attention deficit disorder

How To Find Real Research About ADD and ADHD

Have you ever wondered how to do your own ADD research and find good, reliable resources for ADHD research?

It’s actually easier than you think.

Real ADD Research Studies

A lot of ADD news, or new ADHD research studies come with a lot of hype when reported on by the media. That’s because it takes a flashy headline to get people to click, and flashy, doesn’t always mean accurate. Take the recent study promoted under headlines about people with ADD having smaller brains. That study, kind of, sort of, almost said that, but not really.

To sort through a lot of the fake ADD research and fake ADHD treatments, it helps to go right to the source. Unfortunately, much scientific research is hidden behind paywalls, or only accessible in dense, hard to find, medical and research journals.

That being said, all government funded scientific research (almost all of it, when it comes to ADHD and ADD) is cataloged, with a summary, on various government websites. Most often, you’ll find new ADD research and science on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website, the CDC website, or on the Medline Plus website. Any of these resources catalogs the real research, right from the source.

Unfortunately, the search function on these websites often leaves a lot to be desired. But, Google indexes all of these websites and does a nice job cataloging them. The key is to restrict your research to these sites in order to get a list of “good” ADHD research results.

The SITE Operator

You can go through the steps to setup your own custom Google search, but there is an easier way.

On the regular Google search website, you can add site: to any search to restrict the search to the specified website. For example, if you just wanted to search for ADHD tips on this website, you could do something like this:

adhd tips site:addessories.com

The site:addessories.com part tells Google to only return results from that specific website. So, if you wanted to only see results from the NIH website, you can just type site:nih.gov after your search terms.

Search All Government Websites Together

Unfortunately, not all ADHD data is cross-posted to all of the websites. If you want to know about St John’s Wort for ADD and ADHD, you’ll want to search Medline and NIH. Luckily, it doesn’t take any extra searches to search all of the relevant websites.

Since the .gov domain is actually restricted to government entities, you can get by with using the site operator with “gov” instead of being more specific. (Similarly, you can search only .edu websites by searching for edu with the site operator.)

adhd st johns wort site:gov

Searching like this gives you a normal Google search of terms, but eliminates all the phony ADHD treatment websites, and ADD con-artists, leaving just official government funded research.

You can take it one step further by using the Tools menu on the Google search page to bring up the time parameters and then choose something like “Past year” to only get the most recent ADD news and research.

Managing Your ADHD / ADD

Managing your ADD / ADHD is tricky enough without having to sift through old, disproven, or plain fake ADD news, research and information. So, use the gov searches to get the original documents, even if it is just a summary. That way you know if you are dealing with legitimate data, or just someone who wants to sell you a bunch of ADHD pills that may or may not help treat your ADD.

GABA for ADD Related Depression and Anxiety

Written by ADDer 1 Comment

As you know, I don’t really write about different ADD medications, or ADHD treatments, on here without either some solid research I can reference, or if I have experienced myself. That being said, I got this information directly from my new doctor, so I thought I would pass it along and then follow up.

GABA ADHD Motivation

I think this article about GABA for ADD related motivation issues would benefit from some backstory.

I’m in my 40s. I had hernia surgery a few years ago, but other than that, I haven’t seen a doctor in 10+ years. I’m not one of those stubborn guys who won’t go to a doctor, I’ve just literally never been sick enough to see one–with the exception of the hernia thing. That being said, I am in my 40s now, and that is the age where things can start silently killing you if you don’t have regular checkups with a doctor. The health insurance I have offers this service where you get kind of a discount that works especially well with a high-deductible insurance plan and an HSA. For someone who hardly ever sees a doctor, this is perfect. To join, you pick a doctor online, and then you go in for a full physical, and from then on, you manage your own healthcare online, even scheduling appointments without having to call anyone!

That’s how I ended up with a new doctor here in Denver.

During the interview part of the exam, I was asked questions as part of a depression screen. I don’t know if this is new or not (it’s been a decade since I did this last), but it was a first for me. Of course, as someone who has been diagnosed as having depression, anxiety and attention deficit disorder, the questions were pretty familiar. By the end, the doctor was worried, so I gave her the run down on the old noodle.

