Saffron.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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ADHD
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What does this do? Do you have any research indicating this has potential benefits?
NOS brand energy drink seems to work better for me than any other brand, so it may be worth looking into its ingredients list for things that potentially have a synergistic effect with caffeine
A quick look at the NOS ingredients shows caffeine, taurine, and l-carnitine. Caffeine is a stimulant, so I’ll add that ✅, taurine isn’t mentioned anywhere to be any specific benefit to concentration or mental ability, and l-carnitine seems to just be used to make the stimulant hit faster.
Coffee, fasting during mornings, and lowering carbs
Another upvote for coffee!
Coffee makes me crash, I don't understand how it works for you guys. I fucking love it still, but boy can it send me back to bed in a jittery mess as soon as I get a strong morning cup of if I haven't eaten breakfast.
Before taking meds, I'd drink it twice a day pushing the crash until after work. Now that I'm taking strattera, it's just too much and I can barely handle one cup without going mad with anxiety.
I make it rather mild, one table spoon (fairly loaded) of light roasted coffee for a liter of water.
Weed helps, in edible form, when taken with ritalin and adderall
I bet, but unfortunately the legality of weed is still by state, and not legal federally. The rest are by script.
You say states so I assume USA, you can get THC mailed to you totally legally as long as it's below a certain amount per volume.
I just started microdosing THC and CBD (2.5mg each a day) and it's really helping with my productivity! I buy online from a shop called Mr. Moxeys or something like that, they ship mints or gummies to most US states to microdose. Kind of expensive (87 cents a day) but WAY cheaper than Adderall, and less dangerous.
Did you read what I said? I said legality varies by state, and it’s still illegal federally.
That is 100% correct.
Good for you it works.
Did you read what I said? That it's legal federally if it's below a certain volume per weight. And the mints are. I'm not suggesting you get high, I'm saying legally obtained mints to microdose THC from hemp has been very helpful for managing my ADHD.
It kind of reads like you don't want help you just want to confirm there's no way you can get help so you don't feel bad about your ADHD making you unproductive. Well you shouldn't feel bad either way. We're all just out here doing our best, you included. Good luck, man.
Don’t be a dick and make shit up about me. I couldn’t take CBD/THC products no matter what because my job drug tests, so I don’t get a choice despite your blaming me for not “getting help”, and that help in your case has to be CBD/THC based. For the record IDGAF if people use pot/thc/cbd. Whatever works for you. I asked you to provide a source that proves the legality of what you’re saying, but instead you doubled down on asshole. There are still states where ANY concentration of CBD and/or THC is illegal in ANY product, so whatever man. So IT STILL VARIES BY STATE. Any federal DOT job makes any amount of pot in your system illegal, you get fired. Guess you just don’t want to hear that.
Weed has been legal in my country federally for a decade. What are you talking about?
Not everyone lives where you do. There’s plenty of the world where it isn’t federally legal.
Maybe let us know that?
Green tea
Caffeine?
Green Tea contains a fraction of the caffeine of coffee. The real wonder though is L-Theanine, which increases focus.
Drinking a cup of green tea will make you feel way less jittery than coffee. Instead, it is calming.
Ok, I’ll add it with that caveat.
p.s.: argh, typed this over 12 hours ago and just found this open page. It's clearly not working. But here we go anyway:
- Guarana, for example in a capsule. Effectively a mild stimulant, basically extended release coffee.
- Get out of the slow cycle of: symptom -> doctor -> check for specific deficiency -> supplement. Check for everything proactively. In many countries, you can go directly to a lab and have your blood taken there, if your doctor doesn't play along.
Added guarana as a stimulant
NAC - N-acetyl-cysteine. Psychiatrist recommended it for weaning myself off a THC dependency, but after reading a few PubMed-available research papers I found data supporting further research into its effects on ADHD.
Additionally, I kept researching in an attempt to improve brain fog and sleep issues I suspect are from long COVID. I found studies indicating NAC combined with guanfacine may help those symptoms.
I've found better results from 600mg NAC (standard daily dose is 1200mg) taken three times a day, and started 1mg guanfacine twice a day recently with plans to increase to 2mg twice a day in a week or two.
