This looks cool, but it's not useful or interesting to me. I don't need to "heal from stigma and internalized ableism", I need to get things done and my brain is resistant to this. "stigma" and "ableism" is just psychobabble to me.
I simply do not care about other peoples' biases; they do not affect me nearly enough to be worth navigating against. I care about my own (in)ability to sit down and get something done. That inability is far and away the prime detractor from my quality of life.
Agreed. It almost seems intentionally designed to make it hard to find useful information. Inconsistent spacing, typography, insufficient negative space, lines that are far too long, etc.
That being said, I wonder if it was made by someone who has ADHD?
Funnily enough, ADDitude is a decent online magazine with some insightful articles- it's the first place I discovered the concept of RSD in detail- but it also falls prey to the content marketing school of web design.
No idea, but this was an interesting podcast episode. I recall they do mention at some point about how ADHD in general is physically detectable by doing brain scans and seeing what areas light up?
I listen to a few ADHD podcasts and one of them has the most annoying loud music in the background during commercials as if they're just asking you to skip. It's even more grating if you listen at 3x speed.
I have a feeling that the massive quantities of prescribed amphetamines we've dumped into the population, including millions of children, is going to age about as well as using radium for wristwatches. But I guess we'll have to see the "evidence" for that.
Shhh, you're not supposed to acknowledge that having a large fraction of tech workers hopped up on goofballs is more about their economic output than their health.
This is so counterintuitive for folks. Anecdotally, you can find a lot of stories out there from folks with ADHD who will tell you that their medication calmed their brain for the first time. It could be compared to a sensory deprivation experience.
"I didn't know my brain could be this quiet," is a common refrain from people with ADHD on taking a stimulant for the first time.
Aren't you worried about side effects and addiction?
Say you find some really bad side-effect in the future, can you live a normal life without it, and then you have to think how has your mind changed since getting used to the drug compared to before? And then if you have some other health problem, you always have to worry is it because of the substance or not...so you will think maybe I need to stop just in case...and then you realize you are addicted.
It's hard to become addicted to medicine that you take to, among other reasons, stop forgetting about such things as taking your medicine.
Side-effects can be real though, which is why during a therapy you're usually going through a variety of medicines closely watching for how they interact with your organism before settling on a particular thing.
What you say is true but doesn't necessarily contradict gp. Although stimulants work, they have unpleasant side effects and I hope one day we discover a better solution.
Setting aside that Ritalin is the more common drug of choice for treating adolescents…
I’m in my 40s, and have been taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years now. To this day, my experience is consistent and predictable. Before I take my first dose (which isn’t always in the morning), I have little ability to control where my attention goes. It’s not that I lack attention, mind you. There’s plenty of water in the tank, I just can’t control the firehose, and the nozzle just sprays water everywhere. My brain is a “noisy” place, different aspects of my cognition demanding to be the one that is heard. It’s a firehouse full of firefighters demanding to direct that wide-stream firehose. Every interruption, every slow driver, every unexpected sound, they’re all adding to the din, each one a firefighter demanding the firehose for their own purposes. If I’m lucky, I can fight them off and direct the hose where I want…until a new firefighter (distraction) walks in.
As a result, I’m anxious, irritable, fidgety, and impatient. You’d think I was on speed, given how quickly my attention jumps from one thing to another, and how quickly I lose the ability to focus on non-novel, boring things. It doesn’t matter if they’re “fires” that require my attention, I’m just ill-equipped to battle for the firehose.
About 20–30 minutes after a dose, the noise abates. The firefighters disperse. The flow to the firehose is narrowed and slowed, and I’m able to consciously hold on to it; I can direct the water (my attention) wherever I need to. Sometimes, I don’t even need to hold on to it, and it just stays where I pointed it (“hyperfocus”).
At the end of the day, when my meds wear off, I’m not exhausted from fighting my own brain all day long. I’m more relaxed. Peaceful. Calm. Patient.
I’ve seen no cognitive or physiological deficits as a result of taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years. Because my wife and other adult friends/family members knew me before my diagnosis, they have a baseline to compare to when evaluating my behavior. I’ve asked outright, several times: they’ve seen nothing but positive improvements in my attitude, my ability to work, and my relationships with them and others.
I would suggest to the creator that they make it clear that the consensus statement is the centerpiece and link to it more clearly. I found it kind of confusing that there was a section of the homepage that promoted the consensus statement without giving me a way to get to it in the body of the page. There is a huge amount of information and evidence that seems to be presented really clearly, its just not front and center on the landing.
> Widespread public belief that artificial food coloring causes ADHD-like hyperactivity in children originated from Benjamin Feingold, a pediatric allergist from California, who proposed in 1973 that salicylates, artificial colors, and artificial flavors cause hyperactivity in children;[35] however, there is no evidence to support broad claims that food coloring causes food intolerance and ADHD-like behavior in children.
I'd say the two fields are very different. In the case of NLP - they watched very successful therapists in the 1970s, noticed some common themes, and extracted out a model. So for example, Milton Erickson would tell artfully vague stories to his clients, which were clever metaphors for healing, tailored to the individual. It's difficult to run scientific experiments to prove the efficacy of this - it depends on the skill of the practitioner and every client will need something different, so flexibility is key, not replicability of a technique which can be codified and taught.
CBT on the other hand, definitely ticks all the evidential boxes.
I think the two can be complementary - CBT has strong evidence for success, but maybe, the codified, procedural nature of it limits it somehow.
An NLP practitioner could try something completely different outside of any rule book if the client wasn't responding to something.
Anyway, I don't have a horse in this race, just a very curious lay-person with a few favourite classic books on these subjects.
