Wine!

Randall Grahm from Bonny Doon vineyards came to talk and taste today. Awesome! Will have to follow up on Edmund St John, Renaissance wineries.

Learned the following

– Terroir means from the place and minimalist wines that allow for nature to influence the wine rather than ‘effort based’ wine which winemaker controls everything

-I love Albarino wine, gotta get to Galicia some day

-invest in good glasses

Pay attention to what is right in front of you

I have ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I am certain of it. According to the DSMIV aka the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, I have 5 cardinal features of the inattentive type of adult ADHD and 5 features of the hyperactive type of adult ADHD. Although technically one needs to have at least 6 cardinal symptoms in each category type, I am pretty convinced that I am on the spectrum and pretty durn close to meeting the clinical criteria for a diagnosis.

Unfortunately, the choices for treatment leaves the subclinical ADHDer much to be desired. One the one hand there is pharmacologic treatment which consists of drugs like addicting amphetamines and atomoxetine which is a non amphetamine but have a few side effects of its own like suicidal ideation (whoo hoo). On the other hand there are behavioral changes such as getting more regular sleep and exercise which if I could change on my own, I probably wouldn’t be writing/complaining about having ADHD.

Finally there is an interesting treatment I came across called Neurofeedback which is a form of biofeedback where one looks at an EEG while doing a series of attention and hyperactivity tests to literally adjust one’s responses in real time. The literature on it at first rub also seems to be quite positive including several studies that look out 3-5-10 years at children treated for ADD who on follow up actually sustain the benefits of treatment. I wonder why the lack of adoption? The great ADHDer that I am though, I bet I will forget about it eventually and move onto the next thing like I always do :)

http://www.neurofeedback-scotland.com/support-files/efficacyneurofeedback-kaiser.pdf