I would love to share the NIH papers with anyone interested. Educating yourself about your condition and its particular manifestation will get you far with an invested care team. I'm headed to bed bit will reply to any and every person interested in the research tomorrow morning.
The message I sent to my psych two days after she recommended NAC contained inline citations referring to the papers I had linked at the bottom. That due diligence communicated my dedication not only to my own care, but also to my dedication and respect for knowledge.
Don't take random supplements recommended to you on the internet. Discuss their use with a doctor or, barring that, ground your decisions in science.
I personally had phenomenal results with decreased skin picking compulsions after my dermatologist recommended it. May not work for everyone but absolutely worth a shot.
May I ask what dosage you're taking? I started at 1200mg twice a day for awhile, but ran out and about a week later noticed a worsening of my tics/hand-talking/dropping things issues. Started 1800mg (3x600mg taken morning/afternoon/night) once I bought more, but saw dosages of 2000-2400mg in a study or two.
600 mg/day. I have a history of responding to surprisingly low dosages of everything, though. E.g. I take the lowest available dose of methylphenidate that my pharmacy stocks, and usually split my sleep aid in half unless I'm really wired and need to knock myself out
I'm not a small or very active human, so it's odd.
I added the NAC, but Guanfacine is prescription, so I’m leaving it off.
NAC without guanfacine improved several of my hyperactive symptoms and the other poster's skin picking if you'd like to mention that in the post.
Also, I think it's chelating effect on lead and other heavy metals in the bloodstream is valuable on it's own since we're still using leaded AVgas and such. Leaded gasoline is why engineers need history classes; the Romans showed us how great ingesting lead is, and then 2000 years we decide aerosolizing it sounded like a good idea‽
Leaded avgas is so low on the overall reasons to get lead contamination it’s not even worth mentioning. Not all aircraft use 100LL. You’d have to be a fueler at the airfield, spill gas on yourself regularly, and fly aircraft with leaky exhaust to even start to show signs of contamination. I’ve been around aircraft for decades and don’t have lead in blood tests, we all got checked when one of our kids did have it. Come to find out there is still lead in toy paints and “lead free solder” in electronics when manufacturers lie. Far more likely to come into contact with lead in products, house paint, or even plumbing than from any other source.
Thanks for providing context on how NAC might help.
Doesn't seem to be that much evidence, but I'm in the mood for a new supplement obsession - on it!
I looked back through my NIH history and you're right about the sparse evidence for ADHD, actually. Looks like my interest in NAC, in addition to weaning off THC, came from the bipolar and autism angle, its ability to act a a lead chelator, as well as some tentative dots I connected between its glutamatergic effects and some reading into a mutation of the MC1R gene as passed down to me by my red-head mother.
Likely also conflated my more recent readings into the guanfacine+NAC combo for my brain fog and sleep issues and misremembered my findings from the initial research. Good catch, and an excellent example of 'don't listen to the internet dude.'
Here are some starting points
NAC https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8211525 - NAC review
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763415001190
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35316513/
NAC+Guanfacine https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10960163
I hyper focused on my gut microbiome and the results are very interesting. No more anxiousness, amazing sleeps, and way better ment focus. Almost never forget things now. There is a lot of scientific support here too as the microbiome really does play a large role in our mental state.
It sounds like you’re improving your overall health. That’s always valuable.
Absolutely
What did you do exactly?
It was not one thing but months of things starting with a 7 day water fast then on to rice porridge and then onto streamed sweet potatoes and carrots and over time more and more options. It was brutal but my circumstances dictated such extreme measures as I had developed a severe histamine and glutamate sensitivity. AI was amazing at navigating it all, but it is not perfect so I used 2 AIs and many other sources to validate each step of the journey. I am honestly shocked it worked so well.
I got to get back there, too. I lived like that for a decade, back then no clue that ADHD was one of the main problems, and it seemed to help. But due to lack of "evidence" & a diagnostic that requires this, I slipped up. Now I'm the average eater with some good, some bad parts of the diet.
My diet was a kind of "low carb", but not in the strict sense that it's much lower than recommended, just much lower than the average sinner.
Tom Brady poop
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