Homeopathic Remedies for ADHD Vs ADHD Prescription Drugs - Determining The Best Treatment Option

Okay, so little Johnny or precious, but seemingly always energized little Sara, have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with the next step being to select the treatment option that will manage their symptoms safely and effectively without breaking the bank. The advice parents likely will receive typically varies greatly depending on what type of specialist is treating the condition.

For example if your child's primary care physician is a general practitioner he/she is likely to suggested one of a number of stimulant medications (Ritalin, Adderall, etc..), if your child's specialist is a psychiatrist or psychologist behavior modification therapy will likely be the favored course of action, and if they are a holistic practitioner your child will likely be provided a comprehensive natural threatment plan referred to as a full spectrum approach including herbal or homeopathic remedies.

So that brings us to our topic of homeopathic remedies for ADHD vs ADHD prescription drugs. We will leave out behavioral therapy or behavior modification since all parties agree it works and would be a good addition to either homeopathic ADHD remedies or ADHD prescription drugs.

At this point you can stop hyperventilating, take a couple of deep breaths, and get ready to begin your investigative journey to find answers.

Which treatment will deliver the best result?

This is tricky one as there is a case to be made for both ADHD prescription drugs and homeopathic remedies for ADHD.

Volumes of well documented research tell us that prescription drugs for attention deficit disorder will produce good results in the short-term about 75 percent of the time. The caveat is the longer they are used the less effective they tend to be (NIMH study).

Stimulant medications solely treat the symptoms and in no way heal the underlying cause. In other words they are nothing more than a symptom management tool that requires almost perfect daily dosage amounts to provide optimal results.

Homeopathic remedies for ADHD seem to be slightly less effective overall showing to be effective in approximately seven out of ten cases. Millions of natural herbal or homeopathic remedies for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have been sold with parents of ADHD children generally giving this form of treatment very high marks.

One notable advantage for these types of medications is that they may provide long-term benefits. According to one British study examining the benefits of homeopathic remedies when taken by ADHD children the long-term benefits were in the 50 percent range.

What about safety?

Stimulant medications have a long list of possible side effects including stunted growth (though normally temporary), loss of appetite, nervousness, insomnia, changes in personality, skin rashes, headaches, facial tics, and one study published by the National Institute of Health even correlated their use with heart failure and blood pressure issues.

Can you imagine any parent saying "My little Johnny is a foot shorter than his classmates, can't sleep, gets really nervous, and might keel over any day but boy has his grades improved."?

Homeopathy which is the science of natural dilutions is one of the safest forms of medicine known to man. Currently there are no documented cases of side effects when used for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in either children or adults.

Affordability

You can expect to pay around $30 a month for most homeopathic remedies for ADHD. As far a prescription medications go if your insurance is picking up the tab on a co-pay the cost is likely to be about a wash. If your insurance covers the cost of the medications then stimulants will be the more affordable option. On the other hand, if you are without insurance or your insurance plan will not pick up the cost for alternative treatments then homeopathic remedies will likely be far less expensive.

Choosing the right natural remedy

This is a complicated issue with most well established natural health companies providing a well trained support team to talk to parents about exactly these types of concerns. I would advise you to take advantage of this type of free resource in order to make the most informed decision possible.

From my perspective as an independent researcher much will depend on the number of symptoms and whether or not a co-existing condition such as ODD, OCD, depression, or bi-polar disorder are present, and to what degree. Many of the newer homeopathic remedies for treating child ADHD have over 20 ingredients to cover a broader spectrum of symptoms.

On the other hand one of the best selling homeopathic remedies for ADHD children of all time contains only four ingredients. They are hyoscyamus, arsen iod, verta alb, and tuberculinum.

In conclusion, as you might guess being a natural health guy I lean toward natural remedies primarily due to safety and long-term unknowns. That said, parents should consult with their doctor, mental health professional, or natural health specialist to find the right treatment solution as ADHD symptoms can vary greatly from child to child.

Robert D. Hawkins is an enthusiastic consumer advocate for natural health and natural living with over 10 years experience in the field. To discover more about ADHD along with information about safe and effective all natural herbal and homeopathic ADHD remedies Click Here

Healthcare Reform - Why Not Having a Public Option Will Reduce Your Chances to Become a Homeowner

"Whether or not the public option is part of healthcare reform" is how President Obama began his answer to a healthcare reform question. The manner in which he answered that question struck a central nerve in the healthcare debate, as many of the leading voices, of the Obama administration seemed to be threatening to abandon the public option, for expanding health insurance coverage.

