This article hits the nail on the head. I had a happy childhood, but my mom is an anxious and stressed person and this really affected me when I was a teenager. Nothing was easy, nothing was chill, any issue that I had became her issue so I couldn't tell her anything etc... Our relationship got better when I matured and did serious work on myself. But at heart I'm an anxious perfectionnist, and I meet any criticism, even constructive, on defensive mode as it makes me feel inadequate.
Along the years, different people have asked me if I had ADHD as I displayed some symptoms ; mind going too fast, forgetfulness, prone to impulsion and addiction, getting overwhelmed or having difficulties making choices etc... For some times I dwelved into it, pondering my symptoms, evaluating if I should get diagnosed etc... Honestly the symptoms are so diverse, and overlapswith other 'neurodiversity' it just never seemed worth it.
The main thing is that I considered I do not have executive dysfunction as I could, and can, DO things, and had successful studies and career. Like you, I figured that improving my physical health (big up to nutrition), my stress management and my outlook on life (meditation ++), it really reduced the symptoms, because it reduced stress.
One important thing is the impact of scrolling and social media on attention. Yeah.... i don't think I have ADHD my brain's just fried on dopamine caused by scrolling lol
I read this while on a bus and my Garmin watch reminded me to relax. I don't have ADHD symptoms, for me it's anxiety and light-to-moderate (not life threatening) panic attacks.
I slept one hour less last night than ideal and I had little blips of anxiety today during otherwise normal moments.
Your comment about conditional self-esteem really hit home. Not in exactly the same way, but I really feel my true laid-back, happy nature being poisoned by my job and some personal life things that prevent me from being the old me. It's very different than what you are saying but I feel like I am loved conditionally to some degree and that's on top of the normal work stresses.
'I think it was only when I was 35 that I had a moment of clarity where I said to myself, “Oh, so many contradictory instructions coming my way, I should try clarifying what is expected of me”.' I am 19 and this is why I keep going. Even though I often don't feel like a functional adult, I have to remind myself that just because I wasn't taught certain skills in childhood doesn't mean I can't learn them now. Neuroplasticity! And honestly, I get giddy with excitement thinking about the growth that is still to come-- maybe slower than I'd like, but it's getting closer all the time. Thank you so, so much for the insightful post.
Great essay -- I agree with you, "ADHD" is almost *always* stress-related. We're in denial of this in the West, in the same ways we're in denial that the typical ways Western children are raised cause mental health issues, or the typical Western diet causes mental health issues. Doctors can't prescribe hugs or lifestyle changes or better family relations, and anyway, pills are profitable.
I have a book on Ayurvedic medicine and under the 'Treatments for Common Medical Conditions' section about "ADHD", it claims that the causative factors are "irregular routine, staying up late, video games/TV, junk food, preservatives, carbonated beverages, leftovers, and lack of parental attention." Dietary treatment is avoiding "vata-increasing foods, dry foods, junk foods, artificial preservatives, carbonated beverages, leftovers" and eating more "vata-pacifying foods, ghee, almonds, walnuts, cardamom, and fennel." Behavioural recommendations include meditation, implementing a daily routine, sesame oil massage, exercising outdoors, avoiding screens, going to bed early, foot massage with ghee before bed, and Vata aroma therapy. Helpful herbs are brahmi, shatavari, ashwagandha, guduchi, Indian valerian.
I'll admit I haven't tried a lot of that stuff (clearly I need to learn how to make ghee!) but there you go.
I was diagnosed with "ADHD" during a period of gut disruption, high stress, poor sleep, poor diet, and while I was in a *very* unhealthy relationship with a bad boyfriend. Dumped the boyfriend, quit my stressful job, purged the disrupted gut microbiome with magic mushrooms (intermittent fasting also accomplishes this), avoided screens for a while, did a bunch of yoga, found a better guy, started eating better and sleeping more and voila "ADHD" cured.
Funny thing though -- during the magic mushrooms purge, I had uncontrollable cravings for walnuts. Which I continue to eat a lot of. I got this book on Ayurvedic healing like three years after that so its funny that under the influence of mushrooms my body instinctively "knew" I needed that. I've also gotten very addicted to cardamom and drink some in tea nightly.
What is this book on Ayurvedic medicine? I _need_ it in my life! Thank you so much for posting this, I had no idea.
It feels like emotional stress is what triggers a lot of things. It feels like we can overcome everything as long as we're able to not be stressed out by it, or have our stress constantly soothed by the presence of loved ones. Having persistent stress through your day-to-day seems like what causes all kinds of health issues.
