The Effect of Physical Exercise on the Concentration of Individuals with ADHD

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372555/

by romefort • 11 years ago

150 107 11 years ago

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

netcraft• 11 years ago

Another recent study showing that fidgeting and moving helps concentration in ADD children: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150417190003.ht...

pbhjpbhj2• 11 years ago

My personal experience [long term volunteer with kids groups, as a child and as a parent] has been that most younger kids (<11) can't sit still for long.

I sat next to a lad in an informal setting recently (watching a martial arts class), his mother kept nagging him to sit still, not make a noise, etc.. I felt so sorry for him, he could easily have stood at the side and tried to mimic the older childrens movements, or just danced around for a bit, or played a game with his mum. When she told him off for raspberrying I really wanted to start just to show it wasn't inappropriate (it wasn't a quiet segment of the class); social inhibition prevented me. I find that my kids primary school teachers have a similar attitude, they're all female, they seem particularly bothered by some types of "unruly" behaviour which is primarily from the boys. Is there a biological divide between the sexes here too? [On the basis of the above linked study abstract, do more boys have ADHD than girls, is it a spectrum disorder?]

When I pick up my youngest (5-6yo) from school the boys are almost all [always] playing chase around the playground whilst the girls are almost all [always] chatting quietly and standing with their parents (mainly mothers). Mothers of boys seem to tell the boys off for running around, whilst the [far fewer] dads do not.

smorrow2• 11 years ago

"do more boys have ADHD than girls"

It's a fact that more boys than girls are diagnosed, but I've noticed that /r/adhd seems overwhelmingly female. I dunno, though, maybe it's just that people are more likely to be talking womanly on a mental disorder site. (They're more likely to be talking about their feelings, for one thing.) And a tendency to associate Facebooky spelling ("isnt",etc) with females might be unfair on my part.

"teachers have a similar attitude, they're all female, they seem particularly bothered by some types of 'unruly' behaviour. Is there a biological divide between the sexes here too?"

Don't get me started... I have ADD, so it's hard for me to write a short comment.

In my life, pretty much all the women teachers have been big into rules for the sake of rules, and applying rules with no thought on the actual point of the rule. I can't really think of any reason for more women than men to be sensors rather than intuitives (most _people_ are sensors), but I suppose there could be a reason for more women teachers to be sensors than men teachers, or rather, for less men teachers to be sensors than the general population. I conjecture that that reason is: men who become teachers do it because they want to talk about equations and right-angle triangles all day, which is an intuitive trait. I want to be a teacher and that's the main reason.

(And women don't need a special reason to want to be a teacher... not the way men do, anyway.)

kevinwang• 11 years ago

Is Prince of Persia a commonly used test for measuring concentration?

cshimmin• 11 years ago

They had potential volunteers play PoP for 5 min as part of a screening process, to select individuals that wouldn't have problems playing a similar videogame. The actual game they used was called "Raiders of the Lost Treasure", cited as:

    11. Silva AP, Frère AF Virtual environment to quantify the influence of colour stimuli on the performance of tasks requiring attention. Biomed Eng Online. 2011; 10:74 doi: 10.1186/1475-925X-10-7421854630

With a link to the article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3201025/

late2part2• 11 years ago

I've found that kids with attention deficits (diagnosed or not) tend to be able to talk and focus better when they can move around. Try right now to describe something at the far side of the room without pushing your head or using your hands. Communication and interpretation is more than just verbal.

jMyles• 11 years ago

No doubt. I can't imagine why you're being downvoted?

hgibbs3• 11 years ago

I have adhd and have noticed that some of my own behaviours fit this characterisation.

1) I typically pace when talking on the phone

2) In general, going for a walk is a really good way to clear my mind.

3) I will walk around a lot, and quickly, when I am anxious.

4) It is easier for me to sleep when there is rain or a fan on in my room. Any kind of white noise.

