The fact that the height of adult males with ADHD is greater than that of males without ADHD (first figure/graphs, G & H) should indicate that there is no causative link that the medication has an impact. For females, the average does not show this, but if you look carefully, the variation is bigger. The same selection bias is possible in this case.
Instead, to me it looks like there is selection bias going on. Shorter males are more likely to get MPH prescribed is an equally valid explanation.
Luckily, the conclusion makes no assertions about height either, nor does the paper make conclusions about any causative relation.
Or, alternatively, because many of us have a tendency to eat when we are uninterested in other tasks...simply how much I snack, whether I feel like eating at regular mealtimes, and the correlated impact on my weight, is a pretty big indicator that I need to ask my physician to adjust the dose of my Vyvanse next time I send a message for my next fill.
I was prescribed Ritalin when i was 6 years old, and was considered one of the short kid my entire childhood (and suffered the consequences).
I decided to stop taking meds when I was 17, and in a few years became the tallest of my friend group.
I'm older now, and occasionally have periods where I take what I consider "better" meds like Vyvanse, but there ain't no way i'm letting my kids take ANYTHING until they are much much older and can decide for themselves.
I don't think the evidence is on your side for the outcomes. Kids cannot be assured to make the best choices in their own interest for every scenario. I was on meds for ADHD from ages 4 to 14 before I asked to stop. In elementary school I was among the most talented students in my class, but I was very close to failing to graduate high school. I later failed out of community college. Through great effort I managed to get employed as a software developer, though my original passion and hope was biology. I now take Vyvanse to keep sustained focus in my work.
I'm confident if I had stayed on my meds that I would have been far more academically successful in high school and beyond. I pushed to get off Adderall as a kid because I started to feel like a zombie on it, but maybe my parents could have instead helped me to find a treatment that was better suited for me or adjust my dosage.
Getting the dosage right with ADHD meds is super difficult. And your needs and body change with time.
I wonder if it wasn't the puberty that made you somehow more susceptible to amphetamine. Lot of things change in the body at that time and it could have also been the enzymes that process the amphetamine.
Unless the kids have a feeling they should go off meds to get taller (like you did), isn't it better for them to be on meds?
Average first time for sex with adhd girls is 13y vs 17y for non adhd or medicated.
Probability to be addicted to drugs or alcohol halves for when on meds vs without.
Same goes for obesity, etc.
I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis.
Don't have time to finish the post, and I don't believe I'm entitled to anything. But if I had less problems at school, I might've been doing sth more fun now and less demanding on the body.
i did not stop to get taller, it just felt like crap. I think as you get older and more independent it starts messing with your sense of self.
is it better to be on meds? maybe i don't know. all i have is my experience.
and looking back i'd much rather my parents told the school "fu im not giving my kid stimulants just challenge him" and to provide the challenge if the school didn't.
if you're top 1% (definitely not hn average), it's very likely you had "problems at school" simply because it was boring. don't know how old you are but with 1% there's really nothing preventing you from learning whatever it is you want to learn and go do something else.
Now that you've realized all this, you could do something about it. Being a butcher in a slaughterhouse could become one of the things you used to do before you decided to do something else.
> I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis.
I really hope I'm not stating the obvious to you here, but don't let your current situation define you like it guarantees the course of the rest of your life.
> But if I had less problems at school, I might've been doing sth more fun now and less demanding on the body.
Even on Adderall in my teenage years, I fucked around in school - it didn't interest me, which is not uncommon in 2e individuals with ADHD. Dropped out at 16, got my GED a few years later, never went to college, resigned myself to the fact that I would be working class like my parents for the rest of my life.
But the right doors opened because I kept pulling at the knobs when I saw them, while the thousands of hours of my free time messing around with dozens of linux distros, writing toy programs for personal use, and a little bit of selling the unique talents my atypical neurology gives me, were enough to get me through one interview, and then the next.
The non-traditional path still very much exists in many fields, but it always starts at smaller companies that are less glamorous to work at, and often don't pay as well. None of us may be entitled to anything, but that doesn't mean we should resign ourselves to wasting our talents because the traditional paths didn't work out for our unique situations.