Oh, to be fair, NLP proposed the meta model, which was based on how Virginia Satir would solve people's problems by just getting them to be more specific, in a skilful way. This would highlight how our thinking can change how we experience things, through what they called deletions, generalisations and distortions.
CBT does something very similar with how it focuses on making language more realistic and less emotive.
That's really interesting that neuro linguistic programming helped you so much.
I don't want to inquire into your own experiences as it's personal. But, I used to follow NLP very closely and sort of lost interest over time.
Anyway, I felt it was best suited to 'software' changes in oneself - say at level of beliefs about the world, and how our use of symbols and language can affect our experience and abilities.
ADHD, as condition seems more like a 'hardware' thing. It's intriguing to imagine how conditions like that can be helped with a 'cognitive' approach. Perhaps it's used more to help manage things through techniques and strategies.
I think you are spot on. As a person in that spectrum, i feel everyone's brain is hardwired in some way, and if you want to fight it with workarounds (with techniques/strategies) you will have to pay a lot in terms of brain power. And not a lot of ADHD people are motivated to do that (thanks to ADHD lol)..
Yeah it's interesting. My entire life is held together by a fragile network of hacks to get myself to almost kinda sorta approximate normal adult behavior. I've managed to take things pretty far with that actually, but I'm very prone to falling off the rails.
Among the many many novelty-seeking obsessions I've had over the years, one of them was meditation. I got REALLY deep into it. Started doing it everyday. That was the closest thing to a miracle cure for my ADHD I've ever tried. I was just practicing two skills: awareness of the contents of my attention, and the ability to shift that attention back to an object of my choosing. At first, I'd get an hour after a 25-30 minute sit where I could just focus and do the things I wanted to do. With daily sits in the 25-60 minute range, I started to get continuous awareness of attention. It was like a superpower. I could actually listen to people when they spoke without getting excited and interrupting them, or getting distracted. So much of my life changed for the better. Then... I ran into some of the dark side of meditation. "Dark night of the soul" kind of stuff where tons of repressed emotions started involuntarily resurfacing, and I started getting tension headaches for the first time in my life. Ultimately I just had to stop.
And now I'm back to where I always was... trying to figure out what to do. Can't do stimulants because my blood pressure runs spuriously high. I need to checkout the non-stimulant meds, but I just haven't gotten around to it.
ADHD, as condition seems more like a 'hardware' thing. It's intriguing to imagine how conditions like that can be helped with a 'cognitive' approach. Perhaps it's used more to help manage things through techniques and strategies.
Kind of like video card drivers that have patches for specific games to work around issues in the hardware.
I think this hardware/software metaphor is in a way limiting belief :). No, it is a good metaphor but what helped me is understanding that things can be changed and I was able to change fairly drastically my life and how I went about things, NLP way, reprogramming problems and limiting behaviors in my life.
Did I fix everything, no, not at all. I still have serious ADHD issues but compared to where I was, it is night and day and if I had not run into NLP books and studied them and applied, I probably would live pretty limited and miserable life now.
> Surprisingly, data show that sugar consumption does not worsen symptoms of ADHD.
Surprisingly? Sugar consumption is known to help with symptoms of ADHD, as do other dopamine-inducing activities, which makes perfect sense to me. The problem with sugar is that it has a pretty high cost due to all its other effects on the body, that its dopamine hit wears off pretty fast and you quickly build up a tolerance, which is why it's good to look for other stimulants than sugar.
Caffeine without medication evens me out until I have had enough that the side effects take over. It's a bit like medication alone, but with worse side effects.
Caffeine with medication (Methylphenidate) works just like caffeine does for most (neurotypical) people.
> Sugar consumption is known to help with symptoms of ADHD, as do other dopamine-inducing activities
Sorry to say, that is absolute bollocks. Sugar is ADHD in powdered form, and both in personal experience and the professional advice from my psychiatrist is to stay as far away from sugar as possible.
Also, symptoms of ADHD != ADHD. Many things cause lower baseline levels of dopamine in the brain, but not all of them are ADHD, the disorder itself.
Personally, as a diagnosed ADHD sufferer, the lower the amount of carbs I ingest, the better my executive centre functions. In fact, yesterday I have had a little more sugar than my regular strict diet and my motivation today has tanked to absolute zero. It's a feeling I have known all my life.
Please provide some sources because your comment goes against all professional and scientific advice.
Prove it. There is no scientific data that would establish a link between sugar intake and worsening symptoms of ADHD. Systematic review of ADHD-related studies[0] concluded that the current evidence is weak and that what's there may very well describe correlation instead of causation, or even inverse causation.
> Please provide some sources because your comment goes against all professional and scientific advice.
You're commenting under a website that's literally all about one of such sources[1]. I even quoted it in my previous comment already - that wasn't my idea, that was my reaction to actual scientific data that was, for some reason, being described as "surprising".
> the professional advice from my psychiatrist is to stay as far away from sugar as possible
As I've already noted earlier, it's a good advice - just not because consuming sugar makes ADHD worse.
> Personally, as a diagnosed ADHD sufferer, the lower the amount of carbs I ingest, the better my executive centre functions.
That's perfectly possible, for the same reason why stimulant-based treatment works for some people with ADHD and does the opposite for others, and also for multitude of other non-ADHD related reasons. This doesn't mean that what you're experiencing is in any way universal though, and my personal anecdata disagrees with your anecdata anyway.
Is it just me or does the fact that this site already heavily pushes a particular conclusion rather than being open to all evidence lead others to take it with an extra grain of salt as well?