Ayurvedic Healing: Contemporary Maharishi Ayurveda Medicine and Science (2nd edition) by Hari Sharma MD and Christopher Clark MD! It's a textbook.
I'll admit a lot of it goes over my head or is difficult for me to understand, but I suspect people with backgrounds in Hinduism would have an easier time with it.
Loved your article! My mom and I have been trying to figure out if our ADHD symptoms might be significantly determined by what we're eating. I know you mentioned the raw salad, ice cream, and eliminating ultraprocessed foods; could you elaborate on what you've been eating during the average week that your symptoms haven't been present? Have you restricted or opened your diet in any particular way in the last year? If you could tell me more about what if any meat you've been eating, or even if more broadly speaking, you've significantly reduced/increased your carb/fat/sugar/etc. intake, we'd really appreciate it!
Glad it's helping. So I think I'd be better off if I went keto, but I really love rice. I don't eat breakfast. For lunch I have rice and sambar/vegetable AND I also have a large salad that's all the veggies you find at Subway, dressed with olive oil and vinegar. I have something light for dinner, often a stir-fry. For snacks, I usually have crackers with spiced sour cream (i spice it with jaljeera powder and kashmiri chilli lol). I cook everything in ghee and have generous amounts of ghee in my diet. I don't eat meat or seafood.
What helps is to take mineral supplements especially B-complex and a broad spectrum mineral supplement along with all this.
Having more sugar means more symptoms. Having processed oils means more symptoms plus skin issues.
Another interesting thing I found was I take these stress gummies and the symptoms go away. This one I have has rhodiola, lemon balm, l-theanine, gaba. I also tried this other supplement called phosphoditylserine and it helps. The thing is life just feels "fine" when I have all of this and it doesn't feel like they are doing anything. But if I stop for about a week, it hits me hard lol.
I think the biggest impact comes from the salad. If I go without the salad for more than 2-3 days at a time, I start having more negative thoughts.
If both you and your mom have these issues, I'd suggest you look at your communication patterns especially in contrast to others who you consider normal. It only hit me why the communication patterns I had were causing me stress when my daughter was born and I had to really examine my communication patterns and if they were good to pass on. It helped to contrast this with how my husband communicated.
Great, thanks for letting me know. What you’ve shared is consistent with our experiments as well. I’ll try some gummies with the ingredients you’ve mentioned. To clarify, you’ve personally experienced an obvious increase/decrease in symptoms based on sugar intake?
There are some good points in this article but it is again downplaying the symptoms to an extraordinary degree. Modern Living is stressful for all people(cases of depressions,anxiety are increasing through the roof) but for people with ADHD it is a constant struggle to live normal life from brushing our teeth to eating too little or too much, having time blindness to having addictions with alcohol,drugs,etc. There is no mention of dopamine at all. It all comes off as Self - Helpish to me.
I think i go more into symptoms in earlier posts on this topics. TBH if I don't do that enough, it is because I have a lot of shame about me having any of those symptoms and how debilitating it all is. By the time I wrote this, I didn't have issues with getting up and brushing my teeth and such. A lot of my symptoms just went away on taking broad spectrum mineral supplements and cognitive behavioral therapy.
The point of this post is that my symptoms come up again only when I'm stressed out. I fixed the baseline which was a huge achievement, and I thought I was cured, but stress brings it all back up. I went digging into why and it turns out, it was cortisol all along, and previously my baseline was causing me cortisol spikes from just existing.
A low dose of adaptogens really helps me now as I've discovered since I wrote this.
Wow, I can't believe how accurately you just described my childhood. Even now decades later my parents can still freak out about writing a simple email.
It seems like there's at least a few different things that people call ADHD, and such stress response is just one of them. My husband has been diagnosed with ADHD in early childhood and is the most effective and level-headed person I know, and I guess that's because without all these added stress layers he could simply build effective systems around the way his brain works. When people talk about ADHD online, they usually describe my challenges, not his.
As far as I can tell, he has a hard time doing things that require patience and precision, especially if there's a lot of repetition involved. But instead of procrastinating or stressing over it, he'll always come up with some clever workaround or a way to automate/delegate them. He's also always losing stuff and looking for it, and I suppose he'd be forgetting a lot too if he hadn't spent the last 20 years bulletproofing his note taking system.
