AuDHD means being autistic and having ADHD – and it can look very different to a single diagnosis
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When you finally receive a neurodevelopmental diagnosis that reflects your strengths and the challenges you face, it can be life-changing.
But for people with both autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – known colloquially as AuDHD – getting the right diagnosis can be difficult.
People with AuDHD (pronounced awe-D-H-D) often find their traits and experiences don’t always neatly fit into either category. Sometimes the two conditions contradict each other and appear to act in opposite ways. Other times they exacerbate or increase a trait or difficulty.
This can delay diagnosis and support.
What are these conditions and how common are they?
Autism is a condition that affects social communication. Autistic people often have significant sensory sensitivities and need certainty and repetition. Around 1-2% of children and adults are autistic.
ADHD impacts either the ability to flexibly focus and sustain attention, or results in hyperactivity and impulsivity – or both. Around 5–8% of children and 3% of adults have ADHD.
Around 30% to 50% of autistic people also have ADHD. But despite them commonly occurring together, autism and ADHD have only been able to be diagnosed together since 2013, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders received its fifth update in the the DSM-5.
What’s usually diagnosed first?
Autism is usually diagnosed at an earlier age than AuDHD and ADHD in childhood.
This may related to autistic traits – social difficulties – often being apparent in preschool, whereas ADHD traits may not become apparent or problematic until school age, when concentration abilities are needed to learn.
But some people can mask their autistic differences through strategies, such as learning explicitly how to socialise, following scripts, copying and mirroring others and hiding autistic traits.
Sometimes, accessing ADHD medication treatment can reveal autistic traits that may not have been obvious and were overshadowed by ADHD. After taking ADHD medications, some people can achieve their preference for being highly structured and organised, when ADHD traits of disorganisation and inconsistency in attention are reduced.
For others, ADHD medication will treat impulsivity that manifests as talkativeness or extroversion, to reveal a deeper introversion and preference for solitary activities.
In recent years, some people who have one existing diagnosis have learned about the other condition on social media and realised they might have AuDHD.
Some difficulties are exacerbated
Maintaining friendships and socialising
For autistic people, maintaining friendships is a core difficulty and can make social interaction draining and overwhelming. Autism makes it difficult to pick up social cues, know what to do or say in social situations, and identify non-verbal signals from others.
ADHD can make it hard to organise social events, stay in touch with friends and respond to texts and calls. When socialising, attention difficulties can make it harder to focus on conversations and remember what was said. Hyperactivity and impulsivity can mean interrupting and talking over others or being overly talkative.
Together, AuDHD can mean a person experiences all these differences in social interactions, resulting in more unintended “social mistakes”.
Stims
Repetitive behaviours in autism (stims) are often ways to regulate or express emotions through repeated movements or vocalisations. They could be repetitive noises such as squeaks or humming, or movements such as rocking back and forth or finger flicking.
ADHD hyperactivity often involves fidgeting and not being able to be still or relax.
Together, movement from stims and fidgets can be more obvious and frequent.
Other traits pull people in different directions
Organisation
Autistic traits include the need for order, systems, categorisation and organisation around the house, at work and with hobbies.
ADHD traits of inattention include significant difficulties with organisation.
The result for people with AuDHD is often internal frustration and discomfort: wanting to be organised but not being able to maintain it.
Special interests
Autistic special interests are usually long-standing (over years) and limited to a few subjects.
ADHD involves seeking novelty and quickly becoming bored and moving on to the next interest once something is no longer stimulating. This might mean buying new things for a hobby but never actually using them.
AuDHD tends to follow the pattern of ADHD. So someone may have intense interests but be exhausted by them sooner than they would with autism alone.
Routine
Autism wants certainty, plans and routine. ADHD wants spontaneity and novelty. Together, autism often seems to win.
People with AuDHD may follow routines due to the anxiety uncertainty causes them, but they may feel bored or dissatisfied as their ADHD needs aren’t met.
