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!-- bungston, Jul 13 2011 Caffeine made the West. http://ngm.national.../ngm/0501/feature1/ [bungston, Jul 13 2011] Caffeine works for ADD http://www.addmtc.com/caffeineNot 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.htmThis 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] 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.-- Alterother, Jul 13 2011 red bull ?
lots of caffeine there-- j paul, Jul 14 2011 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.
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.
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.-- bungston, Jul 15 2011 Energy drinks are mostly sugar. Bone from me, sorry!-- RayfordSteele, Jul 15 2011 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.-- bungston, Jul 17 2011 What [bungston] said... cubed.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 17 2011 Adderall, spelling adjusted for 21 Quest. I know of which-eth drug I speak/took/was addicted to.-- blissmiss, Jul 17 2011 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.
BUN! Bun bun bun bun, a SWEET bun, dripping with frosting and a little extra sugar! [+] ( <<<bun, with SUGAR )-- Grogster, Jul 17 2011 Hello!
I have certain views which i will express later.-- nineteenthly, Jul 17 2011 Concerta = time release Adderall.
That said, Ritaalin and Adderall are both stimulants.
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...-- phoenix, Jul 17 2011 Sorry, i kept getting distracted.
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.
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.-- nineteenthly, Jul 17 2011 Gah.... There's no convincing some people...
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.
See? Now you've gone and done it.-- Alterother, Jul 17 2011 And, yes, I'm aware that I chronically misspell 'caffeine.' I'm also taking medication for that.-- Alterother, Jul 17 2011 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.
That said, I'll just guess that kids don't stay well hydrated.-- reensure, Jul 17 2011 [21 Quest], that's because you're addicted to caffeine. My wife has the same problem/solution.-- Alterother, Jul 17 2011 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.-- Alterother, Jul 17 2011 I have to call b*richaunty*t on any notion of treating kids. What audacity!-- reensure, Jul 17 2011 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...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 17 2011 [2fries]:
THANK YOU.
I knew I liked you for a reason.-- Alterother, Jul 17 2011 Yes, wouldn't it be better to push them out the front door with the instruction to “go and make some friends”?-- pocmloc, Jul 17 2011 Not done here, i hope, [fries].
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.-- nineteenthly, Jul 17 2011 That caffeine withdrawal headache is extremely painful. I don't get headaches unless I am missing my caffeine.-- blissmiss, Jul 17 2011 I bet love of caffeine is not random, but associated with certain genotypes.-- bungston, Jul 18 2011 [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.-- Sir_Misspeller, Jul 18 2011 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.
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.-- nineteenthly, Jul 18 2011 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.-- bungston, Jul 18 2011 Type A is said to be more common in Northern Europe.-- nineteenthly, Jul 18 2011 Well, people *would* say that -- is there evidence?-- mouseposture, Jul 18 2011 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.-- Alterother, Jul 21 2011 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.-- bungston, Nov 05 2011 //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.-- DIYMatt, Nov 06 2011 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.
One problem though... caffeine is said to stunt growth, and tall people are statistically more likely to be successful.-- bob, Nov 06 2011 yes but tall people who don't drink coffee, not so much.-- FlyingToaster, Nov 06 2011 // 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)?-- mouseposture, Nov 06 2011 // Having been prescribed ritalin or the like makes a child ineligible for the armed services. //
If that's true, I'm off to get my kids prescribed ritalin.-- Loris, Nov 06 2011 [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?-- spidermother, Nov 06 2011 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.-- Alterother, Nov 07 2011 [marked-for-tagline] "sometimes I just chime in because I like to hear myself type"-- normzone, Nov 07 2011 // Would you characterise that as OCD compulsions to fly off at a tangent to ramify the smallest thing you've just taken in ? //
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.
// My experience with prescription stimulants is limited to ritalin. //
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.-- Alterother, Nov 07 2011 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.
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.-- DIYMatt, Nov 08 2011 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.-- Alterother, Nov 08 2011 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.
So while I wouldn't recommend skipping the proper meds, caffeine may be worth trying if the better alternatives aren't available.
later: Oh, but after I read the second link I see that I'm not saying anything new at all here...-- scad mientist, Nov 08 2011 random, halfbakery