For many years now, like me whole life, I have had issues with keeping on task and attention. I have been able to manage these “problems” for a good deal of my life, but over the past few years I have noticed these “problems” becoming more intense (might not be the right word, but I hope you get my point). Now as I tell you this, understand that I do NOT agree with the labels – ADD or ADHD. My reason is simple, it’s over used and it’s a way for some to avoid the real issues – if there are real issues to begin with. So what did I do?
First thing I did was scheduled and appointment with a neurologist, Dr. Beena Shah, in California, MD. She performed a complete physical on me, including my families medical history. She requested that I get an MRI, this came back clean, and a sleep deprived EEG, which showed no “abnormal” activity. (I was just happy that them found activity and my brain – told you I had one mom). So neurological speaking, I was fine, but I really knew I had something going on. So the next step is where it gets interesting, I think.
There is this local company, Personalized Therapy, LLC , that a few months back, starting offering what’s called “neurobiofeeback”. If you unfamiliar with this type of therapy, don’t worry may people are. Think about it like this – if you have a puppy and everytime you take the puppy outside you ring this bell and wiring is going to take place in the puppy brain that ringing the bell mean going outside and going to the bathroom. So that is neurobiofeedback, it’s wiring connections in the brain that are missing or not connected properly and they making the connection correct.
So, on Monday April 18, 2011 I went to there office and had my brain mapped. They placed, what looked like a shower cap on my bald head and then the computer was able to read my brain activity. The whole thing took about 45 minutes and I got the results yesterday..so here we go.
With my eyes closed they found that my LoAlpha was Hi and my LoBeta was also Hi. They believe, off of this test, that I am a “Strong Potential Match” for the following: Hyper-arousal, Attention, Decision Making, Motivation, Procedural, & Spatial Sequence and a “Potential Match” for these: Verbal Sequencing; Tone Sequencing, Auditory Tone Processing, & Passive Aggressiveness.
With my eyes open it was not much better – truefully, it was worse. They found the the Delta, LoAplha, HiAplha, LoBeta and Beta were all HIGH. When it came to the “Strong Potential Match”, they removed – Hyper-arousal & Spatial Sequence – because they are not availble, but added short term memory and verbal sequencing processing(I was upgraded from the “Potential Match” I got with my eyes closed). Then the “Potential Match” we add Event Sequencing and Auditory Verbal Sequencing and remove nothing.
So where do we go from here, well I am going to schedule my biofeedback sessions and see what happens. Do I believe in ADD or ADHD now? Not in the way that the “psychiatrist” want us to believe, but there is something about seeing how your brain is working – or in my case not working, that could make you alter your way of thinking. I just hate when “psychiatrist” use objective tests to push drugs on small children.