Research Recap with Skye: Circadian Rhythm

Summary

Hacking Your ADHD

Episode: Research Recap with Skye: Circadian Rhythm

Host: William Curb
Guest: Skye Watterson
Date: June 5, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this Research Recap, William Curb is joined by Skye Watterson to discuss a perspective paper titled "ADHD as a Circadian Rhythm Disorder: Evidence and Implications for Chronotherapy." The conversation explores how circadian rhythm dysfunction manifests in people with ADHD, the latest research on sleep/wake cycles, and practical interventions like light therapy and melatonin supplementation. The episode is conversational yet evidence-driven, focusing on real-life implications and actionable strategies for listeners with ADHD.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

What is a Perspective Paper? (01:21–02:44)

• William and Skye explain the difference between a "perspective" paper and other academic articles.
  • Perspective papers synthesize and critically review existing literature without conducting new research or meta-analysis.
  • They are "academically rigorous" and evidence-based, unlike opinion blogs.
  • Quote:
    "It's like an opinion piece, but it's not like a blog article. Like, everything has to be evidence based. It has to be grounded and supported by existing scientific literature." — William Curb (02:30)

ADHD and Circadian Rhythm: What's happening? (02:44–05:38)

• ADHD brains often show specific, identifiable differences in sleeping patterns.

• Neurological and behavioral evidence supports a unique relationship between ADHD and sleep.

• Delayed Melatonin Production:

  • For people with ADHD, melatonin onset is delayed by ~45 min in children and ~90 min in adults.
  • This delay leads to difficulty winding down and falling asleep at “socially normal” times.
  • Quote:
    "When everyone else is getting ready to go to sleep, we're not feeling those same hormones going through our bodies." — William Curb (03:46)

• Daytime Sleepiness:

  • Some studies show unusually high melatonin levels during the day in children with ADHD.
  • This may explain persistent daytime sleepiness, independently of previous sleep quantity.
  • Skye draws connections to prior episodes discussing this phenomenon.

Evolutionary & Behavioral Theories (05:47–06:34)

• Skye suggests evolutionary reasons for different sleep cycles:
  • "Maybe, and I have no idea, some people are evolved to have different watch and sleep cycles...It makes sense that you'd want to take an afternoon nap because you stayed up later." (05:47)
• In a free-choice environment (no schools/work), people with ADHD might naturally settle into later sleep and nap patterns.

Chronotherapy Interventions (Light & Melatonin) (06:34–08:08)

• Light Therapy:

  • Morning light exposure can help reset the circadian clock for ADHD brains.
  • William highlights the effectiveness of light therapy in shifting melatonin timing.

• Melatonin Supplementation:

  • Lower doses (0.5 mg) are most effective; over-the-counter options often overdosed (5 mg+) are less effective and possibly counterproductive.
  • OTC melatonin can vary in actual dosage.
  • Quote:
    "They were looking at 0.5 milligrams. You might see something that's like 5 milligrams of melatonin. That's way too much. It's not gonna work and it's gonna be less effective than taking a lower dose." — William Curb (07:06)

• Personal Experiences:

  • William uses a 1mg supplement and finds it helpful ("I do find that it helps me..."). (07:55)
  • Skye, as a mother of young children, doesn't need melatonin—her kids wear her out! (08:08)

Light Hygiene & Routine Adjustments (08:21–11:23)

• Protecting Your Circadian Rhythm:

  • Minimize light exposure at night—especially overhead lights; maximize daylight exposure in the morning.

  • Simple home modifications (dimmer switches, turning off overheads) can impact sleep readiness.

  • Skye uses alarms to remind her to turn off bright lights, and finds the family is calmer and sleeps better as a result.

  • Quote:
    "I am a big proponent of like, turning off all the overhead lights at a certain time. I have an alarm that goes off and I try to turn off all the overhead lights at that point. And I find that's really helpful..." — Skye Watterson (09:07)

  • Even overcast daylight outside is much brighter (in lux) than indoor lights—helpful for setting circadian rhythm.

    • William: "My Washington state super overcast days out in the morning, I like, pop out my like, Lux meter. I'm like, that is still plenty of light." (09:56)

  • The act of engaging in light-related routines may itself (ritual, not just light level) help cue sleep.

