It sure doesn't look like everyone paid attention in class, did you maybe skip some English classes? I for one have been greatly helped by being on medication and wish someone would have given me that option when I was younger. As mentioned before, just because you've never experienced something doesn't mean you know what's going on in someone else's head. I would bet that there were more than a few kids in your classes who were having trouble staying focused that got labeled as problem kids.

And at the very least could you hit the 'shift' key every now and then and capitalize the beginning of your sentences, show us that you learned something when you were paying attention in class.

-Marcus

I agree, It's both. I did read something about a study that rasied a suspicion about an envrionmental factor. It was at least a year ago. I can't find it. Does that sound familiar to you ?

I don't think that there is a rise in ADD/HD, I think it is only more recently being diagnosed. As stated before there was a time when the characteristics of ADD could be a benefit, boundless energy, changing focus. It is only recently when people are being asked to become more like machines in the workforce that we are seeing this increase in problems. When I finished school and became a bike messenger my ADD symptoms went away. After riding 200 miles a week I didn't have any energy to stress or worry, all I had to do was focus on the tasks at hand (ride hard, deliver packages, smile at clients.) All very straight forward, it is only now when I'm asked to sit in front of a computer and do rote tasks that it gets difficult. I believe there needs to be a discussion of the benefits of people afflicted with ADD/HD, just like we recognize people with excellent math skills make good CPAs. For example, the CEO of Jet Blue is a self confessed ADD sufferer.

Anyways, I know that without meds and cycling I wouldn't be married and successful today. Maybe there is a problem of over medicating children, but just because some kids are over medicated doesn't mean that there aren't kids who benefit from being on meds. As an aside, it certainly doesn't help young kids that recess and gym class are being cut in favor of more test preparedness.

-Marcus

An article in Pediatrics about a year ago suggested a direct correlation between childrens' exposure to TV between the ages of 1.5 and 3.5 and then subsequent ADHD at age 7.

They were Danish kids--and only 2% of Danish kids that age watch TV, versus 50% (!) of American kids.

[PEDIATRICS Vol. 113 No. 4 April 2004, pp. 708-713

Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children]

That's it. NO wonder I could not find it, I read it at the doctors.

TV, computers, and video games have long been my prime suspects. I know the ability to multitask has also increased my propensity to do so. Hey, I'll just pop over here and see if I have new mail. Oh hey, I've been wondering about X for a while, I'll quickly Google that. Hmm...What's the weather going to be like tomorrow.

Oh right... I was working on something.

As for the symptoms being advantageous, I think there's something to that. I thrive in high stress, high demand environments. When I'm doing event support, there's nothing to do but run from crisis to crisis. It's messed up, but it keeps me excited and engaged. It's like a hunting dog who wants nothing more than to be out in the field digging through brush and rusty fences tracking game.

But there are only so many jobs that can scratch that itch.

Trouble with correlational studies is that they do not imply causation... which you are. Perhaps kids with AD/HD prefer TV more than other kids?

I'm a psychology professor and did my Ph.D. dissertation on adult AD/HD. To discuss the potential benfits of exercise to a sufferer of AD/HD, you have to remember there are 3 types: AD/HD Hyperative/Impulsive type, AD/HD Inattentive type, and AD/HD Combined type (symptoms of both hyperactivity and inattentiveness). The AD/HD - I type is the least common, and I can't really see how riding a bike would help that much. In both AD/HD-HI and AD/HD-Co the core symptom is believed to be impulsivity. This, in turn, affects a host of executive cognitive functions like memory, rule following, emotional control, and so forth.

A common myth in popular culture is that AD/HD people can't stay focused on things. They can, if it is stimulating enough. For example, many AD/HD people can play video games for hours on end. But see what happens when they have to do something tedious or rote, like writing an essay or listening to a boring lecture. A person with AD/HD might do very well at a bike messenger job (like Treespeed mentioned) because there is lots of variety and stimulation. Put them in a cubilcle doing accounts receivable and they will have a lot of trouble.

There are no known benefits to having AD/HD. People can cope with the disorder by finding activities that suit their need for stimulation and variety. People with AD/HD may enjoy a chaotic and risky environment more than others... but will be more accident prone. Medications help reduce levels of impulsivity and give other executive functions a better chance to kick in. Strenuous exercise provides an outlet for surplus physical energy, some novelty, and is just plain good for you. In other words, I can't think of any way that cycling would be better for AD/HD sufferers than it would for anyone else.

The prevalence rate for AD/HD is not believed to have changed over the years. More people are diagnosed with it now (and many are misdiagnosed with it). Unfortunately, there is a tendency to assume every misbehaved child has AD/HD, and that may not be the case. Correlations with environmental pollutants, birthing complications, and parenting practices exist, but have not proved decisive. Heredity seems to play a big role. By the way diet does not. Special diets like the Fiengold diet have not shown any efect in controlled studies.

