The Year I Met My Brain by Matilda Boseley

Author:Matilda Boseley [Boseley, Matilda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760146467
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Obviously, plenty of our sleep issues are caused by simply not having the executive-functioning capacity to get ourselves to bed on time, or not being able to quiet our brains, but this might not be the whole story. In Chapter 4, I mentioned that a decent whack of ADHDers potentially have issues with a delayed circadian rhythm,21 meaning the simple comfort of ‘being sleepy when it’s bedtime’ isn’t guaranteed. But there are potentially some fixes for that as well.

One fairly popular and reasonably effective option22, 23 is to take melatonin supplements (but please talk to your doctor first, especially if you’re already on ADHD medication, because when used incorrectly or for too long, melatonin has been linked to depression). I’ve found melatonin incredibly helpful. It’s not a miracle fix, and I’ll still have nights staring at the ceiling on occasion, but it’s really great for speeding up that eyes-heavy, mind-empty, acute feeling of tiredness when I need to rip myself away from my phone and put effort into going to sleep.

If melatonin isn’t for you, there’s another (admittedly less robustly researched) tactic, that’s either very funny or extremely Black Mirror–esque, depending on how you see it. It’s buying a sunrise online. Hear me out.

Basically, one way to potentially get our circadian rhythm and our melatonin-release schedule back on track is to beat our brains over the head with the fact that the sun is up by using something called ‘morning bright-light therapy’. For half an hour first thing each morning, you chill out with your face 60 centimetres away from a super-bright (at least 10,000 lux) lamp usually used for seasonal affective disorder. Two studies on ADHDers showed a significant improvement, both in bringing their circadian rhythm forward and reducing ADHD symptoms in general, for the weeks they used bright-light therapy.24, 25 But while the results were promising, the study sample sizes were small, so there’s no guarantee it will be worth the cash splash.

I believe part of the morning-light therapy process is meant to include limiting your exposure to blue light at night, too, meaning no screens or phone in bed. But given my brain’s night-time tendency to become consumed with the crushing reality that I will one day die when it’s not constantly distracted by technology, I went for the alternative technique suggested by one study, which is wearing blue-light-blocking glasses from 4 pm onwards.26 I ran my own extremely small science experiment on these two tactics for a few weeks and my conclusion was . . . yeah, sure, I think it helped a bit. But, god, it’s hard to remember to put on those glasses at 4 pm.

So, those are the four main pillars of reducing the intensity of our ADHD impairments. Achieving this lifestyle is still a difficult (potentially lifelong) mission, but hopefully, even with little, incremental improvements, we will start giving our Ethel some room to breathe. She’s earned it.

Now we’ve gone through all the ways we can help our brain fit our world, it’s time to talk about how we can make our world fit our brain.

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