Does adhd cause insomnia


Ways ADHD Can Cause Insomnia & Sleep Problems (And How To Fix It)

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

Everyone needs 7-9 hours of sleep each night to feel productive and well during the day. But people with ADHD often have a hard time falling or staying asleep.

Because you feel tired, your ADHD symptoms get worse, and that makes it harder to sleep the next night. This cycle repeats. And it happens to a lot of people. One study found that roughly two thirds of people with ADHD -- 67% -- found it hard to get a good night’s sleep.

But why? And what's the solution? While experts don’t know exactly how sleep woes and ADHD are linked, they do know about some of the possible causes and what might help.

Ways ADHD Causes Sleeplessness

On top of the normal things that can keep anyone from getting a good night's rest, there can be extra challenges if you have ADHD. These include:

Trouble keeping a schedule. People with ADHD are often easily distracted and find it tough to stop projects, tune out interruptions, and go to bed. Even once you’re in bed, it can be hard to quiet your mind and relax enough to sleep.

Stimulants. The stimulant medications often used to treat ADHD can make you feel more awake and can make sleeping harder. That’s on top of any caffeine you get from sources like coffee, tea, soda, and chocolate.

Other conditions. Often people with ADHD also have anxiety, depression, mood disorders, or substance abuse problems that can make falling and staying asleep difficult.

Sleep Disorders Tied to ADHD

Sleep disorders are more than a bad night's sleep. And if you have one, it can steal your rest and make you more distractible and impulsive during the day. These conditions are so common among people who have ADHD that experts often check on sleep problems when they’re diagnosing ADHD.

Some of the more common sleep disorders to watch for include:

Insomnia. Along with medications and trouble sticking to a schedule, there are other reasons people with ADHD are at risk for insomnia. You may get a burst of energy at night, along with racing thoughts that make it hard to get to sleep. Even when you do sleep, it might not be particularly restful -- especially if you also have nightmares. And stressing out about being unable to sleep can make your insomnia worse.

Circadian-rhythm sleep disorders. Your body makes changes throughout the day to adjust to the amount of light and darkness in a 24-hour period. Sometimes your body may not be in tune with the cycle and might not release hormones like melatonin at the right time. That, in turn, can make it hard to fall asleep. Bright lights, especially artificial blue lights from laptops and tablets, can throw off your body’s inner clock.

Sleep apnea. People with sleep apnea stop and start breathing throughout the night. It messes with your rest and leaves you feeling tired. About 3% of all people and 25% of those with ADHD have sleep apnea or some other "sleep-disordered breathing" problem. If you snore loudly, you may want to mention this to your doctor because it can be a sign of sleep apnea.

Restless legs syndrome (RLS). Symptoms include limb discomfort and a strong urge to move your legs while you sleep. Some people describe the feeling as pulling, throbbing, aching, or itching inside your leg. About 2% of all people and 44% of those with ADHD have RLS.

What You Can Do

If you have ADHD and trouble sleeping, you should tell your doctor. You might need a change in your medications to make sleeping easier, or you might do a sleep study to see if there is another underlying cause of your sleeplessness.

If you’ve ruled out other causes, then your ADHD symptoms may be to blame. You may be able to improve your rest by doing the following healthy habits and routines. You should:

  • Avoid napping 4 hours before bedtime.
  • Avoid drinking caffeine 4 hours before bedtime.
  • If you take stimulant medication, make sure you are taking it as early as possible.
  • Have a calming bedtime routine.
  • Go to bed at about the same time every day.
  • Sleep in a comfortable bed in a dark and quiet room.
  • Avoid looking at screens (TVs, smartphones, etc.) and electronic media in the evening.

ADHD Guide

  1. Overview & Facts
  2. Symptoms & Diagnosis
  3. Treatment & Care
  4. Living With ADHD

ADHD and Sleep Problems: Why You're Always Tired

ADHD and Sleep Problems

Adults with ADHD rarely fall asleep easily, sleep soundly through the night, and then wake up feeling refreshed. More often, ADHD’s mental and physical restlessness disturbs a person’s sleep patterns — and the ensuing exhaustion hurts overall health and treatment. This is widely accepted as true. But, as with most of our knowledge about ADHD in adults, we’re only beginning to understand the stronger link between ADHD and sleep, that creates difficulties:

  • Falling asleep
  • Staying asleep
  • Waking up

Sleep disturbances caused by ADHD have been overlooked for a number of reasons. Sleep problems did not fit neatly into the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) requirement that all ADHD symptoms must be present by age 7. Sleep disturbances associated with ADHD generally appear later in life, at around age 12, on average. Consequently, the arbitrary age cutoff has prevented recognition of night owls and sleep disturbances in ADHD until recently, when studies of adults have become more common. Just as ADHD does not go away at adolescence, it does not go away at night either. It continues to impair life functioning 24 hours a day.

