Have you ever been so distracted that you started forgetting simple things? I remember when I was in graduate school at Penn that I would be so focused on thinking about my latest research that I would sometimes come out of the shower wondering whether or not I had actually washed my hair. My mind had been on autopilot. I really wasn’t sure.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the instances of ADD in the United States has risen from 6.1% in 1997 to a whopping 10.2% in 2016 –the significant increase happening over a mere 10 years.[1] According to a 2021 report in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 8.7 million adults in the U.S. have ADHD.[2] The count continues to rise.

Is it because we are “paying attention” to the prevalence of ADD in our country today? (Pun inten…