Hyperactivity

...ba href=/hyperactivity/a/b disorder are invited to attend a lecture by Dr.

Peter Jensen, child psychiatrist, author and researcher.

Dr.

Jensen is scheduled to speak about "how to make the system work for your child" on April 1 at Walkersville High School.The program is sponsored by the Frederick County Special Education Advisory Council and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Frederick County.

Following his lecture, which begins at 9 a.m., will be the Frederick Disability Awareness Expo.For more information, please contact Amy Kimble at 301-748-8310.Health tip of the day: Weighing yourself daily may be good for weight loss, after all.

A study by the University of Minnesota found that dieters who checked the scales every day lost twice the amount of weight as those weighing themselves weekly.Guilt goes a long way?

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...ba href=/hyperactivity/a/b disorder (ADHD).

Sleep on this Still, more sleep is no guarantee for overall health, and more sleeping pills might not bring on either.

A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep.

The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.

Those who took sleeping pills nightly had a greater risk of death than those who took them occasionally, but the latter risk was still 10 to 15 percent higher than it was among people who never took sleeping pills.

Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, Kripke writes in his online book, "The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills." "There is really no evidence that the average 8-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke says, on the basis of his ongoing psychiatric practice with patients along with research, including the large study of a million adults (called the Cancer Prevention Study II).

And he suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful.

The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.

And there are questions about the effectiveness of sleeping pills.

A study by researchers at Beth Israe...

...ba href=/hyperactivity/a/b disorder.

Still, the advisers to the Food and Drug Administration called on doctors and parents to be far more vigilant about the psychiatric side effects, citing rare but serious cases of horrific hallucinations, aggression and suicides by children.

An estimated 2.5 million children and 1.5 million adults take drugs for the disorder.

The top treatments generated about $3.5 billion in sales last year.

The recommendation by the FDA's Pediatric Advisory Committee came nearly two months after another FDA advisory committee narrowly approved the idea of a black box for cardiovascular risks of drugs to treat the disorder.

The split decision on black boxes - a bold-faced label that often leads to fewer prescriptions and sales - could provide some breathing room to makers of the drugs and may deflect harsher FDA action.

The drugs include Adderall XR, made by Shire P.L.C., and Concerta, made by McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

Provigil, made by Cephalon Inc., is under review with the name Sparlon.

The skin patch Daytrana, made by Noven Pharmaceuticals and marketed by Shire, is also under review.

Others drugs affected are Ritalin, made by Novartis AG and several generic firms; Strattera, made by Eli Lilly & Co.; and Focalin XR, also made by Novartis.

FDA officials still must accept or reject the recommendations.

Officials already indicated they think a stern heart-attack warning is excessive...