I have the apathy kind of depression. It is fairly frequent, lasts a few days at time, to continuously. I do not feel sad or worthless, and I never have thoughts of hurting myself. If anything, I feel like I deserve more than I get, and I could have it too if my brain would just get out of my way and let me go work hard on all the things that I know could be great. Finally, I mentioned how my biggest problem is being able to start something, whether it is spontaneously, or if it was something I planned and committed to.

I told her that I had done some therapy, and that over the years I had tried numerous prescriptions including Adderall and Vyvanse, but that in the end, they didn’t really seem to make much of a difference in a way that mattered to me. That being said, I have been taking St. Johns Wort, and while it isn’t a booster in any way, I do feel as if it keeps me from hitting the no-motivation dumps as often. (Don’t mistake that from actually giving me energy and motivation, just that it keeps me from feeling like keeping my eyes open is too much effort.)

GABA Doctor Recommended for ADD and Motivation (and Depression)

Right about there is where your average health care professional bails out and figures at least I can keep going, so why bother with the extra effort.

This time, however, the doctor gave me some recommendations.

One was 5-HTP. I’ve tried this before, but not probably regularly enough to get the effect. Just like St. Johns Wort, it can take a while for the effect of 5-HTP to build up in your body and brain enough to actually help improve your serotonin levels. As an added bonus, it is supposed to help you sleep better, and we all know good sleep with ADD can be hard to come by, especially if you are taking ADHD medications that can be stimulating long after the effectiveness wears off.

I’ll keep you posted on the 5-HTP.

But, what I really wanted to focus on is called GABA. I have never heard of this before, and according to the bottle, this isn’t really up my alley. However, the doctor suggested it, particularly as something that might help with motivation

So, let’s jump in.

GABA and ADHD

So, GABA is short for gamma-Aminobutyric acid, which is a form of y-Aminobutric acid. Technically, that makes it an amino acid, but not in the way that people mean amino acid when they talk about nutrition and stuff, so forget about that.

GABA acts as an inhibitor in the brain. At first, this doesn’t really sound promising. In general, a lot of the research is about how GABA helps with anxiety. It is also supposed to help mood (although if you are less anxious, then your mood is probably better), and with PMS, if you might want some help with that as a side benefit.

The way it may work for ADD and motivation is this:

For me, motivation is a difficulty in getting started. It isn’t that I don’t WANT to do something, I just can’t get going. It is hard to explain because it isn’t that I really want to get started but something stops me, so much as when I sit down, I just start doing something else, and I don’t care that I’m doing something else, so much so that I can’t even make myself try to force myself to do something. Basically, I’m playing Candy Crush and fine with it, so that’s that. Trying to snap out of it causes me worry and anxiety mostly out of fear that I can’t and even if I do, I won’t like it.

How do you motivate when you can’t even care enough to try and motivate?

That is where the GABA comes in.

What if, I was feeling a little better (mood) and I had a little less resistance to getting started, then maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to get over the getting started hump before the resistance kicked.

Far fetched?

Maybe, but I’m willing to drop a 10-spot to find out.

As usual, with supplements like these the research is small and inconclusive, but if there is the potential for it to help with both ADD and anxiety and maybe help me be the more productive person I’ve always tried to be, them I’ll give it a shot.

Update: It’s only been 5 days, but so far, I’ve noticed no difference between taking St. Johns Wort on its own after adding in 5-HTP and GABA. I’ll finish the bottles, but so far, this isn’t fluttering my raincoat.

Boost Your ADD Mood By Moving

Written by ADDer 1 Comment

You have ADD. That’s tricky enough as it is, but ADHD often goes along with depression, or low mood.

It makes sense when you think about it. Unbalanced neurotransmitters are the root of both issues. However, not every slow, sluggish day is a result of off-kilter brain chemistry.

Moving to Boost Mood

One of the traps to avoid when you have ADD is the tendency to blame everything on your ADHD condition. Sometimes, the issue is just good old human imperfection.

For those days when you seem to be a little sluggish, or you just can’t get your brain into gear, and another cup of coffee isn’t helping, try moving around. Physically using your body switches up tons of systems in your body from rest to active. Doing so has a ripple effect on your body that can, and often does, include your brain functions.

Now, I know what you are thinking. This isn’t new news, and you know that exercise and diet can help your ADHD, because, by now, you’ve figured out that better diet and exercise helps literally everything. But, the key thing here, is how little movement is necessary for potential improvement. Sure, a 40 minute run would be great, but that may not be what is required.

