Research Recap with Skye: Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind - Exercise for Kids with ADHD

Summary

Hacking Your ADHD – Episode Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Research Recap with Skye: Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind - Exercise for Kids with ADHD
Hosts: William Curb, Skye Waterson
Date: September 5, 2025

This episode of the "Hacking Your ADHD" podcast dives into a recent systematic review and meta-analysis examining how physical exercise affects anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation in children with ADHD. William Curb and guest expert Skye Waterson break down what these rigorous studies found, why the results matter, and how listeners can put scientific insights into practice. The discussion also touches on the realities and challenges of getting started with exercise—especially for people with ADHD.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why This Research Matters

• Meta-Analysis as "Almost Proof":
  • Skye emphasizes that while you can’t “prove” things in science, systematic reviews and meta-analyses are the gold standard for reliable evidence.

    “This paper is as close to proof as possible within this particular area... This is exactly what they found as possible, which I love.”
    — Skye Waterson (02:20)

• Specific Focus on ADHD:
  • The research intentionally excludes other conditions (autism, Tourette’s) to hone in on ADHD-specific effects.

    “We're not going to be looking at autism. We're not looking at Tourette System or other comorbid conditions with adhd. We're looking for papers that are specifically about ADHD so that we can really drill down, is this an effect for adhd?”
    — William Curb (05:47)

2. How the Research Was Done

• Systematic Review Process:
  • Used the PRISMA framework, a best practice for systematic reviews. The researchers started with thousands of studies, narrowing them down to just 18 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that met strict criteria.

    “They started with, you know what, like 7,000 from one place, 1,000 from another, like a massive amount of, of papers, and they ended up with just 18.”
    — Skye Waterson (04:37)

• Why RCTs Matter:
  • RCTs help avoid the pitfalls of subjective reporting and increase the reliability of findings.

    “Randomized controlled trials avoid a lot of the issues that you have with subjective analysis.”
    — Skye Waterson (04:59)

3. What Did the Research Find?

• Exercise Works:
  • The big takeaway: exercise improves anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation in kids with ADHD.

    “With this, they found that exercise worked. We have studies to prove that.”
    — William Curb (06:40)

• What Kind of Exercise Helps Most?
  • Mixing different types of activities is key—no “one size fits all.”
  • For Anxiety:
    • Mixed exercise (variety), moderate to high frequency, moderate intensity.
    • E.g., “Weightlifting and running, or doing sports” (06:59)
  • For Depression:
    • Mixed exercise, long-term, low frequency, moderate intensity—no need for daily routines.
  • For Emotional Regulation:
    • Mixed exercise, moderate to high frequency, lower intensity (e.g., walking).

    “I know works great for my emotional regulation where I'm like, oh, I'm upset, I'm gonna go for a walk. And then it comes back and I'm like, wow, I thought things through and I'm dumb.”
    — William Curb (08:18)

• Underlying Neuroscience:
  • Exercise aids the frontal lobe, activates dopamine pathways, and supports emotional well-being.

    “Exercise promotes frontal lobe function, development activates the prefrontal cortex, stimulates dopamine release, thereby fostering positive emotions, diminishing negative ones.”
    — Skye Waterson (08:55)

• Moderation Over Perfection:
  • No need for “all or nothing” or high-intensity regimens; small amounts and moderate intensities are beneficial.

4. Practical Takeaways—Realities for ADHD Brains

• Start Simple—Avoid Perfection Paralysis:
  • Many with ADHD can get stuck trying to find the “perfect” program, which delays action.

    “You think, not only am I going to start a new program, I'm going to start the best program there is.”
    — William Curb (09:38)

  • Overplanning leads to inaction.

    “I will exercise in about two months from now once I have all these pieces together. Also, I'm incredibly overwhelmed...”
    — Skye Waterson (10:05)

• Adaptability Matters:
  • If your space or routine isn’t ideal, improvise—take a walk, try in-home videos, or find alternatives if mobility is limited.

  • “Terrible idea. I can just go out for a walk and do stuff in my backyard...”
    — William Curb (10:30)

• Do What You Can:
  • Listeners are reminded that any movement helps, and modifications are valid.

    “Maybe you have something where you can't go for a walk. Well, then you could... There are things you can do even if you have limitations. So don't completely write off the idea.”
    — William Curb (11:54)

• Mental and Emotional Health Benefits:
  • Exercise isn’t just for ADHD symptoms—it supports broader emotional well-being.

