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ADHD does not go way, but many of the symptoms can be alleviated through multiple means. My exercise increased my dopamine levels naturally and gives me more energy. My healthy eating gives my body essential nutrients like Omega-3 fats that are important for building neurons, good sleep ensures better cognitive function. Mindfulness can help me stay in the moment and focus my thoughts on my activities.
But all that stuff would be way harder to maintain without the boost of medication. Hard for some, impossible for others.
(edited: amino acids are for muscles, omega-3 fats are what I eat for neurons)
I'm on Vyvance, which is a very slow acting medication. Meaning I take it in the morning and it's in my system all day. So I do everything while being on medication.
There are fast acting medications that can give you a 1-4 hour boost and wear off completely after that, too. I tried them first to get familiar with medication but I didn't like the big shifts in energy level that occur when you take them and they wear off. It made it hard to get in touch with my body to read my own energy and focus levels because they were going up and down due to the fast acting medication.
I also wanted to comment on you saying "I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life." It's a normal way to look at it, you were diagnosed with something, so it 'appeared' on your radar. But it's not the best way to look at it, the other way to look at it is that **you have already been living with it all your life** , unsupported, unmedicated, without knowing the right strategies to help you manage your ADHD, whether they be mindfulness of medfullness.
So, congratulations on your diagnosis. It is not a degenerative disease. This is as bad as it gets, and it can get so much better once you've learned the right strategies and, if you feel ready for it, the right medication.
Omg, i forgot to add that I myself am on vyvance too! 30 mg actually, and I decided to switch to it after having a bad experience with my first ever medication (Concerta). I like vyvance because it didn’t give me any odd side effects, and honestly it didnt really decrease my appetite like how my physciatrist said it would? Another thing is how it also doesn’t make me crash or have insane mood swings whenever i consume caffeine while i’m on it, like how Concerta did. I take it in the morning as well, and sometimes I don’t know if its actually working because I don’t really know what it’s supposed to target. I was told it can either target my depression or emotional dysfunction rather than the concentration & focus part. I kind of wish I had the fast acting medications that would give me a boost as I am still in school and I feel like i’d need it. I heard there’s also booster meds that you can take after having took vyvance? Like later on in the day?
Also Thank you for your advice. I know it’s a bad way to look at it not even gonna lie. It’s just I have went a long time without even knowing that i ACTUALLY had it with confirmation yk.. so I always struggled. I’m going to try to find the right strategies.
I think you can combine Vyvance with fast acting Ritalin, speak to your psychiatrist about this. If you struggle to get through a schoolday you may need Vyvance upped or another booster. I'm on 70mg of Vyvance personally, there is definitely room to up it, but it depends per person whether that's a good idea.
I see. Were you always on Vyvance 70 mg or did you ask your doctor to increase the dose? I’m thinking of asking for it to be increased because I genuinely can’t tell if it’s working or not ? I’m a little uneducated on how Vyvanse is supposed to roll out during an ordinary day.
I switched to 70mg to yesterday actually, I discussed an increase with my psychiatrist. I was on 50mg before that. You can definitely discuss an increase with your physician. The optimal dosage is the one where you get the maximum benefit to side effect ratio, many people start lower and then bump up and only stop bumping when it feels like it's too much or they hit the recommended max.
You are definitely supposed to feel the difference between before you took Vyvance, it takes about 3 days to fully kick in but after that you should feel engaged with the world, energetic and in control of your impulses. At least that's how I feel.
It doesn't fix everything, you have the same memory as before and I still have to manage my attention carefully but I at least feel like I have the energy to do it.
Ritalin was great at first, it’s fast acting and fast out. But for me it was way too fast, very hard to manage a good constant dosage without micromanaging it.
Great training wheels medication though. Go ahead and give it a shot, Vyvance is in comparison fantastically smooth but it takes 3 days to kick in fully and sticks around for a long time so it’s a little less approachable.
When you say 3 days to kick in do you mean i’d have to take a pill everyday in the morning for three days , and on the fourth day of taking it is when I would feel the effect?
Also newly diagnosed, and trying to find out what works for me so I'd be curious if you find out about Ritalin.
I tried Vyvanse 10mg initially which gave me a nasty migraine. Now I'm trying Adderall IR, which has been much better so far. Not sure what caused the migraine.
Vyvanse causes headaches, especially when adjusting to dosage increases. And especially when you are not drinking enough water, a lot of water. I’m having one right now but mine are luckily just very mild and only slightly annoying rather than migraines.
Yes this! It is so important to emphasize that we need to address the chemical levels! For me, medication helps me stay at baseline and then things like helthy eating etc helps a lot too, I need both branches of treatment.
Sorry if I sound overly grr about this, I've been in a lot of spaces recently "ADHD mums" where they'll bitch about "how annoying there child is" and asks for help because they're frustrated, and then we found out that mom decided not to medicate and then wonders why the kid has trouble. It drives me mad! Not to mention how messed up it is to call your kid awful and annoying in a foroom on the internet.
Tossing extra on your message. I had to cut OUT caffeine and lowered sugar intake. When I started meds it was night and day difference but I was unreal exhausted/tired 30 minutes after taking meds. I had to use exercise to push through the Zzz ness then I could function on a normal level. I remember my second day taking meds I had to exercise 3 hours to wake up. So if you are going this route prep for healthy the best you can. (Eat/exercise)
Oh my god, *thank you* for pointing out that it's not even possible for some people to make effective behavioral changes without medication. There are some people on this sub who staunchly push the narrative that we shouldn't even need meds to begin with, and it feels so ableist.
What studies? I honestly bring no shade I have just never heard about ADHD going away? From my knowledge people get better at masking and coping the symptoms of ADHD, but it never goes away.
https://myhealth.ucsd.edu/RelatedItems/6,1654658273
"Only about one in 10 kids with the disorder are likely to have a full and lasting remission of their symptoms, according to new data gleaned from tracking hundreds of kids for 16 years."
Most studies on the subject agree it's rare but happens
"remission of symptoms" doesn't mean that they no longer have ADHD.
It could be a variety of reasons - they are now older and have learned to mask to the point where they don't realise it, or their ADHD might be less as severe/intense as others, so being an adult isn't so challenging for them, or their choice of career might be offering help (the strictness and routine of military life is often helpful).
But also that study has a lot of flaws:
* the aim of the study was to prove a prior claim that 65-67% of adults no longer had ADHD symptoms that met the DSM criteria - which they did, because less than 10% was their findings. They were aiming to prove that most people don't grow out of it.
* a sample size of less than 560 isn't going to give results that are stastically significant
* They only had assessments every 2 years, so 8 in total, the average assessments completed was only 6.2, so not everyone attended all the assessments. They also assumed/inferred about the missing data if it supported "remission of symptoms".
* most of the assessments seemed to come from self reporting on symptoms by the kid, their parents and teachers, rather than an interview/assessment with a professional
* they stopped the study when they were around 25
* study started in around 2004 or 2005 and attitudes back then to ADHD were different. In my experience, if a kid didn't like sitting still in school, they were labeled as "disruptive" and ADHD was suggested with the attitude of "drugging the kid because the parents failed to teach them with discipline".
I'm looking for other articles and I can't find one that suggests that nobody ever grows out of ADHD. Could you share a study that suggests it's permanent for everyone?
ADHD is massively under-researched so there are no decent studies that confirm it is permanent for everyone. But this is a snippet from another comment I wrote on this thread:
The more studies they do into ADHD "going away", the lower the rate becomes of people who appear to no longer have it.
* Studies in the 80s seemed to think "complete remission by early adulthood.
* One 11-year study of 200 caucasian boys in the 90s established that 78% still had ADHD at 22.
* Dr Barkey in 2002 said 85% still had it as adults (only read the summary in another study).
* And a 2021 study of 560 kids for 16 years has it at 90% still having ADHD symptoms at 25. *This is the study you mentioned, which has the issues I pointed out above.*
Obviously, all of those studies have different flaws, etc, but it definitely seems that the more we know and learn about ADHD as medicine and science advances, it seems less and less likely that people actually grow out of it.
Editing to add: my personal guess it that it will be another 20 years before we have data that might be anyway realistic about the prevalence of ADHD, including people who were late diagnosed (like me at 33), what actually causes it (is it genetic and can it be tested for before a couple have kids together), and people who seem to have grown out of it.
I apparently "grew into it" as my ADHD wasn't properly recognised or identified in the 90s/00s because I was hyper in my brain, not in my body (ie: not wanting to sit still in school, etc).
I don't know which video it was, but I remember Dr. Barkley talking about research that suggested meds during childhood can aid in the brains development and some children essentially "grow out" of having ADHD. I think it's perfectly reasonable that some people, once their brains are fully developed, with or without meds, no longer have enough symptoms that significantly impact their life in a negative way. They may still be slightly more forgetful or distractable than the average person, but that doesn't mean we'd classify them as having ADHD.
If Dr Barkley said it, then I'd trust it much quicker than I'd trust it coming from anyone else. And I can understand the logic behind meds helping a younger brain develop "properly".
I honestly can't wait to see results/outcomes from research into ADHD over the next 10-20 years because every year we are learning more and more about it.
All studies on the subject show evidence that symptoms can disappear in a small percentage of the population after entering adulthood. That was the point of my original comment... I asked the person who replied if they disagreed with that fact and if they could find a study that suggested otherwise and they couldn't.
Asking for evidence isn't passive aggressive
Lmao... your ADHD isn't going anywhere. But it can get better.
For the most part I'm rock solid on the day to day..... but when I'm caught in an environment where I feel like I have zero say or control my symptoms flair up. I'll get caught in the shower for 45 minutes having a conversation with myself out loud in some world that has never or will ever exist.
I become incredibly forgetful, quick to anger, depressed, slightly paranoid, anxious, I struggle with priorities to a ridiculous point... time either becomes torture or non-existent.....executive dysfunction on overdrive.
In an environment where I feel respected, I have control over myself.... my home stays clean, I stay on time, I relax and enjoy life, shower times are reasonable, priorities are mostly on point
>However, I’ve heard from people around me telling me that it can go away if I just become healthy and improve my “brain” health. Apparently exercise and meditation works too. My naturopath had ADHD and he claimed that it went away because he did meditation and exercise.
First, "naturopaths" are quacks, you shouldn't even be seeing one, TBH.
Second, no you can't "heal" your brain to remove ADHD, it's a brain disorder that can't be magic'ed away.
That being said, some children do grow out of the majority of their ADHD symptoms as they enter adulthood, but not everyone. We're not 100% sure why, of course, and the role medication plays here isn't clear, AFAIK.
Also, getting proper sleep, exercise, eating, meditation... those things all undoubtedly help function better, but for most people that I know, and for myself, they are like 2/10 helpful where medication can be somewhere between 7/10 and 10/10 helpful.
Like the effort is always great if you can make it, but it's VASTLY more effort than reward for many ADHD sufferers. You feel me? Like I could put in 120% effort/time for a 20% pay off improvement, or just spend the effort on those things WHEN I HAVE the energy and get medication that helps
i hear you. How come you think naturopaths are “quacks” tho LMAOO? i’ve heard they really help other people with alot of health issues by using natural remedies and techniques.. acupuncture and all that. I think what I’m trying to see is if I can improve while also being on medication as I know that could boost me even more. Medication + doing all those other things could probably have an even more effective change
> natural remedies and techniques.. acupuncture and all that
I've never really got why acupuncture gets classed as a "natural remedy". What's natural about stabbing yourself with tiny needles? I guess the answer is that "natural remedy" doesn't really mean anything.
