06.28.07
Exercise on iTunes
I get bored with exercises really easily. I can’t watch the same video more than a couple times, and just laying on the floor doing situps and pushups just isn’t exciting enough for me to do regularly. So, I found some short exercise “podcasts” on iTunes. Even though they are called podcasts, you don’t have to watch them on a video iPod. I just watch them on my computer screen.
Some of the free podcasts are pretty lame, but I found one that is somewhat interesting. My favorite one at the moment is called “Workout Wherever” and is (surprisingly) created by the directors of Jazzercise. It’s designed for travelers, so you can do the exercises without a lot of space or equipment. All you need is something a little heavy (like a textbook or laptop case), a chair, and a resistance band. I don’t have a resistance band, so I just skip those particular exercises. The lady shows you how to do the move, tells you how many to do, then moves on. It’s nice and quick, and the exercises easily fit into my 15-30 min daily exercise goal. I have downloaded 9 of the workouts, so I can pick and choose which exercises I want to do.
If you know of any other good exercise video podcasts, let me know in the comments!
Feeling Better…
OK, well after 3 or so days of feeling crappy, having a bad sleep schedule, and not meeting any of my goals, I think I’m back on track today. For the past few days, I haven’t even filled out my progress chart – I didn’t want to look at it and fill in zeros next to all of the goals!
Despite feeling well, I did something totally stupid that is typical “ADD” today. So, some friends and I are going to a condo in Miami for a little over a week next month. It’s for rent by owner, and the lady requires full payment up front. Since I’m the one in the group with a PayPal account, we decided that I would put the entire $1500 rental on my credit card, then everyone would pay me back. (Also, it’s a bonus for me since I was going to use my Amazon Visa and get a $25 gift certificate out of it from spending my “points”.) So, I logged onto PayPal, selected pay with Visa, took out my card to enter the credit card number, and clicked “Continue” on the form. I went ahead and completed payment, only to realize that it hadn’t asked for my card number at all. It used the default Visa that was in my account, which happened to be my debit card, and I just clicked through the form so fast, I didn’t read the details and see that’s what was going to happen.
So, since I just paid all of my bills this month, I didn’t have $1500 in my checking account, and making the payment on my Visa Debit card overdrafted my account. I had to call the lady, have her refund the payment, and go back through the whole process, using the right credit card this time. Luckily, the lady was really understanding, and it turned out OK. Now I just have to wait for bank business hours to see if they’ll charge me an overdraft fee even though the money was back in my account an hour later.
Ugh… but other than that, today has been a good day, and I’m about to sit down and get a bunch of work done. I just took my GABA supplement and my Omega-3s with dinner, so as long as I remember to take my multivitamin and exercise later, I’ll have met my goals for the day.
I’m just glad to be feeling like I’m not going crazy anymore!
06.25.07
Progress Update
OK, well you may have noticed I haven’t posted much this week. There are 2 reasons for that:
- I have been super busy working towards a project deadline
- I haven’t been doing too well
I haven’t taken the time to exercise, so I haven’t been meeting those goals. Most days have been frantic and I haven’t taken my supplements all week, so I can’t tell you whether they’re helping. Despite all that, my self-assessment score for the week was only down slightly (to an 81 out of 160), so at least I’m not sliding backwards too much. I hope to get my act together in the coming week.
I am feeling particularly distractable at the moment, which is why I’m writing this, so I can feel like I’m accomplishing something.
If anyone is reading, please leave a comment! That may help motivate me to achieve my goals, and therefore be able to post more information about whether my “natural” remedies are helping, if I know someone out there is holding me accountable.
And just so this post isn’t all just blah, here is a link: http://community.livejournal.com/adults_add/
That is the livejournal community I visit when I’m procrastinating to know that there are other people out there doing the same thing for the same reason :)
06.19.07
“Days Until” Google Gadget
For anyone that found the “Days Since” iGoogle Gadget useful, you may also like the new sister gadget: “Days Until“.
06.18.07
GABA Supplements
Well I finally got over to the Health Foods Store, and they had the GABA supplements. I wanted “GABA Calm” because it also has Taurine and L-Tyrosine, but they didn’t have that. What they had is just called GABA, and is also by Source Naturals, and it cost $18.50 for 90 tablets! Much more than I would’ve paid online, but at least it’s in my hands now and I don’t have to worry about any shipping costs, waiting to get it, freshness of the product, etc.
On the bottle, it says:
GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is an amino acid derivative and a key inhibitory neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that carry information between nerve cells or from nerve cells to other target cells. GABA is synthesized directly from glutamic acid. It has an inhibitory effect on the firing of neurons and supports a calm mood.
but warns that these statements aren’t approved by the FDA. I’m going by Dr. Amen’s advice on this one. Note that GABA is not an herb or drug, but something found naturally in the human body.
Interestingly, the lady at the checkout said “Oh, another lady buys these regularly and says they really work! She takes them until they build up in her system, and says then she doesn’t have to take them for a while.” OK… I’ll have to see if I find out what she meant by that. Also, I’m taking them specifically for my “Temporal Lobe” type ADD, so I’ll be able to evaluate how they affect me using my chart.
They are large tablets, 750 mg, so I am going to break them in half at first and take approx 375 mg until I see how my body reacts to them.
I’ll keep you posted! Here goes…
Quick Update
OK, well Thursday and Friday were not-so-good days for my personal life – had a few big arguments and generally was in a low mood until late Friday night. Yesterday and today (Father’s Day) have been relatively good, though. I’ve been getting some non-work things done like gardening and shopping, and I’ve been in a positive mood.
I still haven’t found GABA supplements locally, so I’m either going to have to go to the expensive health food store, or buy them online. I see some on Amazon for a decent price that I might get.
