March 2020

“There is no doubt that longer work hours, constant interruptions, and decreased sleep time are contributing to the rise of ADHD,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, double-board certified psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist at Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, located in the Silicon Valley area of northern California. These constant demands for attention, combined with a lessened stigma for seeking help for mental health disorders, are pushing more adults toward getting help for an attention disorder that may have been there all along. Often times, it’s the treatment and therapy of a child that brings an adult to realize that keeping attention has been a challenge for them since adulthood.

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By YouAreUNLTD, March 6, 2020

According to psychiatrist Dr. Alex Dimitriu, founder of the Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine Center in Menlo Park, CA, sadness is generally short-lived and dissipates over time as we adjust to a new situation. “We often casually refer to this situational sadness as depression,” he says, “but it is important to distinguish it from clinical depression, a much more severe and long-lasting condition that has serious implications for long-term mental and physical health and must be diagnosed and treated by a medical professional.”

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By Julia Rachel Malacoff, March 04, 2020

Another potential (and ironic) side effect of some antihistamine-containing OTC sleep aids is less-than-great sleep. “There is some concern that diphenhydramine may also negatively impact sleep by reducing REM sleep (or dream sleep),” says Dr. Dimitriu. Lack of REM sleep can affect your memory, mood, cognitive performance, and even cell regeneration, so this can be pretty problematic.

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By Kate Bratskeir, 01/17/2020

Sleep starts are common in healthy people, but can be exacerbated by fatigue, sleep deprivation or stimulant use (caffeine and beyond), added Alex Dimitriu, a double board-certified expert in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine. For the most part, hypnic jerks are benign and nothing to worry about. But if they’re happening regularly and preventing you from falling asleep easily, it’s worth talking to your doctor, Dimitriu told HuffPost.

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By Kara Cuzzone,  JAN. 15, 2020

It’s no coincidence that you pass out on the couch every time you cozy up with your weighted blanket. According to the National Sleep Foundation, that’s because they decrease anxiety, increase serotonin levels and reduce restlessness for some people. “I’ve had a number of patients report benefit from these,” confirms Alex Dimitriu, M.D., double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine.

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by George Citroner on January 8, 2020

“I think it’s important to recognize what alcohol is. Alcohol is effectively, in many ways an anesthetic, alcohol makes you feel less, not feel more,” Alex Dimitriu, of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine, told Healthline. “The question then becomes, ‘What is it that we’re trying to anesthetize?’ Because I think that these rising rates of alcohol-related deaths and binge drinking are really evidence of a society that perhaps is trying to mask, hide, or run from something,” he said.

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1/6/2020. Dr. Dimitriu was published in Psychology on the topic of Identifying bipolar disorder’s “softer side”.

It’s true. Bipolar disorder has a “softer side,” and that’s what makes the condition’s diagnosis all the more challenging in people who have a wide array of what might be considered “finer symptoms.” 

Classic bipolar disorder is characterized by dramatic, extreme mood swings—from high “highs” (mania and hypomania, “I can do anything”) to low “lows” (depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, paranoia). But what about people with symptoms considered more “common,” like periods of anxiousness, sense of uneasiness, irritability, boredom, poor decision-making, and feelings of meaninglessness intermingled with moments of energy and intensity, euphoria, a spurt of ideas, focus, brilliance, vision, and achievement? These are often missed in psychiatric examinations because they are not viewed as a connected whole. They fall beneath what might be called the “threshold of diagnosis,” failing to fit neatly within standard clinical tools like the Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale or the Mood Disorder Questionnaire.

Click HERE for the full article.