Exercise for ADHDers - What you need to know
Exercise plays a key role in brain health and function that can help manage ADHD symptoms. The benefits goes beyond physical fitness. For ADHDers, engaging in regular exercise can help improve focus, attention span, mood regulation, and overall cognitive function.
Research suggests that exercise increases the brain's production of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, which play key roles in regulating attention and mood, making it an essential component of a comprehensive ADHD management plan.
Whether it's through aerobic activities like running, swimming, or cycling, or exercises like yoga or martial arts, incorporating physical activity that you enjoy into your daily routine can complement traditional ADHD treatments and make you feel more grounded.
Importance of Exercise for ADHD
Here's a closer look at how exercise can help you to manage ADHD:
Combats Sedentary Lifestyles
Studies indicate that those with ADHD tend to be less active, contributing to potential health risks and shortened lifespans. Exercise is vital to counteract these trends and their associated health impacts.
Improves Motor Skills
ADHD is linked to impaired motor proficiency and fitness. Exercise is a natural way to enhance coordination, strength, and physical wellbeing.
Boosts Cognitive Performance
Regular exercise boosts cognitive abilities, enhances executive function and working memory.
Promotes Self-Regulation
By increasing the production of key neurotransmitters like dopamine, exercise aids attention and enhances inhibitory control. The structure of physical routines also encourages self-discipline.
Channels Excess Energy
Physical activity offers a constructive outlet for the hyperactivity associated with ADHD, promoting calmness and reducing restlessness.
Enhances Emotional Regulation
Exercise has been shown to significantly relieve anxiety and depression, improving mindset and social interactions in ADHDers.
The Scientific Benefits of Exercise for ADHDers - Exercise to Improve Your Attention
Studies show that regular physical activity can substantially improve attention and motivation - essential elements for maintaining focus and staying on the course.
So how does this work?
During exercise, our brain produces more key substances - namely brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotransmitters, synaptic proteins, glutamate receptors, and insulin-like growth factor. Think of these as a potent natural cocktail that boosts the brain's performance. They regulate mood, stimulate the growth of new neural connections and improve the exchange of information between brain cells.
This all leads to an instant lift in concentration and focus, making a morning workout a smart move for starting the day on the right foot. But the power of exercise doesn't stop there. By making physical activity a regular habit, we stack up these cognitive gains, leading to long-term improvements in maintaining attention and focus.
Increase Motivation
In addition to enhancing focus, studies have found a self-reported 16% increase in motivation to undertake mental tasks immediately after exercise. This mechanism is triggered by dopamine, one of the neurotransmitters that exercise triggers your body to produce. Known as the "feel-good" neurotransmitter, dopamine is responsible for creating feelings of reward and pleasure.
In the context of focus and attention, dopamine influences the brain's reward system and executive functions, which are managed by the prefrontal cortex—a key area involved in attentional control.
So, by incorporating a consistent exercise routine into your daily regimen, you're providing your brain with an regular extra dose of dopamine to enhance your focus, accomplish tasks and power through.
The “Runners Glow”
Dopamine isn't the only 'feel-good' hormone stimulated when we exercise. Physical activity prompts our bodies to produce a host of other beneficial neurotransmitters that help to manage ADHD.
Exercise also triggers a substantial increase in endorphins, often referred to as the body's 'natural painkillers, ' by as much as five times the resting levels in the bloodstream. These endorphins interact with opioid receptors in the brain to reduce the perception of pain and enhance pleasure, culminating in feelings of euphoria.
It's this endorphin release that's largely responsible for the sensation known as 'runner's high' - a post-exercise glow of positivity and tranquility that many individuals experience after prolonged, intense exercise.
Boost Your Serotonin Levels Naturally
Exercise boosts serotonin, the 'happiness chemical,' essential for mood regulation and overall wellbeing. This uplift in serotonin can lead to improved mood and reduced anxiety and depression, common in ADHD.