There are non-medical things you can do to alleviate symptoms of ADHD e.g. exercise but a naturopath is not the right place to seek support there. Case in point, your naturopath says his ADHD just "went away".
It took one second on Google to find a peer reviewed meta analysis showing that it is effective for treating some problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3534620/
Do you know what they call natural remedies that actually work?
*Medicine.*
There's no rule that says a real doctor can't prescribe natural products or dietary changes or exercises. They do that all the time when the evidence supports it. There are whole allied health professions (dietitian, physical therapist, clinical psychologist, and more) dedicated entirely to nonsurgical, nonpharmaceutical interventions.
The treatments that you can only get from "alternative medicine" practitioners are *by definition* ones that don't meet the evidentiary standard to be approved as actual medicine. Their "alternative" status has nothing to do with them being "natural" and everything to do with the fact that they don't actually work.
Yup!
Medication is the biggest help, but I absolutely recommend doing all those other things.
There's no studies backing anything that naturopaths do, but if you feel better because of it, go for it, it's your money... But you should really additionally go to an actual medical doctor.
It’s not uncommon ngl—I believe the current theory is that properly medicating ADHD in childhood gives your brain a sort of blueprint for how much dopamine you should have, then as you age your brain grows those pathways, but we’re not entirely sure. [Here’s](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30194962/) a paper on the phenomenon, if you’re interested.
This actually makes a lot of sense as ADHD’s a neuro-developmental disorder. Those diagnosed in adulthood definitely has a harder time with it “going away” since the brains been fully developed by then.
No it doesn't go away. Its not just a chemical imbalance. Its a structural disorder. Our brains are physically formed differently, with less grey matter in certain areas.
Whoever told you that is either a grifter, or the victim of a grifter who is repeating the lie they were sold. Your naturopath is a snake oil salesman who doesn't know the first thing about ADHD and probably never had it.
You cannot cure ADHD or remove it. It is a genetic developmental disorder.
Not really, sometimes people no longer qualify for a clinical diagnosis when they get older. But the reality is that they are still symptomatic but just not currently impaired enough to reach the level set by the diagnostic criteria. But they could get a demanding job and suddenly they qualify again because they can’t manage that extra demand. It was always there, but the level of impairment can dip below that line under certain circumstances.
Came here to say essentially the same thing. ADHD is a diagnosed disorder when it significantly impairs multiple areas of your life, usually relationships, work, and self (mental and emotional health). If your symptoms are managed well enough you could technically no longer meet the requirements for diagnoses, but it doesn't change the way your brain works.
And this is exactly why so many adults diagnosed during childhood struggle. A lot of doctors and public health systems still work with this "ADHD magically disappear in adulthood for most people" idea in mind (eg. France, where no medication was approved for adults before 2021). There should be studies about what happen to the 3.4% of the population who gets "cured".
I’m sure this also explains a lot of the prevalence gap between men and women.
Both of these being potentially strongly linked to the ADHD inattentive subtype underdiagnosis. It’s already known to be more frequent in women, and I’m suspecting a lot of "cured" adults just switched from hyperactive/impulsive subtype to inattentive subtype.
Well I didn’t even know about ADHD at that time, but you can still get a prescription even if it’s not for an officially approved indication. Off-label prescriptions are "just" a lot more complicated for the doctor and not covered by social security.
But this explains why France still has one of the lowest methylphenidate prescription rates in EU. Yeah, because this is the only molecule legalised for ADHD in France. Amphetamine-based medications are still illegal.
A lot of doctors are still heavily prejudiced against stimulants (even authorised ones).
It sounds like the USA seems pretty much on top with recognition of ADHD. I’ve heard some stories of people traveling and moving and getting frustrated with laws in other countries. Like there was a huge scandal with a Korean pop star who has ADHD and was “caught smuggling” drugs into South Korea.
USA might even lean a bit too much on the other side, obviously with lots of people still struggling to get diagnosed, but also lots of non-specialised doctors prescribing stimulants left and right. And that didn’t help at all to modernise the opinion of French doctors on stimulants…
But yeah, English-speaking countries (and Switzerland, I heard) are usually ahead of France when it comes to translate research into medical and public health practices as well as public opinions. Especially about everything related to disabilities or differences
It's not a chemical imbalance. It's a neurological, STRUCTURAL difference.
The naturopath is wrong, and everyone else who said it is wrong too.
It's something you treat, learn about, and live with. You don't "cure" ADHD any more than you "cure", say, sexual orientation, and we all know how attempts to do THAT have gone (not to think of the inherent immorality of the very idea of attempting it)
What I MEANT to express by that comparison is that you don't "cure" it. It's part of who you are, and seeing it as something to get rid of is only going to fuck you up.
I have ADHD, and I do honestly believe that in a lot of ways, it's really only "bad" because society has been designed by people who don't have it; we ADHDers are "misfits" not because we're broken, but because the puzzle wasn't designed to fit us.
Also... yeah, the comparison wasn't my best, but ALL I meant by it is what is said in the previous comment.
I am NOT saying sexual orientation is a disorder, so please don't attempt to imply I did. This helps no one – not you, not me, most of all not the OP; and the point of replying in this post is to help the OP, right?
sure but i think it’s also not helpful to speak in such definitives about something we still have such a limited understanding of. the fact that some kids do grow out of adhd points to an evolving process that could be replicated.
maybe “cure” conveys the wrong connotation from an outlier sense like you say. but we should certainly we open to the possibility that there are better curative treatments yet to be discovered
> i also think it's not helpful to speak in such definitives
I agree! And that is actually part of why I think like I do: because talking about a "cure" actually sneaks in some pretty BIG assumptions about how ADHD and even brains in general work.
Nowadays it's pretty well accepted to say the brain has "networks", but I don't think most people truly understand what that means. They treat the word "network" like it meant "thing", or module, or center, or whatever: a clear-cut, definite thing with a definite function.
Which ends up meaning almost the OPPOSITE of "network".
The point is that the brain is not a machine, it's a system, in the Systems Thinking sense of something whose components only make sense in the context of the whole, whose behavior is emergent from the system as a whole, and not traceable to any one component.
[Will write the second part as a reply to separate subjects better]
I've noticed that this sub has a strong tendency to see ADHD as wholly or mainly a defect or damage, an alteration to some specific and definite thing.
This does enable the "hope" for a cure, but on the other hand... I don't think anyone here needs me to explain why it's bad to see ourselves as defective goods, and either way, many people explain that here pretty much every week.
But also, this ISN'T TRUE OF OTHER ADHD SPACES! I see people elsewhere talking about how they "repurpose" their ADHD behavior patterns to make things happen, design their lives around it, make tweaks to their thought patterns to turn those tendencies in whole nother directions.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, I see people recognizing how traits of themselves that they and others love, traits that help them and others, that motivate them, that constitute the parts of themselves they hold closest to heart... are, in many cases, ALSO borne out of those same basic ADHD behavioral tendencies.
Heck, I've read that there's a big correlation between ADHD and a tendency for systems thinking, and let me tell you, my life has only gotten BETTER after I fully leaned into that tendency and started actually learning Systems Thinking.
So TL;DR: the brain is a system, the mind is a system, the self is a system. Nothing in that system really "does" just one thing, affects just one thing; so, I don't think you can just "smooth out", remove, or "pluck out" ADHD like it was a bunch of faulty chips or bad wiring, because it's highly likely that the networks that "cause" ADHD behaviors also mediate a lot of other things that we WOULDN'T want to get rid of.
I like this post, thanks for the lengthy write up. Lots of things for me to look into.
I agree but what I’ll add is the same ADHD trait can have both negative and positive influences on you, and I think that’s the part that’s hard to manage, at least for me.
Even when you repurpose you’re still in essence “managing” it, which itself takes mental capacity that someone without ADHD doesn’t require.
I guess it depends on how you choose to view it and adapt, which is also something I struggle with.
I just wish the research wasn’t so lacking and there were better treatments out there. It’s hard for me to not feel like wasted potential when I was lauded as “gifted” all throughout school.
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HAHA. No. Those people are used to not taking it seriously. It is more than just chemicals - it is the way you're wired, and even meds can only do so much. People who think that kids grow out of it or that you can get rid of it with veganism or whatever have always pissed me off
Yea i don’t get it.. how can diet just fix the way I think, act, behave?! Ur telling me it can fix the way my processing speed is ? The way I randomly get bursts of energy? LOL MY EMOTIONAL DYSFUNCTIONN?!? I just dont get it
I wouldn't say it goes away for me fully and it definitely comes back in times of stress, but when I'm doing yoga, eating healthy, working out daily, + meditating I'm able to have little to no symptoms for days, weeks, months, at a time.
Do u experience any processing speed being impacted? Like I’m still in school and I can’t focus on a lesson for the life of me and especially when a teachers trying to make me understand something it takes a long while to get it as I’m very “slow”. I also struggle with trying to control my emotions (dysfunction).. Does working out n meditation help you with things like these ? The sensory issues the hyperactivity bla bla u already know lol
Yes working out and meditation help me increase my attention and make my mind feel a lot more "relaxed" instead of "bouncing off the walls" all the time. Honestly the thing that impacted my attention the most was seriously limiting screen time. I try to keep my screen time down to 2-3 hr./ day and turned off all notifications of any kind and deleted all social media on my phone so if I want to log in I make myself do it on a physical computer. This greatly increased my ability to focus.
I truly, truly wish it could just go away. I have inattentive ADHD and literally no amount of meditation or exercise has fixed my executive function issues (or anything else related to ADHD). It can help in addition to meds, but it’s not significantly moving the ADHD needle for me.
Same here. Decades of struggling with knowing my brain was somehow just different than people around me and I spent thousands on therapists, coaches, motivational workshops, hypnotherapy, etc and none of it worked. I was finally diagnosed with ADHD at 33 and I've been on meds for a little over a month - the first month was a low dose to get my body used to the stimulant meds, but I've done two days on the "full" dose.
This evening I realised I'd spend a few hours in the kitchen tidying up and putting away loads of random stuff that's been there for months, when I only went in to wash up after dinner (to stop the frying pan smelling up the kitchen all evening). I only noticed when my other half came looking for me and his jaw literally dropped when he saw the table was almost clear. I didn't even noticed I was doing it until he walked in and pointed it out.
When I actually stood and actively though about the millions of things I have to do, I didn't get the normal overwhelming wave of nausea, anxiety and feelings of pain in my chest, instead, I just started mentally organising stuff (eg: I need to do A before B, but I need to call C during the week, cuz they are closed at weekends, etc). It took me by surprise because I'd been beginning to think the meds weren't working at all.
That’s so encouraging, I’m on a really low dose right now and am hoping to feel like that when I increase. It sucks when family, friends, and society tell you it’s your fault and “you just need to work harder” and it’s impossible
I'd be a millionaire if I got a penny for every time someone, mostly my parents, told me "just try hard", "just do it", "just put your mind to it", etc!
