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What if you look at it from a different perspective. The body and brain are two roommates with different needs and if you treat one poorly it acts it on the oth

by dzink 3y ago

What if you look at it from a different perspective. The body and brain are two roommates with different needs and if you treat one poorly it acts it on the other. If a child has a fast processing brain eager to learn and crunch problems and a body full of energy, then when one or both of those has nowhere to go, they will act out. Families have an abundance of mental stimulation cheap right on their phones, TV, etc. That likely makes both parents and kids less likely to move their bodies as much as the body required to generate natural endorphins and balance the needs of the brain. AKA: staring at screens or people all day and not moving as much as your body needs to will make you miserable, regardless of how successful your mental tasks were. Carbs create more energy for the body and proteins with fat make more food for the brain, if one consumes more of one than they need and less of the other, they will also suffer. If you eat a bunch of carbs you will want to move more and think less. A child or adult who gets to vary physical and mental exertion will be more focused and able to work. Test that. ADHD symptoms may not show as much in tired bodies telling you if the issue is that or an actual pathology in each person.

theGnuMe 3y ago
I mean ADHD is executive function dysregulation. An overtired kid can have a lot of behaviors and be able too tired to work. I don't find myself focused after a long day of work. I think what you mean is that what physical and mental exertion may do is train your body and increase your stamina which improves your focus long term. Sure it may help develop the neural pathways. Much like learning to read is hard at first but then becomes easy. Also people with ADHD can hyper-focus on the things that interest them. I am not sure what you mean by or how you would test varying physical and mental exertion in any reliable way. If we make kids run a mile and then rest and give them a math test what does mean?
- dzink 3y ago
  My argument is that if your kid has: 1. A lot of physical energy and is forced to sit on a chair 8 hrs a day, they would be miserable without a way to expend that energy. If they get to burn energy before or intermittently during the task, they will focus far more easily. 2. A mind as fast as a Porche and you make them drive behind a Tractor 8 hrs a day (listening to a slow talker describing things they already know), they would not be happy. I think ADHD is really underutilized mental and/or physical processing power. Some of us think and move like elephants and others like hummingbirds and we have to operate together. The educational system is often designed for the former, not the latter.
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    ADHD isn't necessarily fast thinking, honestly, it is more accurate to call it an attention dysregulation. It might look like fast thinking because it can resemble someone with a regulated attention but who can context switch quickly. In actuality, it is more like someone who cannot control when their thoughts switch + their thoughts lose context suddenly. So it would be more like when you stand up, go to another room & forget what you went to the room to do but... everything, all the time.
    - LocalH 3y ago
      THIS
krabizzwainch 3y ago
I want to disagree with how you got to this conclusion, but in the end anecdotally this is 100% me. I’m a runner with ADHD and if I don’t run for a couple days I go crazy. Exercise in generally has made me feel infinitely better as an adult. But I don’t think effects of ADHD should be limited to “acting out”. And there wasn’t the same abundance of cheap stimulation 30 years ago for me.
philsnow 3y ago
> Carbs create more energy for the body and proteins with fat make more food for the brain I was under the impression that the brain, almost uniquely among human tissues, requires glucose for energy (whereas most other tissues can use ketones). How do carbs create energy "for the body" and not for the brain?
- singingfish 3y ago
  I believe this is not quite right. I think it's due to the blood brain barrier. Brain tissue has only limited capability for anaerobic respiration compared to the rest of the body, can't metabolise fats for energy, and has no ability to store glycogen (which happens in muscle tissue and the liver), so any glucose has to get sent up there by other systems.
pizza 3y ago
if mind respects body, body respects mind
lelanthran 3y ago
> Carbs create more energy for the body and proteins with fat make more food for the brain, I'm pretty certain this is not correct. I thought that the brain runs almost completely off carbs, and will only in famine mode use protein. I read this some years back (I want to say wikipedia, but not quite sure) when trying to lose a few kgs and trying to determine what the dieters meant by "ketosis". IIRC, what I found was that switching to a no-carb-at-all diet would force the brain to use protein as a fuel source. Somehat off-topic, I also found out that the brain uses approx 20% of the energy consumed in a human body, muscle uses about 20% and the liver uses about 15% (might be slightly off on that last one, maybe that was closer to 20% than to 15%). I reasoned that doubling the amount of work that a body does can, at most, use up only 20% of any extra calories put into the body. So I ate 20% less, had no hunger pangs and went from 88kgs to 82kg, in what appeared to be almost all fat reduction. That was 16 years ago and I have not exceeded 82kgs since. I'm now 81kgs and fluctuate between 82kg and 81kg. Of course exercise has quite beneficial properties unrelated to losing weight, but when one exercises one should have those other properties as a goal, not weight reduction as a goal.

