Slashdot Mirror
Large Genetic Study Finds First Genes Connected With ADHD (arstechnica.com)
A paper published in Nature Genetics this week looked at genetic data from more than 50,000 people, finding 12 different regions of DNA that seemed to play a role in increasing ADHD risk. Ars Technica reports: This evidence comes from a genome-wide association study, or GWAS: a close look at how the DNA of people with ADHD differs from those without. Geneticist Ditte Demontis and her colleagues used data from more than 20,000 people with ADHD, comparing them to a control group of 35,000 people without an ADHD diagnosis. They found 304 points where tiny differences in DNA -- like single letter swaps -- were distributed across their two groups in a statistically telling way. If any of those variants were very close together, the researchers counted them as representing the same stretch of DNA, grouping them together into 12 important regions.
There were correlations between the genetic risk for ADHD and a range of other conditions, including depression and anorexia. That ties in with the idea that genetic variation might be important in a way that plays out system-wide. Some of the genes they identified are also known to be involved in other neurological conditions, including speech and learning disabilities, depression, and schizophrenia.
There were correlations between the genetic risk for ADHD and a range of other conditions, including depression and anorexia. That ties in with the idea that genetic variation might be important in a way that plays out system-wide. Some of the genes they identified are also known to be involved in other neurological conditions, including speech and learning disabilities, depression, and schizophrenia.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, means your environment has a activity deficit resulting in a disorder, it is all in the way you put it. So boring environments play havoc with the moods of some people and variabilities like socio-economic upbringing and diet and exposure to environmental pollutants (sound, radiation, visual, smells as well as consumed toxins), will all impact the condition and alleviate it or make it worse.
Probably it would help if those who were genetically poorly set up to handle the current version of human society, were given more support and guidance earlier but capitalism demands the children pay the price for their loser parents, shit parents, well suck it the fuck up, the rest of society does not give one shit, unless it becomes life threatening, living poorly is you fault child, get a job or actually just fucking suffer is the answer, if you are dying or about to die then you can ask society for help as a child but up until that time, poor outcomes are just your lot.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
in a four wall box all day long doing meaningless tasks for a giant abstract system or learning to do meaningless tasks for a giant abstract system that normal healthy humans naturally want to do.
That might be the case, but I'm not completely convinced. (Going AC because this shit is too personal).
It's a vague diagnosis to begin with and it almost seems like today some wear it like a badge of honor and think they're somehow smarter than everyone else. Or at least they think maybe the drugs they get make them better students.
I was diagnosed as "hyperactive" back in the '70s largely due to pressure on my resistant parents from a private school principal. Yes, a doctor did the actual diagnosing, but my parents thought I got into trouble sometimes because I was a bad kid. I never heard the terms ADHD or ADD until years later.
My parents didn't like me being on Ritalin so after a year or two they switched to the Feingold Diet which seems like complete junk science to me now that I look at it as an adult.
I can't remember if either had any effect on me at all other than it being a pain in the ass to take pills at first and then later to have to explain to my friends that I wasn't allowed to have a whole bunch of different kinds of foods including a goddamned chocolate bar (with few exceptions. Mounds was okay, but just about anything else was off limits.)
By middle school we abandoned all that shit and I did reasonably well academically all the way through college when I graduated and became a regular part of the workforce.
I know I'm intelligent (and fairly creative) and it's easy to accept the idea that I'm the smartest person in the room* so why should I try hard? That really did me in during Differential Equations in college. The first few weeks were so easy I started doing crosswords in class and blowing off homework until midterms when I suddenly realized I had a lot of catching up to do.
And while I'm intelligent and have been reasonably successful in life, I've never done anything great or even noteworthy.
I'm not sure if I really had ADHD back then or if I still suffer from it today. I know that sometimes I can concentrate for hours on something like software development, but at other times I find myself reading or watching a movie and suddenly realize that while my eyes may have been processing what's on a printed page or a screen, I have no idea what the hell is going on because my mind had wandered off somewhere in the complete opposite direction.
But that doesn't happen all the time. Maybe it's just that I had things on my mind and that's completely normal.
And if I do have ADD how is that related to my abuse of alcohol, if at all? Where does my social anxiety fit in? Maybe I'm mildly autistic?
* - just a footnote. A lot of times I've been pretty sure I was one of the smartest in the room if not the smartest. I actually think I do better and am more comfortable when I know for a fact that I'm not the smartest person in the room or at least feel like I'm among people of similar levels of intelligence.
The diagnosis is not really vague. There are specifics.
If you don't really meet them strongly, you probably don't have it.
I have a son with it and we knew even when he was a baby that he was different. Turns out he matches the textbook symptoms and it is only with medicine that he can cope with his disability, i.e, participate successfully in society, and he has only a moderate case. None of his other brothers have ADHD.
'ADHD' is not a verifiable condition in any way shape or form.