Latest / ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women / 179 // ADHD & the Gut-Brain Connection, with Erin Kerry

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179 // ADHD & the Gut-Brain Connection, with Erin Kerry · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

0:00
Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast.
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I'm your host, Kelsey Spronk, and today I'm joined by Erin Carey.
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She's an author, a health coach, and a mental health advocate,
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and she is encouraging people to live beyond their labels. So I'm super excited
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for everything that she has to share with us today. Erin, welcome to the show.
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Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. Me too. Yeah.
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So in preliminary conversations, you have so many different topics that you
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could share with us today.
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So I'm very excited about that. But things just to give people a taste.
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Things like the gut-brain connection, talking about hormones,
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ADHD, perimenopause, talking about living beyond our labels.
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I just want to give them that little taste of how exciting this conversation
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is going to be. So start us off with telling us about yourself,
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your connections with ADHD, both personally and professionally.
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Yeah, absolutely. Well, I often joke that of all of the mental health labels
1:00
I was given growing up, this was the one that was the most missed,
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probably the most accurate to the way that my brain functions.
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However, I was diagnosed by the age of 18. I was diagnosed with PTSD,
1:11
which can look a lot like ADHD, side topic, and then depression after that.
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And then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder because my nervous system was
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completely dysregulated.
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I had some immune, some what we would call neuroimmune issues as well that factored
1:25
in, but this was all by 18.
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And so of course I got put on all of the medications.
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I felt terrible, never really felt like I was balanced out, did not feel like
1:37
myself, didn't feel like I was in my body as well.
1:39
I ended up becoming pretty self-destructive at that point, had my first child,
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I call her my college souvenir.
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I got pregnant with her my senior year of college after just a period of being
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on heavy duty psychiatric medications
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And then drinking alcohol to cope with my feelings that I couldn't cope with
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I found myself in a lot of very unsafe situations one resulted in a pregnancy and I say she was.
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The first best thing that ever happened to me. God completely transformed me
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my mind, body, spirit through her pregnancy. I'm actually a preacher's daughter.
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I grew up in a small town community. My dad was a pastor of a church there,
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and the people of that church just surrounded me with grace and support.
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And I had so many baby showers, and it was a very healing time for me.
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And that really kind of catapulted me into more of a healing journey in my life. It wasn't easy.
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But then I ended up meeting my husband.
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We got married. He adopted my daughter. we now have two kids together.
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And I like to say we have a neuro spicy family.
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We see all aspects of neurodivergence in our family. There are two neurotypicals
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kind of holding the fort down and the rest of us are, you know,
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processing the world the way we process.
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And so, yeah, so my personal connection to ADHD is through, it's funny as this
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often goes, through the recognition that my youngest child is very much an ADHD kid realizing, oh,
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I was exactly like that when I was a kid growing up.
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The extreme emotional dysregulation. My mom can tell me stories of before the
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age of seven, like I did not, I mean, and I have old, old, old videos of me
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as a baby, like just not stopping moving, like always moving.
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And then once I started talking, I didn't stop talking.
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I've always been a talker, always got in trouble at school for talking,
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also zoning out and not paying attention because my brain is going so fast that
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once I get the information, I'm out. I'm on to the next thing.
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And so that happened a lot growing up. But I think I interrupted myself. I do that too.
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The emotional dysregulation. Right. The emotional dysregulation piece.
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That was the thing that I think later on got put into that bipolar hypomania category.
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But Really, I was having emotional meltdowns from a nervous system that was
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chronically over, balancing between being overstimulated
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and hypervigilant to then crashing and being completely, and we would probably
4:07
call that like a low dopamine dynamic or something like that,
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to where it was just always back and forth. Trauma didn't help.
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A lot of immune issues did not help. And so I really floundered.
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I mean, when I think about my years growing up, it was just,
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I felt like I was just smack dab in a world that was overstimulating,
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overwhelming, emotionally overwhelming.
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And I did not have tools and resources to walk through that.
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I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I was weird.
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I thought I was overly sensitive, very much an achiever at my heart.
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I'm a firstborn. Like I said, I'm a preacher's kid too.
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And so in my heart, like there's this achieving aspect, but then also pushing
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myself so hard that I would crash.
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And so that's my personal connection. And I see so many similarities,
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of course, with one of my kids who is more in that ADHD world.
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But yeah, it has definitely been.