Importantly, the surge in serotonin from physical activity helps provide significant therapeutic effects, with studies demonstrating that regular exercise can lead to a reduction in depressive symptoms by as much as 47%
With increased serotonin, you will find everyday stresses seem more manageable and you feel more patient and resilient in challenging situations. Put simply - life just becomes easier.
Exercise Is Natural Medicine
The natural neurotransmitter boost from physical activity mirrors the aims of those prescriptions (without the side effects) and studies have shown it can be just as effective as CBT or antidepressants in reducing depressive symptoms.
While it's important to always follow medical advice about medication, it's empowering to know that exercise naturally realigns our body's hormonal state in helpful ways.
These neurotransmitters also increase our capacity to handle stress, and our resilience to mental fatigue. The hormonal realignment from exercise helps makes ADHDers feel more grounded and present, and brings a sense of mental clarity.
Alleviating Hyperactivity
For ADHDers, hyperactivity often stems from a feeling of excess energy and restlessness, which can manifest physically or as an overactive mind. Exercise helps to channel this suppressed energy naturally.
While it may seem intuitively obvious that tiring yourself out through exercise helps to diminish hyperactive symptoms, it's important to note that scientific studies consistently confirm this connection.
Using standardised tests that measure ADHD hyperactivity, (such as the Test of Everyday Attention for Children and the Disrupting Behavior Disorders Rating Scale), researchers have shown that regular physical activity significantly alleviates hyperactivity symptoms in ADHDers.
Aerobic vs Anaerobic
Both aerobic and anaerobic exercises help reduce hyperactivity, though they do so in different ways.
Aerobic exercises such as running or cycling provide an energising outlet for hyperactivity, allowing for a more controlled and focused expenditure of energy throughout the day. Just like releasing air from an overinflated tire allows for a smoother, more controlled ride.
On the other hand, introspective and mindful exercises like yoga or tai chi offer different benefits while achieving the same goal. These promote mental calmness and a state of tranquility that extends beyond the session itself.
Take the Cold Plunge
Cold water swimming is a practice that triggers a range of physiological responses in the body. When you plunge into cold water your body's natural response is to trigger its 'fight or flight' system, known scientifically as the sympathetic nervous system.
After the initial shock of cold water subsides, your body begins to adapt and acclimatise. This process involves the adrenaline surge dying down and your body transitioning into a more relaxed state, known as the parasympathetic state.
With repetition, your brain becomes more adept at transitioning between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states, allowing you more control over your response to stress. Similar to how your body becomes less stressed with each subsequent plunge into cold water, your brain can learn to better manage transitions between concentration and calm.
This repeated transition can help "train" an ADHD brain to better handle the oscillations of stimulation and calm inherent in everyday life, providing a practical and actionable method to improve focus and attention regulation.
Approach with Caution
Whilst cold water swimming has great benefits, it's important to approach this practice with caution. Cold water immersion can shock the system and should be approached gradually to avoid potential risks.
For those interested in starting this practice, joining an open water swimming group that conducts cold water sessions can provide a safe and supportive environment to explore this unique form of exercise.
Regulating Impulsivity
Impulsivity affects both hyperactive and inattentive individuals with ADHD. While hyperactive traits may seem to diminish as ADHDers age, these tendencies often just evolve into more subtle forms of impulsiveness, such as restlessness or impulsive decision-making.
Certain types of sports known as “open skill” activities have been found to be particularly beneficial for controlling impulsive behaviour.
Open-skill activities, like football or basketball, require players to respond rapidly to a constantly changing environment.
Research has shown that these exercises are especially effective at helping regulate impulsivity. Through building focus amidst chaos, these dynamic exercises train the brain to regulate impulses and manage distractions.
Improving Motor Coordination & Balance
Balance and motor skills can often be a stumbling block for ADHDers, impacting daily activities, confidence, and quality of life. Fortunately, exercise provides essential brain training that can help improve coordination and balance.
