Karate is an essential part of helping my youngster to cope with her
dyslexia.  She had a 6-month break a couple of years ago, and her
reading age declined sharply; we found a new dojo, and her reading age
was within months back close to what's predicted by her IQ.

Nicky.
T2 dx 05/04 + underactive thyroid
D&E, 150ug thyroxine
Last A1c 5.2%  BMI 26

Of course they are. The human brain is "designed" to develop in
response to the way it is used. Things you do a lot will recruit more
of the brain, and things you never do will fade away. We're used to
the idea of "use it or lose it" in terms of age and physiological
performance, but it applies equally to the brain.

It used to be thought that nearly all the brain development was
achieved at a young age (varying from around ten years old to twenty
dependingon criteria) and after that all that happened to the brain
was that it slowly degenerated as you got older, more rapidly as you
get very old. But we now know that while the young brain is much more
plastic than the adult brain, adult brains still have an amazing
amount of plasticity left. The most dramatic recent example of that
was the London taxi driver study, where they found that middle aged
people who became London taxi drivers started growth in the spatial
navigation parts of the brain which went on for years, resulting in
very much larger portions of the brain (in fact in the hippocampus)
devoted to finding their way round the city.

An interesting area of current research is where you can gain
cross-over benefits, where learning to do one kind of thing makes it
easier to do better at another apparently unrelated kind of
thing. There is for example some suggestive evidence that teaching
young children to swim or to play music has an improving effect on
general more academic mental performance.

I agree, Quentin.  Of course, it could always be both.  ;-)  Actually,
I've been wondering if children's brains are being developed differently
 with our high-paced societies and all the technology that supports it.

Best regards,
Michelle C., T2

Hi Michelle,

 I've read similar articles. They assume ADD has been around for
ever. Maybe it has. Maybe it is of modern occurrence. Hard to tell
which hypothesis to support.

Kind regards,

Hi Quentin,

I agree.  We call all relate to this type of behavior in some ways.
It's the extremeness of it that is the issue.

I read an interesting article once that hypothesized that a person with
ADD who lived a more primitive tribal existence would be a great benefit
to the tribe.  The fact that people with ADD are highly distractable
would make them the first ones to be alert to danger.  It might also
carry over to the hunt where s/he might be the first to detect the
presence of prey.

Best regards,
Michelle C., T2

Thanks Michelle,

 Fascinating.

It seems almost normal behaviour but extreme in its execution.
It is easy to imagine being distracted from something boring like
doing accounting but being absorbed in some fascinating new idea.

Once again thank you,

Hi Quentin,

I can't answer for PP, however in my observation of my dad, it's easy to
distract him from mundane things like paying bills example.  A stray
thought, (or an interruption) causes him to lose his place and he has to
backtrack to remember where he was in the process.  (He has a routine
that must be done in order.) However if the thing he's focused on is
novel, then stray thoughts are much less likely.  In fact, sometimes
what I call hyperfocus comes into play.  He can think about a
problem/puzzle/interesting idea for hours.

Best regards,
Michelle C., T2

Hi PP,

Help me understand this more fully please.
Does novelty distract you or assist you?
I'd like to understand ADD better.

Thanks,
Quentin.

Thanks.  I have the typical ADD ability to focus when there's novelty
involved, so I have that way of assisting myself, too.  A cubicle move
at work helped a LOT, giving me changes in my physical environment to
jangle my novelty detector.  Management's becoming somewhat more rigid
in terms of time reporting is also helping me by forcing me to keep more
lists and notes.  So, it's not all about meds, for me at least.

PP

I hope you're able to find something that works better for you, Priscilla.

Best regards,
Michelle C.

On weekends I often either take only 1 Adderall a day instead of 2 or
just skip it.  My psydoc says that's why I haven't built up a tolerance.  
I don't think I have.  I just need something else maybe.

PP

Peppermint Patootie wrote:

ADD as child--back when no one had a clue about it and just thought he
was incorrigible.  Also highly intelligent.  He remembers his dad
shouting at him, "Your IQ is higher than mine.  How come you can't do
your school work?"  Pretty much describes the whole issue in a nutshell.
 The failure of his family to understand (not that they had any
resources for understanding ADD back in the 50's) shot the hell out of
his self-esteem, which added to the problem.

Starting in elementary school my mother would repeatedly back me into a
corner.  "What do you do these things?" she'd rage, and I had no answer.
 So they concluded I was lazy, irresponsible, obstinate and, yes,
incorrigible, and I had nowhere to go but end up agreeing with them.
It's a horrible feeling, to think you have no recourse but to say it's
your fault you did those things you had no intention of doing.  Wears
out any self-esteem you've got.  Shame city.

Yep, you've described it exactly.

Surprisingly, since my grandparents have come to live nearby (in a house
behind ours), I've realized that my grandpa--my dad's dad--has ADD too.
  He has trouble following conversations, often goes off on tangents,
and frequently fails to acknowledge what was just said, because he's
thinking his own thoughts.  Looking back over the years, I can see that
he's always been this way, but seeing him nearly everyday has brought
this home to me.

Unlike my dad who had such trouble in school, my grandpa did okay
though.  However, his school experience occurred in a one room school
house with 13 kids ranging in age from 1st grade to 8th.  Much less
stressful environment with individualized attention.

My dad's brother shows some symptoms too.

medication until his early 50's.  He takes the Parkinson's med,
seligiline for it.

sometime.  I'm starting to have problems at work again.

Although the seligiline is a long-acting med--he takes a tiny dose every
 3 days--sometimes, he finds taking a break from it helps him "reset".
 Of course, the "reset" period has to occur when there isn't much going
on that requires his attention.

Michelle C.