21: Navigating the ADHD Medication Maze ft. Kelly Brändli
Demystifying ADHD Medication: Stimulants, Non-Stimulants, and Lifestyle Changes
Guest Kelly Brändli, an ADHD and relationship coach, discusses ADHD medication, covering the differences between stimulants and non-stimulants, and the importance of finding the right medication and dosage. Visit https://sofrickinhealthy.com/episodes/kelly-brandli for more information and resources.
00:00 Introduction
00:35 Medication Types 101
00:39 Understanding ADHD Medication
02:00 Stimulants vs Non-Stimulants
05:56 Personal Experiences with Medication
10:24 Finding the Right Medication
12:29 Beyond the Pill
13:00 Non-Medication Strategies for ADHD
18:58 The Importance of Sleep
24:03 Conclusion and Next Steps
Mentioned in this episode:
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00:00 - Introduction
00:35 - Medication Types 101
00:39 - Understanding ADHD Medication
02:00 - Stimulants vs Non-Stimulants
05:56 - Personal Experiences with Medication
10:24 - Finding the Right Medication
12:29 - Beyond the Pill
13:00 - Non-Medication Strategies for ADHD
18:58 - The Importance of Sleep
24:03 - Conclusion and Next Steps
Speaker A
We're working you to death today.
Kelly Brandley
Hi there.
Kelly Brandley
I'm Kelly Brandley, and I'm today's guest on the so freaking healthy podcast.
Kelly Brandley
I'm an ADHD coach, a relationship coach, the mother of two boys with ADHD, and the partner of a late diagnosed man.
Kelly Brandley
On this episode, we're going to demystify ADHD medication, focusing on the pros, cons, and options beyond stimulants, which is a frequent concern for many with ADHD.
Speaker A
Hey, Kelly, we're back.
Kelly Brandley
Hey, Dana.
Kelly Brandley
Good to be back.
Speaker A
I'm excited about this next episode.
Speaker A
As our listeners can imagine, we're shooting these out on a weekly basis, but we've been here geeking out with you for the last couple of hours on ADHD, and we are touching the topic of medication today.
Speaker A
I'm super interested because I'm thinking of going back on the medication.
Speaker A
My kids are just about to start the medication, and I think a lot of people are interested when it comes to ADHD medication.
Speaker A
What is the difference?
Speaker A
I know there's stimulants and non stimulants.
Speaker A
How does a doctor decide what's right for you?
Speaker A
How do you decide what's right for you?
Kelly Brandley
Yes, let's unpack that.
Kelly Brandley
I want to start with my favorite quote about medication.
Kelly Brandley
It's from doctor Ed Hollywell, and it says, medication is the most powerful tool we have for ADHD that everyone is scared of.
Kelly Brandley
I experience this on a daily basis.
Kelly Brandley
I get so many questions about this, and sometimes it's, how do we avoid medication?
Kelly Brandley
There's horror stories around medication, and I think, I'm so excited to do this episode.
Kelly Brandley
Cause we get to unpack all these myths and false information, things that have been out in the media and people heard about back in the eighties, that is still in their minds today.
Kelly Brandley
I'm really excited for that.
Kelly Brandley
Let's start with medication.
Kelly Brandley
We have stimulants and non stimulants.
Kelly Brandley
Under stimulants, there's basically two different kinds of active ingredients.
Kelly Brandley
So we've either got methylphenidate, which is the brand name we know as ritalinous, and then we've got the other one, which is amphetamines, which we often know as Adderall.
Kelly Brandley
Those are the two active ingredients in stimulant medication.
Kelly Brandley
The last time I looked, there's about 29 different preparations and dosages.
Kelly Brandley
For a lot of people, it seems like there's this huge menu of medication.
Kelly Brandley
And the reason being that there's so many is because unlike a lot of other medication, which is dosed by your weight.
Kelly Brandley
With ADHD medication, people metabolize it so differently.
Kelly Brandley
So we have slow metabolizers, we have median, and we have really fast metabolizers.
Kelly Brandley
I think, Megan, in the first episode you mentioned I was taking like five milligrams of Ritalin and a kid was taking 50.
Kelly Brandley
It just may mean that his body metabolized it way faster than you did.
Kelly Brandley
Because ADHD medication is only in your body for a number of hours.
Kelly Brandley
Short acting is around four to six, and long acting can be ten to 16 hours, but at the end of the day, it's gone.