Small amounts of movement can make a huge difference, especially if you have been sitting for a long period of time, or first thing in the morning when you haven’t moved much at all yet for the day. Try loading the dishwasher, or running something upstairs. The key is not so much the intensity of the activity, but the length.

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Stand up, walk down the hall, pour a cup of coffee, then walk back to your desk and sit down, and likely nothing has changed. The body takes a wait and see approach to kicking in extra systems as a way of saving energy. No since increasing energy use if this is just a quick blip.

That’s why a 15 minute chore, or other activity works, while a quick break doesn’t. You have to do something long enough to engage the body. Stay standing, and hopefully moving, for 10 minutes. Heck, sometimes, just 5 will do it. Just make sure it is longer than that quick standup and sit back down that doesn’t seem to be working.

Just Do It By Crashing Forward

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

My last post here was 12 days ago. That’s not unusual here, or for other blogs. However, my goal (one of my New Year’s Resolutions, actually) was to write here (and on my other blogs) daily.

Now, in all fairness, that’s a tall order, but 12 days between posts isn’t even in the ballpark. As Jules from Pulp Fiction might say, “That’s not even the same damn sport.”

The issue, as is so often the case for us with adult ADD and ADHD, is a combination of getting started, and keeping going. Depending upon the way your personal ADD manifests, one of those two things might be harder for you. For me, it’s the former, although, at any point if some external event causes a break in the flow, it’s just as likely as not that I will not get restarted. (One might argue that this is still the issue of getting started, just from a new, unexpected, starting place.) For example, just now, I remembered that my coffee should be ready. I know that if I leave to get that coffee, this article will likely sit in an open tab in Chrome for DAYS, and that’s if I ever get back to it at all.

On the other hand, when I do get going, the results are often really good. It’s just that I can’t necessarily make myself get going. That’s really more of the whole depression/anxiety side of things, than a pure ADD trait, but it doesn’t matter where it comes from. The fact is, that it holds me up from achieving everything I am capable of achieving, and therefore, it must be dealt with.

Actually Getting Something Done

For nearly four years, we debated what to do with the little patch of land beside the sidewalk to the front of our house. It was once nicely landscaped by the previous owners, but had been let go by us. But, we made a decision to do something… four years ago. There was a plan. To execute the plan we had to go to Home Depot. Then, it turns out that plan was pretty expensive, so we put the project on hold, you know, to do some research and stuff. Then we came up with another plan. Another reason to put it on hold.

Finally, earlier this summer after literally FOUR SUMMERS of plans and no action, my daughter and I dug it up, laid down landscape fabric, covered it with wood chips, and planted three lilac bushes. It looks pretty good. It took less than half a day. Boom! Done.

add project done — Yes, I need to pull those weeds, but if I stopped to do that after taking the picture, I wouldn’t have come back to write this article.

What happened?

It came down to the fact that after all of the years of failed plans, my wife officially gave up. (I’m not blaming her, but she has the design skills and planning skills. I just copy what I see someone else do.) The other critical factor was we bought the lilac bushes and put them in big pots, but it turns out, you can’t grow lilac bushes in a pot like that, so they were dying. It was, do something now, or throw away the plants, and the $100 we spent on them. Now, I may be ADD lazy, but I’m also a former financial planner, and a world class tightwad. The reality is that I could have thrown them away and not cared, but I knew in the back of my mind that I would have to buy something else to replace them, and when it comes to spending money, I always want to spend it on Hawaii, not house stuff.

Editors note: I just went and got the coffee. That was a foolish decision, but I really wanted it. And, having mocked myself earlier in the article, I made a deal with myself that I would, for sure, come back to writing. I usually weasel out of these kinds of deals with myself (they aren’t REAL deals), but having just talked about it, I was able to see the problem coming and avoid it by rushing up, and back down before I could move my brain onto something else. — This is the point of this article, if you can see it coming, you can avoid it (sometimes).