  • Dimming lights in the evening can induce sleepiness rapidly, more so than full darkness (which feels "expected").

    • *"I don't know how dimming the lights makes me so sleepy sometimes, but I'll just be like, oh, now it's dim and I want to go to sleep." — William Curb (10:41)

  • Skye notes practicalities: she loves using lamps instead of overhead lights—unless her kids break them. (11:16)

Paper's Practical Recommendations & Final Thoughts (11:23–12:00)

• The perspective paper argues for "chronotherapy" (manipulating light exposure, strategic melatonin) as an effective, evidence-based strategy for managing circadian rhythm issues in ADHD.
• Parents may notice their ADHD kids have different (often later) sleep/wake patterns—this is normal and biologically based.
  • Quote:
    "So if you didn't know that and you were just wondering why your kids are waking up at 8 o'clock like mine and everyone else's kids are waking up at 6 o'clock, that might be why." — Skye Watterson (12:00)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's like an opinion piece, but it's not like a blog article. Like, everything has to be evidence based." — William Curb (02:30)
• "When everyone else is getting ready to go to sleep, we're not feeling those same hormones going through our bodies." — William Curb (03:46)
• "Maybe...some people are evolved to have different watch and sleep cycles...you'd also be somebody who'd want to take an afternoon nap because you'd be tired because you stayed up later." — Skye Watterson (05:47)
• "They were looking at 0.5 milligrams...5 milligrams of melatonin—that's way too much." — William Curb (07:06)
• "Turning off all the overhead lights...is really helpful with going to bed as a family" — Skye Watterson (09:07)
• "My Washington state super overcast days out in the morning...that is still plenty of light." — William Curb (09:56)
• "I don't know how dimming the lights makes me so sleepy sometimes, but I'll just be like, oh, now it's dim and I want to go to sleep." — William Curb (10:41)

---

Useful Timestamps

• 01:21 — Episode intro, research recap, what is a perspective paper?
• 03:46 — Explanation of delayed melatonin onset in ADHD
• 05:38 — Link between daytime sleepiness and melatonin
• 06:34 — Light therapy and melatonin interventions
• 07:06 — Melatonin dosage warning
• 09:07 — Light hygiene strategies at home
• 09:56 — The real brightness of daylight vs. indoor lights
• 10:41 — Impact of dim lights on sleepiness
• 12:00 — Practical context for parents and wrap-up

---

Final Takeaways

• There is strong, evidence-based support for the concept that ADHD is linked to disrupted circadian rhythms, notably delayed melatonin production and altered sleep patterns.
• Chronotherapy—using morning light exposure and low-dose melatonin at the right times—can help correct these rhythms.
• Light hygiene, both in the evening (dim/turn off lights) and morning (get sunlight, even on cloudy days), is crucial.
• ADHD brains may need different sleep/wake routines: it's biological, not just behavioral.

This episode provides a science-backed, yet practical guide to understanding and managing circadian rhythm issues in ADHD, with actionable steps and real-world advice.

Transcript

[Progressive/ZipRecruiter Ad Voice]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states.

[Jake Grez (Nurse Jake)]

Hi, I'm Jake Grez, also known as Nurse Jake. As a travel nurse, I've worked in all kinds of places, different settings, cities and climates. Every assignment brings on a new challenge, which is why I always bring my figs. These scrubs are built for whatever the job throws at you. They're breathable, flexible and comfortable in any environment. No matter where I land, I know they're going to keep me looking and feeling my best. And don't sleep on the details. The pockets, the features, the finishing touches. Everything has a purpose and it makes a real difference when you're moving non stop. The fit is clean, tailored and super polished and they come in a huge range of colors. In other words, they feel great throughout a 12 hour shift and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram. If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out FIGS and get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wherefigs.com code FIGSRX.