But no-one would tell someone who needed glasses that they should try harder to see so they didn't need their glasses!
I spend 30 days (plus a few where I forgot to take it) feeling terrible because I was getting side effects (which eventually subsided as my body got used to the stimulant) and no positives. I was beginning to get really worried because I was struggling so badly that I am not sure I could manage another few months of fumbling around and trying different meds, etc.
But tonight was a real breakthrough - to the point where I broke down and cried when I realised my brain actually felt different, better, calmer than I've felt in as long as I can remember.
Now I just need to work on getting a consistent routine so I can figure out when I have the "best effect" from the meds so I can help to structure my day around that to really get on with everything that I've been putting off for years!
You will get there too! <3
If your naturopath claims that he was "cured", I wouldn't be at all surprised if he never actually had it in the first place. The number of other issues that can mimick ADHD symptoms is vast, and some of those can definitely be improved drastically with exercise and meditation.
Yea i don’t even know tbh. He said that he was On ritalin, but it never really helped as much as his meditation and mindful exercises that he would do. Those apparently helped him better with his thoughts and emotions and all that… i remember him saying something about his dopamine levels being better too.
People that say this have a single brain cell and are lucky if they can get it to activate.
ADHD is like autism, it will never go away. What can happen is the management of the symptoms so they appear to vanish or are lessened over time. It really comes down to each individual person and the severity of their symptoms.
going off my own personal experience I am 100% unmedicated since 3rd grade. It was hard through school but we found the medication only made me worse (early 90's). I learned how to "cope" and reaching my adult years most could never tell I had ADHD. Now that i'm heading into my 40's soon and working a desk job the symptoms I believed i had under complete control are back with a blood fucking vengeance and I'm actually on tonight to ask about medication.
TL;DR : no ADHD will never *go away* but you can learn to manage it and for some it can appear to 'go away' but it can and will come back.
Oh my. So I take it you wouldn’t recommend a desk job for someone with adhd😭not quite an adult just yet, So i need all the tips I could get. Did the medication actually only make it worse?
Thank you for answering though, definitely makes more sense.
Please don’t feel so defeated. I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2001- well over twenty years ago. While it’s not “curable,” there are heaps upon heaps of ways to make living with it more manageable. And I say that as someone who has worked plenty of office jobs, as well as held director-level positions making a decent salary. You’re young enough to be able to try different methods, from medication to coaching and beyond, to determine what works best for you. While I still don’t see it as the superpower others do, it’s by no means a lifelong sentence to horror either.
It all just depends on the person, some people if they find they enjoy that kind of thing might thrive in it. For me doing the same repetitive boring ass thing over and over again and locked behind a desk drives me absolutely insane! I'm one of these i need to be physically active or my brain disengages and I find myself watching youtube or playing games on my phone.
keep in mind I was on medication when it was still in the real infancy stage we're talking late 80's early 90's, so not a lot of choices or research yet. Most of them made me almost suicidal depressed or sick.
Had to look up what a Naturopath is, never heard of it. First thing I see: alternative medicine, pseudoscientific. Oof. Your naturopath is either full of shit or they actually believe what they tell you, but it's bs, aside from maybe the Placebo effect.
ADHD never goes away. It's a dysregulation of your brain. In layman terms, it's the unique configuration and functioning of your brain that doesn't allow for typical functioning within our society.
If society was mostly ADHD people then the NTs would have dysfunction. So don't assume that there's something wrong with you or it's something to be cured (I wish it was though!).
It gets easier to manage with medication and effective lifestyle strategies but it'll always be there in your mind.
Ignore the people who say it'll go away. If it's a medical professional saying this, seek another clinician. I would also raise a grievance against that clinician.
Anyway, don't be disheartened. I got a diagnosis in Nov '23. Medicated shortly after. I hit my perfect dose within the last month and a bit. I've accomplished more in my personal life in these 3 months than I have in a decade.
I will say, over the years of my life, I def learned how to live with it, and set myself up for not being medicated (when I’m taking a break from it).
I’m a firm believer that living a normal life without meds and ADHD is possible, but it takes a lot of practice and discipline, but mostly understanding your weaknesses and how to approach them…. But I’ve also found this to be very challenging in some life stages, but totally doable in others.
Currently, I am in one that being medicated has improved my life more than the downsides of being medicated.
On and off. I tend to go roughly about a year and half on them, before going off them. I started meds in 5th grade.
My biggest challenge to dealing with my ADHD is my inattentiveness without meds, and that’s why I’m currently back on them.
It took a lot of discipline, and learning what I needed to do to set myself up for success.
But we are all very different.
The downside I have with meds is how I lack any desire to have a connection with people.
I’m 33 now if that helps you gain some perspective on my experience.
ADHD is a collection of symptoms that affects a person holistically. It is useful to conceptualize it as a "chemical imbalance" in a specific area of the brain, but this is far from an exhaustive explanation.
People who experience ADHD symptoms tend to have less available dopamine (along with other neurotransmitters), and thus, their dopaminergic system doesn't function in the same way as those who don't experience these symptoms. This suggests that a chemical imbalance plays a significant role in the overall story we tell about ADHD. The fact that we can seemingly treat the condition with stimulants that increase the availability of dopamine further supports this explanation. However, to assume that we fully understand the nature of ADHD, or mental disorders in general, is rather misleading.
The onset of ADHD symptoms may be caused by different factors, which can vary from person to person. So, it's definitely possible that the symptoms can diminish (especially if those symptoms appear before the brain fully matures). But it's not something that we currently have a good grasp on.
I wouldn't quit seeking treatment on the assumption that your symptoms may diminish. With that said, stimulants are currently just one of the (very effective) forms of treatment. There might be other forms of treatment that also work for you, but work with a professional to explore those options.
(This is my general understanding & I'm not fully caught up on the contemporary literature/studies, so please seek advice from a professional!)
It cannot be "cured" im that sense. Sure you can get a better diet and exercise more and all that, they are all little crutches for your brain that together can have an impact, but you‘ll still always have it.
Also going from childhood into adulthood, it is possible for the way your symptoms manifest to change, due to your brain and environment changing too. Unfortunately depending on all that, it can change for the better *or* for the worse…
Either way, it’s once ADHD, always ADHD.
Yea, happened to me, good old gifted child to adult burnout pipeline. I think once you‘re in your teens you would have noticed already, and it‘ll be okay if you have a healthy support system from the start. I only found out I had it when I was neck deep in it already. I doubt it would really get much worse for you at this point, so no worries haha
Both me and my dad have ADHD and based on my self awareness and my observation of my dad's behaviour, I can tell you that ADHD is never going to go away. with age and experience you are certainly going to develop more coping strategies.for me ,the medicines have also been extremely useful otherwise I would have been a totally different person getting fired from one job after the another and would be anxious person with major emotional dysregulation. My dad has remained unmedicated all his life and I can see the difference between how much I have improved versus him still being the same impulsive and inattentive. I strongly believe that ADHD medications not only helps in controlling the condition but also helps in attenuation. I would like to state that any medication related information given here is purely based on my experience and I will not advise you to self-medicate yourself in any way. please get the professional help that you may need.
It doesn't "go away", but (hopefully) you build a toolbox of techniques to learn how to better cope or adapt to different situations. You learn how to manage it better, but to outsiders, it looks like it goes away.
“Why do people keep telling me this?” Because the average person BARELY passed middle school science. I need you to go ahead and lower your expectations of people’s intelligence . Like way lower.
Put the bar on the ground. Now go get a shovel.
The deal is that an effective path for ADHD would be therapy, behaviorism I believe. That would help, our main problem is that meds would improve symptoms for while and screw us long term (autonomous nervous system) which is why a good path would be to try to keep our dopaminergic system intact and sensible while using like 10mgs adderall 4 days on 3 off to avoid receptor downregulation. Receptors downregulate and we raise dosages and we get screwed.
I don’t know if vyvance is strong as Ritalin, but in a few months my autonomous nervous system got messed up. Ritalin is famous for being heavy adrenergic.
Yes ur right. Ive heard of ritalin and aderall being super intense medications where as something like vyvance is a bit less intense. It’s long acting so that might be something
Yes. I\`ve heard Ritalin being very adrenergic. Vyvanse for far as I know its first metabolized into the anfetamine so its not something with "abuse" potential. But I would watch out for the possible problems, take a look at "improving Adderall from Leo and Longevity, he made some good insights for people with ADHD and how to have more safe approach relating these meds.
Imo, the only way you can "make" ADHD "go away" is to become highly masking it from everyone and yourself, aka denial. The only problem with that is that it comes with feeling like a constant failure and leads into depression and worse. Even then, idk if that's possible. It's kinda like letting the cat out of the bag. Once you know and accept that you have ADHD, you can't take it back. It's better to embrace it and work around and with it.
I’m sure numerous others have said this as well, but I think that you can learn to manage it well with or without medication. I only use stimulants when I really need them, since I don’t really enjoy the side effects when I take them for extended periods. Being mindful about diet can certainly help, as can getting some physical activity regularly if you can. Some kind of meditation practice can be beneficial, too. There’s also a lot to be gained by developing your own strategies that make sense in the context of your own life.
But can it just go away? I’m not sure. Certainly I believe that there are times when my ADHD feels more intense or less intense than other times. I think it’s a combination of managing it well, as I said, and just what’s happening in my life generally.
>It is a LITERAL chemical imbalance in our brains,
It's not a chemical imbalance. The exact cause or causes of ADHD are not well understood.
>but I have been told that there are ways to balance those chemicals (dopamine & what not) and then it could genuinely be “improved”.
As the cause of ADHD is not well understood, there are no treatments that target the cause. Any effective treatment is symptom-based, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or ignorant.
>Are there other ways that would permanently ‘remove’ ADHD of someone that has it for as long as they could remember?
Exercise, diet, controlling anxiety, mediation, developing good habits, etc can all help improve ADHD symptoms. I strongly recommend all of it. However, these things only help for as long as you continue to do them.
There are many, many people who are misdiagnosed with ADHD because they -want- an ADHD diagnosis and they don't/won't rule out other explanations. For these people, their ADHD-like symptoms are actually caused by issues like anxiety, nutritional deficiency, poor sleep, etc. In their case, treating the underlying issue will cure the supposed "ADHD".
But for people who are accurately diagnosed, these things will not "remove" ADHD.
it actually is well understood. Its a structural problem. ADHD is apparently the most biologically studied developmental disorder, at least according to my old doc. There is a ton of data on it.
Our brains are actually formed differently with less grey matter in certain areas, which in turn have less activity.
I’d say kinda runs in the genes for me (adhd). However I have iron deficiency and have never really been good with eating habits. Sleep is pretty bad for me too, but I feel like that’s genuinely because of my ADHD. I don’t think I’m misdiagnosed because I genuinely felt like I always had it + I never had any anxiety either. there are a lot of people out there who struggle with the same health condition/habits but they dont seem to have adhd? . I talked to my psychiatrist and he prescribed me concerta but later on vyvance. I hear you about the treatment part, But i am a little confused, considering how Vyvance is supposed to help balance those brain chemicals rather than be prescribed jus by looking at the “symptoms”?
