#27 — Brain Food for ADHD: Lucinda Miller

Hi, this is Joseph Pack and welcome to the Drug Free ADHD podcast. Today I am joined by Lucinda Miller. a wonderful naturopath whose groundbreaking work focuses on supporting neurodivergent brains through her fantastic book brain brilliance that we own in this family We cook recipes from it regularly. And in her clinical practice, Lucinda bridges the gap between natural medicine and neurodiversity.

helping families find holistic approaches to cognitive wellness. She's revolutionizing how we think about supporting ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent conditions through nutrition and functional.

medicine. Without further ado, this is Lucinda Miller. Oh, it's interesting, you know, because we were both talking at the ADHD UK conference. And I'd mentioned you. I had no idea that you were in the waiting room at the time. That's so funny. Because, yeah, I'd heard about you, but it was kind of, it's like, yeah, we've been put together. This is great. We've got the guys that are sort of looking at the sort of...

Not drug free alternatives, but the things that you can do alongside that can really help to support ADHD. And I think so many people wait for years to get the diagnosis and then get rather disappointed that the drugs aren't doing. what they hope they might and obviously it sounds like they didn't see you at all no i hear that constantly but obviously there is a bias with my audience anyway because they're seeking drug-free alternatives or ways to either get

Well, probably about 40% of them are trying to get off of medication they've been on for a period of time. Some of them have just gone on medication and it's freaked them out. There's a thousand different reasons why they don't want to take it. And then there's a... good chunk of people who are just totally no, they don't want to take the meds. And it's funny because Henry, the CEO of ADHD UK, told me that around 50% of the people they've surveyed with ADHD don't take the medication.

That's fascinating. I didn't realise it was that high. Yeah. So imagine waiting five years or whatever it is for your diagnosis and the options are drugs or... Get on with life. I mean, I got diagnosed in 2017, beginning of 2017. And back then, that was exactly what I was told. It was, here's some medication. And I said, okay, what else can you offer me? Nothing.

It was done in a nasty way, but it was just like, it was a stone wall, nothing. I was like, okay, I'm going to have to go and find out for myself now. So I was diagnosed back in 2002. So a long time ago. Wow. And I'd had one baby and I was really keen to have at least one more. I ended up having two more. And so there wasn't really any clarity over whether you could take the medication or not during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

really feel I had an option anyway. And so you've not taken it since then? I didn't take it because I had a small one, I was still breastfeeding, I was planning on pregnancy. And so I've never really gone down that route because I found that the diet and the supplements and things like the breathing and so forth made such a massive difference to me that actually I thought, well, I was, you know, do I really need this?

Was that what kick-started you on this path? Or were you already working in this area beforehand, before you had kids? So I had been training as a naturopath.

um it was quite a long journey because i've got adhd i didn't realize that you know you get distracted by things and so you don't necessarily do the course in the three years you're expected to i did it over probably six years i sort of kept saying it's because i've got a full-time job and i'm doing this part-time but um anyway yeah no so i did i did a six-year course in the end um in naturopathy and so of course i was going to be more drawn towards that um

than the medication anyway um and also i guess you when you're training you become quite in tune with your body and you can see what's working and what's not working And I think the big thing for me and the thing I could relate to the most was blood sugar balance because my mom.

was diagnosed both with type 1 and type 2 diabetes which is quite rare to be diagnosed with both and therefore and i am wired like her you know i mean i think she was you know my aunt describes her as the child that never sat still the child that was always in trouble you know the one she was slightly described as the black sheep of the family you know because she didn't comply with the way everyone else

ticked so i think you know it's a strong thing in the family and um yeah so i think with her blood sugar issues i was very aware that i didn't want to become diabetic And therefore, I think I initially worked on it purely thinking they were sort of energy crashes and brain energy crashes. Yes.

And what was interesting is I also have a diagnosis of an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And again, that can affect your morning energy, which is something which many people with ADHD experience as well.

And what was interesting is when you first sort of go down this route, I've learned a lot about this since, but you slightly get sort of brought into this idea you need to be gluten free, dairy free, et cetera, which I have slightly kicked. out against but at the time you know you think okay well i'll have this sort of gluten-free cornflakes and this sort of rice milk or whatever

You have that for breakfast. And literally 45 minutes later, I was the biggest rat bag ever. I was shouting at my kids, shouting at my husband. I felt scattered. All I wanted to do was to crawl back into bed.

just changing to have eggs feta cheese or greek yogurt and lots of nuts and seeds for breakfast just completely changed that and i remember because i think that's very interesting for so just for a little context i wouldn't about a year or two after i got diagnosed with adhd i went vegan for about four years oh my goodness that's probably the worst thing you could have done well i was probably also the time where i was most depressed in life

There were some other things. My wife and I were traveling through South America and I caught some sort of, I ingested some sort of dodgy bacteria on the Inca Trail and I ended up really ill. Like I lost about two stone.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I was down to about 11 stone, I think, at the time. And I think it was probably about a year after my wife and I were like, maybe we should explore a different diet. And it's actually... made an enormous difference on my life anyway i've derailed it slightly carry on with what you were saying we'll come back to that

We'll come back to you because I think that's really interesting because I had a similar experience with a backpack bug as well, which derailed me for ages. So we'll go back to that. But essentially, the ADHD brain... finds it a bit glitchy to create the neurotransmitters that keep everything in balance so we've all heard of dopamine we've heard of norepinephrine or adrenaline cortisol and they tend to be

you know quite uneven and difficult to balance so it's not just about making them it's also about something called re-uptaking so helping them to come back into the system so there's almost like a constant level rather than highs and lows And the big amino acid that helps to make dopamine is something called tyrosine. And you get that from meat and eggs and fish and sort of these sort of animal products. You can get some.

yes of course from vegan and plant-based so i'm not anti-anti these it's just they don't necessarily serve you that well if you are struggling to make that in the first place And then that pathway then sort of kicks out to adrenaline. So basically, it's the beginnings of that will sort of kickstart everything going.