Yeah, this strikes me more as, "I need to get the word out about my Super Totally Justified beliefs" than a sober look at ADHD research so far.
I'm getting adhd-as-a-lifestyle vibes off of this, and as someone who has ADHD I stay away from that mentality with every ounce of effort I can muster.
ADHD is a thing I have, not who I am.
Edit: The actual "statement" is a much better representation of what this site (and its organizers) are about:
Seriously, I'm stunned by how terrible the landing page is. If the person who built this is here, you've really got to quiet that landing page down, there's way too much going on. In particular, the AMA accordion component should be removed entirely.
Huberman is a neuroscientist and everything he recommends appears to be backed by peer reviewed research. He does also promote various products, but afaict, he does a good job of keeping that from biasing his recommendations.
The site is atrocious. The carousels aren’t even obvious — people will straight-up miss that there’s content. The little accessibility icon teleports about a second after scrolling, distracting the user and covering some text. (Seriously, just because material design made it cool to float a button right over the content doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea.) A small amount of content fades in the first time one scrolls to the bottom, which is a great way to waste bandwidth and many latency really obvious.
This site gains nothing from any Javascript or display: styling. Keep the overall theme but make it just plain content.
With all the comments about carousels, I just had to look! Is the idea that the site's interactivity is stimulating and thus soothing and attention grabbing for ADHD folks? As being diagnosed myself, I feel like such treatment is disgustingly patronizing.
I reckon they got a rookie web dev to put it together, and naturally they got excited by carousels, because that's what landing pages for shiny products have on them (annoyingly).
Yeah, the site hurts my ADHD brain to read too:
- The font is simultaneously too big and too small, inconsistent in sizes and styles between headers and sections. The handwritten font used in a few places is basically illegible to me.
- The margins/padding are too small - the text comes riiight up to the edge of my screen! Argh
- The carousel sections could just be..... all shown as regular paragraphs, one under each other... without the distracting animation... Not great for working memory, having things you want to read going in and out of your visual field! Let me scan the whole document!
- The page is full-width, all sections get as wide as possible - meaning you can have lines of text which are like 40 words long! (Longest I counted was one of the reddit AMA questions - 41 words). The line length should be limited to like 75 characters maximum. [1]
- Lots of stuff is too close together (not enough vertical padding) - like the reddit AMA questions. Why are those in an accordion and collapsed by default? What are the borders between them for - do they show the top of one or the bottom of another?
- Why do the "Source" buttons pop up a modal dialog with a snippet of reddit thread which is styled entirely different to the rest of the site? Again, why not just show all of that information on the page to begin with?
- A long page which you just have to scroll is _infinitely_ more readable than a user interface where stuff is popping in and out of existence everywhere and depends on user clicks. What if you're dyspraxic / you don't use a screen reader but your carpal tunnel's acting up?
The accessibility options provided by UserWay are a nice touch, but the little human icon at the bottom right isn't immediately obvious what it is (at least give it an "Accessibility" label). Make it _above the fold_ - top of the page. Make it one of the first things someone who would _want_ the accessibility options would spot!
I think that sites like this, where it does look like the _intention_ is to make it accessible and readable by as many people as possible, could take inspiration from the UK Gov Design System [2] and read about the principles underpinning it [3].
I've experimented in the past with making my personal blog more readable for "people with brains like me" [4]. It's certainly personal taste / meeting my own personal needs, but how I lay out information on that blog (very narrow, very linear, minimal interaction needed) is a lot different to how the ADHD Evidence Project site lays stuff out (very wide, multiple columns, stuff inconsistently in and accordions and popups)
That site feels like a cruel joke. Every aspect is either distracting or unreadable - collapsed panels, un-explained acronyms, zero discernible order, etc. Even if you think you don't have ADHD, this site will make you question it!
I remain highly skeptical that there is a common neurological physical pathology in children that is treatable by a steady lifetime use of amphetamines and amphetamine derivatives. It's all comparable to the other major pharamceutical scandal of our era, i.e. the opiate prescription business.
I would agree that children who appear incapable of paying attention to their teachers (who may not be very good teachers) in often-overcrowded classrooms will be better able to 'stay on task' if given amphetamines, but I don't see this as being much different from the heavy use of amphetamines in, for example, sweatshop factories in Asia where workers are doing repetitive tasks for hours on end. For example:
> "Dignity Returns was founded by women who worked for a Bed Bath & Beyond factory in Bangkok, where they were often forced to work up to 60 hours at a stretch, making clothes for international brands like Nike, Gap or Reebok. They were given amphetamines so they could work multiple shifts, and their pay was sometimes docked if they complained of exhaustion."
Constant use of amphetamine-type drugs, from Ritalin (methylphenidate) to Adderall (amphetamine) to Desoxyn (methamphetamine) does have numerous negative side effects, from skin acne to amphetamine psychosis, and also results in severe withdrawal symptoms (which accounts for the users tending to justify their diagnoses of ADHD because if they stop taking it, they feel terrible). This has not raised as many red flags as the opiate prescription epidemic, because overdose fatalities are rare in comparison.
That said, I'm relatively libertarian in my views on drug use, and it is possible that some people may benefit from judicious use (I drink rather a lot of coffee, after all, and it helps me stay focused) but I think if people were well-informed they'd be much more cautious when it comes to taking such powerful stimulants (and painkillers).
Undiagnosed and untreated adults with ADHD develop higher than normal rates of mental illness like anxiety and depression, higher rates of substance abuse and addiction, and often have difficulty maintaining personal relationships, careers, even basic personal responsibilities. Whatever the physiological reason, failing to diagnose and treat ADHD has a detrimental effect for many of us.