Kelly Brandley
This is a factor of why there's so many different options we have then.
Kelly Brandley
Non stimulants.
Kelly Brandley
The main difference between a stimulant medication and a non stimulant is people often think stimulants and they think, like, street drugs, they think of cocaine and they think of this stuff.
Kelly Brandley
The main difference is whether or not it stimulates dopamine in your brain or it stimulates norepinephrine or noradrenaline.
Kelly Brandley
Norepinephrine comes from dopamine.
Kelly Brandley
So it's like, does it hit the first line or the second line?
Kelly Brandley
And that's the difference.
Kelly Brandley
But people hear stimulant and it scares them, right?
Kelly Brandley
Because they're like, my child is hyperactive.
Kelly Brandley
I don't want to stimulate them.
Kelly Brandley
I want them to calm down.
Kelly Brandley
What they don't realize is actually stimulants in people with ADHD have a calming effect.
Speaker C
Yeah.
Kelly Brandley
The hyperactivity comes from trying to stimulate dopamine production by moving.
Speaker C
It was explained to me when I was much younger, the doctors tried to explain what was going on.
Speaker C
They basically said it's like your foot is on the gas pedal, or there's like a trigger in your brain that normal brains, when you get to the level, it would flip and slow you down.
Speaker C
For ADHD brains, that trigger has a much higher tolerance and it needs to go faster to slow down.
Speaker C
I thought that was a great way to say it because it explains why you would give a hyperactive child a stimulant.
Speaker C
And I think I talked about it in the last episode.
Speaker C
I self medicated with caffeine, where caffeine usually makes people hyper.
Speaker C
It just made me focused and calmer, actually, or at least the brain.
Speaker C
And I think that's a great way to say, it's like you just got to go faster to slow down.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah.
Kelly Brandley
I love the work of doctor Ed Holloway.
Kelly Brandley
He has a quote that says having ADHD is like having a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes.
Speaker A
Oh, that's epic.
Speaker A
I love it.
Kelly Brandley
The medication gives you breaks for the fast brain.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah, exactly.
Kelly Brandley
And we talked about the swinging door, the filter.
Kelly Brandley
It lets you close that door when needed.
Kelly Brandley
Right?
Kelly Brandley
That's where you need the breaks.
Speaker A
You're getting me excited about medication.
Kelly Brandley
I am excited about medication.
Kelly Brandley
I have seen medication play a really life changing role in my family's life and the lives of many families.
Kelly Brandley
I think of it oftentimes.
Kelly Brandley
It's like a key that can open the door to then doing the work of learning the skills and improving the executive functions.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker A
That is super interesting because I myself use marijuana self medication.
Speaker A
And it's funny because everyone that I talk to, they're like, what?
Speaker A
Really?
Speaker A
That stuff puts me to sleep.
Speaker A
And I'm like, no, I could not run three businesses if I didn't have.
Speaker A
It focuses me, and most people don't understand it, but again, I think it's the same as everything else.
Speaker A
That's how my brain works.
Speaker A
I think we talked about it in the first episode that we're more prone to get addicted to things.
Speaker C
Right.
Speaker A
Addictive personality and ADHD go hand in hand.
Speaker A
So it's also easier to find something that you use as a crutch.
Speaker A
And because it helps to a certain amount, you're like, okay, this is my new thing.
Speaker A
This is what I'm going to use now.
Kelly Brandley
When your body needs it, it needs the dopamine.
Kelly Brandley
It's going to find it, and it will find a way, and there's so many different ways that you can get the dopamine you need.
Kelly Brandley
I just wanted to touch on a point that you mentioned, which is why these things work so much differently in an ADHD brain versus a non adhd brain.
Kelly Brandley
We talked before about how you have a nerve impulse and dopamine transmits that impulse across the nerve.
Kelly Brandley
When you have ADHD, you have a limited amount of dopamine and you have more receptors than there are dopamine molecules to bind.
Kelly Brandley
So some kind of stimulant or other medication will bind to those.
Kelly Brandley
When you don't have ADHD, you have more dopamine than receptors.
Kelly Brandley
And so by taking a stimulant, all of a sudden you're flooding that synapse of that nerve with way more dopamine than there are receptors.
Kelly Brandley
What happens is it binds, it releases, it binds, it releases, and it just keeps going.
