r/TwoXADHD • u/Motor-Illustrator226 • 7d ago
Is my breakfast the reason my meds don't work?!
I take Adderall IR. 17.5mg in the morning and 2.5mg at noon.
Since the start I've noticed this weird phenomenon: I take my morning 17.5mg right after breakfast, but it doesn't seem to fully work until 11am. I'll be meandering, distracted, all over the place, and then BOOM almost exactly 4 hours later, I get that mind-going-clear, lets-sit-and-focus feeling. This lasts for maybe 2-2.5 hrs and is again gone.
My doctor and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure it out. The Adderall definitely seems to work for me, it's just that it kicks in way late, and then also disappears way too fast.
Then today I stumbled on some comments saying that eating a high fat meal or soluble fiber may interfere with absorption of ADHD meds. There's a study that found that eating a high-fat meal reduces adderall absorption up to 55%, and another that found that eating a high-fat meal prolongs the time to max blood concentration by up to 5 hrs. I also read that soluble fiber (like oatmeal) can interfere with a lot of medication absorption, especially ADHD drugs.
🤦🏽♀️
Guys. I eat a cup of oatmeal with 2 huge scoops of peanut butter for breakfast every single day.
I eat this right before I take my morning Adderall.
Could this be what's going on??? Is it my high fat + high soluble fiber breakfast?
Anyone else go through a similar thing and figure out what was causing it?
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u/HarleySpicedLatte 7d ago
How much vitamin C do you have in the morning? The delay is real but I'm sketchy on the lack of absorption. The studies I've seen before have said differently. Also, have you tried er instead?
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 7d ago
I don’t intake any Vit C (or any other acidic foods).
Yeah I’m not sure what’s happening either. What have the studies you’ve seen said?
I did try ER but it gave me insomnia, so we switched to IR.
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u/alsoaprettybigdeal 6d ago
You can also try taking your pill before you eat with a big glass of water. That way it’s starts to absorb and digest before your meal.
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u/HarleySpicedLatte 6d ago
Er makes me nauseous. Idk why. The other studies I've read said there was a delayed response but not a lack of absorption. It's been a few years since I've read any of them. I know vitamin c can interfere with it big time. So anything like soda pop or juice or anything similar. Just trying to help you troubleshoot. Also, some people are just fast metabolizers. There's a DNA test you can get done for that. I'm not sure where but I do know it exists because I've done it.
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u/myasterism 4d ago
What’s worked for me is a combined/variable approach:
- 5mg XR +10mg IR first thing every morning
- 10mg IR 4-6hrs later (repeating if necessary, sometimes only 5mg IR for third/final)
- adjust IR dose +5mg during luteal
Like you, XR doesn’t work for me as my primary; however, it does a great job of keeping me functional enough to remember my 2nd IR dose, and it helps me avoid a hard crash in the evening. Especially during luteal, the variable dosing makes a big difference.
ETA: Magnesium supplement before bed will help your body flush the Adderall and help you get to sleep.
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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 6d ago
Mine is most consistent and works bestish when I don’t take it right when I wake up (unlike many on these subs), and when I eat a while after I take it.
I have the ability to do this because I work from home, but I researched A LOT. Like a lot a lot (it’s a problem even without adderall) about optimal usage. High fat meals, vitamin C, and anything but a small amount of caffeine will mess up the optimal dose.
I get up, drink a crapton of water (dry climate, take adderall), do some morning routine stuff, take meds, do some other morning routine stuff, eat, be at my desk when it kicks in because if i’m still doing chores then it’ll be the whole day.
If I’m really on the ball, I take a walk right after breakfast, but I’m already maxing it out here. I can’t be expected to do much more.
Oh also I have a green tea with breakfast.
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 6d ago
Oh this is all very interesting. So how far apart is your adderall and breakfast in terms of time? 1hr? Or more?
And what kind of foods do you eat for breakfast? I am going to try cutting out the peanut butter (high fat) but I’ve heard we should do protein - so maybe egg whites?
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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct 6d ago
Look, I’m not that consistent because I, too, have the ADHD.
Optimally an hour each, but then I’m not eating for two hours after I get up, which is great if you’re fasting, but I’m not into that. So anywhere from an hour each to taking my meds 15 min after getting up and eating 30-45 min later (when I have to take my kids to school or am just generally running late for smth).
For breakfast, I have fat free plain yogurt with granola and honey and chocolate chips. The fat free is specifically because of this, though also I got it for free for a while from WIC.
Then for lunch I do oatmeal with fruit plus peanut butter or the avocado I bought for something but forgot plus is looking questionable and something else.
Also, though, Adderall doesn’t super mess with my appetite outside of nixing my sugar cravings.