I was diagnosed a few years ago, after a fairly severe mental health crisis with crippling anxiety and nearly drinking myself to death. Since diagnosis and beginning treatment with stimulants, I’ve been able to put my life back together. My life is stable, I’m happier than I ever was even before my mental health tanked, and my anxiety is manageable enough I seldom take notice of it.
I don’t like the side effects of stimulants, particularly the toll they've taken on my already poor dental health (for folks who don’t know, “meth mouth” can be a thing even with prescription amphetamines taken as prescribed, not just from smoking). But I have no doubt in my mind that whatever side effects I’ve experienced or may, it’s better by far than what I’d have experienced without meds.
AFAIK “meth mouth” is a myth. It’s just that addicts tend to care much less about dental hygiene. Amphetamines may dry your mouth slightly but as long as you keep your proper dental routine you should be fine.
> I remain highly skeptical that there is a common neurological physical pathology in children that is treatable by a steady lifetime use of amphetamines and amphetamine derivatives.
I would argue that even if the effects diminish over time (and it’s true, they do), the benefit of being able to focus in class in those early formative years will pay dividends down the line. Being able to pay attention means you don’t have to play catch-up in math/English/etc later in life. The knowledge you gain in those years doesn’t go away once you stop taking meds.
I’m just speaking as someone who didn’t get diagnosed until I was in my late 20’s. Getting diagnosed and prescribed meds was truly life changing and it’s frustrating thinking back and knowing school didn’t have to be so difficult.
> This information War on ADHD stigmatizes affected people,
On the contrary I see tons of accommodations made by both private and public organizations. Many, many people seem to enjoy diagnosing themselves with this condition. Can someone point to evidence of stigmatization?
Getting meds at the pharmacy (even after getting a prescription) can be a pain. I’ve run into issues where I’ll have a prescription, but the pharmacy that it’s sent to is out of stock. But pharmacy’s aren’t allowed to disclose stock of controlled substances over the phone, so I have to call my Dr to ask them to transfer the prescription to a different pharmacy, hoping that it’s not out of stock. If it is, I have to do that all over again. It’s annoying to say the least.
I don't understand the connection at all. The pharmacy doesn't know if I'm diagnosed with ADHD but I have all those same problems. Also why would they want to withhold drugs from you? Aren't pharmacies usually parts of money-grubbing conglomerates that just want money out of you? What is in it for them to use "stigma" as a way to reduce service to you? Conversely, can you imagine the blowback if this were discovered to be the case?
That is partly due to the rise in prescribing the medication. I saw the DOJ launched an investigation into some of these mental health startups to determine if they are just modern day pill mills, or if they are actually helping people.
I do agree with your point though, getting controlled substances filled is hard. It is unfortunate people abuse them which makes it harder for people who actually need them to have them filled easily.
There is nothing to enjoy about having ADHD any more than you would "enjoy" having herpes.
I thought I was just depressed for 20 years and had a hard enough time trying to cover that up. I work in an industry that is built on trust through repeated execution and excellence - Management Consulting
It's thinking work. Any mental "impairment" could reasonably be classified as effecting that consistent repeatability with certainty.
Dysregulation of attention and emotion means your ability to execute is not always in your control, and sometimes you will take longer, or make mistakes, or sometimes you hit it right out of the park... but too far - you are seen as being inconsistent. Your ups and downs are much more frequent and often in severity than the general population (that's what makes it a disorder)
A lot of people partition you in the "too-hard" to deal with pile. They don't know what to do with you, how to use you effectively.
Covering up for this, masking, takes a huge amount of additional effort and drains you physically and mentally.
Yes my organization champions the importance of diversity, even neurodiversity because diverse teams work better and deliver better results. Yes I have access to some accommodations, but my work is project based, I get pulled onto things by others. If they subconsciously have a bias towards putting me on something because they are afraid of that inconsistency when the stakes are already high, then I'll likely be looked over. Not everyone, but many. You're a risk. A liability.
I have a friend. An incredible lawyer. Here undiagnosed ADHD and diagnosed depression meant she had to take some time off due to being completely burnt out. She disclosed it to her employer. She was pressured into signing an NDA before later being fired because the partner couldn't "trust" or "deal with" her not always being available. The NDA meant that she couldn't speak publicly about it or sue her former employer for wrongful dismissal. It ruined her career.
Can someone with ADHD give an example of a website that is well organized and architected that they find helpful as a counterexample to this site? I'm curious as someone parenting someone with ADHD what that would look like.
(And then, when you look at local authority websites for local councils, or local healthcare trusts, they're an absolute disparate hellscape of information badly put together in powerpoints, word documents, handmade GP websites tacked onto by students on work placements who know a bit about HTML, ...)
Site could use some polish but IMO it's not that bad or somehow "worse" because I have ADHD. Nothing factually wrong or biased stands out. It's a standard meta-analysis that finds that most treatment theories have no or limited evidence.
I think it's beneficial overall to have the research on ADHD in one place even if it has little practical advice. While it might seem like ADHD is a very normalized condition, there's still some misunderstanding in many countries and regulatory bodies.
In the US, where ADHD is most normalized, ADHD can impact your ability to get a commercial flight license which includes recreational flying of certain aircraft [1]. It may prevent you from joining the military which many need to afford higher education [2]. Outside the US, it gets worse. Stimulant treatment in Europe is difficult and underutilized despite the evidence [3]. The strangest effect I've heard (anecdotally) was that ADHD diagnosis can increase mortgage interest rates in Sweden (or maybe it was Norway?).
