Your ability to do certain things — like pay attention, stay on task, manage your time, control urges and impulses, wait your turn, interpret social cues, and even learn from your mistakes — are governed by a set of important brain operations referred to as executive functioning skills.

As the millions of people in the United States who are living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) know firsthand, any imbalance or disruption in the brainwave activities that control executive functioning skills can trigger a variety of uncontrollable mental and behavioral symptoms, ranging from inattention and distractibility to impulsivity and restlessness.

Although combining the right medication with proven behavioral/cognitive strategies can be helpful, this conventional treatment approach doesn’t really address the brain imbalances that cause ADHD in the first place. Luckily, there’s a new and effective ADHD solution that does exactly that.

ADHD and the brain

Most mental health conditions and disorders involve some degree of disrupted brain activity, usually in the form of dysregulated, dysfunctional, or imbalanced brainwave patterns. ADHD is no different.

As one of the most common neurobehavioral problems of childhood, ADHD typically emerges early in life, often before adolescence. Although all kids are distractible, restless, and impulsive sometimes, children with ADHD tend to demonstrate these traits to a much greater degree and more often than their peers.

Contrary to popular belief, most kids don’t outgrow the disorder — it simply evolves as they grow and develop. By the time kids with ADHD become adults, they’re less likely to be affected by impulsivity and hyperactivity, and more likely to have difficulty staying focused and finishing tasks efficiently.

While researchers once believed that ADHD was a product of a head injury or brain damage, they now know that it’s actually caused by chemical, structural, and connectivity differences in the brain, possibly as a result of genetics.

Brainwave function and imbalance

Your every perception, thought, and action is controlled by coordinated and continuous communication between your brain cells (neurons). As these special cells talk to one another, they generate synchronized electrical pulses called brainwaves that form your entire spectrum of consciousness.

To understand how brainwaves drive your thoughts and behaviors, it’s helpful to think of them as key “instruments” in your “brain activity orchestra.”

Low-frequency brainwaves are like a slow, consistent beat that keeps perfect time, while the light and flexible mid-to-high-frequency patterns power the melody. When your brainwaves are balanced and in sync, they link together to form a continuous and harmonic “symphony.”

When your brainwave patterns are out of sync, it can cause a kind of “harmonic dissonance” that makes your brain activity less clear, controlled, and efficient. People with ADHD may experience over-arousal (hyperactivity) in certain areas of their brain, along with under-arousal in other areas (inattention).

Restoring brainwave balance

Personalized repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (PrTMS) is an innovative and effective new ADHD solution that uses low-amplitude magnetic pulses to restore balance and harmony to the dissonant brainwave patterns that generate and perpetuate ADHD symptoms.

So how does it work?

PrTMS sends repetitive pulses of magnetic energy into targeted areas of your brain to gently stimulate brain cell activity and promote optimal inter-neural communication. Over the course of your multi-week treatment plan, this holistic therapy gradually reshapes problematic brainwave patterns and rewires the circuits of your brain.

To develop your personalized ADHD treatment plan, we perform an A-to-Z assessment of your current brain function that includes a PeakLogic ComfortScan™ electroencephalogram (EEG) as well as a neurocognitive evaluation.

You continue to have weekly EEG “snapshots” of your brain throughout your treatment so you can see exactly how your brainwaves are changing as your symptoms decline, and so we can adjust your therapy in real time to keep it on target every step of the way.

Most adults and children with ADHD experience substantial symptom improvement — and in some cases, elimination — after an initial treatment cycle of 20-30 PrTMS sessions. What’s more, periodic maintenance sessions are often all it takes to keep ADHD symptoms at bay.

To find out how PrTMS can help you take control of your ADHD symptoms for good, call our office in San Diego, California, or click the online booking tool to schedule an appointment with Kevin Murphy, MD.