So protein is really, really important. As I said, you can get it from plant based sources, but you just have to have a lot more. So you can get away with, say, 100 grams of steak, but you'd probably need. a tin and a half of black beans to get that same sort of balance so yes you can do it but you have to have a big piled up plate you can't have small amounts of vegan food um

And I think so. Yes. So the protein is really important and also the healthy fats. So what we find in neurodivergent folk across the board. quite a lot with the adhd especially the type that finds executive function hard planning procrastination etc it's often their prefrontal and frontal cortex which is the front part of your brain so it's the bit behind your forehead which takes longer to develop. So in a typical person, a girl might be fully developed.

by the age of 21 22 so that's why they often seem to be a bit more grown up and the boys it could be 24 25 but if you've got a neurodivergent brain it could be five seven years delayed so this is why a lot of adhders especially the blokes are late bloomers They sort of seem to bundle around in their 20s and then suddenly they, you know, they're this incredible entrepreneur that just takes off in their 30s and they seem to be able to do it all.

So, but that part of the brain is fed by healthy fats. Right. So you actually need cholesterol. And obviously, you know, a plant-based diet is going to be very low in cholesterol. unique choline and isn't that funny though we go you know when i was younger cholesterol was bad yeah that's the way it was documented in the press

It is exactly because if you have too much of the bad stuff and the bad stuff happens if your body is in a state of something called oxidative stress. So if it's been very unwell. You've had a bad infection. Your body is highly stressed. It's going to go into a state of oxidative stress. So it can happen. But we need cholesterol in our brains to help our brains stay flexible.

The thing is, though, you know, obviously you're very experienced working with neurodivergent people where quite often, unless we've trained ourselves not to be black and white thinkers. So if we hear the word, words cholesterol bad. and it's not nuanced, then we think it's all bad. Absolutely. So as I said, there's good cholesterol and not so good cholesterol.

But it's actually a really complicated story. But what's important is you've got to think that your brain is made up of a lot of fat. So if you deplete your body of fat.

and your brain of fat is not going to function as well across the board fat so you need some oils some healthy fats in your diet what are the general like food sources then for healthy fats yeah so this is where so you've got the cholesterol then you've got this thing called choline and choline helps to make acetylcholine which is learning memory working memory processing emotional regulation self-regulation so a lot of the things that

adhd is struggle with as well so choline is another important brain fat and then you've got something called omega-3 fatty acids which come from fish oil so oily fish like salmon sardines etc and that again is a very important brain fat so you need these three brain fats and they mainly come from as i said eating oily fish eggs things like olive oil nuts and seeds avocado so it's very much this mediterranean diet that we're told about

And this is why it's so important. Now, you can, as I said, get a lot of these fats through plant based foods. So it's not impossible, but you've got to focus in on them. So you've got to have lots of sunflower seeds or peanuts or or whatever to be a green veg. to compensate so I think where often people are plant-based and say they're going traveling and they end up eating an awful lot of carbohydrate

Yeah, big time. You know, cheese, things like that, because they're the easy wins and they're easy for restaurants and so forth to produce. I think if you're in 100% control of what you're eating, you can do it really well. I also think that if you're living in a hot country where there's abundance of lovely variety of fruits, vegetables, pulses, whole grains, et cetera, you can leave really well.

plant-based yeah but i think in the uk it's much harder and i always say you know a lot of people who are plant-based are also thinking about the environment and i say Put yourself in the middle of Somerset in the middle of the winter and try and eat local with being vegan. And you'll end up eating onions, beetroot, tatties, kale. There's not much else. So it is hard. So you have to. Yeah. So I'm not anti this. It's just you have to think a lot more.

strategically for your health um if you're plant-based but what's really interesting is going back to this gut infection thing is There's a really high percentage of neurodivergent people who have underlying gut issues anyway. They've got a sensitive gut. From birth.

From birth. So it may be that they had colic or reflux as a baby. They might have had fussy eating because things felt uncomfortable or constipation or allergies or even bigger things like... inflammatory bowel or autoimmunity like select disease but there's a much higher percentage when you look at the studies so there's a sensitive gut anyway um and also the immune system finds often

I'm not saying always, there's never an always in this world, but there's often a struggle to get back on track having had a severe illness. It's almost like the body finds it harder to repair. Okay, so the immune system just... Again, it's a little bit glitchy. So what happens is you get, say, said nasty bacteria, amoeba, parasite, whatever you picked up when you were in South America.

On probably a slightly sensitive gut anyway. Yes. One that's been nourished. Always have had it. Interesting. But nourished. pretty well. The microbiome was going to be doing quite well with the plant-based diet, which is great. Interesting thing is because we were quite strict on avoiding ultra-processed vegan food. We were quite strict about that. That was difficult in South America.