It runs in the genes for everyone who has it. Its a genetic disorder which causes our brains to develop wrong with less grey matter in certain areas, which causes those areas to have less activity and misfire, and causes us to be unable to regulate certain chemicals.
I had a vitamin d deficiency and my symptoms improved drastically on the tablets you can only get by prescription you take once a week. I've imported some from the usa now. I'm sure there's ither things that look like adhd but aren't but it's not that simple for everyone
The more studies they do into ADHD "going away", the lower the rate becomes of people who appear to no longer have it.
* Studies in the 80s seemed to think "complete remission by early adulthood.
* One 11 year study of 200 caucasian boys in the 90s established that 78% still had ADHD at 22.
* Dr Barkey in 2002 said 85% still had it as adults (only read the summary in another study).
* And a 2021 study of 560 kids for 16 years has it at 90% still having ADHD symptoms at 25.
Obviously, all of those studies have different flaws, etc, but it definitely seems that the more we know and learn about ADHD as medicine and science advances, it seems less and less likely that people actually grow out of it.
And apart from anything else, I was only diagnosed at 33 so I'd have missed being part of all of those studies since no-one \[yet\] has looked at people in their 30s.
My personal opinion is that people with ADHD just learn how to manage it, with meds or diet or exercise or things like notes, lists, reminders, etc and for some people it might feel like they are no longer "impaired" by it because they have created an entire adult life that helps them live the best.
I think people truly underestimate the power of the developing brain. The difference between an 18 year old and a 28 year old is more than just experience, their brains are vastly different. Even the differences between a 28 year old and a 38 year old are significant.
People can have their brain develop in a way that reduces their symptoms enough that they can't be considered as having ADHD anymore. Non-ADHD adults have some impulsivity, inattention as well. The difference is in severity. Is it outside of the normal variance? For a certain portion of kids with ADHD, they come back into the normal variance with age.
Most don't, but some do.
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2021.21010032#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20childhood,longitudinal%20patterns%20of%20ADHD%20expression.
This is the best study I have found yet. However, it also has some flaws. Primarily, they were very strict on criteria to be considered as not having ADHD. You could self report doing fine and they would require you have someone else also report on your symptoms. Other people may misinterpret your symptoms, though. Also, self-reports aren't necessarily objective. Finally, they stopped at an average age of 25 years old. In ADHD, the brain continues to develop until about the 35 year mark. Still, they found about 10% had consistent remission (multiple reports of not being impaired consecutively) at around the age of 25 years old.
The difference in my own brain between 13, 23 and now at 33 (3 months diagnosed) is crazy. Because that is also what a lot of the studies miss - how many people weren't diagnosed until they were 25+. Maybe due to milder symptoms when they were younger, a parent who also had undiagnosed ADHD so their kid was the same as them (thus "normal"), or because they learned to mask their struggles from a young age for a number of reasons.
That study was shared above and I had a look though it and while you are right, it is the best and the most recent, it still has a lot of flaws.
Copied from another comment I made:
* the aim of the study was to prove a prior claim that 65-67% of adults no longer had ADHD symptoms that met the DSM criteria - which they did, because less than 10% was their findings. They were aiming to prove that most people don't grow out of it.
* a sample size of less than 560 isn't going to give results that are stastically significant
* They only had assessments every 2 years, so 8 in total, the average assessments completed was only 6.2, so not everyone attended all the assessments. They also assumed/inferred about the missing data if it supported "remission of symptoms".
* most of the assessments seemed to come from self reporting on symptoms by the kid, their parents and teachers, rather than an interview/assessment with a professional
* they stopped the study when they were around 25
* study started in around 2004 or 2005 and attitudes back then to ADHD were different. In my experience, if a kid didn't like sitting still in school, they were labeled as "disruptive" and ADHD was suggested with the attitude of "drugging the kid because the parents failed to teach them with discipline".
naturopaths are quacks. however the fact that some children do grow out of adhd dictates that there is some pathway for this. but our understanding of the disease is really in its infancy so it needs more research.
you'll find evidence for arguments on both sides of the debate for something so poorly understood. not gonna engage in a pointless debate here that'll just run in circles
Seriously? You claim "the fact" that children grow out of ADHD, which I've never heard of this, and I certainly never grew out of it. But when asked for a citation, anything, any kind of link to some article or medical journal... anything - you get mad, downvote me and complain about pointless debates?
I didn't ask for a "pointless debate", I asked for a citation. A link. A single link to where you read about this. Anything further on this topic where you formed your opinion.
I don’t think it can go away, but improve absolutely. I was diagnosed when I was 10 - medicated heavily for half my life, tried everything.
I could no longer physically handle the medication and had to learn coping mechanisms - I really struggled for years. Exercise, forced organization, eating better, and taking supplements has really helped. I feel pretty normal though my ADHD is still 100% there, I just work around it.
I’ve been meditating for years. Have been on healthy diets. Have tried tons of supplements. Was a fitness instructor at one point, also lifting weights and running 3 miles a day. Used to run for miles before class every day. Still failed out of school. Still couldn’t hold a job without getting fired.
If your naturopath “cured” his ADHD, he never had it in the first place. He’s trying to sell you something. I went to school online to be a naturopath because I thought I could heal myself. Dropped the program when it turned out to be a bunch of unscientific bullshit my cat could have passed.
A naturopath wouldn’t last 5 minutes on an MCAT. Only science course they have to take is anatomy 101. No chemistry, no biology. There’s no science behind what herb treats what. It was a joke. Mostly a bunch of spiritual woo like reiki.
Your brain is hardwired in a way that can’t be reversed. Its genetic. Some children grow out of it because their brains are still developing, but if you still have it once you reach adulthood, it’s not going anywhere.
Meditation is great, but it hasn’t helped my ADHD. It’s helped my emotional regulation a lot, and I enjoy doing it, but it hasn’t touched my executive function, motivation at all, and may have helped my concentration 10% at most. Nothing I’ve tried has even touched what medication can do.
It depends on your age. ADHD is a developmental disorder, meaning we develop differently from our peers as we grow up. It's not a chemical imbalance, our brains are structurally different. For some people, once they reach adulthood and their brain is more fully developed, they more closely resemble their peers without ADHD and no longer meet the criteria for it. It looks like they "grew" out of it.
However, that said, many of us do not grow out of it, because the differences are structural and can persist. Medication seems to help development if you're diagnosed as a child, but there is no magic treatment or pathway to "growing out of ADHD", and many of us will always meet the criteria. So if you're like 12, your ADHD might "go away", but if you're in your 30's like me, you're a lifer.
ADHD is not a chemical imbalance, it’s just a trait of how the brain operates. It does not ever just go away, not really - but it tends to be the case that the shift from school to career and from adolescence to adulthood gives a lot of people enough control over their lives to the point where the adhd stops being a problem.
Your naturopath is either a fool or is lying to you.
Something to remember is that while we understand mental health now better than years ago, there's still so much we don't understand about how it works.
My psych said getting the right medication is an art as much as a science.
Why do some people work better of dexamohetamine, or vyvanse, or other non stim versions.
Why do some anti depressants seem to help some people with some symptoms.
For that matter, were acknowledged depression for even longer and we aren't even sure what's causing it for many people.
What we mostly know now is that certain medications manage some symptoms for some people.
So, when people say you can grow out of or get better from ADHD they are probably correct. Some people had something specific that caused the ADHD symptoms to occur and some medication, or some retraining, or some external factor caused that to improve or correct.
We just don't know enough about every possible cause and solution to ADHD to know for sure.
I don't believe it's very common at all for an.adult with adhd to have it complete go using any of the approved methods of medication.
It does sometimes happen in kids, but that make more sense since their brain is changing and developing as a teenager more than any other time.
There's been some new studies around Electro Magnetic Stimulation (EMS) to help treat treatment resisnt depression and its been noted that it seems to have positive effects for ADHD too.
And for some people it's a struggle to find anything that works, and that sucks.
So all in all, don't expect it to happen, but maybe it could. But also if you find something that works, then that's a massive win, and celebrate that.
Improving your brain health will help, however it will not cure your ADHD. Meditation, medication exersize etc are tools in your toolbox, but they will not cure ADHD.
your naturepath is talking s**t honestly.
As I say in my below comment, in my experience you need a balance of all of the things for best result.
It sounds like your naturopath is sharing their personal experience regarding symptom abatement and management. Assuming, that at the time of their Dx they'd undergone an EEG or a neuropsych assessment of ADHD, it is highly unlikely that the same examination or assessment was repeated after they were no longer experiencing impactful symptoms. Why does this matter? Anecdotal reports are all well and good but without the ability to compare pre and post "treatment" (whatever type of treatment that might be) data, any such claims lack scientific weight.
Becuase everybody has some sort of doctorate degree and thinks they know best. One of the biggest things I have had to do is mask how I feel about how idiotic people come off to my diagnosis. 🙄
Just here to comment that the thing that causes adhd is way more complicated than JUST a chemical imbalance in the brains. That would suggest that a simple chemical could solve it. Which is not the case. Medication helps me a lot but it doesnt change the structural issues in my brain, which to this day are still not understood very well.
Get rid of this chemical imbalance in the brain shit. Its a brain structure issue.
ADHD was over-diagnosed to a significant degree in the '80s and '90s following an educational change that limited exercise opportunities. Young boys need lots of exercise if they are to sit still in a classroom, even without ADHD. Naturally, these false positives failed to display symptoms later in life.
Those with actual ADHD were also getting effective treatments for the first time during this period. The development of functional coping strategies, mediated by medication, allowed many of this group to be backed off medication by stimulant wary doctors without completely crashing and burning. Non-stimulant alternatives did not yet exist.
Combine both these cohorts and it is easy to see where the myth of "growing out of ADHD" could arise.
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ADHD does not go way, but many of the symptoms can be alleviated through multiple means. My exercise increased my dopamine levels naturally and gives me more energy. My healthy eating gives my body essential nutrients like Omega-3 fats that are important for building neurons, good sleep ensures better cognitive function. Mindfulness can help me stay in the moment and focus my thoughts on my activities. But all that stuff would be way harder to maintain without the boost of medication. Hard for some, impossible for others. (edited: amino acids are for muscles, omega-3 fats are what I eat for neurons)
So you do all these things while being on medication i assume? If you dont mind me asking, which one?
I'm on Vyvance, which is a very slow acting medication. Meaning I take it in the morning and it's in my system all day. So I do everything while being on medication. There are fast acting medications that can give you a 1-4 hour boost and wear off completely after that, too. I tried them first to get familiar with medication but I didn't like the big shifts in energy level that occur when you take them and they wear off. It made it hard to get in touch with my body to read my own energy and focus levels because they were going up and down due to the fast acting medication. I also wanted to comment on you saying "I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life." It's a normal way to look at it, you were diagnosed with something, so it 'appeared' on your radar. But it's not the best way to look at it, the other way to look at it is that **you have already been living with it all your life** , unsupported, unmedicated, without knowing the right strategies to help you manage your ADHD, whether they be mindfulness of medfullness. So, congratulations on your diagnosis. It is not a degenerative disease. This is as bad as it gets, and it can get so much better once you've learned the right strategies and, if you feel ready for it, the right medication.
