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Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it's more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or social phobia. Although an Internet addiction is not an official diagnosis, signs of a potential problem include using the Internet so much for game playing or other purposes that it interferes with everyday life and decision-making ability. (The diagnosis is being considered for the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the "bible" of mental ailments published by...

In another thread, I happen to mention a problem that exists between an ex-wife of mine and our youngest son. He has ADHD. Several years ago, he was on meds and he was doing well. He was getting nearly straight A's and had plenty of friends, but his mother didn't like him taking meds so she, on her own, just took him off of them and took him to see a holistic doctor. Well, she has actually taken him to see several and it's not working. The quacks, errr, doctors made huge promises and charged big bucks and the results...

For Ann Hohmann, Oct. 21, 2004, began just about like any other day. On that morning, the 54-year-old mother of two living in McAllen, Texas, was preparing to take her eldest son to school. She had an early appointment, so her husband, Rick Hohmann, would be dropping off younger son, 14-year-old Matthew, at his school that day. About a month earlier, Matthew had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. And like an estimated 2.5 million other children in the United States, he was taking medication for the condition.

College students, of course, have been using stimulants for years: They take such things as modafinil, Adderall, and Ritalin (euphemistically known on campuses as "vitamin R") to enhance their memories for exams or to stay up all night and press out a term paper. By one estimate, at least 10 percent of American college students use prescription drugs as study aids. Now the general adult population is turning to the pills, too – often illegally – to boost productivity and enhance their mental prowess on the job. Some experts laud the development: They think it's time to consider making the...

A report published today in the journal Pediatrics, however, estimates the incidence of psychotic symptoms at 1.48 per 100 person-years. (Person-years is defined as total years of treatment with a drug. For example, 100 people taking a drug one year is 100 person-years.) The statistic was based on data from 49 randomized, controlled trials of ADHD medications. In those same studies, no psychotic symptoms were reported in children who did not receive medication. Moreover, an analysis of spontaneous adverse-event reports to the FDA showed more than 800 reports of psychosis or mania. Psychotic symptoms were found with every ADHD drug...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can cause children to have hallucinations even when taken as directed, U.S. government researchers said on Monday. U.S. Food and Drug Administration researchers analyzed data from 49 clinical studies conducted by makers of the drugs and found they can cause psychosis and mania in some patients, including some with no obvious risk factors. In some cases, children hallucinated that worms, bugs or snakes were crawling on them. "Patients and physicians should be aware of the possibility that psychiatric symptoms consistent with psychosis or mania" might arise in the course of treatment,...

NEW YORK -- Baseball authorized nearly 8 percent of its players to use drugs for ADHD last season, which allowed them to take otherwise banned stimulants. A total of 106 exemptions for banned drugs were given to major leaguers claiming attention deficit hyperactivity disorder from the end of the 2007 season until the end of the 2008 season, according to a report released Friday by the sport's independent drug-testing administrator. That's up from 103 therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for ADHD in 2007, according to figures cited by baseball officials before a congressional committee last year

This was from a few months ago, there was a more recent article but I can't find it. It's funny, we now have 30 years of research supporting the artificial food dye-kid hyperactivity link, yet our FDA has done nothing. Once again, we have given all responsibility of something (our food) to politicians (FDA) who only have to pretend their doing something. Just as troubling is how secretive and unregulated the food ingredient and chemical businesses are. Here's out it works: They say its safe, and the politicians that they pay off agree. Note in the article below that American...

The Transcendental Meditation technique may be an effective and safe non-pharmaceutical aid for treating ADHD, according to a promising new study published this month in the peer-reviewed online journal Current Issues in Education.

In the winter of 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study indicating that 200,000 two- to four-year-olds had been prescribed Ritalin for an “attention disorder” from 1991 to 1995. Judging by the response, the image of hundreds of thousands of mothers grinding up stimulants to put into the sippy cups of their preschoolers was apparently not a pretty one. Most national magazines and newspapers covered the story; some even expressed dismay or outrage at this exacerbation of what already seemed like a juggernaut of hyper-medicalizing childhood. The public reaction, however, was tame; the...

Academics Laud Drug Use by: Bethany Stotts, December 15, 2008 Six academics and Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature Magazine, recently argued that society should move “towards the responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy,” particularly drugs typically used in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). “In this article, we propose actions that will help society accept the benefits of enhancement, given appropriate research and evolved regulation,” write the authors, who hail from prestigious universities such as • Stanford Law School, • Harvard Medical School, • the University of Cambridge, • the University of Manchester, • the...

