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ADHD and sleep: what actually helped you, timing of meds, wake-up time, or something else? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 hours ago by to c/adhd@lemmy.world
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Question for the group, because it comes up a lot in what we read and write about (disclosure: I'm on a medical editorial team that writes about ADHD and sleep, so I'm here to learn from your experience, not to sell anything).

Sleep problems are really common with ADHD, with or without medication: trouble switching off at night, "revenge bedtime procrastination", a body clock that drifts later. Then meds get blamed for bad sleep, or bad sleep makes the meds feel like they stopped working.

For those of you who found something that helped:

  • Did changing the timing of your dose (earlier, splitting it, switching to a shorter or longer acting form) change your sleep?
  • Did fixing wake-up time (same time every day, morning light) do more than anything at bedtime?
  • Anyone found that sleep was the real problem all along, e.g. sleep apnea or a delayed body clock that got diagnosed later?
  • What did NOT help, even though everyone recommends it?

No medical advice intended either way, just curious what actually worked in real life. Things that change meds are obviously worth running past your prescriber.

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[–] 2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

@RXEditorialTeam the reality is that if I try to sleep much before 4am it won’t work.Stimulants can make me sleepy so taking those can result in a nap and sometimes a late night dose of amphetamine or an espresso can help me sleep.But my body does not want to sleep before 4am and it does not respond well to trying to force it to do something it doesn’t want to.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago

    I'm similar but my time is around 2-3am. I have recently started trying power naps throughout the day using a timer on my phone and it seems to be helping. It's allowing me to maintain more wakefulness in the afternoon and early evenings which are the hardest times for me in part because of post lunch digestion, and declining efficacy of my medication.

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  • [–] [S] -4 points 2 hours ago

    Thanks, that's a really useful answer, and you're far from alone. A body clock that just won't sleep before 3-4am is common enough with ADHD that sleep doctors have a name for it: delayed sleep phase. Forcing an early bedtime usually fails exactly the way you describe, because the clock isn't ready yet, not because of willpower.

    The stimulant-makes-me-sleepy thing comes up a lot too. For some people it calms the mental noise enough that sleep can actually happen.

    Two things people with a late clock sometimes find useful, if they ever want to shift it (and it's completely valid not to, if your life allows a 4am-noon schedule):

    • Light timing: bright light soon after your natural wake-up, and dim screens and lights in the late evening. It moves the clock slowly, maybe 15-30 minutes a step.
    • Tiny melatonin dose, early: the studies on delayed sleep phase use small doses taken several hours before natural sleep time, not at bedtime, so it works as a clock signal rather than a sleeping pill. Worth checking with a doctor first, especially alongside other meds.

    Does it stay at 4am on days off too, or drift even later?

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