by dzink 3y ago

theGnuMe 3y ago

I mean ADHD is executive function dysregulation. An overtired kid can have a lot of behaviors and be able too tired to work. I don't find myself focused after a long day of work. I think what you mean is that what physical and mental exertion may do is train your body and increase your stamina which improves your focus long term. Sure it may help develop the neural pathways. Much like learning to read is hard at first but then becomes easy. Also people with ADHD can hyper-focus on the things that interest them. I am not sure what you mean by or how you would test varying physical and mental exertion in any reliable way. If we make kids run a mile and then rest and give them a math test what does mean?

dzink 3y ago
My argument is that if your kid has: 1. A lot of physical energy and is forced to sit on a chair 8 hrs a day, they would be miserable without a way to expend that energy. If they get to burn energy before or intermittently during the task, they will focus far more easily. 2. A mind as fast as a Porche and you make them drive behind a Tractor 8 hrs a day (listening to a slow talker describing things they already know), they would not be happy. I think ADHD is really underutilized mental and/or physical processing power. Some of us think and move like elephants and others like hummingbirds and we have to operate together. The educational system is often designed for the former, not the latter.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  ADHD isn't necessarily fast thinking, honestly, it is more accurate to call it an attention dysregulation. It might look like fast thinking because it can resemble someone with a regulated attention but who can context switch quickly. In actuality, it is more like someone who cannot control when their thoughts switch + their thoughts lose context suddenly. So it would be more like when you stand up, go to another room & forget what you went to the room to do but... everything, all the time.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    THIS

krabizzwainch 3y ago

I want to disagree with how you got to this conclusion, but in the end anecdotally this is 100% me. I’m a runner with ADHD and if I don’t run for a couple days I go crazy. Exercise in generally has made me feel infinitely better as an adult. But I don’t think effects of ADHD should be limited to “acting out”. And there wasn’t the same abundance of cheap stimulation 30 years ago for me.

philsnow 3y ago

> Carbs create more energy for the body and proteins with fat make more food for the brain I was under the impression that the brain, almost uniquely among human tissues, requires glucose for energy (whereas most other tissues can use ketones). How do carbs create energy "for the body" and not for the brain?

singingfish 3y ago
I believe this is not quite right. I think it's due to the blood brain barrier. Brain tissue has only limited capability for anaerobic respiration compared to the rest of the body, can't metabolise fats for energy, and has no ability to store glycogen (which happens in muscle tissue and the liver), so any glucose has to get sent up there by other systems.

pizza 3y ago

if mind respects body, body respects mind

lelanthran 3y ago

> Carbs create more energy for the body and proteins with fat make more food for the brain, I'm pretty certain this is not correct. I thought that the brain runs almost completely off carbs, and will only in famine mode use protein. I read this some years back (I want to say wikipedia, but not quite sure) when trying to lose a few kgs and trying to determine what the dieters meant by "ketosis". IIRC, what I found was that switching to a no-carb-at-all diet would force the brain to use protein as a fuel source. Somehat off-topic, I also found out that the brain uses approx 20% of the energy consumed in a human body, muscle uses about 20% and the liver uses about 15% (might be slightly off on that last one, maybe that was closer to 20% than to 15%). I reasoned that doubling the amount of work that a body does can, at most, use up only 20% of any extra calories put into the body. So I ate 20% less, had no hunger pangs and went from 88kgs to 82kg, in what appeared to be almost all fat reduction. That was 16 years ago and I have not exceeded 82kgs since. I'm now 81kgs and fluctuate between 82kg and 81kg. Of course exercise has quite beneficial properties unrelated to losing weight, but when one exercises one should have those other properties as a goal, not weight reduction as a goal.