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Consider caffeine. Linked is an excellent article showing how the industrial revolution and most of the related Western cultural developments were made possible by caffeine. Caffeine allows Western culture.
Public education exists in its current form in large part driven by the need to modify kids
into good factory workers. It is a harbinger of what is to come.
But where do the kids get caffeine? Often they do not, and lacking it, many also lack the sustained focus necessary. This is called Attention Deficit Disorder.
ADD is medicalized and children are treated with... stimulants! Prescribed, controlled, costly and more prone to abuse than caffeine. Kids get punchy and rowdy when fatigued, and more wakefulness = more focus.
A google finds that many teachers do deal with untreated ADD kids using a Pepsi or something similar.
I propose that healthy caffeinated energy drinks for little kids (8 and less) could help with focus at school. These would be sugarfree but perhaps with some fats to help curb appetite - similar perhaps to milk. The health promoting benefits would also help them sell sell sell!
Caffeine made the West.
http://ngm.national.../ngm/0501/feature1/
[bungston, Jul 13 2011]
Caffeine works for ADD
http://www.addmtc.com/caffeine
Not as speedy as speed but can get the job done. [bungston, Jul 15 2011]
Military rules regarding attention deficit disorder
http://usmilitary.a...litary/a/asthma.htm
This states the rules have changed, and the blanket disqualification for having taken ritalin is no longer hard and fast. I wondered if this was true also for the Marines (more selective) but could not find that info online. [bungston, Nov 07 2011]
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People with ADD (kids and adults, including myself) are
treated with certain stimulants because those compounds
have a paradoxical effect on our body chemistries, helping
us calm down and focus rather than hyping us up. Caffiene
is not one of those stimulants. This would not serve the
purpose you address; it would only create a bunch of little
caffiene addicts who get even crankier than normal kids
when they're tired because thier high just crashed. |
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Kids (and I would venture, adults) with ADD are not mutants who respond differently to psychostimulants. Those drugs are popular because they help _all_ kids to focus, whether their lack of focus is pathologic or no. Lack of focus in one context might not be maladaptive at all but in a classroom it is. |
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Kids are not physiologically different from adults: many effects of amphetamine are the same whether you have ADD or not: blood pressure goes up, appetite goes down, hard to sleep etc. |
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My proposal is that parents could sidestep the cumbersome medicalization of ADD by using a safe cheap and readily availble stimulant. I think that actually this might be widely done - thus my idea is not that it be done (baked!), but that the doing be marketed as a tasty children's beverage. |
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Energy drinks are mostly sugar. Bone from me, sorry! |
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I am hoping for nineteenthly to show up. The philosophy of medicalization, the definition of normal variants as pathologic: these sorts of thing are his bread and butter. Some bakers show up if their names are typed. Nineteenthly nineteenthly nineteenthly. |
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What [bungston] said... cubed. |
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Adderall, spelling adjusted for 21 Quest. I know of
which-eth drug I speak/took/was addicted to. |
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Needs more sugar. A LOT of sugar. Sugar sugar sugar... and a little liquid stuff to mix it up... like corn syrup. Oh, and yeah, ok, the caffeine too; as long as you can add enough sugar. |
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BUN! Bun bun bun bun, a SWEET bun, dripping with frosting and a little extra sugar! [+] ( <<<bun, with SUGAR ) |
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I have certain views which i will express later. |
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Concerta = time release Adderall. |
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That said, Ritaalin and Adderall are both stimulants. |
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Moreover, our pediatrician suggested coffee for my younger daughter who deals with this. Dosing would be the tricky part. And making it something kids would want to drink... |
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Sorry, i kept getting distracted. |
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As a child, i behaved in a manner which was
probably diagnosable as ADD. The school i went to
instituted a number of measures as a result, one
of which was to put me on tranquilisers, which
didn't seem to work. My perception of the
situation was that the teacher should have made
an effort to be more interesting than the walls of
the classroom, but maybe that wasn't her fault
because they had clearly set the bar very high.
