Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Peripheral biofeedback, the sort that tracks skin conductance and heart rate rather than brainwaves, has more behind it than neurofeedback does. You practise letting the body drop into a calmer state while a monitor shows you it happening.
Once that state is familiar, pair it with a distinctive scent used only for this. After enough repetitions the smell starts pulling the state along with it, and a small bottle in a pocket becomes a portable version of the room. None of this changes attention directly. It lowers the background noise that attention has been working through.
Qur’an and Sunnah
truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). The settling this aims at has an older and freer route into it.
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The nearest good evidence is for settling practices rather than for any machine. A meta-analysis of mindfulness based interventions in ADHD found improvement in core symptoms and in associated difficulties across children and adults, with the caution that the studies were small and few used an active comparison. Read it as support for training a calmer state, not as proof that a particular device does it best.
Oliva F, Malandrone F, di Girolamo G, Mirabella S, Colombi N, Carletto S, Ostacoli L. (2021). The efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder beyond core symptoms: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A body running at a lower level of tension gives the mind less to filter out.
When not to
This sits alongside treatment rather than in place of it, so keep medication or therapy that is already helping.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Neurofeedback rests on a tidy idea: in ADHD the slower theta rhythm shows up when the faster beta rhythm should be running, so the training rewards you for shifting the balance. Knowing the idea is worth a few minutes, because it is what the brochure is built on.
Weight across the body settles a lot of people and sends some of them to sleep quickly. It is a preference though, not a remedy, and for others it feels like being closed in.
People with ADHD tend to have lower omega-3 in their blood, and bringing low levels up has been linked with some improvement in symptoms. No convincing difference has shown up between DHA and EPA for this.