Unique strengths
Many late-diagnosed people with AuDHD are highly intelligent and have developed elaborate compensation strategies for their difficulties. Many have found ways to leverage and maximise their strengths.
Strengths in AuDHD can be related to either condition. This can include common autistic strengths such as being highly focused, having meticulous attention to detail and subject matter expertise.
ADHD strengths can include creativity and the ability to develop novel solutions, strategise, quickly research to a deep level, have a high level of focus, and take quick action in highly stressful situations.
Knowing you have AuDHD can result in self-acceptance and understanding, and replace a lifetime of self-criticism. This can lead to developing a life that is right for each individual person with AuDHD rather than trying to fit in with what might be socially and culturally expected.
It also means you can access treatments and supports to support both autism and ADHD needs. This might include ADHD medication, neuro-affirming education and therapy adjusted for autism and ADHD, occupational therapy, ADHD coaching, as well as workplace and academic accommodations.
Tamara May, Psychologist and Research Associate in the Department of Paediatrics, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Why do we get snippets of songs stuck in our heads? And are earworms more common with OCD?
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You’re reading a report and trying to concentrate. The room is silent. But despite your best efforts to focus, a little snatch of melody – an “earworm” – keeps circling inside your head.
Research suggests most people get earworms regularly – and they’re more common among people who listen to a lot of music. One Finnish study found more than 90% of people report experiencing earworms at least weekly. About 60% of people experienced them daily.
Why does your brain insist on inflicting snippets of tunes like Jingle Bells, Bohemian Rhapsody or Golden when you try to clear your mind or at random times during the day?
And how are people with conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) affected?
Westend61/Getty Images What turns a song into an earworm?
A song is more likely to become an earworm when you’ve heard it often or recently.
In a 2015 study, we played an unfamiliar song to participants either two or six times, and then contacted them at random times during the three days afterwards to ask if the songs were stuck in their heads.
About one-third of participants reported experiencing an earworm at the time of contact. We also found that earworms of the songs in the experiment were more common if participants heard the song six times, and were most common in the day afterwards.
What’s going on in our brain?
Research shows brain function is broadly similar when people listen to music and when they experience musical imagery like earworms. The word imagery here refers to the imagined nature of the earworm – it’s not a sound that we are hearing out loud, it is instead within our minds.
But part of the brain called the auditory association cortex (which does more complex brain tasks related to music listening) seems to be playing a bigger role with musical imagery than the primary auditory cortex (which does more of the basic tasks).
Another interesting finding concerns people with congenital amusia, a condition which means they don’t hear music as effectively as everyone else. This might mean they’re not good at telling if something is out of tune, and struggle to remember melodies they just heard.
Researchers found that while their brains might not be as good at analysing music, they still experienced earworms, though less frequently.
What have earworms got to do with memory?
What earworms seem to be doing when we experience them is getting into a part of our cognitive architecture called working memory. We use working memory when we have to remember something someone just told us, or when we do maths in our head.
Australian researchers have found that people doing tasks that test their working memory aren’t as accurate at remembering things if they have a song stuck in their head. The earworm is crowding out other information in working memory.
In another study, the same Australian researchers found that the more familiar people were with the songs, the more likely it was that the song stuck in their head was interfering with their working memory.
So what are earworms for?
While the earworms we don’t like can be really annoying and stand out, research suggests most earworms are a relatively pleasant experience.
German researchers have argued earworms are essentially a sort of withdrawal response to not hearing music. Sometimes we want to listen to music but can’t, which might mean that your withdrawal symptom is an earworm.
British researchers also found the earworms people experience reflect the reasons why those people listen to music. So if people often listen to music to rev themselves up, their earworms will often also be songs that would rev them up.
What’s the experience of people with OCD?
Earworms can sometimes be troubling for people with conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), who have unwanted thoughts come into their head. Earworms can be just another unwanted thought.