In early attempts to define the syndrome, sleep disturbances were briefly considered a criterion for ADHD, but were dropped from the symptoms list because evidence of them was thought to be too nonspecific. As research has expanded to include adults with ADHD, the causes and effects of sleeping disturbances have become clearer.

For now, sleeping problems tend either to be overlooked or to be viewed as coexisting problems with an unclear relationship to ADHD itself and to the mental fatigue so commonly reported by individuals with ADHD. Sleep disturbances have been incorrectly attributed to the stimulant-class medications that are often the first to be used to treat ADHD.

The Four Big ADHD Sleep Problems

No scientific literature on sleep lists ADHD as a prominent cause of sleep disturbances. Most articles focus on sleep disturbance due to stimulant-class medications, rather than looking at ADHD as the cause. Yet adults with ADHD know that the connection between their condition and sleep problems is real. Sufferers often call it “perverse sleep” — when they want to be asleep, they are awake; when they want to be awake, they are asleep.

[Watch This Video: 5 Fixes for “I Can’t Sleep”]

The four most common sleep disturbances associated with ADHD are:

1. Difficulty Falling Asleep with ADHD

About three-fourths of all adults with ADHD report inability to “shut off my mind so I can fall asleep at night.” Many describe themselves as “night owls” who get a burst of energy when the sun goes down. Others report that they feel tired throughout the day, but as soon as the head hits the pillow, the mind clicks on. Their thoughts jump or bounce from one worry to another. Unfortunately, many of these adults describe their thoughts as “racing,” prompting a misdiagnosis of a mood disorder, when this is nothing more than the mental restlessness of ADHD.

Prior to puberty, 10 to 15 percent of children with ADHD have trouble getting to sleep. This is twice the rate found in children and adolescents who do not have ADHD. This number dramatically increases with age: 50 percent of children with ADHD have difficulty falling asleep almost every night by age 12 ½ by age 30, more than 70 percent of adults with ADHD report that they spend more than one hour trying to fall asleep at night.

2. Restless Sleep with ADHD

When individuals with ADHD finally fall asleep, their sleep is restless. They toss and turn. They awaken at any noise in the house. They are so fitful that bed partners often choose to sleep in another bed. They often awake to find the bed torn apart and covers kicked onto the floor. Sleep is not refreshing and they awaken as tired as when they went to bed.

[How Sleep Deprivation Looks a Lot Like ADHD]

3. Difficulty Waking Up with ADHD

More than 80 percent of adults with ADHD in my practice report multiple awakenings until about 4 a.m. Then they fall into “the sleep of the dead,” from which they have extreme difficulty rousing themselves.

They sleep through two or three alarms, as well as the attempts of family members to get them out of bed. ADHD sleepers are commonly irritable, even combative, when roused before they are ready. Many of them say they are not fully alert until noon.

4. Intrusive Sleep with ADHD

Paul Wender, M.D., a 30-year veteran ADHD researcher, relates ADHD to interest-based performance. As long as persons with ADHD were interested in or challenged by what they were doing, they did not demonstrate symptoms of the disorder. (This phenomenon is called hyperfocus by some, and is often considered to be an ADHD pattern.) If, on the other hand, an individual with ADHD loses interest in an activity, his nervous system disengages, in search of something more interesting. Sometimes this disengagement is so abrupt as to induce sudden extreme drowsiness, even to the point of falling asleep.

Marian Sigurdson, Ph.D., an expert on electroencephalography (EEG) findings in ADHD, reports that brain wave tracings at this time show a sudden intrusion of theta waves into the alpha and beta rhythms of alertness. We all have seen “theta wave intrusion,” in the student in the back of the classroom who suddenly crashes to the floor, having “fallen asleep.” This was probably someone with ADHD who was losing consciousness due to boredom rather than falling asleep. This syndrome is life-threatening if it occurs while driving, and it is often induced by long-distance driving on straight, monotonous roads. Often this condition is misdiagnosed as “EEG negative narcolepsy. ” The extent of incidence of intrusive “sleep” is not known, because it occurs only under certain conditions that are hard to reproduce in a laboratory.

