Since the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder was created, there have been an estimated 6.1 million children diagnosed with this condition. ADHD is characterized by abnormally high levels of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors. Specifically, individuals with this condition have difficulty focussing their attention on a single task for long periods of time. While typically associated with children, this condition affects adults as well.
Thankfully, there are plenty of available treatments.
What Helps ADHD?
ADHD treatments come in a wide variety of forms. This means that people with this condition can find the management strategies that work best for them. Treatments can involve medications, support groups, therapy, and more. Many individuals rely on a combination of these potential treatments to help them with their condition.
Let’s take a look at some methods many people use to manage their condition…
10. Exercise
Exercise is great for our overall health. There’s really no aspect of our physical and mental condition that can get a boost from a good workout routine; ADHD is no exception.
Why It Helps
Exercise has a few different ways of helping people with ADHD. For starters, a good exercise routine helps build a regular and reliable schedule into our days. It also helps elevate mood and burns off excess energy, which helps limit the impact of this condition. Exercise can also help improve other health conditions that might make ADHD worse if left unchecked.
A specific type of exercise people with ADHD find particularly helpful is yoga…
9. Yoga
Yoga might not seem like an intense workout, but it can really get the blood pumping. Yoga not only gives your body a great exercise routine, but it also helps improve your ADHD symptoms.
Why It Helps
Yoga helps people with ADHD on a few different levels. The first and most obvious level is the physical workout that helps you get rid of excess energy. Yoga is also a slow exercise that helps to build attention spans by giving people a set time where they must build mindfulness and concentration.
Much like yoga, meditation is a great tool that helps us gain control over our emotions and our minds…
8. Mediation
Meditation can help all of us with our focus, but this is especially true for people with ADHD. The goal with any meditative practice is to slowly bring the skills learned in mediation into our day-to-day lives.
Why It Helps
Meditating on a regular basis helps you build up your ability to focus, gain control over your emotions, and resist distractions. These events all can be challenging for people with ADHD. The key to meditation is to begin slowly and build up your practice over time. This strategy gives you the core skills needed to manage the condition.
While meditation is a great way to build up inner strength, some people with ADHD find the help they need in new organizational techniques…
7. Find Your Organizational Style
You’ll often hear tips aimed at getting more organized, but that is often an oversimplification of what organization means for someone with ADHD. People with the condition might appear incredibly well organized, after all. They often make lists, clean regularly, and otherwise appear “put together.” It’s all about finding out how you can out-organize your ADHD.
Why It Helps
You can help focus your attention by finding an organizational style that works for you. This practice allows you to prioritize the tasks you need to get done while lowering the chances of becoming distracted. Experiment with color-coding, different prioritizing techniques, and other ways to help you cut through the noise. Remember, there is no one-size-fits all solution strategy.
Finding your organizational style will help you get ahead of your distractions…
6. Get Ahead of Your Distractions
We all get distracted from time to time, but for people with ADHD, distractions can be debilitating. Preventing your distractions from taking over your time is a great way to manage your ADHD symptoms.
Why It Helps
Getting ahead of your distractions means finding ways to stop them from distracting you in the first place. Techniques like turning your phone on silent, using parental-blocking software to limit your access to movie-streaming websites, and changing your work environment can all help you limit the chances of a distraction snagging your attention in the first place.
This is a small step, but it can help you build up your attention span over time…
5. Boost Your Attention Span
For people living with ADHD, it can feel like your attention span isn’t as robust as everyone else’s is. Thankfully, you can boost your attention span.
Why It Helps
Our attention spans are like a muscle. In other words, we can exercise them in order to make them stronger. Try strategies like using a timer to give yourself set periods of work. Or, incorporate a secondary activity, like a stress ball or other “fidget” toy, into your daily life. These strategies can help you build up your attention span, and they require minimal effort on your part.
One of the best things you can do for both ADHD and your overall health is get some regular sleep…
4. Get Regular Sleep
Sleeping on a regular cycle does wonders for our mental health, which includes ADHD. In addition to making sure you get a full night’s sleep, having a reliable “bedtime” can help your mind prepare for the day, despite ADHD symptoms.
Why It Helps
Sleep deprivation doesn’t just come in the form of pulling all-nighters. If your sleep schedule is irregular, it can throw off your balance and make your ADHD symptoms worse. A regular sleep schedule works to help your overall health as well as build in a reliable routine that helps lower the impact of ADHD.
Just like our sleep schedules, our diet can also improve our ADHD severity…
3. Improve Your Diet
A poor diet doesn’t directly cause ADHD, but it can make ADHD symptoms worse and harder to manage. After all, a diet that is rich in junk food can make even people without ADHD jittery and distracted. Improving your diet can therefore help your ADHD outcomes.
Why It Helps
ADHD is all about attention and your overall ability to focus on a single task. As such, caffeine, sugary foods, and junk food can all contribute to worse outcomes for people with the condition. Conversely, eating at regular intervals throughout the day, limiting unhealthy foods, and planning out healthy snacks can help individuals improve their ADHD symptoms.
While there are plenty of personal changes we can make to help ADHD symptoms, getting help from a professional is still the standard treatment for this condition…
2. Therapy
There are countless different types of “talk therapy” that can help with ADHD. These range from specialists who can help you with your on the job performance all the way to counselors who know how to help people with ADHD handle their emotional trauma.
Why It Helps
Depending on the type of therapist you work with, you can get help in a variety of ways. A cognitive behavioral therapist can help you learn skills and new ways of thinking that improve your ADHD symptoms. Other forms of therapy can help you specifically with on-the-job skills or even help you to work through underlying emotional and traumatic problems that are making your ADHD worse.
Many people who choose therapy also combine this approach with medications…
1. Medication
For years medication has been the go-to treatment for ADHD. However, modern research is showing that ADHD is best treated with a combination of both medication and therapy. With that said, medication is still part of the standard treatment for this condition.
Why It Helps
Medications can help people with ADHD get a hold of their neurological functions when used in combination with other treatments. One common treatment? Amphetamines. Now, amphetamines might seem like a strange choice for ADHD, but they are in fact the standard medicine for this condition. They help boost focus and are used alongside other cognitive medication and drugs.
All in all, getting a hold of your ADHD is all about blending together the treatments that work best for you…
Final Thoughts
When it comes to handling your ADHD, no two people are going to have the same strategies for handling this condition. By working with your therapist or doctor of choice, you can explore combinations of lifestyle changes, therapies, and medications that can improve your ability to focus while living with ADHD.
