God damnit, why is this shit happening, again? I’ve known I’ve had ADHD for more than twenty fucking years, and I’ve usually been able to control it with diet, exercise and activity; but for the last few weeks that doesn’t seem to be working anymore. I haven’t been this flaky in years, fucking years.
I can’t even manage to get to work on time because I keep getting distracted by a book. I won’t do work I’ve got plenty of time to do until the last possible minute. My fucking god this sucks. I’m the reliable one – I get shit done when no one can or will, I’m the one who shows up on time or early. Though now I’m not – I’m turning into the flaky one, I’ve been late nearly every day for the last week and a half (no one’s noticed, yet), I can’t concentrate on anything for more than five minutes before something distracts me, and I’m not pay attention to what I commit myself to doing, and am letting things slide.
Hell this post is great fucking example. I started it when I came into the office this morning, and here it is hours later, and I’m still not done with it. I wouldn’t be annoyed if it was work that had distracted me from posting, that’s fine, but no, it was stupid shit, an IM conversation and a luncheon. I mean really, how the hell hard can it be to concentrate for ten fucking minutes to write a post? Obviously it’s too hard for me. This is ridiculous, I’m a gown man with a successful career, I should not be this fucking flaky.
I’ve gone this long without having to use prescription medication to control this; I do not want to have to take another fucking pill. Damn it. If this continues I’m going to have to seek help, and with my fucking luck, that’ll mean medication. Fuck!
No one can force you onto medications if you don’t want to be, and a good shrink will help you find non-med ways of dealing. That being said, my girlfriend cannot imagine facing life without ritalin again. She doesn’t know how she ever did, and she’s thankful every day that modern medicine gave her something that lets her act like a normal human being.
Have you ever read a book by a guy named Hallowell on the subject? It’s a good read with all sorts of helpful advice.
Only fairly recently did I bother to educate myself on ADHD, particularlly in adults. I had made a crude off-hand remark, and someone called me on it. He gave me a link, which led to other links, and within a couple of hours, my whole view about the matter had changed. My heart goes out to you. If you need an ear or a shoulder, let me know. I’ll arrange for you to have my e-mail address.
Redwing, I am curious. Have there been any major or minor changes in your life that might have triggered this? If you can’t think of any (and I’m guessing you probably can’t offhand because you don’t seem to know why this is happening now) a complete physical might be a good idea. Hormonal or other changes might account for the difference in how you respond to your regular program.
You have described me to some extent. I think my daughter’s more severe ADHD is genetic. I do know that sleep deprevation can make it worse, so can depression. Also if you are doing something like the Fiengold diet, perhaps there has been a reformulation of something that used to be clean or you are reacting to something new. Go back to a clean diet and start over for a bit.
It’s worth a trip to the doctor. These are, of course, ADD symptoms, but if your ADD has been under control for years, it might be worth looking at other causes. Hyperthyroidism, off the top of my head, can mimic ADD, and I believe other hormonal conditions may have the same effect.
But if you do get on medication, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve been on Ritalin for years; it’s wonderful how much difference it makes. The medicine makes more difference than all the work I did without it. ADD people have screwy brain chemistry and physical differences in the size of certain parts of the frontal lobes and corpus callosum. It’s a physical disease, and there’s nothing wrong with using medicine for it. Ritalin, at least, has the advantage of being an old drug with a long history of use, and it’s a very safe drug at that. And it’s not as though it’s a life sentence - you might need it for a month, or six months, and never again.
But go to the doctor. Get a workup before you make any other decisions.
If the trend continues I will bring it up to my doctor (I see him regularly, for other reasons). I mainly posted this from frustration with the rather sudden expression of this. I’ve had occasional periods like this before, and they do clear up with time, and usually a change in my program. Sleep depravation is always a part of these things, and it’s difficult to tell if the one causes the other – and there are no other obvious changes in lifestyle over the past quarter or so.
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If anyone could, I have some ignorance that needs fighting. My only real experience with ADHD is a couple kids in middle school who were pumped full of Ritalin, so how do diet and exercise help? Is it just as simple as the exercise wearing you down so you can’t be hyper?
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NotQuiteAYinzer I am also not quite a Yinzer myself. Diet and exercise don’t help, generally speaking. A person achieving control of ADHD through these means would be atypical, athough I cannot say it is impossible.
You probably didn’t know the milder ADD cases - it wouldn’t have been obvious, especially if they were non-hyperactive type. I wouldn’t have been anyone’s guess for ADD, not in middle school anyway, because it’s not very obvious to look at me.