Why Do People with ADHD Have Problems Sleeping?

There are several theories about the causes of sleep disturbance in people with ADHD, with a telling range of viewpoints. Physicians base their responses to their patients’ complaints of sleep problems on how they interpret the cause of the disturbances. A physician who looks first for disturbances resulting from disorganized life patterns will treat problems in a different way than a physician who thinks of them as a manifestation of ADHD.

Thomas Brown, Ph.D., longtime researcher in ADHD and developer of the Brown Scales, was one of the first to give serious attention to the problem of sleep in children and adolescents with ADHD. He sees sleep disturbances as indicative of problems of arousal and alertness in ADHD itself. Two of the five symptom clusters that emerge from the Brown Scales involve activation and arousal:

  • Organizing and activating to begin work activities.
  • Sustaining alertness, energy, and effort.

Brown views problems with sleep as a developmentally-based impairment of management functions of the brain — particularly, an impairment of the ability to sustain and regulate arousal and alertness. Interestingly, he does not recommend treatments common to ADHD, but rather recommends a two-pronged approach that stresses better sleep hygiene and the suppression of unwanted and inconvenient arousal states by using medications with sedative properties.

The simplest explanation is that sleep disturbances are direct manifestations of ADHD itself. True hyperactivity is extremely rare in women of any age. Most women experience the mental and physical restlessness of ADHD only when they are trying to shut down the arousal state of day-to-day functioning in order to fall asleep. At least 75 percent of adults of both genders report that their minds restlessly move from one concern to another for several hours until they finally fall asleep. Even then, they toss and turn, awaken frequently, and sometimes barely sleep at all.

The fact that 80 percent of adults with ADHD eventually fall into “the sleep of the dead” has led researchers to look for explanations. No single theory explains the severe impairment of the ability to rouse oneself into wakefulness. Some patients with ADHD report that they sleep well when they go camping or are out of doors for extended periods of time.

One hypothesis is that the lack of an accurate circadian clock may also account for the difficulty that many with ADHD have in judging the passage of time. Their internal clocks are not “set.” Consequently, they experience only two times: “now” and “not now.” Many of my adult patients do not wear watches. They experience time as an abstract concept, important to other people, but one which they don’t understand. It will take many more studies to establish the links between circadian rhythms and ADHD.

[Read This Next: Tired of Feeling Tired? How to Solve Common Sleep Problems]

How to Get to Sleep with ADD

No matter how a doctor explains sleep problems, the remedy usually involves something called “sleep hygiene,” which considers all the things that foster the initiation and maintenance of sleep. This set of conditions is highly individualized. Some people need absolute silence. Others need white noise, such as a fan or radio, to mask disturbances to sleep. Some people need a snack before bed, while others can’t eat anything right before bedtime. A few rules of sleep hygiene are universal:

  • Use the bed only for sleep or sex, not as a place to confront problems or argue.
  • Have a set bedtime and a bedtime routine and stick to it — rigorously.
  • Avoid naps during the day.

Two more elements of good sleep hygiene seem obvious, but they should be stressed for people with ADHD.

  • Get in bed to go to sleep. Many people with ADHD are at their best at night. They are most energetic, thinking clearest, and most stable after the sun goes down. The house is quiet and distractions are low. This is their most productive time. Unfortunately, they have jobs and families to which they must attend the next morning, tasks made harder by inadequate sleep.
  • Avoid caffeine late at night. Caffeine can cause a racing ADHD brain to grow more excitable and alert. Caffeine is also a diuretic, although not as potent as experts once thought, and may cause sleep disruptions brought on by needing to go to the bathroom. It is a good strategy to avoid consuming any liquids shortly before bedtime.

Treatment Options for ADHD-Related Sleep Problems

If the patient spends hours a night with thoughts bouncing and his body tossing, this is probably a manifestation of ADHD. The best treatment is a dose of stimulant-class medication 45 minutes before bedtime. This course of action, however, is a hard sell to patients who suffer from difficulty sleeping. Consequently, once they have determined their optimal dose of medication, I ask them to take a nap an hour after they have taken the second dose.