5) When I need to think about something particularly abstract, I will take a shower. Going through the routines of cleaning my hair, using soap etc, all while having the physical stimulation of water falling on my back, helps to get me in a very focused and 'zen' state.

late2part2• 11 years ago

Have you ever tried meditation? I wonder if it would influence how you handle yourself. I think your behaviors are fine, I'm not judging or suggesting you change, but I wonder how it would help.

Retra3• 11 years ago

Everything you've said is true for me as well. But then people say things like "I need noise and stimulation to concentrate," whereas I can't get anything done unless I have total silence.

And I don't have ADHD.

libraryatnight• 11 years ago

I always enjoy reading others have these behaviors. My wife thinks it's funny how I pace when on the phone. Sometimes I even move from room to room and back, pacing the house.

I have recently been working from home, and one of the added benefits is I can take a walk and it's not a big deal and no one bothers me. At work it was awkward walking the parking lot and usually people would stop and try to chat. walks significantly lower my anxiety level and help me focus.

I use the White Noise app on my phone with the rain on a tent sound loaded to get to sleep. It's a great little app, takes me significantly less time to sleep.

Showers are great, I also enjoy a long drive during periods of little or no traffic. Really anything where I'm thinking and engaged but also sort of in autopilot - routine acts.

I didn't realize I had ADHD until I was older, and I went to therapy for anxiety and depression. When I was young I struggled a lot, but it was always approached from the angle of discipline and 'just focus and get it done.' I started to develop bad habits of internally beating myself up when I couldn't focus, or I realized a simple homework item was taking me ages - usually because I'd stop to read something out of a novel, or work on a drawing, or just doodle all down the sides of my paper. Then I'd bring myself back, "C'mon, don't be an idiot, this is easy." I developed the same bad habit for depression, "Just cheer up, stop being such a gloomy ass." I often wish I had been more open with my difficulties earlier in life and talked to my parents and teachers about how I was feeling. As a kid, though, that was an unappealing notion.

plaguuuuuu• 11 years ago

Reddit had a link to a study proving this phenomenon a couple of days ago.

piratebroadcast• 11 years ago

TL:DR: "Conclusion: This study confirms the hypothesis of Medina et al. and Koehl et al.: intense physical exercise improves the attention of children and adolescents with ADHD symptoms. Physical exercise may be helpful for their learning because attention is essential to the school performance of any individual.

Physical exercises help improve children's attention and provide greater impulse control; these additional effects appear almost immediately, as confirmed in this study, which helps the concentration of children with ADHD."

falcolas• 11 years ago

Unmedicated, regularly attending school, able to focus for at least five minutes on a videogame, and:

volunteers with notably good grades in all subjects, without reports about behavior problems and a good social life at school and at home.

That seems like a relatively mild case of ADHD.

[EDIT: Quote applies to control group, as pointed out by andreasvc. The first three points appear to still stand.]

I'm also wondering how the resulting GC and GE values from "Performance of groups in the whole game" figure are so different, considering that part of the selection process was being able to complete the level in 600 seconds, ±5%.

On a side note, this was very interesting:

These data seem indicate that after an intense physical exercise, people without ADHD show impairment in attention performance.

andreasvc• 11 years ago

The first passage you quote describes the control group, so they were specifically selected not to have ADHD.

bitexploder3• 11 years ago

I definitely had problems with ADHD, and still do to some extent. I was listening to a book, The Sports Gene, and the touched on exercise and attention deficit. A proposed theory is that in the attention deficit brain you don't have enough dopamine. Exercise produces the dopamine you need to get to "normal". Therefore, exercise for some people is very rewarding and helps them out a lot. In other individuals who already have normal levels of dopamine it is a very "meh" experience for them, maybe even counter productive. They don't get the boost of dopamine as strongly since they already had "enough" to function well. And, since they had to endure, potentially higher, cognitive load to do the exercise its a net negative for them. Anyway, I don't know if this mechanism explains all of it, but anecdotally this matches extremely well with my experience.

