Hi everyone! I was diagnosed a few years ago in my early 30s, and started taking Adderall along with some different drugs for anxiety as well.
With Adderall and then Wellbutrin, even in small dosages, I notice that my HRV Stress (recorded on a Garmin 945 Forerunner) is significantly elevated for the entire day. When I used to take a midday and evening dose of (instant release) Adderall, it severely impacted my sleep. I also tried extended release taken in the morning, and that caused sleeping issues as well. So did an extended release of Wellbutrin.
Basically, any benefits those medications provide (and it didn’t really feel like it was helping) were offset by the bodily impact.
Has anyone had a similar experience with either of these medications? Any notable co-morbidities or changed metabolism or something that you identified as causing these symptoms? Did Ritalin or Strattera work for you when Adderall did not? I’ve been cycling through other non-stim medications with my provider, but haven’t found anything that provides benefits for ADHD (I’m currently on guanfacine and zoloft, which mitigates my anxiety at least).
Oh, thanks for reminding me to take my meds.
- medication interaction could be a reason
- overdose
- you dont eat right (protein, fat, vegtables)
- you are insuline resistent
- in my case, i am grain allergic without knowing it, stopped etaing grains, that helped
- you could be out of salt and different minerals
so. you take uppers and downers at the same time. you take blood pressure altering meds. you take ssri while having adhd, AND stimulants on top.
a couple of things:
stimulants WILL speed up your metabolic rate. thats why they give you brain energy, and a bit of body energy. Its what you want. but the blood pressure thing interferes big time, as does the ssri. the ssri tries to slow your metabolic rate down, thats why it interferes with blood sugar levels, for example.
the salt thing is easy, just eat or drink salt. overdose is also easy, just halv your dose. eating is also easy, just eat right.
so essentially, what you are trying to do is not possible. it will get worse and worse and worse.
MY problem for eanxeity was grain allergy.
you have a very high chance that your anxiety has a reason.
i would recommend getting of of your anxiety meds, make a pause, and see what you cn do to make the stims work.
I garantuee you that what you do will not work at all.
try the salt and eat more good stuff, that cant harm you. but if this doesnt owrk, you have to reconsider. try taking less.
signs of food allergy:
bloating, stomach cramps. you need 60 sheets of toilet paper, stomach ache, migraines, heart arythmia, anxiety, drepression, skin problems, hair looks dirty, pimples, black spot under eyes, sore throat, dry thorat, white trush on tongue, panic attacs, paranoia thoughts, congested nose, vitamin deficency
yea, ssri does kinda complement adhd meds, because of serotonin dopamin relase and stuff.
but that still leaves the fact that one does speed up your system, the other slows it down.
keep in mind that salt and minerals could be also the culprit. salt is insanely important for proper heart function. and your body cant really deal with a sped up metabolism, sometimes, you are right on the edge, and the stims push you over.
Every body/brain is different. I tried three other meds for adhd before I landed on a combo that works for me. Strattera was extremely bad for me, but I know it’s amazing for other people. Sometimes you don’t really have a choice but to go through a few meds before you find one that works and is tolerable
When I noticed meds weren’t being beneficial anymore for me, I stopped taking them and started trying to spot where my focus-related issues were and how I could change them. It hasn’t been a smooth sail and requires a lot of discipline, but so far that helped me more than any medications.
I take Mydayis, Strattera and Zoloft every day. I’ve run the gamut of ADHD and anxiety drugs and this seems to work best for me.
Friendly interjection from Depression Lemmy.
Not so long ago I was discussing my meds with my psychiatrist and expressed to them that it felt like the medication wasn’t so much resolving the problem as it was redistributing the problems.
To my surprise the response was, “We’ll, yeah, pretty much.”
This didn’t help my depression much either. :|
Yeah, unfortunately meds don’t fix ADHD. They’re a treatment, not a cure. Meds are supposed to be used in conjunction with other treatments (such as therapy, as an example) to be most effective. I know, it sucks, but these are the cards we’ve been dealt.
How about off-label stuff like guanfacine? I have a relative that got panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, racing heart and the like from the traditional meds, but the guanfacine did the trick.
I’m currently taking guanfacine. It works well for me for anxiety and sleep, but has shown no improvement to my ADHD symptoms
Not in this way but I stopped taking my methylphenidate as I just couldn’t cope with the side effects.
I had no appetite but was hungry yet it make me feel sick, I would sweat constantly and could never just wear a t shirt without a hoodie due to embarrassment and finally it was so much stress trying to source the medication.
I feel like once I had a handle on life with medication and had gotten into a good routine and made positive changes that I am now in a much better place to handle life. I struggle with executive dysfunction still and I’m finding it hard to get motivated to do anything and work is killing me slowly.