Yeah, it must be like, oh, the option is rice and vegetables. But I think probably where what happened at that point is you were probably a bit depleted. in some b vitamins in some iron in some zinc etc just because you weren't getting the variety because you're not packing sure but let's not put that in the blame we're just going to be talking about the sensitive gut anyway so you have that slightly sense of gut anyway

You got this nasty parasite or bacterial, whatever it was. And what these do is they go into the gut and they literally put holes in the gut lining and then they sort of mushroom up again. to cause a sort of inflammation of the gut lining. So that means these little holes in the gut is known as leaky gut. And this is where slightly partially undigested food, toxins, other bacteria, other viruses.

go hooray there's no barrier i'm going to come straight into the bloodstream and cause havoc so that in itself can make you have severe brain fog feel really exhausted etc find it hard to recover but equally the inflammation and the gut again inflames the rest of the body but it also prevents the good in the good nutrients getting through properly

And so you become more and more depleted. So say you were on the kind of like edge with not having the best nutrition because you weren't at home. And then you had the bug and that was the double whammy. that would have really knocked you for sex but yeah my experience was i was backpacking aged 22 in um in himalayas and i picked up a parasite called jadia

which causes, you know, it's not the nicest thing to have. You get eggy burps, you feel pretty sick and nauseous, but it sort of passes. You sort of go, oh.

i think i'm all right now but actually what's happening is it's still in your gut and it depletes you so it sort of almost feeds on the food that you eat wow and especially and so you over time you've got this and it also mimics this thing called leaky gut stroke you know sort of the villi which are meant to do all the absorption stop working so basically you become really really depleted and that's when my adhd probably was its worst that's fascinating because when i i was in peru when i first

fell ill with this whatever it was and it we that was in july i think and then we traveled through bolivia chile and i was okay i think i might have been ill again in bolivia but then we flew to bali And I was very ill in Bali. So ill, I think, that we left Bali early and went to Malaysia.

just on the whim that malaysia had better health care than bali which ended up being correct ended up seeing this doctor immediately and she gave me a blood test straight away and i remember i wish i could find the results because i can't remember the specifics but they were definitely i was depleted in multiple areas

You would have been because the gut wasn't absorbing. So even if you're eating the best food in the world, it wasn't going to get through. And I think this is where it's a really important message.

to so many of the clients we see and the people out there is i think people beat themselves up saying oh it's all my fault i'm being told my diet's really bad um you know i'm not eating right it's all my fault and often it's not it's often because your gut is not playing ball whether it's had a bad infection whether it doesn't digest and absorb so well. And that's what we explore in our clinic doing proper stool tests to understand exactly what bugs you have got in your gut.

whether you've got the good ones whether you've got too much of the bad ones whether you're digesting properly whether there's inflammation because there's usually something in the way stopping those good nutrients to come through And we see parents who say, I'm literally feeding my child the best organic food and we're doing everything from scratch and dah, dah, dah. But they're still not right. And then you do the stool test. You go, well.

So there's a marker called pancreaticolastase, which basically is how you break down your foods and the enzymes you produce to sort of... break everything down so you can absorb it properly and they're often like a half mast you know they're meant to be 200 plus and they're 100 or 50 so they're just not digesting the food that they're eating

And by the way, we're going through that exact process with one of your team in January for our son, Ronnie. Oh, fantastic. How exciting. Because we bought Brain Brilliance and we've been making recipes from it quite a lot since we bought it. And I mean... For example, the hazelnut chocco, choccy, what do you call it? Choccy hazelnut waffles. Yeah. They're a winner in this house. And you mentioned black beans earlier, but the black bean and sweet potato chili is just divine.

We live off that. I mean, literally live off it. I mean, we probably have it every week. We're pretty much eating it every week. And I've also, I don't know whether or not this is good or not, but I've been occasionally having that with a steak on the side.

Oh, delicious. Yeah. Great. Fantastic. So, yeah, I mean, interestingly, I think the Jardia was. a contributor to this because then i wasn't absorbing very well so the giardia i didn't actually i think i had in my system for 10 years i mean that's the problem these things stick around they don't go unless they get treated but unfortunately did that come to an end on its own no so what happened was so i got this when i was 22.

And then when I was, as I said, I had my first baby and I was okay. Then I had the second baby and my immune system just crashed after having her. I think I was trying to be supersonic. I lost a lot of weight and I started getting all the symptoms as if I'd had Jardia but I was living in London so I went to my doctor and I said I feel I've been backpacking again but I haven't I've been here with my baby

You know, I've lost all this weight. I'm feeling really sick. I've got these eggy burps. And they said, well, I think you ought to see a gastro. So I went to see a gastro and they and I literally crawled in. I hadn't I could hardly walk because I was so weak. Oh, just you'll just have. to live with this it's IBS love and I was like what anyway I went back to the GP and I said I know I know this is bizarre but I know this is what it what it is so she said you've never come to see me before

I really believe you. You're really good at sorting yourself out normally. So I'm going to give you the antibiotic. And I kid you not, within half an hour, I started feeling much better. And within three or four days, I was so much better. And then... It came back a little bit again, but they weren't able to do anything because there's a limit to how many antibiotics you're allowed. So then I went down the natural route of a big gut cleanse.

and I basically did a parasite cleanse and a gut cleanse. How do you do that? Herbs and things like that. It was about three months I did. Pretty hard at all.