Probably the best thing would've been to make
the room more boring. |
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I suppose what i think is that it depends on how
necessary or positive one thinks the current
schooling system is. If it's efficient and more than
a childcare service, then it would be worth
pursuing. I'm quite conflicted about this because
the impression i get is that what's called ADD is
the result of the absence of an appropriate social
outlet for that behaviour, so my response to that
would be to provide that outlet. I also have a
suspicion that something which is allegedly
enhanced by certain compounds in food which are
not usually encountered physiologically might not
be physiological itself. So the short answer is i
don't know. |
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Gah.... There's no convincing some people... |
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Caffiene is not an amphetamine or 'psychostimulant.' I don't
care how you think AD(H)D works or doesn't work, but
CAFFIENE HAS NO BENEFICIAL EFFECT ON US. IT JUST
MAKES US CRANKY. |
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See? Now you've gone and done it. |
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And, yes, I'm aware that I chronically misspell 'caffeine.'
I'm also taking medication for that. |
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f*garagedoor*k caffeine. Drinks with refined sugar defocus the mind and disturb the body's stimulus/reward path to habit development; and, carbonated drinks soften teeth and leach intracellular potassium. |
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That said, I'll just guess that kids don't stay well hydrated. |
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[21 Quest], that's because you're addicted to caffeine. My
wife has the same problem/solution. |
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Oh, and when I said 'us,' I meant adults with ADD. I'm not
kidding, it really does. No, we're not mutants, but our
brains/bodies work differently. If that wasn't the case, we
wouldn't have ADD. |
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I have to call b*richaunty*t on any notion of treating kids. What audacity! |
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It's a very sad thing that society insists on trying to make kids, who's brains and bodies work differently from the norm, conform to a status quo rather than adapting the system to incorporate these differences. What with variety being the spice and all that jazz... |
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I knew I liked you for a reason. |
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Yes, wouldn't it be better to push them out the front door with the instruction to “go and make some friends”? |
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Not done here, i hope, [fries]. |
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Caffeine is my drug of choice. I spent five years off it
and they were five years of no energy and no
motivation. I would like to be rid of it sometimes but
if it takes that long to withdraw, it doesn't seem
worth the effort to achieve a longer lifespan in which
i would have done even less than i do now. |
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That caffeine withdrawal headache is extremely
painful. I don't get headaches unless I am missing my
caffeine. |
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I bet love of caffeine is not random, but associated with certain genotypes. |
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[2 fries shy of a happy meal], you bring up a Noble ideal.
Nonetheless, it is a royal pain not focusing as well as
others. ADDERALL@30+mg 3x day was helpful for me.
Though, I too prefer a society more knowlagable and open
minded to mental-health/behavior issues. |
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Allegedly, though i have very little faith in the
source, people who have blood group A crave
caffeine more, and that's true of me. I used to
drink coffee as quite a small child and i've
sometimes wondered if doing badly without it is a
sign of long-term harm from that. Lack of focus is
definitely a big problem, possibly even the
fundamental problem for me. |
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It's also claimed, with more credence than the
blood group thing, that the majority of headaches
are linked to caffeine withdrawal. Analgesics
often contain caffeine too, which is bad from a
renal perspective. |
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If my suspicious about caffeine and other stimulants and the ADD spectrum is true, people from certain backgrounds doing better with caffeine in a Western culture is kind of like people from certain backgrounds doing better with sunscreen and a hat in the tropics. Humans have always used technology and culture to more quickly adapt their phenotype to the circumstances. |
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Type A is said to be more common in Northern Europe. |
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Well, people *would* say that -- is there evidence? |
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My wife and I are of Norse/Irish heritage and both O+. She
is a caffiene addict and I am not.
Nearly irrelevant, I know, but sometimes I just chime in
because I
like to hear myself type. |
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I learned another reason to make child stimulants
available without doctors being involved. Having
been prescribed ritalin or the like makes a child
ineligible for the armed services. Ever. I was
skeptical but apparently this is true. |
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//I learned another reason to make child stimulants available without doctors being involved. Having been prescribed ritalin or the like makes a child ineligible for the armed services. Ever. I was skeptical but apparently this is true.//
In the US you can't serve while taking Ritalin, but you aren't disqualified just because it was prescribed in the past. |
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en I was 17 i was diagnosed with the most full blown
case of ADD the doctor had ever seen. I was moved
from regular schools to a "learning centre". Which is
the last hope for students who were struggling.