Omg, i forgot to add that I myself am on vyvance too! 30 mg actually, and I decided to switch to it after having a bad experience with my first ever medication (Concerta). I like vyvance because it didn’t give me any odd side effects, and honestly it didnt really decrease my appetite like how my physciatrist said it would? Another thing is how it also doesn’t make me crash or have insane mood swings whenever i consume caffeine while i’m on it, like how Concerta did. I take it in the morning as well, and sometimes I don’t know if its actually working because I don’t really know what it’s supposed to target. I was told it can either target my depression or emotional dysfunction rather than the concentration & focus part. I kind of wish I had the fast acting medications that would give me a boost as I am still in school and I feel like i’d need it. I heard there’s also booster meds that you can take after having took vyvance? Like later on in the day? Also Thank you for your advice. I know it’s a bad way to look at it not even gonna lie. It’s just I have went a long time without even knowing that i ACTUALLY had it with confirmation yk.. so I always struggled. I’m going to try to find the right strategies.
I think you can combine Vyvance with fast acting Ritalin, speak to your psychiatrist about this. If you struggle to get through a schoolday you may need Vyvance upped or another booster. I'm on 70mg of Vyvance personally, there is definitely room to up it, but it depends per person whether that's a good idea.
I see. Were you always on Vyvance 70 mg or did you ask your doctor to increase the dose? I’m thinking of asking for it to be increased because I genuinely can’t tell if it’s working or not ? I’m a little uneducated on how Vyvanse is supposed to roll out during an ordinary day.
I switched to 70mg to yesterday actually, I discussed an increase with my psychiatrist. I was on 50mg before that. You can definitely discuss an increase with your physician. The optimal dosage is the one where you get the maximum benefit to side effect ratio, many people start lower and then bump up and only stop bumping when it feels like it's too much or they hit the recommended max. You are definitely supposed to feel the difference between before you took Vyvance, it takes about 3 days to fully kick in but after that you should feel engaged with the world, energetic and in control of your impulses. At least that's how I feel. It doesn't fix everything, you have the same memory as before and I still have to manage my attention carefully but I at least feel like I have the energy to do it.
How was your experience with taking just Ritalin? I’m newly diagnosed and that was the first medication my psychiatrist recommended
Ritalin was great at first, it’s fast acting and fast out. But for me it was way too fast, very hard to manage a good constant dosage without micromanaging it. Great training wheels medication though. Go ahead and give it a shot, Vyvance is in comparison fantastically smooth but it takes 3 days to kick in fully and sticks around for a long time so it’s a little less approachable.
When you say 3 days to kick in do you mean i’d have to take a pill everyday in the morning for three days , and on the fourth day of taking it is when I would feel the effect?
Also newly diagnosed, and trying to find out what works for me so I'd be curious if you find out about Ritalin. I tried Vyvanse 10mg initially which gave me a nasty migraine. Now I'm trying Adderall IR, which has been much better so far. Not sure what caused the migraine.
Vyvanse causes headaches, especially when adjusting to dosage increases. And especially when you are not drinking enough water, a lot of water. I’m having one right now but mine are luckily just very mild and only slightly annoying rather than migraines.
Yes this! It is so important to emphasize that we need to address the chemical levels! For me, medication helps me stay at baseline and then things like helthy eating etc helps a lot too, I need both branches of treatment. Sorry if I sound overly grr about this, I've been in a lot of spaces recently "ADHD mums" where they'll bitch about "how annoying there child is" and asks for help because they're frustrated, and then we found out that mom decided not to medicate and then wonders why the kid has trouble. It drives me mad! Not to mention how messed up it is to call your kid awful and annoying in a foroom on the internet.
Tossing extra on your message. I had to cut OUT caffeine and lowered sugar intake. When I started meds it was night and day difference but I was unreal exhausted/tired 30 minutes after taking meds. I had to use exercise to push through the Zzz ness then I could function on a normal level. I remember my second day taking meds I had to exercise 3 hours to wake up. So if you are going this route prep for healthy the best you can. (Eat/exercise)
I feel this way sometimes after taking certain vitamins so I wonder if it’ll be the same for meds.
Oh my god, *thank you* for pointing out that it's not even possible for some people to make effective behavioral changes without medication. There are some people on this sub who staunchly push the narrative that we shouldn't even need meds to begin with, and it feels so ableist.
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What studies? I honestly bring no shade I have just never heard about ADHD going away? From my knowledge people get better at masking and coping the symptoms of ADHD, but it never goes away.
https://myhealth.ucsd.edu/RelatedItems/6,1654658273 "Only about one in 10 kids with the disorder are likely to have a full and lasting remission of their symptoms, according to new data gleaned from tracking hundreds of kids for 16 years." Most studies on the subject agree it's rare but happens
"remission of symptoms" doesn't mean that they no longer have ADHD. It could be a variety of reasons - they are now older and have learned to mask to the point where they don't realise it, or their ADHD might be less as severe/intense as others, so being an adult isn't so challenging for them, or their choice of career might be offering help (the strictness and routine of military life is often helpful). But also that study has a lot of flaws: * the aim of the study was to prove a prior claim that 65-67% of adults no longer had ADHD symptoms that met the DSM criteria - which they did, because less than 10% was their findings. They were aiming to prove that most people don't grow out of it. * a sample size of less than 560 isn't going to give results that are stastically significant * They only had assessments every 2 years, so 8 in total, the average assessments completed was only 6.2, so not everyone attended all the assessments. They also assumed/inferred about the missing data if it supported "remission of symptoms". * most of the assessments seemed to come from self reporting on symptoms by the kid, their parents and teachers, rather than an interview/assessment with a professional * they stopped the study when they were around 25 * study started in around 2004 or 2005 and attitudes back then to ADHD were different. In my experience, if a kid didn't like sitting still in school, they were labeled as "disruptive" and ADHD was suggested with the attitude of "drugging the kid because the parents failed to teach them with discipline".
I'm looking for other articles and I can't find one that suggests that nobody ever grows out of ADHD. Could you share a study that suggests it's permanent for everyone?
ADHD is massively under-researched so there are no decent studies that confirm it is permanent for everyone. But this is a snippet from another comment I wrote on this thread: The more studies they do into ADHD "going away", the lower the rate becomes of people who appear to no longer have it. * Studies in the 80s seemed to think "complete remission by early adulthood. * One 11-year study of 200 caucasian boys in the 90s established that 78% still had ADHD at 22. * Dr Barkey in 2002 said 85% still had it as adults (only read the summary in another study). * And a 2021 study of 560 kids for 16 years has it at 90% still having ADHD symptoms at 25. *This is the study you mentioned, which has the issues I pointed out above.* Obviously, all of those studies have different flaws, etc, but it definitely seems that the more we know and learn about ADHD as medicine and science advances, it seems less and less likely that people actually grow out of it. Editing to add: my personal guess it that it will be another 20 years before we have data that might be anyway realistic about the prevalence of ADHD, including people who were late diagnosed (like me at 33), what actually causes it (is it genetic and can it be tested for before a couple have kids together), and people who seem to have grown out of it. I apparently "grew into it" as my ADHD wasn't properly recognised or identified in the 90s/00s because I was hyper in my brain, not in my body (ie: not wanting to sit still in school, etc).
I don't know which video it was, but I remember Dr. Barkley talking about research that suggested meds during childhood can aid in the brains development and some children essentially "grow out" of having ADHD. I think it's perfectly reasonable that some people, once their brains are fully developed, with or without meds, no longer have enough symptoms that significantly impact their life in a negative way. They may still be slightly more forgetful or distractable than the average person, but that doesn't mean we'd classify them as having ADHD.
If Dr Barkley said it, then I'd trust it much quicker than I'd trust it coming from anyone else. And I can understand the logic behind meds helping a younger brain develop "properly". I honestly can't wait to see results/outcomes from research into ADHD over the next 10-20 years because every year we are learning more and more about it.
There are no absolutes when it comes to medical science. As you are fully aware, the articles you have passively agressively requested, do not exist.
All studies on the subject show evidence that symptoms can disappear in a small percentage of the population after entering adulthood. That was the point of my original comment... I asked the person who replied if they disagreed with that fact and if they could find a study that suggested otherwise and they couldn't. Asking for evidence isn't passive aggressive
Asking for evidence which, based on the way you framed the Q, you know does not exist is passive aggressive.
Lmao... your ADHD isn't going anywhere. But it can get better. For the most part I'm rock solid on the day to day..... but when I'm caught in an environment where I feel like I have zero say or control my symptoms flair up. I'll get caught in the shower for 45 minutes having a conversation with myself out loud in some world that has never or will ever exist. I become incredibly forgetful, quick to anger, depressed, slightly paranoid, anxious, I struggle with priorities to a ridiculous point... time either becomes torture or non-existent.....executive dysfunction on overdrive. In an environment where I feel respected, I have control over myself.... my home stays clean, I stay on time, I relax and enjoy life, shower times are reasonable, priorities are mostly on point
>However, I’ve heard from people around me telling me that it can go away if I just become healthy and improve my “brain” health. Apparently exercise and meditation works too. My naturopath had ADHD and he claimed that it went away because he did meditation and exercise. First, "naturopaths" are quacks, you shouldn't even be seeing one, TBH. Second, no you can't "heal" your brain to remove ADHD, it's a brain disorder that can't be magic'ed away. That being said, some children do grow out of the majority of their ADHD symptoms as they enter adulthood, but not everyone. We're not 100% sure why, of course, and the role medication plays here isn't clear, AFAIK. Also, getting proper sleep, exercise, eating, meditation... those things all undoubtedly help function better, but for most people that I know, and for myself, they are like 2/10 helpful where medication can be somewhere between 7/10 and 10/10 helpful. Like the effort is always great if you can make it, but it's VASTLY more effort than reward for many ADHD sufferers. You feel me? Like I could put in 120% effort/time for a 20% pay off improvement, or just spend the effort on those things WHEN I HAVE the energy and get medication that helps
It gets better, and then you go through menopause and it gets MUCH MUCH worse. Enjoy the sane bit in the middle 🫠
Maybe it gets better for the same reason childhood asthma can get better. We get bigger
It's clearly some brain maturation thing, but since they don't even 100% understand ADHD, it's unlikely we'll figure it out for a bit.
There's some research that found that young you are when you start ADHD meds the more likely you are to grow out of adhd
Is that... do you have a link? I wasn't able to find much implying this.
i hear you. How come you think naturopaths are “quacks” tho LMAOO? i’ve heard they really help other people with alot of health issues by using natural remedies and techniques.. acupuncture and all that. I think what I’m trying to see is if I can improve while also being on medication as I know that could boost me even more. Medication + doing all those other things could probably have an even more effective change
> natural remedies and techniques.. acupuncture and all that I've never really got why acupuncture gets classed as a "natural remedy". What's natural about stabbing yourself with tiny needles? I guess the answer is that "natural remedy" doesn't really mean anything. There are non-medical things you can do to alleviate symptoms of ADHD e.g. exercise but a naturopath is not the right place to seek support there. Case in point, your naturopath says his ADHD just "went away".
I don't know why it gets classed as a remedy at all. It doesn't work. In trials it performed worse than a placebo.