Well, it was not too bad. I mean, I just took quite a lot of pills and a few little tinctures. It wasn't like extreme, you know, it wasn't like I... it wasn't you know so some people get into this diet thing where they they sort of won't eat anything and they sort of live off bone broth and i didn't do that i had to eat normally because i had lost a lot of weight

But it really made a massive difference. And my brain started waking up. But then my iron levels started coming up too. And when your iron levels come up, then again, your ADHD is so much better. Because I talked earlier about the tyrosine and the importance of this.

amino acid you get from the protein. But the thing that helps to convert that into dopamine is the iron. So if your iron levels are low, then it's going to struggle to do that too. So that's another reason why a lot of women find that they have adhd symptoms later on especially if they've had heavy periods or post-birth because they've lost a lot of blood right yeah that's i've seen that several times with clients of mine you know speaking of clients

Some of the things you've mentioned I've heard people say. In particular, I've noticed multiple people that seem to have recurring illnesses that seem to be related to the gut, let's say. So when you explore it, again, I can't really give them much guidance apart from send them to you. But when you do ask them about what they're eating, it tends to be a lot of ultra-processed food because of the convenience.

So for someone with ADHD, how do you convince them, let's say, to eat in the way that you've been speaking about? Yeah, so it's a really difficult one to navigate sometimes. Because if your gut is very sensitive, then sometimes you just want really simple food. And actually... that ultra processed food feels quite comfortable to begin with because it's not too scratchy or bloaty etc so that can be one of the reasons second is they're just feeling exhausted depleted and that's an easy win

Third thing is that dopamine hit. You know, we know anything sugary or high carb is going to make us feel better immediately. So I don't say take these things out because actually you could end up having a few days or weeks. feeling quite flat because your body's so used to having the UPFs. So what I say is, let's start the day with something really, really great and nourishing and healthy.

And if you're still craving something after you've eaten that, then, you know, have your UPF, whatever, but have the good stuff first. So it might be having something really simple like an omelette or scrambled eggs.

if you like eggs it could be okay i'm going to get better quality toast like a sourdough rather than you know the rubbish sliced bread and i'm going to get i'm going to put some peanut butter on it because i really like peanut butter or oh i've heard about greek yogurt that's really good isn't it for the gut microbiome i'm going to buy some of that and i'm going to get some seeds and nuts and some frozen fruit and i'm gonna make a smoothie

And again, that's going to be better than buying some sort of protein shake or whatever. So you kind of start with a thing at the beginning of the day. And I reckon if you can get the beginning of your day right. then you make better choices later on in the day too. So it doesn't work for everybody.

This is a really important sort of clinical soundbite is if you are not hungry in the morning, you actually feel a bit sick in the morning and you're kind of. gut and energy and hunger doesn't wake up till about 10 or 11 that's often a sign you're low in zinc and zinc helps with things like sense of smell sense of taste gastric juices It also helps with perception of texture in the mouth and so mouthfeel. And zinc is very much depleted if you eat a lot of sugar and ultraposic foods. Right.

so it's one of those chicken and egg things but if you start to take zinc which you can take any time of the day it doesn't matter um as a supplement um then often over a few weeks you suddenly wake up think oh i'm actually quite hungry and then you can get more into a routine with that that's so funny you say that because we're very good in this house eating well

Right. But I've got a bit of a cold at the moment. And last night, well, we were driving past McDonald's, which is down the road from us. We noticed that they've got a Terry's chocolate orange McFlurry on at the moment and both my wife are like, got to get one. Just because when we're ill, we tend to get a McFlurry. It's just like a thing. And we, you know, maybe like two or three times a year at most. So I had one last night.

And this morning I woke up not feeling hungry and my stomach feels horrific, if I'm honest. Oh no. Usually it doesn't. I never even thought about it until you just said then. I usually wake up hungry. This morning I didn't. Now that might just be a total coincidence.

however you mentioned something there i don't know what's as i said i didn't even know this thing existed until a moment ago but um i would say that there will probably be some sort of emulsifiers oh for sure or preservatives or something in that which may have exacerbated some of your gut symptoms so and that's onto another point which is like

What damage do you think is done by blanket advice on the internet about this specific subject when... what you're saying is it sounds like everyone's unique in some way so you have to do a stool test and then you'll find out where is it causing harm or do you have to battle that when you speak with people So that's a really interesting question. I would say that as with most things, the majority of the people who read information will benefit from that.

Whether they'll take action or not is a different matter. So they have to be pretty motivated to read a... I know, social media posts or a blog and go, right, this is me. They just don't usually. It's usually just information they pick up. But say they were taking action. The majority of those people. If they were going to be cooking from scratch, eating high protein, focusing on, you know, good quality nutrient dense foods, that's going to benefit them overall. If, however, they adopt that.

and their tummy doesn't feel right they don't feel it's scratched the surface they feel there's something else going on then it's important to investigate those sorts of things and get a bit more individualized But yeah, I think that I think the dangerous approach and I don't like using that word. So probably let's not say the word dangerous. Let's say something like the things you'd be most cautious about.

is someone who says my way is the highway okay you know it's like you have to take out gluten gluten's the devil or you know dairy's awful or you must go plant-based or you know whatever is those are people who are looking for clicks yes and not necessarily giving advice whereas when you've been working with people for Jolly nearly 30 years. And we've looked after Nature Dog about 10,000 people. Wow. I would say that everyone is unique. And even if someone says that.

