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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support
Adult ADHD Tips – Taurine for Sleep and Anxiety
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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support Podcast - A Podcast for Neurodivergent Creatives. Taurine for Anxiety and Sleep. This podcast is an audio companion to the book "The Drummer and the Great Mountain - A Guidebook to Transforming Adult ADD / ADHD."
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Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain, a podcast where we share effective tips and practices for working with adults. Add ADHD in a natural, effective way without the use of medications each episode Join me, your host Bahman Saram, along with the author of the Drummer and the Great Mountain, Michael Joseph Ferguson. Join Michael and myself in an interactive discussion of sharing our stories as we journey together in transforming what can be the gift of being what we call hunter types. This podcast is intended to be your audio companion to the book written by Michael, who joins me each episode where we both will strive to foster dialogue, give you our personal insights and share both of our experiences on this similar path that we are all on. Our intention and hope is that along with the book, this podcast gives you an additional perspective as you listen to us, delve deeper into each chapter of the book to give you even more tools to go along with what it is that you are reading. Visit us at drummerandthegreatmountain.com to purchase the book and look for more tools, tips and updates as well as giving us feedback on this podcast. Join our growing global community of creative types, entrepreneurs and out of the box thinkers on our shared journey. Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain podcast.
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Welcome everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host Michael Joseph Ferguson. I hope you are all doing really well in today's episode. We are going to be talking about Taurine and how it could potentially help you with sleep and anxiety. So this one has been a bit of a revelation for me personally. Taurine does not get talked about too much when it comes to ADHD and I hope to change that a little bit because I have noticed some major impacts to taking Taurine in reducing anxiety and improving sleep and I want to talk a little bit about why that could be the case and why Taurine could potentially help us. So if you are challenged with sleep and anxiety, stay tuned. I'm going to talk about what Taurine is, how to get it, how much to take, and how you might be able to add this to your toolkit of supplements that may be helpful to you. Okay, so one quick announcement. By popular demand we are offering another two month live online support group starting on September 3rd. We are calling this Virgin the Thrive Group. We thought that was a cool name. This group is based on the model and principles I use for my one on one life coaching sessions. So I've been doing these since 2007 so that's been refined over time. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, but you need some support in integrating the topics we discuss. This is for you and especially if you maybe you're having a hard time affording one on one life coaching sessions because those can be a little more expensive. This also may be cost effective for you. We actually lowered the price a little bit because I know some of you are in countries where the exchange rate's a little high. So it might be a little more affordable to you to join us. So this group is all about implementation. Each week we'll cover a different topic such as time management, goal setting, follow through, navigating emotions. But primarily the focus is on you getting support. Support with goal setting, support with follow through and support on getting clear. What are my actions for the upcoming week? What are the things that need to happen so that the week goes better? So all this is in a group setting. You'll connect with fellow podcast listeners around the world who share your strengths and challenges. It's just very healing to be with people who are like minded. We heard that a lot in the last session. Just to be able to actually relax and go, okay, I'm with people that I don't have to mask around. I can just relax and talk about what things are coming up for me. But also then really get some the support from me and from Cuesta, but from the group and getting some ideas and then just that encouragement I find goes a long way. So if you're interested, you can go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com thrive and you'll be able to get more info including dates, times, pricing and I'll also leave a link in the description. And again, this starts on Tuesday, September 3rd. 3rd. So let's go problem solution real quick. So the problem is that people with ADHD commonly have sleep issues. It's one of the top things on our list as well as challenges with anxiety, which often triggers us getting distracted. Usually we get have anxiety, then we get triggered and then we go into distraction. Often our brain can also get overstimulated. We can wake up in the middle of the night being overstimulated, really anxious and and it's really hard for us to go back to sleep. And depending on the person, this could relate to lower GABA levels. That's one of the things we're gonna talk about today is GABA or just having anxiety issues that you haven't found any supplement. Or maybe you've had challenges with taking medications and they have work but then you've got a lot of side effects. Those are the issues. So the solution potentially can be to explore taking some taurine, especially before you go to sleep. And what it does is it raises your GABA levels or it affects your GABA in a very specific way. I want to be very