Later in life I have come to rely on routine physical exercise as it keeps me on an even keel and productive. Caffeine and Ritalin both just made me go into the zone just the same way hard exercise does. I find that if I do not exercise hard and regular I have a hard time staying productive and I might seek towards other dopamine producing behaviors (Alcohol, junk foods). I have found a middle ground of moderate exercise, but it is never as fulfilling as being full tilt into a training cycle.

edit: Found a quote from the author of The Sports Gene:

"Here at Axon Sports, we talk a lot about the brain’s role in playing sports. From vision to perception to decision making to emotions, the brain plays a critical role in sports success. What have we learned about neurogenetics that can influence an athlete’s performance from a cognitive perspective?

DE: One of the most surprising things I learned in my reporting was that scientists know quite well that not only does the dopamine system in the brain—which is involved in the sense of pleasure and reward—respond to physical activity, but it can also drive physical activity.

One of the scientists I quote in the book suggests that this may be why very active children who take Ritalin, which alters dopamine levels, suddenly have less drive to move around. That’s precisely what he sees when he gives Ritalin to the rodents he breeds for high voluntary running, anyway. And it appears that different versions of genes involved in the dopamine system influence the drive to be active. (Interestingly, native populations that are nomadic and that migrate long distances tend to have a higher prevalence of a particular dopamine receptor gene; the same one that predisposes people to ADHD. I discuss in the book the possible link.) "

rlonstein• 11 years ago

Personal anecdote, I can thank a country doctor and my elementary school teachers for recognizing this back in the 70's: I was sent to school with a thermos of coffee and permission to go to the gym and run until I could compose myself.

leoh• 11 years ago

This is a wonderful story. I've also personally noticed I can focus an order of magnitude better with exercise.

lloeki3• 11 years ago

Personal anecdote: people (incl. doctors) laugh at me when I say I may (within 3-sigma) have ADHD, either because "that's for kids only", or because "it's just a myth and I should get my act together and quit being lazy". I have no hope of getting any form of medication for my condition.

I was lucky enough to discover a few sports (snowboarding, rollerskating, climbing) at the right time i my life that managed, unbeknownst to me, to get me through the parts of life where I needed the most focus (incl. my degree). Things went downhill when I started to work and got a car, which dramatically reduced my physical activity, up until I picked myself up and went running, then skateboarding. This changed my quality of life on so many levels: although I still get both periods of numbness and hyperfocus, the positive feedback loops are much more frequent and negative feedback loops much less so. I still have to take great conscious care about not exerting (physically or mentally) myself too much because there seems to be no warning telling me "hey this is too much" and I regularly wear myself out. Still, I now have control over my life, but the fact that all of this I had to find myself early in my 30s and still get scorned at to this day is terrible: how many are being cast away as either unruly or lazy and left to their own devices?

DanBC5• 11 years ago

Personal anecdote: people (incl. doctors) laugh at me when I say I may (within 3-sigma) have ADHD, either because "that's for kids only", or because "it's just a myth and I should get my act together and quit being lazy". I have no hope of getting any form of medication for my condition.

If those are UK doctors I politely urge you to complain.

Otherwise, try showing them this: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg72/resources/cg72-attenti...

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

Personal anecdote: people (incl. doctors) laugh at me when I say I may (within 3-sigma) have ADHD, either because "that's for kids only", or because "it's just a myth and I should get my act together and quit being lazy". I have no hope of getting any form of medication for my condition.

I'm really sorry to hear that. I urge you to keep trying, because I think you may have had a run of unusually bad luck with doctors. I'm 36 and I've never had a problem getting scripts for my ADD meds. I was diagnosed at age 5, but I have several friends who realized what was going on much later in life, and none of them had any difficulties getting a diagnosis either. I'm in the US, so I don't know if the medical culture is different where you are, but I hope that you can find a more cooperative doctor.