> I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis
Yeah, get your kids diagnosed and get them medicated if they need to be. Adderall is one of the most well studied medications in the world. Whatever downsides there are pale in comparison to the academic and social downsides of untreated ADHD.
Could the BMI thing be simply explained by the treated children expending less kinetic energy? In other words, they are less hyperactive, so it seems logical that they might actually be prone to some weight gain.
Methylphenidate is also prescribed for ADHD-PI (inattentive). My son took this medication and for him it served as an appetite suppressant. He's also 6'5" now as an adult. So individual experiences will vary.
I take methylphenidate, actually. I experienced the appetite suppressing effect, but I would say that after ~3 to 5 months on the drug that basically went away. There's still a noticeable benefit for attention, but otherwise I eat just about as much as ever. But yeah, different experiences for different folks.
If you don't see the difference between metaamphetamines and their deriatives vs methylphenidate, then you don't have any right to comment on the subject.
And no, it's not a "drug". Calling it such is guilt-tripping those that want to/do use MPH it and there's already a ton of that in the lives of people with ADHD.
A parent hearing somebody call MPH a "drug" = "There's no way in hell I'm giving my kid DRUGS!!11". For kids with ADHD (and for people with ADHD in general), medication is massive a life changer ( and saver too ) - from often nightmare to livable/decent.
You don't have any right to take that away from them.
If parents (or anyone else) is unable to overcome their cognitive dissonance from drugs being called drugs, they really have no business making decisions about their use.
You clearly have no idea how people with ADHD / parents of ADHD kids feel like.
Just because you can "overcome your cognitive dissonance" doesn't mean that everybody has the same freedom/will/strength to do so.
Adding the weight of the "drugs" tag is not a way to help those who need medication to barely function like a normal person.
I don't have cognitive dissonance to overcome here as I'm not reflexively recoiling at the term "drugs". If someone is unable to acknowledge that drugs are drugs, how are they supposed to analyze the intended effects, possible side effects, the actual effects, etc? Or are we just supposed to blindly trust the overworked bureaucrat in the white coat?
And sure, I understand if someone needs to just trust a bureaucrat to bootstrap themselves to the point where they can make decisions. But your original comment was talking about parents making these decisions for kids, which is quite dodgy if they're in denial that these are mind altering substances.
You are clearly and deliberately "arguing" aka. rage-baiting from an angle of bad faith.
You seem much more pre-occupied with vague conspiracy theories about how bureaucrats work to the detriment of society than an actual topical discussion about medication or the article linked here.
Drugs (as used by you and colloquially as something to get high and negatively connotated with health outcomes) and medications are not the same thing.
Yet you pretend they are, without taking into account the contrasting realities of how medication is vetted and approved.
Nobody is trusting a overworked bureaucrat, because that's not how this works.
People far more qualified than you can imagine using standardized processes and thousands of people vet medication before it becomes available to the public.
Ritalin hs been around for decades.
I am all for informing the public and empowering people to make autonomous decisions for their health.
I am against people playing moral superiority when actually all they're doing is spouting non-scientific conspiracy theories about some bad bureacurats following an evil plan drugging the populace.
I thought the idea that individuals should be advocating for themselves (and their families) in the modern medical establishment is just basic table stakes in 2026, not a "vague conspiracy theory."
I don't see how calling out someone's reaction to the word "drugs" is "an angle of bad faith". If someone has an emotional reaction to the reality that a doctor is proposing giving their kid mind-altering substances, that indicates they haven't gotten to the point where they're able to judge it rationally. The answer isn't to shy away from the reality!
So yes, unfortunately the first step to making an informed decision is getting past the fearmongering propaganda pumped out by all the anti-illegal-drugs campaigns. And yeah that sucks, but it's certainly nowhere near the biggest hurdle to self-actualization that our society perpetuates.
Something can be mind altering without producing a recreational high for the user. Isn’t it strange that people don’t chime in on threads about anti depressants with “don’t you know you’re taking drugs?!?!”…
"Recreational high" has nothing to do with it. Medicare part D is literally referred to as "prescription drug plan".
If people have the same denial about anti-depressants, then my critique applies as well. But an allowance for the need to bootstrap would seem to apply more, plus the generally more complex mechanisms and nuanced effects making it harder to understand the effects for yourself.
