ADHD as a circadian rhythm disorder: evidence and implications for chronotherapy (2025)

Beware that Frontiers In is a very low quality outlet and most scientists stay far far away from it (unless they really need a publication the next three weeks since they have that tenure track review coming up).

> walk in

> see this title

> oh man that would explain a lot

Ok after reading a chunk of this the correlation is pretty wild. Having the data it’s quite striking. Sleep intervention as a form of ADHD treatment has always seemed reasonable to me but this gives a lot more clarity to the approach and mechanisms.

For me, the seasonal aspect of it aligns with their blue light findings (both driving symptoms and aligning with improvement under the intervention of having a grow-LED garden setup on my desk), and in a second maybe related matter we’ve found using blue light blocking glasses an hour before bed to be the most impactful single intervention around sleep quality and onset (the ones that are like orange laser safety glasses, not the mildly reflective desk-work glasses)

adhd is a socially constructed disorder with significant heterogeneity and is only becoming moreso with the advent of scrollable video media and patient communities/advocacy. i am highly skeptical of results pointing to an easily identified physiological cause. the studies cited in this paper are generally low quality and fall apart under scrutiny.

There seems to be almost nothing new here. I see that the main studies the they cite are actually from the 2010s:

https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h68.abstract

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13899...

I'd be curious to see if there's been any larger scale follow up on this since.

Dr. Sandra Kooij is a good person to look up if you are interested in adult ADHD and sleep. She has a book about it. From what I remember, there are a few things that are known:

1. a large majority of ADHD sufferers are phase-delayed and struggle with insomnia

2. you can induce ADHD-like symptoms in normal people by restricting sleep

3. Some of the interventions that improve sleep timing and quality affect ADHD (but it isn't a total cure)

For a time I had to wake up at 6AM for work and it was a period where I struggled the most with my ADHD symptoms.

I hope there is more awareness in the future about the importance of sleep for neurodivergent people. This could help with the social jet lag most of us feel with having to follow a schedule that simply does not work for us.

I've been using a smart switch to fade in a light (one of the "sun-like" full-spectrum ones) over my head in the morning and it's been really effective for regulating my circadian rhythm. Even with little sleep, I will naturally wake up in the morning at a much more regular time.

Disruptions to sleep aggravates underlying issues, mentally or physically.

uBlock filter to fix selection:

  www.frontiersin.org##.InfoDrawer

How do the authors disintangle cause and effect here? It doesn't follow that sleep issues are an underlying cause, and not just one of the MANY symptoms of ADHD.

There seems to be some kind of hidden connection between autism and ADHD. At first sight the definitions are contradictory but in reality, many people have both. Sleep disturbance seem to be common among autistic people too.

Oh cool so now people will be told to go to sleep earlier and get more sun before you can prove that you deserve actual treatment. Fun...

lists Melatonin, first, then behavioral pseudo-interventions.

stay tuned for more monthly product placements on frontiers in, best digested post prime time.

Welcome to your readjustment. Willkommen beim Nachrichten.

hey, is anyone wondering if kleine & grosse Lauschangriffe are shared with private people or the guys working for these institutions are trustworthy enough and whether they actually deserved their Bachelor degrees or someone somehow decided they are worth it anyway? wait ... it's just a fucking Bachelors degree

Be me. Too AHDH to even open the article, let alone read the article before moving to the next HN post.