Ok after reading a chunk of this the correlation is pretty wild. Having the data it’s quite striking. Sleep intervention as a form of ADHD treatment has always seemed reasonable to me but this gives a lot more clarity to the approach and mechanisms.
For me, the seasonal aspect of it aligns with their blue light findings (both driving symptoms and aligning with improvement under the intervention of having a grow-LED garden setup on my desk), and in a second maybe related matter we’ve found using blue light blocking glasses an hour before bed to be the most impactful single intervention around sleep quality and onset (the ones that are like orange laser safety glasses, not the mildly reflective desk-work glasses)
I had great success reflecting 80,000 lumens of work lights off my living rooms ceiling during winter for a couple years.
At a new home, I remodeled four rooms to have three bands wide of LED lighting surrounding the ceilings, hidden from below by cove molding. It is an actual sunny day, with an “an actual” sunny sky inside. Winter, midnight, eclipse? Not a concern.
Having all that intense light reflecting off entire ceilings creates soft diffuse lighting, no shadows, even though it is extremely bright.
Helped a lot with waking up and avoiding depression, all year round.
On the sleep treatment, anything that can help sleep is good, my body has always operated well on a 30 hour day, which means terribly almost all the time, by default. But I do a lot of things that help, so my sleep is pretty good most of the time.
I would see sleep aids as a pretty narrow interventions relative to my ADHD.
The 30 hour day feeling resonates. If I have no external schedule or I'm just living as I see fit, I end up gravitating to 3am bed, ~12pm wake sorta schedule. The only real problem is that it's functionally incompatible with jobs and many other services, even fully remote
I also work best in long bursts of up to 12 hours, with days of full rest in between bursts. I don't do well with a five days a week 9-5 work schedule.
And timeline urgency / time pressure tends to do well at putting me into deep flow state, whereas it can be hard for me to get into flow state for work otherwise.
Ah on the 30 hour day: I had some success living a 28 hour day for a few months, which has the nice property of meaning your awake hours are identical week to week making it at least somewhat possible to interface with polite circadian society.
6x 28 hour days pack cleanly into a 7-day week, so all Mondays you wake at the same time, then all Tuesdays you wake 4 hours later and so on. It was one of the most productive times of my life but ultimately left my partner feeling unhappy and lonely.
I can confirm this effect. One winter I left 2x300w living room lights on perm, and it had a dramatic effect. The only issue is that its nice to turn lights off at night, and if you do that, now you're in habit-dependent territory.
one thing i've been paying the adhd tax on is automating / making habits lower activation energy. smart bulbs / blinds are a great thing for me especially when i am already in bed and have too much executive dysfunction to walk 3 feet to the light switch / shade
I had a contractor and an electrician! There is some significant power draw.
It’s been five years, so I expect the best components are different, more efficient and cheaper.
In winter, the lights can be considered part of my heating system. In summer, windows get opened. If I did it again, I would have some little fans up there expelling air from the cove directly outside.
But that is fine tuning. I am really happy. (When the lights are on. /h)
The following (informally described) symptoms are well-known consequences of ADHD:
- Delayed Sleep Phase [1]
- Staying Up Late [2]
- Revenge Bedtime Procrastination [3]
Newsflash, getting a full night's sleep helps alleviate ADHD symptoms, while being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks us.
But there are reasons why we stay up late. Simply forcing us to sleep doesn't address those reasons.
Which is why I wrote about it so much, and keep spamming these links even though it feels so darn obvious. Not to the authors of the study, it appears.
> E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.
I can do all of these things anyway. Of course, this does present the potential reality that were I able to sleep like people, I could be even more successful, but after a near death experience, then disability, I've learned to be happy with where I am.
It's hard to interface with society this way. I'm the same as you and have waxed and waned many times. There are periods where I'm all about being social and living a normal life. There are other times where I'm just down to only sleep when I'm dead tired (as opposed to using drugs to keep me in normal rhythm). There are tradeoffs
>Lots of the things on this site are normal things that everyone experiences to some degree ...right?
Everyone may experience some of those things some of the time, particularly if they are overwhelmed, overworked, overstressed, etc.
ADHD is experiencing most of these most of the time - as in all the time - for your entire life.
As an analogy: everyone may experience toe pain sometimes if and when they stub their toe on kitchen table leg.
But if it hurts like that all the time, for your entire life - you'd get it checked out, right? There are solid chances something is different about your body.
Now multiply that by 100.
To reword this: say, each relatable entry on that page is a 2% likelihood of ADHD.
If you relate to 100 of them, the chances you're not ADHD drop to 13%.
I've got enough people through an official diagnosis this way that this page, in itself, is a decent enough diagnostic tool.
Then add in the use of powerful stimulants (e.g. Adderall) to power through a workday, only to have that cause insomnia that night, and a wrecked sleep schedule for the following 3 days.
