If caffeinated drinks like coffee are meant to give you boosts of energy then why is it recommended for kids with ADHD to calm them down?
In: Biology
The simplest explanation here is that our brains don’t work the same way as someone without ADHD. It seems counter intuitive to give someone who suffers from a deficit of attention and hyperactivity a stimulant. The thing is ADHD is neither a deficit of attention or hyperactivity, it’s an impulse control disorder.
Stimulants don’t help everyone with ADHD but they do help a lot of people. They act as a ripcord. People with adhd are prone to risky behaviour and chasing that dopamine drip. They act they way they act to get their brain going. They need to push themselves that way to trigger the dopamine response that normalizes their behaviour. That’s why people with ADHD tend to also have other issues that stem from impulse control at it’s root.
Stimulants act as a rip cord. Just like starting up one of those old school gas lawnmowers. The stimulant kick starts your brain and allows it to start producing as close to “normally” as it can.
The way it was explained to me in an ELI5 way is to imagine a gas gauge in your car that is measuring stimulation in your brain. Someone without ADHD has about a half of a tank of gas, and a stimulant will kick their brain into overstimulation, a full tank of gas. However, someone with ADHD, their gas gauge is closer to empty, and a stimulant will kick their brain up closer to a half a tank of gas, where someone without ADHD would normally be. It doesn’t “calm them down” so to speak, but rather but eliminates the need for extra stimulation to get to that average half a tank of gas.
The actions we see as “hyper” in someone with ADHD are actually just their brain trying to get to that half a tank of gas / baseline level of stimulation.
Imagine there are three people talking at once. You want to listen to just one person. So your listen to that one person. A person with ADHD can’t focus on the one person. What stimulants do is basically fill the extra sensory receptors to block out the extra conversations so they can focus on the one conversation.
Dopamine. ADHD is a lack of dopamine. Dopamine is your reward drug in your brain that lets you focus. It keeps you motivated. It let’s you function as a normal person. Caffeine activates dopamine. That’s all it is.
The part of the brain responsible for concentration is under stimulated in people with add/adhd. This makes it seem as though they are over stimulated but we just can’t pay attention because that part of the brain don’t work so well. When we take a stimulant, for me Adderall, it speeds up that part of the brain bringing us closer to normal to paying attention. People that already have a normal working brain that add stimulates now have an over stimulation causing them to look like tweakers.
Folks with ADHD have an underdeveloped area in the brain called the prefrontal cortex. Basically think of it like the secretary of the brain. It’s job is to tell you what’s important to pay attention to and to generally organize incoming stuff. When this area is underdeveloped, your mind basically doesn’t know how long it’s supposed to pay attention to something, kinda like scheduling meetings. It’s not struggling to engage attention with something, it’s also struggling to disengage. When a nonADHD person sees a squirrel, they know whether or not they need to keep focusing on the squirrel thanks to the secretary. When you give a person with ADHD a stimulant like caffeine, it stimulates the area, essentially getting the secretary to do its job. When the secretary is doing its job, the person with ADHD doesn’t have to anymore, which means they can work better and don’t have to work as hard.
I strongly felt an urge to pitch in here, given what people were posting.
Psychostimulants such as amphetamines and methylphenidate which many of you are probably aware of, are first line drugs used to treat ADHD. It may sound counter-intuitive to say a stimulant drug can treat a “stimulant”/”hyper” condition, but these drugs increase certain chemicals (neurotransmitters) between nerve endings (synapses) that control attentional function.
The drugs will increase dopamine and norepinephrine in your brain that interferes with attention negatively, thus bringing the patient back to perceived “normalcy”. It is similar with caffeine as well.
PS I am a doctor.
ADHD is caused by *underactivity* in the frontal lobe of the brain – the part responsible for organization and impulse control (think of it as “the brain’s secretary and the brain’s breaks). The reason kids with ADHD are hyperactive is because that front part of the brain is underactive – the hyperactivity is because their brain is not active enough to stop them from moving and fidgeting, *not* because their brain is overactive. Stimulants (like caffeine)* increase activity in these areas, which lets them control their impulses better and results in them being “calmer.”
Source: I’m a clinical psychology professor who specializes in studying ADHD.
*Caffeine is actually not recommended for ADHD though, because it is more of a central nervous system stimulant. Stimulant medications like Adderall or Ritalin/Concerta specifically target the front part of the brain, which is why they are used for ADHD.
OP, you do realise Ritalin (the most common medication for ADHD where I’m from) is low dosage amphetamines right?
Does this explain why, as an adult with ADHD, I can take my amphetamines with a cup of coffee and then lay down and take a nap?
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