← ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast. I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains. After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd. In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests and hear new findings and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey. Here's today's episode. Today we've got Dr. Miguel Toribo Mateos. Now, he's affectionately known as the creative scientist and he is a distinguished clinical neuroscientist and nutrition researcher in the uk. And his expertise sets centers on the intricate gut brain connection, drawing on a rich and real world scientific foundation rather than just the purely academic pursuits. And Dr. Miguel's academic journey includes degrees in nutritional medicine and clinical neuroscience, culminating in a doctorate focused on mental health and gut microbiome. I'm absolutely. I know there's lots more to discuss here, but I know that you are fascinated in the profound effects of gut health on the mood, cognition and, and overall well being. And you are doing this important work as a research fellow at Cardiff University School of Psychology. And you have also been diagnosed with ADHD and autism. So you really understand from a very deep personal level how important it is that we include all of this, the dietary, the gut, gut brain information, all of that in enhancing our life as neurodivergent individuals. So I just want to welcome you to the podcast. I can't wait to get stuck in. Welcome, Dr. Miguel.
- [02:03]
B
Thank you so much, Kate, for having me. It's wonderful to be here.
- [02:06]
A
I'd just love to hear because obviously that biog that was, you know, hugely loaded in all your fantastic academic achievements. But I wanted to know kind of from a personal perspective what led you to your ADHD and autism diagnosis and what was the path towards that?
- [02:22]
B
I interestingly started thinking about ADHD first of all, when I was, I decided to go back to University in 2013 to do neuroscience, clinical neuroscience. And I really struggled with a lot of the deadlines. I got like super high marks but I was always late, like handing in the assignments and everything else. So like typical adhd, if you're motivated by something, you'll read everything. I was always that, you know, if there were optional books, I was Reading them, I was reading all the articles. I was really getting stuck into all of the material, but I was really struggling to manage my time and to manage my energy and I was really, really stressed and, and I had to trek to. Through London and the other side of London. I'm kind of in Hertfordshire and I had to go to southwest London, so it was a long commute and I was working as well. All my studies have always been while I was working. I've been working since I was 14, like doing bits and bobs. So, so yeah, and, and, and I thought, might I be ADHD on the basis that I had a. There was another student who was diagnosed ADHD and he was on meds and we didn't really discuss it so much, but I saw him taking his medication and he told me about the adhd. And I thought at the time, but thinking about going to a psychiatrist or to a clinical psychologist or so on, getting a diagnosis, it was quite daunting at the time. And I think also the stigma, thinking, oh, if this is psychiatric condition, maybe they are going to unearth something else if I go and see somebody who is going to diagnose me. So I didn't do anything about it until basically many years later. It was in 2020 when I basically had the same situations happening to me, dramas at work and meltdown and emotional dysregulation completely, you know, in every pore of my being. And I would be like very happy in general with, you know, as we can be like happy, go lucky in many aspects of our lives, but in other aspects actually really disregulated and. And I was really burnt out as well. And that was the consequence of having a lifestyle and jobs that meant that I had to travel a lot. Going back, you know, 20 plus years. I traveled a lot internationally. I never really understood how much the travel and the having to show up and smile in front of audiences kind of depleted my energy. And I remember doing gigs for companies I was working in scientific publishing many, many years ago in a previous life. And one of the companies that I had to deal with was Novartis. And I used to go to Basel a lot in Switzerland to do training on medical databases and, and so on. And I had 100 scientists in a room waiting for me and I'd be hiding in the toilet until five minutes before the session, petrified. And then people are starting to get Aggie thinking, where is Miguel? Oh, I don't know, he was having a coffee and I turn up in the, in the meeting room where Everybody's waiting for me two minutes before the session is due to start, and I have to put my, you know, my big smile on and deliver the session. And then colleagues and other, you know, and delegates would go for dinner, and I would give it a miss because I would be. The moment that I finished