I’m given to understand that people with ADHD react differently to caffeine and Ritalin than other people do. They calm down people with ADHD, and have the opposite effect on people who don’t.
If that is true, then coffee should be an excellent (cheap, safe, quick) test of ADHD. Has anyone done double-blind caffeine vs. decaf trials and correlated the results with other measures and diagnoses?
This would have been convincing if true, but is apparently false. Looks like the key difference is dose, at low doses stimulants aid focus and at high doses inhibit it (or something like that).
Interesting. I wonder if it would be possible to detect someone with ADHD by their preferred dose.
Come to think of it, the original test could still work. If we know that caffeine affects people with ADHD differently, the fact that it’s because they’re taking a smaller dose is irrelevant. It does mean that you’re not allowed to control dosage, so it would be more prone to error.
I’ve heard that too, which would definitely count as strong evidence. Would be cool to see studies comparing ritalin or caffeine on ADHD vs non ADHD people.
I’m given to understand that people with ADHD react differently to caffeine and Ritalin than other people do. They calm down people with ADHD, and have the opposite effect on people who don’t.
If that is true, then coffee should be an excellent (cheap, safe, quick) test of ADHD. Has anyone done double-blind caffeine vs. decaf trials and correlated the results with other measures and diagnoses?
This would have been convincing if true, but is apparently false. Looks like the key difference is dose, at low doses stimulants aid focus and at high doses inhibit it (or something like that).
Interesting. I wonder if it would be possible to detect someone with ADHD by their preferred dose.
Come to think of it, the original test could still work. If we know that caffeine affects people with ADHD differently, the fact that it’s because they’re taking a smaller dose is irrelevant. It does mean that you’re not allowed to control dosage, so it would be more prone to error.
I’ve heard that too, which would definitely count as strong evidence. Would be cool to see studies comparing ritalin or caffeine on ADHD vs non ADHD people.