Kelly Brandley
That's why there's such a different response to things like caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, or cocaine.
Speaker C
So I mentioned in one of the previous episodes my experience taking medication, and I was waiting for this episode to go deeper about the effects.
Speaker C
When I was old enough to remember, I mentioned that when I was young, I had heart palpitations.
Speaker C
Like just my heart was beating out of my chest.
Speaker C
I also had muscle spasms, which we mitigated and managed.
Speaker C
We adjusted the dosage, adjusted the time between dosages, and it was fine.
Speaker C
However, when I was in high school, I had a lot of activities going on, extracurriculars.
Speaker C
I was in going to extra classes in the morning, so my day was packed.
Speaker C
One of the things I noticed with friends that had known me for a really long time, and I was taking my medication, they could always, always tell when I was on my medication, and they said, megan, you're not Meganehen, when you're on your medication, you are not bubbly, you're not funny, you're just super serious, and you're not your usual you when you're on your medication.
Speaker C
That was a huge thing for me in high school because I love being me.
Speaker C
I have really good self image, and I enjoy making people laugh and being a little bit of the center of attention.
Speaker C
That stuff went away.
Speaker C
So I actually stopped taking medication in high school.
Speaker C
And then I start, and it didn't seem to be much of a problem.
Speaker C
I got really good grades, I was in advanced classes.
Speaker C
I did everything I was supposed to do because I didn't have time to let myself go off course.
Speaker C
And then, as I mentioned, I went back on medication when I was in college because I just had to, because I had whole days with no classes, no structure whatsoever.
Speaker C
I'm bringing this up because the same doctor that, and his name escapes me.
Speaker C
The guy in Canada, he was talking about stimulant versus non stimulant medication, and about how sometimes certain stimulant medications can affect a certain part of the brain that does affect your affect, which is also parents with kids saying, my kid is not hyperactive anymore, but he just sits there like a blob.
Speaker C
I'm very curious now about this new medication that the non stimulant, which was not available when I was younger, that affects a different part of the brain and then how you might use both to make sure someone still is their own personality, the bubbly, wonderful personality that is an ADHD person that everybody knows is kind of the center of attention.
Speaker C
And how do they then how do you still focus as well?
Kelly Brandley
Absolutely.
Kelly Brandley
So just as kind of a baseline for this medication shouldn't change the person's personality.
Kelly Brandley
If it is, then it's likely the wrong medication or the wrong dose or the wrong timing.
Kelly Brandley
Like there's something that needs to be adjusted because the person should still be able to bring forward all those great characteristics and traits of who they are.
Kelly Brandley
Certainly people who become quiet or almost depressive.
Kelly Brandley
That's oftentimes it's an over dosage, and we need to go back.
Kelly Brandley
That's part of how you find the right dose.
Kelly Brandley
You have to go too high to realize that's too much to then come back down.
Kelly Brandley
That's a sign that the dosage is probably too high in terms of when stimulant or non stimulant.
Kelly Brandley
We know about 80% of people will respond to a stimulant and 20% won't.
Kelly Brandley
That 1st, 20% will try a non stimulant, and then it impacts different parts of the brain.
Kelly Brandley
The non stimulants tend to have a lot more impact on the affect, the mood, the emotional regulation side.
Kelly Brandley
And so what we'll see is people will do really well on that.
Kelly Brandley
So especially people that have more of an emotional dysregulation, ADHD, they'll find their emotions get well controlled with the non stimulant, but then they'll say, but I still can't focus.
Kelly Brandley
And so then what we'll do is we'll add in a stimulant in conjunction with that, and then we can kind of balance out both sides.
Kelly Brandley
But this is often a process of trial and error that you need to go through with your doctor discussing options and being very open about what the side effects are and what you like about the medication, what you don't like.
Kelly Brandley
And then having somebody who's very experienced with guiding people through that process can be valuable.
Kelly Brandley
Personally.
Kelly Brandley
My eldest tried six different types of medication.
Kelly Brandley
My youngest has tried four, and my partner tried six or seven and is now on the first one he tried.
Kelly Brandley
After trying all of them, he realized that was the one that suited him best.
Kelly Brandley
At the beginning, he didn't have that reference point, so that was interesting to see.
Speaker A
So we now know it's not only a huge process to get your diagnosis, then there's also a process behind finding what medication is right for you.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah, a lot of people give up really early.