It's strange that ADHD is both rejected as not-real or over-diagnosed and also treated as a severe condition by certain groups. Even if these negative effects can be mitigated by changing medication or getting a medical waiver, it discourages individuals with ADHD from applying and adds more bureaucratic cruft as a cruel joke.
I feel like there has to be other under explored methods of treating ADHD aside from medication. I’ve yet to find any for myself, but am also incredibly hesitant to medicate my symptoms away. I’ve tried stimulants in the past and was left feeling like I traded one issue (lack of concentration and executive function) for another (racing thought and elevated heart rate).
I do see CBT mentioned, but only as an adjunct to medication. Another commenter here mentioned NLP which I have never heard of prior. Will take a look into this as well.
This sounds an awful lot like either your dosage was too high or you’re one of the people with ADHD who doesn’t actually respond well to stimulants. Elevated heart rate/blood pressure is common and responsible doctors prescribing these drugs check it routinely, but racing thoughts is not a typical reaction at an appropriate dose.
Regarding other methods, one common but less formal thing that has helped me, and which I’ve seen benefit a lot of friends and others diagnosed later in life: developing and nurturing an awareness of the kinds of coping mechanisms that are already present, with close attention to which are helpful but could be developed further and to which are counterproductive or just neutral so they might be put aside.
For myself, I’ve realized that there’s a couple common threads through most of my helpful coping mechanisms. Foremost among them: keeping consistent routines is kind of a house of cards, but one which is much more resilient for me if I allow myself to be fairly rigid about them. Another: having a high degree of control over the sensory stimulation I’m exposed to, especially but not only sound, is one of my best defenses against cognitive overload.
These coping mechanisms vary by person but they often cluster around the kinds of problem areas that ADHD patients notice rather than the external problem areas that tend to lead to childhood diagnosis (or internalized self judgment reflecting real or perceived external judgment regardless of diagnosis age). As in, “why does ____ cause me to struggle and what’s been most effective when I do struggle?” tends to be a better starting point than “why can’t I just do ____ like normal people seem to do?” If nothing else, it gives you a chance to have self empathy and recognize that there are reasons and that you may already have a framework for those reasons, even if you haven’t noticed it yet.
If racing thoughts exist without medication too. I would look at CBT to help with that. They will probably also look at mindfulness and meditation exercises to give you tools to deal with it when it starts.
It depends on what the thoughts are as to what will work best, if they are beliefs or schemas about yourself, random ideas or memories. What they are could mean they have a different purpose.
I have them regardless of treatment, mostly ideas for things to research, or questions to answer or creative things, sometimes I just need to record them and know they are captured somewhere. Like a voice recorder. Because years of trying to remember things means when I have an idea, sometimes, I'll run it over and over and over again to make sure it doesn't get lost. Capturing it and putting it somewhere safe means I can let myself move on more easily.
I do have elevated blood pressure that is now slightly on the "hmmmm lets watch that" side, but I had very healthy blood pressure to begin with and can thankfully adequately manage it with some medication.
The issue with an "evidence-based" approach is that conducting studies to generate evidence requires substantial capital, and that capital is most available for treatments that are supported by major companies. In this case, pharmaceutical companies make substantial profits from selling stimulants, and medical insurers favour CBT for a variety of reasons, including relatively short treatment timelines. Consequently, evidence will be biased towards those therapies, so the volume of evidence isn't really a good basis for comparing different treatments.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadEven if you somehow don't care what other people think, stigma gets in the way of medication.
That being said, I wonder if it was made by someone who has ADHD?
https://additudemag.libsyn.com/278-the-flip-side-of-rejectio...
"I didn't know my brain could be this quiet," is a common refrain from people with ADHD on taking a stimulant for the first time.
Having since been medicated for some time, I now take this for granted, but it was a real watershed moment for me, that first day.
Say you find some really bad side-effect in the future, can you live a normal life without it, and then you have to think how has your mind changed since getting used to the drug compared to before? And then if you have some other health problem, you always have to worry is it because of the substance or not...so you will think maybe I need to stop just in case...and then you realize you are addicted.
Side-effects can be real though, which is why during a therapy you're usually going through a variety of medicines closely watching for how they interact with your organism before settling on a particular thing.
Why do you believe so?
I’m in my 40s, and have been taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years now. To this day, my experience is consistent and predictable. Before I take my first dose (which isn’t always in the morning), I have little ability to control where my attention goes. It’s not that I lack attention, mind you. There’s plenty of water in the tank, I just can’t control the firehose, and the nozzle just sprays water everywhere. My brain is a “noisy” place, different aspects of my cognition demanding to be the one that is heard. It’s a firehouse full of firefighters demanding to direct that wide-stream firehose. Every interruption, every slow driver, every unexpected sound, they’re all adding to the din, each one a firefighter demanding the firehose for their own purposes. If I’m lucky, I can fight them off and direct the hose where I want…until a new firefighter (distraction) walks in.
As a result, I’m anxious, irritable, fidgety, and impatient. You’d think I was on speed, given how quickly my attention jumps from one thing to another, and how quickly I lose the ability to focus on non-novel, boring things. It doesn’t matter if they’re “fires” that require my attention, I’m just ill-equipped to battle for the firehose.
About 20–30 minutes after a dose, the noise abates. The firefighters disperse. The flow to the firehose is narrowed and slowed, and I’m able to consciously hold on to it; I can direct the water (my attention) wherever I need to. Sometimes, I don’t even need to hold on to it, and it just stays where I pointed it (“hyperfocus”).
At the end of the day, when my meds wear off, I’m not exhausted from fighting my own brain all day long. I’m more relaxed. Peaceful. Calm. Patient.
