[octatrack]

I challenge any non-ADHD person to do the following for a week:

* Sleep only 5 hours a day

* Spend 5 hours on TikTok every day

* Eat a diet of mostly processed carbohydrates

* Stay sedentary all day

Let’s see if this person starts showing ADHD symptoms after a week. Should we start medicating them?

I am not saying that there are no _legit_ cases of ADHD when it is indeed genetic or trauma based that cannot be easily fixed by lifestyle changes. There are people who really need the meds. But I am betting that that these people are only a very low percentage of the currently medicated ones.

[irdc]

Med student here. I'm not dismissing the idea that some people are wrongly diagnosed with ADHD, but what you're saying here is the kind of harmful nonsense that's been interfering with appropriate treatment for ADHD for ages.

Psychostimulants for ADHD are universally associated with better outcomes, even in people who appear to manage without them. They reduce depression, anxiety, drug abuse and mortality. Heck, a lot of people with ADHD even sleep better while on them!

Stop meddling in other people's evidence-based medical treatment.

[tacon]

>Psychostimulants for ADHD are universally associated with better outcomes

When someone in the medical field starts talking about universal outcomes in relation to biological entities, my spidey sense goes crazy. As Eric Hoffer so eloquently put it, "We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand."[0] The pharmaceutical industry has strong incentives to emphasize benefits and downplay harm from drugs, especially in the long term effects[1]. That is assuming that the drugs are actually manufactured correctly[2]. And even drugs manufactured correctly can decay on the shelf into carcinogens at a million times the safe limit, and (almost) no one bothers to check[3]. I once sat through a doctor going through how to use the ADHD meds, and my head started to hurt. How to take one type before sleep so it kicks in just as the kid wakes up for school, but another works faster or slower, and on and on. And all of this from doctors (and medical students) who can tell you everything about how great drugs are but spend close to zero time learning about the uses of exercise in improving health outcomes[4].

[0] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eric_hoffer_142924

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/jacob-stegenga-on-medical-nihilism/

[2] https://peterattiamd.com/katherineeban/

[3] https://peterattiamd.com/davidlight/

[4] https://www.exerciseismedicine.org/

[irdc]

None of the resources you link specifically address psychostimulants for ADHD. Handwaving and vaguely suggesting one drug is pretty much like all others isn't going to cut it: drugs don't work that way, drugs are _specific_.

The sordid situation around generics manufacturing has no bearing whatsoever on the effectiveness of plain old dexamphetamine or methylphenidate in helping people with ADHD. The FDA approval process doesn't impact how drugs work, just how they're licensed. And just because one single drug contained a carcinogenic ingredient doesn't suddenly mean they all do.

I'll give you one thing though: exercise helps people with ADHD. In addition to psychostimulants.