ADHD

Ask your doctor about guanfacine (Intuniv). It is taken both as an ADHD medication and a blood pressure lowering medication. It might be good either by itself or in conjunction with your current medication to offset the stimulant’s effects on blood pressure.

Am 42 and unmedicated my whole life, adhd coaching can help alot, I find my focus for doing stuff is also terrible, however it's things I've convinced myself are unneeded bullshit, do I need to send that email today? sort the insurance paperwork? yes I actually do and once it's done I can go treat my self to some creative time to relieve the 'ugh' feeling of emails.

Also an immense amount of coffee, but that's probably not great advice in your situation.

I’ll give ya this much, you managed to type out the whole post!

Do you drink coffee or smoke? I went cold turkey on both for over a year now and my blood pressure went back to normal.

"I’ve pretty much just sat on the couch these past two days throwing myself a little pity party."

As a veteran @ 1 year and about to be 7 months of Vyvanse, it does get easier... eventually. I'd consider (job willing) taking at least a week off to deal with the withdraw. It's not as bad as generic amphetamine salts... but my reccommendation is to stay focused on hygiene, nutrition, fitness, and rest. You'll get through it.

I am so sorry you're going through that. I had to be off my meds for four months due to the shortages, so I know how difficult that sudden change can be, physically and mentally. I'm uncertain how they interact with blood pressure, but you may be able to try Strattera or Wellbutrin (which is off-label for ADHD treatment, but works for some). I also tried several vitamin options, but they only seemed to help me by around 5%.

Well...this might sound odd, but I've heard that balance exercises can help with ADHD symptoms. I've been riding a longboard for a while now, both for exercise and to improve my balance. I feel like I have better executive function when I work on my balance. It's been too hot lately to do much outside exercise, and I already notice I'm backsliding.

I totally understand what you're going through. I took Adderall for the better part of 10 years, and it started making me feel lousy. And my blood pressure started to climb.

So, I switched to Straterra, a non-amphetamine medication, which may still have some risk of HBP, but it doesn't seem to do anything to mine. That might be an option.

It takes several weeks to take full effect, and it's not as effective as Adderall was for me, but it's difficult to function without it. Later on, I still had to face high blood pressure. I could possibly go back on Adderall, but I'd prefer not to have the medications "fight" over it. ;-)

Have you looked into the possibility your blood pressure is a result of anxiety? My friend had blood pressure issues despite being in shape and a runner. He got his anxiety treated and now he has no major issues regarding blood pressure.

Shit, sorry man thats never fun to deal with. I know from experience that I'm able to muddle through tasks out of pure willpower when unmedicated. If you excercise a lot then you probably have a decent control over your willpower. I contracted a bad case of covid recently and I stopped my meds for a month while dealing with that. You will probably experience joylessness and lack of motivation for some time while your brain finds a new homeostasis, but its not that bad. I do a "quit-everything" dopamine starvation every couple of years to reset and its only horrible for the first week or so and then it just becomes the new normal. All the best for sorting out that blood pressure!

My therapist recently had me (mid 40's) reconsider everything that has worked for me in the past and to list it all out in my journal (or something visual that I can keep relatively handy). I do forget to keep looking at it and choosing a tool from the toolbox so I probably need to rethink what I write it on and how I display it. She also advised that when I notice the helpfulness of the list falling off, that I REWRITE IT and change up the order.

The tools in my toolbox evolve all the time. Some of them work better for some tasks vs others. Some of them have lost their punch over time and need to be benched for a while. My current favorite tool on the list is to plop headphones on and crank some EDM or anything karaoke-worthy. This doesn't work for work-work where I need to concentrate, but it works fantastically for anything physical like DIY projects or non-thinking things like laundry or dishes. For work-work, I still haven't found one that is no-fail, but playing lo-fi instrumental hiphop like the study girl video does ok to keep me on task once I can get myself kickstarted. Oh and ChatGPT is my new work bestie for writing anything, especially emails. Sometimes it hits the target where I can just copy/paste, but usually it gives me enough material to edit into something intelligible. I also have to keep reminding myself to add a sensory something when I start getting off track. I have bicycle pedals that fit under my desk. They worked great when I first got them. They've been benched for a while now, and maybe it's time to bump them back up the roster. I have an accupressure mat, back massage cushion, will light candles or incense, chew gum, just basically try to layer not-too-distracting sensory things on top of what I HAVE to do, and that usually gets me through it where I can then go be a potato for a while.

Before getting actually diagnosed I did a lot of research on microdosing. I don't think this would be the end all solution but might help a bit. Any change of asking some other doctor?

That's really disheartening. My blood pressure bounces between prehypertension and stage 1 hypertension so I have to be mindful of how my choices affect it, otherwise I'll just have another medication I need to take.

It sounds like your doctor is being careful but a quick search looks like there should be some options to take both Vyvanse and a beta blocker. It's possible your doctor just wants a baseline BP off of Vyvanse first, before reintroducing it.

I also find motivation something that takes work. One strategy I use is to write down before bed one big thing I want to accomplish the next day and just a few small ones as well. By keeping the list very small I find it much more doable and everything I accomplish after is just icing on the cake if i'm feeling good about it.

For tasks I find difficult to start, first asking myself why I'm doing it and then using Chat GPT to help me break down the task into clear and manageable actions helps a lot. If I can get a first easy action done, the next comes much more smoothly. And the great thing is that if any action seems daunting, I just ask the AI to help make it more manageable. If I still feel like it's not enough and the outcome is important to me, then I ask my partner (or an accountability buddy) for a little help and tell them the next action that's holding me back. It ain't perfect but i've found chatGPT or Bingchat a big help in organizing and defining unclear tasks. I am careful though of not using it with sensitive or personal info. I figure anything being prompted could end up as public info and is definitely will be data mined.

My blood pressure spikes with stress. In my doctors office, we took a reading and it was high. Then we took another one 5 minutes later after I intentionally relaxed myself and it was normal again.

She prescribed guanfacine to take in combination with the vyvanse. Should theoretically help. Won't know until I start it next month

Oh, that's a real bummer (and a fear of mine since high blood pressure runs in my family).

Most of the "automedication" stuff makes the blood pressure rise too, so it's not even easy to "bridge the gap". Try to lower the amount of salt you eat to better your chances of reducing the blood pressure

I can't help but wonder if it's as simple as cutting the caffeine from your diet. I'd look there first

As a temporary fix till you and your doctor figure something out, try coffee. It helps ADHDers with focus, but can incress stress.

However, caffeine and high blood pressure are also not a great mix.

"Drinking coffee can temporarily increase blood pressure, but its long-term effects on blood pressure are unclear". mayoclinic.org

People who drink multiple cups of coffee a day may be at higher risk for heart attack. heart.org I'd like to see the actual study they cite. They said one cup is fine, btw.

My non-high blood pressure mom drank coffee all day. Her ADHD was very well masked by it to the point where no one knew she had it, including her. Of my two parents though, she was definitely my source. You could see the signs in her, but only if you already knew what to look for.

BTW, which type of fingerprint do you have? Most people with HBP have whorls. I read this years ago and asked my HBD dad to show me his fingertips. He had whorls. Cool.

"There have been a number of studies showing that certain dermatoglyphic markers are associated with hypertension. This association could be explained if the risk toward developing hypertension later on in life is somehow connected with fetal development of dermatoglyphics."source