AS with ADD

Post Reply New Topic

The diagnostic ability of EEG for ADHD is still experimental. The studies that have been done took two groups of people one with ADHD and one without ADHD and were able to associate the ADHD with higher theta wave activity in a certain part of the brain. But picking one person out of each group and trying to determine if they had ADHD is more
problematic. The other methods I'm not to up on.

Oh here is an open source plans to a homemade EEG

http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/

So people think you can use brainwave biofeedback to train your brain to produce more
betawaves.

Stimulants (according to current sketchy knowledge) activate regions of the brain that are underactive in people with ADD, primarily the frontal lobe and putamen. By normalizing activity, people with ADD are able to function more normally. People without ADD who take stimulants are already normal, and thus throw their brain into an abnormal state. The biology of it is far from figured out, but it's been proven that people with ADD react to stimulants differently. When I take it, I don't really "feel" anything, but am more able to produce and direct my thoughts. I have more control over my brain.

Why not take cocaine? It acts too quickly. It's mechanism of action is like stomping on the gas, compared to ritalin, which is like a slow acceleration up to a moderate speed. Also, different stimulants have different targets in the brain, so some have more tailored profiles than others. Most drugs affect more receptors than desired (they're shotgun approaches), and produce side effects. The key is finding the ones that an individual will tolerate the best.

Oh I'm on my 3rd large cup of green tea as I type. Caffeine can absolutely treat ADHD
with a few serious limitation. For one its not selective enough to the CNS and/or parts of the brain that are associated with ADHD. So a very large and quite dangerous dose is
needed. The same can be said for ephedrine. Both of which I used alot in college. Nicotine has benefits to though is high side effects to (all 3 drugs I mentioned have negative cardiovascular effect in the ADHD treatment range).

These prescription drugs how long do they last. Like if I take coffee the effect doesn't last very long. I'm not sure if it make me intellectually stimulated I will have try an experiment.

Most the anti-ADHD stimulants have half lifes of around 4 hours. There are some extendend release version also. But one usually takes pills a number a times a day.

I am diagnosed ADD...I joined this forum because I started recognising that alot of my symptoms seem to be AS symptoms..(though now I am beginning to doubt that I am an Aspie..this is the second time I have gotten obsessed with the notion and then dismissed it....It is gonna keep going till I finally get a diagnosis)

Anywhoo...I definitely have had serious lifelong ADD problems....and after finally being diagnosed, at the age of 30, I was put on 30 mg of Adderall XR (extended release)

It helped me in some ways..I was able to get more stuff done..focus on my artistic projects and get closer to what I visualised in my head....but in other ways it proved to be extremely detremental..It did something weird to my brain chemistry I started to have more and more extreme mood swings...(so I assume there is something going on in my head in addition to ADD.....i know of alot of ADDers who are also on antidepressants..and i don't want to be one of them, but it does run in my family....and the meds seemed to deplete my capacity for avoiding depression somehow.


On meds, I was able to function better in some ways, but still not up to the capacity that I believed I needed to funtion...
I wear alot of hats...or have my spoon in a whole lot of different pots....some metaphor like that...and attempting to focus on doing everything I believed I needed to do cause me to boil over...if that makes sense....

When I am not medicated, it is easier to go easy on myself and let things slide..so even though there are still all these things that are in my head..more that I will possibly able to accomplish even though I can't let go of them...at lest it does not mentally destroy me....it till causes me alot of stress though..and I am in a state of sensory overload that causes me to drop the ball on things alot. I can relate to the guy in the BBC news segment...I just wonder who does his cleaning....his place looked awfully tidy for an ADDer.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was ADD as well as AS, however I mean ADD as in not ADHD. There is actually a difference, and reading up on them the difference is pretty significant. I know a lot of people refer to both ADD and ADHD as the same thing, and it all means hyperactive. That's not the case at all, according to some articles I have read.

Yeah this comes up time to time. The semantic of ADHD/ADD.

ADD is an obsolete term not used by the experts anymore.

ADHD is broken down into 3 types.

primary inattentive
primary hyperactive
combined type

I believe I was definitely misdiagnosed. Everything about me suggests Asperger's.

I believe I am combined type..ADHD...

Thats likely the most common diagnosed type. Hyperactive alone is likely rare. And
inattentive type often goes completely unnoticed since person with it do not have disruptive behavior.

I have gone through both extremes...I was inattentive when I was a kid and when I was a teenager I became hyperactive...now I am a jumbled muddled combination of the two.

Stimulants shouldn't be affecting your emotions. They're just supposed to make you more focused and calm - they shouldn't make you "feel" any different at all. I've heard that Wellbutrin can be helpful for people with ADHD who can't take stimulants. I know it's supposed to be a good antidepressant, too, so maybe it's worth considering.

Well I never really took highly selective CNS stimulants but the mechanism in which they
can make one feel not like oneself is similar to that of wellbutrin or reboxetine. Which is
if your inattentive your in a theta brain wave daydream like state often. Thats
how a non-drug using ADHDer will see as their true self. If you take a drug that suppresses much of that theta wave production and the states associated with it like daydreaming you may very well not feel like yourself. My results from high doses of reboxetine and wellbutrin tend to confirm that.

Oh and another potential negative effect of medications for ADHD is suppressing that theta wave production suppresses alot of the creative spark ADHDers have. So meds give you more focus to get work done but they might reduce your creative solutions at the same time.

Last edited by TheMachine1 on 16 Apr 2007, 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They do make me feel more focused and calm some of the time...(though i also stim more when I am on meds)..they definitely don't make me speedy..I am more prone to SERIOUS hyperfocusing when I am on them.

But yeah...my meltdowns were alot more fierce when I was on Adderall i am not sure why...I was also prescribed a mild non-narcotic anti-anxiety med called buspar...I didn't like that so much and stopped taking it.
I have thought about welbutrin...I might like to give it a try some day...I need to do some more research...I am scared of antidepressants...I have heard too much about them increasing peoples sucepability to suicidal tendancies..I am not sure if welbutrin is one of those though.

Really really though...I mostly use natural stuff....lotsa green tea.....rhodiloa rosea, l-theanine, essential fatty acids....rescue remedy.....my parents over the years have kept me well stocked in a vast assortment of potential neuro-helpful depression fighting ADD-controllong type natural products......they are very skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry.

This what what I was initially started on. It worked about half as well as Ritalin, which was still quite an improvement. The only noticeable personality issue with it was that I would develop a temper for a few hours each day. Things frustrated me easily. Nothing extreme, but still odd for me. I was on the maximum dosage, too.