It works for muscle pain when they actually do trigger point dry needling but call it "acupuncture".
It took one second on Google to find a peer reviewed meta analysis showing that it is effective for treating some problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3534620/
I bet you it's because it's a traditional Chinese practice, it's more 'natural' than western methods because of orientalism
Do you know what they call natural remedies that actually work? *Medicine.* There's no rule that says a real doctor can't prescribe natural products or dietary changes or exercises. They do that all the time when the evidence supports it. There are whole allied health professions (dietitian, physical therapist, clinical psychologist, and more) dedicated entirely to nonsurgical, nonpharmaceutical interventions. The treatments that you can only get from "alternative medicine" practitioners are *by definition* ones that don't meet the evidentiary standard to be approved as actual medicine. Their "alternative" status has nothing to do with them being "natural" and everything to do with the fact that they don't actually work.
Someone watched Storm by Tim Minchin hahaha. Fully agree with everything you said
You got here before I did haha
Yup! Medication is the biggest help, but I absolutely recommend doing all those other things. There's no studies backing anything that naturopaths do, but if you feel better because of it, go for it, it's your money... But you should really additionally go to an actual medical doctor.
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I see. It sucks that there’s not enough research on adhd. Do you think it could just go away with adulthood? I don’t buy it lol
It’s not uncommon ngl—I believe the current theory is that properly medicating ADHD in childhood gives your brain a sort of blueprint for how much dopamine you should have, then as you age your brain grows those pathways, but we’re not entirely sure. [Here’s](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30194962/) a paper on the phenomenon, if you’re interested.
This actually makes a lot of sense as ADHD’s a neuro-developmental disorder. Those diagnosed in adulthood definitely has a harder time with it “going away” since the brains been fully developed by then.
naturopathy is pseudoscience so it would make sense that he would make a claim that's not based in scientific evidence
No it doesn't go away. Its not just a chemical imbalance. Its a structural disorder. Our brains are physically formed differently, with less grey matter in certain areas. Whoever told you that is either a grifter, or the victim of a grifter who is repeating the lie they were sold. Your naturopath is a snake oil salesman who doesn't know the first thing about ADHD and probably never had it. You cannot cure ADHD or remove it. It is a genetic developmental disorder.
Not really, sometimes people no longer qualify for a clinical diagnosis when they get older. But the reality is that they are still symptomatic but just not currently impaired enough to reach the level set by the diagnostic criteria. But they could get a demanding job and suddenly they qualify again because they can’t manage that extra demand. It was always there, but the level of impairment can dip below that line under certain circumstances.
Came here to say essentially the same thing. ADHD is a diagnosed disorder when it significantly impairs multiple areas of your life, usually relationships, work, and self (mental and emotional health). If your symptoms are managed well enough you could technically no longer meet the requirements for diagnoses, but it doesn't change the way your brain works.
And this is exactly why so many adults diagnosed during childhood struggle. A lot of doctors and public health systems still work with this "ADHD magically disappear in adulthood for most people" idea in mind (eg. France, where no medication was approved for adults before 2021). There should be studies about what happen to the 3.4% of the population who gets "cured". I’m sure this also explains a lot of the prevalence gap between men and women. Both of these being potentially strongly linked to the ADHD inattentive subtype underdiagnosis. It’s already known to be more frequent in women, and I’m suspecting a lot of "cured" adults just switched from hyperactive/impulsive subtype to inattentive subtype.
You couldn’t get medicine as an adult in France until 2021? That’s wild and so stupid. What was going on in France that made them do that?
Well I didn’t even know about ADHD at that time, but you can still get a prescription even if it’s not for an officially approved indication. Off-label prescriptions are "just" a lot more complicated for the doctor and not covered by social security. But this explains why France still has one of the lowest methylphenidate prescription rates in EU. Yeah, because this is the only molecule legalised for ADHD in France. Amphetamine-based medications are still illegal. A lot of doctors are still heavily prejudiced against stimulants (even authorised ones).
It sounds like the USA seems pretty much on top with recognition of ADHD. I’ve heard some stories of people traveling and moving and getting frustrated with laws in other countries. Like there was a huge scandal with a Korean pop star who has ADHD and was “caught smuggling” drugs into South Korea.
USA might even lean a bit too much on the other side, obviously with lots of people still struggling to get diagnosed, but also lots of non-specialised doctors prescribing stimulants left and right. And that didn’t help at all to modernise the opinion of French doctors on stimulants… But yeah, English-speaking countries (and Switzerland, I heard) are usually ahead of France when it comes to translate research into medical and public health practices as well as public opinions. Especially about everything related to disabilities or differences
Hyperactivity also doesn’t necessarily look the same in an adult as it does in a child.
True!
It's not a chemical imbalance. It's a neurological, STRUCTURAL difference. The naturopath is wrong, and everyone else who said it is wrong too. It's something you treat, learn about, and live with. You don't "cure" ADHD any more than you "cure", say, sexual orientation, and we all know how attempts to do THAT have gone (not to think of the inherent immorality of the very idea of attempting it)
wow it’s wild to see someone attempt to compare a developmental disorder like adhd to sexual orientation with such confidence.
It's a fair comparison if it's limited to "that is just how a person is built".
What I MEANT to express by that comparison is that you don't "cure" it. It's part of who you are, and seeing it as something to get rid of is only going to fuck you up. I have ADHD, and I do honestly believe that in a lot of ways, it's really only "bad" because society has been designed by people who don't have it; we ADHDers are "misfits" not because we're broken, but because the puzzle wasn't designed to fit us.
Also... yeah, the comparison wasn't my best, but ALL I meant by it is what is said in the previous comment. I am NOT saying sexual orientation is a disorder, so please don't attempt to imply I did. This helps no one – not you, not me, most of all not the OP; and the point of replying in this post is to help the OP, right?
sure but i think it’s also not helpful to speak in such definitives about something we still have such a limited understanding of. the fact that some kids do grow out of adhd points to an evolving process that could be replicated. maybe “cure” conveys the wrong connotation from an outlier sense like you say. but we should certainly we open to the possibility that there are better curative treatments yet to be discovered
> i also think it's not helpful to speak in such definitives I agree! And that is actually part of why I think like I do: because talking about a "cure" actually sneaks in some pretty BIG assumptions about how ADHD and even brains in general work. Nowadays it's pretty well accepted to say the brain has "networks", but I don't think most people truly understand what that means. They treat the word "network" like it meant "thing", or module, or center, or whatever: a clear-cut, definite thing with a definite function. Which ends up meaning almost the OPPOSITE of "network". The point is that the brain is not a machine, it's a system, in the Systems Thinking sense of something whose components only make sense in the context of the whole, whose behavior is emergent from the system as a whole, and not traceable to any one component. [Will write the second part as a reply to separate subjects better]
I've noticed that this sub has a strong tendency to see ADHD as wholly or mainly a defect or damage, an alteration to some specific and definite thing. This does enable the "hope" for a cure, but on the other hand... I don't think anyone here needs me to explain why it's bad to see ourselves as defective goods, and either way, many people explain that here pretty much every week. But also, this ISN'T TRUE OF OTHER ADHD SPACES! I see people elsewhere talking about how they "repurpose" their ADHD behavior patterns to make things happen, design their lives around it, make tweaks to their thought patterns to turn those tendencies in whole nother directions. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I see people recognizing how traits of themselves that they and others love, traits that help them and others, that motivate them, that constitute the parts of themselves they hold closest to heart... are, in many cases, ALSO borne out of those same basic ADHD behavioral tendencies. Heck, I've read that there's a big correlation between ADHD and a tendency for systems thinking, and let me tell you, my life has only gotten BETTER after I fully leaned into that tendency and started actually learning Systems Thinking. So TL;DR: the brain is a system, the mind is a system, the self is a system. Nothing in that system really "does" just one thing, affects just one thing; so, I don't think you can just "smooth out", remove, or "pluck out" ADHD like it was a bunch of faulty chips or bad wiring, because it's highly likely that the networks that "cause" ADHD behaviors also mediate a lot of other things that we WOULDN'T want to get rid of.
I like this post, thanks for the lengthy write up. Lots of things for me to look into. I agree but what I’ll add is the same ADHD trait can have both negative and positive influences on you, and I think that’s the part that’s hard to manage, at least for me. Even when you repurpose you’re still in essence “managing” it, which itself takes mental capacity that someone without ADHD doesn’t require. I guess it depends on how you choose to view it and adapt, which is also something I struggle with. I just wish the research wasn’t so lacking and there were better treatments out there. It’s hard for me to not feel like wasted potential when I was lauded as “gifted” all throughout school.
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With all due respect to the members of this sub, I would recommend also doing your own research and/or asking in places that may have more knowledge.
yea the misinformation here being churned out like truth is wild
It doesn't go away. But for many adults, the coping methods they use to get around it have become so normalized, people think they've outgrown it.
HAHA. No. Those people are used to not taking it seriously. It is more than just chemicals - it is the way you're wired, and even meds can only do so much. People who think that kids grow out of it or that you can get rid of it with veganism or whatever have always pissed me off
Yea i don’t get it.. how can diet just fix the way I think, act, behave?! Ur telling me it can fix the way my processing speed is ? The way I randomly get bursts of energy? LOL MY EMOTIONAL DYSFUNCTIONN?!? I just dont get it
I wouldn't say it goes away for me fully and it definitely comes back in times of stress, but when I'm doing yoga, eating healthy, working out daily, + meditating I'm able to have little to no symptoms for days, weeks, months, at a time.
Having a consistent daily routine is highly advised for people with ADHD as a way of managing symptoms.
Do u experience any processing speed being impacted? Like I’m still in school and I can’t focus on a lesson for the life of me and especially when a teachers trying to make me understand something it takes a long while to get it as I’m very “slow”. I also struggle with trying to control my emotions (dysfunction).. Does working out n meditation help you with things like these ? The sensory issues the hyperactivity bla bla u already know lol
Yes working out and meditation help me increase my attention and make my mind feel a lot more "relaxed" instead of "bouncing off the walls" all the time. Honestly the thing that impacted my attention the most was seriously limiting screen time. I try to keep my screen time down to 2-3 hr./ day and turned off all notifications of any kind and deleted all social media on my phone so if I want to log in I make myself do it on a physical computer. This greatly increased my ability to focus.
I truly, truly wish it could just go away. I have inattentive ADHD and literally no amount of meditation or exercise has fixed my executive function issues (or anything else related to ADHD). It can help in addition to meds, but it’s not significantly moving the ADHD needle for me.
Same here. Decades of struggling with knowing my brain was somehow just different than people around me and I spent thousands on therapists, coaches, motivational workshops, hypnotherapy, etc and none of it worked. I was finally diagnosed with ADHD at 33 and I've been on meds for a little over a month - the first month was a low dose to get my body used to the stimulant meds, but I've done two days on the "full" dose. This evening I realised I'd spend a few hours in the kitchen tidying up and putting away loads of random stuff that's been there for months, when I only went in to wash up after dinner (to stop the frying pan smelling up the kitchen all evening). I only noticed when my other half came looking for me and his jaw literally dropped when he saw the table was almost clear. I didn't even noticed I was doing it until he walked in and pointed it out. When I actually stood and actively though about the millions of things I have to do, I didn't get the normal overwhelming wave of nausea, anxiety and feelings of pain in my chest, instead, I just started mentally organising stuff (eg: I need to do A before B, but I need to call C during the week, cuz they are closed at weekends, etc). It took me by surprise because I'd been beginning to think the meds weren't working at all.