Kelly Brandley
They try Ritalin and.
Kelly Brandley
And they say, oh, this does nothing, and they give up.
Kelly Brandley
It's really important to understand that it is a process, and it's not like taking something for a headache to say it worked or it didn't.
Speaker A
Knowing that it takes so long, it might take a good year to get the diagnosis.
Speaker A
It might take another few good months to get the medication right.
Speaker A
What are some non medication strategies or lifestyle changes that can help manage ADHD symptoms and how do they compare to medication?
Kelly Brandley
Okay, so I always think of it as a three legged stool.
Kelly Brandley
Medication is one of the legs.
Kelly Brandley
The other one is coaching and therapy, and then the third one is lifestyle management.
Kelly Brandley
Medication, I think is a really important aspect.
Kelly Brandley
All the people that I work with hear from me.
Kelly Brandley
I educate on it.
Kelly Brandley
Of course, it's always their decision if it's something they want to look into with their doctor.
Kelly Brandley
But I do really think medication is one of the most powerful tools we have.
Kelly Brandley
There's not a stigma if you have diabetes to take insulin because you need it.
Kelly Brandley
And I don't see medication for ADHD being anything different as we're giving a replacement of something that the body needs, that it is short in supply or lacking.
Kelly Brandley
There's been a lot of media creating negativity.
Kelly Brandley
There's a shortage in the US because a lot of college students are abusing stimulant medication.
Kelly Brandley
It works for them differently.
Kelly Brandley
They can stay up for two days and study when they're on stimulants.
Kelly Brandley
And so that's why there's this abuse of stimulant medication.
Kelly Brandley
But it works very differently in ADHD.
Kelly Brandley
It's unfortunate that they're not being able to get the help that they need because it is being abused, but that doesn't mean that an ADHD child given medication will abuse it.
Kelly Brandley
So we need to separate those two.
Kelly Brandley
Sure.
Kelly Brandley
And then I forgot the original question because I went off on a tangent there.
Speaker A
What are some non medication strategies or lifestyle changes that can help?
Kelly Brandley
So then the lifestyle changes.
Kelly Brandley
So we look at sleep, exercise and diet, managing your sleep and having a good sleep routine.
Kelly Brandley
I work a lot with people on setting a fixed bedtime, a fixed wake time, using daylight to stimulate your eye to help with your melatonin to fall asleep at night, and your cortisol to wake you up in the morning.
Kelly Brandley
Having strategies like using multiple alarms for people that struggle to get up in the morning to make sure that they're keeping this routine.
Kelly Brandley
Screen time is always a question for parents.
Kelly Brandley
Limit any kind of screen exposure 2 hours before bed.
Kelly Brandley
Blue light stimulates cortisol.
Kelly Brandley
It's the waking hormone, so we don't want to be stimulating that before bed.
Kelly Brandley
Having routines and rituals.
Kelly Brandley
Right.
Kelly Brandley
Like with young kids, we've always had the bedtime story that tends to fall away.
Kelly Brandley
What do you do with teens helping them get into their routine, which is maybe they have a snack, a shower and they read a book, they do some drawing, but that they have this ritual that gets them ready to sleep.
Kelly Brandley
Then daily exercise is super important.
Kelly Brandley
Exercise stimulates dopamine and it can do that for several hours.
Kelly Brandley
Absolutely.
Kelly Brandley
Whether it's getting out for a walk or doing an organized sport, building exercise into your life is important, but really hard for people with ADHD to do consistently.
Kelly Brandley
Having a buddy that holds you accountable for that, having strategies to make sure that you're doing that regularly.
Kelly Brandley
And then the big one is diet and supplementation.
Kelly Brandley
A lot of people advice from grandparents is don't feed your ADHD child sugar.
Kelly Brandley
They'll be bouncing off the walls.
Kelly Brandley
Some may, some may not.
Kelly Brandley
Sugar is actually an addictive stimulant as well.
Kelly Brandley
Right.
Kelly Brandley
We eat sugar because it helps release dopamine.
Kelly Brandley
It can lead to negative consequences and obesity being one of them, type two diabetes.
Kelly Brandley
But having a healthy diet is super important for everybody, as I'm sure you can attest to.
Kelly Brandley
But certainly with ADHD having the right balance, having enough protein and nutrients and making sure that it's not heavily overloaded with simple carbs and processed foods, there's a lot of talk and research about dyes and how they can affect people differently.
