ADHD—not just for kids!

Consider the following:

• If a kid has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, ADHD!”
• If a young adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a disinterested ne’er-do-well!”
• If an older adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a senior moment!”

Yet, if we recognize that ADHD is fundamentally a brain difference in children (and we do; there are physiological characteristics that we can test), and we can recognize that as people get older our brains typically have less neuroplasticity (ability to change) than when we are younger rather than less, then… Surely, there are just as many adults with ADHD as kids!

After all, that rather goes with the linear nature of time and the progressive nature of getting older.

So why do kids get diagnoses so much more often than adults?

Parents—and schools—can find children’s ADHD challenging, and it’s their problem, so they look for an explanation, and ADHD isn’t too difficult to find as a diagnosis.

Meanwhile, adults with ADHD have usually developed coping mechanisms, have learned to mask and/or compensate for their symptoms, and we expect adults to manage their own problems, so nobody’s rushing to find an explanation on their behalf.

Additionally, the stigma of neurodivergence—especially something popularly associated with children—isn’t something that many adults will want for themselves.

But, if you have an ADHD brain, then recognizing that (even if just privately to yourself) can open the door to much better management of your symptoms… and your life.

So what does ADHD look like in adults?

ADHD involves a spread of symptoms, and not everyone will have them all, or have them in the same magnitude. However, very commonly most noticeable traits include:

• Lack of focus (ease of distraction)
  • Conversely: high focus (on the wrong things)
    • To illustrate: someone with ADHD might set out to quickly tidy the sock drawer, and end up Marie Kondo-ing their entire wardrobe… when they were supposed to doing something else
• Poor time management (especially: tendency to procrastinate)
• Forgetfulness (of various kinds—for example, forgetting information, and forgetting to do things)

Want To Take A Quick Test? Click Here ← this one is reputable, and free. No sign in required; the test is right there.

Wait, where’s the hyperactivity in this Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?

It’s often not there. ADHD is simply badly-named. This stems from how a lot of mental health issues are considered by society in terms of how much they affect (and are observable by) other people. Since ADHD was originally noticed in children (in fact being originally called “Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood”), it ended up being something like:

“Oh, your brain has an inconvenient relationship with dopamine and you are driven to try to correct that by shifting attention from boring things to stimulating things? You might have trouble-sitting-still disorder”

Hmm, this sounds like me (or my loved one); what to do now at the age of __?

Some things to consider:

• If you don’t want medication (there are pros and cons, beyond the scope of today’s article), you might consider an official diagnosis not worth pursuing. That’s fine if so, because…
• More important than whether or not you meet certain diagnostic criteria, is whether or not the strategies recommended for it might help you.
• Whether or not you talk to other people about it is entirely up to you. Maybe it’s a stigma you’d rather avoid… Or maybe it’ll help those around you to better understand and support you.
  • Either way, you might want to learn more about ADHD in adults. Today’s article was about recognizing it—we’ll write more about managing it another time!

In the meantime… We recommended a great book about this a couple of weeks ago; you might want to check it out:

Click here to see our review of “The Silent Struggle: Taking Charge of ADHD in Adults”!

Note: the review is at the bottom of that page. You’ll need to scroll past the video (which is also about ADHD) without getting distracted by it and forgetting you were there to see about the book. So:

1. Click the above link
2. Scroll straight to the review!

Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago

The placebo effect is a well-known, well-evidenced factor that is very relevant when it comes to the testing and implementation of medical treatments:

NIH | National Center for Biotechnology Information | Placebo Effect

Some things that make placebo effect stronger include:

• Larger pills instead of small ones: because there’s got to be more going on in there, right?
• Thematically-colored pills: e.g. red for stimulant effects, blue for relaxing effects
• Things that seem expensive: e.g. a well-made large heavy machine, over a cheap-looking flimsy plastic device. Similarly, medication from a small glass jar with a childproof lock, rather than popped out from a cheap blister-pack.
• Things that seem rational: if there’s an explanation for how it works that you understand and find rational, or at least you believe you understand and find rational ← this works in advertising, too; if there’s a “because”, it lands better almost regardless of what follows the word “because”
• Things delivered confidently by a professional: this is similar to the “argument from authority” fallacy (whereby a proposed authority will be more likely trusted, even if this is not their area of expertise at all, e.g. celebrity endorsements), but in the case of placebo trials, this often looks like a well-dressed middle-aged or older man with an expensive haircut calling for a young confident-looking aide in a lab coat to administer the medicine, and is received better than a slightly frazzled academic saying “and, uh, this one’s yours” while handing you a pill.
• Things with ritual attached: this can be related to the above (the more pomp and circumstance is given to the administration of the treatment, the better), but it can also be as simple as an instruction on an at-home-trial medication saying “take 20 minutes before bed”. Because, if it weren’t important, they wouldn’t bother to specify that, right? So it must be important!

And now for a quick personality test

Did you see the above as a list of dastardly tricks to watch out for, or did you see the above as a list of things that can make your actual medication more effective?

It’s arguably both, of course, but the latter more optimistic view is a lot more useful than the former more pessimistic one.

Since placebo effect works at least somewhat even when you know about it, there is nothing to stop you from leveraging it for your own benefit when taking medication or doing health-related things.

Next time you take your meds or supplements or similar, pause for a moment for each one to remember what it is and what it will be doing for you. This is a lot like the principles (which are physiological as well as psychological) of mindful eating, by the way:

How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food

Placebo makes some surprising things evidence-based

We’ve addressed placebo effect sometimes as part of an assessment of a given alternative therapy, often in our “Mythbusting Friday” edition of 10almonds.

• In some cases, placebo is adjuvant to the therapy, i.e. it is one of multiple mechanisms of action (example: chiropractic or acupuncture)
• In some cases, placebo is the only known mechanism of action (example: homeopathy)
• In some cases, even placebo can’t help (example: ear candling)

One other fascinating and far-reaching (in a potentially good way) thing that placebo makes evidence-based is: prayer

…which is particularly interesting for something that is fundamentally faith-based, i.e. the opposite of evidence-based.

Now, we’re a health science publication, not a theological publication, so we’ll consider actual divine intervention to be beyond the scope of mechanisms of action we can examine, but there’s been a lot of research done into the extent to which prayer is beneficial as a therapy, what things it may be beneficial for, and what factors affect whether it helps:

Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials

👆 full paper here, and it is very worthwhile reading if you have time, whether or not you are religious personally

Placebo works best when there’s a clear possibility for psychosomatic effect

We’ve mentioned before, and we’ll mention again:

• psychosomatic effect does not mean: “imagining it”
• psychosomatic effect means: “your brain regulates almost everything else in your body, directly or indirectly, including your autonomic functions, and especially notably when it comes to illness, your immune responses”

So, a placebo might well heal your rash or even shrink a tumor, but it probably won’t regrow a missing limb, for instance.

And, this is important: it’s not about how credible/miraculous the outcome will be!

Rather, it is because we have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for healing rashes and shrinking tumors, that just need to be activated—whereas we don’t have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for regrowing a missing limb, so that’s not something our brain can just tell our body to do.

So for this reason, in terms of what placebo can and can’t do:

• Get rid of cancer? Yes, sometimes—because the body has a process for doing that; enjoy your remission
• Fix a broken nail? No—because the body has no process for doing that; you’ll just have to cut it and wait for it to grow again

With that in mind, what will you use the not-so-mystical powers of placebo for? What ever you go for… Enjoy, and take care!