The first wealth is health.
- Emerson
MEDICAL HISTORY
My medical records, at age seven, include
a note from my pediatrician stating that I had suffered from sinusitis. Upper respiratory infections like sinusitis,
allergic rhinitis and bronchitis have reoccurred throughout my life and may be
more common for people with ADD.
As a child, I experienced tonsillitis,
which was corrected with surgery. I had chronic bouts of otitis media
(earaches), a medical problem often associated with ADD. A perforated right eardrum resulted from the
infections, but spontaneously healed in adulthood.
I missed 30 days of school in first grade
due, my doctor thought, to rheumatic or undulant fever. He never made a definitive diagnosis.
At age 27, at about the age that my
paternal grandmother died of a stroke, and my father suffered a stroke, I was
diagnosed with essential hypertension.
(Both my parents had this condition.)
Like Sherlock Holmes, because of my lethargic ADD/-H nature[1], I have eschewed exercise since my weight lifting days in high
school. Lack of exercise is a risk
factor for acquiring hypertension (Vaillant & Gerber, 1996).
My weight steadily climbed over 200 lb. by
the time I reached my 40s. I denied
that I had a weight problem, but my children kept reminding me of it. My denial was deflated on Christmas
morning, 1993, when my then-seven year-old daughter, Emily, announced: "Dad, I know you're Santa
Claus." "How?,” I said. "Because you're wearing red and you're
fat!" Daniel Amen, MD, recommends
a high protein, low carbohydrate diet for some of his ADD patients. It worked for me in 2000, when I lost 17 lb.
with the help of the Atkins' low carbohydrate diet (see Atkins, 1997).
Adults with ADD/-H, like me, are at
greater risk for health problems due to lethargy, lack of exercise, stress
intolerance and a propensity to overeat and drink too much alcohol.