You probably know as well as I do that ADHD brains often have trouble sleeping.
It’s very common for someone with ADHD to struggle with something like insomnia.
A lot of us tend to be night owls, often claiming we are even our most creative at night when our brains should be settling down.
I have to keep a pen and notepad beside my bed because I usually get some of my best ideas at night while I’m trying to fall asleep. There are some tricks I use to help myself fall asleep quicker, like counting down slowly from 100 and repeating that over and over until I doze off, but sometimes these things still don’t work.
Sleeping is obviously very important. Like… we require it. Which is such a crazy concept when you stop and really think about it. We as humans actually have to lay down, close our eyes and lose consciousness for a certain amount of time every night or we’ll… probably die? Right? Is that what happens if you just stop sleeping?
Anyways, being that it’s very important and that we as ADHD brains have so much trouble doing it, I thought this guide would be a good thing to share with you today.
Tuck Sleep created this amazing guide that covers the subject of sleep and ADHD pretty thoroughly.
Tuck Sleep is a community devoted to improving sleep hygiene, health and wellness through the creation and dissemination of comprehensive, unbiased, free web-based resources. They have been referenced by Well + Good, Smithsonian Magazine, Harvard University and by many sleep organizations across the web.
Their guide, ADHD and Sleep is probably the best I’ve come across on the subject.
They start off the guide by explaining what ADHD is in the first place, even going into how diagnosis works and the different options for treatment.
Then they start in on the subject of Sleep. Here’s a snippet I found especially interesting:
ADHD-related disturbed sleep typically appears around age 12, and may not coincide with the onset of other symptoms. Researchers still aren’t sure why ADHD and sleep disorders occur together. However, ADHD symptoms and medication both commonly interfere with sleep, and sleep deprivation in turn can worsen ADHD symptoms.
-As many as 50 percent of children with ADHD suffer from sleep problems.
-Children with ADHD experience higher levels of daytime sleepiness.
-Children with ADHD are more than twice as likely to suffer from sleep-disordered breathing.
-Children with ADHD are more likely to have periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD) and restless legs syndrome (RLS), resulting in less restful sleep.
-Nearly 75 percent of adults with ADHD report suffering from insomnia.
From there they list common sleep disorders that are associated with ADHD and go into detail about each one. After that they thoroughly discuss all treatment options for ADHD related sleep issues and what each one entails.
They also list out several sleep management tips for both children and adults with ADHD, which I found particularly helpful being that most ADHD resources tend to focus solely on children with ADHD. They end the guide with a great list of additional resources like advocacy organizations for ADHD, online forums, and sleep resources.
All in all I found this guide to be extremely helpful. There was so much useful information in there and it was very comprehensive. So I wanted to share it with all of you because I figured you’d get a lot out of it.
I suggest checking it out for yourself, and I also recommend their page on Productivity and Sleep, as well as their article on How to Fall Asleep Faster.
Also just to be clear, I’m not affiliated with Tuck Sleep and they’re not paying me to say any of this. I just genuinely found their guide to be helpful and knew that my readers would too.
I hope you find these resources as beneficial as I did!
Until Next Time,
Keep Calm and Grow On