However, research is mixed on whether people with OCD experience more earworms than other people as a result of their condition. Some research suggests that, while people with OCD are more troubled by earworms, they don’t usually experience them more often than anyone else.
Other research does find they experience earworms more often. But it’s possible that people with OCD are just much more aware of their earworms, and such results can reflect that awareness.
Researchers have suggested the best therapeutic approach for people with OCD troubled by earworms is in context of broader treatments such as exposure and response prevention. This aims to reduce the negative response patterns that occur in response to intrusive thoughts.
How do I remove an unwanted earworm?
Some some British researchers have found that chewing gum might be the answer to getting rid of unwanted earworms, as odd as that sounds.
If earworms are going around our working memory, this actually makes sense – our memory is partly held in our “inner voice”, which involves using the throat to “subvocalise”.
So if you engage your throat muscles by chewing on some gum, this may disrupt the looping earworms just enough for them to end. If your earworm is bothering you, it’s worth a try.
Or try listening to something else, as people tend not to experience earworms when listening to other music. That can work for getting the song out of your head right now – but then you might get earworms of all the other songs.
But there’s little evidence that listening to the whole song will get rid of an earworm. Research suggests that listening to the song increases the likelihood the song will then get stuck in your head.
Timothy Byron, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Wollongong
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Cantaloupe vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cantaloupe to cucumber, we picked the cucumber.
Why?
In terms of macros, both are of course 90–95% water, with just enough fiber to hold them together. However, it’s cantaloupe that’s 90% water and cucumber that’s 95% water, because cantaloupe has more than 2x the carbs and 144x the sugar (whence the sweetness). Now, it’s a fruit and so this sugar isn’t really anything to worry about if you’re eating it in solid form (as opposed to as juice), but by the numbers, it does mean that cucumber has the much lower glycemic index (cucumber has a GI of 21, while cantaloupe has a GI of 65), so we’ll give cucumber the win in this category.
In the category of vitamins, cantaloupe has more of vitamins A, B3, B6, B9, C, and E, while cucumber has more of vitamins B2, B5, and K, so cantaloupe scores a 6:3 win in this round.
When it comes to minerals, cantaloupe has more potassium and selenium, while cucumber has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, so another win for cucumber here.
Looking at polyphenols, cantaloupe has almost nothing (trace amounts of some lignans), while cucumber has more of the same lignans that cantaloupe has, plus highly beneficial flavones apigenin and luteolin, and famously good flavonols like kaempferol and quercetin. So, one more win for cucumber here.
Plus, and it’s not yet known the mechanism of action for this one, but cucumber extract beats glucosamine and chondroitin for reducing joint inflammation, at 1/135th of the dose.
Adding up the sections makes for a very clear overall win for cucumber, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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Younger Next Year: The Exercise Program – by Chris Crowley & Dr. Henry Lodge
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We previously reviewed the same authors’ original “Younger Next Year”, and now here’s the more specific book about exercise for increasing healthspan and reversing markers of biological aging, going into much more detail in that regard.
How much more? Well, it’s a very hand-holding book in the sense that it walks the reader through everything step-by-step, tells not only what kind of exercise and how much, but also how to do, what things to do to prepare, how to avoid not erring in various ways, what metrics to keep an eye on to ensure you are making progress, and more.
There are also whole sections on specific common age-related issues including osteoporosis and arthritis, as well as how to train around injuries (especially of the kind that basically aren’t likely to ever fully go away).
As with the previous book, there’s a blend of motivational pep talk and science—this book is heavily weighted towards the former. It has, however, enough science to keep it on the right track throughout. Hence the two authors! Crowley for motivational pep and training tips, and Dr. Lodge for the science.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be biologically younger next year, that exercise will be an important component of that, and this book is really quite comprehensive for its relative brevity (weighing in at 176 pages).
Click here to check out Younger Next Year: The Exercise Program, and make that progress!
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Artichoke vs Green Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing artichoke to green beans, we picked the artichoke.
Why?