- My time in the field of psychology has made me think that the use of imprecise language for describing psychology has a large and problematic societal impact
ADHD is correlated with but is NOT a "circadian rhythm disorder". This is definitionally true.
There are many causes of ADHD. One of them is likely sleep issues.
Has anyone considered that one reason for being/staying awake late at night that's very salient for ADHD people is that night tends to be much quieter, so it's a period when it's much easier to think/read/work without constant interruptions. Noise pollution isn't taken seriously enough.
Three things that helped me with my circadian phase (to certin extend)
1) Melatonine 300mcg 5-6 hours befor desired sleep time
2) 10k lux light for 30m when waking up
3) Nobeltin (nootropic) it enhances clock amplitude, so I do get less sleepy during teh day and more sleepy at night ..
things taht kind of helped but find hard to keep: Keto
(I feel less sleepy on Keto, and easier to fall a sleep but it's been a while since ive been on keto)
+1 to melatonin. It took me a very long time to dial in the right dose though. It’s not like it’s some miracle cure but it has helped a bunch with being able to fall asleep at a reasonable time, sleep through the night, and thus wake up at a reasonable time. Which of course helps a bit with everything else
Beware that Frontiers In is a very low quality outlet and most scientists stay far far away from it (unless they really need a publication the next three weeks since they have that tenure track review coming up).
adhd is a socially constructed disorder with significant heterogeneity and is only becoming moreso with the advent of scrollable video media and patient communities/advocacy. i am highly skeptical of results pointing to an easily identified physiological cause. the studies cited in this paper are generally low quality and fall apart under scrutiny.
Believe it or not, some of us are well read on the disorders we have to live with every day. Also, reading research papers will never replace the deep understanding of living with the disorder itself.
Beyond the blatant appeal to authority, it is funny that you think even psychiatrists have a consensus on issues like these. Psychiatry is rightly described as the humanities arm of the medical profession.
Psychiatry is pseudoscience for the most part. They just give you meds that give you brain zaps or turn you into a vegetable. Imagine if the entire medical profession worked like that.
As a person whose extreme lack of attention went away spontaneously once after a meditation retreat I am skeptical of most things anybody says about ADHD. The inattentiveness eventually came back a few months later but I am still squarely in "this is more complicated than people make it out to be" camp.
Socially mediated and socially constructed do not mean the same thing and the distinction matters, especially from someone claiming to be read as authoritative on this matter.
Dr. Sandra Kooij is a good person to look up if you are interested in adult ADHD and sleep. She has a book about it. From what I remember, there are a few things that are known:
1. a large majority of ADHD sufferers are phase-delayed and struggle with insomnia
2. you can induce ADHD-like symptoms in normal people by restricting sleep
3. Some of the interventions that improve sleep timing and quality affect ADHD (but it isn't a total cure)
> 1. a large majority of ADHD sufferers are phase-delayed and struggle with insomnia
I would think this wouldn't be such a problem if society would acknowledge night owls exist and allow work to adjust accordingly. Forcing a night owl to live the life of a morning lark is likely not the best way to get their best work. The person suffers who has to try and live in a world not designed for when they sleep, and the employer suffers by getting less out of those people.
I have ADHD and left to my own devices I would go to sleep somewhere between 2-4am. At work, I don't function so well before about 2pm some days... and by that point that day is almost over.
Completely agree, and tend towards the same schedule. I don't even mind working in-person with people, but this idea that everyone should just be uniformly aligned to operate on the same hours is alienating and humiliating at times.
> I have ADHD and left to my own devices I would go to sleep somewhere between 2-4am. At work, I don't function so well before about 2pm some days... and by that point that day is almost over.
Indeed. I've struggled with it since childhood, not only me. The same "symptoms" for lack of a better word are seen with my mother, my aunt and my grandmother. All are night owls, all sleep poorly etc.
For whatever reason, regardless of how much sleep i've had, my brain begins to kick into high gear with a clarity of thought and capacity to dedicate myself to things starting at about 9PM. This remains true REGARDLESS of sleep, how well rested I am, general health, etc. I could have had NO sleep for 24 hours, still be away at 9PM the next night, and it's like a switch.
The ONLY time this ever differs, for reasons still unknown, and where I fit into "normal society" is for whatever reason, when I visit Russia (which I have not done for some time for obvious reasons.)
When I am in Russia, with no effort at all, I sleep normal hours without issue, and wake up during the day time actually well rested. This ceases once I return to my timezone. This same pattern is not seen when say, I visit the US instead.
This would depend on the individual, or so my sleep team, including my sleep doctor suggest.
It is better for me to align with a pattern where I get some level of restful sleep, as opposed to one where I do not ultimately.