I do have a bit of good news – my overall weekly score went up from week 1 to week 2! So, despite having a few “really bad” days, I seem to be improving overall. That’s why I made the charts, right? So, last week was a 79.9 for the week (out of a maxiumum perfect score of 160), and this week was am 83.3. Not a huge improvement, but I was happy to see any improvement at all.
I think one of the big factors helping me is my exercise. My best friend decided to go on a diet and work out also, so I finally have some company on my walks, and it feels good to be able to “gab” for the whole 15-30 mins since I don’t have many times during the day when someone will just listen when I need to blab.
OK, got to get some things done so my score for today will be decent! I’m behind on some work, so I’m taking my Sunday night to catch up.
06.13.07
Daily Goal #3: GABA Supplement + Multivitamin
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Amen’s article, which you can read here: http://amenclinics.com/bp/articles.php?articleID=10
“From a medication standpoint I have seen antiseizure (also called anticonvulsant) medications be the most helpful for temporal lobe problems. One of the mechanisms these medications work is by enhancing the amino acid gama-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA is an essential neurotransmitter in the brain. It is formed in the body from glutamic acid. It’s function is to decrease neuron activity and inhibit nerve cells from overfiring or firing erratically. GABA can be taken as a supplement. It acts like an anticonvulsant and also as an anti-anxiety agent. In the herbal literature it is reported to work in much the same way as diazepam (Valium), chlordiazepoxide (Librium), and other tranquilizers, but without fear of addiction. I have seen it have a nice calming effect on people who struggle with temper, irritability, and anxiety (all which may be temporal lobe symptoms). The doses of GABA range from 100-500mg a day for adults, half that for children.”
I’ve read about GABA elsewhere, including here: http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20031204/brain-scans-reveal-adhd-differences
Since I most likely have the Temporal Lobe type of ADHD, and since GABA seems to have many other benefits, I have decided to start taking a GABA supplement in addition to my Omega-3 supplement. I am also going to up my Omega-3 supplement since I did well taking 2 per day last week and didn’t notice any adverse effects, so I will up my intake by using “Smart Balance” buttery spread instead of butter, cooking with Olive Oil instead of vegetable oil (which also has additional benefits), and also replacing my normal peanut butter with “Smart Balance” peanut butter. I’ll let you know if that seems to make any difference.
I also wanted to share this in-depth analysis of Omega-3 uses with you: UMM Omega-3 Article . This article recommends a slightly higher amount of Omega-3s per day, which is one of the reasons I will attempt to add more to my diet.
In addition to the GABA supplement, I’m going to now track my multivitamin usage. I like the GNC Ultra Mega Women’s vitamins, but they are pretty strong and have way over the necessary daily amounts of most of the ingredients. I also like Centrum chewable adult vitamins because they have 100% of everything and they are easy to take. So, I will take one or the other multivitamin every day. I will probably try to take the stronger GNC vitamin 3 times a week.
OK so now, my goals are
- #1: Exercise 15-30 mins a day (still working on achieving that one)
- #2: (modified) Take 2 Omega-3 capsules per day and also add Omega-3 fatty acids to my diet
- #3: Take 200 mg of GABA supplements and one multivitamin daily.
I will add the third goal to my spreadsheet and start tracking it as soon as I purchase my supplements. Now I’m off to the store to figure out which supplements contain GABA!
06.11.07
Progress Chart – Download
OK, so I am ready to upload the progress chart I created so I could have some way to objectively track my progress. I listed my major “add problems” in column A, then for each day, I gave myself a score (0 to 10, 10 being best) on how I did in that area. Some may seem repetitive, but to me they are each individual issues I am dealing with. Each day, I average the whole column to see how I did overall, and each week I will take the average of the daily scores for each row and add them up to get a weekly total. I’m hoping that over time this number will go up!
Goals: You will notice that the numbers for how well I accomplished each goal I set up on this blog is in grey. I figure that the number of goals will go up, but I don’t want to increase the overall possible total (160) so I can have a weekly score that is comparable week to week. So, all of the daily goal scores get averaged into one score (in row 20) that shows how well I did at meeting all of my goals that day. Now, if I add a goal, it will just get averaged into that number.
I also am going to make charts to show visually whether I improve over time, and if you download the file you can see the charts. You can also see the hidden columns with my daily notes if you download the chart.
So, here is a picture of the chart (click to enlarge) with the comment columns hidden so I could show all of the numbers. You can see that my total “weekly score” was a 79.9. The highest possible is 160, because there are 16 rows that get added in, and the highest possible average for each row is 10.
You can download the excel spreadsheet here: Renee’s ADD Progress List
06.10.07
Name Change
OK, so I had to change my blog’s name and start over. At least WordPress makes it easy to import posts and I hadn’t been going too long under the other name. Thought the new name was kind of cute, since ADD often kicks my a$$, I figured it was time to kick back. Let me know what you think!
06.09.07
Exercise and AD/HD
I remember reading in the great ADD book Delivered from Distraction that exercise is not only a long-term therapy for ADD, but also an “emergency fix” – that if you are feeling your symptoms, that sometimes a burst of exercise to get out that distracting fidgety energy will do the trick.
I also read an article recently that said Yoga can help increase your body’s natural production of GABA, which has a calming effect, so I will probably do some of that next week.
For the moment, I am feeling anxious -both because I am feeling fidgety and haven’t exercised yet today, and because I am not getting as much done tonight as I wanted to. So, I think I’ll get my tennis shoes on and do a little workout. I haven’t done my 15-30 minutes of exercise yet today anyway, so I’ll also feel like I’ve accomplished a goal.
Edit: This did seem to work. About 15-20 mins after I exercised (and my heart rate came down) I did feel more focused than before.
