Here's Your Attention Prescription

Would you knowingly take potent amphetamines if you knew that they would help you focus your attention? Would you give them to a child?

That’s exactly what the conventional common treatment has become for the most over-diagnosed disorders in history – “Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD).

The medical establishment generously prescribes Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine – drugs more powerful than cocaine. The fact is the drugs psychiatrists are handing out like candy for ADHD are entirely unnecessary and dangerous to you… and your children. Yet you don’t hear about natural remedies that are just as effective as these dangerous and addictive drugs.

Today, I’ll offer some perspective on the “prevalence” of ADHD and give you treatment options that don’t involve expensive, powerfully psychoactive drugs.

Is the ADHD “Epidemic” Real?

First, let’s take a step back for a second. Before World War II, we just didn’t diagnose ADHD at all. In 1985, about 500,000 people were diagnosed with ADHD. By 2000, that number had skyrocketed to 7 million. To put this in perspective: about a half million people develop this disease every year, on top of those diagnosed the previous year.

Our National Institutes of Health estimates that as many as 20 percent of children suffer from the syndrome. And by some estimates, approximately 30-70 percent of children who manifest symptoms of ADHD will continue to do so into adulthood.1

Too many mental health practitioners ADHD is their “bread and butter”. Yet as I write this, there is no objective test for the diagnosis of ADHD. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If we are in the midst of a new and sudden “epidemic” here, shouldn’t someone be seeking out the cause?

A Windfall for the Legal Drug Cartel

Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine – these are at least as strong as methamphetamine and cocaine. And, if you compare brain scans of people on any of these drugs, you’ll see that they light up the same areas of the brain – in exactly the same way.

Incredibly, the pharmaceutical giants, the medical mainstream...even the US government have always known this. In fact, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sets production quotas on these drugs as with any drug with potential to be abused recreationally.

And by the way, they do. The number of ER visits for these legal drugs is approaching the same number as visits for cocaine and heroin. Emergency rooms recorded 613,053 treatments involving cocaine and heroin in 2005, compared with 598,542 visits involving pharmaceutical abuse.2

The popularity of this treatment is turning more and more young people in this country – millions and millions – into “users.” This has done nothing to put a brake on the prescription craze.

Take a look at this graph of ADHD drug use over the past five years:



ADHD is a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry. Sales of methylphenidate (the chemical name for Ritalin) totaled $60 million in 2004 alone. And in the last five years, the average cost of an ADHD drug has nearly doubled, from $39.03 in 1999 to $76.49 in 2003.

Let’s divorce ourselves from the drug for everything model and take a look at the real cause for the worsening behavioral symptoms responsible for the surging diagnosis...and find some safer solutions.

In a word it’s diet.

1 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. NIH Publication No. 3572, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Margaret Strock et al., 1996.
2 Donna Leinwand, “Misuse of pharmaceuticals linked to more ER visits,” USA Today, 3/13/03.
3 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. NIH Publication No. 3572, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Margaret Strock et al., 1996.

Your Health and Mine