(Adhd joke hehe/no hehe)
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.
"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.
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
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.
But the majority will not. Treating ADHD through stimulants usually has fantastic outcomes for patients.
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.
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.
The associations with ADHD really are there, but that may just also be because a huge number of brain processes have a circadian regulation, and those get disrupted by whatever is causing ADHD.
The causality is also bidirectional, because whatever ADHD does could cause light exposure behavioral changes, which could leave a circadian phenotype.
In general, a huge number of diseases have circadian phenotypes. To be a circadian disorder, you’d have to have clock mutations, and ADHD really doesn’t have those. So calling it a circadian disorder feels off.
But from personal experience, the linkage is strong enough to warrant deeper research, and beyond that, there’s some steps we can take ourselves. Regular walks in nature, going out to get sun… all generally useful things to do that do seem to help ADHD as well.
This seems the most likely given my own experience with ADHD and sleep issues. Good sleep alleviates some of the worse aspects of ADHD. Conversely bad sleep exacerbates ADHD symptoms which can also worsen sleep, etc.
My 23andme profile says I have genes associated with delayed sleep. ADHD (and autism) really seem like they're driven by a cluster of multiple genes with many overlapping between people with the condition(s), but not all.
One rationale for that is how surprisingly prevalent ADHD is across many societies, which only makes sense to me if there's multiple genes which combine and which together confer various advantages to societies as a whole (if not to the individuals). One of the gene sets seem to be sleep issues. It makes sense in a pop-psychology level evolutionary biology where the "creative" types also tend to stay up later which might give them more focus time, or perhaps for story tellers / poets recounting tribal history, etc.
I hope this area gets more research. These things are highly inheritable among families.
But the clock itself has a population wide variation in its actual period. It varies between 23.8 hours and 24.6 hours, and everyone far from the 24 hour ideal pays a tax. The clock either has to phase advance or phase delay to synchronize, and over time that has all kinds of impacts, including on sleep, but also memory and learning, stress, attention…
The whole system is clocked. Every cell in our body runs a 24 hour cycle, driven by the transcription, translation, inhibition and breakdown of the core clock proteins. They’re in a negative feedback loop, with a time delay, and all kinds of mutations can shift the overall period of the clock. If it’s of a core clock protein, the effect will be strong, but other genes cycle or have their functions in a cycle due to the clock, and feed back into the clock, so small mutations can accumulate to cause circadian period variation.
It’s also why you see circadian phenotypes in all kinds of diseases. Definitely needs more research, but the research is also hard. You need to observe the body in high resolution over many time points to start making sense of all this, and that’s expensive and exhausting. We’ll get there, though.
I know because I am on the spectrum and suffer from overload. At night is my "flow time" when the creativity happens.
I also have polymorphism in my melatonin, receptor genetics that are linked to this disorder. But I have several other genetics that make this a definite polygenic disease. So I highly doubt chronology efforts are going to work in a holistic way.
My heritage is a Sami people of Finland. And my disorder is most likely related to that heritage and my sensitivity to light changes. But also changes in my diet. Specifically higher omega-3 fatty acids, and I mean really high.
> 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)
Eg see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/29/frontiers-retract-122...
problem solved I guess
I don't know about Frontiers in Psych specifically, but, see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1oi5dhy/whats_...
- 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.
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.
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)
However, it's almost like I'm so conditioned to being groggy in the mornings that I still find it hard to get up even if I feel fairly refreshed.
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)
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.
My sleep issues are at least manageable.
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.
Tried it with gusto over about 3, among a ton of other things. Didn't work for me at all.
> we propose a pragmatic, behavioral-first clinical pathway
Read: cheap
> Read: cheap
I mean, if it works great, if it doesn't there's a lot of other options.
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.
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.
When it first starts, it's more of a warm glow than a light. The max brightness can also be set.
www.frontiersin.org##.InfoDrawerHowever, 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.
The whole sleep hygiene things been sort of discredited and doctors just follow a script with like 5 things they will prescribe you for sleep problems and after those 5 things it’s like oh well we tried
I once showed them a study I found online in a reputable journal (at least the study was conducted by someone from a well regarded university in a journal that wasn’t obviously bad)
The doctor didn’t even look at the study, he just saw where it came from and said “yeah we don’t use that journal”
I would have much more appreciated an answer if I don’t have time to read your bullshit vs what he gave me
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.
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…
> see this title
> think authors are reversing causation hard
-- signed, a deep Night Owl
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
And the cruel tragedy is that it becomes this self-reinforcing cycle.
Sleep bad > "Bad" ADHD day > Harder to fall asleep. Rinse. Repeat.
>get on the floor
>walk the dinosaur
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.
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...
Associations between sleep problems in children with ADHD and parental insomnia and ADHD symptoms
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.
Impossible to express just how deeply frustrating it is to have the “sleep when I want you to, not when you want to” kind of fight. Over and over. For decades after being a grown ass adult.
It’s weird that it has to be explained to 24h normies but pressuring someone to alter a part of their biology like this is wrong. Gosh honey, plastic surgery might be uncomfortable in an ongoing way for you, but I’m willing to take that risk. Gee babe, I see you need a vegan/carnivore lifestyle but please change this just doesn’t work for me.
People can always make these things their red line and force the issue I guess, find out where the other person’s red line is. The weird part is that the sleep thing is generally accepted as reasonable and polite society kinda regards the other behaviors as very unacceptable
That's enough synchronization that I am going to give some thought to what the crossovers times with "normals" will be, and may try it.
Synchronizing across M-F, then adjusting between Friday evening and Monday morning, to repeat.
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)
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.
I did this for several years. It works great
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.
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.
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
Some people are just night owls. A large percentage of night owls have ADHD. I think they can linked without it meaning that people with ADHD have to learn to get up at 5AM.
Keep staying up late if that's what feels natural for you, but it's probably worth making sure that you're still getting enough sleep and that you don't have other issues (like sleep apnea) keeping you from getting the quality of sleep you need. There's a lot of other health issues associated with sleep disorders and sleep problems will tank people's ability to focus even when they have non-ADHD brains.
but there's a strong cultural bias to judge people that wake up at 11am as lazy. and people that stay up to 4am are reckless.
but somebody that slept the same seven hours from 11pm-6am is pragmatic and responsible.
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).
being perpetually sleep-deprived wrecks everyone. If you've got ADHD getting the sleep you need won't cure it, but it will make it easier to manage. If you don't have ADHD, but a lot of the symptoms fit for you, getting sleep might those all go away.
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.
I'm not sure that's an entirely fair way to frame that. ADHD people can be highly motivated by reward, but being motivated isn't enough to consistently navigate the path from wanting something to getting something. Reward can make you want something more, and even try harder for it, but ADHD means that sometimes no matter how much you want something and how hard you try it just doesn't happen.