ADHD drugs don't work the way we thought | Hacker News Reader

ADHD drugs don't work the way we thought

sciencedaily.com

26 pointst-39 comments

This is weird.

I’m friends with a doctor (med student until recently) who I remember telling me about 5 years ago as a fun fact that adhd is somewhat related to sleep regulation, that the tendencies of adhd people (hyperfocusing on topics, fidgetting, etc) are mostly compensating behaviors to maintain wakefulness.

I remember because I’m actually diagnosed (very recently). Is this not common knowledge?

It doesn't make sense to me. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the start of the year. I've had consistently good sleep for several years prior to the diagnosis and I never particularly felt tired

I see what you mean. For me it’s not exactly about being tired without meds, but I would describe the effect of the meds as “awaking”, in the sense that their effect on my focus is similar to what I’d get taking caffeine on a day I haven’t sleep.

The “mental clouds dispersing” effect is similar, if that makes sense? So my mental model was something like the brain showing “lack of sleep effects” (without the feeling) when it shouldn’t.

I remember reading an article here of an engineer who discovered they had sleep apnea that lead to symptoms similar to ADHD

After a semi-botched deviated septum surgery, I can atest to that.

Whattt

That is massive breakthrough knowledge (unironically).

Thanks for mentioning this.

> Their findings suggest that these medications primarily affect brain systems involved in reward and wakefulness rather than the networks traditionally linked to attention.

It's not common knowledge that the reward system is altered by these drugs? Anyone that takes them could attest to that subjectively.

I was thinking the same thing. My understanding has always been that stimulants flood the brain with dopamine which in turns makes difficult tasks less unpleasant.

I found this Substack to be an excellent explainer of the paper:

https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelhalassa/p/the-latest-ad...

It was also gratifying as somebody who has been diagnosed with ADHD but who is seemingly resistant to treatment with stimulants.

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