They're gluten free. They'll go, I'm gluten free, except on Christmas Day or, you know, or unless they're obviously celiac or allergic or whatever, that's slightly different. Or people are. And I think this is quite an ADHD trait is you kind of stick with things most of the time, but it's quite difficult to do things 100% because life is not linear. I mean, I think if you literally lived on your own.

and were able to control everything that went into your mouth, that'd be great. But if you're a social animal and you're going out to restaurants or spending time with family or friends or traveling, you can't do it 100%. No. So I think the 80-20 rule is a good one to aim for. I think most people it's probably 70-30. You go for 70% as healthy as you can and 30% just relax a bit. I knew a girl when I was a teenager who cut out gluten from her diet.

For some reason. I don't think I ever asked her why. I worked with her in a cafe. And then when she reintroduced it again for one reason or another, she was intolerant to it. Really? The thing she ate that had gluten in made her ill. gosh what is that have you heard that before or do you think that i think probably there would have been a reason for her taking out the gluten in the first place um and then

The thing is, if you're eating gluten every single day and it's an intolerance, I'm not talking about an allergy. An allergy, you get an immediate reaction or almost immediate reaction, but the intolerance can build up over three days. So you could eat.

the croissant on a monday and your gut might be out of whack on a wednesday so it's not necessarily i mean it could be earlier and it often is earlier but you know it can be a slower burn so if you're eating something every single day Then there's a sort of low grade reaction, which could be a bit of bloating or gas, but nothing too extreme because the body is sort of like coping.

And then you take it away and then you go, oh, my God, it's back again. I told you I didn't want it. So it's basically giving a little bit more of a kind of reaction. So she hasn't suddenly developed it. She would have always had some sort of. intolerance of sorts, but it's just been shown in a more obvious way because it's been isolated. Because as human beings, we forget how we felt very, very quickly, and especially ADHDers.

you know you can this is what's so funny that you go have you been feeling like oh i've been great and i say well you told me two days ago you had a really bad migraine and really bad time oh yeah yeah that was two days ago Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're like that, you know, and so, which is great. And I always sort of, I always sort of look at us as kind of.

You know ducks have a sort of oily back and the water just goes straight off it. It's almost like you shrug things off and you just move on. And that's what's so great about our brains. Yeah.

is we don't hold on to things for i mean some people do obviously but i as a whole quite good at just dealing with rubbish and moving on um and i think this is why they and this is not about nutrition but why they surrender um process which is a basically there's a guy called Michael Singer who he wrote a book called The Untethered Soul and it was about how um basically

If you have a set of very rigid preferences, how your life should go, you're destined to be miserable. So in over time, if you can slowly work out how to release some of those preferences. you will get happier and happier. And the way to do that would be like, for example, he uses this example, and this works because I've done it, is if you suffer from road rage,

let's say, and you're traveling, you're late for the dentist and you're in a 40 mile an hour zone, but there's a car going 30 and there's no way to overtake. You're going crazy in that car, shouting, you know, blah, blah, blah. If you can learn over time to not do that. So basically when the urge comes to react to the slow driver to be able to relax while the voice in your head is going crazy and there's tension in your body, if you can actually relax.

whatever's causing you to react will in time release from you, from your nervous system. from your brain wherever it might be located and then one day you know maybe six months later you're late for the dentist again and you happen to be in the 40 and there's a car going 30 and you don't even notice because the part of you that had a problem is gone

I actually had a theory that people with ADHD would be able to do that process very well for two reasons. One, exactly what you just said. And the second reason is we're so unbelievably aware of the voice chatting in our head. in a way that most neurotypical people actually aren't when you talk to them. And so far, I've been teaching people how to do this for a few years. I think it's true. I think most people with ADHD can grasp that very quickly and make massive changes.

in their life from it anyway that's slightly derailed what this conversation was supposed to be about no i can really relate to that so yeah i think um my i can relate to that in that my father was a very very tight timekeeper So his obsession was what the time was and whether his watch was accurate. And so if I was sitting in the car and I knew I was going to be late for the dentist, I'd be freaking out because my father's priority was...

You had to be on time. But actually, he's relaxed a bit in his old age. Right. And when I was able to observe that he wasn't getting stressed, that I was late for something or whatever, or, you know, we were late for something, I was like. oh, it's okay. And that's really, really helped me to realise that actually it's better to get there safely. They're probably running five minutes late anyway.

it's you're going to be all right you know at the end of the day you're paying for your appointment you're not putting them out you've got to get there so yeah you can get there in time but i think what you were saying is um i think our expectations if your expectations are not met, that again can derail you massively. Absolutely. And whether it's the beginning of a relationship and what you expect, whether it's a marriage or another relationship or parenting.

you know, you will have expectations in your mind. And if that is different to what you anticipated, that can really derail you too. And I think with ADHD, we have that. But again, you can work on that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that, you know, going back to food, look at, for example, I don't know, going to an appointment and the motivation that it requires to get there. Perhaps performance.

in your job as well like what foods can improve that area of an adhd is life so it's really where are you coming from Are you the person that has the low energy, the low, slow brain in the morning? You know, is it that you need a high energy breakfast? So for me, with the thyroid. um etc i'm definitely a slow morning person so i'm having dark chocolate i'm having a high protein breakfast i've got my supplements you know and that really gets me going um

