ADDer – Page 13

Natural ADD Treatments: Zinc for ADHD

Research Suggests Using Zinc to Treat ADD

Alternative ADHD therapies are a big area of interest for many adults with ADD and parents of children with ADD who, for one reason or another, wonder about natural ADD treatments that might be used rather than prescription ADD medications.

As someone who accidentally went off of Adderall for a while and found out that I actually do not have insomnia, I watch with considerable interest the current research on ADHD treatments and potential natural therapies for ADD symptoms.

As is almost always the case with any alternative therapy or herbal supplement, there is no conclusive evidence that any natural ADD treatment works. That being said, the bar for saying that is very high, and only really achievable by a major company willing to pump millions of dollars into ongoing clinical trials and research efforts.

Use Zinc to Treat ADD in Children

There are several governmental websites that provide the results of scientific research. One of those is PubMed.gov which does a good job of providing the abstract, or summary, of medical research papers on ADD and other conditions.

While procrastinating with my ADD instead of working through it today, I came across an interesting tidbit of information that had escaped my attention before now. (Please excuse this article if it is a bit rough. I am tired, my work day is coming to an end, and I am really, really apathetic today, which is why I started doing medical research in the first place. However, I wanted to get this out there so that I would not forget, and so that if it might help someone, they could find it.)

It seems that a 2009 study suggests that zinc deficiency may be one issue in children with ADD. The study used a dose of 55 mg/day of zinc sulfate, which equates to 15 mg of zinc, to treat kids with ADHD. Over the course of the trial researchers observed statistically significant improvement in ADD symptoms of the children, before coming to the conclusion that zinc deficiency has a role in the etiopathogenesis of ADHD. (Yeah, my spell-checker just threw up too. I’ll look it up later…)

Furthermore, a new study started in 2010 aims to investigate whether zinc supplementation may be beneficial either in conjunction with prescription ADD drugs, or as a replacement.

This study offers some very important items about the current state of ADD research that I will need to catch up on when my mental state is in a better place.

A dysfunction of the dopamine transporter is involved in the "pathogenesis" of ADHD (Last I checked we were still at that, maybe, maybe not, phase.)
Some, but not all, ADHD patients may be zinc deficient. (That means that this treatment would only be useful for some.)
The human dopamine transporter has a high-affinity zinc binding site. (This is just interesting.)

Alternative ADHD Treatment in Adults with Zinc

I don’t have a dosage for zinc supplements being used in ADD research for adults. The only reference I have so so far is the study on children which used 55 mg/day of zinc sulfate. I’m guessing that the number for adults might be higher, but I’m no doctor. The recommended daily allowance (that percentage you find on vitamin bottles) is 15 mg, which I would assume corresponds to the 55 mg/day of zinc sulfate = 15 mg of zinc in the ADD in children research study referenced above. That makes as good of starting place as any.

Of course, your average multi-vitamin has 100 percent RDA of vitamins and minerals, including zinc, so if you are already taking a multi-vitamin, you are getting your 15 mg of zinc already.

Anyone have any other research or studies regarding zinc that they want offer up?

I’ll be back with more extensive research soon…

Twitter: Automated Distraction for ADD

Written by ADDer 2 Comments

Twitter is a case lesson in ADD. Tiny snippets of thought appear out of nowhere, exist for a second or two and then are buried beneath an avalanche of new snippets that pour in. Each snippet claims to be interesting or important enough to exist, although that is actually true for only a handful of them.

Some of the snippets have links that point in another, supposedly, interesting direction. While following those links to glean information or entertainment, the snippets of thought continue to pour into your Twitter stream, each with their own information, entertainment, or links to other stuff.

In reality, the more people you follow on Twitter, the more tweets you have to ignore. There are methods for determining which tweets should get read and which ones should be dropped into the ether or nothingness. There are lists to help you organize your tweets, programs that allow you to flag certain people or topics as important, and methods for sending yourself emails or reminders. Sounds a lot like organizing life!

In the end, however, there is only one lesson to be learned from Twitter, and that is that you can either pay attention to the endless stream of thoughts and distractions that continuously beg for your attention, or you can pay attention to that spreadsheet in the window behind Twitter. Which one wins out at which particular time determines how productive you will be.

Guess who is writing a blog post about how distracting Twitter is because he just spent a bunch of time ignoring the spreadsheet instead of his new Twitter client?

Have a productive Wednesday!

Distraction versus Do It Now

Written by ADDer 6 Comments

One of the trickiest things about dealing with ADD is that it happens inside of your own brain, which makes it incredibly difficult to be truly objective. In turn, that lack of objectivity can lead to making bad decisions.