TrevorJ4• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what your health care system is set up like, but if you can go to a different doctor, or a specialist, it would be worth doing. Even here in the US, some doctors are much more receptive than others.

pc2g4d• 11 years ago

Being driven to physical activity rather than drugs could be seen as a positive outcome here, as frustrating as it must have been to get those invalidating messages from doctors.

sandstrom• 11 years ago

Would be interesting to know how long the effect lasts, e.g. will 1h, 12h or 24h between the physical exercise and the test make a difference.

If it's say ~8 hours, then scheduling gym classes in the beginning of school days may help these children. If it's 1h it won't matter much, as long as gym isn't at the end of a school day.

pbhjpbhj2• 11 years ago

In countries that do calisthenics at the start of the school day are there less problems with hyperactivity, and diagnosed disorders with that symptom?

hasenj• 11 years ago

Am I the only one who finds it difficult to mentally concentrate on a task after physical exercise? I feel like all my energy has been spent and there's not much (glucose?) left for my brain to function at higher levels of abstractions.

UhUhUhUh• 11 years ago

That's because you don't need movement to stabilize your thinking and that expense of glucose depletes your resources. My experience is that ADHD kids need some sensori-motor input to help them reach their cognitive baseline. However, I don't agree with the study's conclusion because it tested a sort of "carpet-bombing" approach to the problem (i.e. lots of movement, injection of endorphins). I think that a much more efficient way, and I believe, more durable also, would be rock-climbing because in addition to the physical expense (i.e. energy output), it also stimulates very powerfully concentration/focus and the zones of the brain associated with it (i.e somewhere in the pre-frontal cortex) and can actually teach concentration and focus. I even wonder whether the best rock-climbers are not self-medicated ADHDs rather than so-called "adrenaline-junkies". Jumping off a bridge gushes adrenaline system-wide, climbing a face does not.

fferen• 11 years ago

That's kinda what the study finds: the worst group was the non-ADHD group that exercised.

bitexploder3• 11 years ago

Exercising, especially at your limits, drains mental energy from the same bucket as hard thought about say, math problems. In addition you are burning energy. Your bucket of cognitive energy is only so big. I think if you have already normal levels of dopamine and endorphins the rush of them after exercise doesn't do very much for you.

For the ADHD brain, which lacks a normal level of dopamine the exercise intensity is offset by the production of dopamine. For me, hard exercise, a proper recovery period of about an hour (nutrition, relaxing) and I enter a period of high productivity for about 4-5 hours. I can intensely focus in this time. After that I have to move around some more (it's also later in the afternoon then when many people are getting a little tired anyway). I can usually settle in to deal with lower cognitive load tasks after that (easier coding, email, report writing, et.) for a few hours.

federico3• 11 years ago

Citation needed.

fiblye• 11 years ago

Depends on the exercise. After lifting I'm exhausted, but even more motivated since I feel like I've accomplished something big and I'm eager to do more. After cardio, I'm too worn out to want to do anything.

lloydde• 11 years ago

Interesting methodology. I've used John J. Ratey's 2008 book Spark: Revolutionary New Science of Exercise & the Brain to regularly remind myself, for my own health, of numerous ways exercise has been demonstrated to help mental health including its place in my anxiety and depression toolbox.

aswanson• 11 years ago

I've never been diagnosed with ADHD but im pretty sure im on the spectrum. Did some Insanity this morning with the wife and noticed how much it enabled me to focus afterward and how it mitigated my desire for a drink, which I use for the same effect. I highly recommend regular physical exercise.

Ocerge• 11 years ago

As I get older, I'm definitely beginning to notice some ADHD symptoms (inability to concentrate at work, can't fall asleep without some kind of white noise, don't know what to do with myself at home after work, etc). I'm also discovering that the only things that help to center me are exercise and coffee.

conradfr• 11 years ago

Anecdotal : I have diagnosed ADD and started lifting (starting strength) some month ago. At first I felt some benefits, I would say almost the same feeling as with Ritalin, but it's almost already gone by now.