I’ve seen no cognitive or physiological deficits as a result of taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years. Because my wife and other adult friends/family members knew me before my diagnosis, they have a baseline to compare to when evaluating my behavior. I’ve asked outright, several times: they’ve seen nothing but positive improvements in my attitude, my ability to work, and my relationships with them and others.
https://www.adhdevidence.org/ics
> Widespread public belief that artificial food coloring causes ADHD-like hyperactivity in children originated from Benjamin Feingold, a pediatric allergist from California, who proposed in 1973 that salicylates, artificial colors, and artificial flavors cause hyperactivity in children;[35] however, there is no evidence to support broad claims that food coloring causes food intolerance and ADHD-like behavior in children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_coloring#Criticism_and_he...
Site is attrocious :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming
CBT on the other hand, definitely ticks all the evidential boxes.
I think the two can be complementary - CBT has strong evidence for success, but maybe, the codified, procedural nature of it limits it somehow.
An NLP practitioner could try something completely different outside of any rule book if the client wasn't responding to something.
Anyway, I don't have a horse in this race, just a very curious lay-person with a few favourite classic books on these subjects.
CBT does something very similar with how it focuses on making language more realistic and less emotive.
So there are similarities in that sense.
I don't want to inquire into your own experiences as it's personal. But, I used to follow NLP very closely and sort of lost interest over time.
Anyway, I felt it was best suited to 'software' changes in oneself - say at level of beliefs about the world, and how our use of symbols and language can affect our experience and abilities.
ADHD, as condition seems more like a 'hardware' thing. It's intriguing to imagine how conditions like that can be helped with a 'cognitive' approach. Perhaps it's used more to help manage things through techniques and strategies.
Among the many many novelty-seeking obsessions I've had over the years, one of them was meditation. I got REALLY deep into it. Started doing it everyday. That was the closest thing to a miracle cure for my ADHD I've ever tried. I was just practicing two skills: awareness of the contents of my attention, and the ability to shift that attention back to an object of my choosing. At first, I'd get an hour after a 25-30 minute sit where I could just focus and do the things I wanted to do. With daily sits in the 25-60 minute range, I started to get continuous awareness of attention. It was like a superpower. I could actually listen to people when they spoke without getting excited and interrupting them, or getting distracted. So much of my life changed for the better. Then... I ran into some of the dark side of meditation. "Dark night of the soul" kind of stuff where tons of repressed emotions started involuntarily resurfacing, and I started getting tension headaches for the first time in my life. Ultimately I just had to stop.
And now I'm back to where I always was... trying to figure out what to do. Can't do stimulants because my blood pressure runs spuriously high. I need to checkout the non-stimulant meds, but I just haven't gotten around to it.
Kind of like video card drivers that have patches for specific games to work around issues in the hardware.
Did I fix everything, no, not at all. I still have serious ADHD issues but compared to where I was, it is night and day and if I had not run into NLP books and studied them and applied, I probably would live pretty limited and miserable life now.
Surprisingly? Sugar consumption is known to help with symptoms of ADHD, as do other dopamine-inducing activities, which makes perfect sense to me. The problem with sugar is that it has a pretty high cost due to all its other effects on the body, that its dopamine hit wears off pretty fast and you quickly build up a tolerance, which is why it's good to look for other stimulants than sugar.
Caffeine with medication (Methylphenidate) works just like caffeine does for most (neurotypical) people.
Sorry to say, that is absolute bollocks. Sugar is ADHD in powdered form, and both in personal experience and the professional advice from my psychiatrist is to stay as far away from sugar as possible.
Also, symptoms of ADHD != ADHD. Many things cause lower baseline levels of dopamine in the brain, but not all of them are ADHD, the disorder itself.
Personally, as a diagnosed ADHD sufferer, the lower the amount of carbs I ingest, the better my executive centre functions. In fact, yesterday I have had a little more sugar than my regular strict diet and my motivation today has tanked to absolute zero. It's a feeling I have known all my life.
Please provide some sources because your comment goes against all professional and scientific advice.
Prove it. There is no scientific data that would establish a link between sugar intake and worsening symptoms of ADHD. Systematic review of ADHD-related studies[0] concluded that the current evidence is weak and that what's there may very well describe correlation instead of causation, or even inverse causation.
> Please provide some sources because your comment goes against all professional and scientific advice.
You're commenting under a website that's literally all about one of such sources[1]. I even quoted it in my previous comment already - that wasn't my idea, that was my reaction to actual scientific data that was, for some reason, being described as "surprising".
> the professional advice from my psychiatrist is to stay as far away from sugar as possible
As I've already noted earlier, it's a good advice - just not because consuming sugar makes ADHD worse.
> Personally, as a diagnosed ADHD sufferer, the lower the amount of carbs I ingest, the better my executive centre functions.
That's perfectly possible, for the same reason why stimulant-based treatment works for some people with ADHD and does the opposite for others, and also for multitude of other non-ADHD related reasons. This doesn't mean that what you're experiencing is in any way universal though, and my personal anecdata disagrees with your anecdata anyway.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30986731/
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33549739/
I'm getting adhd-as-a-lifestyle vibes off of this, and as someone who has ADHD I stay away from that mentality with every ounce of effort I can muster.
ADHD is a thing I have, not who I am.
Edit: The actual "statement" is a much better representation of what this site (and its organizers) are about:
https://www.adhdevidence.org/ics
Seriously, I'm stunned by how terrible the landing page is. If the person who built this is here, you've really got to quiet that landing page down, there's way too much going on. In particular, the AMA accordion component should be removed entirely.
https://hubermanlab.com/adhd-and-how-anyone-can-improve-thei...
