From Drs. Hill and Castro, Getting Rid of Ritalin.     

 “Mainstream opponents of neurofeedback, who are entrenched in the old medical paradigms or who are beholden to pharmaceutical firms for their research funding, state the wide ranging benefits we claim are anecdotal or temporary.  This thinking is typical of those who are wedded to the use of drugs for the relief of symptoms.  There is no drug that cures ADD–take away the stimulant medications and the symptoms are as predominant as ever.     While physicians were putting every disruptive child on stimulant medications, there were men and women who refused to settle for the notion that stimulants were the solution.  Stimulants are what drug abusers refer to as “speed.”For more than 30 years, practitioners of biofeedback have demonstrated that if you feed back appropriate information to the brain, the human being can change the functioning of any organ or system.  Biofeedback  is a treatment in which a person learns to reliably influence biological responses that are not ordinarily under voluntary control.”     For example, a person attaches a thermometer to a finger-tip and by watching the temperature changes can learn mental techniques for voluntarily raising and lowering the temperature of the fingertip.  In my (Robert Hill) practice, I have had eleven and twelve-year -old boys who could consistently raise the temperature of a single finger to 103 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.  We have taught people with Raynaud’s disease how to warm their cold hands with just the mind.  We have taught patients with borderline hypertension to lower their blood pressure, thereby reducing the need for medications.  We have taught people to use biofeedback to calm their anxiety or to relax or strengthen any muscle in the body.  So, why not retrain the brain?  Attention deficit disorder is a problem of brain function, so how do we train the brain to function properly”  Continued next week. 

The majority of our ADD/ADHD clients on medications before neurofeedback are able to gradually go off meds supervised by their parents and prescribing M.D..  (Drs. Kelsey)