The Forums › Forums › What is it? › Co-morbidities/Secondary Disorders › ADD/PCOS overlap? › Re: ADD/PCOS overlap?
Hi Jeannius,
I just googled pcos ‘adhd-symptoms’ and found your post. I am diagnosed with pcos since two years. At that time it was taken very lightly (both by me and by the doctor) and the doctor was only focusing on treatment with hormones in order to get my period going, which apparently decreases the higher risk of cancer that comes with not having any bleeding at all. I never really understood at that point that it could have anything to do with psychological problems.
However, a year ago I got in contact with a psychologist who though my emotional problems relates to ADHD and I have now been through an extensive ADHD-investigation for several months. All my symptoms pointed in the direction of ADHD and everyone (doctor, psychologist and psychiatrist) seemed very certain that ADHD was the problem. However, during the investigation my psychologist suggested me to test changing diets. Now, I am a skinny person and has always been, so I have never bothered about diets at all before. I have eaten healthy for most of my life, but I have never really had to care about sugar, carbs or fat. I seem to burn it all like crazy. But I agreed to do the test and during 6 weeks time I ate strict LCHF (Low Carb High Fat). Before, during and after we redid the ADHD-tests. The result was amazing. I was a totally different person! On carbs I scored bad! Bad enough to fall well below the criteria for ADHD. And we tested twice (I scored 71/126 on the first one and 50/126 on the second one. 100 is considered ‘normal average’). Without carbs I only made two mistakes and I scored 124/126 – well above avarage.
This fact made the psychiatrist to eventually not give me the ADHD-diagnos. He thinks the symptoms relate to the pcos and he thinks that I have a malfunctioning metabolism of carbs, meaning that my cells/muscles cannot use the glucos from the blood and that I basically am allergic to it. So now starts a whole new process of investigating levels of hormones, metabolism etc.
I feel really confused at this time. I don’t know what is an effect of what anymore (pcos or adhd? dopamin or insulin?) but I really hope that I will get to the root cause (I am sure it all has to do with some kind of unbalance of something). And I really think that you are on to something with your question. It’s absolutely linked somehow. Maybe there are pcos persons getting ADHD-diagnoses wrongly? Maybe a pcos person like myself actually also have ADHD, but removing carbs removes the whole fuel and just eases the symptoms. Who knows?
Long answer with no real answers….
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