But some people, their brain, they wake up and it's almost there on hyper mode already. So they've woken up in a high cortisol state. And that would be the worst thing for them to do is to have coffee or... anything overstimulating so actually that's probably where you want to go outside and ground yourself have some fresh air You might want to think of something calming. It might be chamomile. It may be oats, yogurt, anything that's sort of almost going to chill you out rather than push you up.

and again have something grounding like the protein so the protein is important for both scenarios um and i would also think about you know your sleep routine the night before you know are you prepped for the day What's going to make you put yourself into that high cortisol state? Is it because you haven't put your clothes out or you haven't put your train ticket or, you know, whatever it might be to get to that appointment or whatever that.

task might be yeah and i mean i'm not brilliant at this i'm not consistent but if i have a very very busy day like yesterday i was i had about six things i was so proud i got home and i said i only dropped one ball today because you've got to expect there's going to be at least one that's going to be dropped and but you know the day night before i had to i just had to do that planning i had to say

Where do I have to be? What timing do I need to be there? When do I have to leave? And it was really hard to do. I found it was the hardest task I did in the whole day was to do that planning. But it did make yesterday work really well.

And so for me, I will wake up full of energy and my brain is going absolutely crazy. But we've... at drug for adhd we've integrated a daily meditation group yes it's like accountability group at 7 30 m every single day i mean there's a few dozen people that usually come to it and it changes but there's like probably about 10 people that come every single day

And that has been a game changer for me because it sort of resets the crazy brain and then allows me to then attack the day with some clarity, let's say. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. I would say that probably you're waking up in a high cortisol state and supplements I would consider, and I'm not saying you have to, but consider it's probably magnesium and ashwagandha at night. yeah and those two things can put brings your cortisol levels down so hopefully you'll wake up slightly less kind of in that high core cell state so that might help we take a again we take an omega-3 supplement

We don't eat a lot of fish because my wife doesn't like it, but I will eat it when we're out. We take B12 and vitamin D. Is there anything else? So you just said magnesium. What was the other thing? Yeah, so B12 is very good for kind of... As you said, historically, you were plant-based for quite a long time. You've had the gut issues. So vitamin B12 is absorbed through the small intestine. So yeah, you probably need that for now, but do monitor it. You can get your GP to do that.

vitamin d important during the winter but there's also been studies to find that those who supplement vitamin d and are on medication methylphenidate or whatever that will help the methylphenidate to work better So vitamin D works on, there is a vitamin D receptor in every cell in the body. So if your vitamin D levels are low, then it can affect your brain, your bones, your mood, all sorts of things. So it is really important.

I'd say they're good baseline supplements. But with you specifically, with this high cortisol state in the morning and then you feeling quite burnt out by the afternoon, I remember you saying. at the conference that you had a cut off with your work because you just were too tired.

I'm wondering whether if it will take a little bit of rebalancing, but whether if you sleep better, wake up in a slightly less high cortisol state, that actually you'll maintain your energy better for a bit longer in the day. I might have to negotiate with my one-year-old daughter as well not to keep waking up at two o'clock in the morning. That would be helpful. Oh, well, that'll be one of them. But I've always been like that even before she was born.

oh little one bless her i'm sure she'll get get good now you know once yeah she slept well she sort of slept through last night um so magnesium is used up um it actually works in about 400 pathways in the body it helps with blood sugar it helps with cortisol it helps with muscle relaxation sleep etc so it's really really important but essentially

it helps to bring your cortisol levels down okay um and so it's very good to take at night it's not going to it's not going to knock you out like a sleeping pill but it just if you have it quite consistently in the evening it will help your body to sort of wind down That could work perfectly because I find it very easy to fall asleep. Yeah. It's often the staying asleep that can be an issue at times. But again, I think that's just more from distraction that's happening in the house.

But yeah, I'm definitely going to do that. and then ashwagandha is a lovely herb it comes from india but it's been really really well researched um and again it helps to bring down cortisol spikes So it helps with anxiety. It helps with restlessness. And it helps with that sort of deep sleep at night.

But also, interestingly enough, for the men, it can help testosterone levels too. Now, women as well, perimenopausal and menopausal women often get depleted in testosterone as well. So it is helpful for both. And yeah, I have found... I had one client whose testosterone doubled in three months. And that was a bloke who needed it. He was actually quite depleted. And that was just from this herb?

But the most important thing is to realize it's an adaptogen, which means it will only act on the body where it needs that support. Okay. Okay. So anyway, again, that's one you would probably take with the magnesium at night. just see if that helps you to wake up feeling a little bit more chilled and it might take a few weeks to properly kind of you might it'll be very gradual probably with you because it's been a stuck pattern so a lot of people who are subscribed to the

adhd newsletter that i write talk to me about how they struggle with sleep in fact that's probably the main thing i get questions about um what what what can you tell them from a dietary nutritional perspective So there is another sort of pathway in the body in neurotransmitters. So we've heard of serotonin. Serotonin helps us stay happy, helps us poop. but also helps us sleep. Okay. And essentially the building blocks of serotonin is something called tryptophan.