Making sure every American has access to high quality healthcare, is one of the most important challenges of our time. With the number of uninsured Americans is growing, skyrocketing premiums and more people are being denied coverage every day. A better healthcare system is essential to rebuilding the economy. The President has said, that he wants to make healthcare work for the people and for businesses, not just for the insurance companies and the drug companies. And in my opinion, he is right it should work for everybody. The operative word here is everybody.

Currently, three house committees have passed healthcare legislation, which includes a strong public option. These government-run insurance plans are designed, to encourage choice and competition in the marketplace. However, the public option has been the focal point, used by critics who say the overhaul of healthcare, would amount to a government takeover of healthcare. And nothing could be farther from the truth.

If we took a second to honestly look at and discuss what this debate is really about and let everybody see it for what it is. This whole discussion boils down to, those who have and those who don't have (insurance). On one side, providing you have a good job, that provides health insurance coverage, you feel there is no reason, you should have to face a possible tax increase, to help someone else who isn't as fortunate as you. On the other side are the self-employed, small business owners and those workers who work for a company, which can afford a good or any health insurance plan.

In deciding which direct you feel is the best way to deal with this issue, here is some additional information that you may not be aware of.

A couple of years ago the GAO (Government Accounting Office) produced a report that stated, taxpayers currently pay for an estimated 50% of all healthcare costs in America. This means the way things are currently, if you are receiving healthcare coverage through your employer, you are paying for your own health insurance as well as helping to pay for nearly half of the nation's healthcare costs.

Recently Families USA, a North Carolina consumer advocacy group, released a report showing how healthcare costs impacted the residents of the state, of North Carolina. Their report stated the cost of buying health insurance, for a North Carolina family increased more than five times faster, than income since the start of the decade. Since the year 2000, healthcare costs have doubled, yet income has increased only 18%. Insurance costs have risen from $6,650 to almost $13,100. The figure includes worker and employer payments for health care. The report says median earnings rose by 18 percent, from $23,100 to $27,330 in the same period.

Additionally, the middleclass is shrinking, in the near future more and more people are going to be classified as poor, as reported in Time Magazine, Economists View and numerous government reports. Worries about the middle class vanishing, shrinking, or otherwise dwindling are hardly new. The 2010 federal budget request addresses concerns that the middle class may be shrinking. It says: "Some Americans have not been able to keep up, falling out of the middle class and into poverty"; "the ladder into the middle class and beyond has become harder and harder to climb"; and warns that without high-quality schools, there is no way to "strengthen the middle class." In fact, it is believed 80% of a middle class Americans who are currently leaving the middle class, are ending up being classified as the poor.

What effect will this have on housing and homeownership? The answer to that question can be found in the remnants of a very recent historical event, Hurricane Katrina.

According to the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Hurricane Katrina severely interrupted the Gulf Coast oil industry. As a result, gas prices suddenly and dramatically increased substantially. With incomes not rising as fast many families found themselves facing financial difficulties, as the increasing fuel costs shattered the family budget. This forced many families to have to choose between having to pay for their rent or mortgage, food, healthcare and driving back and forth to work. In order to compensate their budgetary imbalances many families placed themselves in further debt with the use of credit cards.

During the spring of 2008 this process was repeated as oil speculators drove the price of oil to $143 a barrel, as result the cost of fuel doubled on consumers.

With healthcare rising at rate that's five times faster, than income it is just a matter of before the costs of one accident or illness will be able to wipe out an average American family, leaving them financially destitute.

Again you may be asking, what does this have to do with housing? What does that mean to you, the person trying to purchase their first home or the homeowner needing to consolidate their existing debt?

First, it means without healthcare reform, in the not to distant future it is going to be more difficult to obtain mortgage financing. With healthcare costs increasing so dramatically and eating up more and more of the family's budget, it means that people will have less money to put towards housing and it will become more difficult to save, meaning, it will be more difficult to come up with the money needed for their down-payments.

Without healthcare reform, it seems that health insurance pays less and less of the medical bill, even though premiums keep going up and up. Therefore, you can expect the number of medical collections and medical judgments to increase. This will have devastating affects on credit scores, driving them below the minimum acceptable credit score needed to buy a house. Medical judgments, just as all other judgments must be paid off, before a person can obtain a mortgage. This could increase the amount of money some people will need to complete their transaction, at a time when it is already difficult to save, and it will prevent otherwise qualified people, from being able to obtain a mortgage altogether. That also means less people to buy homes, a longer buyer's market and lower home prices.