    “This is going to help you not just with that, but also with the emotional side of your life.”
    — Skye Waterson (10:58)

5. Research Quality and Future Directions

• Why Meta-Analyses Stand Out:
  • They weed out poorly designed studies and focus on consistent, high-quality evidence.

    “By doing the meta analysis, we're like, we're looking at a lot of different papers...and then, yeah, from these 18 papers, we can find a significant result.”
    — William Curb (14:17)

• Room for More Research:
  • The hosts note that even with these 18 RCTs, more studies are welcome to refine knowledge.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the evidence standard (meta-analysis):
  • “This paper is as close to proof as possible within this particular area.”
    — Skye Waterson (02:20)
• On the “exercise perfection” trap:
  • “As you said, I need to find the best program. I need to get it fully set up, I need to get it fully implemented and then I'm going to do it. So don't ask me to exercise today. I will exercise in about two months from now once I have all these pieces together.”
    — Skye Waterson (10:05)
• On real-world accommodations:
  • “I have not been doing as much recently because the exercise space in my garage has stuff, boxes and other crap just all around it. And I'm like, when I get around to cleaning that I'll do more of my exercise program. Terrible idea. I can just go out for a walk.”
    — William Curb (10:30)
• On who benefits from exercise:
  • “Even if you don't have adhd, exercise is going to be good for all of these things. But we're seeing here it is especially good for people with ADHD, 100% according to randomized control trials.”
    — William Curb (13:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:09] Skye explains meta-analysis and the significance for ADHD research
• [05:47] William discusses the importance of ADHD-specific criteria in studies
• [06:40] Main findings—what works, for whom, and how
• [08:45] Discussion of neuroscience and why moderate exercise helps
• [09:38] William and Skye share realities of starting exercise (especially for ADHD brains)
• [10:58] Emotional health and “permission” to start small or adapt
• [13:00] Summarizing why this research matters for the ADHD community

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Summary Table: Quick Takeaways

| Symptom/Domain | Recommended Exercise Approach | Intensity/Frequency | |-------------------------|-------------------------------------|---------------------------------------| | Anxiety | Mixed types (variety) | Moderate intensity, moderate-high freq| | Depression | Mixed types | Moderate intensity, low freq, long-term| | Emotional Regulation | Mixed types | Lower intensity, moderate-high freq |

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides an evidence-backed case for making physical activity a central tool in managing ADHD-related anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation. William and Skye highlight both the science and the everyday challenges—encouraging listeners to start wherever they can, mix it up, and forget perfection. The message is clear: any movement matters, especially when done with ADHD-friendly flexibility and self-compassion.

Transcript

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[William Curb]

Welcome to Hacking your 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 Washington 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 Effects of Physical Exercise on Anxiety, Depression and Emotion Regulation in Children with Attention Hyperactivity Disorder Systematic Review and MENA Analysis. Yep, lots in there, but we're going to get into all of it, so don't worry. Before we get started, I do want to mention that this is still a new series, so we're going to be figuring out what works and what doesn't, and I'd love to hear what you think of it. So if you have any thoughts, head on over to hackingyouradhd.com contact and let me know. I appreciate all the feedback I've already gotten, and we've definitely got to work on some things to make sure they're a little bit more organized and so we'll see how that goes. We've been already implementing some of that and I'm sure you're gonna love it. New episodes of Research Recap come out every other Friday all right, let's get into it.

[Sky Washington]

Okay. I am super, super excited about this paper because this paper is a systematic review and a meta analysis of randomized controlled trials. I will tell you what all of that means, but what it essentially means is in the academic world, there's no such thing as proof. You can't prove anything. It's the first thing we learn. This paper is as close to proof as possible within this particular area, which means that the results of this paper are as close to take it to the map, use it. This is exactly what they found as possible, which I love. So, yeah. Do you have any other thoughts before we dive in? Will?

[William Curb]

Exercise is all I've written about exercise being a great thing for adhd. So based on probably studies that were included in this meta analysis, and it's something that I always am preaching to have people try and include more of, including to myself, because can be hard some days. I'm not saying this is an easy thing to do, but there is science behind it that says, yeah, you probably should.