In an ideal world, you are obviously correct, but in the world between a severely disturbed sleep where I get a handful of hours of actually restorative sleep, vs once where I actually sleep for 7 hours? One wins over the other.
And yes, given I have an entire medical team (for other reasons, I have a SCI) I have done about everything you can to resolve sleep. Between ADHD however, symptoms related to the SCI etc, we really do just have to go with whatever we can reasonably get.
For a time I had to wake up at 6AM for work and it was a period where I struggled the most with my ADHD symptoms.
I hope there is more awareness in the future about the importance of sleep for neurodivergent people. This could help with the social jet lag most of us feel with having to follow a schedule that simply does not work for us.
I was formally diagnosed as a kid but didn’t do the drug route due to my father not liking these new drugs. I’m in my 40’s now and only started enforcing a sleep routine 10ish years ago. Eg. Bedtime at 11 and get up when alarm goes off at 7:30. And the effect on me was astounding. Everything just levelled out. I still like/need a coffee in the morning.
I still have problems, but my life categorically improved once I got diagnosed and treated for obstructive sleep apnea. I focus on things much better, I'm better at juggling tasks, and I'm just nicer to people, or at least my fuse is considerably longer than it used to be. Also I'm sure my wife is grateful that I'm not snoring or gasping for breath every night.
I would highly encourage anyone who can get a sleep study done to do it. Most insurance companies will at least cover the sleep study and sleep sleep apnea can lead to a lot of considerably-more-expensive issues later down the line. It's not very invasive anymore, all they had to do was have me sleep with a pulse oximeter for a few nights and apparently that was enough.
I am lucky I don't have disruptive sleep issues, but my brain still feels slightly foggy and my battery feels 75% charged in the morning. I imagine if I had disruptive sleep issues I might as well be toast. Or maybe I'm just not aware of disruptions in my sleep...
I was like you. A year ago, I was tired as hell despite sleeping (well, not enough, but I've never slept 'enough'). A few people said sleep apnea but i was not overweight and didn't snore. I tried the test anyway, and it turns out I wasn't breathing. I used an oral appliance and a year later, it's gone and I feel better.
Also, without doing anything my triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and blood sugar which had gone way out of whack, went back to normal.
I started using my oral appliance on a Monday. That Friday I was so energetic I ran 12 miles in one go. I hardly ever run or even practice that much, but I was just so wired that I couldn't help it. It was an amazing feeling. I highly suggest sleep apnea treatment even if you don't think it sounds like you.
I've been using a smart switch to fade in a light (one of the "sun-like" full-spectrum ones) over my head in the morning and it's been really effective for regulating my circadian rhythm. Even with little sleep, I will naturally wake up in the morning at a much more regular time.
I have been using one of those sunrise alarm clocks for around 8 years now. If I go to bed at a reasonable time, the light will wake me up naturally before the alarm actually goes off. However, if I stay up too late the effect of the light fades. I'll sleep right through the light and need the alarm. On one occasion when I must have been really sleep deprived, I slept through the light, an hour of the alarm going off, and another 2-3 hours after that.
If the light turns on too quickly for me it’s super jarring and I hide under the covers. Did you find one that goes bright over the course of 30m or something? Or can you handle the quick increase in brightness?
You can make your artificial sunrise take as long as you want, and connect them to a sleep tracker so they're timed to wake you up during a comfortable phase.
I've been doing this for 12 years, and I don't think I have ever been upset to hear my alarm since, as long as I'm home and the lights have prepared me. Lately I've even been waking up before my alarm about half the time, even though I work on a schedule one time zone east of where I am.
It's shocking to me that it's not more popular for everybody. I guess the benefit is hard to explain.
I have a sunrise alarm clock, I think from Phillips. If I set the alarm for 8am, the light will start turning on at 7:30am then slowly increase in brightness over the next 30 minutes until 8am when it's at full brightness and the alarm goes off (which are nature sounds).
When it first starts, it's more of a warm glow than a light. The max brightness can also be set.
I believe it. I even sought out medical advice on how to best deal with it all. I was given the usual recommendation of low-dose melatonin and light therapy.
However, my issue at the time was that I could never find a light with high enough lux values that I felt like I could trust. Plus, another issue with light therapy is that one can basically never stop for any moderate amount of time, and well, my ADHD makes that near impossible.
I honestly think I would have better success with sleep issues if I could just control my own schedule or have a flexible schedule, but that is not really a luxury most jobs can provide.
How do the authors disentangle cause and effect here? It doesn't follow that sleep issues are an underlying cause, and not just one of the MANY symptoms of ADHD.
There seems to be some kind of hidden connection between autism and ADHD. At first sight the definitions are contradictory but in reality, many people have both. Sleep disturbance seem to be common among autistic people too.
Just an FYI, in circles similar to HN, people will respond very negatively to anyone suggesting anything that might hint at tightening amphetamine prescriptions.