the. The session, I would be. My adrenaline would just drop completely, and I would be completely exhausted. But I just thought nothing of it. I just thought, okay, well, maybe it's just performance anxiety in terms of, like, you know, public speaking or whatever. And. But then the. The more I realize now, looking back at my life, the more I look into those situations, the more I realize that we face life in a different way. Our brain works in a different way, and it demands. It can deplete energy in different ways by doing things that other people would just think, well, it's just normal. You're just turning up at. And doing what you need to do. So, anyway, cut a long story short and Fast forward to 2020. I had done a number of those jobs where I had to show up and smile and deliver talks in front of large audiences and loads of trainings and things like that. And I just felt really, really depleted. And it coincided with COVID as well. So 2020, I. I felt really run down. I felt like the. The emotions were being somatized, so I felt them in my body, and. And I felt a lot of pain. And at the time, I was working with a colleague who had just had his diagnosis, and we talked a lot about adhd, and I decided to go to the same psychiatrist that he had gone to, and she was a very, very kind lady. I felt really safe with her. And she basically just said, well, you're very much textbook adhd. And also we talked about the fact that males, if you are LGBTQ male, may be different because of the intersectionality of it all as well. People with different backgrounds and different life experiences will experience ADHD in different ways. She was very open about talking about things like that, so it was very interesting. And she also said, you know, you have a typical case of social anxiety, which was very strange to me because I thought I was always the life of the party. I was partied a lot in my younger years, and I was always the life of the party. I was the one to leave the club, the last, you know, the last of the gang. You know, everybody would go home and I would stay and. And I was always up for a party, so. But was that because there was something else involved? And it wasn't just Me, I was kind of like, masking behind whatever substance or alcohol was involved in that situation, so I didn't have to be the real me. Because thinking back now, thinking of being sober, like, I don't even drink anymore. I've been sober for the best part of two years now in terms of alcohol. And just thinking of turning up in a. In a club with music, loud music, and loads of people around me just freaks me out. Now thinking of, you know, going to a festival or something like that, I'm thinking, oh, my God, it's just like, you know, how would I face that situation? So I think all of those pieces fit nicely into that journey of how I got to my diagnosis. And she did say at the time, I'm pretty sure you are also autistic, but we need to do another diagnosis, another diagnostic process, so I wouldn't be able to tell you now. And it kind of, like, stuck in my mind a little bit, and I didn't do it for another three years, and I did it last year, and I was diagnosed autistic as well, so. And I think the labels help in a way. I don't use them or I try not to use them as an excuse to say, oh, I'm doing this because I'm autistic, or I'm doing this because my brain is adhd. It's a process of learning for everybody. And it's valid to actually use those cards, in my view, because it kind of is a different way of seeing the world from before your diagnosis. And it's. It's an adaptation period. I'm trying to see those labels a little bit like my label of being gay. I'm openly gay, but I don't turn up in a. In a room. And the first thing I say is, I'm gay, is. So I'm trying to kind of, like, see the ADHD and the autism labels as something that help me navigate the world and give me an understanding that my neurobiological landscape is unique, as yours will be as a woman with adhd, and everybody else's will be different slightly, because at the end of the day, we are people.
- [10:59]
A
I think you perfectly articulated so much that we've talked about on the podcast before. But, you know, to hear it coming from your mouth, it's so validating to be able to see again how it manifests so differently. But I love the ways you use the neurobiological landscape, that we're all navigating this in our own unique way. We've got the connectedness of saying, yes, okay, we've got this label in inverted commas, but how that shows up and like you say, like the access of care, the level of support that we can reach and what we've always known about ADHD is take the medication, maybe go and see a therapist, goodbye, here's your diagnosis. But actually having all of this awareness of saying, right, we can look after ourselves from a completely newly neuroaffirmed and educated place, we can live. Well, would you agree and I guess tell us a little bit about what you believe is the way to live, thriving with ADHD through your lens of the gut brain connection?
