Imagine being the school band director and waking up at 1 a.m. on the day of a big parade to realize that you never booked the school bus to transport your students.

For Lisa Burden, this experience was more than a nightmare. It was a wake-up call to her own shortcomings. While exceptionally bright and creative, she also had to contend with another side of herself. She’d struggled since childhood with challenges like being able to keep track of things and being told she talked too much.

“There were responsibilities that I would just forget to do. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do them,” she told The Epoch Times. “I came to a point when I had to admit I could not keep it all in my head. I’ll have a thought, and then I don’t know when I’ll have that thought again.”

While attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that can undermine a person’s ability to navigate our modern age, in some ways, it is more helpful to think of it as a mismatch of mental abilities. ADHD involves symptoms of inattentiveness, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity, among others.

People with ADHD have brains that think differently in a world that’s become more sedentary and rigid. Experts say seeing ADHD through a new lens can help adults strengthen their thinking, improve their relationships, and accentuate their strengths.

Maybe It Is ADHD

About 15.5 million—or 6 percent—of American adults have been diagnosed with ADHD. About half were diagnosed as adults, with one-third of those diagnosed receiving treatment, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To be diagnosed with ADHD as a child, one needs to have six symptoms involving inattentiveness, hyperactivity, or impulsivity. An adult diagnosis requires five.

Those symptoms include the following:

• Trouble paying attention or being easily distracted
• Being disorganized
• Procrastinating
• Inability to plan or organize
• Difficulty recalling daily tasks
• Losing things frequently
• Being extremely talkative or frequently interrupting
• Trouble multitasking or focusing on larger projects
• Finding it hard to follow instructions or finish projects
• Inability to sit still for lengthy periods
• Fidgeting
• The need to be constantly moving
• Prioritizing immediate rewards over future rewards

There are a few other criteria, too, including symptoms that have been around since before age 12, with clear evidence that they are severe, frequent, and persistent enough to cause problems in at least two areas of life, such as at work, school, church, or home.

Finally, hormonal and mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, or a psychotic disorder, must be ruled out. However, there is no definitive diagnostic tool, such as bloodwork or brain scans, for ADHD.

Beyond Stereotypes

Experts understand ADHD better than they did two decades ago. The stigma is lifting, and awareness is growing, according to Marcy M. Caldwell, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment and assessment of adult ADHD.

She told The Epoch Times that social media has given voice to people who are describing their experiences with ADHD and raising it as a possibility for many people who might not have considered it previously.

For a number of years, ADHD was stereotypically considered a disorder associated with young boys. That, particularly, left a lot of girls undiagnosed in childhood who went on to be diagnosed as adults.

However, professionals are beginning to better understand that symptoms can vary depending on race, sex, and age, Caldwell said. They are also noting that children often don’t outgrow ADHD, as was previously believed in most cases. Rather, she said symptoms relapse and remit throughout life depending on other circumstances.

“In that waxing and waning, the symptoms can come up again around major life events,” Caldwell said. “In normal life, the major events come up at different times. But in 2020, we were all hit with a major life event, so there was a big upsurge in diagnosis that happened after COVID as everyone was adjusting to very new circumstances.”

Pillars of Brain Health

Caldwell described the ADHD brain as working as an off-on light switch, whereas a neurotypical brain can adjust lighting with a dimmer switch. That is, for those with ADHD, the light switch is either on—hyperfocusing, usually with enjoyable tasks—or off for tasks that aren’t as pleasurable.

It takes far more energy, she said, for someone with ADHD to use their brain like a dimmer switch, though it can be done. That energy can come from the following foundational health pillars:

• Sleep
• Exercise
• Nutrition
• Medication
• Meditation
• Connection

“Those are six really hard things, and there’s a lot involved with them. You don’t have to do all of them,” she said.

However, on a day when you don’t get much sleep, you can try one of the others to boost your brain energy, typically exercise, according to Caldwell.

Movement as Fuel

Any exercise is great for boosting energy, though specific exercises may be more tolerable to different brain states, said Caldwell. Rowing, running, and walking are helpful for those who are inattentive. Meanwhile, sports like soccer or karate—during which you must respond to a constantly changing environment—are good for those struggling with hyperactivity and impulsivity.

The problem, Caldwell added, is that most people try to change how their brains work so they can function in the world rather than changing the world for how their brains work. That means if you need to move more, as many with ADHD do, consider using a standing or treadmill desk, take frequent breaks, and exercise before work to build up energy stores.

“A lot of people start out with more ability to regulate their tasks and attention, and as the day goes on, they have less capacity to do that,” she said. “Save things that aren’t as taxing for later in the day.”

Mind Your Diet

Energy is also affected by what you eat. For those with ADHD—and even those without it—sugar can be particularly problematic.

When you eat carbohydrates, your body converts them into glucose, which raises blood sugar. Spikes in blood sugar can cause you to fidget and become inattentive, groggy, or sleepy, according to Beth Lambert, founder and executive director of Epidemic Answers, an educational platform for parents of children with ADHD and other childhood conditions.

She shared a story that illustrates how important metabolism can be for brain health. When a friend of hers learned that one of her children had Type 1 diabetes, she put the whole family on a low-carbohydrate diet. Her three children, who’d all been diagnosed with ADHD, began to lose signs of the disorder, experience behavior improvements, and eventually stop using medication.

Non-healthy diets are generally associated with ADHD symptoms, according to a narrative review in Nutrients.

