All right.
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD.
I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD.
On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to
help you work with your ADHD brain.
Today, I'm joined by Sky Waterson for our research recap series.
In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what
the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Prevalence,
Patterns, and Predictors of Sleep Problems and Daytime Sleepiness in
Young Adolescents with ADHD." And so this is a study that's investigating
the high prevalence of sleep-related issues in adolescents with ADHD, and
this paper is also trying to distinguish between, like, nighttime sleepiness
disorders and daytime sleepiness.
So the story here being that, hey, maybe ADHD might not be caused by poor sleep
quality alone, but there are, like, strong links to other things like sluggish
cognitive tempo, which we'll all get into.
So how about that?
Let's gi- dive in.
Yeah.
this was a very interesting study, and they were basically going
in and saying, okay, like you said, ADHD has been considered
to be related to sleep problems.
I think in some cases, especially with young people, they will
literally check for sleep conditions as part of the diagnostic process.
But let's figure out what is going on.
So they describe daytime sleepiness as something that, affects upwards of
50% of adolescents with ADHD, and this is specifically about adolescents.
Can you give us a sense of what daytime sleepiness looks like?
Because I feel like this was something that they didn't necessarily
go into enough, because it just sounds like what it is, right?
It's just being sleepy in the daytime.
Yeah.
it... yes.
Yes and no, 'cause it is basically, yeah, it's just being sleepy in the
daytime and, and it is just... But it's also like when be- it's being
diagnosed, it's more of a chronic thing.
It is more of, you're being slow, foggy, and, it's,
something where, I feel like it really feels a lot like, the inattentive side
of ADHD, where people are just like, "Oh yeah, you're not quite there sometimes."
where you're just, people are like, the, I will have things with my ADHD where
someone is talking to me and I am not hearing them at all and, they're like,
they say something and just like I'm like, bloop, right back into reality and I'm
just like, "I don't know where I was."
And that's a lot like where I feel like daytime sleepiness feels like,
where you're just like, "Oh, I'm, in a fog during the day, and occasionally
I break out, but it's weird."
Yeah.
Have you ever experienced, daytime sleepiness, what you would consider
versus just not getting enough sleep?
That would imply I had times where I got enough sleep, so that's hard.
is true.
I was like, times that I got enough sleep and then also... there are certainly like,
you are wake up and you're like, "Man, I got enough s- felt like I got enough
sleep." but it is, I think would be very hard to tease out from not getting enough
sleep, maybe not eating enough, maybe all the other things that you need to do.
maybe look up, "Oh, am I daytime sleepy because I'm sick, or is this
something indicative of something else?"
Yeah.
I will say, as we kinda go into this, I feel like it is worth me talking about
our own sleep experiences a little bit before we go into what they found.
I, get pretty good sleep.
I've done pretty well.
I crash in the afternoon like everyone, like a lot of people.
I try and, work or move to, to solve that.
When I was in university, I did experiment for a while with that system where you,
slept for a couple of hours, and then you got up and you did something, and you
slept again for another couple of hours.
Yeah, I got into that.
I don't think I did it for very long.
It was the year before I burned out really hard, so I don't know what that says.
But, yeah.
Yeah, the, they pres- it was polyphasic sleep was definitely presented as
something with, a lot of "Oh, this is how, early humans lived because of..." And it's
this is really not supported by anything other than some weak anthropology.
I know.
I think my, my, my... Like, I was just trying to figure out how to get
all, everything done, and you know.
And, and also, the reason I bring that up is 'cause I wonder if that was
my way of trying to combat daytime, sleepiness, was essentially to sleep.
Yeah.
yeah, and there are, as we mentioned earlier, there are a ton of
sleep related issues with, ADHD.
I want us to look at a paper that I saw a couple days ago that was about
linking, delayed circadian rhythm to ADHD.
and it's just one of those things where there's a lot that can be going
on, and so a lot of people with ADHD are dealing with all sorts of sleep
problems and being tired during the day.
And yeah, they're trying things like, polyphasic sleep or, just
b- I know people that are like, "I'm gonna be sleepy anyway, so
I'm, not even gonna try and get to
That's really interesting, because we'll come to a second,
in a minute, what they found.
that's very relevant.
So basically they, had 262 young adults, in sixth through
to eight grade, eighth grade.