Generally, they find that the medication’s “paradoxical effect” of calming restlessness is sufficient to allow them to fall asleep. Most adults are so sleep-deprived that a nap is usually successful. Once people see for themselves, in a “no-risk” situation, that the medications can help them shut off their brains and bodies and fall asleep, they are more willing to try medications at bedtime. About two-thirds of my adult patients take a full dose of their ADHD medication every night to fall asleep.

What if the reverse clinical history is present? One-fourth of people with ADHD either don’t have a sleep disturbance or have ordinary difficulty falling asleep. Stimulant-class medications at bedtime are not helpful to them. Dr. Brown recommends Benadryl, 25 to 50 mg, about one hour before bed. Benadryl is an antihistamine sold without prescription and is not habit-forming. The downside is that it is long-acting, and can cause sleepiness for up to 60 hours in some individuals. About 10 percent of those with ADHD experience severe paradoxical agitation with Benadryl and never try it again.

Experts point out that sleep disturbances in people diagnosed with ADHD are not always due to ADHD-related causes. Sometimes patients have a co-morbid sleep disorder in addition to ADHD. Some professionals will order a sleep study for their patients to determine the cause of the sleep disturbance. Such tests as a Home Sleeping Test, Polysomnogram, or a Multiple Sleep Latency Test may be prescribed. If there are secondary sleep problems, doctors may use additional treatment options to manage sleep time challenges.

The next step up the treatment ladder is prescription medications. Most clinicians avoid sleeping pills because they are potentially habit-forming. People quickly develop tolerance to them and require ever-increasing doses. So, the next drugs of choice tend to be non-habit-forming, with significant sedation as a side effect. They are:

  • Melatonin. This naturally occurring peptide released by the brain in response to the setting of the sun has some function in setting the circadian clock. It is available without prescription at most pharmacies and health food stores. Typically the dosage sizes sold are too large. Almost all of the published research on Melatonin is on doses of 1 mg or less, but the doses available on the shelves are either 3 or 6 mg. Nothing is gained by using doses greater than one milligram. Melatonin may not be effective the first night, so several nights’ use may be necessary for effectiveness.
  • Periactin. The prescription antihistamine, cyproheptadine (Periactin), works like Benadryl but has the added advantages of suppressing dreams and reversing stimulant-induced appetite suppression.
  • Clonidine. Some practitioners recommend in a 0.05 to 0.1 mg dose one hour before bedtime. This medication is used for high blood pressure, and it is the drug of choice for the hyperactivity component of ADHD. It exerts significant sedative effects for about four hours.
  • Antidepressant medications, such as trazodone (Desyrel), 50 to 100 mg, or mirtazapine (Remeron), 15 mg, used by some clinicians for their sedative side effects. Due to a complex mechanism of action, lower doses of mirtazapine are more sedative than higher ones. More is not better. Like Benadryl, these medications tend to produce sedation into the next day, and may make getting up the next morning harder than it was.

Problems Waking Up with ADHD

Problems in waking and feeling fully alert can be approached in two ways. The simpler is a two-alarm system. The patient sets a first dose of stimulant-class medication and a glass of water by the bedside. An alarm is set to go off one hour before the person actually plans to rise. When the alarm rings, the patient rouses himself enough to take the medication and goes back to sleep. When a second alarm goes off, an hour later, the medication is approaching peak blood level, giving the individual a fighting chance to get out of bed and start his day.

A second approach is more high-tech, based on evidence that difficulty waking in the morning is a circadian rhythm problem. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of sunset/sunrise-simulating lights can set the internal clocks of people with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. As an added benefit, many people report that they sharpen their sense of time and time management once their internal clock is set properly. The lights, however, are experimental and expensive (about $400).

Disturbances of sleep in people with ADHD are common, but are almost completely ignored by our current diagnostic system and in ADHD research. These patterns become progressively worse with age. Recognition of sleep disturbance in ADHD has been hampered by the misattribution of the difficulty falling asleep to the effects of stimulant-class medications. We now recognize that sleep difficulties are associated with ADHD itself, and that stimulant-class medications are often the best treatment of sleep problems rather than the cause of them.

[ADHD Directory: Find an ADHD Specialist or Clinic Near You]

William Dodson, M.D., is a member of ADDitude’s ADHD Medical Review Panel.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

Previous Article Next Article

why do you feel tired all the time?

Constant insomnia can be really debilitating and doctors won't know what to do. A common cause of sleep disorders is ADHD. Experts have ignored the impact of ADHD on sleep for many years, partly due to the fact that this problem manifests itself with age. Fortunately, these simple life hacks will help you fall asleep easily and wake up refreshed and rested.

