37 tabs open in your brain isn't always a diagnosis
Hey,
If you're medicated for ADHD and something still feels off, or you've self-diagnosed from Instagram and it's fit every symptom you've got, I want to push back gently on one thing this week.
A label explains a pattern. It doesn't automatically explain why that pattern is happening, and it definitely doesn't mean the rest of your physiology stops mattering once it's named.
A patient of mine had already landed on ADHD before she saw me. Every symptom fit. Trouble focusing, forgetting things mid-sentence, crashing hard every afternoon. When we actually looked, her ferritin was low, her thyroid had never had a full panel run, and she was skipping breakfast most days and running on coffee until lunch.
None of that ruled out ADHD. But none of it had been looked at either, because once the label landed, nobody kept asking.
I wrote up what I actually work through with patients before or alongside medication: sleep, blood sugar, the specific bloods worth checking, movement, nervous system recovery, and the gut-ADHD link that's more evidence-backed than people realise.
Read: Why ADHD meds feel incomplete
You can have ADHD and something else going on. The point was never to prove the diagnosis wrong. It's to make sure we don't stop asking questions the moment we have one.
More next Sunday,
Georgia

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