clear about my verbiage here. It doesn't necessarily raise your GABA levels, but it affects your GABA receptors in a way that is calming to your brain. Okay, so let's get into it. So this past year has been pretty rough. I've had a pretty hard year. And you may have noticed we've been actually doing quite a bit in terms of workshops. Haven't been doing as much podcasts, but it's been pretty stressful. Dad got injured in the spring, cracked his hip. He's 85 years old, so wasn't sure if that was going to be the end. So lots of stress and anxiety, long distance driving, just high levels of stress, really having a challenge turning that stress dial down. And then we got Covid recently and we actually had to push out one of our recent workshops. So sleep has been a real challenge. Real challenge. And that's coming from someone that actually I had a long stretch where I slept really well. So I can empathize with a lot of you that are really struggle with this. So I tried magnesium. Other sleep sleep aids, they work to a degree, but whoa, Taurine really helped and it made a big difference. So I want to talk a little bit about it because I think the science is there that it may be something we want to explore as something we do especially for our sleep, but also just generalized anxiety as it relates to our particular wiring. So what is taurine? So taurine is an amino acid and it has many different functions in the body. You're getting it as part of your diet. You're gonna be taking in taurine in smaller or larger quantities, depending on what you're eating. But it has an impact on your eye health, your heart functioning, and your cellular hydration and electrolyte balance. It has antioxidant properties, but most importantly for us, it affects our central nervous system. It acts as a neurotransmitter and neuromodulator, contributing to brain and nerve function. That's what we're going to be talking about specifically, it binds to GABA receptors. So let's talk about GABA for a second. So GABA is a neurotransmitter, just like dopamine and serotonin. So serotonin affects our overall sense of, well, being. Dopamine's around learning and focus, and GABA is about relaxation Calming the brain down. Calming, Calming. Calming. GABA is about calming your body, calming your brain in general. Again, oversimplification. There's more to it. But as relates to what we're going to be talking about, GABA and, and calming go together. So my understanding of how this all works together is that when you are stressed or anxious, your body goes into fight or flight and you start getting a lot of cortisol in your body and a lot of adrenaline because you're gonna. Basically, when you're in a stressful situation, back in the day, you needed to run away from the tiger and so your body goes, okay, here's a ton of adrenaline, go. And it just. We're motivated to move. And if you ever had a panic attack, you'll know exactly what that feeling is. You're just, is just filled with adrenaline. It's fight or flight. So you can't stay in that state for a long period of time. So your brain, the deeper parts of your brain goes, okay, we need to calm this down. Now the cortisol actually can be very destructive to the body over time if there's too much of it. So it kind of looks through the environment and goes, okay, what's something that's going to chill us out or stimulate us to the point where our dopamine levels go up, our GABA levels go up and the cortisol goes down? That is my understanding of the mechanism. So for us, when we're feeling anxious or stressed, chances are our GABA levels are lower or our GABA receptors are not being engaged. Okay, so that's the mechanism. And so that affects just about all of us who are wired this way. So how does this relate with Taurine? I'm going to give you two articles to check out. Maybe there's three. I think there's two articles, there's two scientific articles that were published that talk about gaba. One talks about anxiety, one talks about ADHD and gaba. How can Taurine help us? What does Taurine do that could potentially help? This experience of us up late, brain is just on fire. It's hard for us to get to sleep or we're just really anxious. And so we wake up many times during the night or just in general throughout the day. We have a lot of anxiety and we've tried other things and maybe even magnesium and things like that just didn't quite do what we wanted them to do. So Taurine tends to have a calming effect on the brain. And so how that works is it doesn't raise your GABA levels, but it binds to GABA receptors as I understand it. So taurine is known to have a calming effect on the brain. It acts as an inhibitor neurotransmitter, which means it can help reduce neuronal excitability and promote relaxation. And this calming effect can be beneficial for people with ADHD who often experience hyperactivity and have a difficulty winding down. And it relates to regulation of neurotransmitters. So taurine can influence the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain and it can help regulate the release of GABA and which will promote relaxation and reduce your anxiety. And by increasing GABA activity, taurine can help individuals with ADHD achieve a more relaxed state conducive to sleep. So that's the punchline. So how do we do this? What do we take? Is it dangerous? What do we know about taurine? So taurine has many natural sources. You can get it in meat and poultry, seafood, dairy products, eggs, seaweed specifically, and green algae has taurine. It may or may not be enough. So that's the note. You will probably have to supplement with it and which is what I'm going to suggest you potentially explore. So before we go into supplementation and suggestions on that, I want to talk a little bit about the potential side effects. I always want to be responsible when I'm mentioning supplements, whether it was in my book or when I talk about it on the podcast so that