I don’t know that any dietary changes have been shown to have much effect on ADD, except in a few cases. There are various diets pushed by different doctors for the disease, but most of them are untested or haven’t consistently shown results. I tend towards skepticism, but there’s no doubt that a healthy diet can’t hurt. Eating an unhealthy diet can sap you in all sorts of ways and interfering with your focus is probably one of them. It’s not enough to fix the disease, but I’m sure it helps a lot of people to some degree. Of course, avoiding sugar is probably a good idea for the ADD person, but we’re notorious for eating tons of it.
Exercise definitely has a positive effect on ADD (exercise is clearly something that’s good for basically everyone and a huge number of different diseases.) I’ve read that it helps to normalize the neurochemical imbalances that effect an ADD person (for example, it raises dopamine levels, which in ADD people are low in a part of the frontal lobe that regulates concentration.) The mechanism is complex, but exercise is good for most things that ail you, and ADD is no exception.
Well, Excalibre, I would never discourage anyone from exercise. However, there is no empirical evidence of a specific effect of exercise on ADHD symptom reduction, particularly in terms of ongoing treatment. There is evidence implicating dopamine (DA) in some fashion in ADHD, but the manner of its role in the disorder is far from clear. There is also evidence linking DA with depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and many other conditions. We simply do not know enough about the interactions of neurochemicals and brain structures to specify the mechanisms of effect in a putative relationship between ADHD and dopamine, nor whether the links between ADHD and DA are spurious.
Nor is it particularly clear how exercise influences DA. Nor is it known how long lasting the effects of exercise influence whatever psychological or neurochemical systems they might influence. Does exercise cause immediate but short-lived changes in psychobiology? Alternatively, does regular exercise lead to lasting alterations in DA levels and in behavior and attention?
Again, there is no evidence of ill-effects from exercise (speaking generally), so there is no particular reason to discourage it. However, we are a very long ways off from being able to show specific links between exercise, neurochemistry, neurophysiology, and behavior and cognition. It may be that your assertion ultimately proves true, but right now it is an assertion not well-supported (nor refuted) by empirical evidence.
Hentor and Exaclibre, thanks for the info. I’m obviously no expert on it, but what you said does make sense, especially if someone isn’t far enough off to require medication.
And Hentor, why hide where you’re from? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Well, not too much, anyway
Hentor, you sound like an expert so I’ll have to assume you know what you’re talking about. I’m simply relating something I’ve read in books - as with most aspects of ADD, doctors’ opinions apparently vary on the subject. Are you certain that no studies have indicated a link between ADD and exercise? It’s something of a mainstay in ADD treatment, as fair as I’ve been able to determine. (One I’ve managed to avoid. :))
Treatment tends to vary from shrink to shrink, anyhow. Many of them, at least, favor exercise as part of a treatment program, but, as Hentor states, it’s certainly not a complete treatment on its own.
I’ve been taking adderall for a few months, and have been doing pretty well on it. However, because I was losing so much weight, I decided to abstain on the weekends so that I could chow down.
I’ve noticed that on those days I’ve not taken it, my brain is still able to function on a normal level. That is, I’m not as “with it” as when I’m on the adderall, but still far better than where I was before.
It made me wonder if my brain gets into patterns of behavior when I’m on the adderall that still affect me when i’m off it.
Or maybe I just have some traces of medication still in me. Has anyone else noticed this?
I’m a child psychologist and researcher who has published on ADHD (though oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder are more my gig). I’m fairly certain that there are no studies of exercise as a treatment for ADHD. There are some studies that examine exercise challenge and aspects of cognition (that is, have people engage in exercise and study certain aspects of their functioning immediately afterwards), but they are not sufficient yet to link to ADHD symptoms, nor to long-term functioning.
I would love to have exercise as a tool to help people cope with ADHD. I just don’t feel I can or should lead anyone to regard it as a treatment for ADHD. I would also not want to do anything that would remotely feed into the common misperceptions of those with ADHD being inherently lazy.
Even though we don’t know very well what is going on in terms of brain functioning in ADHD, it seems unlikely to me that exercise would make meaningful changes. I’m sure that it might influence cognitive functioning in the short run, but I would wager that this is not specific to ADHD, but rather a more general positive effects of exercise.
I’m exceptionally proud to be from Pittsburgh! I would call myself not quite a yinzer because I was born here but moved away when I was 5, not to return until I was 26. I don’t have the accent, but I will shout my love for the city from the rooftops.
My developmental paed suggests exercise for kids with ADHD but I’ve noticed no difference in my kids exercised or unexercised. the paed says he’s seen it make a difference for some kids but I don’t know if he’s recommending it empirically or based on research. I’ll ask him next time I’m in touch with him.
Diet and supplements make an enormous difference for one of my kids and very little for the other kid.
