alt Hacker NewsADHD as a circadian rhythm disorder: evidence and implications for chronotherapy (2025)
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I have both ADHD and Orthostatic Dysregulation (OD), a 20-40% comorbidity where ADHD-induced sleep issues disrupt the autonomic nervous system, making standard OD treatments less effective.
> 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)
I can't help but notice that there's a lot in the direction of ADHD is linked to sleep pattern differences, and there's evidence that you can alter those sleep pattern differences through a number of environmental/behavioural interventions but the idea that this actually helps ADHD symptoms as such seems to be left up to the imagination of the reader.
Has anyone considered that one reason for being/staying awake late at night that's very salient for ADHD people is that night tends to be much quieter, so it's a period when it's much easier to think/read/work without constant interruptions. Noise pollution isn't taken seriously enough.
The title of the article is irresponsibly chosen.
- My time in the field of psychology has made me think that the use of imprecise language for describing psychology has a large and problematic societal impact
ADHD is correlated with but is NOT a "circadian rhythm disorder". This is definitionally true.
There are many causes of ADHD. One of them is likely sleep issues.
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).
Eg see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/29/frontiers-retract-122...
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.
Three things that helped me with my circadian phase (to certin extend)
1) Melatonine 300mcg 5-6 hours befor desired sleep time 2) 10k lux light for 30m when waking up 3) Nobeltin (nootropic) it enhances clock amplitude, so I do get less sleepy during teh day and more sleepy at night ..
things taht kind of helped but find hard to keep: Keto (I feel less sleepy on Keto, and easier to fall a sleep but it's been a while since ive been on keto)
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)
> Melatonin and bright light therapy has advanced DLMO in both children and adults with ADHD
Tried it with gusto over about 3, among a ton of other things. Didn't work for me at all.
> we propose a pragmatic, behavioral-first clinical pathway
Read: cheap
Disruptions to sleep aggravates underlying issues, mentally or physically.
Dude I saw sleep specialists at Stanford here in Palo Alto and we still don’t know a lot about it, regardless of what you might read
The whole sleep hygiene things been sort of discredited and doctors just follow a script with like 5 things they will prescribe you for sleep problems and after those 5 things it’s like oh well we tried
I once showed them a study I found online in a reputable journal (at least the study was conducted by someone from a well regarded university in a journal that wasn’t obviously bad)
The doctor didn’t even look at the study, he just saw where it came from and said “yeah we don’t use that journal”
I would have much more appreciated an answer if I don’t have time to read your bullshit vs what he gave me
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.
ADHD meds also impact circadian rhythm. So I don't really know how a study could look at this dynamic with any usefulness.
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.
Could explain one pathway on how Guanfacine, an ADHD-approved, blood pressure-lowering, sleep-inducing drug, works.
uBlock filter to fix selection:
www.frontiersin.org##.InfoDrawerHow do the authors disentangle 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.
i like the web new things to see about ADHD.
I believe it. I even sought out medical advice on how to best deal with it all. I was given the usual recommendation of low-dose melatonin and light therapy.
However, my issue at the time was that I could never find a light with high enough lux values that I felt like I could trust. Plus, another issue with light therapy is that one can basically never stop for any moderate amount of time, and well, my ADHD makes that near impossible.
I honestly think I would have better success with sleep issues if I could just control my own schedule or have a flexible schedule, but that is not really a luxury most jobs can provide.
Embrace the nightly builds :P
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.
Chronobiologist here. And also have ADHD.
The associations with ADHD really are there, but that may just also be because a huge number of brain processes have a circadian regulation, and those get disrupted by whatever is causing ADHD.
The causality is also bidirectional, because whatever ADHD does could cause light exposure behavioral changes, which could leave a circadian phenotype.
In general, a huge number of diseases have circadian phenotypes. To be a circadian disorder, you’d have to have clock mutations, and ADHD really doesn’t have those. So calling it a circadian disorder feels off.
But from personal experience, the linkage is strong enough to warrant deeper research, and beyond that, there’s some steps we can take ourselves. Regular walks in nature, going out to get sun… all generally useful things to do that do seem to help ADHD as well.