Creatine for ADHD

Creatine for ADHD?

Is supplementing with Creatine effective for improving the symptoms of ADHD?  It might be.  This very inexpensive supplement has been found in an Australian study to help working memory and intelligence.  It has been used by body builders and athletes for years to improve sports performance and it has been recently found to improve brain functioning.

What is Creatine?  Creatine is compound that our bodies make naturally and that is abundant in people who consume a lot of meat but is known to be deficient in some vegetarians.  Creatine is essential for the normal functioning of both our muscles and our brains. 

Creatine work on the brain’s Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP).  If you have Inattentive ADD, as I do, you probably will not remember the lecture on ATP from your high school biology class.  I will not bore you with the details but ATP is something that our body uses to produce all sorts of cell energy.  Creatine may improve Inattentive ADD by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the ATP function in our brains and in our muscles.

ADHD

Creatine helps ADHD because higher brain creatine is associated with improved neuropsychological performance.  Creatine supplementation has been shown to increase brain creatine and creatine kinase (CK).  CK has been found, in studies, to both protective the brain and to improve brain functioning. One study reported that, in animal studies, Ritalin increases creatine kinase.  It is possible that this increase in creatine kinase is one of the ways that Ritalin improves the symptoms of ADHD and Inattentive ADD.

Creatine Supplements for ADHD

You would have to eat lots of meat to get the amount of creatine that has been found in studies to improve brain functioning.  Fortunately, creatine, which costs about 10 cents a dose, is available in supplement from.

Creatine can be taken as a supplement and the therapeutic dose for Inattentive ADD would be between 2-5 grams a day for adults and about half that dose for children. Supplemental Creatine is showing great promise in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and is also currently being studied to determine it's effectiveness for the treatment of other diseases such as congestive heart failure (CHF), depression, bipolar disorder, high cholesterol and rheumatoid arthritis

Studies have shown that Creatine has very few side effects.  One study reported brain benefits at levels of 2 grams a day in adults.  Reports indicate that the side effects of this supplement which can include stomach bloating, diarrhea and body odor are minimal when taken at these doses.

Creatine may help Inattentive ADD by helping the brain's cell energy system.  It may work similarly to Ritalin and act as both an anti-oxidant and as fuel for amino acid and neurotransmitter functioning.  The use of Creatine supplementation for Inattentive ADD has not been specifically studied but there is reason for me to believe that Creatine supplementation may help the symptoms of Inattentive ADD.

Amino Acids. 2011 Mar 11. [Epub ahead of print]

Use of creatine in the elderly and evidence for effects on cognitive function in young and old.
Rawson ES, Venezia AC.

Amino Acids. 2011 Mar 30.
The creatine kinase system and pleiotropic effects of creatine.
Wallimann T, Tokarska-Schlattner M, Schlattner U.

Proc Biol Sci. 2003 Oct 22;270(1529):2147-50.
Oral creatine monohydrate supplementation improves brain performance: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial.
Rae C, Digney AL, McEwan SR, Bates TC.

Life Sci. 2008 Dec 5;83(23-24):795-800. Epub 2008 Oct 5.
Methylphenidate increases creatine kinase activity in the brain of young and adult rats. 
Scaini G, Fagundes AO, Rezin GT, Gomes KM, Zugno AI, Quevedo J, Streck EL.

DMAE and ADHD

Will Help Inattentive ADHD? I was reviewing the most recent ADHD articles on Pubmed when I came across a review article that listed some of the non-prescription treatments and the article reported that DMAE could offer some help for the symptoms of ADHD. Apparently in the 1970s DMAE was used as a stimulant and some people with ADHD had improved symptoms while taking this supplement.

DMAE is Dimethylaminoethanol and it is one of the building blocks for acetylcholine. Acetylcholine helps with cell communication and it is a neurotransmitter. Many researchers believe that neurotransmitter issues are what causes the symptoms seen in people with ADHD.

DMAE is found in salmon and fish oil and is marketed today as a supplement that helps memory and aging. In the seventies it was prescribed by physicians for ADHD under the name Deanol and several studies reported benefits in behavior and learning at a dose of 500mg a day.  I have included a summary of a study comparing Ritalin and DMAE below.

The FDA removed DMAE which was called by the prescription name 'Deanol' from it's list of approved medications for ADHD in the early 1980s because of a lack of research on it's effectiveness and it became an orphan drug which means it was a drug that no one was interested in testing any further so it fell by the wayside.

When I trolled the ADHD forums for information on DMAE, I got a mixed bag of reports from parents and patients who reported some success and some non-success with the use of this supplement. Apparently some company named Nature's Plus makes a product called PediActive that has 254mg of DMAE as well as Phosphatidylserine and Phosphatidycholine in a chewable tablet form that is marketed for the "Active Child". The Amazon reviews for this product are few but all positive.

When I went to Amazon to find out how adults where faring on the DMAE tablets, most all the reviews reported positive results.  People reported that they were more focused, had more energy, were more productive, etc but I have found that people tend to write more positive Amazon reviews than negative ones and it is entirely possible that the folks that got no results from the DMAE tablets did not bother to write a review.

So will DMAE help ADHD Inattentive. I don't know. All indications point to this supplement being safe and well tolerated.  The only ill effect that I read about were people who reported that there dreams were more vivid.

If anyone has had experience with this supplement I would love to hear about it.  please comment and let us know. If I decide to give DMAE tablets a try, I will let you know how it