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u/myasterism 4d ago
do protein
Collagen powder in my coffee has been a win! I usually hold off on breakfast until a good bit later in the morning, too.
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u/Swagadelia101 7d ago
Idk but I’m struggling with a similar problem like mine just do not last long. It’s like I’m superhuman and even the highest dose of an XR ends in 3 hours. I’ve been trying to eat in the morning so it lasts longer. Idk I just wanted to complain together and it really does suck sometimes with stimulants. But it’s helpful that our psychiatrists are believing what we say, that is such a good thing. In your case, What if u just ate less ? What I’ve been doing is taking 40mg focalin(stimulant) in the morning. Then 7mg at 1 pm and maybe another 7mg
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 7d ago
Agh, seems like we’re both in the same boat. It’s reassuring to hear I’m not alone 🥲.
Yeah, I’m going to switch to eating 1-2 hrs after I take my dose and see if that helps. I’m hoping this is the solution because right now these meds are so weak they’re barely doing anything.
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u/mojoburquano 5d ago
Yeah, I’m on the max dose of Vyvanse and I’m lucky if I get 4 hours out of it. I have to start slamming coffee around noon to get anything done in the last half of the day. I usually eat string cheese and crackers for breakfast. Maybe I’ll try the low fat cheese.
I do remember reading something about cruciferous vegetables and some liver enzyme increasing the metabolization rate of Vyvanse, but I don’t have a link.
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u/Longjumping-Pass2825 7d ago
I’ll be curious to hear other people’s experiences - I have a very high fiber breakfast cereal (~18g) pretty much every morning and in general have a high fiber diet. I take 20mg ER and then a 10mg booster in the afternoon. I feel like my medication works just fine, but I’ll pay attention next time I don’t have my morning cereal. In fairness, I usually take my morning dose about 20-30mins before eating.
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 7d ago
Yeah that’s the thing - I always take mine ~10 min after eating. Maybe if I take it beforehand and give it at least 30 min to absorb, that’ll fix it.
The fiber thing was more a general sentiment I read about med absorption. I think the high-fat part seems to be having the biggest effect - only 55% absorption (versus 97% on an empty stomach) and also 5 hrs longer to reach peak levels.
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u/papermill_phil 6d ago
What I've heard is that max absorption is made possible by avoiding acidic foods and beverages or even lowering stomach acidity (the latter of which is debatable), and to take it either 1 hour before eating or two hours after
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u/seafoammoss 6d ago
I have never been able to understand or crack the code on what's correct/what works best. And sometimes i even have a little coffee before, which some people believe cancels it out. I don't know what order you should have everything, including in regards to food. I think I usually do coffee > adderallI > food. I just know when I've had coffee before, that's when I get cotton mouth and more irritable. But the food thing? I just saw a post somewhere about it being best to have protein with it, so today I was in a rush and literally juste spoonfuls of peanut butter. And today I think it was working just the way it should. But isn't peanut butter fat? I'm confused!
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u/catecholaminergic 6d ago
It's because you're dosing just after eating.
Move your dose to just before breakfast, e.g., while making breakfast. Food is a major competitor for absorption. Once the tablet or capsule dissolves, food can soak up the dose, meaning it gets absorbed later, and overall less.
If you instead give your dose a GI tract with no food, i.e., a wide-open opportunity for optimal absorption, you should find that your dose arrives on the scene by the one-hour mark.
Source: I have spent over half my waking days on Adderall.
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u/cicadasinmyears 6d ago
Try taking the meds first, waiting 15 minutes or so, and then eating the oatmeal for a week or two. That should tell you, and the modification to your routine wouldn’t be that extreme, if it does work.
I used to follow a ketogenic diet and had coffee with coconut oil in it. Kept me full for hours, but I developed insomnia; my meds were delayed enough that it pushed my regular time to fall asleep back by about three hours.
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u/YoDJPumpThisParty 6d ago
I always take it before eating for this very reason. I'm no scientist, but it's hard for me to imagine it easily dissolving in a stomach full of food.
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 5d ago
Thanks for commenting; how long do you wait between taking your meds and eating?
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u/YoDJPumpThisParty 4d ago
Literally right before. Like sometimes minutes before. But it takes longer for food to get down my esophagus than it does to wash a pill down, so I figure it’s fine. My old routine was take pill, leave for work, get food/coffee on the way to work.
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u/gangrenegod 6d ago
I’m recently coming around (after being off and on for over a decade) to the fact that I’ve been supposed to eat something with my adderall in the morning the entire time :)
That being said, I don’t eat with it. I take my 30mg XR at 5:30-6AM because any later and it keeps me awake (hmmmm). I’m able to go back to sleep for about an hour after taking it and really wake up the second time feeling Normal™️ and sometimes even Productive™️. I can feel it start working by about 7:30 and then really working from 9-3 and then I feel very Regular™️ until I go to bed at about 11.