you have no issues. Now, the good news is taurine has very little. Our bodies tend to do well with it. There's not a lot of side effects, so most people won't even experience any of these. But I want to mention them anyway just to be on the safe side. So I want to start by saying check for contraindications with any medications you may be taking. There might be a couple. So definitely check your medication and see if this medication and taurine, just go to Google, say contraindication medication name and taurine and see what pops up. But it's generally considered safe to take. So the only side effects that I was able to find, which are fairly rare, are mild gastrointestinal discomfort, headaches. You may have allergic reaction, although they're very rare from what I can see. And that's like itching and things like that. Low blood pressure in some cases because it can lower your blood pressure a little bit. It's not a real extreme one, like things like trying to think of some supplements that actually lower your blood pressure. Omega 3 fatty acids can lower your blood Pressure, So you have to be careful of that if you're already taking blood pressure medications. So, but in general, just look at some med, if there's any medical interactions, blood pressure, diuretic medications that may be affecting your electrolyte balance, those things may have some contraindications with taurine. So let's talk recommended dosage. So the typical recommended dosage of taurine for sleep or for anxiety is 500 to 2000 milligrams a day. So typically that breaks down to morning, 1000 milligrams, evening 1000 milligrams. And you always want to start with a low dose first and test it out before you take a larger dose. So my recommendation would be start with 500 milligrams, get the 500 milligram capsules, start there. Just take 500 milligrams if it's for sleep, right before bed. If it's for anxiety, take it in the morning. You can take it with food and it's generally recommended to take with food. However, I can state from personal experience, I have not had an issue having it on an empty stomach and I definitely felt the impact of it. So that's what I did. I started with 500 milligram capsules and I tested that out first because I didn't know how my body was going to react. I didn't make sure I didn't add anything else to it. Before bed. I would take 500 milligrams of taurine and tested it out for a couple days and then upped it to a thousand milligrams before bed. And then I started taking a thousand before bed and a thousand in the morning. So. And what I found was that, whoa, it really worked. I slept better and I have been sleeping better consistently. So I've been on this for two months now. Sleep better. Anxiety is noticeably lower, meaning that if I'm feeling anxious, my, my return time after feeling anxious is much quicker. And. But in general, it's the sleep that I was most looking for and it really improved it. And it's consistent. It hasn't been like, it worked for a little bit and stopped. It has maintained a consistent effect. And so. And again, I've talked to other people about this and their experience with it, and I really want to encourage it. Like, I think this is worth checking out, especially if you've been trying a lot of other things and they haven't been working and you've really had a hard time getting to sleep and staying asleep and you've tried melatonin and all the rest of them, it's worth checking out. It may or may not work for you, but it's but given all the different pieces of it, I would say it might be something worth pursuing, especially if you haven't found anything else that worked well for you. So I'm going to leave a link in the description for two different brands that I've personally tested out because there's a lot of brands out there. No one is paying me for this. This is something I came to on my own. I've purchased all these myself, so I would just But I want to recommend brands because sometimes there's just a lot of different qualities of supplements out there. So I can recommend these two. So if check the description of this episode, you will see a link to those and you can check those out and test it out for yourself and see if this does make a difference. If it does, head on over to Facebook, go to our Facebook page, find the post for this particular episode and share your thoughts. I would like to hear if this has been beneficial to you. Or you can drop me an email at inforummarinthegreatmountain, let me know how it goes. Because this is a. This is something that I I want to hear the feedback from the community to see how much impact it's had because especially with sleep, a lot of us really struggle with it. And if this is helpful, I'm going to stay with promoting it because I feel like it could be one of those things that can make a difference to a lot of us. So let me know how it goes. And I hope that was helpful. And if you're interested in joining us in our upcoming two month live online support group, the Thrive Group, you can go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com thrive that starts on September 3rd, so until next time, be well.
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Thanks for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about the book the Drummer and the Great Mountain, visit Drummer and the Great Mountain.com to join us on social media, click Click the links at the top of the homepage. Help us spread the word. We're a small press and reviews really help. If you've been enjoying the podcast or the book, consider writing a review on itunes, Amazon, Goodreads, or your podcast app. If you're new to the podcast and want to quickly get up to speed on the concepts we discuss, check out our free 5 day mini course. Visit drummandthegreatmountain.com minicourse if there's a topic you'd like us to cover on future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email@inforummaandthegreatmountain.com.