I'm counting on it, I find it deliciously ironic how much there's little interest here in the actual wellbeing of people. The logical hoops people go through here is hilarious.
tbh as a non-user, I think stimulants are likely life improving for many (potentially most) people. what i dislike/chafe at is the insinuation that stimulants only work for people with diagnosed ADHD or only have non-recreational effects for people with ADHD. the latter especially seems to rapidly have become a folk wisdom.
Sure, there's always the middle ground, but there's always the extreme, people abusing amfetamines because a regular human being isn't made to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week, or because after the third pill it's not kicking anymore.
And people should drop the cynicism that just because there are doctors around everyone is well cared for. Just look at the opioid crisis in the US, fuelled by respectable doctors chasing financial incentives.
ADHD treats with Lisdexamfetamine. Amfetamines, I repeat. People use this to study, to get high at parties, to be functional at work, so I really doubt there aren't patients out there abusing these drugs with valid prescriptions.
No, but if you're trying to argue that sleep therapy would be more effective for this group than non-stimulant form of medication, you need to prove this.
Sleepy therapy (CBT-I) may be the best supported treatment for insomnia, but it's still quite shit. ~50% of people will see little to no improvement after going through therapy.
ADHD is highly treatable with medication, and any other intervention is at best mild mitigation. So how many? Amongst people with ADHD, basically nobody.
Sun and proper sleep is certainly helpful for people with ADHD but the likelihood of them getting that is vastly increased if they’re medicated correctly.
Any psychiatrist worth a damn already considers these things.
"ADHD" symptoms can manifest for a variety of reasons, and that's why good ADHD testing involves multiple exams alongside the traditional ADHD ones to help figure out what actual issues are present.
Also, comorbidities make this all the more complicated. Your assertion that people need "more sun" and "regular sleep" could very well be true, yet someone can still have ADHD.
> Any psychiatrist worth a damn already considers these things.
Protocols however are always changing depending on new findings. Not saying this is the case, but not considering something unknown at the time doesn't make a doctor not worth a damn.
> Your assertion that people need "more sun" and "regular sleep" could very well be true, yet someone can still have ADHD.
if that was the case the treatment wouldn't be unecessary, like I specifically wrote in the comment you are replying to.
lists Melatonin, first, then behavioral pseudo-interventions.
stay tuned for more monthly product placements on frontiers in, best digested post prime time.
Welcome to your readjustment.
Willkommen beim Nachrichten.
hey, is anyone wondering if kleine & grosse Lauschangriffe are shared with private people or the guys working for these institutions are trustworthy enough and whether they actually deserved their Bachelor degrees or someone somehow decided they are worth it anyway? wait ... it's just a fucking Bachelors degree
> walk in
> see this title
> oh man that would explain a lot
Ok after reading a chunk of this the correlation is pretty wild. Having the data it’s quite striking. Sleep intervention as a form of ADHD treatment has always seemed reasonable to me but this gives a lot more clarity to the approach and mechanisms.
For me, the seasonal aspect of it aligns with their blue light findings (both driving symptoms and aligning with improvement under the intervention of having a grow-LED garden setup on my desk), and in a second maybe related matter we’ve found using blue light blocking glasses an hour before bed to be the most impactful single intervention around sleep quality and onset (the ones that are like orange laser safety glasses, not the mildly reflective desk-work glasses)
I had great success reflecting 80,000 lumens of work lights off my living rooms ceiling during winter for a couple years.
At a new home, I remodeled four rooms to have three bands wide of LED lighting surrounding the ceilings, hidden from below by cove molding. It is an actual sunny day, with an “an actual” sunny sky inside. Winter, midnight, eclipse? Not a concern.
Having all that intense light reflecting off entire ceilings creates soft diffuse lighting, no shadows, even though it is extremely bright.
Helped a lot with waking up and avoiding depression, all year round.
On the sleep treatment, anything that can help sleep is good, my body has always operated well on a 30 hour day, which means terribly almost all the time, by default. But I do a lot of things that help, so my sleep is pretty good most of the time.
I would see sleep aids as a pretty narrow interventions relative to my ADHD.
Correlation would be nowhere near equivalence.
The 30 hour day feeling resonates. If I have no external schedule or I'm just living as I see fit, I end up gravitating to 3am bed, ~12pm wake sorta schedule. The only real problem is that it's functionally incompatible with jobs and many other services, even fully remote
Same. For me it's more like 4-6 am bed.
I also work best in long bursts of up to 12 hours, with days of full rest in between bursts. I don't do well with a five days a week 9-5 work schedule.
And timeline urgency / time pressure tends to do well at putting me into deep flow state, whereas it can be hard for me to get into flow state for work otherwise.
