perinatal Pitocin exposure and ADHD, another reason to strive for a natural birth.

[yaboobarb]

I wonder what other Birth procedures will be proven harmful?

 

Perinatal pitocin as an early ADHD biomarker: neur... [J Atten Disord. 2011] - PubMed result

[philomom]

I had natural childbirths but still have one child with attention issues. Not buying it.

[XanaduMama]

Originally Posted by philomom 

I had natural childbirths but still have one child with attention issues. Not buying it.

Right--the study doesn't argue that pitocin exposure is the ONLY cause (35% of non-exposed kids were still diagnosed). But the correlation is still pretty strong. Just because you can get lung cancer without smoking doesn't mean that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer!

[yaboobarb]

I agree! I believe that there is not one thing that causes ADD, Autism and Autism spectrum disorders The thing that really changed my perceptions was Dan Olmstead's articles:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/04/olmsted-on-autism-1-in-10000-amish.html

Is the answer vaccines, or the way the Amish live, eat, and birth (most naturally), and breastfeeding?

I don't know the answer, but it make sense to me after watching nature in action ( flowers blooming, cats and puppies being born etc.) that nature is good at doing what it does.

The scientists don't know the answers, but *I* can certainly ,  " go right," with mt body and my children.

[mmaramba]

Hm.  Well, I'm not a doctor and I haven't read the full study.  For all I know it could be terribly flawed in some way, but assuming there is a strong correlation, it's just that-- a correlation. 

I have ADD, and had absolutely no exposure to Pitocin at any time.  But that's anecdote.

I have observed that there seems to be an inverse bell curve when it comes to income and high intervention rates, with the poorest and wealthiest American women seeming to have the most interventions in birth.  The poorest because they are pathologized and pushed through urban assembly lines (and also slightly more ACTUALLY likely to have complicated pregnancies) and the wealthiest because Americans tend to think more technology = better.  And when I think about it, there may be reason to believe that there are also higher rates of ADD DIAGNOSIS in those same populations.  Not actually higher rates of ADD, necessarily, but I'd imagine that among a higher socioeconomic class, folks are more likely to have the time and resources to attack behavioral/learning disorders in their kids when they start to crop up.  On the flipside, anecdotally, I have heard many of my working class black friends (all in urban areas) say that basically all young black boys are diagnosed en masse with ADD, etc., and medicated if they show any sort of issue whatsoever-- so a sort of similar treatment as births among the poorer and of color get. 

So, there's that.  (Maybe.)

There's also the possibility that something else, like postdates pregnancies, pre-eclampsia, etc.-- things that would indicate Pitocin inductions at higher rates-- are actually biologically or socially related to ADD diagnoses.  Who knows?  Certainly even if this study is golden, it shows only correlation and not causation.

[Alenushka]

It is very inconclusive study. 

[Kelli Stapleton]

A study of 170ish patients over 23 years of paperwork. Seriously? They couldn't get a larger sample size? Why is such an incomplete study even allowed to suggest any correlation between anything?    Maybe this will help put it in perspective. Out of roughly 78,840,000 births over 22 years they chose data from only 170.  ONLY 170!  

This might be the best example of BAD science I've ever seen

[yaboobarb]

You are right! The studies are all crap. But I do believe that...

"The findings warrant further investigation into the potential link between perinatal Pitocin exposure and subsequent ADHD diagnosis."

If you want to see bad science, go look at the vaccine studies. There have never been any long term studies of Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated population. Many new vaccines studies, ( which are small) compare vaccinated vs vaccinated. That's a horror!

[XanaduMama]

Originally Posted by yaboobarb 

You are right! The studies are all crap. But I do believe that...

"The findings warrant further investigation into the potential link between perinatal Pitocin exposure and subsequent ADHD diagnosis."

If you want to see bad science, go look at the vaccine studies. There have never been any long term studies of Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated population. Many new vaccines studies, ( which are small) compare vaccinated vs vaccinated. That's a horror!

[violetflapjack]

I agree with everyone here that this is certainly not a conclusive study, but I do think that its really important to have out there for people to see that it's an issue coming up, especially in the interest of making informed birthing choices.  I know that if I had seen this before birthing, I may have made some different choices about the care I had.  Not that I think that my child is definately going to have ADHD now, but I am very conservative about all of the interventions (drugs, ultrasound, etc.) that are being used in pregnancy and birth because they are so new in evolutionary terms and we really haven't seen the long term effects or the multigenerational effects of these interventions.

Whew!  That all being said, I want to give thanks to everyone on this thread for helping to put this into perspective for me because I actually was quite alarmed when I saw this study and the perspective here is helpful.  Thanks for this dialouge, which is also very important for facilitating informed birth choices!

[Alenushka]

So, yes, ridiculous. One can just google Stats 101 and calculate a necessary sample size themselves. It is not going to be 170.
 

Originally Posted by Kelli Stapleton 

A study of 170ish patients over 23 years of paperwork. Seriously? They couldn't get a larger sample size? Why is such an incomplete study even allowed to suggest any correlation between anything?    Maybe this will help put it in perspective. Out of roughly 78,840,000 births over 22 years they chose data from only 170.  ONLY 170!  

This might be the best example of BAD science I've ever seen

[CBEmomma]

I think a better, bigger study, needs to be done. But I also think that when you start messing with nature with medicines and interventions, you're bound to start messing chemicals/homrones up as well. Most of these interventions haven't even been studied long term yet, eventhough they've been around for a long time. My ds1 has ADHD and he had Pitocin. My ds2 was born at home and is the complete opposite of ds1. They are so very different in their behavior. Does it prove anything? No, but in my heart I already know the answer.

[Alenushka]

And I know a mom who is AP, non vax and her kid has autism. So, in my heart I know AP causes autism?  There is a reason why there standarts for studies.

And  before big pharma people messed with nature in every which way. There is no long term studies outthere on majority of herbal remedies eitehr