This article hits the nail on the head. I had a happy childhood, but my mom is an anxious and stressed person and this really affected me when I was a teenager. Nothing was easy, nothing was chill, any issue that I had became her issue so I couldn't tell her anything etc... Our relationship got better when I matured and did serious work on myself. But at heart I'm an anxious perfectionnist, and I meet any criticism, even constructive, on defensive mode as it makes me feel inadequate.
Along the years, different people have asked me if I had ADHD as I displayed some symptoms ; mind going too fast, forgetfulness, prone to impulsion and addiction, getting overwhelmed or having difficulties making choices etc... For some times I dwelved into it, pondering my symptoms, evaluating if I should get diagnosed etc... Honestly the symptoms are so diverse, and overlapswith other 'neurodiversity' it just never seemed worth it.
The main thing is that I considered I do not have executive dysfunction as I could, and can, DO things, and had successful studies and career. Like you, I figured that improving my physical health (big up to nutrition), my stress management and my outlook on life (meditation ++), it really reduced the symptoms, because it reduced stress.
One important thing is the impact of scrolling and social media on attention. Yeah.... i don't think I have ADHD my brain's just fried on dopamine caused by scrolling lol
I read this while on a bus and my Garmin watch reminded me to relax. I don't have ADHD symptoms, for me it's anxiety and light-to-moderate (not life threatening) panic attacks.
I slept one hour less last night than ideal and I had little blips of anxiety today during otherwise normal moments.
Your comment about conditional self-esteem really hit home. Not in exactly the same way, but I really feel my true laid-back, happy nature being poisoned by my job and some personal life things that prevent me from being the old me. It's very different than what you are saying but I feel like I am loved conditionally to some degree and that's on top of the normal work stresses.
'I think it was only when I was 35 that I had a moment of clarity where I said to myself, “Oh, so many contradictory instructions coming my way, I should try clarifying what is expected of me”.' I am 19 and this is why I keep going. Even though I often don't feel like a functional adult, I have to remind myself that just because I wasn't taught certain skills in childhood doesn't mean I can't learn them now. Neuroplasticity! And honestly, I get giddy with excitement thinking about the growth that is still to come-- maybe slower than I'd like, but it's getting closer all the time. Thank you so, so much for the insightful post.
Great essay -- I agree with you, "ADHD" is almost *always* stress-related. We're in denial of this in the West, in the same ways we're in denial that the typical ways Western children are raised cause mental health issues, or the typical Western diet causes mental health issues. Doctors can't prescribe hugs or lifestyle changes or better family relations, and anyway, pills are profitable.
I have a book on Ayurvedic medicine and under the 'Treatments for Common Medical Conditions' section about "ADHD", it claims that the causative factors are "irregular routine, staying up late, video games/TV, junk food, preservatives, carbonated beverages, leftovers, and lack of parental attention." Dietary treatment is avoiding "vata-increasing foods, dry foods, junk foods, artificial preservatives, carbonated beverages, leftovers" and eating more "vata-pacifying foods, ghee, almonds, walnuts, cardamom, and fennel." Behavioural recommendations include meditation, implementing a daily routine, sesame oil massage, exercising outdoors, avoiding screens, going to bed early, foot massage with ghee before bed, and Vata aroma therapy. Helpful herbs are brahmi, shatavari, ashwagandha, guduchi, Indian valerian.
I'll admit I haven't tried a lot of that stuff (clearly I need to learn how to make ghee!) but there you go.
I was diagnosed with "ADHD" during a period of gut disruption, high stress, poor sleep, poor diet, and while I was in a *very* unhealthy relationship with a bad boyfriend. Dumped the boyfriend, quit my stressful job, purged the disrupted gut microbiome with magic mushrooms (intermittent fasting also accomplishes this), avoided screens for a while, did a bunch of yoga, found a better guy, started eating better and sleeping more and voila "ADHD" cured.
Funny thing though -- during the magic mushrooms purge, I had uncontrollable cravings for walnuts. Which I continue to eat a lot of. I got this book on Ayurvedic healing like three years after that so its funny that under the influence of mushrooms my body instinctively "knew" I needed that. I've also gotten very addicted to cardamom and drink some in tea nightly.
What is this book on Ayurvedic medicine? I _need_ it in my life! Thank you so much for posting this, I had no idea.
It feels like emotional stress is what triggers a lot of things. It feels like we can overcome everything as long as we're able to not be stressed out by it, or have our stress constantly soothed by the presence of loved ones. Having persistent stress through your day-to-day seems like what causes all kinds of health issues.