[Sky Washington]

Yeah. And particularly for your mood, which I think is really interesting because we talk about it for your adhd. There's papers on working memory and exercise and things like that. And this one was particularly looking at anxiety, depression and emotional regulation. It's from 2025. So this is hot off the press. So how did they do this? I want to just dive a little bit into what a meta analysis systematic review is. Essentially, they did it in the official way. They used a PRISMA statement. So basically these papers take a long time. So usually what will happen is that they will put out a notice that they are doing this paper, please no one else try and do this paper, basically. And they will follow a very specific set of rules called prisma Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta analysis, which involves a really comprehensive literature search. They tell you exactly what they searched and then they have two researchers which just have their little initials who go through all of the papers together and identify which papers need to fit the inclusion criteria, which don't. I have done one of these papers before. I've been the person with the initial on a paper, so I know how much work that is. So shout out to them. And essentially what they did was they started with, you know what, like 7,000 from one place, 1,000 from another, like a massive amount of, of papers, and they ended up with just 18. So they exclude things like conference articles if age is not mentioned, if outcome indicators don't meet inclusion criteria, they do a full screen analysis of all These papers and they get the sort of top papers that discuss this idea of ADHD exercise, emotional dysregulation that fit the criteria. And then they look at those and those were all randomized controlled trials, which is really interesting because randomized controlled trials avoid a lot of the issues that you have with subjective analysis. So we just did another recording where we talked about the idea that they measured it based on kind of just what the parents thought about the kids. And that is not a randomized control trial.

[William Curb]

I would really. The inclusion criteria and the exclusion criteria on these papers I thought was really interesting. I especially appreciate this is a very focused thing on ADHD where they were like, yeah, we're not going to be looking at autism. We're not looking at Tourette System or other comorbid conditions with adhd. We're looking for papers that are specifically about ADHD so that we can really drill down, is this an effect for adhd?

[Sky Washington]

Yeah. And we're comparing it to controls, which is always great. And we're doing it in a randomized control trial way, which means that the intervention is being measured in a randomized way. So people don't know what they're getting, which, again, is very helpful. Just another layer of sort of consistency that you know that the results are pretty good. So what did they find, Will, what did they find?

[William Curb]

So they. The. We had 18 studies that were. That made the cut out of all those thousands of papers. And so they were looking for key results in how the exercise affected anxiety, depression and emotional regulation. So with this, they found that exercise worked. We have studies to prove that. So it wasn't more. A lot of this wasn't saying, hey, does this work or not? They were looking for kind of what works best in these scenarios. We know that exercise is good. What kind of exercises should you be doing? And so they broke this out into how different exercises affected the. The these different areas they were looking at. And so for if we're trying to work on anxiety, they found that using mixed exercises, so not just doing one kind of exercise, you'd be doing weightlifting and running or doing a couple different things to maybe doing sports could help with your anxiety. And they found that the best results for anxiety was a moderate to high frequency with low, like moderate intensity. So I could see something like pickleball. That sounds like something people would be like, moderately intense. I know some people take it very intense.

[Sky Washington]

I was like just thinking that when you said it, that's like, it depends on pickleball.

[William Curb]

Yeah. When I played, it was Moderate for depression. They found that a more long term thing with low frequency, moderate intensity, so that you're not really pushing yourself, you're doing it like over a long period, but not, doesn't need to be every day. That had the best results. There again, mixed. In fact, everything was mixed exercise. Nothing said, just do one exercise and you'll be happy. Mixing things up. And then with emotional regulation, mixed exercise and then doing moderate to high frequency with lower intensity, going for a walk, which I know works great for my emotional regulation where I'm like, oh, I'm upset, I'm gonna go for a walk. And then it comes back and I'm like, wow, I thought things through and I'm dumb. I shouldn't have been angry about this.

[Sky Washington]

So many problems have been solved on a walk. Honestly, it's a necessity for me. And if you guys want an annotated version of this paper, by the way, where I go through all the different details, you wanna ask me any questions, you can just DM me. Exercise at unconventional organization. More than happy to do that, more than happy to chat, but it was, it was a really cool paper. They also said exercise promotes frontal lobe function, development activates the prefrontal cortex, stimulates dopamine release, thereby fostering positive emotions, diminishing negative ones. So there was a lot of like, a lot of good reasons why this works as well as discussions about the moderate exercise, which is so nice, but because if they'd said it was high intensity interval training with weightlifting seven days a week, that would have been very annoying because I don't want to do.

[William Curb]

And I think it's also important, like any exercise is going to be good for all of these. Don't take the idea that you have to do what's most optimal, which I know is something a lot of times when you've got adhd, you think, not only am I going to start a new program, I'm going to start the best program there is.

