Attention Deficit Disorder: Sign of the Modern Times

Jake is a gifted child. The youngest amongst a bunch of cousins in a fairly close knit family. At a very young age, he had a way with words and pictures. He used to read voraciously, and amaze his grandparents with his discussions. Doodling abilities from kindergaarten ,blossomed into full blown artistry by middle school, and his parents, recognising his inborn gifts, looked around and searched for someone qualified to guide him in his development in these areas.

Today Jake is in high school. And his parents are worried.

Jake has a problem of concentration. He still paints and sculpts. He reads. But he comes home from school, with not a clue about the homework assignments and whats going on in class. Mind you, he attends all his classes, can tell you what they did, but a month into the school semester, and his parents find out that he is not doing the required homework and his grades suffer.

There is a behavioural change to. The big rush after getting home from school, is to change into comfortable night clothes. An intermittently appearing stubble and huge amounts of time spent in the bathroom with the water flowing ,hints at problems in the time of adolescence. He leaves his cell phone in the car, and then searches for it a day later. The watch he got on his last birthday sits forlornly amidst the bedclothes, a defiant sign of its being redundant, in a world, where Jake's attention and concentration chnages so frequently, it doesnt matter, what , is scheduled when.

A year of tension, arguments, and no success.

Troubled discussions at home in Jake's absence, agonising on whether to consult the school counsellor or psychologist, the possibility of Jake being asked to attend remedial classes to improve grades in certain subjects, and timely scholastic activities .

Is this a new phenomenon ? Is this special to the children of this generation ? Did we have this in our childhood , say 40 years ago ? Is there a solution to this, that will not bring trauma to the childs mind ?

Jake's parents were told that their son had, what's known as Attention Deficit Disorder, not in a full blown fashion, but to a small extent. Medication was hinted at. Second opinions were considered. And his parents then did their own research, when school let out for the summer.

The question arises as to why , in our day, we never saw anyone in our schools, diagnosed with this "disorder ".

It turns out that over the last 20 years, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and also Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD), has emerged as a major medical disorder in chlidhood, particularly in the western world. School performance has emerged as a major diagnostic, and once it is given a name and , medicalised, so to speak, the pharma companies have followed in avidly. Throughout the 1990's psychostimulants started getting prescribed for these disorders. Between 1990- and 1995, prescriptions for a medicine called methylphenidate, incresaed 2.5 times in the US, 5 times in Canada, and by the year 2000, nine times as many chidren were taking the stuff, compared to 1990.

Medication has resulted in 'success" as measured in school. However, no one really knows what are the implications of taking such medicine in the long term. Brain chemicals cannot be artificially "played with'. In this case , we are looking at school children, with more than 75% of their life ahead of them, and Jake's parents discussed this with some older folks in the family.

What they decided , was, that it wasnt time yet, to go the medicine route.

With the onmset of summer, there was no academic pressure. Jake felt freer in his mind, as he didnt have to put in a great effort regarding what was happening in class. His parents suggested concentrating on sports in the summer, and Jake agreed to regsiter for Volleyball and Swimming classes, weekday mornings, and a English Writing techniques class in the afternoons. A few days into this routine, and a bunch of friends talking about a popular ice cream place gave him an idea.

He walked 2 miles to the place, and enquired about summer jobs. The job required that he be able to perform a song. He insisted on auditioning right there, and the management was bowled over by a kid singing " America, the beautiful"......

Today, Jake is busy rushing from sports to class to work. He feels greatly refreshed after a sweaty game of volleyball followed by some great swimming practice, with some occasional water-polo thrown in. His job allows him to interact with people from varied backgrounds every day, and he certainly looks forward to all that great fre icecream. His appetite has improved, he gets great sleep, and is fresh and ready to go each morning.

What happened ?