In terms of macros, artichoke has nearly 2x the fiber, nearly 2x the protein, and slightly more carbs, making it to “more food per food” option in this category easily.
In the category of vitamins, artichokes have more of vitamins B3, B5, B6, B7, and B9, while green beans have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, E, and K, for a 5:5 tie in this round.
Looking at minerals, artichokes have more copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while green beans have more manganese and selenium, yielding to artichoke a 6:2 win here.
In other considerations, artichokes are also higher in polyphenols, so that’s another round in their favor.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for artichokes, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
Enjoy!
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Aloe Vera vs Alzheimer’s Disease?
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Regular 10almonds readers are probably already fairly on top of Alzheimer’s preventative measures, such as:
Alzheimer’s Causative Factors To Avoid
…but here’s a new development:
All about acetylcholine (and its friends)
Researchers (Dr. Meriem Khedraoui et al.) have investigated bioactive compounds from aloe vera as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, using advanced computer modeling techniques.
Specifically, Dr. Khedraoui and her team focused on how the aloe vera compounds affected acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase, two enzymes that break down acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter already reduced in Alzheimer’s and closely linked to memory loss and cognitive decline.
Managing neurotransmitters has often been an angle of research when it comes to brain health, and we’ve written about that before with other neurotransmitters.
For example, with regard to dopamine, there’s a study that found:
- Increasing dopamine activity increased neprilysin levels.
- Higher neprilysin reduced amyloid-β levels.
- Reduced amyloid burden was associated with better memory performance
You can read about that, here: An Accessible New Development Against Alzheimer’s
And when it comes to norephinephrine, there was a study that concluded “β2AR manipulations can alter disease pathology”, which is a great example of how carefully scientists say things, but the series of declarations adds up to the same; we’ll quote some points directly from the paper’s abstract:
- NE inhibits surveillance activity of microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, via their β2 adrenergic receptors (β2ARs)
- Microglial β2AR signaling is an important modulator of amyloid pathology.
- Endogenous β2AR signaling degenerates as a function of amyloid pathology and aging.
- In AD, microglia downregulate β2AR expression early and progressively.
- β2AR manipulations can alter disease pathology.
- Importantly, dampening microglial β2AR signaling worsened plaque load and the associated neuritic damage, while stimulating microglial β2AR signaling attenuated amyloid pathology.
- Our results suggest that microglial β2AR could be explored as a potential therapeutic target to modify AD pathology.
Translating from sciencese (if you’ll pardon that we’ll still use some big words, but only ones we explain in the below-linked article):
Norepinephrine activates certain receptors in microglia, and those receptors tell the microglia to “keep calm & carry on”. In the case of Alzheimer’s disease, those receptors stop working correctly, leading to increased neuroinflammation. Thus, stimulating those receptors with norepinephrine reduces neuroinflammation, allowing the microglia to calmly carry on with their actual job of getting rid of the amyloid that leads to Alzheimer’s disease.
You read more about that, here: Norepinephrine vs Alzheimer’s Disease
So, what about acetylcholine?
Acetylcholine is the main neurotransmitter of the parasympathetic nervous system, and is also heavily involved in cognitive functions including memory and creative thinking.
In this study we’re sharing today, they found that the compounds from aloe vera demonstrated strong binding affinities of −8.6 kcal/mol with acetylcholinesterase and −8.7 kcal/mol with butyrylcholinesterase.
This is relevant, because if you take an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, it will inhibit acetylcholinesterase, meaning you will have more acetylcholine to work with. That’s good (for most people most of the time).
You can find the paper itself, here: In silico exploration of Aloe vera leaf compounds as dual AChE and BChE inhibitors for Alzheimer’s disease therapy
So, should you stock up on aloe vera and get juicing?
Probably not just yet, though don’t let us stop you. It’s just, this research is new and needs more testing to be sure of its conclusions, which will doubtlessly be done in non-human animals and then in humans.