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I think the gut brain connection plays a crucial role because it connects the external world with your internal world in a way. And going even a little bit deeper philosophically than that, food choices that before you even put anything in your mouth, food choices are determined a lot by emotions and by memories and by associations between those memories and the way that that food may have made you feel, the way that the food actually is perceived by society. Because, for example, now carbohydrates are very demonized and people kind of shy away from them thinking that all carbs are the same. So I'm going to have a low carb diet and that's going to be better for me. So all of those things are kind of like playing in your mind. And take an ADHD mind, it's going 100 miles an hour, it's going a lot faster than the neurotypical mind. All of those things that are kind of like little snippets of information are kind of like little bits of data that are floating around in the spin cycle of a washing machine that doesn't stop running. That, that is a typical overwhelmed ADHD mind that is not either not treated or that you're not aware of it. So if you choose not to go with your traditional treatment with stimulants and so on, you can actually at least be aware that your mind is behaving a certain way and then you can do something about it. So with all of that in mind, before you even put anything in your, in your mouth, and you think, okay, I'm going to engage my, my digestive system, I'm going to engage my, the microbes in my gut, they're going to produce nice molecules that then are going to travel to my brain and all of that is going to happen. And that is the kind of like the, the basis of the gut brain connection in a nutshell. You have all of those emotions to deal with and One of the key things in, in ADHD is that emotional dysregulation, the fact that emotions can affect us to an extent that they can overpower us, they can feel overwhelming, that something tiny can feel like a mountain, that something negative that somebody without ADHD or a neurotypical person can deal with in two seconds and they archive it and it's dealt with and that's fine. It can actually bug us the whole day and it can bug us for days. You know, so a little act of unkindness, words that some, that you've heard from somebody and they didn't sit right with you, they can actually be sitting with you for days and weeks. So all of that is going to have an impact on the kind of foods that you're going to choose. And if you go through your life without being mindful that that is the case, then you could actually be drawing, you could be drawn to the wrong foods for the wrong reasons in your life, and then you can actually get into unhealthy behaviors for your ADHD as well as for the rest of your body and your brain. So not just ADHD and what I find that in general, both in, in the non ADHD community, but also in the ADHD stroke neurodivergent community, we kind of like try and reduce things quite a lot because it's easier to kind of make sense of nutrition, which is quite complicated. If you just think of good things, bad things, the science about this, the science about that, and kind of like build it all like almost like a house of cards in a way that you only need to blow it and it falls down because it needs to work for you. And sometimes the choices that we make on, we don't make them for the right reasons. So that sounds like a lot.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah, but no, and I think it's interesting for you to kind of describe it like that because, you know, we, we know that there's a big prevalence of disordered eating, you know, specifically kind of binge eating cycles with adhd. And to connect to that, not just to the sort of the dopamine seeking, but to understand the emotional connection of, you know, what you were describing with rsd, like how powerful RSD can be. And like you say one comment, one conversation, and it can eat, literally eat us up, you know, from the inside. And we can't shake off that perspective. And that from what I know, and I'm not a neuroscientist, but I know that we've got a default mode network that can be much more whether you want to use the word aggressive or it just feels like it's a more powerful way of thinking where the negativity bias and we do ruminate and catastrophize and worry and ponder on so much that to know that we have that and then to have things that we can break the cycle with. For me, RSD has always been a big part of my life and to understand it and to see it and to kind of almost have it separate from myself. So I can say, okay, that was a really hurtful comment, but am I going to choose to hold that with me now? Do I want to carry that with me? Because that's going to be a weight and understand, like what am I going to reach for? Some people reach for an alcoholic drink, some people reach for chocolate, whatever that is. But actually to just to see it as it is and say, right, I understand my brain, I understand that this is going to affect me and I am more sensitive to this and understand that we do often need perspective and to. How do we get that perspective? Is it having a conversation with someone we trust who understands our brains, someone who can. Who is a bit more pragmatic in thinking and pull us out of that kind of like doom cycle or have, you know, practices of grounding ourselves in nature, going for a walk, swimming, exercise, creativity, Anything that we know is gonna, Is gonna pull us out of that, that, that head.
