Stimulant Meds Inhibit Growth?

Stimulant Meds Inhibit Growth?

Want to make your child shorter than his peers? Give him three years of medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – that ought to do the trick.

Children who are medicated to address ADHD tend to decrease in growth rate with no evidence of growth rebound after three years of treatment, according to the results of a National Institutes of Mental Health study.

That’s pretty disturbing, but here’s the twist: At the outset of the study, these pre-medicated kids, as a group, actually tended to be taller than their peers.

You can be certain that these kids wouldn’t have growth issues if they had been taking omega-3 supplements for three years rather than a powerful stimulant drug.

Last year, in the e-Alert “The Kids are Alright” (7/10/06), I told you about an Australian study that tested fish oil supplements on more than 100 children (ages 7-12) who had been diagnosed with ADHD. Michele Cagan provides a quick rundown of the details of this study in her 4/20/07 HSI On the Spot blog entry titled “Omega-3 Cures ADHD?” which you can find at this link: http://www.hsionline.com/redir/blog.html

Sources:
“Effects of Stimulant Medication on Growth Rates Across 3 Years in the MTA Follow- up” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Vol. 46, No. 8, August 2007, jaacap.com