ADD RN,

I have the book--the title is "Healing ADD--The breakthrough program that allows you to see and heal the 6 types of ADD". I found the book fascinating as well and the brain pictures show how much of our behavior involves differences in our brain and how medication and substance abuse affect the brain for good or bad. I learned a lot from that book although I don't agree with some of his conclusions. But he has a lot of good and helpful information in the book. I also enjoyed his book, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life".

It also seems to me that the four types he mentions of Overfocused, Temporal Lobe, Limbic and Ring of Fire--each resemble ADD with a comorbidity. The overfocused one resembles ADD with anxiety, which my daughter has and that is the one she most closely identifies with. The Limbic one seems to be a combination of ADD with depression. The Ring of Fire represents ADD wtih Bipolar Disorder and the Temporal Lobe sounds incredibly like ADD with Borderline Personality Disorder. My husband has the hyperactive ADHD, depression and borderline personality disorder. His symptoms match Type I, the Limbic type and the Temporal Lobe type. He also takes Prozac, Tegretol (carbamazapine) and Adderall along with an "as needed" antipsychotic.

All three of us have taken Effexor XR and while it did help with depression, none of us noticed any significant differences in our ADD. My sister, who has depression and was recently diagnosed with ADD has been on both Wellbutrin and Effexor XR at the same time and although they have helped considerably with her depression, they have not helped with the ADD symptoms.

And if someone has depression and the borderline personality disorder, as my husband does, they should not take the antidepressant Elavil. Research studies have demonstrated that it worsens the symptoms of the BPD, making individuals more aggressive, hostile and dysphoric.

I also have Dr. Amen's poster of brain scans of a normal brain and brains of individuals who have abused alcohol and different drugs. That is eye opening. It's a great visual for kids and teenagers that show them what the drugs do to their brain.

Elaine

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We'll have to check out Dr. Amen's book and post a review in the ADDitude library: http://www.additudemag.com/resources/bookreviews.html

Thanks!

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Why pay lots of money for Dr. Amen's wares. Whereas I have no doubt that some aspects of ADD matters as denoted by Amen have practical applications, I wonder about the validity of his finding when he is in fact heading up a corporation under his own name and marketing a wide variety of products. What then, if in his own treatment services, if indeed he is even involved with them, would he or his colleagues do when they discovered abnomolies that didn't fit within the framework of the purported purposes and remedies in Amen's clinics and product line? What doctor creates a product line? Nothing in those pills he markets could be approved by the FDA and there are many herbs and such not approved that are useful but what are the odds of those same ingredients not being available at lesser prices with the only difference being they weren't marketed by Amen, inc. And I only say marketed, not produced because if they're produced by his company then where is the facility located? I would think it's likely outsourced. And the last entry prior to this one in this forum reads like is was written by someone in a marketing firm using a brief, simplistic, catchy phrase. As for the 6 types of ADD, to the best of my knowledge they originated with Amen and didn't appear in any of the various literature I read about 7 years ago when as far as I know Amen was not widely known and I'm pretty sure wasn't marketing products. I don't think the establishment of the corporation and large line of products and book covers that read like a pumped up self-help fest, one size fits all, was by any means not coinciding with Amen publishing materials. If it were books, I'd say it's probably repuatable when you're pushing bottles of pills as does focus factor, which are just bunches of vitamins, I'd say ask yourself questions. So why bother to buy tons of his products? That said, if it works for you to adhere to the what I'm guessing to be a craze, then go for it. One note though, a corporation is pretty much writing on paper which can sell stocks and once it does, typically all the corporation cares about is making those stock holders happy. And what makes stockholders happy? I haven't looked into whether his company is private or not or if indeed he's just a Brand name which he recieves a fat check for and is uninvolved in mostly if not entirely. Thus, what I've written is the viewpoint which was formed when seeing the content of Amen's website which after maybe 1 minute tops it wasn't at all difficult to, in my point of view, figure out the ploy. So all I've written is solely my opinion and may have no basis in fact after all.

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