Reduced ability to name smells by hyperactive children has revealed for the first time a link between an impaired smell processing and the disorder. The one-year-study of 88 children aged six to 16 - 44 with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - was led by the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children's Research Institute. It shows how the children with ADHD had reduced ability to identify odours. The study was published in September's Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study involved using scratch and sniff tests of common smells such as orange, chocolate and pizza. Felicity Karsz of University of Melbourne's...

Shock Jock Michael Savage is in hot water again this time for a stating his belief that 99% of Autism cases are fake. He has taken a beating from parents of autistic children and those who lobby for them. However, let us play devil's advocate for a moment... Are Savage's comments mean spirited or could there be some truth to it? Are children who are diagnosed with autism and Asperger's syndrome (Considered a high functioning form of Autism) being over diagnosed? Are the diagnostic criteria for Autism and Asperger's really too broad and too flawed that otherwise ordinary playful children...

The genetic legacy of nomadism may be an inability to settle ABOUT one in 20 children (those under 18) have a group of symptoms that has come to be known as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). About 60% of them carry those symptoms into adulthood. For what is, at root, a genetic phenomenon, that is a lot—yet many studies have shown that ADHD is indeed genetic and not, as was once suspected, the result of poor parenting. It is associated with particular variants of receptor molecules for neurotransmitters in the brain. A neurotransmitter is a chemical that carries messages between nerve...

About 2.5 million children in the United States take stimulant drugs for attention and hyperactivity problems. But concerns about side effects have prompted many parents to look elsewhere: as many as two-thirds of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., have used some form of alternative treatment. The most common strategy involves diet changes, like giving up processed foods, sugars and food additives. About 20 percent of children with the disorder have been given some form of herbal therapy; others have tried supplements like vitamins and fish oil or have used biofeedback, massage and yoga. While some studies of...

Did hyperactivity evolve as a survival aid for nomads? 11:39 10 June 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Impulsivity and a short attention span may be the bane of every parent with a hyperactive toddler, but those same traits seem to help Kenyan nomads keep weight on. A gene mutation tied to attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is also associated with increased weight among a chronically undernourished group of nomads called the Ariaal. Notably, the mutation offers no such benefit to a cousin population that gave up the nomadic lifestyle in the 1960s. The nomads' active and unpredictable life centred...

Associated Press Children should be screened for heart problems with an electrocardiogram before getting drugs like Ritalin to treat hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder, the American Heart Association recommended Monday. Stimulant drugs can increase blood pressure and heart rate. For most children, that isn't a problem. But in those with heart conditions, it could make them more vulnerable to sudden cardiac arrest - an erratic heartbeat that causes the heart to stop pumping blood through the body - and other heart problems. About 2.5 million American children and 1.5 million adults take medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, according to...

CHILDREN who use Ritalin for a long period of time could be more at risk of delinquency and substance abuse, a study has found. Doctors are suggesting children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should take a break from medication after three years of use. An American study - published in the Medical Observer _ has found that while drugs such as Ritalin can initially help sufferers, the benefit of prolonged use is in doubt. Some children stay on medication until they reach 18, but researchers believe it may not protect them from all the symptoms. Has your child been...

ADHD Breakthrough by: Amanda Busse, January 09, 2008 A new study suggests that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children may be a matter of maturity. According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ADHD in children is caused when portions of the brain mature at a slower pace than normal. For many, the condition eventually normalizes and nearly 80 percent of children grow out of the disorder, the researchers found. Researchers used a new image-analysis technique to measure the thickening and thinning of thousands of cortex sites in 223 children with ADHD and...

Drugs given to thousands of hyperactive children have no long-term benefits and could in fact be stunting their development, a major study has said. The study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) found that, while powerful drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta resulted in short-term behavioural improvements, after three years those benefits had disappeared. Children who took the drugs for the full three years were also found to have stunted growth, according to the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). The MTA has followed 600 children in the United States with ADHD since the 1990s and has just...

In youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the brain matures in a normal pattern but is delayed three years in some regions, on average, compared to youth without the disorder, an imaging study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has revealed. The delay in ADHD was most prominent in regions at the front of the brain’s outer mantle (cortex), important for the ability to control thinking, attention and planning. Otherwise, both groups showed a similar back-to-front wave of brain maturation with different areas peaking in thickness at different times. “Finding...