And tryptophan also helps to make something called melatonin and melatonin is your hormone that says it's sleepy time. And then it disappears in the morning when it says it's wakey, wakey time. So essentially working on that tryptophan to melatonin pathway. in the body can make a massive difference to sleep. And the foods, which are great and fantastic are turkey. So turkey slices. Great. Chicken. Yep. Good. Avocado.

great bananas cashew nuts so actually you could sit there watching the telly having bananas and cashew nuts and that will help you to wind down um so and then cherries right naturally contain this melatonin so you can really bypass it and go right straight in with the cherries to sort of get you feeling sleepy and in brain brilliance is this recipe called my sleepy cherry smoothie

And I've had so many people DM me saying, you know, my ADHD child or my autistic child has never slept through the night. And they're having that and something called an Epsom salt bath, which is a magnesium bath. So they've had those two together and they've literally slept deeply for the first time. The thing with Ronnie is, once he's asleep, he tends to stay asleep all night.

But getting him to sleep is excruciating. And in fact, even our occupational therapist said, I've exhausted everything I can think of with him. So I'll tend to, we don't have a bath in this house, unfortunately, but he loves to have a shower anyway. And after he's been in the shower, I will massage his whole body with magnesium butter. Brilliant. Whatever it is. Yeah.

And we do things like making sure that the TV's been off for plenty of time. We have like a spinny thing that he goes in. We have like a rocking chair. We've got loads of different things that we try. Basically. sometimes it will get to sort of like 9 30 and i just have to take him out in the car and that will usually knock him out and then i've got to carry him up all the way up to his bedroom um on the top floor of the house so how old is he

He's four in January. Okay. He's autistic, he's sensory processing disorder and nonverbal. It's quite severe. Yeah. And it's very, very, very difficult to feed him. I bet.

He basically just takes food and rubs it on his lips like that before he decides. And, you know, probably 75 to 80% of the time he just throws it straight on the floor. Very often they've got an oral allergy and it actually makes their mouth tingle.

so it's not just the smell and the taste and the texture it can be actually how it really does feel in the math really um so i saw two kids yesterday in clinic both with very very high needs autism both highly selective eaters, you know, and one just ate crunchy, literally, and then the other just... mush he couldn't actually chew so he's 10 and he's never had anything more than mush because he actually cannot chew so every child is a little different but i would say that in the evening

I would carry on with all that lovely wind down stuff. It sounds amazing what you're doing. You can get sort of chamomile and lemon balm drops, which you could maybe drop into his mouth. He might take that if it's not a food. They're often quite better with supplements in some ways. I don't know why. It's sort of it's less threatening for them.

And if you can get a cherry smoothing, brilliant. But that may be a harder win for now. I'll ask my wife whether she's made it or not. She might have done. I'm not sure about that one. But yeah, I'll talk to her about that in a minute. Yay.

She actually has a question for you. Oh, yes. Yeah, so she was watching or listening to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast and there was a guy on there and he said that lion's mane mushroom... powder, if you will, if it's made in China, there aren't any stringent quality checks on it. This is what he was saying. And it said that it might say it's 100% pure, but it's actually 95% pure.

And the rest is made of maltodextrin. She wants to know, is that a problem? And if it is, where would you recommend buying it from in the UK or Europe? but that was reasonably priced because a lot of the lion's name products in this country are extortionate. I agree. I'm okay. First of all, I think there's an awful lot of very cheap bulk buy.

sites who aren't looking for quality. They're looking for shifting as many products as possible. And people go, great, that's 10.99 or whatever. Fantastic. Ship it in. So those are probably the ones that have that higher risk. There are ones, as I said, in the UK that are being... you know but i mean it's quite easy to grow lion's mane mushrooms um jeremy clarkson clarkson did it in his uh documentary i mean then there was a disaster but you know i'm just saying you know it is possible um

So, yes, there are. I think there are some very expensive companies out there where they've spent a lot of money on advertising, marketing and packaging as well. So we this is totally hands up. Clarity is that we do have our own online shop. We don't have our own range of supplements because that is.

a completely different venture that someone would have to undertake and i do not have the capacity to do that so what we decided to do is to for i've done this for 30 years is to pick the best of the best supplements really good quality ranges of supplements from very very good brands where we know they check for things like heavy metals and fillers etc now there will be some things with

a pinch of multidextrin in there because it's the only way they've been able to make that probiotic for instance but if it doesn't need to be in there then we don't have it so that's where i'm just being sort of clarifying is that sometimes there is a reason why something is in there. But we do stock a really good organic range.

by kiki health and they do an amazing lion's mane powder and a lion's mane capsules which are 100 that's all this in there okay they're really really good and they're organic so i think if it's been organic then you can't have the fillers basically yeah yeah yeah i mean promote yourself all the way i mean i think everyone listening to this will take huge benefit from it so yeah go to the shop and buy the nature doc shop

um and that's basically and the most important thing is people realize that whether it's the dm on instagram or whether it's an email to our support box um i or one of my team will answer that personally and we will give you personal individual recommendations the equivalent of going to a health food shop we can't suddenly do a full consult or anything like that that would be where the clinical

you know teamwork but essentially we are able to if someone says i'm looking for a really good quality lion's mane i can then send you the link whereas you don't have to do the research so anyway just say that's what we do as a service thank you

yeah that's wonderful so you know we're coming towards the end of the interview right now is there anything that you wanted to mention or for example tell us about the book if you want this brain brilliance again for people to see it is

wonderful and it's helped our family immensely i'm so proud of that book it's my third book so i've written one called the good stuff which was generally for children but there was so much in there if you read not necessarily even between the lines there's so much about feeding the brain because essentially that's what I've always done in clinic. And then I do have a baby book because I realise there were a lot of parents really struggling right from that weaning process.