Somehow i thrived there. I considered the
scheduling, and support might have been what
helped me though those times, but until today i
had never considered the proximity to a coffee
shop! I have been drinking 1-2 litres of coffee a
day ever since. |
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One problem though... caffeine is said to stunt
growth, and tall people are statistically more likely
to be successful. |
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yes but tall people who don't drink coffee, not so much. |
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// Having been prescribed ritalin or the like makes a
child ineligible for the armed services.// You certain
it's the Ritalin that makes them ineligible, rather
than the prescription (and the diagnosis it implies)? |
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// Having been prescribed ritalin or the like makes a child ineligible for the armed services. // |
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If that's true, I'm off to get my kids prescribed ritalin. |
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[bob] It's said that the prescribed stimulants have a calming, rather than stimulating, effect on those with ADD; out of curiosity, is the same true for caffeine, in your experience? |
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Same for me (I too have ADD, no H, thankyouverymuch),
and caffeine makes me hyper (and extremely irratable, see
above).
Meanwhile, there are a couple of prescription stimulants
that actually have a sedative effect on me. |
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[marked-for-tagline] "sometimes I just chime in because I like to hear myself type" |
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// Would you characterise that as OCD compulsions to fly
off at a tangent to ramify the smallest thing you've just
taken in ? // |
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No, that's something I do by choice, because it's fun, it
sometimes leads to interesting or at least entertaining new
topics, and it annoys people in a way they can't really
chastise me over. |
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// My experience with prescription stimulants is limited to
ritalin. // |
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I am currently taking a low-ish dosage of Ritalin, and it
works well for me. Dextroamphetamine was my friend for
almost sixteen years, but it got to the point that my dose
was getting too high for safe treatment. Adderall and
Focalin are the ones that make me drowsy, which is
supposedly rare, but not unheard of. That sort of thing
happens to me quite often, strangely, both with med side
effects and in other, not medical respects. |
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I've been trying my best not to go on a"ADD isn't real" rant,
but I just noticed that practically everybody on here has
been diagnosed with it. In fact, I've had doctors tell me I
have ADD, which I might, yet my parents were smart
enough to ignore the diagnosis. Perhaps ADD is just a
symptom of being smart? (take that as a compliment).
Personally I prefer to find ways of dealing with it without
medication. Caffeine makes me more awake and alert in
large enough quantities, but the fact that I'm typing this in
my Economics class probably means it isn't helping me
focus. |
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Also it's worth noting that literally everybody I know who is
prescribed Adderall is selling it to their friends to get high.
It's the thing to do for teenagers now. |
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It's not that ADD isn't real (just believe me, it is); the
problem is that it's too often used as an easy (mis)diagnosis
when the real issue is behavioral or environmental in
nature. My mother's informal estimate, based on her
experience and the consensus of fellow MDs, is that more
than half of adults being treated for ADD and more than
3/4 of children being treated for ADHD actually have
something else going on. She also comments that it's much
more difficult to make the distinction in children, partly
because they can't grasp the concept well enough to give
their provider accurate feedback during treatment. |
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A friend recently told me that he was diagnosed with some form of ADD or ADHD (don't remember which) and has been taking stimulants for the last couple years that have helped a lot. (He's very smart for those relating AD[H]D to intelligence.) Before that he had been known for consuming large quantities of Mountain Dew, and his doctor told him that he was probably self-medicating with the caffeine. He told me that caffeince had a calming effect on him and he was actually somewhat dependent on it to get to sleep. Apparently the prescription drugs work much better so he's continuing with those even though they are expensive. |
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So while I wouldn't recommend skipping the proper meds, caffeine may be worth trying if the better alternatives aren't available. |
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later: Oh, but after I read the second link I see that I'm not saying anything new at all here... |
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