- [18:13]
B
Absolutely. I think. Yeah, sorry I interrupted you. Adhd. I'm just, I'm completely agreeing with what you're saying. And that in a way is the part of how do you tackle that, that awareness? So the first step is to be aware. And I think the fact that we may have been harsher to ourselves than we need to be at certain points in life as well, and the fact that we need that kind of little bit of self compassion that I think is part of that. Okay, so how do I, now that I know, I'm going to try and trace the source of this emotion. So it might be the reason why I'm feeling rejected and the reason why I'm feeling that dysphoria around the rejection. Hmm. I'm going to try and source it to where it comes from. Once you identify where it comes from, how can you ensure that that situation is not going to affect you the same way again? Because otherwise you just falling onto the same. Into the same trap all the time. And all of those things that you said, nature, creativity. For me, having nutrition degree and having looked at nutrition as a key intervention for a lot of the Stuff that I've done later are as important, if not more important than the nutrition. Because I think sometimes we get really, really obsessed with getting the nutrition just right. And with that obsession, sometimes we fuel the anxiety around our own health. That is not actually a healthy thing to do. And I've done that myself. I had massively disordered eating from my teens. I binged, I took slimming tablets in my teens and then I kind of, you know, I binged on loads of different things that, crunchy, sweet things, salty. I'm quite drawn to salty, crunchy kind of foods. That is my sensory kind of. I need. And I did that all through my 20s and I binged in my 30s and I discovered alcohol in my 30s because I never drank. And until my 30s and I, I thought, wow, this is legal. And it gets you more high than drugs that you can take in the clubs and you can buy it in the news agents and go home with like this thing that we get.
- [20:44]
A
Welcome to England.
- [20:46]
B
No, how is this possible? So I discovered alcohol and I thought, wow, this is amazing. So all of those things that you get into, you think, okay, I know that taken out of context and if you think about the binging, it can be really negative. But when you try to make diet so regimented by saying, this is only what I allow myself to eat, you put so many rules in place that it can actually become almost like another eating disorder in itself because it becomes very orthorexic in a way. It's only allowing yourself to eat the right foods that are going to fit into this regime that has a, a purpose for, for health. And that in itself is, was what orthorexia is. So you only eat it if it's good for you and you'll get very obsessed about it. And I struggle with that a lot through my 30s and, and studying nutrition as well didn't help me with that because then you hyper focus on what is really good for you. And then I tried so many things. I was vegan for a while and then I was, I left the vegan and I went keto and then I left keto and I went paleo. And then, you know, I'm gluten free and dairy free and you know, I've done it all. And now the approach that I'm taking and that works for me and for a lot of other people that I've worked with that they decide, okay, well, I have a different journey to yours, but it mimics a lot of the steps where I've tried so many different Things I've seen so many practitioners, I've tried so many different diets, and in the end, just being mindful of how foods make me feel and actually just being compassionate and allowing myself to have that little bit of crunch when I need the crunch or, you know, like for me is popcorn. And I'll binge on popcorn. Because I think, okay, well, of all of the things that I can binge on, popcorn is probably not going to be the worst thing in the world. So rather than actually have a little bowl, I'll give myself a big bowl. And like when my other half sees me do that, he says, okay, you're stressed, aren't you? And I say, yes, I am. And it's my stress ball, it's my, you know, it's comfort and it makes me feel good. I wouldn't want to do it every day because if I do that, then I'll put on weight and I don't want to put on weight. So. And I'm trying very hard to implement my exercise routine as well in my, in my daily life because it helps me feel better mentally as well as physically. So it's kind of allowing yourself to be compassionate with yourself. And to think, if I have that popcorn, it doesn't mean that I'm a failure now. And that everything that I'm working towards, which is ideally having a diet that suits me right and makes me feel good and everything else is not, I've just thrown it all out of the window. And I think there is this kind of attitude that I say that everything needs to be perfect and everything needs to be just right. That is, I think it can be damaging 100%.
- [23:55]
A
Everything that you're saying is so validating to hear because it comes from such an informed, educationally research based. And what we know is extremes aren't great. Ridding the shame, ridding the get the guilt. And to be able to live like that, I think, you know, the gut brain connection will, it must heal itself in a sort of softer kind of way.