Secondly, if people have less discretionary money to spend, they will spend less, and if people are not spending employment and the economy are negatively affected. Here is the effect of that. In order to coax people into spending more companies must reduce prices, which thereby reduces their profit margins, which will make companies less stable and more vulnerable to failure. If your company fails, I don't care if you were the Director of HR, Vice President of Production or the Senior Vice President of Marketing, if you don't have a job, if don't have a company sponsored insurance plan and you will need and you will want insurance, you'll want that public option, also.

And finally, we have to start realizing nothing operates in a vacuum anymore. Every action or inaction has consequences. Healthcare affects employment, employment affects homeownership, homeownership affects retail sales, retail sales affect company profits, company profits affect a company's ability to provide healthcare benefits. Everything is interconnected.

Greg Luchey is a licensed mortgage professional and loan originator in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a liability management advisor specializing in mortgage planning, the owner of The Strategic Homeownership Center and branch owner of Christensen Financial's South Carolina mortgage brokerage office, radio commentator and author.

Unintended Results: Reviving The Single-Payer Option

If the government wants me to pay for a service - let's use health care as an example - it can tax me, and then decide how and when I can use the service. I pay a lot of tax money for Medicare and Medicaid, though I do not qualify for those benefits.

Maybe this is fine with me; maybe it isn't. I can express my feelings here or at the ballot box. It would do me no good to attack the system in court, because the courts long ago decided that the government can tax me to provide services, even services that are used only by other people.

If the government wants to expand Medicare to cover everyone in the country, it could do that, too. It would undoubtedly cost more, so I would undoubtedly pay more. That's the so-called single-payer option that many Democrats hoped would be part of the recent health care overhaul. This idea did not get off the ground, in large measure because American doctors do not wish to work solely for the U.S. government, and private health insurers do not wish to be put out of business.

So Congress required, instead, that beginning in 2014 virtually all Americans who are not otherwise covered must purchase private insurance. Backers of the health care reform did not see this as a problem. Congress could have forced all of us into a single, nationalized health insurance program; instead, it gave us a bit more freedom to choose, by allowing us to select among what are supposed to be multiple plans meeting certain minimum standards. We'll see soon enough - maybe - how well this works in the real world.

But the insurance requirement has emerged as the loose thread that could unravel the entire health care deal. This delights a lot of people who opposed the overhaul in the first place. Some want to keep the system we have had until now; others want a new reform package that concentrates more on controlling costs and less on universal coverage.

Virtually none of them want the other possible outcome of a successful challenge, which would be a revival of the single-payer idea.

Earlier this month, a Virginia federal judge became the first to rule part of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional: specifically, the mandate that all citizens purchase insurance or face penalties.(1) Citing the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Judge Henry E. Hudson ensured that higher courts will have dissenting opinions to consider. And it is virtually certain that, sooner rather than later, the new health care reform law will make it to the Supreme Court.

Two issues are at play here: the constitutionality of the law, and its wider economic implications. The former is a close enough question that the courts could go either way, and have so far; in addition to this decision, there have been two federal court decisions upholding the law's constitutionality, and 12 more cases thrown out altogether.(2) Another challenge to the law, backed by 20 states' attorneys general, is making its way through a federal court in Pensacola, Fla.

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court decides. There are other situations in which government mandates the purchase of private services. In Manhattan, restaurants and office buildings are required to hire private haulers to remove their trash. The system produced a lot of mob-dominated corruption years ago, and a lot of court action that followed, but, as far as I know, nobody has challenged its constitutionality.

Opponents of the insurance mandate claim it oversteps the government's power by forcing Americans to buy a product just by dint of existing. This distinguishes the law from, say, requirements for auto insurance, as citizens have the choice not to own a car. But the naysayers may be missing the bigger picture.

It boils down to the way insurance works. Collectively, we can't have insurance if people only buy it after they know they need it. Either everyone shares the risk (and the expense) or premiums become unaffordable. If the Affordable Care Act is ultimately found unconstitutional, we will be left with only the public option to address the policy goal of universal coverage.

The irony, then, is that those who are challenging the Affordable Care Act as it stands are the very people who could drive us to a public option in the end. Those who supported the public option may just need to sit back and wait until the challengers' court victories suddenly seem a lot less victorious. What remains to be seen is how close they get to the top of this uphill legal climb before they realize what's waiting for them at the summit.

Sources:

(1) Bloomberg Businessweek: Health-Care Reform Faces Long Legal Fight

(2) The Epoch Times: Affordable Health Care Act Forging Forward, Despite Challenges

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