DR. SHAZIA

ADHD ? Recent Research Discoveries Make A Compelling Case For Homeopathic Remedies

For well over a decade now prescription stimulants and non-stimulant pharmaceuticals have been heralded as the only real medical treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This conclusion is  based primary on their estimated 70 percent success rate along with research establishing the cause of ADHD as a neurotransmitter imbalance in the brain primarily driven by the brain chemical dopamine.

But recent research conducted partly by the National Institute of Health (NIH) may soon make the medical community take pause before prescribing such harsh stimulant ADHD medications.

The findings I am talking about didn’t dispute the fact that brain chemicals such as dopamine and norepinephrine cause ADHD symptoms such as inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity, restlessness, along with other issues involving self regulation but rather delved deeper into the mystery of ADHD with the help of  advanced brain scan technology.

What this amazing forward thinking technology revealed was that the areas of the brain primarily associated with self regulation seemed to be underdeveloped, or slow to develop, in children previously diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Another revelation revealed in the long and carefully administered study seemed to suggest that brain communication terminals know as synapses, whose role is to send and receive brain signals, were also underdeveloped.

Ultimately what this research is telling us is that ADHD may in fact be no more than a child developmental concern not that much different than that of unpredictable physical child growth rates.

Would you give your child a growth hormone, steroid, or other harsh chemical compound to accelerate their growth if they were a half inch shorter than their peers at the tender young age of 6, 7,8, 9 or beyond? I think the answer for most parents is clearly no!

I would suspect you would likely make sure they were eating right and getting the vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy hoping eventually they would get that needed growth propelling them up to the level of their peers and maybe even beyond.

So if our premise is correct and ADHD is a problem with sluggish brain development perhaps brought about by genetics or external factors such as pesticides then a less risky natural solution might be a better, and of course safer, alternative.

That said, the world of natural ADHD remedies is filled with a virtual laundry list of possible treatments all claiming to be the latest and greatest find since the emergence of sliced bread.

There is also the concern that perhaps not enough research has been conducted on natural remedies for ADHD leaving us on the merry-go-round of trial and error experimentation.

I would have to agree with this since there is little funding available for conducting research on natural ADHD alternatives. That said, we do have a couple of well run British studies placing homeopathic remedies in a statistical dead heat with prescription stimulants for effective symptoms management.

These studies also seem to prove that while stimulant medications for ADHD were very effective in the very short term they produced no long-term benefits and dramatically increased the chances of drug addiction at some point in the future. On the other hand homeopathic remedies for ADHD produced long-term benefits 57% of the time, even after the medication itself had been discontinued.

In conclusion, we simple don’t have enough information to say homeopathic remedies for ADHD are without exception better than stimulants but recent research discoveries combined with side effect concerns certainly seem to suggest that homeopathic remedies for ADHD could be a natural alternative treatment worth considering.