infant or substitute care is poor, there may be a legacy of violent rage and attention-seeking. Apart from recommending that Tia cut out all sweets (see Sami Timimi’s book, Naughty Boys, for evidence that they can worsen ADHD), rather than pills to mask the symptoms, my advice to Sarah was to attempt a radical and newly validated solution.
In a study published this year of 102 badly behaved children — some with ADHD — parents had been taught a very intense hugging therapy. It entails treating them like a baby as a way of trying to meet those unmet early needs, creating attunement between parent and child at a very primitive level.
Parents hugged the child face-to-face for between 20 and 90 consecutive minutes and, along with being given a great deal of additional advice, maintained this daily for a year. Assessed at the end of the study, nearly all the children (96 out of 102) were half as badly behaved as at the start. Since she had tried everything else, Sarah decided to give it a go. The next weekend she left Paige with her mother and spent 24 hours hugging for England, subsequently doing hug top-ups morning and evening. Only one week later, the results amazed me, as well as her. Tia had become much calmer, loving to her mother and less antagonistic to her sister. Three weeks later, the improvement had been sustained.
On its own, this improvement proves nothing about the role of genes in causing either ADHD or mental illness in general. More reliable are the growing numbers of senior figures from the psychiatric and genetic establishment who have recently begun to admit that the evidence from the Human Genome Project is confounding genetic explanation.
Using the map of our genes, molecular geneticists have been searching for specific genes that distinguish people more prone to par- ticular illnesses. Robert Plomin, the most important single researcher in the field of the genetic causes of mental illness, finds very little. While a single gene has been identified as causing 15 per cent of all cases of Alzheimer’s, this is the only illness for which a gene has been identified. There is no replicated evidence that schizophrenics, neurotics or depressives have different genes from people without these illnesses.
This was recently spelt out explicitly by Kenneth Kendler, a doyen of the American psychiatric establishment. He wrote that “the strong, clear, and direct causal relationship implied by the concept of ‘a gene for . . . two’ does not exist for psychiatric disorders. Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover ‘genes for’ psychiatric illness.”
For the time being, geneticists’ only support is studies of identical twins, and those are increasingly regarded as unreliable (see Jay Joseph’s The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes). Even if twin studies are accepted, their results suggest that genes explain only a modest amount — 30 per cent at most — of the vast majority of mental illness: minor depression, anxiety, personality disorders. What is more, a new body of research (see John Read’s Models of Madness) strongly suggests that at least half of schizophrenia, and possibly bipolar (mania and depression) disorders as well, are explained by abuse.
Forty studies find that most psychiatric patients experienced sexual or physical abuse. Read has demonstrated to many of his peers’ satisfaction that the hallucinations of these patients are often a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, not a consequence of genes. But perhaps most interesting of all is a World Health Organisation study of representative samples in 13 nations. It reveals huge differences in rates of mental illness which are almost certainly not explained by genes.
Indeed, my analysis of these results (with Kate Pickering and Richard Wilkinson) shows that among developed nations, it is the size of inequality of income distribution and wealth of a nation that explains the differences: the richer and more unequal, the higher the illness rate.
The pressure to acknowledge environmental factors in ADHD is building. Plans to feed children fish oil daily suggests that our rulers’ attention is not wholly deficient — someone has finally noticed the vast body of evidence linking ADHD to diet. The child psychiatric establishment and the BMA — too often the mouthpieces of a drug industry to which they have close financial links — will present the results of a report that pays lip service to this evidence. But do not expect any radical changes. Parents will still have to use their own initiative to deal with severe problems in their children.
Hi all. New here and checking out all options for my ds. Ive been doing a lot of research and apparantly rhodiola rosea has stimulant properties so it makes sense why you might see some benefit. Side effects do include heart palpiations. Im also struggling with the fact that these herbs have no regulations so you really don't know how much of what is going into your childs body. Herbal substances are also medications but with no monitering or regulations so this really scares me. My husband and I are looking at all options so I'm so glad I found this board. Good luck to everyone and its nice to know I'm not alone.I agree about the "non-regulation". I know that Rhodiola has alot of the same properties that Concerta does but he seems to be sleeping well, eating well, and we are not dealing with the rebound effects. I am worried about unseen side effects which is why an appointment with the ped is coming soon. I know it can't all be great or a "miracle" suppliment or itseems this would have been used before or we would at least hear about it more.Update guys...WE started the Rhodioa again. 2weeks no improvement. We then brought it up to 200mg. He is having no noticable side effects and look aat th e-mail from his teacher below...
Hi,
I wanted to call you this weekend, but I wasn't sure if the number in the phone book was your current one. I can't get over the difference I have seen in Wyatt these last two weeks. I might have 1 or 2 things that he needs to finish for me. This is very different a month ago. He seems so happy when he finishes something. He knows he has accomplished something for me. I can already see some confidence building in him. It is so great to see. Even his penmanship has improved greatly. He has much more control on his penmanship. It is not all over the place. Have you noticed a difference at home?
Have a great week!
Liza
I am going to make him an appointment with the ped to check liver, heart etc and plan to keep checking but I am excited!!! I don't give the Rhodiola to him on weekends or school Holidays.
That is great! Thanks for sharing! After you upped the dose, how long did it take to see an improvement? Did it happen right away or did it take time? The teacher noticed a difference the first day. I had put him on for a short period a few months ago and took him off only because I was having heart palpitations. (I was trying it too) I have since discovered that it is an unrelated issue for me so now we are trying again. The only thing is that ewveryting I have read about Rhodiola is that you have to give the body a break so that is mainly why aren't doing weekends.
That is great news. If his teacher noticed such a difference that is fantastic! Good for you for sticking it out and looking around (and around!) to find somethign that works for him!