Live on East Coast, take a west coast remote job. 9am Meeting is noon.
I did this for several years. It works great
Ah on the 30 hour day: I had some success living a 28 hour day for a few months, which has the nice property of meaning your awake hours are identical week to week making it at least somewhat possible to interface with polite circadian society.
6x 28 hour days pack cleanly into a 7-day week, so all Mondays you wake at the same time, then all Tuesdays you wake 4 hours later and so on. It was one of the most productive times of my life but ultimately left my partner feeling unhappy and lonely.
Fuck it we do our best with 24 hour days…
I can confirm this effect. One winter I left 2x300w living room lights on perm, and it had a dramatic effect. The only issue is that its nice to turn lights off at night, and if you do that, now you're in habit-dependent territory.
one thing i've been paying the adhd tax on is automating / making habits lower activation energy. smart bulbs / blinds are a great thing for me especially when i am already in bed and have too much executive dysfunction to walk 3 feet to the light switch / shade
This sounds amazing- do you have part list or pics/write up?
I had a contractor and an electrician! There is some significant power draw.
It’s been five years, so I expect the best components are different, more efficient and cheaper.
In winter, the lights can be considered part of my heating system. In summer, windows get opened. If I did it again, I would have some little fans up there expelling air from the cove directly outside.
But that is fine tuning. I am really happy. (When the lights are on. /h)
> walk in
> see this title
> think authors are reversing causation hard
-- signed, a deep Night Owl
Indeed.
The following (informally described) symptoms are well-known consequences of ADHD:
- Delayed Sleep Phase [1]
- Staying Up Late [2]
- Revenge Bedtime Procrastination [3]
Newsflash, getting a full night's sleep helps alleviate ADHD symptoms, while being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks us.
But there are reasons why we stay up late. Simply forcing us to sleep doesn't address those reasons.
Which is why I wrote about it so much, and keep spamming these links even though it feels so darn obvious. Not to the authors of the study, it appears.
[1] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Delayed%20Sleep%20Phase
[2] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Staying%20Up%20Late
[3] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Revenge%20Bedtime
going to bed early feels like i'm a child being punished.
staying up late rocks. its the funnest. why would i give that up? just to pay attention better at work? no thanks.
> staying up late rocks. its the funnest. why would i give that up? just to pay attention better at work? no thanks.
You may eventually find yourself in a situation where the tradeoff is worth it.
E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.
> E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.
I can do all of these things anyway. Of course, this does present the potential reality that were I able to sleep like people, I could be even more successful, but after a near death experience, then disability, I've learned to be happy with where I am.
There's only one little problem with that reasoning, my friend...
sigh
ADHD PEOPLE ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY REWARD[1]
We literally can't do the things we want and need to do [2].
We know full well the trade-off is worth it. It's just that we can't have it.
Sincerely,
--an AuDHDer
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3010326/
[2] https://add.org/demand-avoidance/
It's hard to interface with society this way. I'm the same as you and have waxed and waned many times. There are periods where I'm all about being social and living a normal life. There are other times where I'm just down to only sleep when I'm dead tired (as opposed to using drugs to keep me in normal rhythm). There are tradeoffs
Consistent inconsistency is the part of the ADHD package.
It's not that there aren't tradeoffs, it's that we don't get to choose these tradeoffs (as in: the cost of choosing is huge and nonzero).
Lots of the things on this site are normal things that everyone experiences to some degree ...right?
>Lots of the things on this site are normal things that everyone experiences to some degree ...right?
Everyone may experience some of those things some of the time, particularly if they are overwhelmed, overworked, overstressed, etc.
ADHD is experiencing most of these most of the time - as in all the time - for your entire life.
As an analogy: everyone may experience toe pain sometimes if and when they stub their toe on kitchen table leg.
But if it hurts like that all the time, for your entire life - you'd get it checked out, right? There are solid chances something is different about your body.
Now multiply that by 100.
To reword this: say, each relatable entry on that page is a 2% likelihood of ADHD.
If you relate to 100 of them, the chances you're not ADHD drop to 13%.
I've got enough people through an official diagnosis this way that this page, in itself, is a decent enough diagnostic tool.
Almost my exact response.
And the cruel tragedy is that it becomes this self-reinforcing cycle.
Sleep bad > "Bad" ADHD day > Harder to fall asleep. Rinse. Repeat.
Then add in the use of powerful stimulants (e.g. Adderall) to power through a workday, only to have that cause insomnia that night, and a wrecked sleep schedule for the following 3 days.
The title of the article is irresponsibly chosen.
- My time in the field of psychology has made me think that the use of imprecise language for describing psychology has a large and problematic societal impact
ADHD is correlated with but is NOT a "circadian rhythm disorder". This is definitionally true.
There are many causes of ADHD. One of them is likely sleep issues.