The problem is that motivation is fleeting. So, I did two things that ended up ensuring the project would actually go. (I didn’t do either of these things intentionally. I realized after the fact, when I was trying to figure out why I can do some things –like this project– but end up not doing other things.) First, I offered my daughter allowance money for helping out. This is important. I never let my kids down. I let myself down all the time, but never my kids. Backing out of the project now, meant taking away an opportunity that I had promised her. Not going to happen if I can help it. Second, I didn’t plan. I didn’t figure it out. We measured quickly, and we went straight to home depot. We bought that red cedar mulch (it’s what they use at the Botanic Gardens), and came straight home, unloaded the bags, and started digging. Once we had part of it ready, we stopped digging and moved onto laying down the landscape fabric and wood chips. (It’s disheartening to work hard and then still have a long way to go, so “completing” parts is a good strategy if you can make it work.) Before you know it we were done.

Go! Go! Go!

Total time from initial motivation to DOING SOMETHING: Less than 10 minutes. — This is critical.

Total time from start to finish of project: Less than a day. — Not always practical, but super helpful.

Basking in my success, I announced that on Monday I would go get sod and fix the backyard. No plan, just sod the whole thing. Plus, I would figure out how to glue down the loose bricks on the back patio.

Boom! Nice yard, no more weeds, stable bricks.

Except…..

My wife gave me that look that says, not only do I not really approve of what you are doing, you should already know why I don’t approve of it.

So, I stopped. We talked… for 45 minutes. Have we really decided to keep the brick patio? Do we really want the whole thing to be grass? Do we want a deck, a platform, a pergola?

You can probably guess what happened from there.

We planned. We agreed. NEXT WEEKEND, we went to Home Depot. It would take $1000+ to execute the plan, and not just a weekend, but WEEKENDS… several actually.

Was that really the way we wanted to spend our summer?

The result?

My yard is still full of weeds and loose bricks.

Crashing Forward

The key to living successfully with ADD / ADHD, is knowing what it is and how it affects you. I don’t mean the fancy descriptions in all those ADD Books you probably already read, or about executive function, and serotonin levels. I mean, what trips you up. When does it happen, and can you see it coming, and if so, can you head it off at the pass?

Like many people with ADD, I have some level (relatively low I think) of depression and anxiety that makes forcing myself to so something very difficult. If I can just harness any motivation that does pop up, that really helps. It’s not the whole ballgame, but it helps a lot. Unfortunately, some things that need to be done I’m never motivated to do. But, for those other things, the key is to catch that momentum, get it going, and keep it going.

I’m calling this idea crashing forward. For me (and I bet for a lot of others) the main issue is letting all of those “other” things that are in the way stop us. Nike used to say, Just Do It, and that’s right, just doing something is great, but just do what? Therein lies the rub. If just doing it, means setup, prep, thinking, designing, planning, scheduling, and so on, then it’s game over. What I need is to crash through those steps and just get going. Will I make mistakes? Yes. Will things go wrong? Yes. Will I maybe do it the wrong way and have to do it over? Again, yes.

But…

I will DO IT!

This is the key. Imagine if for the backyard, I hadn’t said anything. Imagine I had just gone out and sodded the whole thing and glued down the bricks. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have planned out something better. It doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done it the following weekend. But, if, in the very likely circumstance, it took a little while to execute, we would have a nice yard in the meantime. Now, it’s fall, and I don’t really have time, and… here we go again.

It comes down to the difference between the long-game and the short-game. I win the long game by playing the short game. I’ll never finish a full curriculum on my own, but you bet I can finish a crash course when my energy and enthusiasm is high. That’s what I need, a way to turn everything into the crash course version. Not just any crash course, but the crashiest possible course.

That’s my new project: Crashiest.

It’s a time management, organization, to-do list, motivation, all natural ADD treatment, planning, task management, completion system. — I bought the domain name a year ago. There is still no website. Why? I’ve been looking at whether to make it a blog or a regular website, researching frameworks, looking at templates, picking fonts, deciding on how to code the site, figuring out linking and design and….

You get the picture. Obviously I have work to do, both on myself, and on that website / system / program.

I’m headed there next to build it. I made a mistake coming here and blogging about it first, but I still have some motivation, so… wish me luck.

If it worked this time (09/20/2016), by the end of the day you should see something at crashiest.com when you click. I’m going to crash forward right here, right now.

I’m going to make it a regular website. I’ll add a blog. I’m going to use the Zurb Foundation framework/template thing, but I’m going to leave off all the extras. I can add them in later if I choose.

It should be ugly to start. It should have a lame design, and need some work. It should not be ready for me to use as a project sample for my web development career. Not yet.

But, what it should be is THERE, because I did something, instead of “working on it.”