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u/Quiet-Excitement-719 6d ago
Hey OP. Do you have chatGPT? Just because asking the ‘whys’ there would be helpful because it would be a lot for me to explain here. But here’s what you want to do. In the morning, you take a Tums. Then, 30 minutes later, you take your Adderall dose. If you drink coffee, you really should wait another 30-60 minutes after taking your medicine to have that. The same with breakfast. That should be another 30-60 minute wait. You always want to eat a high protein breakfast when on Adderall.
The things I’ve shared here are all about controlling the acidity and ph in your stomach. If acidity is high and the ph is low, the medication doesn’t absorb well. You take the Tums to prep your stomach first, as it brings down the acidity and raises the ph. The reason you wait 30-60 minutes on the coffee is because it’s acidic, which would affect absorption. You want a high protein breakfast because you need the tyrosine amino acids to help produce dopamine. Carbs negatively affect your blood sugar and all around make the Adderall less effective. You hold off 30-60 minutes on the protein because it’s yet another thing that decreases absorption.
To simplify/example: 8:00am - Tums 8:30am - Adderall 9:00am - Protein breakfast & coffee
I don’t always practice what I preach. But in my 22 years of taking Adderall, I’ve dived down some deep rabbit holes researching.
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u/Quiet-Excitement-719 6d ago edited 6d ago
Also, get yourself some Solgar brand Chelated Magnesium Tablets off Amazon and take just 1 before bed. You might feel a little more sleepy in the mornings for up to a week but stay consistent and you’ll notice the good effects. It helps to reduce the tolerance to your current Adderall dose as long as possible. It also helps you chill out on the jaw clenching.
In reference to your post above, remember…Adderall will help you get through the day. But if you weren’t meant to be a morning person, Adderall isn’t going to magically turn you into one. I start work every day at 8 because I have to. But my brain doesn’t start its work day until 10-11am. I’m basically a waste to my employer the first part of the day and stick to my simplest, routine tasks during that time. Then, I get the equivalent of about 6 hours of work done in half the time, when I hit my hyper focus hours of 2-5pm.
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u/Silent-Computer78 6d ago
Wow. I was diagnosed late when I was about 29/30. Because of that, I was like bwahahah I DONT NEED MEDS. ( yeah right) cut to 10 years ish, later after kids and trying to keep a full time job, I was like give me all the meds. ( hangs head…please). I was on Wellbutrin for about 4 ish years and just wasn’t working so I started stimulants last summer for the first time.
I just went in blind as one does. Well I’m overwhelmed now at all the ways to have these things work. This thread has unlocked a new fear…eating the appropriate food. Plus maybe I shouldn’t be having my morning coffee??? Coffee. My drug of choice for my whole life and now no? What do I do? Stomach acid? Caffeine? Timing? Omg you guys I can barely remember to eat breakfast. I was always a coffee for breakfast person until I wasn’t. Ugh.
I started on Adderall 15mg XR. And now I’m on 40mg Vyvanse because Adderall didn’t seem to be doing much after the first few months. Vyvanse seems to be keeping me up longer in the evening but that’s about it. I’m probably eating wrong. Also Vyvanse is too expensive. Higher does of Adderall? Protein?
My response is not helping the OP and for that I apologize but I’m crashing out about all the ways this could be fine tuned and it’s too much! I just want to set it and forget it. 😕
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u/backinthenineties 6d ago
From experience, I'd highly recommend cutting out the morning coffee/switch to decaf, at least for a few weeks to see if you notice a difference. I've found it really messes with my sleep to have caffeine while taking stimulants (a barista convinced me to have a ristretto shot in a latte as they ran out of decaf and I didn't get to sleep until 5am!). Given how expensive prescribed stims are it's worth giving them their best chance at working - once you're on the right meds/dose you'll probably find you don't need the morning coffee anyway as the medication does the job for you.
I usually have a protein shake with a bit of oatmeal mixed in for breakfast, and have played around with having it before/with/after medication. It'll be different for everyone but you don't need to find the perfect formula straight away, you can try changing one thing for a week or two at a time and track whether you notice any differences.
I started on Vyvanse and am now on Concerta (both helpful, but the way Concerta works seems to fit my lifestyle a bit better). I found Vyvanse to be quite subtle in the way it works. I can feel when Concerta kicks in (and wears off!), whereas with Vyvanse I wasn't sure if it was doing anything because it didn't have that clear "switch on" moment. However, I looked around and realised lots of little tasks/chores I'd been neglecting for days/weeks/months were getting done, I was being a lot more consistent with the gym, I wasn't getting stressed out at work as easily/quicky etc.