Researchers have also employed this technology for use in special 'night lights' Scientists at John Carroll University, working in its Lighting Innovations Institute, have developed an affordable accessory that appears to reduce the symptoms of ADHD. Their discovery also has also been shown to improve sleep patterns among people who have difficulty falling asleep. The John Carroll researchers have created glasses designed to block blue light, therefore altering a person’s circadian rhythm, which leads to improvement in ADHD symptoms and sleep disorders. How the Glasses Work: Jumpstarting Melatonin Production The individual puts on the glasses a couple of hours ahead...

As cousins Travis and Chuckie Jones stroll off the South Broward High campus on school days, they're "gooned out." Wearing oversized T-shirts and low-riding jeans, they mimic the hard core look that gangsta rappers first popularized in the 1990s. The Jones boys' jean shorts, held up by belts, are hanging around their thighs and sag so low that you can't help but see the gym shorts they wear underneath. "I like saggin'," said Travis, a 15-year-old sophomore. For him, wearing baggy, ill-fitting jeans, is cool — and makes a strong statement. It's all about attitude. "It tells everybody to kiss...

Drugging Our Poor by: Bethany Stotts, October 22, 2007 Many public schools have begun incorporating mental health screening tests into their curriculum, and may soon be analyzing family circumstances as a factor influencing low school performance under the No Child Left Behind requirements (NCLB). The proposed We Care Act (H.R. 3762) would amend the NCLB Act to stipulate that “Each State plan shall include an assessment of the nonacademic factors influencing student achievement, a description of public and private organizations and agencies within the State that are working to impact... including but not limited to state departments....and nonprofit youth development...

Insulin's brain impact links drugs and diabetes Insulin, long known as an important regulator of blood glucose levels, now has a newly appreciated role in the brain. Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers, working with colleagues in Texas, have found that insulin levels affect the brain’s dopamine systems, which are involved in drug addiction and many neuropsychiatric conditions. In addition to suggesting potential new targets for treating drug abuse, the findings raise questions as to whether improper control of insulin levels – as in diabetes – may impact risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or influence the effectiveness of current...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a state of serious impairments in both learning ability and social functioning, is one of many labels for one of the most prevalent conditions in child psychiatry, and, undoubtedly, the most controversial, which partly persists into adulthood. ADHD is conservatively estimated to occur in 3,0–7,5% of school-age children (Goldman et al., 1998), but more permissive criteria yield estimates of up to 17% (Barbaresi et al., 2002). Up to 20% of boys in some school systems receive psychostimulants for the treatment of ADHD (LeFever et al., 1999). Partly in response to legitimate concern about an apparent rapid increase...

Mr. & Mrs. Fred Thompson will be interviewed on Hannity & Colmes tonight.

Certain artificial food colorings and other additives can worsen hyperactive behaviors in children aged 3 to 9, British researchers reported on Wednesday. Tests on more than 300 children showed significant differences in their behavior when they drank fruit drinks spiked with a mixture of food colorings and preservatives, Jim Stevenson and colleagues at the University of Southampton said. "These findings show that adverse effects are not just seen in children with extreme hyperactivity (such as ADHD) but can also be seen in the general population and across the range of severities of hyperactivity," the researchers wrote in their study, published...

MONDAY, Sept. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly 9 percent of American children have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but only 32 percent of them are getting the medication they need. That's the sobering conclusion of a landmark new study, the first of its kind based on what doctors consider the "gold standard" of diagnostic criteria -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. "There is a perception that ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated," said lead researcher Dr. Tanya E. Froehlich, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center. "But our study shows that for those who meet the criteria...

> >> >>I have read the information presented on your website. You have shown >>zero >>evidence that ADHD does not exist as a neurological disorder. >>Your opinion about ADHD goes against the findings of the mainstream >>scientific community, and you do many people a great disservice by >>promoting ignorance and stigma. >> >>Lyle Fred Baughman, MD, author THE ADHD FRAUD www.Trafford.com, writes to Bob Collier, author of The Parental Intelligence Newsletter http://www.parental-intelligence.com Dear Bob, Lyle, who writes above, needs to understand a couple of basic things about science and reason. The burden of proof always lies with those who pronounce...

