2 weeks Ago By Amy Denney
Imagine being the school band director and waking up at 1 a.m. on the day of a big parade to realize that you never booked the school bus to transport your students.
For Lisa Burden, this experience was more than a nightmare. It was a wake-up call to her own shortcomings. While exceptionally bright and creative, she also had to contend with another side of herself.
She’d struggled since childhood with challenges like being able to keep track of things and being told she talked too much. “There were responsibilities that I would just forget to do. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do them,” she told The Epoch Times.
“I came to a point when I had to admit I could not keep it all in my head. I’ll have a thought, and then I don’t know when I’ll have that thought again.” While attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that can undermine a person’s ability to navigate our modern age, in some ways, it is more helpful to think of it as a mismatch of mental abilities.
ADHD involves symptoms of inattentiveness, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity, among others. Trouble paying attention or being easily distracted Being disorganized Procrastinating Inability to plan or organize Difficulty recalling daily tasks Losing things frequently Being extremely talkative or frequently interrupting Trouble multitasking or focusing on larger projects Finding it hard to follow instructions or finish projects Inability to sit still for lengthy periods Fidgeting The need to be constantly moving Prioritizing immediate rewards over future rewards She told The Epoch Times that social media has given voice to people who are describing their experiences with ADHD and raising it as a possibility for many people who might not have considered it previously. For a number of years, ADHD was stereotypically considered a disorder associated with young boys.
That, particularly, left a lot of girls undiagnosed in childhood who went on to be diagnosed as adults. However, professionals are beginning to better understand that symptoms can vary depending on race, sex, and age, Caldwell said. They are also noting that children often don’t outgrow ADHD, as was previously believed in most cases.
Rather, she said symptoms relapse and remit throughout life depending on other circumstances. Sleep Exercise Nutrition Medication Meditation Connection The problem, Caldwell added, is that most people try to change how their brains work so they can function in the world rather than changing the world for how their brains work. That means if you need to move more, as many with ADHD do, consider using a standing or treadmill desk, take frequent breaks, and exercise before work to build up energy stores.
When you eat carbohydrates, your body converts them into glucose, which raises blood sugar. Spikes in blood sugar can cause you to fidget and become inattentive, groggy, or sleepy, according to Beth Lambert, founder and executive director of Epidemic Answers, an educational platform for parents of children with ADHD and other childhood conditions. She shared a story that illustrates how important metabolism can be for brain health.
When a friend of hers learned that one of her children had Type 1 diabetes, she put the whole family on a low-carbohydrate diet. Her three children, who’d all been diagnosed with ADHD, began to lose signs of the disorder, experience behavior improvements, and eventually stop using medication. “Altered levels of nutrients, such as vitamin D, iron, zinc, and PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids), have also been associated with the aggravation and progression of ADHD.
Therefore, diet has emerged as a treatment option for ADHD,” wrote the authors. Another reason tweaking diet is so effective, Lambert said, is because of the link between the gut microbiome and the brain. The gut microbiome is all the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that live in the gut.
Many Americans have some type of imbalance, and those fluctuations have been associated with a number of diseases, including ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and dementia, among others. The authors wrote, “If replicated, these results could help identify targets for nutritional interventions or microbiota-targeted pre-/probiotics as treatment support for reactive aggression, especially in the context of adult ADHD.” “The world we live in and the influences we are exposed to every day are myriad and can influence our body’s ability to function,” Lambert said.
“Symptoms are just the body saying something is out of balance.” Two-thirds of health care practitioners aren’t trained to handle adult ADHD. Over-reliance on basic diagnostic surveys that one study found wrongly indicated ADHD in up to 90 percent of cases.
The role of environmental toxins like lead paint and cigarette exposure in fetal development and early childhood is often overlooked. ADHD diagnosis relies on observation. It’s tricky to distinguish ADHD from other conditions like anxiety, medical conditions that affect thinking and behavior, and side effects of certain drugs like steroids, antihistamines, and caffeine.
Not much was understood about ADHD, particularly in women, when Burden, now 43, was growing up. There are a growing number of triggers associated with our modern lifestyle that can alter the brain and mirror symptoms of ADHD. Seizure disorder Alcohol or other substance misuse Brain injury Low blood sugar Hormone imbalances, such as thyroid problems Beyond structural issues, sleep can also be disrupted by behavior.
“The modern American lifestyle is staying up ’til midnight. We’re on our devices. We’re looking at blue light on our iPads or our phones.
Blue light suppresses melatonin, which prevents you from sleeping, then that perpetuates insomnia and sleep problems,” Lambert said. With regard to easy tips that anyone can use to improve their sleep, setting one’s circadian rhythms by viewing the sun outside in the morning, minimizing the time in front of screens, especially in the three hours before bed, being outside as much as possible, and limiting bright artificial lights, especially at night, could all help. Several strategies can also help when it comes to offsetting tendencies of forgetfulness and an inability to focus.
However, when it comes to ADHD, tools are best personalized and automated, Caldwell said. For instance, one client of hers was having trouble getting her children to bed. She would tell them to go to bed, and then she would get engrossed with an activity and realize they were staying up beyond bedtime because she’d become distracted.
She resolved the chaotic bedtime problem by setting several alarms every night at intervals to remind her and her children to stay on task. Sometimes, drilling down to a solution often requires understanding what’s motivating the behavior, which can also be attached to an ADHD strength yet to be uncovered. That was the case with Caldwell and her husband, who has ADHD.
He would often interrupt her, which made her feel hurt, and he wasn’t sure why he kept doing it. “As we started to dig into it, he only interrupted me when he was excited and enthusiastic about what I was saying. I interpreted it as he didn’t care about what I was saying, but it was exactly the opposite,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell said it’s vital to preserve the strengths of people with ADHD while working out the kinks in brain function. It’s not just to their benefit, but it encourages them to work through vulnerabilities so others can be the recipients of their positive qualities. “There’s a lot about the ADHD brain that doesn’t always work well in our current societal structure and makes us feel like ADHD is a problem, and there’s a lot of suffering that comes for folks with ADHD,” she said.
“But a lot of that suffering comes from a mismatch with the environment rather than it being a problem itself.”.
