Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne is the President and Founder of MedShadow, and the Executive Director of DES Action USA.  MedShadow’s mission is to preserve quality of life by ensuring everyone has access to the risks, benefits and alternates to using drugs to manage healthcare. Read More

Think the only way to deal with a child who has ADHD is with a stimulant? Think again. More parenting skills and other resources can help your child out more than you might think. What causes hyperactivity and ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder)? A combination of temperament, environment and parenting. The most important factors are parenting skills and resources, especially those that can help create some calm. You can learn them. “I would suggest we can head off many cases of ADHD in the first 2 years of life,” says W. Douglas Tynan, PhD, ABPP, director of Integrated Care at the…

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Is your cholesterol high? Has your doctor suggested you might be at risk for heart disease? If so, you have some decisions to make. You need to know that you can likely improve your health and lower your cholesterol by simple lifestyle changes like exercise and changing your diet. You also will likely have the option of taking a statin. The fact that people have choices in their health care is very important and something we explore at MedShadow, an online nonprofit I founded to inform the public about the side effects, risks and benefits of medicine, both prescription and…

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With new studies piling up warning of risks of stimulants on kids, are the risks of ADHD meds worth the benefits? I’ve never hidden my concern about giving stimulant medicines to children, teens and even adults with ADHD. When my child was diagnosed ADHD, we took a long, considered view of ADHD meds and decided against them. Behavioral therapy is the first line of treatment and we went that route. But we circled back to reconsider meds many times, when notes came home from teachers complaining of his behavior; when we couldn’t, try as we might, get him to concentrate…

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Does it really make sense to put a large group of people on a drug whose effectiveness hasn’t been proven for that group? What at first looked like a creeping increase in statin prescriptions is turning into a gallop. Despite the significant and life-altering side effects that this class of cholesterol-lowering drugs can cause, the USPSTF (US Preventative Services Task Force) is likely to approve a broadening of the group of adults for whom statins are recommended — without including a recommendation to try lifestyle changes to lower cholesterol first. The USPSTF is proposing that any healthy adult between the ages…

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ADHD Drugs Side Effects What’s the harm in using ADHD drugs to get a little help studying? If you actually don’t have ADHD, these stimulants can lead to nausea, headaches, high blood pressure, arrhythmia and other side effects, as I learned by reading Teresa Bergen’s great article ‘Smart Drugs’ on Campus: Too Easy to Get & Abuse. She explores the growing phenomenon of college students taking illegal prescription drugs — stimulants mostly — in order to focus more clearly and improve their grades. I wondered whether the kids who do have ADHD and are taking stimulants have the same risks for nausea, psychosis and…

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Doctor Says Valid Diagnosis of ADHD in a Toddler is Not Supported by Evidence “More than 10,000 American toddlers 2 and 3 years old are being medicated for ADHD  drugs outside established pediatric guidelines.” (NYT) “Valid diagnosis of ADHD in a toddler is not supported by evidence,” according to Susanna Visser, DrPH, MS of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. What happened to the accepting tone of “ants in the pants?” Kids wiggle, move, get distracted and through all this inform the rest of us how wonderful life is. I have often worried out loud in this…

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My husband has been on statins for several years. He started on Lipitor (atorvastatin), but his doctor switched him to simvastatin a while ago. Six months ago, my husband’s doctor switched him back to Lipitor because $4 coupons were available making Lipitor much less expensive. The timing was not coincidental. One of the big surprises in the pharmaceutical community has been Lipitor’s ability to remain a player after going off patent. Usually a brand name drug loses 90% of the market to less expensive generic drugs. Now, 4 months after expiration of patent protection, Lipitor still has about 30% of…

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It’s not easy being a consumer. The information available to the public is often contradictory and confusing. For example, take the issue of statins (Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, etc.). There are many known side effects of statins, some beneficial, some not so much. When reading on-line discussions of statin side effects, there are many who complain of sexual dysfunction caused by statins. However, a recent study claims that statins help cure erectile dysfunction. Huh? How can it both help and hurt sexual function? After reviewing the research available to consumers (the staff at MedShadow is made up of consumers like you), it…

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Study: ADHD Symptoms Persist Despite Meds A new study on ADHD medication from Johns Hopkins was reported in The Atlantic magazine, “Study: ADHD Symptoms Persist Despite Medication in 9 Out of 10 Kids.” It found that 160 out of 180 kids on ADHD medicine still exhibited ADHD symptoms 6 years later. The parents, when interviewed, claimed the ADHD had been chronic through the 6 years. There were unanswered questions raised by the study: Were the children each prescribed the right medicine for him/her? Did they take the medicine correctly? Were they diagnosed too young? These children were diagnosed at 4-1/2 years…

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ADHD Stimulants Study on Boys This study was reported in The Medical Journal of Australia,1/22/13. It looked at both height and pubertal attainment (love the scientific term!) for boys between the ages of 7 to 15.99. As has been suspected in the past (the conclusion claims this is the first study to confirm) stimulant medicines used for ADHD stunts height in boys but doesn’t delay puberty. It is still unclear if the boys “catch up” with their height.

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