To help understand how exercise trains the brain, consider the act of catching a ball. On the surface, it's a straightforward task, but this seemingly effortless act involves a complex coordination of neural activity and physical movement.
Your brain calculates the trajectory of the ball, adjusts your body's position, and perfectly times the extension of your arm and the opening of your hand - all in a matter of split seconds.
Each time you throw and catch the ball, you exercise your muscles and stimulate the brain's coordination centers—the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and motor cortex.
Can Exercise Make You Smarter?
While it may not be immediately obvious, the link between physical activity and mental performance is well-established. Research demonstrated students who engage in consistent, long-term physical exercise outperform their sedentary peers by 6%. This improvement is attributed to regular exercise creating optimal conditions for the brain to function at its peak in areas such as thinking, learning, and forming memories.
Studies have shown that consistent physical activity enhances planning skills, memory recall, and focus, and is a significant predictor of performance in tasks that demand planning and execution.
Optimising Working Memory
Research also suggests that both short-term acute exercise and long-term chronic exercise can enhance various facets of memory, one of which is 'working memory.' This cognitive function allows for the temporary storage and manipulation of information.
For ADHDers, daily scenarios like trying to stay present in a conversation can be challenging, as it requires a robust working memory to keep track of the ongoing points being made. Fortunately, regular physical activity can bolster this ability, making such scenarios more manageable and less stressful.
Memory improvements are due to increased neurotrophic factors that support neural growth and signaling efficiency. Over time, this leads to neural proliferation and enhanced plasticity in regions like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, which are critical for working memory and executive functions.
Promoting Brain Health & Aging
Regular exercise improves blood flow, promotes neuroplasticity, and reduces inflammation, all of which benefit the aging brain. These benefits extend to ADHDers, helping to manage some of the common challenges associated with this condition.
Exercise also wards off age-related atrophy in brain regions like the prefrontal cortex, which are crucial for memory, learning, and focus - faculties that can be compromised in ADHDers. Regular exercise can help preserve these important cognitive functions well into old age.
Beyond its immediate benefits for managing ADHD, maintaining a regular exercise routine across the lifespan primes the brain for healthy aging, allowing it to thrive in youth and remain robust in later years.
Executive Function
Finally, let's unpack executive function, especially as it closely relates to ADHD. We often associate executive function with our struggles to stay focused and maintain momentum in life - but what is actually going on?
Think of executive function as the brain’s sophisticated command and control centre. It’s the taskmaster in your mind that helps set goals, make plans, and get things done.
When executive function is impaired, it’s like having an unreliable taskmaster, making it tough to control impulses, sustain focus, switch between tasks, and regulate behaviour.
The core cognitive foundations underlying our executive function are:
Working memory - your mental scratchpad that holds information to enable complex tasks. It’s how you juggle data in your mind.
Cognitive flexibility - your brain’s adaptability that allows you to shift gears between tasks and think outside the box.
Inhibitory control - your brain’s quality control that regulates impulses and behaviors. It helps resist distractions and avoid bad habits.
As we have learned, exercise targets all of these core cognitive foundations and the net effect is better executive function and a more successful navigation of daily tasks and responsibilities.
Finding Activities You Enjoy
Sustaining a regular exercise regimen is important for effectively managing ADHD, but consistency requires finding activities you genuinely enjoy. The key is choosing exercises you find rewarding and appealing so that you are more likely to stick to the routine long-term.
The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that regular exercise provides huge neurological, cognitive, and behavioural benefits for managing ADHD.
Physically training your body activates key brain regions and neurochemical pathways that bolster executive functions like focus, working memory, and impulse control. It also mitigates ADHD symptoms including distractibility, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Trust the process and stick with it. In time, you'll start to feel the rewards - a clearer mind, more focus, and a sense of accomplishment. The confidence will come. Before you know it, exercise will become a natural part of your weekly schedule.
I'm dedicated to sharing the knowledge and strategies I've gained over the years to help others facing similar challenges. If you want to discuss anything I’ve written here or if you need more support, please contact me.