Dear Today Show Family,
I’m a Today Show junkie. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I tune in and within minutes I know the weather forecast, how to make a refreshing Gazpacho and that, unfortunately, ‘80s fashions are back in style. I trust Matt, Natalie, Al and Savannah to give me infotainment that has been thoroughly researched and interview experts who actually know the best food excursions in Puerto Vallarta or if gum really does take seven years to digest (no). At the very least, I expect them to know more than I do.
However, I am sad to say that this morning my trust in you was irrevocably destroyed. I watched my friend Natalie interview two “pediatric sleep specialists” who advised parents how to get kids back on good sleep cycles for the beginning of the school year. As I was half listening to their proficient benign advice while making my bed, I heard Natalie ask, “If kids don’t get the optimal amount of sleep, what kind of behavior problems do we see?” To which one of these sleep specialists answered, “ADHD, learning disorders, anxiety and depression, obesity ... studies show kids really don’t perform as well in school which is really no surprise.”
Wait, what? I absolutely could not have heard that correctly. My head snapped up like my dog’s does when I say “ball” and I saw, emblazoned across the bottom of the screen, “Poor sleeping habits may lead to ADHD, obesity, learning disorders and behavioral problems.”
Yep, I heard correctly, this self-proclaimed expert said lack of sleep can cause ADHD and learning disabilities. I can just imagine thousands of parents thinking all their learning disabled kid needed was a few good night's sleep and all would be right in their world. Really, Today Show?!
Although I was 99.9 percent sure this statement was not at all valid, I researched this claim anyway. This is what I know for sure (from www.help4adhd.org/en/treatment/coexisting/WWK5D):
- Two-thirds of children with ADHD are reported to have at least one co-existing condition.
- The most common co-existing conditions include learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, behavioral disorders and sleep disorders.
- Since sleep disorders can mimic ADHD symptoms, children who have sleep problems can be misdiagnosed with ADHD.
I have read that snoring can lead to ADHD due to either poor sleep or a drop of oxygen in the blood. But, in each article I read identifying snoring as a cause of ADHD, the ADHD symptoms usually dramatically improve with better sleep, thus raising the question as to the validity of the ADHD diagnosis.
Just to make double-sure, I called my go-to for all things cognitive, neuropsychologist Dr. Ellen Preen, and read her the quote. After she stopped laughing, she informed me that this was indeed, as I thought, “pseudoscience.”
She explained that “there is a correlation relationship between sleep disorders and ADHD/learning disabilities, but no causality.” What does this mean? In causality, one thing causes the other, like smoking causes lung cancer. But in a correlation, certain things may happen at the same time but one does not cause the other.
According to Dr. Preen, ”there is no causation between sleep deprivation and learning disorders and ADHD.” She went on to say, “a person with prolonged sleep deprivation can exhibit symptoms of ADHD, learning difficulties, and/or mood disorders; and exacerbate these preexisting conditions.” When someone is sleep deprived, all they need to do is get caught up on their sleep and magically, no more symptoms!
Today Show family, I am very disappointed in you. How many other un-and-half truths have you told me? How many other pseudo-experts sat opposite Matt or Savannah or Natalie misleading your loyal followers? For these reasons, I feel I must end our longstanding relationship. It’s not you, it’s me. Also, I kind of have a thing for George Stephanopoulos.
Sincerely,
Sue Schaefer, M. ED., M.A.T
Proclaimed an Education Expert by my Friends and Others Who Know What They’re Talking About
About this column: Susan Schaefer, director and founder of Academic Coaching Associates, is an academic coach, student advocate, and certified teacher. We encourage you to visit her website: Academic Coaching Associates. You may email Sue at susan.schaefer@academiccoachingct.com. You can also follow Sue on twitter: @sueschaefer1
Of course the way his network is owned by the anti-smoking and public health Lobby itd probably be his job if he manned up and fought back!
Sue
made them feel they are not alone in their struggles.. Sue
Please so not assume what know what I do and do not know. I know a wet fish when I see one. Sue
I would be amused by your defense of tobacco use, but I fear that you might be telling young people that there is no proof that smoking is bad. Do you tell people that there is no truth to evolution also? How about that the sun orbits the earth? And for the record, I don't care if people smoke, just don't smoke around me. Smokers don't realize how annoying it is for non-smokers following a smoker by even 50 feet on city street.