73% male, so back on more males than women.
comprehensively diagnosed with ADHD,
which is, interesting.
Yeah.
We'll talk about that.
and, And in terms of the procedure, it was a lot of, a lot of surveys basically.
So they were going through the Child Interview for Psychiatric Syndrome.
they were looking at... It just says, "So again, no diagnosis," in my notes.
they were doing the Vanderbilt ADHD Diagnostic Rating Scale, Behavioral
Assessment System, Child Sleep Habits Questionnaire, and Sleep Self-Report,
and then the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale, and a bunch of other ones.
They did a lot of surveys.
Yeah.
but mostly filled out by the parents, sometimes filled out by
Yep.
adolescents,
So let's talk about the diagnosis piece, 'cause I think it's always
important to note if, like, how people are being diagnosed.
Yeah.
'cause in this one they were doing the Vanderbilt, which is a great
assessment.
but for mine, it was just being done by parents, which is not a full assessment.
Yeah.
Parents, caregivers rated how frequently each system
occurred on a four-point scale.
and, yeah, then they used the system.
So it wasn't being done by an expert in any kind of expert way.
And if you have kids, you'll know that, like, some of the answers, they don't
necessarily lead to an ADHD diagnosis.
They may just be, um, yeah, kids run around a lot.
so this is an interesting conversation in itself because the, it is, i- a,
one of the components of ADHD diagnosis is that it is happening both at home
and/or at, both at home and then, and at school or work, where it's just so
this is not just a single place issue.
and usually people are more concerned about it happening at schools than
they are it happening at home.
But, specifically often because of the masking that often happens at school, you
might see people having more ADHD symptoms at home than they, they do at school.
Nonetheless, it is being like, oh, if you only, are only looking at one
side of the picture, it is hard to g- really g- give that diagnosis.
Yeah, I thought this was really interesting.
I know we probably talk about this a lot, but I think it's so crucial
because, I had a conversation yesterday on a podcast and someone was
like, "Do you have to be diagnosed?
How do you get diagnosed?
What is that process?" And I still continue to find it interesting that the
papers that are published in academic journals that are for the purposes of
building a body of work about how ADHD works for the purposes of prescribing
medication or sleep support or, diagnosis in itself are based on such
ephemeral ground compared to that.
Yeah, it's... If we're trying to have, empirical data, it needs to have a
solid base of where it's coming from.
Otherwise, we're, we don't know if we're actually comparing all the same things.
Yeah.
And I do feel like most people, who are not listening to this wonderful
episode, you guys are in the know, but most people, don't know that.
Most people have no idea.
Yeah, and it's, I think it's important.
Yeah, if you are not in a science study, I don't really
care how you got your diagnosis.
if,
Absolutely.
I say it all the
were doing... Yeah, I'm like, self-diagnosis is fine in this case.
I don't, you're not gonna get medication with self-diagnosis, 'cause you need a
doctor to do that, and they're not gonna do that, and that makes sense to me.
But if you're just like, "I have ADHD, and I need to do these things to help
me get through the day," that's fine.
That's do,
That's awesome.
do what works for your brain.
But if you're doing a study, y- you need to know what's really going on because
just... The way that lack of sleep can mimic ADHD and then not having a super
comprehensive, this person has ADHD and not just sleep issues makes it so I'm
like, that's hard, to get my head around
And I think it's, like the study itself is makes sense.
It's all written out there.
It's all easy to see.
What I get... And I promise we'll talk about what they found in a second.
But what I, what I feel like, uh, a little bit frustrated about is I know how these
sort of academic things go, and so this paper will be read at a conference by
a certain person, and then it will be meta-analyzed into a variety of papers,
and then eventually it will become something that gets given as just like
a cer- a line or two to a person who is helping with really important diagnoses.
Yeah, or, and someone will see this as a, like it'll be posted on a
science forum, and it's just the headline that people are reading.
Yes, all that, 100%.
So in both cases, no one will know.
Okay, so now that we've talked about that, let's go into what they found.
So it was interesting.
They found, they talked about, like, time spent in bed, uh, sleep
scores, bedtime resistance, sleep duration, sleep anxiety, night
waking, parasomnias, sleep-disordered breathing, and daytime sleepiness.
So they had a whole regime of different things that you could be struggling with.
But what they found was that, yeah, daytime sleepiness was not
related... ADHD symptoms was not related to a lot of them, which was
un- which was not what they expected.