You're completely missing the point, probably intentionally. Context exists. Everyone knows medicine in general is drugs, there are also recreational drugs/narcotics. It's usually very obvious which of these someone is referring to. They are separate categories of things with separate implications. You know this of course.
The comment I initially responded to was reacting to the usage of the word "drug". And yes while there is a distinction in categories with some distinct implications, there is also a lot of commonality between them. And the reaction I was responding to indicated a strong desire to reject those commonalities.
Ritalin (methylphenidate) is a central nervous system stimulant used for ADHD and narcolepsy, but it is not an amphetamine based medication, unlike Adderall. While both increase dopamine and norepinephrine, Ritalin acts as a reuptake inhibitor rather than a stimulant that directly releases these neurotransmitters like amphetamines do.
Oh, and by the way: wherever you are is not the center of the world.
In the EU, barely anyone recognizes the names "Ritalin", "Adderall" etc. - methylphenidate is a lot more common.
> In the EU, barely anyone recognizes the names "Ritalin", "Adderall" etc. - methylphenidate is a lot more common.
Nope, completely depends on the country, both for EU and non-EU. Nothing special about EU in this case. Plenty of EU countries where "Ritalin" is 100x better known than "methylphenidate". Don't take your bubble and extrapolate it to a federation of 450 million people with 27 countries.
> Oh, and by the way: wherever you are is not the center of the world.
If you were going for the "most ironic HN comment of 2026 award", it's a great attempt!
The BMI being higher is slightly interesting (you would guess it would be the reverse), but the height differential seems vanishingly small.
Concerns that stimulant meds taken as children reduced adult height have been around for three decades.
To my mind, the bigger take away here is that ADHD meds don't significantly impact adult height.
The fact that the height of adult males with ADHD is greater than that of males without ADHD (first figure/graphs, G & H) should indicate that there is no causative link that the medication has an impact. For females, the average does not show this, but if you look carefully, the variation is bigger. The same selection bias is possible in this case.
Instead, to me it looks like there is selection bias going on. Shorter males are more likely to get MPH prescribed is an equally valid explanation.
Luckily, the conclusion makes no assertions about height either, nor does the paper make conclusions about any causative relation.
Maybe they have a higher BMI because they become less active :D
Or, alternatively, because many of us have a tendency to eat when we are uninterested in other tasks...simply how much I snack, whether I feel like eating at regular mealtimes, and the correlated impact on my weight, is a pretty big indicator that I need to ask my physician to adjust the dose of my Vyvanse next time I send a message for my next fill.
Patients with ADHD, particularly those treated with MPH, had a higher BMI and shorter height at adulthood than individuals without ADHD.
This is not known enough.
I was prescribed Ritalin when i was 6 years old, and was considered one of the short kid my entire childhood (and suffered the consequences).
I decided to stop taking meds when I was 17, and in a few years became the tallest of my friend group.
I'm older now, and occasionally have periods where I take what I consider "better" meds like Vyvanse, but there ain't no way i'm letting my kids take ANYTHING until they are much much older and can decide for themselves.
I don't think the evidence is on your side for the outcomes. Kids cannot be assured to make the best choices in their own interest for every scenario. I was on meds for ADHD from ages 4 to 14 before I asked to stop. In elementary school I was among the most talented students in my class, but I was very close to failing to graduate high school. I later failed out of community college. Through great effort I managed to get employed as a software developer, though my original passion and hope was biology. I now take Vyvanse to keep sustained focus in my work.
I'm confident if I had stayed on my meds that I would have been far more academically successful in high school and beyond. I pushed to get off Adderall as a kid because I started to feel like a zombie on it, but maybe my parents could have instead helped me to find a treatment that was better suited for me or adjust my dosage.
Getting the dosage right with ADHD meds is super difficult. And your needs and body change with time.
I wonder if it wasn't the puberty that made you somehow more susceptible to amphetamine. Lot of things change in the body at that time and it could have also been the enzymes that process the amphetamine.
4 is absolutely insane
Unless the kids have a feeling they should go off meds to get taller (like you did), isn't it better for them to be on meds?
Average first time for sex with adhd girls is 13y vs 17y for non adhd or medicated.