[William Curb]

Welcome to Hacking youg adhd. I'm your host William Curb, and I have adhd. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today I'm joined by Sky Watterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called ADHD as a Circadian Rhythm Disorder Evidence and Implications for Chronotherapy. Now, this is a perspective paper looking at the available research on circadian rhythm dysfunction in ADHD and what works for correcting some of that dysfunction. So as we get into it, I think a great place for us to start is to talk about what a perspective paper is because it's a little different than what we usually take on.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah, I mean, the biggest difference is that this is not a paper that has a method section or results section. It's not. Well, it kind of is examining a bunch of different papers, but it's not doing it in that meta analytical way. Instead it's, it's, yeah, Looking at the accumulated evidence.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And it's like an opinion piece, but it's not like a blog article. Like, everything has to be evidence based. It has to be grounded and supported by existing scientific literature. So it's a more rigorous opinion.

[Sky Watterson]

Yes, exactly. I will say I didn't know that blog pieces weren't that, which is probably why I ended up being read a lot when I started writing my articles. Because, yeah, this is, this is what you would expect. It's, it's an academically rigorous article, basically. So they, they really looked at this idea of, okay, what is happening with ADHD and sleep? Because for those of you who don't know, there is something happening with ADHD and sleep. If you're like, my sleep is strange and people don't, you know, I've noticed it. Maybe you haven't said it, maybe you just assume it's a bad week, bad day, bad life. But in reality, there are some very specific differences that we can see in people who have ADHD and how they sleep, both on a behavioral level, but also on a more of a neurological level and what they're seeing in that. So do you want to take us through what some of those are?

[William Curb]

So naturally for humans, when things get dimmer, we start developing melatonin. This is just like, this is what the circadian rhythm is. It's our connection with the sun, our 24 hour clock, and it is often set by light. And so they found that with ADHD, that's delayed for us by 45 minutes in children, about 90 minutes in adults, which is a huge deal. When everyone else is getting ready to go to sleep, we're not feeling those same hormones going through our bodies.

[Sky Watterson]

In fact, anecdotally, I've heard from a lot of clients and experienced it myself. We can have a second wind. Yeah,

[William Curb]

yeah. Because one of the things to understand about a circadian rhythm is it's, you know, like this energy level going up and down throughout the day. It's also related to ultradian rhythms, which are like 90 minute cycles. Having your circadian rhythm off and does not necessarily mean your other bodily rhythms are going to be off too. So you can have energy when you're supposed to be asleep.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And they also found, so they found different sleep issues. So with the melatonin, they also noticed that some studies found abnormally high levels of melatonin during the day in children with adhd. And I thought that was really interesting because a previous episode, you and I had talked about the idea of daytime sleepiness. And now what we're seeing is some real physical evidence that daytime sleepiness is occurring, which feels a bit chicken and egg because in that article that we listed we read before, that wasn't part of the conversation. It was just like, is it that they didn't get enough sleep the day before, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah.

[William Curb]

But if it's specifically that your circadian rhythm is off. Yeah, that explains a lot of that effect.

[Sky Watterson]

And let's, let's, let's break this down for a second because like, if you think about this just as a rational way. Right. Let's say maybe, and I have no idea, some people are evolved to like be, have different watch and sleep cycles. You know, for whatever reason, if you were somebody who stayed up later, as a general rule, for whatever reason, it makes sense that you would also be somebody who'd want to take an afternoon nap because you'd be tired because you stayed up later. So it's weird that in a world where we take out the school, we take out the work, we just let people do whatever feels natural for them. People with ADHD would still be getting enough sleep because they'd be sleeping in the afternoon and staying up later in the evening.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Now with that in mind, they also did talk a lot about light therapy and its effect on this melatonin release and how that was incredibly effective at helping move you back into the right circadian rhythm.

[Sky Watterson]

Yes, exactly, exactly. So they were looking at light therapy in the morning and then obviously the melatonin like supplements as well as two things that could be very, very helpful.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And just a note, for people that are considering melatonin supplements, less is better. They were looking at 0.5 milligrams. I, you know, if you go into the grocery store, you might see something that's like 5 milligrams of melatonin. That's way too much. It's not gonna work and it's gonna be less effective than taking a lower dose. Interesting. Also, there is other studies that show that just getting like, you know, the over the counter melatonin can be really hit or miss on your dosage. So.

[Sky Watterson]

Interesting. I was going to ask if you've ever taken melatonin supplements, because I haven't and I do know people who have, but I haven't really heard a lot about the effects. So this was an interesting study for me to kind of get to grips with what this looks like.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I take a like 1mg supplement going to bed and I do help find that it helps me, like, get in. I don't know if it's actually the melatonin or the ritual, but.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah, interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I have three children, four and under, so I don't need melatonin to go to sleep.