“Altered levels of nutrients, such as vitamin D, iron, zinc, and PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids), have also been associated with the aggravation and progression of ADHD. Therefore, diet has emerged as a treatment option for ADHD,” wrote the authors.

Another reason tweaking diet is so effective, Lambert said, is because of the link between the gut microbiome and the brain. The gut microbiome is all the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that live in the gut. Many Americans have some type of imbalance, and those fluctuations have been associated with a number of diseases, including ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and dementia, among others.

Another Nutrients study showed that gut microbiota contribute to ADHD reactive aggression. Researchers found specific patterns of microbes in the gut and symptoms in a study of 77 adults with ADHD compared to 76 neurotypical adults.

The authors wrote, “If replicated, these results could help identify targets for nutritional interventions or microbiota-targeted pre-/probiotics as treatment support for reactive aggression, especially in the context of adult ADHD.”

They added, “While inflammatory processes might play a role in both reactive aggression and ADHD, the mechanisms at play in the interaction of diet, the gut microbiota, and these behaviors deserve more investigation.”

Myriad Issues

Lambert said that while it’s unusual for just one lifestyle change to have a dramatic effect, proper diet and nutrition are key components that can help people of all ages manage brain symptoms. Often, other things may also need to be addressed, such as visual, auditory, or sensory processing issues, food sensitivities, neurotransmitter imbalances, and more.

“The world we live in and the influences we are exposed to every day are myriad and can influence our body’s ability to function,” Lambert said. “Symptoms are just the body saying something is out of balance.”

She is concerned that the overemphasis on diagnosis only reinforces a predominant medical-drug model that often excludes deeper work on root causes and leads to an overdiagnosis of ADHD. That’s a problem the Association of American Medical Colleges recently highlighted.

The association pointed to concerning evidence, including the following:

• Two-thirds of health care practitioners aren’t trained to handle adult ADHD.
• Over-reliance on basic diagnostic surveys that one study found wrongly indicated ADHD in up to 90 percent of cases.
• The role of environmental toxins like lead paint and cigarette exposure in fetal development and early childhood is often overlooked.

Consider Other Root Causes

Burden saw a psychiatrist at 33 and was diagnosed with ADHD. It went unnoticed for decades because it was offset by her many strengths, a pattern that is also common among those with ADHD. The disorder can also be masked for other reasons, including the following:

• ADHD diagnosis relies on observation.
• It’s tricky to distinguish ADHD from other conditions like anxiety, medical conditions that affect thinking and behavior, and side effects of certain drugs like steroids, antihistamines, and caffeine.
• Not much was understood about ADHD, particularly in women, when Burden, now 43, was growing up.
• There are a growing number of triggers associated with our modern lifestyle that can alter the brain and mirror symptoms of ADHD.

Meanwhile, adults increasingly suspect they have ADHD: one in four, according to a new survey of 1,000 adults.

There are several medical reasons someone might be experiencing ADHD-like symptoms. According to the Mayo Clinic, they include:

• Seizure disorder
• Alcohol or other substance misuse
• Brain injury
• Low blood sugar
• Hormone imbalances, such as thyroid problems

One underrecognized root cause of ADHD is sleep apnea or restricted airways that prevent cells from receiving optimal oxygenation at night. Anything interrupting deep, restorative sleep could be problematic for the brain.

Beyond structural issues, sleep can also be disrupted by behavior.

“The modern American lifestyle is staying up ’til midnight. We’re on our devices. We’re looking at blue light on our iPads or our phones. Blue light suppresses melatonin, which prevents you from sleeping, then that perpetuates insomnia and sleep problems,” Lambert said.

“That’s one category of root cause of ADHD, and that’s a fraction of the categories.”

Personalize Strategies

It could be helpful to make an inventory of life stressors, nutrition, and work environment and to seek out blood tests to check for chemical imbalances, Lambert said.

With regard to easy tips that anyone can use to improve their sleep, setting one’s circadian rhythms by viewing the sun outside in the morning, minimizing the time in front of screens, especially in the three hours before bed, being outside as much as possible, and limiting bright artificial lights, especially at night, could all help.

Several strategies can also help when it comes to offsetting tendencies of forgetfulness and an inability to focus. However, when it comes to ADHD, tools are best personalized and automated, Caldwell said.

For instance, one client of hers was having trouble getting her children to bed. She would tell them to go to bed, and then she would get engrossed with an activity and realize they were staying up beyond bedtime because she’d become distracted.

She resolved the chaotic bedtime problem by setting several alarms every night at intervals to remind her and her children to stay on task.

Sometimes, drilling down to a solution often requires understanding what’s motivating the behavior, which can also be attached to an ADHD strength yet to be uncovered.

That was the case with Caldwell and her husband, who has ADHD. He would often interrupt her, which made her feel hurt, and he wasn’t sure why he kept doing it.

“As we started to dig into it, he only interrupted me when he was excited and enthusiastic about what I was saying. I interpreted it as he didn’t care about what I was saying, but it was exactly the opposite,” Caldwell said.

Caldwell said it’s vital to preserve the strengths of people with ADHD while working out the kinks in brain function. It’s not just to their benefit, but it encourages them to work through vulnerabilities so others can be the recipients of their positive qualities.

“There’s a lot about the ADHD brain that doesn’t always work well in our current societal structure and makes us feel like ADHD is a problem, and there’s a lot of suffering that comes for folks with ADHD,” she said. “But a lot of that suffering comes from a mismatch with the environment rather than it being a problem itself.”