Has anyone considered that one reason for being/staying awake late at night that's very salient for ADHD people is that night tends to be much quieter, so it's a period when it's much easier to think/read/work without constant interruptions. Noise pollution isn't taken seriously enough.
Three things that helped me with my circadian phase (to certin extend)
1) Melatonine 300mcg 5-6 hours befor desired sleep time 2) 10k lux light for 30m when waking up 3) Nobeltin (nootropic) it enhances clock amplitude, so I do get less sleepy during teh day and more sleepy at night ..
things taht kind of helped but find hard to keep: Keto (I feel less sleepy on Keto, and easier to fall a sleep but it's been a while since ive been on keto)
+1 to melatonin. It took me a very long time to dial in the right dose though. It’s not like it’s some miracle cure but it has helped a bunch with being able to fall asleep at a reasonable time, sleep through the night, and thus wake up at a reasonable time. Which of course helps a bit with everything else
Beware that Frontiers In is a very low quality outlet and most scientists stay far far away from it (unless they really need a publication the next three weeks since they have that tenure track review coming up).
Eg see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/29/frontiers-retract-122...
adhd is a socially constructed disorder with significant heterogeneity and is only becoming moreso with the advent of scrollable video media and patient communities/advocacy. i am highly skeptical of results pointing to an easily identified physiological cause. the studies cited in this paper are generally low quality and fall apart under scrutiny.
Yes random Hacker News poster, you know more than the entire psychiatric profession.
All those peoples with doctorates who spent their lives studying the human brain are wrong, but you alone know the truth.
Believe it or not, some of us are well read on the disorders we have to live with every day. Also, reading research papers will never replace the deep understanding of living with the disorder itself.
This article is 100% conflating cause and effect.
Beyond the blatant appeal to authority, it is funny that you think even psychiatrists have a consensus on issues like these. Psychiatry is rightly described as the humanities arm of the medical profession.
Psychiatry is pseudoscience for the most part. They just give you meds that give you brain zaps or turn you into a vegetable. Imagine if the entire medical profession worked like that.
So is conservatism. I'm tired of people loudly opining based only on their inability to synthesize novel inputs.
As a person whose extreme lack of attention went away spontaneously once after a meditation retreat I am skeptical of most things anybody says about ADHD. The inattentiveness eventually came back a few months later but I am still squarely in "this is more complicated than people make it out to be" camp.
Gotta love the HN armchair experts
you are so utterly and completely wrong it's not worth engaging in anything you wrote.
please educate yourself: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8328933/
Nothing in this review is contrary to the idea that ADHD diagnosis is socially mediated. It is unclear what you are even disagreeing with.
Socially mediated and socially constructed do not mean the same thing and the distinction matters, especially from someone claiming to be read as authoritative on this matter.
There seems to be almost nothing new here. I see that the main studies the they cite are actually from the 2010s:
https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h68.abstract
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13899...
I'd be curious to see if there's been any larger scale follow up on this since.
well it's a review article
I'm used to reviews of recent work, not of work from a decade ago
ADHD meds also impact circadian rhythm. So I don't really know how a study could look at this dynamic with any usefulness.
Dr. Sandra Kooij is a good person to look up if you are interested in adult ADHD and sleep. She has a book about it. From what I remember, there are a few things that are known:
1. a large majority of ADHD sufferers are phase-delayed and struggle with insomnia
2. you can induce ADHD-like symptoms in normal people by restricting sleep
3. Some of the interventions that improve sleep timing and quality affect ADHD (but it isn't a total cure)
> 1. a large majority of ADHD sufferers are phase-delayed and struggle with insomnia
I would think this wouldn't be such a problem if society would acknowledge night owls exist and allow work to adjust accordingly. Forcing a night owl to live the life of a morning lark is likely not the best way to get their best work. The person suffers who has to try and live in a world not designed for when they sleep, and the employer suffers by getting less out of those people.
I have ADHD and left to my own devices I would go to sleep somewhere between 2-4am. At work, I don't function so well before about 2pm some days... and by that point that day is almost over.
Completely agree, and tend towards the same schedule. I don't even mind working in-person with people, but this idea that everyone should just be uniformly aligned to operate on the same hours is alienating and humiliating at times.
> I have ADHD and left to my own devices I would go to sleep somewhere between 2-4am. At work, I don't function so well before about 2pm some days... and by that point that day is almost over.
Indeed. I've struggled with it since childhood, not only me. The same "symptoms" for lack of a better word are seen with my mother, my aunt and my grandmother. All are night owls, all sleep poorly etc.
For whatever reason, regardless of how much sleep i've had, my brain begins to kick into high gear with a clarity of thought and capacity to dedicate myself to things starting at about 9PM. This remains true REGARDLESS of sleep, how well rested I am, general health, etc. I could have had NO sleep for 24 hours, still be away at 9PM the next night, and it's like a switch.