I should do more cardio to see if it's the same.

smorrow2• 11 years ago

I take it you're predominantly inattentive (you omit the letter H). I see on the ADHD web sites they always advocate exercise, and I dismiss it out of hand every time as something I don't think would apply to me. I tend to think of the typical /r/ADHDer as being quite different from me, and not someone that I would even like, really.

So you're saying that that stuff applies for inattentives too?

mtae• 11 years ago

I was under the impression the majority of /r/ADHDer's are PI or combined type. I recall hearing that most people with ADHD fall in one of those categories.

aidenn02• 11 years ago

Exercise has a huge benefit for me, and I am PI as well.

Benefits to the point that my wife will bend over backwards to find time for me to exercise, completely out of selfish reasons.

chubot2• 11 years ago

Exercise helps a ton with depression too. And probably anxiety, though I don't have any direct experience.

I think it's no exaggeration to say that richer countries have been experiencing a rise in mental health issues, and that is in a large part, although not entirely, due to sedentary lifestyles.

DanBC5• 11 years ago

Exercise helps a ton with depression too.

It probably doesn't.

http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...

When only high-quality trials were included, exercise had only a small effect on mood that was not statistically significant.
Exercise is moderately more effective than no therapy for reducing symptoms of depression.
Exercise is no more effective than antidepressants for reducing symptoms of depression, although this conclusion is based on a small number of studies.
Exercise is no more effective than psychological therapies for reducing symptoms of depression, although this conclusion is based on small number of studies.
The reviewers also note that when only high-quality studies were included, the difference between exercise and no therapy is less conclusive.
Attendance rates for exercise treatments ranged from 50% to 100%.
The evidence about whether exercise for depression improves quality of life is inconclusive.

You say

I think it's no exaggeration to say that richer countries have been experiencing a rise in mental health issues, and that is in a large part, although not entirely, due to sedentary lifestyles.

What makes you think this? Plenty of very active people suffer depression and anxiety. There are a couple of sports people who have talked about their depression. You may have the causal link reversed - depression lowers ability to do stuff, and so depression causes inactivity. That's at least plausible.

austinjp• 11 years ago

The Cochrane report says the evidence for exercise as an intervention to improve depression is "inconclusive", whereas you say it "probably doesn't" help, which isn't the same thing.

The various reviews of exercise-based interventions illustrate how complex it can be to implement trials and interpret their results.

Frankly I'd encourage exercise in a depressed patient, rather than say it "probably doesn't help". There are numerous other benefits that could probably outweigh risks (although these should obviously be assessed on a case-by-case basis) and interventions should seek to minimise nocebo as well as maximise placebo -- ethically of course. It just might work for that patient, and actually that is a perfectly rational basis for treatment sometimes.

chubot2• 11 years ago

So I would admit that there is no strong evidence either way. For these types of issues, you can always find studies that contradict one another.

Nonetheless the sheer magnitude of the issue is a signal that something widespread is going on. This page says 40 million US adults are affected, or 18% of the population. I've heard similar statistics before.

http://www.adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

This article is saying that exercise helps ADHD, which is another increasingly diagnosed mental disorder.

That doesn't prove sedentary lifestyles are the cause, but the evidence seems consistent with that hypothesis.

Yes, it's a vague hunch. I'm just saying it seems credible. I don't think it's very controversial that if you go to a psychiatrist for depression, they will ask how much you exercise, and if you don't, they will recommend it. They don't really have proof that it will help. But they will tell you that. It's the best they can do.

Whether antidepressants or ADHD drugs help is also of some controversy as well, I believe. Certainly they do in many cases, but not in all cases.