[William Curb]

Something that we really do need to consider is, you know, when we're thinking about the sleep effects and stuff, and specifically with circadian rhythm is are we doing things that are hurting our circadian rhythm or not?

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah.

[William Curb]

And specifically a lot of the, like, light exposure late at night versus actually getting like sunlight in the morning or using a light therapy machine, although those are expensive and you can sometimes just use. You can get like an app on your phone that will like measure light output of something because it's measured in lux. And then you can figure out, hey, is this actually really bright or is this, you know, just. I feel like it's really bright.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. And I will say, I, I, yeah, I don't do the melatonin, but I am a big proponent of like, turning off all the overhead lights at a certain time. I have an alarm that goes off and I try to turn off all the overhead lights at that point. And I find that's really helpful with going to bed as a family, even if we're not going to bed right now. And quite frankly, maybe the TV's still even on if everything is, everything is turned off, all the overhead lights are turned off, and then we tend to keep our TV on quite dim just in general. And then the next day. Yeah, going outside and standing outside in the morning, even if it's not a super sunny day, it's still a lot brighter in terms of lux than you think it is. I do think those things have helped so much.

[William Curb]

Bright, like even like a. My Washington state super overcast days out in the morning, I like, pop out my like, Lux meter. I'm like, that is still plenty of light.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah, yeah. It just doesn't feel. It's not the same energy, but, but, but it's funny. I, I do feel a bit like you. I'm like, I'm not sure if it's working or if it's the ritual because again, with adhd, it's all like, it's now or it's not now. And if I'm outside in the morning and the birds are like doing their thing or I'm turning off the lights in the evening, it is, it is very much part of the routine and the ritual which is so important for ADHD as well.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Yeah. Another thing for evening light, too, is I've put some, like, dimmer things on some of the lights in my house.

[Libsyn Ads Voice]

And

[William Curb]

I don't know how dimming the lights makes me so sleepy sometimes, but I'll just be like, oh, now it's dim and I want to go to sleep. I'm very, very sleepy now.

[Sky Watterson]

It is true. It's true. And then sometimes, occasionally someone will turn on an overhead light and I'm like, what did you do for hours?

[William Curb]

What's funny, too, like, having all the lights off. Not. Not a huge aspect of making me really sleepy because I'm like, it's darkness. I expect it to be dark.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah.

[William Curb]

Really dim. My body's like, oh, it's slow down.

[Sky Watterson]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of, like, lamps and things if the kids can't break them, which is always a problem.

[William Curb]

Some things just to mention with this paper. So, again, it's perspective paper. This is not. There's nothing being measured in this paper or anything. It's just looking at the science that's available. But it does have, you know, a fairly compelling argument that doing some chronotherapy things, light exposure, melatonin, other aspects of, like, trying to affect your circadian rhythm, is an effective way to help treat some of this circadian rhythm disorder that is parent with adhd, and also the

[Sky Watterson]

fact that it is parent with adhd. So if you didn't know that and you were just wondering why your kids are waking up at 8 o' clock like mine and everyone else's kids are waking up at 6 o', clock, that might be why. Hello, everyone. If you have enjoyed listening to this episode, then you might like to listen to my podcast, the ADHD Skills Lab, where we go and deep dive into more of the research. And also we focus on ADHD support for business owners. Whether you're aspiring or you have your own company, and if you have your own company and you wish that you had somebody who would just build these systems for you so you could stop figuring out what to do all the time. Well, that's what we do. We are mentor and operator together. So if you want to learn a little bit more about that, you can find me at unconventional organization. Thanks for listening.

[Progressive/ZipRecruiter Ad Voice]

Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. Which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. Its powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, ZipRecruiter finds you what you're looking for. The needle in the Haystack.

[William Curb]

See why 4 out of 5 employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get

[Progressive/ZipRecruiter Ad Voice]

a quality candidate within the first day. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip that's ZipRecruiter.com Zip ZipRecruiter.com Zip Marketing is hard,

[Libsyn Ads Voice]

but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to Libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.