Megan in Boekhorst | Unsplash

William Dodson, MD explains how to deal with insomnia caused by ADHD.

Contents of the article

Do not self-medicate! In our articles, we collect the latest scientific data and the opinions of authoritative health experts. But remember: only a doctor can diagnose and prescribe treatment.

ADHD and insomnia

Most adults with ADHD have difficulty remembering a day when they fell asleep easily, slept through the night, and woke up easily feeling rested. Much more often, physical and mental anxiety in ADHD causes sleep disturbance. And insomnia gradually undermines health and interferes with treatment. While the connection is fairly obvious to all adults who suffer from this syndrome, doctors are only just beginning to really dive into the problem of sleep disorders. The main problem was that ADHD syndromes become noticeable at the age of seven, but sleep disturbances often begin to appear only in adulthood - and this prevented doctors from connecting one with the other. But ADHD does not sleep - at night it interferes with us in the same way as during the day.

New research has helped to understand the causes and consequences of sleep disorders. They are not related to the stimulant class drugs used to treat ADHD in the United States. They may be partly due to the "mental overload" that ADHD patients often complain about.

The four big sleep problems with ADHD:

The most agonizing condition is “perverted sleep”: the inability to fall asleep when you want to sleep and terrible sleepiness at hours when you need to be active.

Difficulty falling asleep

¾ of all ADHD patients complain of being unable to switch off their brain to sleep. Someone simply considers himself a "night owl" and cannot sleep at night, trying to use this time for work. Someone complains that as soon as the head touches the pillow, obsessive thoughts, creative ideas and strange questions fill the brain. The brain rushes from one disturbing thought to another, not wanting to go into sleep mode. Unfortunately, this manifestation of ADHD often leads to misdiagnosis: patients talk about "jumping" thoughts, and the psychiatrist diagnoses "mood disorder", prescribing treatment that simply cannot help.

Approximately 5-7% of children experience sleep disturbances before puberty. Children with ADHD are twice as likely to have this problem. By adolescence, 50% of children with ADHD complain of insomnia. 70% of adults with ADHD toss and turn in bed for at least an hour, unable to fall asleep.

Restless sleep

But even when the long-awaited dream finally comes, you can't get enough sleep. They toss and turn and wake up to any noise. They sleep so restlessly that in the morning they often find that the sheet is knocked down in a lump, the blanket is on the floor, and the partner has gone to sleep on the sofa, unable to withstand such a neighborhood. Sleep is not refreshing; they wake up even more broken than they went to sleep.

Difficulty waking up

80% of patients in Dr. Dodson's practice described their sleep as follows: repeated disturbing awakenings until 4 am, and then a dead sleep until noon. An "owl" with ADHD cannot be raised by five alarm clocks, nor by relatives, nor by a sense of duty. If you nevertheless wake up a person with ADHD before he is ready to wake up, you will get an irritable, grumbling person who is completely useless at work and at home.

Obsessive drowsiness

Dr. Paul Wender, who spent 30 years of his life studying ADHD, explains that for people with this symptom, any activity is possible only as long as it interests them. While they were passionate about their occupation, there were no problems with activity, and no symptoms of the disorder bothered them (however, many call this condition hyperfocus and consider it one of the criteria for disorder). But, as soon as a person with ADHD lost interest in his occupation, the brain immediately switched to looking for a new exciting task or tried to switch off. Sometimes this abrupt switch caused sudden severe drowsiness.

Dr. Wender confirmed his experience with an MRI experiment. He observed an extreme manifestation of ADHD: when a student on the last desk suddenly fell out of his chair, simply passing out. The doctor says that this is not falling asleep, but rather a swoon from boredom; doctors often diagnose "EEG narcolepsy", which is incorrect, since the cause of this condition is ADHD. People who are prone to such manifestations should drive with caution, especially if there is a long trip along a monotonous road.

Why do people with ADHD often have sleep disturbances?

Different doctors have different theories about this. Someone thinks. that the reason is a lack of discipline and a chaotic lifestyle; others consider it only a consequence of ADHD.

Dr. Thomas Brown believes that the cause of insomnia in this case is a violation of the executive functions of the brain that arose in the process of growth. He offers a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it is necessary to maintain sleep hygiene: routine, routines, separation of the recreation area and work area (we wrote about this many times). On the other hand, drugs with sedative properties to suppress the symptoms of ADHD.