There's certainly nothing WRONG with exercise for a typical sedentary person, while there are known side effects to medication. And that doesn't mean they are exclusive -- medication + exercise may be the best solution for many people.

RobertoLong• 11 years ago

Exercise has had a massive positive impact on my depression. For anyone suffering from depression, please check out my http://controlyourmindset.com/1 blog where I review the destroy depression system. Written by a former depression & PTSD sufferer, it teaches 7 natural steps which helped to eliminate depression from my life as well as many others and the success rate is very high.

schalab• 11 years ago

Physical exercise is generally repetitive,boring and requires discipline to stick to.

It could be that forcing someone to overrule their impulses for a period of time might be the solution, rather than the exercise itself.

I would ask for a control group who are forced to do some boring, repetitive activity without physical exertion like meditation and see if the results are mirrored.

mse11028• 11 years ago

Wow it's like we're from different planets. I'd never describe exercise as "repetitive, boring and requires discipline". For me it's an urge and it's fun to do.

biot• 11 years ago

You may be on to something. It's almost as if different people enjoy different things.

solocshaw2• 11 years ago

Do you mind describing your routine? I've tried getting into jogging but, like the above commenter, I find it extremely boring.

ccvannorman• 11 years ago

For me exercise is never boring because I don't do boring exercises. Jogging for example -- just kill me instead, holy christ is that boring.

Soccer, Basketball, Climbing, Sprinting, and Biking (to the liquer store for example) -- now that's exercise I can get into!

lawnchair_larry• 11 years ago

You know what "reps" are, right? ;)

greggman3• 11 years ago

Lucky for you. For others of us I'd rather do almost anything else. I'd rather clean the house, do dishes, anything other than exercise. Yea, I force myself to do it but I'm massively bored and can't wait to get on to whatever I really want to be doing.

I'd love to know some secret sauce other than luck to head into actually enjoying to exercise.

nnq• 11 years ago

I'm definitely from the same planet as the parent poster (PP). There is a subset of people, like me and PP (I'd say we're probably < 10% of the general population), for which physical exercise really is "repetitive, boring and requires discipline" and sometimes even feels like pure pain when we force ourselves to do it, because we know it's healthy, even if we'd rather be lazying around, although there is no physical pain involved and we are otherwise in good health.

It would probably make sense to further split the participants of a study like this into two groups: the ones that enjoy physical exercise and the ones that most of the time don't enjoy physical exercise.

If I were to speculate on the physiology of this, I'd say that for people like me and the PP, the brain either fails to secrete enough endorphins - the feel-good chemicals that are usually released during physical exercise that make it "fun" and an "urge" (I've read once about a study liking physical exercise addiction to addiction to hard drugs, so it makes sense to have a similar mechanism) - or we don't have enough receptors for endorphins. Thankfully I also happen to have an auto-burner metabolism (I can eat anything anytime and just never get fat) and and no genetical predisposition for obesity or diabetes, so I can stay reasonably healthy even when I stop doing any kind of exercise for some periods of time, but other people are not as lucky as me...

lucaspiller2• 11 years ago

A study done in Australia on alternative medicine looked into the effects of meditation on ADHD, and yes the results were positive.

http://m.ccp.sagepub.com/content/9/4/479.short

(Free link: http://www.freemeditation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/adh...)

leni536• 11 years ago

I wonder if learning music would help too. I think it could require much more discipline than doing sports. I have done swimming (which really falls in the "repetitive, boring" category of sports) and played the cello as a kid. I don't know if I have ADHD though, it's much less diagnosed here in Hungary than in the US (I personally know nobody diagnosed with it).

mattlutze2• 11 years ago

I think you're on to something here. I was an avid musician as a pre-university student. My (obviously super scientific) data point suggests to me that as a decreased music rehearsal/learning through university, my academic performance tracked with a strong correlation. My academic high-point was probably the semesters in high school / secondary school where I had 3-4 hours of music instruction and practice per day.

raverbashing• 11 years ago

Really?