Kelly Brandley
Supplementation.
Kelly Brandley
There's no research that confirms that the supplementation is really helpful.
Kelly Brandley
But there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that omega three supplementation and magnesium supplementation are really helpful for people with ADHD, especially magnesium.
Kelly Brandley
At night to sleep, people also supplement with melatonin.
Kelly Brandley
In Switzerland, it's by prescription only.
Kelly Brandley
In most countries it's over the counter.
Kelly Brandley
People can do that in discussion with your doctor, of course, to help with getting regular sleep.
Kelly Brandley
Personal contact is also for people with ADHD.
Kelly Brandley
Often super important to be able to have that interaction with people because it makes us feel good and releases dopamine.
Speaker A
I also read yesterday that iron is typically low with ADHD, which is really interesting because my dad has been going loyally every single year.
Speaker A
He needs to get an iv and I have been getting an iv and that was kind of another light bulb going off.
Kelly Brandley
So iron is often supplemented for people with ADHD and most people who are in treatment will get tested for it every single year to make sure that they're getting enough.
Speaker C
It's interesting because we did another episode with Doctor Mary Pines, which this one will come out before that one, but it's about perimenopause and menopause.
Speaker C
And we do a couple episodes with Doctor Mary and we asked also the same question, you know what kind of perimenopause, menopausal.
Speaker C
Menopausal woman do what's like the number one thing they can do to help them.
Speaker C
And she's just like, sleep, sleep.
Speaker C
You need to sleep.
Speaker C
Every time we interview someone, whatever the problem is, the very first thing is always, you have to get enough sleep for your body to do all the things it's supposed to do.
Speaker C
And so, yeah, I just wanted to point that out because I feel like it needs to be pointed out.
Speaker C
Most of our problems could be solved with just really, really good sleep and consistently.
Speaker A
But having said that, a lot of ADHD people are struggling with quality of sleep or like, falling asleep.
Speaker A
I know it used to take me hours before I started with magnesium, before bed and gaba and things like that.
Speaker A
I would take two, 3 hours to fall asleep every single night.
Speaker A
And if I was woken up in the middle of the night by a bird, by a car, forget it.
Speaker A
There's another one or 2 hours to fall asleep.
Speaker A
So I have to say, to strengthen what you were saying, kelly, when I found my rhythm, I'm usually in bed at nine.
Speaker A
I wake up at five, sure, but I'm in bed at nine and I wake up naturally every single day at the same time.
Speaker A
That really did help to get into the rhythm of actually falling asleep and not just laying there.
Speaker A
I find for me that there is a time which for me is 10, 10 30, where if I'm still awake, my brain gets second wind and now I'm laying in bed and I'll be up until midnight just thinking.
Speaker A
Yeah, and it doesn't matter how tired I am.
Speaker A
So I think it's also important to just understand yourself a little bit better.
Speaker A
Test these out and see.
Speaker A
Yeah, sleep, man, sleep.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah, sleep.
Kelly Brandley
So a lot of people with ADHD have a circadian rhythm shift, so they're falling asleep and is shifted by several hours because they don't produce the same melatonin.
Kelly Brandley
They go to sleep later, so they become night owls.
Kelly Brandley
And then they've got this sort of semi plausible argumentation that will, I do my best work at night when everything's quiet and my mind are done, so I need to be up, which perpetuates that situation.
Kelly Brandley
I have some clients I work with where we've said, they said I can't sleep.
Kelly Brandley
And I said, well, try taking a short acting stimulant right before bed.
Kelly Brandley
And they're like, no, but it works because it calms the brain.
Kelly Brandley
Of course, never do this without talking to your doctor.
Kelly Brandley
Just to the disclaimer in there.
Kelly Brandley
But these are things about understanding yourself.
Kelly Brandley
If you've got that overstimulated brain that keeps you awake, calming it down can help, right?
Speaker C
Yeah, love it.
Speaker C
I think this definitely shows the different types of ADHD, because I am somebody who can go to sleep very quickly and I do not have voices in my head keeping me awake.
Speaker C
My husband does.
Speaker C
He gets very irritated when he hears me snore within 3 seconds of my head hitting the pillow.
Speaker C
And it's a joke.
Speaker C
It's like, oh, you want to cuddle?