Ayurvedic Healing: Contemporary Maharishi Ayurveda Medicine and Science (2nd edition) by Hari Sharma MD and Christopher Clark MD! It's a textbook.
I'll admit a lot of it goes over my head or is difficult for me to understand, but I suspect people with backgrounds in Hinduism would have an easier time with it.
Loved your article! My mom and I have been trying to figure out if our ADHD symptoms might be significantly determined by what we're eating. I know you mentioned the raw salad, ice cream, and eliminating ultraprocessed foods; could you elaborate on what you've been eating during the average week that your symptoms haven't been present? Have you restricted or opened your diet in any particular way in the last year? If you could tell me more about what if any meat you've been eating, or even if more broadly speaking, you've significantly reduced/increased your carb/fat/sugar/etc. intake, we'd really appreciate it!
Glad it's helping. So I think I'd be better off if I went keto, but I really love rice. I don't eat breakfast. For lunch I have rice and sambar/vegetable AND I also have a large salad that's all the veggies you find at Subway, dressed with olive oil and vinegar. I have something light for dinner, often a stir-fry. For snacks, I usually have crackers with spiced sour cream (i spice it with jaljeera powder and kashmiri chilli lol). I cook everything in ghee and have generous amounts of ghee in my diet. I don't eat meat or seafood.
What helps is to take mineral supplements especially B-complex and a broad spectrum mineral supplement along with all this.
Having more sugar means more symptoms. Having processed oils means more symptoms plus skin issues.
Another interesting thing I found was I take these stress gummies and the symptoms go away. This one I have has rhodiola, lemon balm, l-theanine, gaba. I also tried this other supplement called phosphoditylserine and it helps. The thing is life just feels "fine" when I have all of this and it doesn't feel like they are doing anything. But if I stop for about a week, it hits me hard lol.
I think the biggest impact comes from the salad. If I go without the salad for more than 2-3 days at a time, I start having more negative thoughts.
If both you and your mom have these issues, I'd suggest you look at your communication patterns especially in contrast to others who you consider normal. It only hit me why the communication patterns I had were causing me stress when my daughter was born and I had to really examine my communication patterns and if they were good to pass on. It helped to contrast this with how my husband communicated.
Great, thanks for letting me know. What you’ve shared is consistent with our experiments as well. I’ll try some gummies with the ingredients you’ve mentioned. To clarify, you’ve personally experienced an obvious increase/decrease in symptoms based on sugar intake?
more sweets = more lethargy but it's downstream of vitamin intake IMO. And I think processed food intake depletes your vitamins faster.
There are some good points in this article but it is again downplaying the symptoms to an extraordinary degree. Modern Living is stressful for all people(cases of depressions,anxiety are increasing through the roof) but for people with ADHD it is a constant struggle to live normal life from brushing our teeth to eating too little or too much, having time blindness to having addictions with alcohol,drugs,etc. There is no mention of dopamine at all. It all comes off as Self - Helpish to me.
I think i go more into symptoms in earlier posts on this topics. TBH if I don't do that enough, it is because I have a lot of shame about me having any of those symptoms and how debilitating it all is. By the time I wrote this, I didn't have issues with getting up and brushing my teeth and such. A lot of my symptoms just went away on taking broad spectrum mineral supplements and cognitive behavioral therapy.
The point of this post is that my symptoms come up again only when I'm stressed out. I fixed the baseline which was a huge achievement, and I thought I was cured, but stress brings it all back up. I went digging into why and it turns out, it was cortisol all along, and previously my baseline was causing me cortisol spikes from just existing.
A low dose of adaptogens really helps me now as I've discovered since I wrote this.
Wow, I can't believe how accurately you just described my childhood. Even now decades later my parents can still freak out about writing a simple email.
It seems like there's at least a few different things that people call ADHD, and such stress response is just one of them. My husband has been diagnosed with ADHD in early childhood and is the most effective and level-headed person I know, and I guess that's because without all these added stress layers he could simply build effective systems around the way his brain works. When people talk about ADHD online, they usually describe my challenges, not his.
Can you tell me more about how your husband's issues manifest?
As far as I can tell, he has a hard time doing things that require patience and precision, especially if there's a lot of repetition involved. But instead of procrastinating or stressing over it, he'll always come up with some clever workaround or a way to automate/delegate them. He's also always losing stuff and looking for it, and I suppose he'd be forgetting a lot too if he hadn't spent the last 20 years bulletproofing his note taking system.