The most important symptom of ADD is being chronically distracted in a manner above and beyond the norm. This condition is often referred to as distractibility. Once you have been diagnosed with ADD, you spend a fair amount of time searching for that distraction occurring within your own mind. This in itself can become a distraction, but we’ll leave that aside for today.

How To Tell If It’s ADD Distraction

Today I was working at my desk. I am a freelance writer who works from home. I have created a small office in a closet in my basement as a way to both block out the distractions of working at home — TV, Internet, kids playing — and a way to focus on my work. My desk fits against a wall. On either side are shelves with office supplies, books and printers. All in all, as distraction free of an environment as you can get without resorting to blank walls, empty desks, and soundproofing. Still, as an adult with ADD, distractions pop into my brain all of the time without any additional stimulus.

On this particular morning, the thought that showed up uninvited in my mind was that I needed to make a phone call that I had been putting off for a few days. Like many people with ADHD, I would think of making the call, decide to do it "in a minute" and then forget all about it. So, when it came up during a time when I was both willing and able to make the call, I grabbed the opportunity.

When I returned to my desk, I started beating myself up about getting distracted while I was supposed to be working. Then, it hit me.

Was I really distracted, or did I finally take care of something that needed to be done by doing it right away.

This is, of course, a trick question.

Doing something that needs to be done right away is a good thing.
Stopping what you are supposed to be doing in order to do something else is a bad thing.

The trick is that it was not a "bad" thing to take care of something that needed to be taken care of. What was a "bad" thing was not doing it before during all of the other windows that were available so that I didn’t have to interrupt what I needed to be doing to finally take care of it.

As ADDers, we beat ourselves up too much anyway. Be sure that you are at least trying to correct the right thing.

In this case, I should have been proud of myself for returning immediately to work after making the call and glad that the task had been completed. The correction that I need to make is getting to these things before I should be focusing on something else.

Oh, and the other thing I need to work on a bit is not writing blog posts whenever I have a thought about ADD instead of getting back to work on the paying freelance writing gig that is due this week 🙂

When You Just Can't

Written by ADDer 2 Comments

Procrastination versus Motivation

Sometimes, you just can’t.

Period.

That’s it.

I mean it.

As adults with ADD, we tend to be an introspective lot. It starts with questions like, “What’s wrong with me,” or “Why can’t I just get it together,” and moves forward (hopefully) through a vast journey of other questions until someone, somewhere, blurts out (grin) the words, “Maybe it’s ADD.”

Along the way, a lot of other considerations get made and a lot of other theories are formed. Some of the ideas suggested are pleasant fictions, some are unpleasant realities, and there are many others in between. The thing is, that by the time you actually get diagnosed with ADHD you already have a barrel full of other things that could, should, or would be issues that you do or do not have to deal with. This vat of knowledge can overwhelm other factors that might be at play.

When you CAN’T get going on something, I mean really cannot get going, there are a lot of things to choose from.

Off the bat, you could go with depression and its coincident apathy.

You could go with procrastination.

You could also go with the old standby and blame distraction.

That’s Not It

However, with all of that ammo born of introspection, it is important to fully understand the situation before picking your metaphorical bullet and loading it up into your mental firing chamber.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it isn’t ANYTHING.

Depression is not a one day thing, nor is one day worth of hard core apathy a symptom of depression.

Procrastination is defined by the putting off of a task in order to do something else marginally more enjoyable. Not doing anything isn’t procrastination per se.

And distraction requires that something else be occupying your focus. Just staring at the computer screen and rolling your eyes at the thought of doing ANYTHING at all isn’t ADD. It isn’t depression. It isn’t distraction. It’s nothing. Nothing at all. And, it sucks.

When that happens there really isn’t anything you can do about it other than unlearn everything that you have learned since being diagnosed with ADD and go back to what you used to try and do before you knew you had ADHD. Just put your head down and try and plow ahead until that lack of motivation goes away.

As an adult who has grown more savvy in the ways of managing ADD, this can be trying. For years, just putting your head down and trying harder was a one-way ticket to Failsville. It accomplished nothing more than draining your brain of willpower and happiness. That makes trying it again in these situations tough to take. But, there it is.

A quick reality check that you already knew courtesy of my own Day of Blah. I’m a writer and I didn’t feel like writing. I just couldn’t make myself write a very easy, very due, assignment, so I wrote this. I don’t feel any better about it, but I’ve already been writing now, my fingers are already moving, and I’m already forming the intro paragraph in my mind. In other words, I didn’t exactly put my head down and write on the assingment, but I put my head down and wrote.

And it worked.

If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.