Huberman is a neuroscientist and everything he recommends appears to be backed by peer reviewed research. He does also promote various products, but afaict, he does a good job of keeping that from biasing his recommendations.
Is it common to differentiate between Scandinavia and Europe like this?
If you want this to be a useful resource, please consider:
-removing the distracting movement from carousels or moving the content entirely out from carousels
-removing the expanding sections and instead display all that content by default (no reason to hide it or make it expandable when it's so small)
-maybe the most impactful, adding some more margins and padding to give content enough space to breathe so my eyes can focus on one thing at a time
I tried looking through the accessibility menu but nothing there was able to improve these significant issues in the default styles.
This site gains nothing from any Javascript or display: styling. Keep the overall theme but make it just plain content.
I really enjoyed how the first answer to the question of how people with ADHD can improve their lives is, "take your meds!"
Yeah, the site hurts my ADHD brain to read too:
- The font is simultaneously too big and too small, inconsistent in sizes and styles between headers and sections. The handwritten font used in a few places is basically illegible to me.
- The margins/padding are too small - the text comes riiight up to the edge of my screen! Argh
- The carousel sections could just be..... all shown as regular paragraphs, one under each other... without the distracting animation... Not great for working memory, having things you want to read going in and out of your visual field! Let me scan the whole document!
- The page is full-width, all sections get as wide as possible - meaning you can have lines of text which are like 40 words long! (Longest I counted was one of the reddit AMA questions - 41 words). The line length should be limited to like 75 characters maximum. [1]
- Lots of stuff is too close together (not enough vertical padding) - like the reddit AMA questions. Why are those in an accordion and collapsed by default? What are the borders between them for - do they show the top of one or the bottom of another?
- Why do the "Source" buttons pop up a modal dialog with a snippet of reddit thread which is styled entirely different to the rest of the site? Again, why not just show all of that information on the page to begin with?
- A long page which you just have to scroll is _infinitely_ more readable than a user interface where stuff is popping in and out of existence everywhere and depends on user clicks. What if you're dyspraxic / you don't use a screen reader but your carpal tunnel's acting up?
The accessibility options provided by UserWay are a nice touch, but the little human icon at the bottom right isn't immediately obvious what it is (at least give it an "Accessibility" label). Make it _above the fold_ - top of the page. Make it one of the first things someone who would _want_ the accessibility options would spot!
I think that sites like this, where it does look like the _intention_ is to make it accessible and readable by as many people as possible, could take inspiration from the UK Gov Design System [2] and read about the principles underpinning it [3].
I've experimented in the past with making my personal blog more readable for "people with brains like me" [4]. It's certainly personal taste / meeting my own personal needs, but how I lay out information on that blog (very narrow, very linear, minimal interaction needed) is a lot different to how the ADHD Evidence Project site lays stuff out (very wide, multiple columns, stuff inconsistently in and accordions and popups)
[1] https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
[2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/
[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles
[4] https://odj.me/blog/2021-10-22-a11y
(This turned into a long comment because I'm going to send the link to u/sfaraone on reddit as my feedback :-))
I would agree that children who appear incapable of paying attention to their teachers (who may not be very good teachers) in often-overcrowded classrooms will be better able to 'stay on task' if given amphetamines, but I don't see this as being much different from the heavy use of amphetamines in, for example, sweatshop factories in Asia where workers are doing repetitive tasks for hours on end. For example:
> "Dignity Returns was founded by women who worked for a Bed Bath & Beyond factory in Bangkok, where they were often forced to work up to 60 hours at a stretch, making clothes for international brands like Nike, Gap or Reebok. They were given amphetamines so they could work multiple shifts, and their pay was sometimes docked if they complained of exhaustion."
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2010/10/25/global-garmet-...
Constant use of amphetamine-type drugs, from Ritalin (methylphenidate) to Adderall (amphetamine) to Desoxyn (methamphetamine) does have numerous negative side effects, from skin acne to amphetamine psychosis, and also results in severe withdrawal symptoms (which accounts for the users tending to justify their diagnoses of ADHD because if they stop taking it, they feel terrible). This has not raised as many red flags as the opiate prescription epidemic, because overdose fatalities are rare in comparison.
That said, I'm relatively libertarian in my views on drug use, and it is possible that some people may benefit from judicious use (I drink rather a lot of coffee, after all, and it helps me stay focused) but I think if people were well-informed they'd be much more cautious when it comes to taking such powerful stimulants (and painkillers).
I was diagnosed a few years ago, after a fairly severe mental health crisis with crippling anxiety and nearly drinking myself to death. Since diagnosis and beginning treatment with stimulants, I’ve been able to put my life back together. My life is stable, I’m happier than I ever was even before my mental health tanked, and my anxiety is manageable enough I seldom take notice of it.
I don’t like the side effects of stimulants, particularly the toll they've taken on my already poor dental health (for folks who don’t know, “meth mouth” can be a thing even with prescription amphetamines taken as prescribed, not just from smoking). But I have no doubt in my mind that whatever side effects I’ve experienced or may, it’s better by far than what I’d have experienced without meds.
I would argue that even if the effects diminish over time (and it’s true, they do), the benefit of being able to focus in class in those early formative years will pay dividends down the line. Being able to pay attention means you don’t have to play catch-up in math/English/etc later in life. The knowledge you gain in those years doesn’t go away once you stop taking meds.
I’m just speaking as someone who didn’t get diagnosed until I was in my late 20’s. Getting diagnosed and prescribed meds was truly life changing and it’s frustrating thinking back and knowing school didn’t have to be so difficult.
