Medication covers the morning. By three o'clock your focus has gone, the biscuit tin is winning, and your energy is either flat or frantic. Nobody in the diagnosis process mentioned blood sugar.
Nico is for adults with ADHD who want something besides medication that helps with focus, impulsivity and energy, alongside whatever treatment they already have. Glucose swings affect attention and self-control in everyone, and ADHD makes both harder to start with. Nico shows you your glucose as it happens and coaches the habits that keep it steady. It does not replace medication, and we will never suggest changing a dose.
What's going on in your body
The skills ADHD affects most - working memory, impulse control, holding attention - are demanding work for the brain. A fast rise in glucose after a meal, followed by a fall and the adrenaline that comes with it, lands on exactly those skills: it is harder to stay on task and harder to say no to the next snack.
Stimulant medication suppresses appetite through the day, so many people eat little until the evening and then eat a lot, fast, producing a large rise at the worst time for sleep.
What you'll see on Nico
A sensor gives immediate, visual feedback. You eat, and within the hour you see what the meal did. There is no food diary to remember.
What changes
Breakfast with protein comes before the medication takes hold and appetite disappears. Lunch includes protein and fat even if you are not hungry, because the four o'clock crash arrives either way. A walk in the twenty minutes after the evening meal helps, and so does a cut-off for eating that protects sleep, which for many people with ADHD is already fragile. The full loop is on the How it works page.
What to expect
Most members notice the afternoon first; a lunch that holds the line changes how four o'clock feels. Evening eating and sleep tend to improve over the first month. If you take medication, keep taking it as prescribed. If your data makes you think something should change, take it to your Doctor.
Nico is a wellness and coaching platform. A sensor cannot diagnose anything. Only a blood test can.
Questions people ask
Will this let me reduce my medication?
That question is for your Doctor. Some members have had that conversation with their data in hand, and that is as far as we go.
I forget things. Will I forget the sensor?
The sensor stays on your arm for two weeks and reads by itself. The app does the remembering, which makes this one of the few health tools that works better with ADHD.
I binge in the evenings. Is that glucose?
Often it is partly glucose. Eating little all day on medication, then a crash, then a large fast meal is a pattern the sensor makes very clear. Seeing it is usually the first step to changing it.
Is there evidence that diet affects ADHD?
Some, mostly in children and mostly about food sensitivities rather than glucose. In the INCA trial (Pelsser and colleagues, The Lancet, 2011), 64% of children with ADHD who followed a strict elimination diet improved by at least 40% on ADHD ratings. NICE does not recommend diet changes as a standard ADHD treatment, and elimination diets need professional supervision. Whether glucose is part of your picture is a separate question, and the one the sensor answers.
Is there a link between ADHD and PCOS?
The two appear to overlap more than chance would suggest, and both involve insulin, but the research is early. If you have both, steadier glucose helps the PCOS side regardless.
Does caffeine matter?
Caffeine raises adrenaline and cortisol, and both push glucose up. Many people with ADHD drink a lot of it. The sensor shows what yours does, and the answer varies from person to person.
If the sensor shows a crash landing at four o'clock most days, part of what gets blamed on ADHD at that hour can be changed by what you eat and do at lunch.
Wear a sensor for a few weeks, and your coach will show you which of this applies to you.