Thats where we find the first real use of statistical analysis. Doll taking his education in Nazi Germany from Hitlers finest propagandists in their new anti-smoking movement pushed by the Fuhrer himself. Doll in 1950 used that same science to push todays anti-smoking movement and followed it up for 50 years until 2004. The same questionaire science was used there as in the second hand smoke Junk Studies........... Here's my all-time favorite "scientific" study of the the anti-smoking campaign: "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths," Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont, Journal of Regulation, Vol. 21 (4), 1998. You can access the article for free on the Cato Institute's wesbite, Cato.org. This article neither defends nor promotes smoking. Rather it condemns the abuse of statistics to misinform and scare the public. Levy, by the way taught Statistics for Lawyers at Georgetown University Law School. There is also a popular law school class called How to Lie With Statistics.
“Indeed, as early as 1936—the year that the young Richard Doll was attending the lectures in Frankfurt of the SS radiologist Professor Hans Holfelder—they had gathered sufficient statistical evidence to prove the cancerous hazards of what they labelled “passive smoking” (passivraucher).” http: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117732/ Doll’s own account. Oral History – Sir Richard Doll. “Along with a number of my colleagues, I had the experience of actually visiting Nazi Germany and seeing what was happening there. There was a St Thomas’ man called Stephen Taylor and he had the very sensible idea of arranging trips to foreign countries to study medicine and see how medicine was taught in those countries.” “And then in 1936, we had a similar week in Frankfurt and we had some extraordinary experiences there of the effects of Nazism.”
But he came in and said “Heil Hitler”and then, believe it or not, in the course of the lecture he showed slides in which the X-ray beams were illustrated as Nazi storm troopers and the cancer cells had all got Jewish Emblems on them. So, we didn’t require many experiences of that sort to realize that there was something evil that had to be eliminated from the world.” “As far as I was personally concerned the only other event that I remember was drinking with some of the German medical students in a cafe and my criticising the way the Jews were being treated and immediately being told that I must be a Jew myself, which I denied that I was, which in fact I’m not. And it sounds ridiculous now but I was made to stand up on a table whilst they measured my ankles because apparently thick ankles were one of the physical signs of being a Jew. As it happens I haven’t got thick ankles so they had to drop the idea that I was Jewish. But that event stands out in my mind as to the way the students were behaving.” http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/4/327.full.pdf He was in fact a Communist, which wasn’t favoured either.
Statistics is the art of DECEPTION you can create any ILLUSSION you want with it''see below'' Because of epidemiology ie statsistical sampling we have a public health sector and medical science thats become so corrupt in its dash for GRANT MONEY nobody any longer cares about science....Every morning we get bombarded by the latest miracle study on ...................fill in the blank. Americans and the world over are now immune to the medical scare of the day PROPAGANDA. I had thought forever they had factually discovered that smoking via a microscope had caused cancer,yet we find that was never ever the case oh but they tried and never ever could prove anything against active smoking! Then comes along second hand smoke,then thirdhand smoke,then second hand obesity the list of B.S. and propaganda goes on and on! Should I continue or do you get whats going on thru manipulation of science and press by headline! The lowering of levels over the last 15 years of what constitutes a disease entity just so these prohibitionists can claim EPIDEMICS and forge thru with even more draconian laws against
http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/a... WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department was in a new dispute Friday with the tobacco industry over the government's landmark lawsuit against the companies. The government has prepared corrective statements it wants the companies to be forced to make about the health hazards from smoking. But the tobacco companies don't want those proposed statements put in the public record before they get a chance to review them. FORCED TO MAKE.......SOUNDS like somebodys not playing fair doesnt it.So if the tobacco companies make statements then the nazi anti-smokers get to say see even the tobacco companies admit this!!!!! force isnt that what hitler did at bayonet point! ...
A little research in the DSM-IV-TR (the current version of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Asso.) might answer some questions.
http://www.drgreene.com/article/sleep-deprivation-and-adhd http://thedubinclinic.com/2012/04/24/childhood-adhd-sleep-deprivation/