On the contrary I see tons of accommodations made by both private and public organizations. Many, many people seem to enjoy diagnosing themselves with this condition. Can someone point to evidence of stigmatization?
> Also why would they want to withhold drugs from you?
Stimulants are bad drugs!!
Though the pharmacy itself is more worried about getting in trouble for making things too easy, because the laws are that awful.
> Conversely, can you imagine the blowback if this were discovered to be the case?
I imagine it to be quite negligible.
I do agree with your point though, getting controlled substances filled is hard. It is unfortunate people abuse them which makes it harder for people who actually need them to have them filled easily.
I thought I was just depressed for 20 years and had a hard enough time trying to cover that up. I work in an industry that is built on trust through repeated execution and excellence - Management Consulting
It's thinking work. Any mental "impairment" could reasonably be classified as effecting that consistent repeatability with certainty.
Dysregulation of attention and emotion means your ability to execute is not always in your control, and sometimes you will take longer, or make mistakes, or sometimes you hit it right out of the park... but too far - you are seen as being inconsistent. Your ups and downs are much more frequent and often in severity than the general population (that's what makes it a disorder)
A lot of people partition you in the "too-hard" to deal with pile. They don't know what to do with you, how to use you effectively.
Covering up for this, masking, takes a huge amount of additional effort and drains you physically and mentally.
Yes my organization champions the importance of diversity, even neurodiversity because diverse teams work better and deliver better results. Yes I have access to some accommodations, but my work is project based, I get pulled onto things by others. If they subconsciously have a bias towards putting me on something because they are afraid of that inconsistency when the stakes are already high, then I'll likely be looked over. Not everyone, but many. You're a risk. A liability.
I have a friend. An incredible lawyer. Here undiagnosed ADHD and diagnosed depression meant she had to take some time off due to being completely burnt out. She disclosed it to her employer. She was pressured into signing an NDA before later being fired because the partner couldn't "trust" or "deal with" her not always being available. The NDA meant that she couldn't speak publicly about it or sue her former employer for wrongful dismissal. It ruined her career.
[1] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/attention-deficit-hyperactivit... [2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/
(And then, when you look at local authority websites for local councils, or local healthcare trusts, they're an absolute disparate hellscape of information badly put together in powerpoints, word documents, handmade GP websites tacked onto by students on work placements who know a bit about HTML, ...)
I think it's beneficial overall to have the research on ADHD in one place even if it has little practical advice. While it might seem like ADHD is a very normalized condition, there's still some misunderstanding in many countries and regulatory bodies.
In the US, where ADHD is most normalized, ADHD can impact your ability to get a commercial flight license which includes recreational flying of certain aircraft [1]. It may prevent you from joining the military which many need to afford higher education [2]. Outside the US, it gets worse. Stimulant treatment in Europe is difficult and underutilized despite the evidence [3]. The strangest effect I've heard (anecdotally) was that ADHD diagnosis can increase mortgage interest rates in Sweden (or maybe it was Norway?).
It's strange that ADHD is both rejected as not-real or over-diagnosed and also treated as a severe condition by certain groups. Even if these negative effects can be mitigated by changing medication or getting a medical waiver, it discourages individuals with ADHD from applying and adds more bureaucratic cruft as a cruel joke.
[1] https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/dec_cons/disease_prot/adhd [2] https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archive... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2942810/
I do see CBT mentioned, but only as an adjunct to medication. Another commenter here mentioned NLP which I have never heard of prior. Will take a look into this as well.
> racing thought and elevated heart rate
This sounds an awful lot like either your dosage was too high or you’re one of the people with ADHD who doesn’t actually respond well to stimulants. Elevated heart rate/blood pressure is common and responsible doctors prescribing these drugs check it routinely, but racing thoughts is not a typical reaction at an appropriate dose.
Regarding other methods, one common but less formal thing that has helped me, and which I’ve seen benefit a lot of friends and others diagnosed later in life: developing and nurturing an awareness of the kinds of coping mechanisms that are already present, with close attention to which are helpful but could be developed further and to which are counterproductive or just neutral so they might be put aside.
For myself, I’ve realized that there’s a couple common threads through most of my helpful coping mechanisms. Foremost among them: keeping consistent routines is kind of a house of cards, but one which is much more resilient for me if I allow myself to be fairly rigid about them. Another: having a high degree of control over the sensory stimulation I’m exposed to, especially but not only sound, is one of my best defenses against cognitive overload.
These coping mechanisms vary by person but they often cluster around the kinds of problem areas that ADHD patients notice rather than the external problem areas that tend to lead to childhood diagnosis (or internalized self judgment reflecting real or perceived external judgment regardless of diagnosis age). As in, “why does ____ cause me to struggle and what’s been most effective when I do struggle?” tends to be a better starting point than “why can’t I just do ____ like normal people seem to do?” If nothing else, it gives you a chance to have self empathy and recognize that there are reasons and that you may already have a framework for those reasons, even if you haven’t noticed it yet.
It depends on what the thoughts are as to what will work best, if they are beliefs or schemas about yourself, random ideas or memories. What they are could mean they have a different purpose.
I have them regardless of treatment, mostly ideas for things to research, or questions to answer or creative things, sometimes I just need to record them and know they are captured somewhere. Like a voice recorder. Because years of trying to remember things means when I have an idea, sometimes, I'll run it over and over and over again to make sure it doesn't get lost. Capturing it and putting it somewhere safe means I can let myself move on more easily.
I do have elevated blood pressure that is now slightly on the "hmmmm lets watch that" side, but I had very healthy blood pressure to begin with and can thankfully adequately manage it with some medication.