I took a spin on the pharma-go-round about 20 years ago. Went through just about every stimulant on the market over the course of two years. The only one to have a noticeable effect was Adderall… but the effect was panic attacks for routine issues at work. I was done at that point. I rawdogged reality for 25 years, how bad could it get?
Narrator: yes.
I went through some shit this past winter that basically required me to seek intensive mental health treatment. After one psychiatrist (who declared after 20 minutes of talking to me post-trauma that I didn’t have ADHD) and one useless APN that worked for the program I was in, I found a psychiatrist that listened… but he wanted to slow-walk the ADHD treatment due to severe depression and anxiety while the SSRI did its thing. After a few months of relative stability he wanted to try Lamictal… which promptly gave me hives. I said fuggit and asked for the DNA analysis. I’m not fond of getting put into yet another big database but shots in the dark take too long.
Sounds about where I’m at as well.
Did you get the results of the DNA test back, and get any valuable information from it?
No results yet, it just arrived yesterday lol. Fingers crossed it has some good info. Feels like I’ve been in a holding pattern for months.
Wait there is DNA analysis for ADHD?
I think it’s more to do with what drugs/classes will be effective/ineffective/dangerous based on known genetic markers. It’s not necessarily hard info, but it can inform the direction of treatment. I’m all for skipping as much of the pharma-go-round as possible.
Fellow Garmin user with ADHD.
The HRV status feature on your Garmin is meant to track physiological stress. Not necessarily mental stress (although that can affect physiological things.) Unfortunately yes, when I’m on my ADHD meds (currently unable to source my Adderall XR) my HRV status is lower.
But functionally, I’m better when I’m on my ADHD meds. Yes my body has a heightened stress response (i.e. higher HR during the day when I’m on my meds) from the meds, but in my opinion that’s a necessary side effect of the ADHD meds. I’d rather be functional and capable and have a worse HRV than spend hours laying on the floor feeling like I can’t function because of my ADHD.
Your HRV status covers a rolling 4-week average. Given enough time on the meds, it will learn your new HRV trends and stop reporting you as “unbalanced.” It looks worse than it is right now because the initial period of getting on meds is making it look like your system is out of whack. Which honestly it kind of is, as it’s adjusting. Once you figure out the med combo for you, not only will your HRV settle down from getting used to the meds, but the score on your Garmin will also settle down as you spend more time in your “new normal” range.
Basically what I’m saying is: HRV on your Garmin is more intended to track the impact of training and exercise on your body, and not necessarily intended to track how medication changes affect the score. Personally I would take the Garmin readings with that grain of salt: the changes to your score are due to meds rather than exercise, so it’s sort of outside the intended use of the feature. Keep up with the meds and keep up with your normal training, but your Daily Suggested Workouts will probably be a bit easier while it recovers from thinking your status is Unbalanced.
Thanks for your response! What you’ve told me is accurate, and I have always taken all my Garmin measurements with a grain of salt. But the measurements of stress also coincide with actually feelings of immense stress, restlessness, anxiety, and extreme debilitating mental and physical fatigue.
I took Adderall for 2 years, starting with small doses and slowly titrating up after a few months of consistency. Over that time, the symptoms I describe began to start and become more severe. I did in fact have a nice stretch at the start where the Adderall was working well. I definitely didn’t jump ship at the first sign of physiological changes…only at the point where continuing with the Adderall was going to continue negatively impacting my life and work.
In my futile attempt to stop my post from running on and on with these bits of context, I omitted it and posted it…to a forum full of people that thrive on excessive amounts of context.
I never understood how this feature on my Garmin, thank you for explaining it!
I like being a data nerd 🤓 Garmin’s help articles are pretty informative, this is the one about HRV if you’re curious for more: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/garmin-technology/health-science/hrv-status/
The side effects you list are common for stimulants. Over time your body and mind gets used to them. It varies a lot between people what they can tolerate.
You have to make a trade off between desired effects and side effects for every medication.
Wellbutrin is like a stimulant. Maybe you’d do better the ssri’s?
SSRI’s can cause issues with stimulant medications primarily for two reasons. They increase the effectiveness of the stimulant and they increase the level of serotonin in your blood. Too much serotonin is not good. Look up “seratonin syndrome” and see if you’re experiencing any other symptoms.
Those meds can be taken together but there probably needs to be a dosage adjustment to one or both of them.
Also, if you’re not already, avoid caffeine completely.
I haven’t taken sertraline and Adderall at the same time. But this is good information to know, I’ll look up the symptoms. Thanks!
I used zoloft at first, which imo didnt do jack shit, then went to wellbutrin, which made me completely unable to sleep (I was doing 48h awake, crashing out, sleeping 4 hours, repeat), and now I’m back on Zoloft, which I still feel like doesn’t do jack shit but at least no side effects are manifestating
tl;dr I have no fucking clue, good luck
Marijuana, fuck pharmaceuticals