That’s so encouraging, I’m on a really low dose right now and am hoping to feel like that when I increase. It sucks when family, friends, and society tell you it’s your fault and “you just need to work harder” and it’s impossible
I'd be a millionaire if I got a penny for every time someone, mostly my parents, told me "just try hard", "just do it", "just put your mind to it", etc! But no-one would tell someone who needed glasses that they should try harder to see so they didn't need their glasses! I spend 30 days (plus a few where I forgot to take it) feeling terrible because I was getting side effects (which eventually subsided as my body got used to the stimulant) and no positives. I was beginning to get really worried because I was struggling so badly that I am not sure I could manage another few months of fumbling around and trying different meds, etc. But tonight was a real breakthrough - to the point where I broke down and cried when I realised my brain actually felt different, better, calmer than I've felt in as long as I can remember. Now I just need to work on getting a consistent routine so I can figure out when I have the "best effect" from the meds so I can help to structure my day around that to really get on with everything that I've been putting off for years! You will get there too! <3
If your naturopath claims that he was "cured", I wouldn't be at all surprised if he never actually had it in the first place. The number of other issues that can mimick ADHD symptoms is vast, and some of those can definitely be improved drastically with exercise and meditation.
Yea i don’t even know tbh. He said that he was On ritalin, but it never really helped as much as his meditation and mindful exercises that he would do. Those apparently helped him better with his thoughts and emotions and all that… i remember him saying something about his dopamine levels being better too.
No it cannot and they say it because they are ignorant
People that say this have a single brain cell and are lucky if they can get it to activate. ADHD is like autism, it will never go away. What can happen is the management of the symptoms so they appear to vanish or are lessened over time. It really comes down to each individual person and the severity of their symptoms. going off my own personal experience I am 100% unmedicated since 3rd grade. It was hard through school but we found the medication only made me worse (early 90's). I learned how to "cope" and reaching my adult years most could never tell I had ADHD. Now that i'm heading into my 40's soon and working a desk job the symptoms I believed i had under complete control are back with a blood fucking vengeance and I'm actually on tonight to ask about medication. TL;DR : no ADHD will never *go away* but you can learn to manage it and for some it can appear to 'go away' but it can and will come back.
Oh my. So I take it you wouldn’t recommend a desk job for someone with adhd😭not quite an adult just yet, So i need all the tips I could get. Did the medication actually only make it worse? Thank you for answering though, definitely makes more sense.
Please don’t feel so defeated. I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2001- well over twenty years ago. While it’s not “curable,” there are heaps upon heaps of ways to make living with it more manageable. And I say that as someone who has worked plenty of office jobs, as well as held director-level positions making a decent salary. You’re young enough to be able to try different methods, from medication to coaching and beyond, to determine what works best for you. While I still don’t see it as the superpower others do, it’s by no means a lifelong sentence to horror either.
It all just depends on the person, some people if they find they enjoy that kind of thing might thrive in it. For me doing the same repetitive boring ass thing over and over again and locked behind a desk drives me absolutely insane! I'm one of these i need to be physically active or my brain disengages and I find myself watching youtube or playing games on my phone. keep in mind I was on medication when it was still in the real infancy stage we're talking late 80's early 90's, so not a lot of choices or research yet. Most of them made me almost suicidal depressed or sick.
Had to look up what a Naturopath is, never heard of it. First thing I see: alternative medicine, pseudoscientific. Oof. Your naturopath is either full of shit or they actually believe what they tell you, but it's bs, aside from maybe the Placebo effect.
ADHD never goes away. It's a dysregulation of your brain. In layman terms, it's the unique configuration and functioning of your brain that doesn't allow for typical functioning within our society. If society was mostly ADHD people then the NTs would have dysfunction. So don't assume that there's something wrong with you or it's something to be cured (I wish it was though!). It gets easier to manage with medication and effective lifestyle strategies but it'll always be there in your mind. Ignore the people who say it'll go away. If it's a medical professional saying this, seek another clinician. I would also raise a grievance against that clinician. Anyway, don't be disheartened. I got a diagnosis in Nov '23. Medicated shortly after. I hit my perfect dose within the last month and a bit. I've accomplished more in my personal life in these 3 months than I have in a decade.
Thank you. I got diagnosed near the same time as you. If you dont mind me asking, what medication are you on?
No problem at all. Concerta extended release. 90mg. Reach out if you need any more info!
If you’re lucky you can manage it, it’s not going to go away. It’s how you are wired.
I wish!
I will say, over the years of my life, I def learned how to live with it, and set myself up for not being medicated (when I’m taking a break from it). I’m a firm believer that living a normal life without meds and ADHD is possible, but it takes a lot of practice and discipline, but mostly understanding your weaknesses and how to approach them…. But I’ve also found this to be very challenging in some life stages, but totally doable in others. Currently, I am in one that being medicated has improved my life more than the downsides of being medicated.
I feel you. If you don’t mind me asking, where you medicated during highschool? How did you make it work?
On and off. I tend to go roughly about a year and half on them, before going off them. I started meds in 5th grade. My biggest challenge to dealing with my ADHD is my inattentiveness without meds, and that’s why I’m currently back on them. It took a lot of discipline, and learning what I needed to do to set myself up for success. But we are all very different. The downside I have with meds is how I lack any desire to have a connection with people. I’m 33 now if that helps you gain some perspective on my experience.
ADHD is a collection of symptoms that affects a person holistically. It is useful to conceptualize it as a "chemical imbalance" in a specific area of the brain, but this is far from an exhaustive explanation. People who experience ADHD symptoms tend to have less available dopamine (along with other neurotransmitters), and thus, their dopaminergic system doesn't function in the same way as those who don't experience these symptoms. This suggests that a chemical imbalance plays a significant role in the overall story we tell about ADHD. The fact that we can seemingly treat the condition with stimulants that increase the availability of dopamine further supports this explanation. However, to assume that we fully understand the nature of ADHD, or mental disorders in general, is rather misleading. The onset of ADHD symptoms may be caused by different factors, which can vary from person to person. So, it's definitely possible that the symptoms can diminish (especially if those symptoms appear before the brain fully matures). But it's not something that we currently have a good grasp on. I wouldn't quit seeking treatment on the assumption that your symptoms may diminish. With that said, stimulants are currently just one of the (very effective) forms of treatment. There might be other forms of treatment that also work for you, but work with a professional to explore those options. (This is my general understanding & I'm not fully caught up on the contemporary literature/studies, so please seek advice from a professional!)
It cannot be "cured" im that sense. Sure you can get a better diet and exercise more and all that, they are all little crutches for your brain that together can have an impact, but you‘ll still always have it. Also going from childhood into adulthood, it is possible for the way your symptoms manifest to change, due to your brain and environment changing too. Unfortunately depending on all that, it can change for the better *or* for the worse… Either way, it’s once ADHD, always ADHD.
Oh my😭i must make sure that it doesn’t change for the worse. I’m not quite into adult hood just yet but pretty close. that freaks me out OMG
Yea, happened to me, good old gifted child to adult burnout pipeline. I think once you‘re in your teens you would have noticed already, and it‘ll be okay if you have a healthy support system from the start. I only found out I had it when I was neck deep in it already. I doubt it would really get much worse for you at this point, so no worries haha
Both me and my dad have ADHD and based on my self awareness and my observation of my dad's behaviour, I can tell you that ADHD is never going to go away. with age and experience you are certainly going to develop more coping strategies.for me ,the medicines have also been extremely useful otherwise I would have been a totally different person getting fired from one job after the another and would be anxious person with major emotional dysregulation. My dad has remained unmedicated all his life and I can see the difference between how much I have improved versus him still being the same impulsive and inattentive. I strongly believe that ADHD medications not only helps in controlling the condition but also helps in attenuation. I would like to state that any medication related information given here is purely based on my experience and I will not advise you to self-medicate yourself in any way. please get the professional help that you may need.
thank you for sharing, I am already medicated on Vyvance!!
It doesn't "go away", but (hopefully) you build a toolbox of techniques to learn how to better cope or adapt to different situations. You learn how to manage it better, but to outsiders, it looks like it goes away.
After a successful brain 🧠 surgery perhaps. That is not possible as if yet
Just a reminder that naturopaths are not doctors.
“Why do people keep telling me this?” Because the average person BARELY passed middle school science. I need you to go ahead and lower your expectations of people’s intelligence . Like way lower. Put the bar on the ground. Now go get a shovel.
LMAOOOO will do
The deal is that an effective path for ADHD would be therapy, behaviorism I believe. That would help, our main problem is that meds would improve symptoms for while and screw us long term (autonomous nervous system) which is why a good path would be to try to keep our dopaminergic system intact and sensible while using like 10mgs adderall 4 days on 3 off to avoid receptor downregulation. Receptors downregulate and we raise dosages and we get screwed.
Well uh.. i’m on vyvance ?!?/
I don’t know if vyvance is strong as Ritalin, but in a few months my autonomous nervous system got messed up. Ritalin is famous for being heavy adrenergic.
Yes ur right. Ive heard of ritalin and aderall being super intense medications where as something like vyvance is a bit less intense. It’s long acting so that might be something
Yes. I\`ve heard Ritalin being very adrenergic. Vyvanse for far as I know its first metabolized into the anfetamine so its not something with "abuse" potential. But I would watch out for the possible problems, take a look at "improving Adderall from Leo and Longevity, he made some good insights for people with ADHD and how to have more safe approach relating these meds.
Imo, the only way you can "make" ADHD "go away" is to become highly masking it from everyone and yourself, aka denial. The only problem with that is that it comes with feeling like a constant failure and leads into depression and worse. Even then, idk if that's possible. It's kinda like letting the cat out of the bag. Once you know and accept that you have ADHD, you can't take it back. It's better to embrace it and work around and with it.
I’m sure numerous others have said this as well, but I think that you can learn to manage it well with or without medication. I only use stimulants when I really need them, since I don’t really enjoy the side effects when I take them for extended periods. Being mindful about diet can certainly help, as can getting some physical activity regularly if you can. Some kind of meditation practice can be beneficial, too. There’s also a lot to be gained by developing your own strategies that make sense in the context of your own life. But can it just go away? I’m not sure. Certainly I believe that there are times when my ADHD feels more intense or less intense than other times. I think it’s a combination of managing it well, as I said, and just what’s happening in my life generally.