- [24:18]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. Because we focus a lot on the gut and okay, what reaches the gut. So we look at the food and then we kind of dissect the foods into components and we think, okay, so this has got polyphenols that will help my gut bacteria, or this has more fiber that's going to help my gut bacteria. You know, this has got some fats like omega 3 fatty acids that might actually be prebiotic in nature. So they help the gut bacteria as well. And some bifida bacteria can actually thrive on omega 3s and so on. So, and that's all great. But what is very basic in terms of the gut brain connection is that if there is a gut brain connection and a brain gut connection, it is a bi directional connection. They are both talking to each other. And the brain with emotions that are as powerful as we know they are in ADHD is sending incredibly poignant messages to the gut, to the point that that is the primal way of communication between the gut and the brain in a situation of fight or flight, which can be how our brains are actually. And our nervous systems are hardwired in ADHD because of years of being told we're not good enough, of rejection, of tiny traumas, massive traumas, all of that wires the nervous system in such a way that we are hypervigilant, we are mere cutting, we kind of are, you know, just ready for the next negative thing that is going to hit us. And sometimes we don't even realize because we have become almost so used to that rejection that it is part of that basic mechanism as what I'm trying to say. So if the brain is saying to the gut, the emotions that I'm overpowered with now are negative, that is the same thing as having a lion just behind you that's going to attack you. And literally, whether the brain is actually overpowered by a negative emotion or whether you have a negative situation that is physical just about to happen to you, that perceived stress or that real stress of the lion or the train or the bus that's going to hit you and the, and the stress of something that is just in your imagination but is happening in your brain is real, that is happening. That, that is having the same effect on your gut is basically the message that your brain is sending to your gut is the can you tone down your activity? Because in a situation of danger, I don't want you to be spending any energy. I want the energy for me. The brain is selfish and wants the energy for itself because it needs to get you out of that danger. So in a way selfish, knowing that it's going to need that energy to take you out of the, of the, of the potential threat. And when you think about it, that is actually very powerful because a lot of people with ADHD will have digestive issues, will have kind of IBS type symptoms, they'll have potential low inflammation situations in the gut. They don't agree with certain foods, food intolerances. All of that is quite typical in the neurodivergent community that might also strike from the Fact that the brain is constantly telling the gut to take a step down in terms of its activity. So there's a lot of the processes that normally happen in the gut, like the very first steps in digestion, which is saliva forming in the, in the mouth that carries enzymes that break down the food already from the mouth into the stomach, to the formation of stomach acid, to the formation of enzymes in the, in the pancreas, to bile producing in the gallbladder. All of those are necessary ingredients for food to start being digested more properly in the small intestine to then the appropriate amount and diversity of bacteria in your colon so they can actually extract the nutrients from the food that reaches the colon. All of that is depending on a calm nervous system, or rather than a calm nervous system, which is, it's never going to be completely calm. A nervous system that is resilient and able to withstand these ups and downs of life. And if your nervous system is hardwired for drama, which a lot of it is the case in adhd, and you're getting drama from yourself because of the self talk that you're giving yourself, or I'm not allowing myself to give to eat this because this will happen if I eat that and that, that self talk that stops you from doing things that are in a way common sense. Unless you are of course, you know, celiac or you have any clinical situation that any of the ingredients you're allergic to or you know, some people, I talk about keffiya, for example, and some people say, oh, I've got, I react really badly to histamine. Okay, well, of course that, you know, if you know that that is your situation, of course, don't take a food that will put you in danger, that's going to make you feel ill. So I'm not talking about pushing foods that are potentially going to make you feel sick. I'm talking about foods that have a purpose in health that is documented in literature quite widely at high level, high quality of experiments and that I wasn't allowing myself to put in my body because of different reasons. And when I talk to people, it happens to so many people, we do that to ourselves. And that negative self talk is literally just fueling that fight or flight situation that our central nervous system is already wanting. You know, it's, it's, we are wired for drama and we're giving it drama. So it's kind of like a cycle of perpetuating the drama in adhd. And I think the way to get, to get out of the drama is Self compassion and self acceptance in all different shapes. So first accept yourself for the fact that, okay, I'm still carrying five kilos more than I would like to carry, although I'm carrying 15 kilos less than four years ago. My journey's been long since being diagnosed and being burnt out. But when I had no other choice but to actually be kind to myself because I had, I was bedridden when I was burnt out and when I was diagnosed I was actually, I was finding it very difficult to get out of bed. I had to like put on a smile to do zoom calls at work and then go back to bed for a while because I was really that, that burnt out. I think I was pushed to be kind. I didn't have the energy to think. I cannot allow myself to eat this. I'm just going to eat whatever. I'm going to be intuitive in what I'm drawn to eating. Just because I didn't have the energy to get into the drama of this is allowed. This is not allowed. This is making me feel like this. I'm gonna get fat. My trousers won't fit. I was my energy, I didn't have the energy to spend thinking about all of that. So in a way that helped me perversely to, to become more acceptant of, of accepting of myself.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah.
