Virus
I meant this post to be solely about sleep and ADHD. After all, what does the virus have to do with ADHD? Well, not much, except we’re impulsive and impatient, and prone to take risks. So, wash your hands often with soap and warm water for at least 2o seconds, which seems like a long time to impatient us. It’s the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday to You twice, or say one Hail Mary or one Our Father, whatever works for you.
Avoid unnecessary risks.
Sleep
Latest research increasingly shows the importance of sleep for everyone. Quantity and quality. Poor sleep impairs memory and cognition and mood among other things. I haven’t seen recent specific research about sleep and ADHD but since we already have problems in those areas, it seems that sleep would be especially important for us.
Comments, opinions, and personal notes:
Most Americans are sleep deprived, especially adolescents, who have different sleep cycles and sleep needs than adults or children, and should never be required to start school before 9 AM. Sleep deprivation is a significant cause of accidents. We are each unique and have different sleep requirements and different effective strategies for sleep. Most medications used for sleep eventually lead to tolerance. I advise using sleep hygiene principles and ruling out adverse practices before turning to meds. I use melatonin, which has minimal if any side effects, tolerance, or addictive risk; it is “natural.” The book advises 2 -3 mgm of melatonin. That’s rarely been effective for my patients or for me. I usually take 10 mgm an hour before bedtime. I also need to treat my restless leg syndrome and leg jerks, which are common with ADHD, and leg cramps, which probably aren’t. Daylight savings time stinks and the changes cause many problems, which are unnecessary.
Stay Safe.
doug
Links:
ADHD and Sleep: comprehensive article
@addstrategies #adhd #add @dougmkpdp
There are many alternatives to sleep.
Adhd and sleep- are you kidding me?
ADDadultstrategies 
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Hi Mr. Puryear, I just wanted to thank you again for you book and now I found your blog. This is great. I wanted to let you know that your book has encouraged me to pursue higher education and a license in Speech Language Pathology. I start in June!
Until I read your book, Your Life Could Be Better, I was trapped in thinking I wasn’t smart and also carried a horrible burden of shame for not finding things, being late, and feeling like the laundry pile indicated the status quo. It all left me feeling limited in my options. Yet, before the official diagnosis I had figured out my “list system” and other hacks in college, but I stopped using them because they didn’t fit the different seasonal life changes or different roles I play. I really need some new strategies right now with the virus. Is this harder on the ADHD crowd? I’m usually good in a crisis, but this makes me feel helpless. I started cleaning my tile grout and that got boring fast. My husband and children reminded me of that project today as it wasn’t finished in the section that I started. So, I finished that part up so everyone can walk without getting baking soda on their socks. I thank God for your book and simple wisdom that you shared. God bless you and your wife.
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Chrystal
1.Wow! Wonderful comment. You made my day, maybe my week.
2. Good for you for the education. That sounds like a great career for an ADHDer. We need structure, like regular start and stop times, lunchtime, and scheduled clients, like for me patients in practicing psychiatry; structure but containing within it a lot of novelty. each client and each session are different.
3. Is the virus thing harder for us ADHDers? Good question. I never thought of it. Maybe, because it would mess up the structure that we have. I can’t think of other reasons that it would be harder, have you thought of some?
I have a few suggestions: lookup John Battaglia on Facebook; he has a great video on this.
Think of this as a time of opportunity. What are some things you would really like to do, enjoy doing, that you can do in the house? Indulge yourself. Are there any online courses, especially relating your speech pathology or other courses you would need, so you could work on those and have a head start?
Make structure, plan each week with one chore and one fun thing per day and then work from there. These are what I would do; everyone needs to find what works for their unique self.
Finally, if I needed to do something like cleaning tile grout, I’d make sure that I had music while I did it. That helps me with a lot of things.
If you come up with some other ideas, please put them in the comments. Your contribution is very helpful. hope to hear more from you.
Thank you for your comment and your blessing
Best wishes
Doug
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prof
statistics – wow! I’ve always found them overwhelming. reading The Drunkard’s walk right now. fascinating, i think i understand most of it, not all. hope you can use strategies to get sleep, my main strategy is melatonin dissolvable, high dose – 5, 10 or rarely 15. on a really bad night i add CBD oil. of course, on top of sleep hygiene, which i strongly believe in, tho its often not enough.
thank you for commenting and contributing.
best wishes
doug
.
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Hi Doug, As a college prof. in the area of statistics, the virus has had a huge impact on me as a person diagnosed with ADHD and with sleep. I have to resist checking statistics every other minute and now I have to learn a lot of new things that are not that interesting, like how to get a point and click system to do this or that as I teach online. Teaching online, at least for me as a person who had to transition quickly, has been a real challenge. Work has so many more administrative type tasks. So I work a lot more and all the increased screen time, workload and fear makes it harder to sleep and stay asleep. Working with a lot of other people and kids home is harder too. Thanks for your blog.
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