Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
If someone has genuine positional vertigo, get it treated, and do not expect the treatment to touch their ADHD. Both things can be true at the same time.
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo often follows a sinus infection or a bang to the head, and it responds well to repositioning manoeuvres that move the loose crystals in the inner ear back where they belong. Concentration usually does improve afterwards, for the plain reason that the room has stopped moving. That is a symptom removed, which is worth a great deal, and it is not ADHD therapy.
Qur’an and Sunnah
in which there is healing for people (Quran 16:69). Healing that is available should be taken up, even when it is for a different trouble than the one that brought you in.
ثُمَّ كُلِي مِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ فَٱسۡلُكِي سُبُلَ رَبِّكِ ذُلُلࣰ اۚ يَخۡرُجُ مِنۢ بُطُونِهَا شَرَابࣱ مُّخۡتَلِفٌ أَلۡوَٰنُهُۥ فِيهِ شِفَآءࣱ لِّلنَّاسِۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَةࣰ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord.’ From their bellies comes a drink of different colours in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think
Qur’an 16:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Sleep is the well studied version of this. A review of sleep disturbance in ADHD describes a relationship running in both directions and argues that disordered sleep should be treated as part of ADHD care rather than left until later. Treating a genuine second condition is part of the work even when the core difficulty stays where it was.
Hvolby A. (2015). Associations of sleep disturbance with ADHD: implications for treatment.. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Take away something that kept interrupting a person and they concentrate better, without anything about their ADHD having changed.
When not to
Dizziness that arrives with a new headache, hearing loss, weakness or slurred speech needs urgent medical assessment rather than a manoeuvre at home.
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.
Turn the socks inside out so the seam sits away from the toes, cut the label out and print the size onto the fabric instead, and look at seamless clothing. These cost pennies against a course of therapy and they work by teatime.
Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.