- [32:03]
B
And then you start cultivating that compassion little by little and we can talk about what brain parts are involved in all of that. But it's fascinating. The whole science of, of compassion to yourself and to others taps straight into the gut brain connection and, and into diminishing inflammation throughout the body and into making you feel better and more hormonally balanced and everything else. Because all of that is connected.
- [32:36]
A
Hi. So I'm just interrupting today's podcast because I wanted to let you know about some upcoming workshops that I've got opening in July. June and July. August actually. So firstly, I want to let you know about my four session live, ask me anythings. Now this is an opportunity for you to come on live, ask me questions, get some hot seat coaching really to get some support, you know, whether it's before or after a diagnosis. If you've got any burning questions, anything that you just wanted to ask my advice on or guidance, I'm there. I can't wait to do this. We've got the first one happening on the 27th of June, so that's. And this is your opportunity just to come on, meet other like minded people. You can either send me your question beforehand and I can answer it live or you can come on on camera or you can just write in the chat. Now, remember that whenever we do these live sessions and you ask a question, that question is always going to be for someone else as well. And, you know, likewise, when someone else asks a, they are going to always be asking for the collective. And that is what I think is so powerful about this community. We are all dealing with things maybe differently and just different circumstances, but very much with adhd, we have a lot of common denominators and that is why I want to do these four sessions. There's one in June, it's first one's June 27th. We've got two in July and one in August. So these will be recorded and you're able to really just come on and tap into my knowledge. I really want to make this as supportive and affordable as possible. And I. I just want to let you know about a free webinar I'm doing with my friend, my colleague, Adele Whimsic. She's an ADHD hormonal expert and what she doesn't know about hormones and ADHD is, you know, really is second to none. And this is happening on July 9th at 7pm and with the conversation that we're going to be having is about demystifying progesterone and adhd. So we hear a lot about estrogen and perimenopause, but actually, can we understand the role of progesterone and perhaps slightly negative reputation it's had, especially for those of us who considered ourselves progesterone sensitive and many of us with neurodivergent minds and nervous systems, we have very much felt that progesterone is sort of the antihero in our. In our story. So this is happening on the 9th of July. Now, I know that all this information is very overwhelming, so I'm going to just say go to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk and you'll see on the homepage the two buttons and all the information is on there. Now, back to today's episode. What I wanted to ask, which, you know, includes all of this, is as a neuroscientist, we are rewiring our brains to think different thoughts and maybe to accept that we are going to have these busy brains and we're going to have brains that are going to have this constant kind of conversation loop. And I do believe over time it takes a while because it's a completely new practice. It's like basically our brains operating in a different way, but over time that Very critical self talk can dissipate and we can start hearing those sort of more gentle, the softer nudges. And I know we, we spoke before about maybe embracing more of a feminine energy where perhaps before. And it's not about, you know, gender or sex or anything like this. It's understanding that the doing energy was more masculine and the productivity and, you know, external validation and showing people how great you are with all these academic achievements. Not you personally, but just all of us wanting to kind of just keep going on this treadmill. The burnout kicks in and we just literally crash. We can't do anything. And then being able to say, actually, is there another option here? Is there a softer, more gentle, kinder option that we can live where we put a lens, we operate through that lens where it's with our careers, with parenting, relationships, friendships, socializing, the way we eat is more intuitive. And I'd love to talk a little bit more about that with you as someone with all the science behind him to more of the spiritual side of what I like to talk about and saying that we can let go of the doing and the, the productivity and just be a little bit more in the present moment and feel a bit more grounded and calm and. Yeah, I'd love to hear it from your perspective as well.