[Sky Washington]

Oh yeah.

[William Curb]

And that can cause you to procrastinate because you're trying to find that best program and then find something that you don't want to do.

[Sky Washington]

Exactly. Closely followed by, as you said, I need to find the best program. I need to get it fully set up, I need to get it fully implemented and then I'm going to do it. So don't ask me to exercise today. I will exercise in about two months from now once I have all these pieces together. Also, I'm incredibly overwhelmed and I barely have time to do it. We've seen You. We talk to you all the time. We know and we live it.

[William Curb]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Oh, yeah.

[William Curb]

Like, I have not been doing as much recently because the exercise space in my garage has stuff, boxes and other crap just all around it. And I'm like, when I get around to cleaning that I'll do more of my exercise program. Terrible idea. I can just go out for a walk and do stuff in my backyard that I need to. I don't need to specifically use that area, do yoga videos or go to a local gym that I might have a membership for that I haven't used in a while.

[Sky Washington]

Yeah. And this is a really good reminder to us as well as you that that exercise is helpful not just for your adhd, which sometimes feels, I think we can get a little bit like, well, this is going to sound strange, but I know you guys have all had this experience where they're like, I should just be able to figure it out. You know, I should just be able to push through. It's like, no, this is going to help you not just with that, but also with the emotional side of your life. And we spend so much time thinking about if you struggle with emotional, you know, I struggle with anxiety, you know, all of those kinds of things. If you struggle with this, it takes up so much of your time to find out with very, very, very good research that you could go for a walk and it's going to have an effect, a positive effect. Go for a walk, do it. It's not that long. And. And we'll do it too. Trust me. We're going to be doing it as well.

[William Curb]

And I think it's also important to like, yeah, hey, if you do it, do what's in able for you to do. Because we've got going to have listeners that are on all different levels of what they're capable of, what their body allows them to do. And maybe you have something where you can't go for a walk. Well, then you could. There's other things I've watched Get fit while you sit. Yes, that was a something that was on the, I think Channel 2 when I was growing up. But there are things you can do even if you have limitations. So don't completely write off the idea. If it seems like it's going to be too much at once. It's okay to start anywhere, 100%.

[Sky Washington]

And the research backs it up. Really cool paper. I was so happy to find this paper. It's nice when there's something that's just bringing together a lot of practical strategies. Feels like they wrote it for us. That makes it.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And it feels like they did a great job of making sure that this was something that we can relate back to adhd. It wasn't something where we go, this could be also affecting these other things. And that's why we're seeing this effect here, because I do know even if you don't have adhd, exercise is going to be good for all of these things. But we're seeing here it is especially good for people with ADHD, 100% according.

[Sky Washington]

To randomized control trials. So they did compare it to controls, which, again, I love it.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Because it is so easy to have these conflicts that occur in studies. Because when it's not controlled and it's not randomized.

[Sky Washington]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's so easy. And I think this is why I love. I often look for meta analyses or these kinds of papers because it's so easy when you're doing the first paper on a topic to add in extra pieces. Like, I remember doing research, and you're like, yeah, we could add, you know, but this person, we only got 20 people. It was really hard. And this person has something else. And so just include them. You know, that's okay. Like, this is how. That's how it really ends up happening.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And doing the meta analysis also, like, we know there's bad science out there where people are looking for results, so they'll grab a huge sample size, ask a thousand questions, and then they're like, oh, we can find things here. And then by doing the meta analysis, we're like, we're looking at a lot of different papers and trying to see, especially when they're like, here's the criteria to be a paper here. And then, yeah, from these 18 papers, we can find a significant result. Of course, it would be nicer if we had even more research that really supported this, but I feel like this is the gold standard, what we're looking for.

[Sky Washington]

Especially because, like, if they did 18 randomized controlled papers, they would have had a lot of papers that didn't meet that standard that were left on the COVID Yeah. All right.

[William Curb]

I think that's good for this one. Even it's a little bit short. Like.

[Sky Washington]

Yeah, no, let's go out and go for a walk. Hello. So you were just listening to a research recap. I'm Skye Waterson of Unconventional Organization. If you like that there's lots more information about ADHD and support for [e-mail] you can go ahead and check that out. Lots of free resources, lots of strategies, and if you want to join our programs, you can do that as well. And we'll see you there. Unconditional Organization.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Dan Harris]

Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week we'll tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top notch scientists and world class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility and practicality. 10% happier is self help for smart people. Come join the party.