Depends on how much you are into it, and the type of exercise

Running in a treadmill is very different from running into a park, for example. Or where you have to overcome different hurdles and the situation changes every minute.

People usually think lifting weights is boring, I disagree. It is boring if you do it mindlessly and with low weights compared to your 1RM

Strom• 11 years ago

The results of this study also show that the GC group has a performance that is 42% better than the GC-EF group. These data seem indicate that after an intense physical exercise, people without ADHD show impairment in attention performance.

This is the more interesting finding to me and conflicts with my personal experience. Maybe I just haven't been diagnosed for ADHD yet? However if it is true then this raises an interesting problem. Exercise is no longer a universal booster - you have to be damn sure that you're deep in ADHD, because if you're 40% ADHD and 60% normal, then exercise actually does more harm than good, according to the results of this study.

In general, this study seems very limited in scope and participant count. A worthwhile study for sure, but I think it warrants additional research above anything else, and nothing conclusive should be taken from it.

themartorana• 11 years ago

I'd rather ignore this and just concentrate on the confirmation bias provided by the conclusion. In other news, I'm pretty sure I have ADHD.

No seriously. Having been diagnosed with ADHD years ago, I found the conclusion fantastic and confirming, and then parent's point stress inducing. I'm hoping I'm at least 51% ADHD.

Retra3• 11 years ago

Having read hundreds of internet posts describing anecdotal symptoms of ADHD, I can confirm nothing about what ADHD actual is or whether or not I have it. ADHD is, as far as I can tell, a condition whereby a person exhibits habits of some kind and feels the need to either judge themselves or not.

Granted, I am not a doctor, but I have yet to meet a person that I've felt has the apparently superhuman diagnostic abilities required to identify ADHD.

So I wouldn't worry about it either way. Live your life and try not to die or be unhappy.

bootload• 11 years ago

just back from pt, first article read - time to do some work.

ChrisNorstrom• 11 years ago

For 2 months now, an alarm clock program alerts me every hour to do 1-2 minutes of quick but high intensity exercises. That's every hour. The benefits are amazing. I'm amazed at how many of my problems went away. I now get to sleep on time, wake up feeling rested, do not toss and turn during sleep, have a healthy appetite, gained muscle, hair loss stopped, and I cut down on procrastinating and my focus has drastically increased. Who knows how many pills I would have been prescribed had I told my doctor about my problems.

I saw most results within 24 hours, others after only 4 days.

lucaspiller2• 11 years ago

What sort of stuff do you do, is it similar to steps in the '7 minute workout' type things? Do you have an app or just alarms set throughout the day?

dasil003• 11 years ago

Do you have ADHD?

kendallpark2• 11 years ago

I have ADHD and I have always performed better in school during sports seasons. I was undiagnosed through college and used a variety of techniques including exercise to focus on school work.

I prefer tactile sports such as football and rugby. Running is very boring, as are repetitive sports like throwing (I threw hammer and disc). Softball was always too slow paced for me. I'd be caught staring into space in the outfield.

I think ADHD was not as big an issue when jobs/daily life involved more physical labor and tactile experiences. Nowadays most "important" jobs consist of sitting in front of a computer for eight hours. That doesn't do any favors for us ADHD folks. I know medication has made a world of difference for me. I don't think I'd be able to handle a 9-to-5 programming job without it.

aidenn02• 11 years ago

How long have you been on medication? I've considered going back on medication, but my understanding is that many people build up tolerance to it very quickly.

mattlutze2• 11 years ago

My doctor has insisted that dextroamphetamine is not a resistance-inducing or habit-forming. I've found the later more true, though I've heard of folks who'll take "vacations" from it to try and reset what they feel like a tolerance.

