Hey! Welcome to "What in the ADHD?"
My name is Sydni, and today's topic is very exciting - for me, at least -
Because we get to talk about two of my favorite things: science and caffeine.
First of all, I have a couple of announcements before I get started on today's topic.
I've recently reached 650 subscribers,
which is really cool. I'm very excited about that,
so thank you so much to everybody that has subscribed to my channel.
Second, some of you may have noticed that I've been a little M.I.A. on YouTube. I haven't
made a video in a while. I apologize for that.
I actually, uh - on March 24th,
I had a miscarriage and I was dealing with a lot of emotions.
And I wasn't really in the mood to make YouTube videos.
Hopefully everyone can understand. And, side note on that:
I've actually started a Nonprofit Organization
for Pregnancy Loss and Infant Loss Awareness.
It's called "The Shiloh Foundation", which... Shiloh is what I was going to name my baby.
But I will put the link in the description if you're interested in learning more about that.
So, now let's get to the reason that we're all here: caffeine metabolism and ADHD.
How are they connected? If they're connected at all.
So, I have a few reasons that I wanted to make this video.
The biggest one is that I frequently see people
on social media talking about how their ADHD is
affected by caffeine or... vice versa?
*quietly* can it be vice versa?
So, I'll see people post in groups or on ADHD Twitter or something,
and they'll be like, "oh yeah - my caffeine metabolism
blah blah blah blah. Caffeine affects me this way because of my ADHD. LOL."
And then a couple of other people will come in and they're like, "me too!"
And then a couple of other people come in and they're like, "umm, I can't relate to that.
Caffeine doesn't affect me that way. Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with you?"
And then everyone's like "ohmygod, what's going on?!" Because nobody understands what's going on with caffeine and ADHD.
I'm here to tell you in a really basic and general sense
that caffeine metabolism has nothing to do with your ADHD.
Your ADHD does not control how you metabolize caffeine
and how your body reacts to it.
So, we're going to move forward just with that in mind.
So, everything I talk about isn't really going to be ADHD-related at all.
I know this is an ADHD Channel, but
this is a common misconception and I really just wanna clear the air and explain how caffeine metabolism works.
We'll start by describing the types of sensitivity that people can have to caffeine.
There's the Hypersensitive people, there's the people with normal sensitivity,
and then there's the people with very low sensitivity.
These are the type of people that are like, "yeah I can drink a cup of coffee and then go to bed!"
And then other people are like, "what the heck? I take like two sips of coffee and I can't sleep for three days."
So, that's going to be the higher sensitivity people - the people that can't sleep.
And then there's the normal people that have... "normal"?
And then there's the lower sensitivity people that can sleep right after they drink a cup of coffee.
Now let's get into the science part, which I'm very excited about. Um, so -
I learned about caffeine metabolism in my "junior year" of undergrad, when I was getting my Bachelor's.
I learned it in my Cellular and Molecular Biology classes, which was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken in my life, but that's beside the fact.
So anyway, caffeine metabolism is controlled by a specific enzyme,
which is controlled by a specific gene.
So, the gene controls the enzyme, which then metabolizes the caffeine.
The gene is called "CYP1A2", and it's italicized.
And the enzyme it controls is "CYP1A2", but it's not italicized.
Even if you aren't really a big fan of science or "good at science" or whatever,
I'm sure most of you know what a Punnett square is.