Probability to be addicted to drugs or alcohol halves for when on meds vs without.
Same goes for obesity, etc.
I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis.
Don't have time to finish the post, and I don't believe I'm entitled to anything. But if I had less problems at school, I might've been doing sth more fun now and less demanding on the body.
i did not stop to get taller, it just felt like crap. I think as you get older and more independent it starts messing with your sense of self.
is it better to be on meds? maybe i don't know. all i have is my experience. and looking back i'd much rather my parents told the school "fu im not giving my kid stimulants just challenge him" and to provide the challenge if the school didn't.
if you're top 1% (definitely not hn average), it's very likely you had "problems at school" simply because it was boring. don't know how old you are but with 1% there's really nothing preventing you from learning whatever it is you want to learn and go do something else.
Now that you've realized all this, you could do something about it. Being a butcher in a slaughterhouse could become one of the things you used to do before you decided to do something else.
> I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis.
I really hope I'm not stating the obvious to you here, but don't let your current situation define you like it guarantees the course of the rest of your life.
> But if I had less problems at school, I might've been doing sth more fun now and less demanding on the body.
Even on Adderall in my teenage years, I fucked around in school - it didn't interest me, which is not uncommon in 2e individuals with ADHD. Dropped out at 16, got my GED a few years later, never went to college, resigned myself to the fact that I would be working class like my parents for the rest of my life.
But the right doors opened because I kept pulling at the knobs when I saw them, while the thousands of hours of my free time messing around with dozens of linux distros, writing toy programs for personal use, and a little bit of selling the unique talents my atypical neurology gives me, were enough to get me through one interview, and then the next.
The non-traditional path still very much exists in many fields, but it always starts at smaller companies that are less glamorous to work at, and often don't pay as well. None of us may be entitled to anything, but that doesn't mean we should resign ourselves to wasting our talents because the traditional paths didn't work out for our unique situations.
> I didn't get meds when I was younger. Now I have top 1% IQ (likely average here on hn), but work as a butcher at a slaughterhouse. My mom didn't want to stigmatise me with a diagnosis
Yeah, get your kids diagnosed and get them medicated if they need to be. Adderall is one of the most well studied medications in the world. Whatever downsides there are pale in comparison to the academic and social downsides of untreated ADHD.
Anecdotical...Also: "clinically modest, reduction in adult height"
Could the BMI thing be simply explained by the treated children expending less kinetic energy? In other words, they are less hyperactive, so it seems logical that they might actually be prone to some weight gain.
Methylphenidate is also prescribed for ADHD-PI (inattentive). My son took this medication and for him it served as an appetite suppressant. He's also 6'5" now as an adult. So individual experiences will vary.
I take methylphenidate, actually. I experienced the appetite suppressing effect, but I would say that after ~3 to 5 months on the drug that basically went away. There's still a noticeable benefit for attention, but otherwise I eat just about as much as ever. But yeah, different experiences for different folks.
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If you don't see the difference between metaamphetamines and their deriatives vs methylphenidate, then you don't have any right to comment on the subject. And no, it's not a "drug". Calling it such is guilt-tripping those that want to/do use MPH it and there's already a ton of that in the lives of people with ADHD. A parent hearing somebody call MPH a "drug" = "There's no way in hell I'm giving my kid DRUGS!!11". For kids with ADHD (and for people with ADHD in general), medication is massive a life changer ( and saver too ) - from often nightmare to livable/decent. You don't have any right to take that away from them.
Where do you buy your paracetamol? Surely at the drugstore.
Are you seriously implying that "drugstore" == "drug" as negatively used by OOP here and generally associated with recreational or illegal substances?
If parents (or anyone else) is unable to overcome their cognitive dissonance from drugs being called drugs, they really have no business making decisions about their use.
You clearly have no idea how people with ADHD / parents of ADHD kids feel like. Just because you can "overcome your cognitive dissonance" doesn't mean that everybody has the same freedom/will/strength to do so. Adding the weight of the "drugs" tag is not a way to help those who need medication to barely function like a normal person.
I don't have cognitive dissonance to overcome here as I'm not reflexively recoiling at the term "drugs". If someone is unable to acknowledge that drugs are drugs, how are they supposed to analyze the intended effects, possible side effects, the actual effects, etc? Or are we just supposed to blindly trust the overworked bureaucrat in the white coat?
