People who show ADHD traits in childhood are more likely to experience physical health problems and health-related disability by midlife. People with ADHD are more likely to experience stressful life events, social exclusion, and delayed access to health screening and medical care.
Childhood ADHD Tied to Higher Risk of Physical Health Problems by Midlife
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Childhood ADHD Tied to Higher Risk of Physical Health Problems by Midlife
**People who show attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits in childhood are more likely to experience physical health problems and health-related disability by midlife**, according to a large longitudinal study led by researchers at University College London (UCL). Using data based on following patients for more than 40 years, the researchers found that higher levels of ADHD traits at age 10 were associated with a greater number of physical health conditions, increased odds of multimorbidity, and higher levels of physical health–related disability by age 46. The team’s findings are published in JAMA Network Open.
“Here we have added to the concerning evidence base that people with ADHD are more likely to experience worse health than average across their lifespan,” said senior author Joshua Stott, PhD, a professor of aging and clinical psychology at UCL. “People with ADHD can thrive with the right support, but this is often lacking, both due to a shortage of tailored support services but also because ADHD remains underdiagnosed, particularly in people in midlife and older, with needs unaddressed.”
People with ADHD often experience differences in how they focus attention, manage their impulses, plan tasks, and organize time. These differences can affect education, employment, and access to health care, shaping long-term health outcomes. While it begins in childhood, evidence shows that ADHD often continues into adulthood.
Analysis of the data showed that higher ADHD traits in childhood were associated with more physical health conditions by midlife and a 14% increase in the odds of multimorbidity. Among those people who likely had ADHD in childhood, whether formally diagnosed or not, 42.1% had two or more physical health conditions at age 46, compared with 37.5% of those without ADHD.
The findings have implications for clinical care and public health since **people with ADHD are more likely to experience stressful life events, social exclusion, and delayed access to health screening and medical care**. Stott said these factors “align with the fact that ADHD makes impulse control more difficult, the need for instant gratification and reward more intense, and is also associated with worse mental health in part due to the social disadvantage people with ADHD face.”
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2844130
ADHD is incredibly debilitating, it needs to be taken more seriously
>People with ADHD are more likely to experience stressful life events, social exclusion,
One literally have to be a prophet to conclude that people who are not made for this world will experience chronic stress from living in it.
As someone who dealt with horrible ADHD for most of my life, absolutely nothing had even close to as much impact as practicing proper nutrition and regular exercise.
If you are struggling, PLEASE take care of yourself with nutritious foods and lots of movement. I no longer need medication or therapy because of this.
It may not work for everyone, but it completely changed my life.
The worst symptom for me is how difficult it is to simply make doctors appointments. It sounds so easy but it’s physically painful for me to start the process of switching doctors to where I currently live
I feel like the key thing here (at least for me the 4/6 members of my family with ADHD) is impulse control.
Most of us are gluten intolerant and we still all eat gluten at least a few times a month and suffer the consequences and it’s totally normalised. Whenever neurotypical friends of mine see this, they are very confused.
Then there’s the junk food, binge drinking, technology addiction, forgetting to follow up on medical appointments, forgetting to take medication, never being able to commit to exercise routines because we struggle with any kind of routine.
My siblings and I have led completely different lives and didn’t have any kind of traumatic upbringing, but we all struggle with the exact same behavioural problems.
Is this a shocker? Their disorder makes them not pay attention to their own health.
I found out 30+ years later that my ADHD was caused by an underlying health condition. I would expect that many such cases are people with latent health issues like POTS and MCAS that are only understood as ADHD at the behavioral level.
They don’t have enough of a body impact to be considered sick or disabling in their typical form but it’s enough that it keeps your day-to-day functioning at a lower level than your peers. You seem tired, distracted, easy to upset, often paying attention to something else, and you don’t even know that it’s your body that’s failing, not your mind.
Makes a lot of sense to me since ive lived it.
Everyone with ADHD “shows traits in childhood”
I went to the dentist this year for the first time in twenty years.
I had one tooth that has been the bane of my life for years.
I just couldn’t go through the process required to get it sorted.
Ultimately it took the situation getting so bad I could no longer ignore it.
I wish I knew what life was like without this.
It’s very frustrating to see how people with ADHD suffer their entire lives, have to cope, mask and have a variety of comorbid issues, while at the same time everyone else thinks it’s popular, overdiagnosed, that they have it or that no one has it. It’s interwoven into every aspect of our lives, including health issues which you can’t even mention to your doctors because they don’t know or understand the connections.
And it’s also very trivialized in media.
Ugh I get it already, everything about me is doomed