I love it when the establishment media trumpets research findings that support unpopular theories I've been putting forth for years. Not to boast, but it really shows how far ahead of the pack I am - and you are, for reading me. (OK, so I'm boasting...)
That's exactly what happened this past week - a major mainstream news outlet reported evidence that adds even more credence to an assertion I've been making about ADHD ever since it became the disease-du-jour for lazy parents and even lazier psychiatrists (around 15 years ago). Of course, I'm going to tell you exactly how, but first you need a little background...
If you've been a Daily Dose reader (or a Douglass Report reader) for any length of time at all, you've heard me ranting many times before about how ADD/ADHD is - in the vast majority of treated cases - a completely MADE-UP diagnosis.
I've mostly been attributing the explosion in diagnoses of this "disease" to a pair of coinciding seismic cultural shifts: First, the marginalization of traditional parenting skills - as in both tolerance AND discipline - at the hands of a "blameless society" phenomenon that's been sweeping an increasingly multicultural, welfare-state America for the last 20 years.
This guiltless, anything-goes, "I'm OK you're OK" panacea movement absolves parents of almost all accountability for their childrearing, shifting blame for anyone's perceived shortcomings (parents' and kids' alike) to schools, the system, or the evils of healthy, natural competition. Second, booms in both the self-help pop psychology industry and the drug-driven psychiatric profession. After all, hack authors need crises to write books and articles about - and hack head-shrinks need "diseases" to treat, even if they have to make them up.
These influences conspire to brainwash haggard parents into believing that there's something wrong with their kids simply because the process of raising them can be trying at times. That just doesn't square with images of the child-rearing experience they see on TV, in the movies, or on the covers of Perfect Parent and Happy Kids magazines. The combined end result of both of these things is this: Perfectly normal childhood behaviors (like rambunctious-ness and a short attention span) get reclassified as ADHD, resulting in multiple addictive prescriptions being doled out - Ritalin for "unruly" kids and Valium for the "stressed-out" parents. Keep reading...
Due to these two contemporary trends, our culture has all but lost sight of the dual realities that 1) Kids are supposed to be a rip-roaring pain in the rump sometimes, and 2) that parenting isn't always supposed to be a stress-free picnic for all involved.
Because this plurality has vanished on a sweeping scale from the radar screens of parents and those who advise them in the U.S. of A., a whole lot of people (psychiatrists, book publishers, and the fat cats at Big Pharma to name a few) are making a whole lot of money... Meanwhile, the poor kids who are unjustly branded as sufferers of ADHD simply because their parents are insecure and lazy - or their doctors are greedy and lazy themselves - suffer the addiction and ultimately REAL psychological effects this trendy "imbalance" has stamped into the consciousness of an entire generation of Americans.
Winners: Big Pharma, the parasitic self-help industry, and mainstream medicine. Losers: American kids. OK, so now you know where I'm coming from on the ADHD issue - or you've been reminded of it in summary... In the next Daily Dose, I'll tell you why there may be yet another reason for the rampant modern proliferation of this "disease" - one that is NOT made up by industries that prey on the stress of parenting. It's a factor I haven't talked about very much before, owing to the lack of studies that link it to ADHD diagnosis.
Modern psychiatrists (and clueless parents) are quick to point a finger at phantom chemical imbalances to explain why their perfectly normal kids are "hyperactive" or "attention-challenged." But as you now know from part 1 of this essay, I am quick to point my finger at the Big-Pharma-driven medical establishment, the self-help industry and the cultural castration of American parenting for these rampant diagnoses.
However, as you're about to discover, there's a third possible causal factor that I've only barely touched on in the past - mostly because I didn't want to de-emphasize the role bad parenting and allopathic medicine have played in the ADHD boom. It's the number one enemy to children today on multiple medical fronts... SUGAR.
According to Reuters, some recent Norwegian research shows a clear, linear link between hyperactivity among teens and their consumption of sugared soft drinks. The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, focused on more than 5,000 15- and 16-year-olds of both sexes. Those who drank the greatest number of sugary sodas each day reported the worst symptoms of hyperactivity (especially if they skipped breakfast) - and vice versa.
Also, those who gulped the most soft drinks displayed the most behavioral and mental problems... Hmmm. Teenage hyperactivity, mental distress, and behavioral issues. Sounds a lot like a certain over-diagnosed childhood disease here in America, doesn't it? Of course, I've alluded before that sugar consumption and ADHD may be linked. But now that there's a large-scale study linking the key symptoms of the disease directly to sugar consumption via soft drinks, I feel like there's now just cause to point a third finger of blame (the first two are aimed at parents and doctors) squarely at sweets. Keep reading...
It makes perfect sense when you think about it: Every year, kids are exposed to more and more commercials for soda pop and candy. And judging by juvenile obesity rates, more and more of them every year are unable to resist these siren songs that spur them to gorge on sweets.
Add into this mix the modern American de-emphasis on Phys-Ed and sports - things that give kids healthy outlets to burn off both their sugar and their excess energy - and you've got a recipe for hopped-up teens and pre-teens with neither the ability (because they're so fat) or the channels to blow off their sugar buzzes... Which makes them bounce off walls at home and drive their already shackled-by-the-PC-system parents to medicate them for ADHD!
So what can you do to help protect your kids and grandkids? If anyone - a teacher, a pediatrician, a guidance counselor, or even another parent or grandparent - suggests that they have or display symptoms of ADHD, get them off sugar for six months before you even begin to entertain the notion that it may be true. If true chemical ADHD exists at all, it's very rare, in my opinion.
At any rate, it's a far cry from the multitudes of diagnoses that have zoomed upward over the last 15 years in virtual lock step with both obesity rates AND the expansion of soft drink advertising beyond simple TV spots and billboards - to movie previews, i-Pod downloads, "extreme" sporting event sponsorships, and on and on and on...
Of course, I probably don't need to tell you that getting any child you know to kick the "sugar monkey" off his back is a good thing - whether they're being sized up for a Ritalin prescription or not! Giving you the hard truth about the "soft-drink disease,"
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.
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