364 DEATHS IN GEORGIA PSYCH HOSPITALS—TIP OF ICEBERG by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurologist Author: The ADHD Fraud—How Psychiatry Make “Patients” of Normal Children www.Trafford.com ; 1-888-232-4444 The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution has documented 364 deaths in Georgia’s state mental hospitals in the five years, January, 2002 through mid-December 2006. Two-thirds were said to have died of natural causes, 115 were deemed suspicious. The greatest number of these--36 –died from choking on food, vomit or foreign objects, or by aspirating those substances into their lungs. A like number died from questionable care; 12 committed suicide, and two died under physical...

WHO KILLED REBECCA RILEY? By Fred A. Baughman, Jr., MD, Neurologist, Child Neurologist Author: The ADHD Fraud—How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” of Normal Children www.Trafford.com June 21, 2007 Neurologists, such as myself, diagnose and treat real diseases of the brain. Psychiatrists do not. They only claim to. A disease is a physical abnormality evident macroscopically (lump on the head visible to the naked eye) , microscopically (cancer cells on a ‘Pap’ smear) or by chemical assay (high blood sugar in diabetes). If there is no such objective abnormality, the individual is normal, disease-free. It is fascinating to behold the charges brought...

Is it safe? Nobody knows.More and more, parents at wit's end are begging doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful antipsychotic drugs. In the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs. Even children as young as 3 years old. Last year, 1,100 Medicaid children under 6 were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice so risky that state regulators say it should be used only...

After three years on the ADHD drug Ritalin, kids are about an inch shorter and 4.4 pounds lighter than their peers, a major U.S. study shows. The symptoms of childhood ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) usually get dramatically better soon after kids start taking stimulant drugs. But this benefit may come with a cost, says James Swanson, Ph.D., director of the Child Development Center at the University of California, Irvine. "Yes, there is a growth-suppression effect with stimulant ADHD medications," Swanson tells WebMD. "It is going to occur at the age of treatment, and over three years it will accumulate."...

Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea -- and Global Warming Democrats assess the threats to U.S. national security. By Byron York What a difference an election makes. Today the House of Representatives will debate whether global warming is so serious a threat to American national security that the Director of National Intelligence, normally busy with issues like al Qaeda, Iranian nuclear research, and North Korean missiles, should be ordered to put aside other projects to create a special National Intelligence Estimate on climate change. So far, majority Democrats have pushed the proposal through the House Intelligence Committee — on a party-line...

Scientists in Germany said Thursday they have found compelling evidence of a genetic link to hyperactivity in children, identifying three mutations prevalent in fidgety youngsters. A research team led by Professor Johannes Hebebrand of the University of Duisburg-Essen in western Germany studied 329 families in which one child had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder syndrome. They found that a great majority -- around 70 percent -- had a combination of three mutations in the gene for the so-called dopamine transporter linked to hyperactivity. "People who have this combination in both copies of the gene have a 2.5 increased ADHD risk. People with...

WASHINGTON - The use of drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, has more than tripled worldwide since 1993, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. And spending on such drugs rose ninefold between 1993 and 2003, the team at the University of California, Berkeley reported. "ADHD could become the leading childhood disorder treated with medications across the globe," Richard Scheffler, an expert in health economics and public policy who led the study, said in a statement. Story continues below ↓advertisement "We can expect that the already burgeoning global costs for medication treatment for ADHD will rise even more sharply over the...

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The great ADHD mythBy JENNY HOPE - More by this author » Last updated at 22:34pm on 9th March 2007  Have hyperactive kids been misdiagnosed with ADD? The psychiatrist who identified attention deficit disorder - the condition blamed for the bad behaviour of hundreds of thousands of children - has admitted that many may not really be ill. Dr Robert Spitzer said that up to 30 per cent of youngsters classified as suffering from disruptive and hyperactive conditions could have been misdiagnosed. They may simply be showing perfectly normal signs of being happy or sad, he said. 'Many of...

The FDA today ordered all ADHD drug makers to print patient medication guides warning of possible heart and psychiatric risks associated with the drugs. Those possible risks are already noted in the warning labels of all drugs approved by the FDA to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). The planned medication guides are "just written in language that is more understandable for patients and their families," the FDA's Tom Laughren, MD, told reporters in a news conference. Laughren directs the division of psychiatric products at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The FDA's action isn't meant to scare...

Methamphetamine and marijuana aren't the only drugs parents worry about. The problems caused by prescription combinations called "drug cocktails" have finally broken into the national news stream. A recent Page 1 of the New York Times described Stephen, age 15, who takes antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel, plus anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods, plus the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. His brother Jacob, age 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, plus the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, plus the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger, plus Catapres to induce sleep. Over the last three years, each boy has been...