The most interesting and promising hypothesis for the causes of insomnia in people with ADHD is the idea of ​​a lack of circadian rhythms. Many ADHD patients do not wear a watch, and their own internal clock is as if "not set": for them there are only two types of time "now" and "not now". For these people, time is an abstract concept, or a continuous, unstructured flow; it doesn't seem to matter to them. Hence the constant failures of deadlines, problems with discipline and disruption of the sleep-wake cycle.

How to fall asleep with ADHD

However, this is all theory. Unfortunately, the hypotheses of doctors about the causes of insomnia in ADHD do not yet help us fall asleep. All experts' recommendations boil down to general sleep hygiene rules:

  1. Use the bed only for sleeping and sex; do not work or discuss problems in bed.
  2. Set a stable bedtime and wake up time and stick to it strictly.
  3. Avoid daytime naps.

Finally, don't ignore your body's signals:

  • If you prefer to sleep in complete silence, try thick soundproof curtains or earplugs.
  • If you need "white noise" to fall asleep, leave the fan or TV on.
  • If you find it easier to fall asleep on an empty stomach, don't try to cram dinner into yourself.
  • If you find it easier to sleep when you're full, indulge in a heavy carbohydrate snack.

Two more helpful tips:

  1. Go to bed and sleep. Many people with ADHD like to work at night: the house is quiet, there are no distractions, the children are asleep. This is peak productivity; but if you don't go to bed, you will feel overwhelmed in the morning.
  2. Avoid coffee before bed. Caffeine interacts interestingly with the body with ADHD, but you don't need it right now.

youtube

Click to watch

Insomnia treatment options for ADHD

Drugs used to treat ADHD sometimes help with sleep problems. Sometimes sedatives help (some doctors even prescribe antihistamines because of their sedative effect). But sometimes medicines don't help; the cause may be in secondary sleep disorders not directly related to ADHD. To determine the cause of insomnia, doctors may order tests or perform a polysomnogram. Prescription sleeping pills are often prescribed for sleep disorders, but they can be addictive and cause excessive sleepiness. Without a prescription, you can purchase sleeping pills based on melatonin, a circadian rhythm regulator.

How to wake up easily with ADHD

Of all the ways available in Russia to stimulate easy awakening, the most effective is the daylight alarm clock. Such an alarm clock suits your personal dawn (especially true for those who live among the long winter nights and short days). Many believe that such an alarm clock helps improve time management skills by setting the "internal clock" every morning.

Do you get enough sleep?

Insomnia and ADHD are two sides of the same pathology: alev_biz — LiveJournal

? Cancel . But now scientists are proposing a new theory, according to which most cases of ADHD are associated precisely with the lack of a regular circadian rhythm. This work is presented at the Congress of Translational and Applied Neurosciences in Paris, September 2-5.

There are extensive studies showing that people with ADHD tend to sleep poorly. The work, which was carried out in Amsterdam, proves that the disease and circadian disorders in most patients are extremely closely intertwined.

“We think that due to the instability of the day and night rhythms, the synchronization of several physical processes is disrupted at once, and not just sleep: for example, temperature, physical activity, meal times, etc. And if you look closely, it turns out that ADHD and insomnia are two sides of the same physiological and mental coin,” says Sandra Kooij, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the VU Medical Center, Amsterdam and founder of the European Adult ADHD Society.

It turned out that in 75 percent of patients with ADHD, all "sleepy" physiological signs - changes in melatonin levels, changes in motor activity caused by sleep - are delayed by 1.5 hours. The same changes occur with the regulation of the temperature regime of the body (due to melatonin).

In addition, many disorders that are sometimes observed in sleep are associated with ADHD: restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea, sleep delay syndrome, and some others. In such patients, very often, alert behavior increases in the evening, which is associated with the excitation of the adrenergic system, which is also associated with insomnia.

In addition, many attention deficit sufferers benefit from taking melatonin in the evening or bright light therapy in the morning to help reset their circadian rhythm. It will also help with chronic late sleep, which leads to chronic sleep deficit and becomes the cause of many somatic pathologies.

“We are working to confirm this physio-psychological relationship through the search for biomarkers, for example, analysis of vitamin D levels, blood glucose levels, cortisol levels, 24-hour blood pressure, heart rate variability, and so on.
Learn more