Yeah.
although there are some interesting ways that, so like the bedtime resistance,
not what I would have labeled as bedtime resistance, because it
doesn't-- they're like, "This was you.
No, it was not from,
going to bed.
It was more this focused on sleep habits." And I'm like, "That's-- why
don't you just call it sleep habits then?"
the bedtime resistance one was interesting, 'cause I was like, "Oh,
we're talking about, like," I think it's a colloquial thing we say, uh,
revenge bedtime procrastination.
But it didn't necessarily, they weren't necessarily correlated, those two
Yeah.
Also for adolescents it was weird too, 'cause it also included
separation anxiety, which I was like, "I-- these are not young kids."
was really, that was really interesting.
So they were really... 'Cause I was like, "Are we ta- This is gonna sound so funny.
For a second, I was like, "Are we talking about separation from sleep,
or from your phone?" I'm like...
It's specifically they have afraid of sleeping alone or needs
parents to sleep in the room.
And I'm like, these are n- like I understand young kids,
Mm-hmm.
but that is not something I maybe I, maybe that's just how my cultural being is, but
That made me wonder.
I was like, "Oh, are th- is there some different cultural conversation
that we are missing here, where, for some reason, that would be a
thing that would happen?" and yeah.
that would make sense.
if, I, if you have kids that, that don't wanna sleep alone, and you're making
them sleep alone for whatever reason, they're probably not gonna get good sleep.
Yeah.
But yeah,
back to the study itself.
so yeah.
So they did find that daytime sleepiness was the most common issue,
but, it was still, fair- fairly low, in that it was just, like 37% of parent
report or 42% from the adolescent report.
And whereas the nighttime sleep problems were like, the 1% to 5% problems.
So it was really daytime sleepiness was the biggest issue, but not highly
correlated with other sleep issues.
yeah.
It was really interesting.
And then they sort of just didn't know why.
this is kind of an interesting example.
Uh, studies usually have some theory.
I feel like this was the, this was a study that it felt to me was very
much like, "Does anybody know? Like, why is this happening?" because
it wasn't necessarily correlated.
They f- I feel like they came in so certain that daytime sleepiness was
correlated with struggles with sleep.
and when they found that that wasn't 100% the case, there was conversations
about, about what was going on.
And one of the conversations that really stood out to me, 'cause
I was thinking about it, was the idea of your dopamine, uh, or your
stimulation levels during the day.
'Cause remember, these kids are going to school.
Since this is not a, in-lab study, they're just measuring time in bed, which is
a great measurement for getting sleep.
That is per- But, and so they're, like, getting yeah,
Nine hours they were
nine hours and on weeknights or, yeah, during school days,
and, 10 hours on weekends.
That's great.
Yeah, I know.
say.
love that.
And my, I'm like, "Were they really getting that?" Is what my, was
like with these re- 'cause I, I've, woken up and been like, "Oh, why is
there lights on in my house?" And found children awake at 5:00 AM and
Yeah.
It can feel like you're being haunted slightly.
Yeah.
but yeah, so I don't want to completely cast, be like, we can't trust results
from surveys, but it's also just,
Yeah.
it seemed it was higher than I expected, and so then I'm like,
There was, yeah, there's levels of research quality, and a survey is
obviously not gonna be as good as, like, having them in the space.
But then again, if you have them in a room and you measure their sleep, then
it's not an environment study, and this is, this is kind of how studies go.
I did wanna say, though, just as a personal experience, like, if you put
me in school and I am not enjoying the subject that I'm learning, you
know, it's like a really complicated chemistry class that I, was just
not my subject, you will see me experience daytime sleepiness for sure.
I mentioned, the, circadian rhythm issues earlier.
That is a huge issue with when school happens, it's too early.
that is- Straight up there is data that says school happens
before most kids should be awake.
And so yeah, they are going to be sleepy in the morning at school
because their body is telling them, "You should be asleep right now."
Yeah.
So I think really what this paper is telling us is we should probably
find, more, read more, sleep papers, 'cause I know this is a big thing.
Yep.
Absolutely.
It'd be great to be like, "Okay, so we have 40% of these kids saying they have
daytime sleepiness, but they're getting nine to 10 hours of sleep." That is
yeah, we need to know more about that.
Is that, just a data problem or is there more to it?