Yes, I often find my self ignoring the advice of experts too. Natural things like homeopathy are clearly superior.

This is such a shit take; and the shear number of people parroting it leads to a lot of needless suffering.

Almost every expert recommends better diet, exercise and sleep, so I’m not sure why you’re viewing the “go natural” statement as a necessarily anti-expert one.

Likely for the same reason why prescriptions are so popular. It is way easier to down a pill then to workout, changing your eating habits, or adjusting your lifestyle to allow for more sleep. Changing habits is hard, eating meds relatively easy... "So off we go, and man, if someone interferes with our narrative, we attack like the speedfreaks we have become..."

For some people better diet, exercise, and sleep require taking drugs to make it more likely they can even do those things. It's a dumb take.

and those are the very exceptions the parent allows for.

It's "fuck off advice". They recommend it in full knowledge that almost nobody ever sticks to it, but it keeps the advice receiver busy and feeling responsible for their own problem.

Lifestyle change is hard and impractical even for most neurotypical people. With untreated ADHD, it's almost impossible.

Homeopathy may be no more effective than a placebo - but placebos can work pretty well! In this day and age, when patients often aren't satisfied until the doctor gives them a prescription, a "worthless" placebo may be superior to unneeded antibiotics, or other drug with bad side effects.

He must have edited the post you're responding too.

He no longer suggests homeopathy or ignoring reality.

We have really high quality studies pointing out that things like fixing your sleep and going to the gym outperform other interventions in, key word here, healthy individuals.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30627769/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4896469/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26271496/

It’s a shit take for edge cases, but actually on point for the vast, vast majority of us. We have an awful and absurd habit of denying simple truths in homage to very exceptional cases. It’s a convenient reason for most to do less.

Exercising, eating right, and getting outside might or might not do for people what Ritalin does, but it’s not accurate to conflate Babelthuap’s prescription with homeopathy. It’s also not accurate to call homeopathy natural. I think it’s better classed as a folk belief not backed by science or any sort of evidence, like astrology.

I call the "just eat healthy and exercise" tips as "fuck off advice". As in, something you'll say to a person with a problem, and then that person will go and try it, and struggle at it, and fail at it - but the process will take them half a year, during which you don't have to deal with their whining anymore, and they'll blame their own lack of discipline in the end.

Homeopathy is not any more or less natural than other pharmacy.

Would love to know how you personally suffer from ADHD and aren't just projecting your neuro-typical experience onto those who experience reality differently than you.

I hope we will progress as a specie and we'll start to see these statements are all as ridiculous:

- You are missing a hand? OK, I understand. Now can you deliver those boxes to the 3rd floor without elevator?

- Everyone has some ups and downs, you'll get over it.

- If you started to eat healthy, you wouldn't be fat.

- You don't have ADHD, you just need to be more disciplined.

>Natural is they way to go.

Stop using electricity and antibiotics, hypocrite.

Natural is the way to go, but don’t garden — we’re hunter-gatherers by nature. Go outside, stay outside, forever. Forage for grubs, cower before the terrifying might of the sun and moon. Draw glyphs of the flora and fauna using just your hands and the juice of a berry.

I was diagnosed with ADD as an adult. My poor impulse control was a major cause of my anxiety and depression. It took a lot of time to receive the diagnosis because I wasn't disruptive in class and my grades were normal.

However, when I started taking Vyvanse, it changed my life. Vyvanse works by giving me a few seconds to think before I act. Without Vyvanse, I would hit the gas pedal and only realize a few seconds later how stupid that was. On Vyvanse, I have that realization a few seconds before acting, giving me a chance to avoid engaging in self-defeating impulsive behavior.

When your poor impulse control negatively impacts your life to the point of causing panic attacks and depressive episodes, I think it deserves to be rightly called a disorder and deserve to be treated.

> Exercise, eat right, go outside and garden.

Ritalin has helped tremendously with my ability to get to bed on time, to eat more consistently on a schedule, to cook my own food, and to exercise occasionally.

I don't mean to be rude, but going to someone with problems with executive dysfunction and saying, "it's fine, here's a list of regular activities that you'll do consistently every day until they become a habit" is not helpful advice.

"Don't skip meals."

"But I do skip meals."

"Well... don't. Don't harder."

Meanwhile, the psychiatrist says, "take an extended-release pill daily, and then set timers on your watch to remind yourself to eat." And it works! Because when the timers go off, I now have enough willpower to step away from Emacs for 15 minutes and put some veggies in a pan.