The ONLY time this ever differs, for reasons still unknown, and where I fit into "normal society" is for whatever reason, when I visit Russia (which I have not done for some time for obvious reasons.)
When I am in Russia, with no effort at all, I sleep normal hours without issue, and wake up during the day time actually well rested. This ceases once I return to my timezone. This same pattern is not seen when say, I visit the US instead.
If only I could harness this magic...
being a night owl is not good for your health for a lot of reasons (I am one).
This would depend on the individual, or so my sleep team, including my sleep doctor suggest.
It is better for me to align with a pattern where I get some level of restful sleep, as opposed to one where I do not ultimately.
In an ideal world, you are obviously correct, but in the world between a severely disturbed sleep where I get a handful of hours of actually restorative sleep, vs once where I actually sleep for 7 hours? One wins over the other.
And yes, given I have an entire medical team (for other reasons, I have a SCI) I have done about everything you can to resolve sleep. Between ADHD however, symptoms related to the SCI etc, we really do just have to go with whatever we can reasonably get.
its a catch all for people whos brains didnt develop correctly, people who are a genius, and boys
For a time I had to wake up at 6AM for work and it was a period where I struggled the most with my ADHD symptoms.
I hope there is more awareness in the future about the importance of sleep for neurodivergent people. This could help with the social jet lag most of us feel with having to follow a schedule that simply does not work for us.
I was formally diagnosed as a kid but didn’t do the drug route due to my father not liking these new drugs. I’m in my 40’s now and only started enforcing a sleep routine 10ish years ago. Eg. Bedtime at 11 and get up when alarm goes off at 7:30. And the effect on me was astounding. Everything just levelled out. I still like/need a coffee in the morning.
Disruptions to sleep aggravates underlying issues, mentally or physically.
I still have problems, but my life categorically improved once I got diagnosed and treated for obstructive sleep apnea. I focus on things much better, I'm better at juggling tasks, and I'm just nicer to people, or at least my fuse is considerably longer than it used to be. Also I'm sure my wife is grateful that I'm not snoring or gasping for breath every night.
I would highly encourage anyone who can get a sleep study done to do it. Most insurance companies will at least cover the sleep study and sleep sleep apnea can lead to a lot of considerably-more-expensive issues later down the line. It's not very invasive anymore, all they had to do was have me sleep with a pulse oximeter for a few nights and apparently that was enough.
I am lucky I don't have disruptive sleep issues, but my brain still feels slightly foggy and my battery feels 75% charged in the morning. I imagine if I had disruptive sleep issues I might as well be toast. Or maybe I'm just not aware of disruptions in my sleep...
What's wrong with being toast? :P
My sleep issues are at least manageable.
I was like you. A year ago, I was tired as hell despite sleeping (well, not enough, but I've never slept 'enough'). A few people said sleep apnea but i was not overweight and didn't snore. I tried the test anyway, and it turns out I wasn't breathing. I used an oral appliance and a year later, it's gone and I feel better.
Also, without doing anything my triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and blood sugar which had gone way out of whack, went back to normal.
I started using my oral appliance on a Monday. That Friday I was so energetic I ran 12 miles in one go. I hardly ever run or even practice that much, but I was just so wired that I couldn't help it. It was an amazing feeling. I highly suggest sleep apnea treatment even if you don't think it sounds like you.
I've been using a smart switch to fade in a light (one of the "sun-like" full-spectrum ones) over my head in the morning and it's been really effective for regulating my circadian rhythm. Even with little sleep, I will naturally wake up in the morning at a much more regular time.
I have been using one of those sunrise alarm clocks for around 8 years now. If I go to bed at a reasonable time, the light will wake me up naturally before the alarm actually goes off. However, if I stay up too late the effect of the light fades. I'll sleep right through the light and need the alarm. On one occasion when I must have been really sleep deprived, I slept through the light, an hour of the alarm going off, and another 2-3 hours after that.
If the light turns on too quickly for me it’s super jarring and I hide under the covers. Did you find one that goes bright over the course of 30m or something? Or can you handle the quick increase in brightness?
Smart bulbs.
You can make your artificial sunrise take as long as you want, and connect them to a sleep tracker so they're timed to wake you up during a comfortable phase.
I've been doing this for 12 years, and I don't think I have ever been upset to hear my alarm since, as long as I'm home and the lights have prepared me. Lately I've even been waking up before my alarm about half the time, even though I work on a schedule one time zone east of where I am.
It's shocking to me that it's not more popular for everybody. I guess the benefit is hard to explain.
I have a sunrise alarm clock, I think from Phillips. If I set the alarm for 8am, the light will start turning on at 7:30am then slowly increase in brightness over the next 30 minutes until 8am when it's at full brightness and the alarm goes off (which are nature sounds).
