Is Adderall ruining my skin?
Dear Beauty Editor,
Do prescription ADHD drugs affect your skin? If they’re stimulants, don’t they speed everything up, and wouldn’t they speed up breaking down collagen and other things? I’m also curious about other effects, like hair. I’ve heard that they could also cause hair loss.
Thanks,
M.R.
If you spend any time on Reddit, you will quickly learn there are plenty of people who believe the prescription stimulant medications that treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder are basically speed. And if you’ve sat through health class at an American public high school in the past 40 years, you probably have a pretty good idea of what speed (i.e., illegal stimulants like meth) can do to your looks. It’s not pretty.
But the drugs you’re asking about — such as Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin, and their generic counterparts — are different from illegal drugs. And so far there hasn’t been any research showing that they speed up skin aging. “I’ve heard people talk about this [theory], but it would be very difficult to prove,” says physician Evan Rieder, M.D. And he would know: Rieder is one of the few doctors in the United States board-certified in both dermatology and psychiatry.
However, there are other appearance-related side effects to be on the lookout for if you’re taking a stimulant prescription for ADHD, and hair loss, though rare, is one of them. Rieder says some skin conditions may be more prevalent among people who have ADHD. Plus, ADHD can affect other aspects of your life that may affect the way you look. Read on for more details, but talk to your health-care provider about your concerns, too.
Is ADHD itself associated with any hair or skin issues?
Actually, yes. “There is a known association between ADHD and eczema,” says Rieder. “There have also been reports of an association between ADHD and a type of fairly common hair-loss condition called alopecia areata.” However, at this point, researchers don’t know that ADHD itself causes eczema or hair loss; that could just be a correlation.
As for skin aging, there’s not a correlation there, according to Rieder. But he does point out that people with severe ADHD who aren’t managing their symptoms well — regardless of whether or not they’re on meds — are likely to be disorganized in multiple aspects of their lives. “It’s not a stretch to extrapolate that these people might age more gracefully if their work, sleep, and eating schedules were functioning better,” he says. But if you have an ADHD diagnosis and are managing it well with treatment and/or medication, you don’t have to worry about that.
Can ADHD meds like Adderall affect your skin or hair?
Yes, stimulant-based ADHD medications, such as Adderall, can have side effects that affect your appearance. “There are several different skin issues that have been reported with stimulants, including drug rashes, hives, hair shedding, and acneiform eruptions,” Rieder says. So, if you started taking ADHD meds and notice any of those changes, talk to your prescriber. Stimulants can also dry out your skin, making it seem like you’re aging faster (fine lines are usually more noticeable when your skin is dry). But if the dryness isn’t severe, you should be able to control it with a good moisturizer.
Another side effect of some ADHD prescriptions is that they can suppress your appetite. So, if you’re on medication and your diet changes significantly, or you’re eating less, you may not be getting enough of the nutrients needed for healthy skin and hair growth. Again, that would be something to talk to your doctor about.
Do ADHD drugs make you age faster?
It sounds like you haven’t seen any of the side effects mentioned above; it’s more that you’re worried your medication could be changing the way you’re aging at, say, a cellular level. The thing is, ADHD drugs don’t work like a jolt of caffeine to your cells, causing them to speed up all their functions so they burn out and die faster. If that were the case, people taking stimulant ADHD meds would have widespread damage to their organs — their skin would be the least of their worries. Rieder says that’s not a thing. “While we don’t know exactly how stimulants work, many of their effects are due to increasing the availability of certain neurotransmitters in the brain like dopamine and norepinephrine. These are not known to be causes of skin aging,” he says. “There is no known correlation or causation between ADHD — regardless of medication — and skin aging.”
If you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a stimulant medication that’s helping you, I wouldn’t worry that ten or 20 years down the line, you’re going to look older than your chronological age, like those images of people addicted to meth. But if you’re still feeling anxious, share your concerns with your health-care providers. They might even be able to switch you to non-stimulant medications and/or find other ways to help you deal with your side effects.
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