Well, John J. Ratey, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of "A User's Guide to the Brain", says that exercise is like taking a little bit of Psychiatric medicine like Prozac or ADD medicine , like Ritalin. Unlike what we think exercise is primarily for our brain and only then for the body, as it affects mood, vitality, alertness, and feelings of well-being.

Among the many brain chemicals , whose levels determine how we feel, are serotonin and dopamine. Exercise triggers of the generation of these chemicals in certain parts of our nervous system. Each person is different. Some may have a plentiful supply of these, and in cases where their isnt an intrinsic plentiful supply, one needs to exercise to bring on the required amount of these brain chemicals. Its as simple as that.

Well, Jake's parents were actually doing the right thing without knowing it.

A genteleman by the name of Stephen Putnam, was diagnosed with the Attention Deficit as an adult. He was in the field of education, and was probably a daily witness to the rising level of this disorder in American schools. He actively took up canoeing as a sport, as his favourite exercise to deal with the ADD. He seriously practiced the sport, and although we dont know if he made the US Olympic Canoeing team, he certainly recovered without any medication like Ritalin, and emerged from his ADD to write a book called "Natures Ritalin for the Marathon mind "!

Children who do running for like 15-50 minutes before going to class, are observed to be less fidgety and agitated in class, and apparently this good effect remains for a good 3-4 hours later. Exercise affects nerve growth factors in our body in a very positive way. It is also known from animal research, that exercise can cause new stem cell growth, and thus refresh our brain and other parts of the body.

Before we go all ballistic and get our children to sweat out in gyms, it needs to be clarified, that exercise , as needed here, need not be of the fanatical ,pulse-checking variety. Moderate exercise is what is needed.

Dr Ratey recommends 8 to 12 minutes a day of sweating and breathing-hard exercise (60% of maximum heart rate) for brain training. What kind of exercise you decide to do also depends on your age. While the current volleyball-swimming combination seems to work for a boy like Jake, for someone older with ADD problems, a daily 30 minute morning swim and a walk for 45 minutes in the evening may be ideal. Overdoing the exercise can actually set off enzymes that cause fatigue, which is what we dont want.

According to Christin Anderson, wellness and fitness co-ordinator of the University of San Francisco, "If you can control your physiology, you can relax, focus, and remember. When one exercises, you can think more clearly, perform better, and your morale is better. This is pure science -- stimulate your nervous system and function at a higher level."

Looking back at our childhoods, one thing stands out. We had no PC's. We had no video games. We did not have, finally the Internet and Chatting.

What we had was afternoons spent playing with our friends outdoors, chasing each other up and down trees, skating, going bowling, dashing around, getting hurt, darting in for gulps of lemonade and cookies. We had hobbies like stamp collecting, butterfly collections, trading cards and what have you. So many times a week we had some kind of music classes, or soccer or baseball, or some training in sports at school.

Life had a routine, but was rich in variety. Efforts always begat success. Applying to college with the requisite grades was not a traumatic suspenseful affair.

Today, the complete balance has been destroyed. An overexposure to computers, and games where one is the only active performer against oneself, an introduction to a sense of competetion and exclusion in every aspect of ones life, as opposed to doing things together, and a situation where both parents working outside the home has made it impossible for the child to develop as a member of a "group", and forced him to develop in a skew fashion on his own.

In short, there is no balance in the way brain capacities get enhanced. And so we have anxiety, depression, euphoria, schizophrenia. Some of these afflictions may have organic roots in the body, but clearly, Attention Deficit or ADD has to be a malady caused by unbalanced brain training.

During the time of our forefathers, doing enough exercise to generate a decent amount of sweating , was considered a standard cure , when nothing specific was indicated. It was designed, as it were, to make you get rid of insecurities, worries, and fears that were probably showing up as stresses, mental and physical. At the end of the day, it is all about taking a hoilstic view, and NOT about medication to give temporary false answers.

The key to all, is "balance , in the brain.

As Dr Ratey says, "You want to ready your brain for learning, For that to happen, all the chemicals must "jog" into place."