I moved to a different country a few months after I was diagnosed (and since it's rightly a highly controlled medication in the US, couldn't take a long-term supply with me), so I've been able to observe myself both with and without the medication. If I can find a doctor with good enough English, I'd like to reestablish the prescription. Having that support from the dextro was like night and day, eventual tolerance or not.

kendallpark2• 11 years ago

Only a couple of years. I had dextro but I'm trying out Vyvanse. I'm pretty paranoid about dependency on drugs (I don't even drink caffeine on a regular basis for that reason) so I understand your concern. I take the minimum dose necessary to achieve the desired effect and only on days that I need it (when I'm particularly restless and fidgety). I don't take it on the weekend, generally.

TrevorJ4• 11 years ago

One thing I've realized is that there are multiple things that can help concentration for me: When the project is new and shiny, when the deadline is close at hand, caffein.

If you can recognize similar patterns, then there's a number of days each month when you can predict ahead of time that you won't need medication.

stretchwithme• 11 years ago

I think this is because blood moving at higher speeds and pressure gets nutrients to cells that don't always get all the nutrients they need. And it also removes waste products better, like a power washer removes dirt from your car better than just pouring water over it.

rjshayes• 11 years ago

Interesting -- this study referenced another which focused on the effects of color on individuals with and without ADHD (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21854630/). The game was designed for and taken from study for use in this one -- the results were nearly the same. The other study came back with similar results due to the structure of the game favoring ADHD individuals for level 1 and favoring individuals without ADHD for level 2.

The results in the original study were nearly the same proportionally and the game was found to favor the performance of an individual with ADHD.

The linked study, in fact, goes on to misrepresent the study it references in stating it was conducted "to quantify the performance of people with ADHD characteristics," when in fact the study stated it was conducted to describe "the development and the testing of a virtual environment that is capable to quantify the influence of red-green versus blue-yellow colour stimuli on the performance of people."

The referenced study concluded: "The game proved to be a user-friendly tool capable to detect and quantify the influence of color on the performance of people executing tasks that require attention and showed to be attractive for people with ADHD"

cel1ne2• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontostriatal_circuit

_bdog2• 11 years ago

For my ADHD a combination of ritalin, a LOT of sport (martial arts) and playing the piano did wonders. About a year of the sport and I've managed to lower my dose by about 50%.

henryaj• 11 years ago

What sort of martial arts did you do?

cel1ne2• 11 years ago

Silat. Seni Gayung Fatani to be exact.

3 times a week for an hour at least in the evening.

Apart from the fact that exercise always help I think it's the structured, controlled breathing you have to do, that helps to focus.

xwintermutex• 11 years ago

But wait... how can the pharma industry profit from this?

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

But wait... how can the pharma industry profit from this?

By researching the mechanism that makes exercise work, understanding the biochemical basis, and developing a shortcut that triggers the same biochemical effect without actually requiring working out.

rkangel• 11 years ago

While this study agrees with everything I know from anecdotal evidence, it's not an enormous sample size. Two groups of 28 people each doesn't provide an enormous amount of statistical evidence.

RA_Fisher• 11 years ago

This graph feels a bit fishy and / or more interesting than the presented result: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372555/bin/pone...

GE = w/ ADHD GE-EF = w/ ADHD and exercise

GC = w/o ADHD GC-EF = w/o ADHD and exercise

Look how poorly GC-EF performed relative to the other groups in absolute terms. There's visually a much larger difference in concentration for those without ADHD, but who exercised than those that didn't exercise.

If we were to focus on the largest difference of effect shouldn't our conclusion be, 'Intense exercise can make the attention of people without ADHD worse than those with ADHD'?

This is what the authors say, "The results of this study also show that the GC group has a performance that is 42% better than the GC-EF group. These data seem indicate that after an intense physical exercise, people without ADHD show impairment in attention performance. However, this hypothesis requires further studies, which include the assessment of the duration of this effect."

Hmmm ..., color me a skeptical statistician.

The Effect of Physical Exercise on the Concentration of Individuals with ADHD

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