Speaker C
I'm like, my head's on the pillow.
Speaker C
So you have literally a minute before I fall asleep.
Speaker C
But I noticed that if something happened that day, that I'm overanalyzing.
Speaker C
It doesn't happen often, but I tend to now have these little tricks in your pocket.
Speaker C
One is, of course, magnesium.
Speaker C
I definitely, definitely see a different.
Speaker C
It's in the quality of the deepness of my sleep when I take magnesium before I go to sleep.
Speaker C
But I also, if I need help, if my brain happens to be wandering around, I do one of those things where, you know, you just focus on like tightening your toes and then releasing, tightening your legs and releasing.
Speaker C
And I put the focus of this energy on doing something like that and or like literally like the counting sheep or whatever, right?
Speaker C
And I think that those are easy things.
Speaker C
You can try to help.
Speaker C
The last thing I'll say is, I heard this about melatonin recommendation on how to use melatonin.
Speaker C
A lot of people are using melatonin.
Speaker C
They think it's like a sleep aid.
Speaker C
Like, oh, I'm going to take it at 09:00 I'm going to go to sleep at ten or whatever.
Speaker C
The recommendation is actually just to take it 12 hours after you wake up in the morning.
Speaker C
So if you wake up at six, you should be taking your melatonin at 06:00 p.m.
Speaker C
if you want to shift your sleep cycle, it should be when you want to wake up in the morning, you should take it 12 hours before that.
Speaker C
And, and that is actually about the same time that your body should be naturally producing melatonin not half an hour before you lay down in bed.
Speaker C
It's not a drug.
Speaker C
It helps your body use the hormones and other things naturally go into cycle.
Kelly Brandley
I haven't heard the twelve hour, but it does make sense.
Kelly Brandley
In our eyes, we have receptors that set our night and day.
Kelly Brandley
Even people who are blind have the same receptors.
Kelly Brandley
Light coming in at the horizon stimulates cortisol and melatonin in our brains.
Kelly Brandley
And so around the time that the sun's setting in winter, that's much earlier in summer, that's much later when the sun is at the horizon.
Kelly Brandley
It stimulates melatonin production in our brains.
Kelly Brandley
That's why we often go to bed earlier in winter and stay up later in summer.
Kelly Brandley
This twelve hour window makes sense because after you've been up about 12 hours, that's when you want to start winding down and getting ready for bed.
Kelly Brandley
And it does take a couple of hours before your body then gets you into that sleep mode.
Kelly Brandley
And so taking it at 10:00 at night and then saying it keeps me up until 01:00 in the morning, that's kind of making sense because like you said, it's not a sleep aid in the sense that you take it, in 15 minutes, you'll be asleep, which a lot of people think it is.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah.
Speaker C
So on that note, we're recording this in the evening and quite getting close to Donna's bedtime.
Speaker A
My bedtime.
Speaker C
So I think we'll leave this episode here for the moment.
Speaker C
And then we have one more episode planned with you on tips and tricks and relationship hacks, which we will record a little bit later to give also.
Speaker A
Our audience later this week.
Speaker C
We will record at a different time, which hopefully will allow our listeners, if they have any questions about the three episodes we've produced, to comment on social media.
Speaker C
Send us a voicemail, send us an email if there's anything that you have.
Speaker C
Questions for Kelly.
Speaker C
We have one more episode, so we're going to have a little bit of time for you guys to get some questions in that we can get to Kelly on the last time we record with her on this topic.
Speaker C
So thanks, Kelly.
Speaker C
Again, this has been a wonderful couple of hours chit chatting with you.
Speaker C
I definitely feel seen today by you.
Speaker A
She's in tears.
Kelly Brandley
Yeah, now you're in tears, but they're laughter tears.
Speaker C
I think I'm so tired I'm going to crash tears.
Speaker C
All right, thanks, Kelly.
Kelly Brandley
Thanks so much.
Kelly Brändli
ADHD Coach
She has spent her adult life surrounded by ADHD, which has brought both excitement and challenges to her personal relationships. After her son, stepson, and partner were all diagnosed with ADHD, she became dedicated to helping others navigate these dynamics. Since 2019, she has been a relationship coach, and in 2024, she founded Sinaps to specialize in supporting adults and couples affected by ADHD. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she now lives in Zürich’s Zürioberland with her partner René and their two boys.
