Side Effects of ADHD Medication

Children with ADHD may benefit from stimulant drugs, but some may have negative side effects.

When your child is taking ADHD medication and experiencing side effects, it usually indicates that they are not taking the recommended dosage, the medicine is entering their body too slowly or too quickly, or the recommended course of treatment is not being followed.

Adjusting the medication’s dosage or formulation can frequently minimize or completely eradicate adverse effects. However, if they still cause issues for your child, your doctor will consider other options.

Common side effects and remedies for drugs used to treat ADHD include:

Problems when you sleep:

These can improve with time, and certain drugs may be helpful.

Decreased eating: Your youngster can forget to take their medication on weekends and throughout the summer.

Slowly but steadily:

They will catch up after starting the medication, probably a year from now.

Headache and stomach aches:

These typically fade gone in a few weeks, and it helps to take the prescription with food.

Try a new prescription, cut back on the dosage, or start 30 minutes early if you are easily agitated by drugs that wear off.

Tics: The physician treating your child may experiment with a different stimulant or drug.

Changes in mood and agitation

It is possible that your youngster needs to take a different drug or stimulant.

Discuss any possible adverse effects your kid may experience with your doctor.

While certain children may find great relief from the symptoms of ADHD when using stimulant drugs, there are also undesirable or uncomfortable side effects. We make an effort to adjust your child’s medication schedule, release formula, or dosage when side effects occur. Finding the optimal course of action that will benefit him the most and have the fewest negative impacts is the aim.

The primary concerns to be aware of are:

diminished hunger

delayed expansion

stomachaches and headaches

Rebound: pain following a dose of medication.

tics

Mood swings and agitation

Before your child starts the medicine, we need to know his baseline in order to properly examine the side effects. For example, some children with ADHD have complete difficulty going asleep. Some children with ADHD are naturally very finicky eaters.

Acknowledging pre-existing concerns can help prevent difficulties from being attributed to medicine.

There are two key elements to side effects.

Achieving the optimal dosage is necessary to minimize negative effects. Dopamine and norepinephrine are the two neurotransmitters in the brain that are elevated by stimulant medicines. When your child receives the proper amounts of norepinephrine and dopamine, he will be extremely focused. However, eating too much could tax his brain and have unfavorable side effects.

It is important to recognize that there are two types of ADHD medications, each of which is generated from a different stimulant:

Methylphenidate-containing drugs include Ritalin, Methylin, Concerta, Metadate, and Daytrana Patch; dextroamphetamine-containing drugs include Adderall, Vyvanse, and Dexedrine.

Different youngsters react differently to those two categories of drugs. Some people may react differently to even the same fundamental prescription provided in differing release formulas, which alter how rapidly the medication enters the circulation. Formulations that are instantaneously released and have a short half-life last for four hours.

The maximal half-life of long-acting formulations is 14 hours, and the medication is released gradually. For this reason, we frequently experiment with switching medications and formulas when kids encounter unwanted side effects.

problems falling asleep

If your child takes medication that keeps them up at night, this is because the medication works during the night. It’s possible that he’s taking a second or third dose of a short-acting formula too late in the day, which would explain why the effects haven’t worn off by sleep. Try getting him to switch to a less long-acting drug if he takes one that lasts 12 or 14 hours.

Let your child take his medication for four to six weeks and see whether it helps him sleep; most children with drug-induced sleep disorders get better with time.

Furthermore, children who overexcite themselves before bedtime—usually by using the computer—may have trouble falling asleep. They can be sleeping because of their ADHD if the medication’s effects have worn off.

To treat sleep issues, you can also try the following medications: melatonin has its uses. Benadryl was a widely used drug ten years ago. It was not, however, meant to cause children to feel drowsy and less attentive than they ought to have been the next day.

eating disorders

Meals-related issues may arise from extended-release drugs. Four hours after ingestion, these substances peak. Some children who take the medication first thing in the morning report feeling less peckish at lunchtime.

Encouraging your child to eat whenever he feels hungry is one way you can help. Before the drug takes effect and at the end of the day when it is beginning to wear off, he can have a substantial meal.

If your child’s medicine use is a significant issue, switching to immediate-release tablets that wear off by lunchtime or taking breaks from medication on weekends or vacations may be helpful.

postponed growth

When taking stimulant medicine, some children, especially boys, grow more slowly, especially in the first year. However, the data indicates that they catch up and achieve the anticipated growth by the second and third year. Moreover, boys who skipped the medicine on weekends and over the summer did not exhibit the same decline in growth throughout the first year.

nausea and headaches

After taking medicine, these issues usually go away in a few weeks. You can reduce your child’s medication intensity if they take it with food and, in certain situations, if the dosage or timing is adjusted.

Heal

Some parents tell me, “I know it’s going to happen every day at 4:30,” while other times they report that their child acts out and gets extremely agitated after the medication wears off; this behavior is known as the “rebound effect.”

This is because the drug is vanishing from the brain’s receptors too soon. If your child experiences rebound, you might want to think about starting a lower dose 30 minutes before the usual rebound occurs. This will help your child wean off the medication more gradually.

Rebound might occasionally indicate that the dosage needs to be lowered due to an excessive amount. It may also mean that your child’s body isn’t responding well to this specific prescription; in that case, we should try another drug or combination.

Finally, we want to consider the possibility that infants who recover may have another issue. Individuals who have underlying mood or anxiety disorders may decide not to take their ADHD medication. We don’t want to overlook anything else that might present issues.