Hope this helps answer some questions...

I have been diagnosed with ADD before. Well, I've self-diagnosed myself...

I used to get perfect straight a's, and pay really good attention in class, but it all changed in 5th grade.
When I look back, I realize it was because they took out all the recesses in 5th grade, so we only had lunch hour.
I used to thrive with a lunch hour, and 2 recesses. It was perfect, I would go to class in the morning, then just let loose on the basketball court, and come back to classes drenched in sweat... but all of my energy was gone, and I wasn't fidgety, and could focus in class. Then lunch hour, and another break after that.

Once the recesses were taken away, my grades went down. I just couldn't sit still and focus.

About 3 months ago I decided to bike to work and back, and so I put in about 10 miles a day on my bike. I'm now trying to use my bike to get places. I don't have that job now, but I notice that I crave riding on a bike sometimes. Sometimes I'll be on my bike, and this huge physical energy will overcome me, and I'll just let it drain into my pedaling... I sit and think... wow if I didn't have this outlet, what would happen to that energy?

Just recently, I went to visit my parents for thanksgiving, and didn't have a bike. I noticed 2 nights where my body just felt so uncomfortable... it was like it had too much energy, too much irritability. I tried different things, but it wasn't until I would work out that I could finally feel my body relax.

If I can workout everyday, either biking or just something, my body and mind feels alot better. I don't mind being in a car when I've biked alot that day, or done a lot of physical activity... but when I haven't done much physical stuff, being in a car is hellish. I think its because you just SIT there, and its such a couped up environment, kinda like class.

Just my story. I think ADD is just a way of describing how some people get bored with route tasks. Just becuase one of the posters here takes medication so he can do route tasks on the computer, doesn't mean its right, or good. Who knows the side effects of those medications.

But whatever, people use coffee and caffeine of all sorts (similar effect to ADD meds) to get through their route boring tasks...

maybe it's one of the ways for some of the people; i dunno. i'm not add so i don't know how much of a factor boredom is and i wouldn't presume to assume. but in any case i wouldn't go leaping from that to a single-track statement for everyone in the same bucket. it's a complex picture and this whole neurology thing is a pretty new toy to our species.

what you describe in yourself, incidentally, doesn't seem to me like it necessarily matches your own classification - understand i'm not picking nits, i'm just interested. do you only get the energy spikes when you're bored? or do you get the energy spikes all by themselves, and then the difficulty with focus is a side-effect of them? as an example for contrast, i get the wrangy feeling when i'm bored, but believe me. just working off the energy of being so irritated doesn't make the boring thing look interesting, or even more bearable.

i find that kind of funny. some of the things adults find a bit odd in my own kid can be traced back to the fact that he's not really given to processing in tv-type style.

someone should get david sedaris on a bike. and stand well back, mind you.

Hear, hear. I can attest to this. I've been there and done every one of those things except the messaging. I am clinically diagnosed with AD/HD (I don't remember the DSM code at the moment. It's the combined-symptom type, however. So much for my nickname. ), and have been for the last ten years.

That said, Ritalin did not work for me. I hadn't tried anything else except simply dealing with the condition as things arise, until I got a bicycle when I was eleven years old. I can spend hours wrenching at what would seem like tedious things to others (truing wheels, adjusting cones, etc.) to get things absolutely perfect, and spend even more just riding. Bicycles are my way of dealing with my condition.



Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a big role in both motor function and information exchange within the brain. Dopamine transporters clear excess dopamine away from synapses. Stimulants (caffeine, methylphenidate (Ritalin), and cocaine, to name a few) block the transporters from doing their job, leaving the dopamine there.

This works in someone with AD/HD because they have abnormally high levels of dopamine transporters -- which tend to sweep a ton of the dopamine away before it can take effect. With these medications, the normal amount of dopamine remains and AD/HD folk can function "normally".

In someone without AD/HD, stimulants (since they block the dopamine transporters, as mentioned above) cause an overload of dopamine, vastly increasing the rate of motor function and information exchange.

I'm not sure what CagerTools was getting at, but I wanted to make clear that caffeine in people without AD/HD has an entirely different effect. Whereas those without the disorder folk get a buzz and burst of energy, it provides only a small amount of ability to focus in those with the disorder -- incidentally, this is also the cause of its inefficacy as a real treatment, along with other unpleasant side effects.

(Disclaimer: As I'm not even halfway through my course of study in psych, my information could be inaccurate. Feel free to correct me if you know better, or have information saying otherwise.)