In the meantime, here are two ways of improving your choline and/or acetylcholine levels:
Huperzine A: A Natural Nootropic ← it’s an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor
…and:
Citicoline: Better Than Dietary Choline?
Want to learn more?
Here’s a great starting point:
How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
Take care!
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How Artery Widening (Not Just Narrowing) Can Also Cause Strokes
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We’ve written about stroke before; most centrally, our “how to” article, Reduce Your Stroke Risk ← so definitely do check this one out and do those things!
All that remains valid, but a new risk factor has been identified, and, paradoxically, it’s the widening of arteries:
Too wide!
Researchers (Dr. Joanna Wardlaw et al.) have done a study whose results challenge the long-standing idea that lacunar ischemic stroke (a common small vessel stroke) is mainly caused by fatty plaque narrowing in larger arteries; instead, Dr. Wardlaw and her team found that widened, enlarged brain arteries (arterial dolichoectasia) were much more strongly linked to lacunar stroke and cerebral small vessel disease (with 4x greater risk thereof).
As to how this problem arises when logically a wider blood vessel should mean better blood flow, the paper (that we’ll link shortly) discusses how “nonatheromatous intrinsic microvascular pathology” is to blame, which translating from sciences, means the structural disorganization of small brain arterioles, rather than the cholesterol plaque buildup in larger vessels.
In other words, imagine if your house were built quite a bit larger but with only the same building materials; you see how it’d have problems? Same deal for your blood vessels.
This means that antiplatelet drugs such as aspirin mainly target clotting and atherosclerotic plaque-related events, but if lacunar stroke is primarily driven by intrinsic small vessel structural damage rather than plaque blockage, then antiplatelet approaches are not likely to be a lot of help in this case!
Important note: this does not mean that arterial narrowing (let alone blockage) is fine. It’s not. It just causes different strokes for different folks, so to speak. And, by consequence, this also doesn’t mean cholesterol, plaque, or antiplatelet therapy are unimportant for all stroke types (indeed, atherosclerosis remains a major cause of many other strokes) but simply that lacunar stroke will require other approaches:
❝This study provides strong evidence that lacunar stroke is not caused by fatty blockage of larger arteries, but by disease of the small vessels within the brain itself.
Recognizing this distinction is crucial, because it explains why conventional treatments like antiplatelet drugs are not as effective for this type of stroke and highlights the urgent need to develop new therapies that target the underlying microvascular damage❞
~ Dr. Joanna Wardlaw
So, research in this regard will now be focusing on protecting or restoring small vessel integrity rather than just on (the also worthy goal of) preventing clot formation; the same team’s LACI-3 trial is already testing whether drugs such as cilostazol and isosorbide mononitrate will better target these mechanisms.
You can read the paper in full, here: Implications of Cranial Arterial Stenosis and Dolichoectasia for Cerebral Small-Vessel Disease Etiopathogenesis: Findings From a Prospective Mild Stroke Cohort
But what if you do have a stroke?
All is not necessarily lost; there are options! For example: What To Do If Having A Stroke Alone? ← with the caveat that, if you have a stroke, there’s a good chance you’ll forget all this. However, this is good to know anyway, in case someone else is having a stroke (and if you don’t live alone, it can be good for whoever is with you to know this too).
There are also such resources as: Reverse Stroke Damage (Within A 6-Hour Window) ← there is a drug that does this now, but time is of the essence
Want to learn more?
Everyone even vaguely health-conscious knows that prevention is better than cure, but many still don’t think about a lot of things until they’re too late, and stroke definitely falls all-too-often into that category:
❝Each year in the US, over half a million people have a first stroke; however, up to 80% of strokes may be preventable.❞
~ American Stroke Association
Source: New guideline: Preventing a first stroke may be possible with screening, lifestyle changes
To be ahead of that curve, check out:
Don’t Get Caught Out By These “Nontraditional” Stroke Risk Factors
And, for that matter,
6 Signs Of Stroke (One Month In Advance)
Take care!
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