I have been treating, educating and caring for children for more than 30 years, half of that time as a child psychiatrist, and the changes I have seen in the practice of child psychiatry are shocking. Psychiatrists are now misdiagnosing and overmedicating children for ordinary defiance and misbehavior. The temper tantrums of belligerent children are increasingly being characterized as psychiatric illnesses. Using such diagnoses as bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Asperger's, doctors are justifying the sedation of difficult kids with powerful psychiatric drugs that may have serious, permanent or even lethal side effects.

Environmental factors could play a large role in kids' attention deficit The Associated Press Updated: 9:02 p.m. PT Sept 18, 2006 CHICAGO - About one-third of attention deficit cases among U.S. children may be linked with tobacco smoke before birth or to lead exposure afterward, according to provocative new research. Even levels of lead the government considers acceptable appeared to increase a child’s risk of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the study found. It builds on previous research linking attention problems, including ADHD, with childhood lead exposure and smoking during pregnancy, and offers one of the first estimates for how...

Go outside and playhttp://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/1158309564312510.xml&coll=2 http://tinyurl.com/pg6bd That's the advice nature educators have for increasingly reined-in kids and their very protective parents Friday, September 15, 2006 Susan Glaser Plain Dealer Reporter When Steve Cadwell was a kid, he had the North Chagrin Reservation in his back yard, and he used to disappear for hours. "My mom said, 'Go outside, and don't come back until the streetlights are on,' " said Cadwell, 47, now executive director of the Nature Center of Shaker Lakes. Rare is the mother who issues that directive these days. Thanks to everything from fears about stranger danger to video...

A 15-year-old girl and her parents recently came in for a chat with Dr. James Perrin, a Boston pediatrician, because they were concerned about the girl's grades. Previously an A student, she was slipping to B's, and the family was convinced attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was at fault — and that a prescription for Ritalin would boost her brainpower. After examining the girl, Perrin determined she didn't have ADHD. The parents, who had come in demanding a prescription, left empty-handed. Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other physicians...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Federal drug regulators have ordered that strong warnings be put on the labels of stimulants like Ritalin to caution against their use in adults or children with heart problems and to alert doctors that the drugs cause one child in a thousand to experience hallucinations. The new warnings are not as strong as those approved in February by an advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration, but they significantly strengthen the risk information already on the drugs. “We’re not trying to scare people out of using these drugs,” said Dr. Robert J. Temple, director of...

Aug. 3, 2006 -- In contrast to claims that children are being overmedicated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that a high percentage of kids with ADHD are not receiving treatment. In fact, almost half of the children who might benefit from ADHD drugs were not getting them. "What we found was somewhat surprising," says Richard D. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics. "Only about 58 percent of boys and about 45 percent of girls who had a diagnosis...

PHOENIX, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Family counselor Jane Fendelman, MC, has valuable information for parents with school-age children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). She has a track record of helping families with children who would be considered worst-case scenarios -- without the use of medications like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta.. In her book "Raising Humane Beings" she writes in depth about what her clients call the "magic cure." In fact, within 3 to 5 sessions, with Fendelman's help, clients see issues resolved for good. "I call ADD and ADHD the multimillion dollar medical...

George W. Bush has talked openly about accomplishing the New World Order, which is a worldwide government that will lead to antichrist's rule and reign. In his Second Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, President Bush said that he invaded Afghanistanand Iraq because he was attempting to complete an Ancient Plan based on an “Ancient Hope”, a Plan called the “New Order of the Ages”. His father, George Bush, while president, said on Sept 11th, 1990, that we are on the dawn of a "New World Order". That was 11 years TO THE DAY of 9/11/2001. Grandpa Bush, Prescott, was...

Summer Over but Kids Still Need Time Outdoorshttp://www.newswise.com/articles/view/522009/ Source: National Wildlife Federation (NWF) Released: Wed 19-Jul-2006, 12:00 ET Newswise — Summertime often provides a reprieve for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but now that school is starting up, the usual parental concerns are at the forefront again. Can my child stay focused enough to keep up with his class work? Will he get the extra attention he needs in the classroom to keep him on task? There are now 2.5 million children using ADHD medications to reduce symptoms, but there may be a “greener” part of the solution....