Fair enough. There were also a couple letters to the journal which suggested caution and that more study would be helpful--I guess if they used twins and deprived one of TV and let the other watch we'd have better results....

Thanks for the info...
So does performing tedious, unvarying tasks combined with exercise (as previous posters have been suggesting) as a 'therapy' have any merit? (I wouldn't really say that cycling is tedious, anyhow--the scenery changes by the moment).

This was a nice little reminder for me of why I love cycling everywhere I go, and a good description of what it's all about: the air, the smells, the sky, and the pleasure of riding.

It's amazing that something like cycling should exist. I'm not predisposed to personal fitness exercising for its own sake, but bicycling has a beauty about it that transcends that entire aspect of it for me.

Yup, being ADD/ADHD is not about just having too much energy. There's a who complex symptomology that those who think it's merely caused by underexertion would be smart to look up. One of the really peculiar one is the propensity of those with the condition to engage in "high flow" activities where their attention is completely monopolized at the expense of any awareness of the outside world or the passing of time. It's an experience that many people get from reading an engrossing book. For me it was always computers and electronics, later bikes.

https://www.southeastpsych.com/Articl...Dandadults.htm
https://www.risingwomen.com/arcrowe7.htm

That's interesting. Do you have further references on that? That's certainly been my experience. I love coffee, but sometime drinking it actually makes me extremely drowsy (which I figure is due to having a warm liquid in my stomach).

As an observer, I have noticed some of the best technical people I know have ADD/ADHD. Is it just a coincidence? Or does the intense focus of learning something complicated help with the feeling of not being focused? It is interesting to me to learn that some of the Forum members that have provided me with a lot of good technical advice and accurate small details have ADD too. It seems like more than a coincidence. ???

Being AD/HD and having a parent who has worked in special education for many, many years, I can give my personal experience and her study/observation as this(in simplistic words, of course): people with ADD have a tendency (almost all, in fact) to be great with anything like geometry. If it can be seen/expressed in pictures or touched and felt, it's easily grasped. She told me the reason for it, but I can't remember it now.

For me it's almost as if my brain works faster than the rest of me can. If I'm hand writing something I'll often go back to read it and find I only the first letter of short words and parts of longer ones, t instead of the, for example. When I was a mechanic I would watch a machine with a problem and could find what was wrong with it before I even realized it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like being wired completely differently. Take a computer and add a couple more busses, take out some RAM, and you've basically got the AD/HD brain from those I have met. If that makes sense to anyone else...

Too many post to read and too little time to read them so this may have been covered.

First off I too have ADD but I do not take any drugs by choice even though the doc says I should.

Second; high energy sports like cycling should BENEFIT people with ADD and docs recommend high energy sports for ADD suffers because it is like a natural ritalin, that's one of the reasons I don't take the drug (the other is because I don't believe in taking a legal speed drug to calm down).

Most ADD people like high risk sports and competitive sports like football, auto racing, hang gliding etc and yes bicycle racing. I find that ADD actually helps me ride because I can tune into many things at the same time and compute it all which has helped keep me relatively safe. This same attribute helped me when I raced cars as well. Also most people with ADD when motoring down the road when they go faster and faster do not suffer from tunnel vision like most (75% of the population) does. This helps us to see things more clearly and be able to react from things occuring off to the side then most.

Unfortunately ADD people represent about 98% of the prison population, and most drug addicts are ADD suffers, as well as most gamblers (whether it be cards or stocks, or starting a new business etc) they like the thrill of making money and then losing it to try to make it again. I know a business man with ADD who has had 5 business's in the last 30 years or so, he has became a millionare 4 times and bankrupt 4 times, he is now working on is 5th million.

There are obvious disavantages to having ADD but there are also advantages. Study all the books you can on the subject and try to follow their advice. And don't forget your appointment book!!!!!!

AD/HD is one of the most researcher disorders in psychology/psychiatry. No well designed, controlled study has found an advantage to having AD/HD. It's a deficit, after all. If someone has AD/HD, it becomes so ingrained in the cognition and personality that an individual is very unlikely to be able to tell what parts of who they are is the AD/HD and what isn't.

That isn't to suggest that people with this disorder have nothing to offer, or that impulsivity is always a bad thing. And it should be noted that these disorders are dimensional, meaning that we all have these symptoms to some extent. The trouble with someone with AD/HD is that these symptoms exist to the point where they interfere with their lives. Getting the symptoms under control to the point of having a happy and successful life is the goal of all therapies.

Well, going to school in the '50s, I knew at least one kid who had trouble paying attention in class. he used to draw cartoons in math. Not only that, numerous teachers in a couple of schools consistently noted that he had problems with dyslexia and acalculia as well. Did he go outside? Yeah, and pedaled wayyy beyond the bounds his parents set.