So that's called I Can't Believe It's Baby Food, but Brain Brilliance is specifically it's a nutritional toolkit for the neurodivergent brain. And it's not just ADHD or autism. It's for all neurodivergent brains, whether there's some cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, selective mutism, whatever it might be.

i know how complicated neurodivergence can be and it's very rare people have just one diagnosis um or they know that they other things are going on but they can't quite sort of pin it down and then so there's a chapter on sleep, on focus. on emotional dysregulation on highly selective eating etc so those are the things that we found in our in the clinical space that have really made a massive difference and everything is referenced so there's 550 references in the book so you know

that this comes from a science aspect as well as a practical aspect. So I'm a parent of two ADHDers as well as having ADHD myself. So I do get it.

And then in the back are lots of lovely recipes. Now, some people sit there going, I don't think my child will have any of those, but they might have the sweet things or they might have the waffles. So you start with those. But in the beginning of the book, especially in the... fussy eating section you know it does explain how you can weave in new foods

you know new ingredients into the foods they will eat and that actually you know things like the zinc and the probiotics can make such a massive difference to how the gut feels that then they eat better anyway i mean for ronnie the waffles have been a been a winner there's something about i think with the way that he likes to eat especially in particular the pizza waffles the margarita pizza waffles they're fantastic and uh

You know, the crunchiness, the flavor, I think it's just everything that speaks to him. And it's so for us as parents of Ronnie to see him eat when we actually see him finish something. We're hugging in the kitchen basically with just joy because it's so rare that he will. So I'm really proud. I mean, I'm probably known as the waffle queen, you know, because it's my thing. So most people I'm afraid will not just buy the book, they'll also buy a waffle machine. We did.

Lucky Amazon. But yeah, I mean, my 16-year-old pretty much makes waffles every day.

Because he loves them so much. And he does bizarre ones. He'll do ones with... blueberries or dragon fruit i mean you know we literally we're a sort of waffle family because he just loves the crunch and the texture and you just can get so much goodness in there you know you can get the courgette you can get the carrot you can get the yoghurt you can get the eggs all the things they won't eat you can get into exactly the right texture so yeah i mean i'm there and as i said it's a very um

It's a book where I'm hoping I'm meeting the parents. At the beginning, there's a mini chapter on basically putting your oxygen mask on first and helping support you because I've been burnt out by doing this with my kids. So I know what it's like.

get really tired from it but and that you know it's great you know we all need these wonderful neurodivergent brains in our lives but equally it can be really tough when you've got all these things called comorbidities which the gut issues the pain the anxiety whatever it might be that comes with the sleep issues that come alongside so that's where it's really trying to tackle

the difficulties that go alongside the neurodivergent so that the neurodivergent can really shine on itself. Yes. And I will say, actually, I find it neurodivergent friendly, the way the book is structured. Like, for example, these little coloured dots you have at the bottom of the page that's...

talk about what's in it and then i think that's just brilliant because i'm a bit of a skimmer when it comes to things like this so i want to be able to just quickly look through things to make sure that i am picking the right thing And I have a bit of an allergy to reading menus in restaurants. Oh, yeah. I have to get my wife to read it usually. I cannot actually focus on it at all. I didn't feel like that with this for some reason. Good. I'm thrilled.

yeah yeah and also the other thing that annoys me about a lot of uh cooking books is that they a lot of the recipes don't have a photograph of the actual food in it but yours does Oh yeah. There was one of those things we knew that that was going to be, you know, it's why, why the book is, you know, over 20 pounds is because that food photography was so important. Yes.

And without that, it would have been an empty, you know, but it wouldn't be so accessible. And obviously for photography, you need time.

you know you know a good photographer good good food stylist so that that's that's why but it's so it's such a useful book and literally i've been sent these you know photos of all these you know post-it notes and folded over corners and highlighter pens so people really are using it and i think that's what's really important but so a lot of people buy the book and they go what's the next step so there are sort of two angles

Well, no, three. One is DM me, email us. We can help you on, you know, starting out on two or three supplements that may help, you know, ones that you've picked out in the book that you feel are appropriate to you or your child. The second thing. is to do an online course so we have one on adhd one on autism which digs much deeper into all these subjects so if you think yeah that's actually the thing i really need help with i think once i've got that knowledge i can

go with it myself. So those are the sort of seven modules. So you could cram it in a week, but you could do it slow burn. And they're all broken down into sort of five, 10 minute little tiny sort of. So they're easy to do. You can listen to it in the car. You can do it when you're ironing or washing up. You know what I mean? You don't need to be sitting at your desk. And then the third sort of, you know, I guess the sort of premium end is coming.

and talking to one of the clinical team, running stool tests, running urine and hair tests to really understand metabolically exactly getting really fine tuned into what.

that child or you needs right now so it's bringing together everything but getting super duper personalized and wonderful and that's what we'll be doing with ronnie in january oh i'm gonna look up his notes yeah thank you thank you very much um well this was very very very informative and thank you so much for coming on the podcast

Jo, it's been incredible. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing as well in this space. And I think if we all work together, we're going to have some much happier, healthier ADHDers. I could not agree more. Thank you.