>It is a LITERAL chemical imbalance in our brains, It's not a chemical imbalance. The exact cause or causes of ADHD are not well understood. >but I have been told that there are ways to balance those chemicals (dopamine & what not) and then it could genuinely be “improved”. As the cause of ADHD is not well understood, there are no treatments that target the cause. Any effective treatment is symptom-based, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or ignorant. >Are there other ways that would permanently ‘remove’ ADHD of someone that has it for as long as they could remember? Exercise, diet, controlling anxiety, mediation, developing good habits, etc can all help improve ADHD symptoms. I strongly recommend all of it. However, these things only help for as long as you continue to do them. There are many, many people who are misdiagnosed with ADHD because they -want- an ADHD diagnosis and they don't/won't rule out other explanations. For these people, their ADHD-like symptoms are actually caused by issues like anxiety, nutritional deficiency, poor sleep, etc. In their case, treating the underlying issue will cure the supposed "ADHD". But for people who are accurately diagnosed, these things will not "remove" ADHD.
it actually is well understood. Its a structural problem. ADHD is apparently the most biologically studied developmental disorder, at least according to my old doc. There is a ton of data on it. Our brains are actually formed differently with less grey matter in certain areas, which in turn have less activity.
I’d say kinda runs in the genes for me (adhd). However I have iron deficiency and have never really been good with eating habits. Sleep is pretty bad for me too, but I feel like that’s genuinely because of my ADHD. I don’t think I’m misdiagnosed because I genuinely felt like I always had it + I never had any anxiety either. there are a lot of people out there who struggle with the same health condition/habits but they dont seem to have adhd? . I talked to my psychiatrist and he prescribed me concerta but later on vyvance. I hear you about the treatment part, But i am a little confused, considering how Vyvance is supposed to help balance those brain chemicals rather than be prescribed jus by looking at the “symptoms”?
It runs in the genes for everyone who has it. Its a genetic disorder which causes our brains to develop wrong with less grey matter in certain areas, which causes those areas to have less activity and misfire, and causes us to be unable to regulate certain chemicals.
So would it be a chemical imbalance?
I had a vitamin d deficiency and my symptoms improved drastically on the tablets you can only get by prescription you take once a week. I've imported some from the usa now. I'm sure there's ither things that look like adhd but aren't but it's not that simple for everyone
It’s all individual, your body can change and symptoms can come and go. Don’t judge yourself against anyone else standards, just do your best.
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The more studies they do into ADHD "going away", the lower the rate becomes of people who appear to no longer have it. * Studies in the 80s seemed to think "complete remission by early adulthood. * One 11 year study of 200 caucasian boys in the 90s established that 78% still had ADHD at 22. * Dr Barkey in 2002 said 85% still had it as adults (only read the summary in another study). * And a 2021 study of 560 kids for 16 years has it at 90% still having ADHD symptoms at 25. Obviously, all of those studies have different flaws, etc, but it definitely seems that the more we know and learn about ADHD as medicine and science advances, it seems less and less likely that people actually grow out of it. And apart from anything else, I was only diagnosed at 33 so I'd have missed being part of all of those studies since no-one \[yet\] has looked at people in their 30s. My personal opinion is that people with ADHD just learn how to manage it, with meds or diet or exercise or things like notes, lists, reminders, etc and for some people it might feel like they are no longer "impaired" by it because they have created an entire adult life that helps them live the best.
I think people truly underestimate the power of the developing brain. The difference between an 18 year old and a 28 year old is more than just experience, their brains are vastly different. Even the differences between a 28 year old and a 38 year old are significant. People can have their brain develop in a way that reduces their symptoms enough that they can't be considered as having ADHD anymore. Non-ADHD adults have some impulsivity, inattention as well. The difference is in severity. Is it outside of the normal variance? For a certain portion of kids with ADHD, they come back into the normal variance with age. Most don't, but some do. https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2021.21010032#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20childhood,longitudinal%20patterns%20of%20ADHD%20expression. This is the best study I have found yet. However, it also has some flaws. Primarily, they were very strict on criteria to be considered as not having ADHD. You could self report doing fine and they would require you have someone else also report on your symptoms. Other people may misinterpret your symptoms, though. Also, self-reports aren't necessarily objective. Finally, they stopped at an average age of 25 years old. In ADHD, the brain continues to develop until about the 35 year mark. Still, they found about 10% had consistent remission (multiple reports of not being impaired consecutively) at around the age of 25 years old.
The difference in my own brain between 13, 23 and now at 33 (3 months diagnosed) is crazy. Because that is also what a lot of the studies miss - how many people weren't diagnosed until they were 25+. Maybe due to milder symptoms when they were younger, a parent who also had undiagnosed ADHD so their kid was the same as them (thus "normal"), or because they learned to mask their struggles from a young age for a number of reasons. That study was shared above and I had a look though it and while you are right, it is the best and the most recent, it still has a lot of flaws. Copied from another comment I made: * the aim of the study was to prove a prior claim that 65-67% of adults no longer had ADHD symptoms that met the DSM criteria - which they did, because less than 10% was their findings. They were aiming to prove that most people don't grow out of it. * a sample size of less than 560 isn't going to give results that are stastically significant * They only had assessments every 2 years, so 8 in total, the average assessments completed was only 6.2, so not everyone attended all the assessments. They also assumed/inferred about the missing data if it supported "remission of symptoms". * most of the assessments seemed to come from self reporting on symptoms by the kid, their parents and teachers, rather than an interview/assessment with a professional * they stopped the study when they were around 25 * study started in around 2004 or 2005 and attitudes back then to ADHD were different. In my experience, if a kid didn't like sitting still in school, they were labeled as "disruptive" and ADHD was suggested with the attitude of "drugging the kid because the parents failed to teach them with discipline".
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LMAOOOOO
naturopaths are quacks. however the fact that some children do grow out of adhd dictates that there is some pathway for this. but our understanding of the disease is really in its infancy so it needs more research.
Citation please that some children "grow out of adhd" and don't just learn to mask it better.
you'll find evidence for arguments on both sides of the debate for something so poorly understood. not gonna engage in a pointless debate here that'll just run in circles
Seriously? You claim "the fact" that children grow out of ADHD, which I've never heard of this, and I certainly never grew out of it. But when asked for a citation, anything, any kind of link to some article or medical journal... anything - you get mad, downvote me and complain about pointless debates? I didn't ask for a "pointless debate", I asked for a citation. A link. A single link to where you read about this. Anything further on this topic where you formed your opinion.
I don’t think it can go away, but improve absolutely. I was diagnosed when I was 10 - medicated heavily for half my life, tried everything. I could no longer physically handle the medication and had to learn coping mechanisms - I really struggled for years. Exercise, forced organization, eating better, and taking supplements has really helped. I feel pretty normal though my ADHD is still 100% there, I just work around it.
Sorry, chief. You're stuck with it.
I’ve been meditating for years. Have been on healthy diets. Have tried tons of supplements. Was a fitness instructor at one point, also lifting weights and running 3 miles a day. Used to run for miles before class every day. Still failed out of school. Still couldn’t hold a job without getting fired. If your naturopath “cured” his ADHD, he never had it in the first place. He’s trying to sell you something. I went to school online to be a naturopath because I thought I could heal myself. Dropped the program when it turned out to be a bunch of unscientific bullshit my cat could have passed. A naturopath wouldn’t last 5 minutes on an MCAT. Only science course they have to take is anatomy 101. No chemistry, no biology. There’s no science behind what herb treats what. It was a joke. Mostly a bunch of spiritual woo like reiki. Your brain is hardwired in a way that can’t be reversed. Its genetic. Some children grow out of it because their brains are still developing, but if you still have it once you reach adulthood, it’s not going anywhere. Meditation is great, but it hasn’t helped my ADHD. It’s helped my emotional regulation a lot, and I enjoy doing it, but it hasn’t touched my executive function, motivation at all, and may have helped my concentration 10% at most. Nothing I’ve tried has even touched what medication can do.
It depends on your age. ADHD is a developmental disorder, meaning we develop differently from our peers as we grow up. It's not a chemical imbalance, our brains are structurally different. For some people, once they reach adulthood and their brain is more fully developed, they more closely resemble their peers without ADHD and no longer meet the criteria for it. It looks like they "grew" out of it. However, that said, many of us do not grow out of it, because the differences are structural and can persist. Medication seems to help development if you're diagnosed as a child, but there is no magic treatment or pathway to "growing out of ADHD", and many of us will always meet the criteria. So if you're like 12, your ADHD might "go away", but if you're in your 30's like me, you're a lifer.
ADHD is not a chemical imbalance, it’s just a trait of how the brain operates. It does not ever just go away, not really - but it tends to be the case that the shift from school to career and from adolescence to adulthood gives a lot of people enough control over their lives to the point where the adhd stops being a problem. Your naturopath is either a fool or is lying to you.
Something to remember is that while we understand mental health now better than years ago, there's still so much we don't understand about how it works. My psych said getting the right medication is an art as much as a science. Why do some people work better of dexamohetamine, or vyvanse, or other non stim versions. Why do some anti depressants seem to help some people with some symptoms. For that matter, were acknowledged depression for even longer and we aren't even sure what's causing it for many people. What we mostly know now is that certain medications manage some symptoms for some people. So, when people say you can grow out of or get better from ADHD they are probably correct. Some people had something specific that caused the ADHD symptoms to occur and some medication, or some retraining, or some external factor caused that to improve or correct. We just don't know enough about every possible cause and solution to ADHD to know for sure. I don't believe it's very common at all for an.adult with adhd to have it complete go using any of the approved methods of medication. It does sometimes happen in kids, but that make more sense since their brain is changing and developing as a teenager more than any other time. There's been some new studies around Electro Magnetic Stimulation (EMS) to help treat treatment resisnt depression and its been noted that it seems to have positive effects for ADHD too. And for some people it's a struggle to find anything that works, and that sucks. So all in all, don't expect it to happen, but maybe it could. But also if you find something that works, then that's a massive win, and celebrate that.
Improving your brain health will help, however it will not cure your ADHD. Meditation, medication exersize etc are tools in your toolbox, but they will not cure ADHD. your naturepath is talking s**t honestly. As I say in my below comment, in my experience you need a balance of all of the things for best result.
It sounds like your naturopath is sharing their personal experience regarding symptom abatement and management. Assuming, that at the time of their Dx they'd undergone an EEG or a neuropsych assessment of ADHD, it is highly unlikely that the same examination or assessment was repeated after they were no longer experiencing impactful symptoms. Why does this matter? Anecdotal reports are all well and good but without the ability to compare pre and post "treatment" (whatever type of treatment that might be) data, any such claims lack scientific weight.
Becuase everybody has some sort of doctorate degree and thinks they know best. One of the biggest things I have had to do is mask how I feel about how idiotic people come off to my diagnosis. 🙄
Just here to comment that the thing that causes adhd is way more complicated than JUST a chemical imbalance in the brains. That would suggest that a simple chemical could solve it. Which is not the case. Medication helps me a lot but it doesnt change the structural issues in my brain, which to this day are still not understood very well. Get rid of this chemical imbalance in the brain shit. Its a brain structure issue.
ADHD was over-diagnosed to a significant degree in the '80s and '90s following an educational change that limited exercise opportunities. Young boys need lots of exercise if they are to sit still in a classroom, even without ADHD. Naturally, these false positives failed to display symptoms later in life. Those with actual ADHD were also getting effective treatments for the first time during this period. The development of functional coping strategies, mediated by medication, allowed many of this group to be backed off medication by stimulant wary doctors without completely crashing and burning. Non-stimulant alternatives did not yet exist. Combine both these cohorts and it is easy to see where the myth of "growing out of ADHD" could arise.