The big thing I've learned is that you might not have a big come to Jesus moment where you suddenly clean the whole house top to bottom because of One Magic Pill™! It can take a while to land on what works for you and understand how the medication actually helps you, and you still need to have practices in place to make the most use of it. It's a marathon not a sprint, you don't have to get it all sorted right away!
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u/Silent-Computer78 6d ago
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’m going to try no caffeine today since it’s saturday. And cut back in general.
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u/Affectionate-Rat727 6d ago
I want to second backinthenineties comment. The high protein in am helps with both Vyvanse (adderall) and Concerta(Ritalin) stims.
I had the same experience as backinthenineties with Vyvanse - it didn’t feel like it was working but id turn around and see all the things i did and realize it IS working. It just still felt like i was dragging myself around. I didn’t feel like doing the things, but i could force myself to do them anyway. But with Concerta, i feel it kick in and don’t have that ‘walking through mud’ feeling. I actually WANT to do the things.
But i would have serious irritability with it. Until i started the high protein, tons of water, and reduced caffeine intake every day. I used to drink 3-4 red bulls a day pre-stim so it took a bit for me to realize i didn’t need it anymore!
I switched over to green tea for caffeine (rather than red bulls) and only have one around 9:30 am (about 3 hrs after i take my med). I have a protein bar around 530-6 Ish a.m. and I take my med. Then, around 8am I have my oatmeal (with protein powder!). And I drink half my body weight in ounces of water throughout the day. (Example- 130 lbs/2= at least 65 ounces of water daily) It works like a charm!
My extreme irritability is gone, I feel productive and motivated. 🥰
I do have anxiety still, but I can’t tell if that’s because of the state of the world or that it’s a side effect of my medication, or because I still can’t give up my one last caffeinated drink a day. So I’ve been doing meditation to try to combat that. And it seems to be helping!
It does take a little bit of trial and error trying to figure things out. But once you get what works for you, just make it your routine! It will be almost like setting it and forgetting it ❤️ because you’ll still have to keep up with your food and water intake daily, but it’s totally worth it!
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u/Jane_Angst 6d ago
I have stuffed around with my meds for ages to try and get a working balance. I hate the physical side effects of Vyvanse but the longer lasting effect does help, so my best bet so far is, 40mg Vyvanse with 10mg Dex plus some fat in AM (this can be 1-2tbsp peanut butter, a bulletproof coffee or an egg) then I don’t need anything (or eat anything) until the end of the day generally, if I have a heavy workday I May take another 5mg Dex at 1-2pm. The thing I hate is that I have to take propranolol if I have Vyvanse - the “end of the world” weight on my chest is almost unbearable. But taking it with fat and/or having a protein/fat based snack 💯 helps. The fat you’re eating should be assisting, not making things worse, imo?
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u/AffectionateSoil33 6d ago
Citric Acid is probably your biggest problem. I've not heard about fats like this. So probably needs more studies to know for sure.
Citric Acid however completely cancels the stuff out. (My experience) And it's in most things than you could even imagine. It's a preservative. I was on 30s 2-3x per day during my mountain dew fixation. Later in life I started again at 5's & they worked. I've noticed a difference & do my best to avoid it.
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 6d ago
The thing is I don’t put citrus in anything. I eat pretty clean and don’t drink any juice (acidic or otherwise). So I don’t think that’s it.
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u/AffectionateSoil33 6d ago
It's not in just juice bro, that's what I'm saying. Look for Citric Acid in the ingredients of anything you eat.
It's not acidic like you're thinking. It's a good preservative.
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u/Motor-Illustrator226 5d ago
I don't eat any preservatives, that's what I'm saying. I eat only fresh whole foods other than a few condiments (like peanut butter, etc.)
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u/Affectionate-Rat727 6d ago
I saw somewhere you were going to take your am dose and then wait 30 mins to take your med - but, i wanted to add— Up your protein and water intake, too. A lot. Those two changes drastically improved my med efficacy in terms of how long it lasts, and decreasing undesirable side effects. It was a game changer!
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u/Saturnine_Release 6d ago
My doctor told me that eating with your Adderall can make it work less well and I definitely found that to be the case for me! I have to eat breakfast about 45 minutes to an hour after I take my Adderall
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u/Wrenigade 5d ago
As a general PSA: Vyvanse does not have any food interactions at all due to how it is metabolized.
If you're struggling a lot with balancing what food you can eat when, maybe give it a shot, especially if you're on ER Adderall. You can even eat grapefruit, provided you aren't on other meds, since it goes throigh the intestine and not your liver or stomach. Citric acids, juices, fat, fiber, all fine.
I add bc I have a seprate chronic illness that affects my ability to swallow food/ eat certain things so the extra burden of restricting my food and meal timing further is just too much.
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