And sure, I understand if someone needs to just trust a bureaucrat to bootstrap themselves to the point where they can make decisions. But your original comment was talking about parents making these decisions for kids, which is quite dodgy if they're in denial that these are mind altering substances.
You are clearly and deliberately "arguing" aka. rage-baiting from an angle of bad faith.
You seem much more pre-occupied with vague conspiracy theories about how bureaucrats work to the detriment of society than an actual topical discussion about medication or the article linked here.
Drugs (as used by you and colloquially as something to get high and negatively connotated with health outcomes) and medications are not the same thing.
Yet you pretend they are, without taking into account the contrasting realities of how medication is vetted and approved.
Nobody is trusting a overworked bureaucrat, because that's not how this works.
People far more qualified than you can imagine using standardized processes and thousands of people vet medication before it becomes available to the public.
Ritalin hs been around for decades.
I am all for informing the public and empowering people to make autonomous decisions for their health.
I am against people playing moral superiority when actually all they're doing is spouting non-scientific conspiracy theories about some bad bureacurats following an evil plan drugging the populace.
I thought the idea that individuals should be advocating for themselves (and their families) in the modern medical establishment is just basic table stakes in 2026, not a "vague conspiracy theory."
I don't see how calling out someone's reaction to the word "drugs" is "an angle of bad faith". If someone has an emotional reaction to the reality that a doctor is proposing giving their kid mind-altering substances, that indicates they haven't gotten to the point where they're able to judge it rationally. The answer isn't to shy away from the reality!
So yes, unfortunately the first step to making an informed decision is getting past the fearmongering propaganda pumped out by all the anti-illegal-drugs campaigns. And yeah that sucks, but it's certainly nowhere near the biggest hurdle to self-actualization that our society perpetuates.
Something can be mind altering without producing a recreational high for the user. Isn’t it strange that people don’t chime in on threads about anti depressants with “don’t you know you’re taking drugs?!?!”…
"Recreational high" has nothing to do with it. Medicare part D is literally referred to as "prescription drug plan".
If people have the same denial about anti-depressants, then my critique applies as well. But an allowance for the need to bootstrap would seem to apply more, plus the generally more complex mechanisms and nuanced effects making it harder to understand the effects for yourself.
You're completely missing the point, probably intentionally. Context exists. Everyone knows medicine in general is drugs, there are also recreational drugs/narcotics. It's usually very obvious which of these someone is referring to. They are separate categories of things with separate implications. You know this of course.
The comment I initially responded to was reacting to the usage of the word "drug". And yes while there is a distinction in categories with some distinct implications, there is also a lot of commonality between them. And the reaction I was responding to indicated a strong desire to reject those commonalities.
Some people do though. Then the "Your coffee/food/electronics/exercise/(etc but increasingly tenuous) are a drug" people start to jump in...
Ritalin (methylphenidate) is a central nervous system stimulant used for ADHD and narcolepsy, but it is not an amphetamine based medication, unlike Adderall. While both increase dopamine and norepinephrine, Ritalin acts as a reuptake inhibitor rather than a stimulant that directly releases these neurotransmitters like amphetamines do.
Adderall saved my life. YMMV
Is there any actual difference between preventing reuptake and directly releasing them?
Almost certainly, this is biology, after all.
Oh, and by the way: wherever you are is not the center of the world. In the EU, barely anyone recognizes the names "Ritalin", "Adderall" etc. - methylphenidate is a lot more common.
> In the EU, barely anyone recognizes the names "Ritalin", "Adderall" etc. - methylphenidate is a lot more common.
Nope, completely depends on the country, both for EU and non-EU. Nothing special about EU in this case. Plenty of EU countries where "Ritalin" is 100x better known than "methylphenidate". Don't take your bubble and extrapolate it to a federation of 450 million people with 27 countries.
> Oh, and by the way: wherever you are is not the center of the world.
If you were going for the "most ironic HN comment of 2026 award", it's a great attempt!
Ehh, even in EU context I'm familiar with knowing ADHD meds by that name. That was the least consequential point of their post.