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.
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