When it first starts, it's more of a warm glow than a light. The max brightness can also be set.
Google for "wake-up light". Philips is the brand I'm familiar with but there are others.
It's a controllable dimmer switch that I fade in over the course of an hour or so using a Home Assistant script.
I do the same with a lifx bulb, it can be set up to fade and colour shift over any duration you like.
I believe it. I even sought out medical advice on how to best deal with it all. I was given the usual recommendation of low-dose melatonin and light therapy.
However, my issue at the time was that I could never find a light with high enough lux values that I felt like I could trust. Plus, another issue with light therapy is that one can basically never stop for any moderate amount of time, and well, my ADHD makes that near impossible.
I honestly think I would have better success with sleep issues if I could just control my own schedule or have a flexible schedule, but that is not really a luxury most jobs can provide.
i like the web new things to see about ADHD.
Embrace the nightly builds :P
uBlock filter to fix selection:
How do the authors disentangle cause and effect here? It doesn't follow that sleep issues are an underlying cause, and not just one of the MANY symptoms of ADHD.
There seems to be some kind of hidden connection between autism and ADHD. At first sight the definitions are contradictory but in reality, many people have both. Sleep disturbance seem to be common among autistic people too.
Oh cool so now people will be told to go to sleep earlier and get more sun before you can prove that you deserve actual treatment. Fun...
Another way to look at this is how many people need more sun and regular sleep and instead are doing unnecessary treatments?
Just an FYI, in circles similar to HN, people will respond very negatively to anyone suggesting anything that might hint at tightening amphetamine prescriptions.
I'm counting on it, I find it deliciously ironic how much there's little interest here in the actual wellbeing of people. The logical hoops people go through here is hilarious.
tbh as a non-user, I think stimulants are likely life improving for many (potentially most) people. what i dislike/chafe at is the insinuation that stimulants only work for people with diagnosed ADHD or only have non-recreational effects for people with ADHD. the latter especially seems to rapidly have become a folk wisdom.
Sure, there's always the middle ground, but there's always the extreme, people abusing amfetamines because a regular human being isn't made to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week, or because after the third pill it's not kicking anymore.
And people should drop the cynicism that just because there are doctors around everyone is well cared for. Just look at the opioid crisis in the US, fuelled by respectable doctors chasing financial incentives.
Roughly, zero. Stimulants are not a fun dependency, come with a bucket list of side effects and downsides, and only mitigate one aspect of ADHD.
ADHD treats with Lisdexamfetamine. Amfetamines, I repeat. People use this to study, to get high at parties, to be functional at work, so I really doubt there aren't patients out there abusing these drugs with valid prescriptions.
Yes, some people will abuse their prescriptions.
But the majority will not. Treating ADHD through stimulants usually has fantastic outcomes for patients.
So it isn't roughly zero, and this minority is what's being discussed here.
No, but if you're trying to argue that sleep therapy would be more effective for this group than non-stimulant form of medication, you need to prove this.
Sleepy therapy (CBT-I) may be the best supported treatment for insomnia, but it's still quite shit. ~50% of people will see little to no improvement after going through therapy.
[delayed]
ADHD is highly treatable with medication, and any other intervention is at best mild mitigation. So how many? Amongst people with ADHD, basically nobody.
Sun and proper sleep is certainly helpful for people with ADHD but the likelihood of them getting that is vastly increased if they’re medicated correctly.
That is doubly important given that one of the effects of the medications, is to disrupt sleep.
Any psychiatrist worth a damn already considers these things.
"ADHD" symptoms can manifest for a variety of reasons, and that's why good ADHD testing involves multiple exams alongside the traditional ADHD ones to help figure out what actual issues are present.
Also, comorbidities make this all the more complicated. Your assertion that people need "more sun" and "regular sleep" could very well be true, yet someone can still have ADHD.
> Any psychiatrist worth a damn already considers these things.
Protocols however are always changing depending on new findings. Not saying this is the case, but not considering something unknown at the time doesn't make a doctor not worth a damn.
> Your assertion that people need "more sun" and "regular sleep" could very well be true, yet someone can still have ADHD.
if that was the case the treatment wouldn't be unecessary, like I specifically wrote in the comment you are replying to.
lists Melatonin, first, then behavioral pseudo-interventions.
stay tuned for more monthly product placements on frontiers in, best digested post prime time.
Welcome to your readjustment. Willkommen beim Nachrichten.
hey, is anyone wondering if kleine & grosse Lauschangriffe are shared with private people or the guys working for these institutions are trustworthy enough and whether they actually deserved their Bachelor degrees or someone somehow decided they are worth it anyway? wait ... it's just a fucking Bachelors degree
Be me. Too AHDH to even open the article, let alone read the article before moving to the next HN post.