Careful with this. I was “self-medicating” my ADHD with exercise for years simply thinking I just liked exercise and not ever realizing that I had worked up to 25-30 hours a week just to function. Exercise absolutely does 100% work but meds that raise your baseline so you don’t have to exercise is a much healthier relationship with it.

There are a lot of habits that ADHD people fall into to “stim.” Whether or not it’s a healthy way of managing it is up to the person.

Evidence points to exercise and meds being a good idea most of the time for ADHD.

Can't stand meds though.

seems really bizarre to claim taking a light form of meth several times a day is healthier than exercising.

We all breathe a light form of fire several times per minute. Putting things in spooky terms is deceptive.

> Exercise absolutely does 100% work

Exercise works for you, but we should be careful about overbroad generalizations. Exercise is a pretty good thing for just about everyone with lots of benefits, and it likely can help many with ADHD, but it's never going to be enough for some people. I doubt there's anything that will 100% work for everyone. Even stimulants can't help everyone with ADHD, and for those who do benefit from medication some medications will work better than others.

Ultimately it's a lifelong process to figure out what helps with symptoms, what makes them worse, and what doesn't do much if anything at all. It's probably worth giving exercise shot for people who aren't already active enough, but don't expect miracles.

Personally, I've found jogging to be excellent for curing cancer, solving world hunger and balancing the checkbook. It truly is a miracle cure.

To be less sardonic, I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. It feels like people like to kramer into any discussion about medication to offer their unsolicited advice. Just about anyone that's gone through what you've mentioned have heard that same advice 10x over.