treatment of ocd & add

[livgab]

Can a neurlogist treat people with ocd and add?  and does it work for everyone? How long does this treatment take?

[ggreg]

Glad you found a neurologist to help you with your OCD and ADD.  It sounds like an interesting approach, walking backwards and using the left side of the body and so forth.  I think it will do the same thing as exposure, where it makes the mind shift into better working order.  And even tho medication helps a lot, if you can do without it, that's great.  That omega-3 the doc suggested is indeed good for fine-tuning mental processes.

[livgab]

Thanks for the info, i have seen a neurogist just yesterday, and i am not getting any medication, but she is giving me cranial therapy, and exercises to do, that work on the left cerebellum, ie walking backwards down a staircase with your eyes closed but in a flowing action, brushing your teeth with left hand and standing only on your left foot and others.  A change in diet bascially no junk food and nothing with a lot of sugar or e 's, and take vitamins omega 3 fatty acid. I don t have anything that i do constantly only nasty, awkward thoughts about doing something stupid or saying something bad the exposure idea won nt work for me. Glad you treatment works for you.

[ggreg]

Well, he can give a medication or two that will indeed curb it.  For example, I take an SSRI called Zoloft, and while it's for my depression, it also has the effect of calming my tendency to be obsessive about stuff.  On the list of reasons why Zoloft is prescribed, OCD is one of them.  I didn't even realize how often I would get "stuck" on doing a particular thing until I began taking that drug.  Now it's wonderful... Zoloft keeps me from focusing too long on a particular thing, and instead I just "let it go."  Oh, I can still get things done, it's just it keeps me from locking in on one thing at the expense of everything else. I've been taking it for almost ten years.  Some people have taken SSRIs even longer than that.  It's no big deal, I take it right after breakfast and that's it for the day.

As for ADD, I don't know what they prescribe for that, but I imagine taking a medication is the way they go for that stuff, too.  One other thing about OCD, sometimes they prescribe medication in conjunction with what they call "exposure therapy."  That's where you have to gradually make yourself get accustomed to the things that you obsess about, to break the cycle, so to speak.  For example, if you don't want to step on cracks in a sidewalk, they'll make you step on them, stand on them, etc., day after day, until your mind clicks and you realize nothing unusual is going to happen by doing that obsessive thing.  Then you just naturally quit doing it.

One time I went through a stage about twenty years ago where I incessantly washed my hands.  It was a pain in the neck.  So, I had read about exposure, and decided one day to just not wash my hands all day.  Well, of course nothing happened to me.  After a few days, I was over it.  So, I suppose, depending on how bad the OCD is, they might can treat it with exposure and medication, and then stop both after a while.