The ABCs of ADHD

This is the core of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Problems with attention, not necessarily a deficit actually, that’s why the name’s not so great, because sometimes we can hyper focus we’ll talk about that later.

That’s how you feel until you get the proper diagnosis otherwise you think you’re weird, dumb, weak willed, lazy, and you’re not.

A lot of people use cannabis as a way to manage their ADHD.  It does help with anxiety but not a lot of evidence it helps with procrastination and focus.

What exactly is ADHD?  Well it’s not necessarily a deficit it’s certainly not a disease.  A disease you can get cured of, this is kind of, as we’ll see something you’re hardwired with, so we call it a disorder.  Some people just say it causes disorder unless you get a diagnosis.

A powerful strategy, really helps with focus, lots of studies have shown this, it all helps really with any issue, mental or physical.

Right, so we have problems with what’s called working memory, keeping things in mind, we can wander into the room and go what did I come here for? and go back, remember and come back.  What was it again?

ADHD is highly heritable about as heritable as your height, as well the genes have been identified, what they call suspect genes, some are strongly associated, some are not, but over a hundred and five genes have been identified.

Some people have the Combined Subtype of ADHD where we have the hyperactivity and the problems with attention, some people don’t have this hyperactivity this and the impulsivity, they just have the inattention and that’s called the predominantly inattentive

subtype of ADHD, and then there’s the combined subtype which some of us have, all right a lot of us have that actually.

If you find the right job you can soar with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder but that requires knowledge, not only knowledge of ADHD but knowledge of your particular symptoms because you won’t necessarily struggle with the same ones that other people have.  When you’ve got 100

however many genes they’ve identified so far and more showing up.

Which is your happy one and then norepinephrine um which becomes noradrenaline and turns into adrenaline and so we often well we’ll see we get into that we often substitute adrenaline for what we really need so that’s the neurotransmitters.

We can go all over the place, we can be very creative thinkers because we jump all over the place.

It may look odd to other people the way our brains work  and in some ways it is odd we’re certainly not in the majority, but once you have been  diagnosed then you have an understanding of it.

Parenting problems, because ADHD is genetic because it’s highly heritable and it runs in families you end up with parents one or both who have ADHD trying to parent one or more kids who have ADHD and that can lead to some challenges and novelty seeking, so we’ll often crave something original.

So a lot of people take omega-3s and swear by them, I don’t know if there’s a ton of evidence, there’s certainly growing evidence that diet can make a difference.

So executive function’s another great way to think of this is if you think of what the executives do in a company, planning, long-term thinking making sure the right color door arrives at the assembly line onto the right colored car and all the parts fit and every car is exactly the same, those are executives and that’s not necessarily us.   We could come up with 155 great great designs and ideas for the car but…

Obviously that can be a problem.  I did find one odd way to improve my focus, I blogged about improving my focus here.

People with ADHD are uniformly gorgeous are we not? I thought you might agree with that.

A holistic treatment plan, I miss that one strategy or medication or exercise…  one isn’t going to do it you need a number of them, coaching and all

different kinds of things.  You can draw upon a number, so a holistic or multi-modal  plan is really a good idea.

We are prone to more emergency room visits, more car accidents, more bicycle accidents and so on and so on.

Quirky, again we can appear to be weird or quirky and think we’re a little weird and quirky and maybe we are but that means we’re often very  creative, we’re lateral thinkers, we think outside of the box.

Depression good I’ll mention depression and ADHD, we have a higher rate of comorbidities like depression and anxiety and now I’m back at the start, this is ridiculous.

There we go R is also for restlessness now as a kid you’re bouncing off the wall as an adult it’s probably a little more internalized, you’re more  driven so it’s driven and that is the predominantly combined subtype and then there’s procrastination, big problem we put things off we struggle to start things  or we start things too easily and then never finish them.

Ritalin everybody knows about Ritalin, that’s one of the number of medications that people take instead of self medicating with caffeine or alcohol

or whatever.

My favorite strategy, one of them is start small so I’ll break something up into small pieces, and the danger is that I can hyper focus like you know spending all morning working on this and really running out of time to make it look good.

Time management often late, often forgetful about things, rushing at the last minute, relying upon adrenaline. So time management you is… for

university and college people with ADHD often drop out, fail to complete their degree, or as I did settle for a lesser degree, and that has changed because a lot of the universities and colleges now recognize that if they provide accommodations some of them are really simple, it can make a dramatic difference and they can have students… how did i get back to A?

The ADHD diagnosis can explain feelings of grief, hopelessness, regret, sadness and anger.  So emotions can be a big challenge for people with ADHD.

I do Yoga every morning many people do, very soothing, helps to slow the brain down and start the day off right.

X-Rays uh which don’t really show any difference but MRI’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging they do show the brain tends to operate differently in us, it’s quite distinctive actually it’s kind of cool, I guess that was it why it’s useful, we can also we’ve often been described as useful which is a polite term for immature and goofy.

Zero because we can suffer from  discalculia we can have trouble with numbers or with letters in fact forty percent of kids with ADHD struggle with a learning disorder, like this calculator or more commonly dyslexia.

not bees not killer hornets zed for sleep like that’s zed’s come out when you’re asleep zed’s come out and so we do have problems sleeping trying to shut off a brain, the common joke is we’re half asleep at eight and wide awake at two in the morning, like eight in the evening and then in the morning anyway so there you are i’ve covered them all yes.

Self medicating  is using adrenaline or other things like caffeine.  I was drinking so much caffeine until i figured out what was going on and strength that’s the other thing, you want to approach this with a strength-based approach, a plan that is like everybody whether you have ADHD or not, your future lies in your strengths not in your deficits.

Okay that’s it.

Sensitivity shoot so much sensitivity we can be overly sensitive to sight to sound to interruptions and so on as for scary movies I never watch scary movies that gets into the emotions again.

I’m stopping now because i can hear zeds coming out of your nose, or is it your eating mouth?  It’s not your ears.