- [37:07]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And when you were saying about the feminine, I, I completely agree. It's not about gender, it's about softness. And even science can be very masculine, particularly science that is quantitative. And I get bemused by people just being obsessed by, oh, show me the evidence and show me a systematic review and show me a control group and show me all of these kind of things, which of course, I agree as a scientist, this is the gold standard for a particular way of going about science. The science of nutrition is particularly tricky because of the emotions attached to food, of the belief system, attached to different food choices. All of that taken into account doesn't detract from the fact that there are more ways of looking at science than just the numbers, than just the control groups and the systematic reviews and the randomized control trials. There is qualitative science that is very powerful. A lot of the psychology science, a lot of the neuroscience science that goes away from imaging and molecules that you can identify in a test is going to be self reported. When somebody self reports, you need to analyze that in a completely different way. And if you go about analyzing that data from the, with masculine energy, you miss out on the nuances, on the richness of the, of the data, which is more Feminine, it's got power in the, in the context of how it happens in the. Is soft. And when I did my doctoral degree I did two things. So I did like a set of experiments that would have been the more masculine kind of a part. And then I wrote a self reflective piece that was based on different methods, that was more qualitative. And for that I actually drew from social feminist theory and I looked at how the, the feminists in, in key moments of history, like the 70s for example, they looked at things in a completely different way. They gave value to the unfinished. So it didn't need to be even completed to have value. Something didn't need to be completed to have value. There's just one example. And I looked into the work of people like Donna Haraway, wonderful feminist lady who talked about the value of interspecies connections, so talked about the richness of brain development when you have a pet and particularly dogs. So she talked about relationships with dogs and how they enrich human life. So really interesting stuff that is not a randomized controlled trial. And it completely opened my mind to. I came into the doctoral degree thinking, oh, it's all going to be numbers and I'm going to crunch all these numbers and I'll produce appendices with more data and blah, blah. And. And when I, the more I got into the qualitative aspects of science, I'm thinking, wow, I wish I had just done a qualitative only doctoral degree because this is, this is bloody amazing. This is completely incredible. And there's a lady called Audrey Lord who was black. She was born half blind and very, a very weak baby in Harlem in New York in the 30s, in the middle of the big depression. And she became. Well, she was a lesbian black lady living her life in the 50s, 60s and into the 90s until she died. And she did incredible things. But she wrote about the, the oppression that black women felt during certain parts of, of the 20th century. And a lot of her books actually and the way that she wrote remind me of the neuros. Neurodiversity movement of how it's actually developing and how there are tensions between people in the actual movement because of the way that we see things. And that is healthy in a way it's kind of like developing towards something that is going to be much bigger. But she talked about differences as well and she talked about, she has a very famous quote which is it's not our differences that divide us, is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences. And I love that quote. So much, because I think if we recognize that there is that feminine energy in. In everywhere in the. In the universe, but also in science, and that we can learn so much about ourselves and about ADHD and neurodiversity or other neurodivergent conditions. If we go beyond the. What is published in a randomized control trial, what is published in a systematic review, there is the lived experience of you. You have your own lived experience, which is unique to you and is valid. And just because it's unique to you, it doesn't mean that it's not valid. So if mine is completely different, I still need to accept that yours is valid and actually celebrate that difference. And that is what Audre Lorde basically was all about. So I'm really drawn to that lived experience and the feminine element of lived experience, the fact that everything that we feel is valid to us. So in a way, it should be valid in general for the community that we are part of. And I don't think we are there yet, but we are. That we're raising awareness of that commonality of experience that's as. That. That. That we are. Yeah. That we have.
- [42:54]
A
So interesting. And I wonder, you know, from doing all that research with. About feminism and especially sort of back in the day, did you notice any neurodivergent traits in. In the feminists that you were researching?
- [43:04]
B
I'm pretty sure, yeah. There is this physicist called Karen Barrett who's written about the origins of the universe and. And she wrote about this thing called refraction, not diffraction, which is basically a different way of looking at. It's a philosophical concept. It's a different way of looking at how it stems from how light actually reflects on objects and it goes into different places. But she used it as a way to talk about how anything in life can actually be a departure point according to how it. It's almost like comparing how light reflects in a mirror and then it goes into different directions. How you can start discussion about any particular topic by not just always looking at the same departure point, but using any of the points that the light has been reflected to as the departure point. And. And she has other wacky kind of concepts like that. And I thought that, to me sounds very ADHD kind of autistic kind of thinking. That very out of the box kind of way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, there's.