But then, I never thought of myself as disabled, rather differently abled. My mother called it "Rabbit Mind". My brother and I could have conversations that would leave anyone else in the dust as we fluently jumped from subject to subject with three or four subjects skipped inbetween.

If your doctor thinks you should take ritalin, then maybe you should. You are mistaken that high energy sports are like a natural ritalin. They are nothing of the kind.

The hypervigilance of some AD/HD sufferers does allow for extreme concentration in some situations, but everything else you are saying about the tunnel vision of "normal" people is outside of any study I know about.

It is true that many AD/HD folks are attracted to high risk sports. They sometimes think that the AD/HD makes them better at them. On the contrary, they are more accident prone, have worse judgement, and are...well, impulsive. Having a diagnosis of AD/HD will immediately get you disqualified from flying fighter jets in the Navy or Air Force. If the disorder helped in some way in fast, dangerous activities, you would think they would seek out such people.

I'm not trying to be a downer here, or to put down AD/HD people. The problem is that some folks talk up the so-called benefits of AD/HD and then use that as an excuse to not take thier meds. The meds that may make a real positive contribution to their lives.

In my research, I have gathered data on the psychological, cognitive, emotional, and life course of over 250 adult AD/HD sufferers. The average score for the AD/HD group on these hundreds of variables I have measured are never STRONGER than the "normal" population, but many are WEAKER. That is the sad reality. The strengths these people show are in spite of the AD/HD, not because of it...

I think its just strange how pharmacueticals make billions and billions of dollars out of all the mental problems in our society.

Certain strains of marijuana also seem to help with ADHD. Nicotine actually helps with ADHD too. But you don't hear these studies alot.

I hear about people using crack to study while in med school. Or even speed. Why is this so bad, when others are using Ritalin to study?

They're all just drugs. Illegal or legal.

If something helps you then just use it, if it doesn't, it doesn't. I just don't think we should get caught up in the idea that the pharma companies are completely innocent. I mean, if they can come up with a disorder, and market their pill to "fix" the disorder... and then have Dr.'s (who everyone trusts) selling their medicines to patients... thats like, the most genius drug distribution technique I've ever heard of.

My life is having fact and reference.

The idea of caffeine having the opposite effect is not a difficult one to grasp -- caffeine is a stimulant, albeit a mild one, and as such acts something like Ritalin would in an individual with AD/HD.

I notice that whenever I eat or drink something with a fairly small amount of caffeine (80-100mg or so), it pretty much puts me to sleep after a short burst of attentiveness -- this may be due to the amount. More than that, and it actually does help me to focus. If I really need to, I'll have a couple espressos to focus. I rarely do that, though, as I am not the kind of person who self-medicates (Warning, the following is opinion: in fact, I am quite opposed to the rampant prescription of pharmaceuticals in cases where things could be handled in other ways, or at least with less dosage).

There are also a *ton* of studies available by searching PubMed on the efficacy of stimulant medication w/ regards to AD/HD. An interesting one on first glance is SUNY Buffalo's study on kids in a summer camp. In this study, the role of dopamine and norepinephrine in AD/HD is reviewed.

If these are to be believed (that is to say, one comes to the conclusion that stimulants do indeed work in the suggested way), then it's not hard to see why caffeine works on you and I in the way that it does.

If you want the full-text articles of those, you can send me a private message thing and I'll try to grab it from my uni's database when I check those messages -- or if you have a scholarly journal search tool available, plug in the data and see what comes up.

I've never been diagnosed ADD, ADHD, etc., but when I was a kid 40 years ago, these terms were nonexistant. I guess you were just "hyperactive" or fell into some other category. In my case, whether or not I was any of these I don't know, but I always had a very hard time concentrating at school. Reading especially was hard (but for some reason, I can write just fine.)

Anyway, I've thought many times how riding my bike has helped me. It's hard to describe, but it both stimulates me and relaxes me at the same time. I don't want to live without it, my frame of mind is so boosted and my concentration is, too.

Who is the "they" here? AD/HD has been studed for decades, well before there were any medical interventions for it. The research is in peer reviewed journals, independent of financing from drug companies. You can read the research yourself, and if you follow the "Methods" section in these studies, you can replicate it on your own. It is completely transparent and there for you if you care to look.

I, personally, have spent thousands of hours researching this issue. Many of those hours were as an unpaid graduate student. Now, as a professor, I supervise ongoing research in AD/HD. Neither I or my students receive any financial support from a drug company. Our work is born out of a desire to help and understand.... not make money for a drug company.

Mars, I didn't mean to upset you. But I do have a question, have you researched the use of marijuana or nicotine in the treatment of AD/HD? I'm not looking for the negative side effects, but the positive ones.