Healthy Bytes

The similarity between diet soda and an ADHD drug

read time: 289 words, just over a minute

I was watching CNN House Call this morning. One of the stories was about prescribing Adderall to overweight kids.
Adderall is an amphetamine approved for ADHD prescribing.

According to Wikipedia, the active ingredients are:
1/4 Dextroamphetamine Saccharate
1/4 Dextroamphetamine Sulfate
1/4 dl-amphetamine Aspartate (racemic amphetamine)
1/4 dl-amphetamin Sulfate (racemic amphetamine)

One of the side effects of Adderall is decreased appetite. Thus some docs are prescribing it for the “side effect” rather than the “effect”. This is what they call “off label” prescribing.
(other side effects include: sleep difficulty, headaches, aggression, abnormal thoughts/behaviors, mania, growth suppression).

So they featured one kid and his family – a “success story”. It was a dinner table scene and what was the kid drinking… diet Dr. Pepper.
Now, what’s in diet soda… primarily Aspartame (some brands are switching to Splenda).
What is Aspartame (Nutra Sweet)? L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine.
(Some of the side effects are: headaches, brain tumors, brain lesions, and lymphoma)

Aspartic acid – which is an amino acid – is also known as aspartate.
Now I’m not a chemistry whiz. And I haven’t dug deep. But I was tickled by the dl-amphetamine Aspartate ingredient in Adderall and the L-aspartic acid in aspartame.
I’m not sure if there is a functional difference between the two.

What I do know is that aspartame is an excitotoxin. To put it simply – it’s not good for your brain.
If you notice the side effects of both Aspartame and Adderall, you’ll see there are brain issues.

Additionally, artificial sweeteners tend to make you crave more sweet stuff and mess with your brains ability to signal satiety. (I’ve posted on this a few times).

Just a thought… rather than putting the overweight kid on a strong drug, clean up his diet.

Raising better eaters

The American Academy of Pediatrics is petitioning the FCC and Congress to decrease the amount of commercials during kids TV programs. Presently the limit is 5 to 6 minutes an hour. They’re asking for a 50% reduction.

The kid docs are also requesting no Viagra commercials before 10pm.

Even pediatricians see a connection between food product commercials and the crappy food kids eat.

Fluoride - the FDA hands bottle water manufacturers a prize

read time: 293 words, about 2 minutes

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the ok to bottled water manufacturers to decorate their labels with the claim that ‘fluoridated water may reduce the risk of tooth decay‘. (Watch how quickly the ad claims come).

The American Dental Association (ADA) let out a hip hip hooray…
ADA executive director James B. Bramson, D.D.S.:

“Thanks to the FDA’s decision, bottlers can now claim what dentists have long known—that optimally fluoridated water helps prevent tooth decay.”

But wait, there’s more…
The FDA says - and the ADA agrees - this ‘health claim‘ is not for infants (or bottled water marketed to infants). Why? Because lesser amounts of fluoride are ‘appropriate’.

Fluoride beyond the optimal amount creates a risk for “fluorosis” in teeth while they’re developing, before popping through the gums. Fluorosis damages tooth enamel. The results are a white spotting or streaking, and in the extreme - brown spotting on the teeth. There’s some nice pictures here.

Interesting. Teeth don’t only ‘develop’ in infants.

The ADA guidelines for fluoride and kids up to age 6 (which you can get here) advise:
- infant milk/formula - no fluoride. So if your using dry or concentrated formula, use fluoride free water (purified, distilled, deionized, reverse osmosis filtered).
- fluoride toothpaste - not under the age of 2 and no swallowing under the age of 6.
- fluoride mouthwash/mouthrinse - not under the age of 6.

In the next post we’ll take a look at how it came to be that fluoride was added to our tap water. Another tale of corporate and government intrigue. As they say, one person’s trash is another person treasure… or not.
Plus, how to make your own toothpaste… it’s rather simple. I’ve been doing it for sometime.

Better to teach good eating habits than break bad eating habits

read time: about one minute.

CNN Health this morning featured a story on the “HealthBarn USA” - a program created by dietician Stacey Antine. After observing obese kids in a New York hospital, she thought it better to teach kids how to eat BEFORE they wind up in a clinic. Veggies, fruits and whole grains.

It’s a 12 week program for parents and kids. The kids learn how to plant seeds, cultivate and harvest crops. They learn about nutrition as they turn the harvest into meals. They also learn how to read food labels.

An interesting comment from a parent in the program who is also an Orthopedic surgeon… She didn’t get any nutrition education in medical school. Yup. None.

In 2003 the Princeton Review surveyed every US accredited medical school (122) and accredited osteopathic school (19) about nutrition education in their curriculum.
40% (4 in 10) of the schools had a nutrition requirement. The average amount of nutritional training at the schools that required any was 2.5 credit units - about 38 hours.

So 6 in 10 schools have no nutrition requirement at all.
Medical school is about 6,000 lecture hours.

The 2:15 video is worth a watch.
CNN.com/Health click on “Healthy Eating and Kids”