- [44:18]
A
I mean, there's a school of thought that Agatha Christie was adhd. You know, so you sort of hear about these pioneering, you know, women, strong women, you know, doing incredible things throughout history. And you kind of think, I wonder if that wasn't the drive, the ADHD drive or the autism, where we're sort of hyper focused on a passion subject or something like that, where it's just fascinating because there's so many different ways of looking at all of this. But I'm so glad that you can validate a lot of what the listeners are probably thinking is this our lived experience is our lived experience. And sometimes the science isn't there. You know, we know, especially with women right now, the science isn't there to back up so many of the hormonal issues, the women's health issues, the gut problems, the autoimmune problems, all the different things that women have experienced and gone through and doctors have sort of dismissed and gaslit us about. And because there isn't this science, that masculine energy saying that's true, okay, I believe you. Now we have to kind of go with more of that feminine energy of saying your experience is valid and you know, maybe we need to be a bit more intuitive about this and just offer compassion and kindness until science catches up. And that's so much of the work that I've been doing that I'm not a scientist in any way. But the more I speak to people like yourself who have embedded themselves in the sort of the science community, it's just substantiating what so many of us have known for so long. I just want to thank you so much. It's been absolutely fascinating, so much information here and we're probably not even scratched the surface. But if, you know, if anyone's listening right now and thinking, I'd love to work with you or hear more, more from you about your work, tell me what's going on for you right now.
- [46:09]
B
So I have a course that is available now, it's called Thrive with adhd. And a lot of what we have talked about is in the course from neuroaffirming way of looking at ADHD as a neurotype, as a unique neurobiological landscape. As I was saying in the beginning to nutrition, there is seven modules on the course and you can take it as, as you, as you go basically at your own pace, it's recorded. But once you sign up, you have access to me as well and you can ask me questions and, and so on. And there is also a discussion group that you can join and contribute to. There is ample information on the gut brain connection in relationship to adhd. And the way that I've gone about it is by looking at the neurobiology of it all. So I think knowledge can be very empowering. Some of the feedback that I've had is that I would say that it goes with that feminine energy and that makes me happy because of course there is a lot of science behind everything that is in there and I haven't made anything up. When I'm talking about mindful eating, it's all about the science of intuitive eating, which is really well reported in literature. When I've talked about making mindful decisions around food, it's all a combination of mindfulness based cognitive therapy and other forms of therapy. I'm not a therapist, but the science is there and you can draw from it. So that I'm quite proud of having done that because it was actually very therapeutic for me to do and I really enjoyed putting it together. It's available now on my website. Also, I'll give you a quote so people who want to sign up, they can get, they can get a discount as well. So there is that and then I'm doing the the equivalent in a book and the book will be Thrive with ADHD and will be out whenever I write it. So hopefully I'm hoping for late this year or early 2025. I think it's probably going to be January, February 2025.
- [48:24]
A
Amazing. Well, so much fantastic information there and the course sounds incredible. So I will make sure that we get all the information in the show notes. And thank you so much Dr. Miguel for sharing your knowledge and your personal insights and look forward to catching up again very soon.
- [48:43]
B
Thank you so much Kate. Thanks so much for having me.
- [48:47]
A
I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode. If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please do check out my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk for lots of lots of free resources and paid for workshops. I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there. Take care and see you for the next episode. I hear from so many of you every week that this podcast has helped you immeasurably and if that is the case, and it really has helped you understand and validate yourself and your experiences as well as giving you options and ways to move forward positively and finally believe that you can thrive at life with more insights, more guidance. I would absolutely love it if you could support the podcast with a small tip. I actively choose not to hand over the sponsorship or advertising of this podcast to ensure that it's the most pleasurable and easy listening experience experience for you as the listener. So any tip or any contribution is greatly appreciated to ensure that I can carry on with this podcast with the content. All the details are in the show notes. There's a link there. Thank you so much and see you for the next episode.