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A learning, there's been a lot of learning in the last probably 10 years of
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figuring out what it looks like to have a brain that processes information differently.
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And that's what I would say about ADHD, right? It's just having a brain that
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is, whether it's dopamine that is not being produced as much at the root,
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or maybe dopamine dysregulation, or maybe just some nervous system factors there,
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HPA axis dysfunction, dysregulation as well.
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Just what I've learned about the ADHD brain. There's never enough that,
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you know, I would love to learn more. I'm always learning more.
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But it has really been helpful for me to understanding how I can live beyond
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even the labels that I put upon myself, right?
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And how I can see myself through the lens of how God designed my brain and my
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body on purpose to live out a purpose, that I'm not broken like I thought I
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was growing up, like they told me I was growing up.
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And that instead, this is something, a tool that, But I mean,
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just the way my brain works is a tool that I can use to help show up in the
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world and live out my purpose, not a deficit.
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Yeah, well, thank you. First of all, thank you for being being open and vulnerable
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and honest and sharing what your experience has been like. I was talking to.
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My husband about this the other day and when we meet new people and they are
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so willing to share about their life after a sudden, sometimes we say,
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you know what, I think that person might have ADHD.
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And it's such a beautiful part of it.
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I mean, other people, that's once again, right? The labels, other people have
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said, we overshare, we say too much, we're too vulnerable, we're too whatever it is.
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And I say, absolutely not. Those are my favorite people in the room.
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Those people that I want to talk to are the ones that, you know,
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five minutes into a conversation, I'm saying, yes, let's share a life story that, you know.
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What has happened in our life, because it creates that deep connection,
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that opportunity for others, those that are listening, to connect with pieces of your story as well.
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So I wanted to touch on, you were talking about labels.
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Can you tell us a little bit about how those labels that you were given by the
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time you were 18, how did that shape your journey of how you wanted to then help others?
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How does that look now with your business sparking wholeness?
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For sure. Yeah. I mean, my first
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career was in teaching because I had a teacher who saw through my mask.
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I was masking hardcore in high school, also really struggling with some deep
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depression, but showing up the best way I could in school. But my poetry was
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depressing. It was dark. I've read it.
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I actually read some of it recently. I'm like, oh, my gosh, how did people not
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see that I was like breaking down, you know?
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But one of my wonderful English teachers just wrote me a note and said, whatever...
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It sounds like, you know, you're going through something, whatever I can do to help you.
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If you ever need somebody to talk to, I'm there for you. And that changed my life.
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Just that, just having one person outside of my family.
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I mean, my parents were struggling to find support for me.
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And, you know, and I had a team, but just somebody else who was not part of
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my inner circle, seeing me and really seeing me for who I was and the struggle
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I was going through made an impact. And that shaped what I chose to do.
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I taught English for a long time. English is a second language.
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I taught students who are immigrants and loved it. I really felt like I was
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the welcome committee of the United States. Like I loved working with kids who,
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because a lot of them had trauma, right?
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And a lot of them were struggling with their own, not just learning the language,
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but that emotional regulation piece was so hard. And so I like to say I was
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trauma informed before that was a whole thing.
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And then going through, I went through a very traumatic experience when I was
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nine years old. I watched my grandpa die of anaphylactic shock in our front
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yard as a kid. And so that shaped a lot of my own self-labeling of,
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okay, I'm helpless, powerless, I'm alone.
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And so then I get all these diagnoses later on. It's like, yeah,
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I'm helpless, powerless, and alone.
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And I want to use that to help other people who feel helpless,
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powerless, and alone, right?
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And so I was in education, public education, for about 11 years and then got
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involved in the world of wellness, health and wellness.
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I started learning about the gut-brain connection and gut health and realized
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that this is a whole missing puzzle piece for mental health for so many people.
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So I ended up pursuing my coaching certification. I went through a school called
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the School of Applied Functional Medicine to get a deeper dive in the functional
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medicine side of things.
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I'm very much, I mean, you know, I've got my hyperfixations,
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of course, but I'm very much a nerd at heart. I love to know why.
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I want to know how things work, and I want to see how they're all interconnected.
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So that's what I do now, is I see so many people. I mean, I think I've worked
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with over a thousand clients now, and the people that I work with,
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whether they have ADHD or not, they have a lot of missing puzzle pieces in their health stories,
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And a lot of them have been gaslit by their medical practitioners and then just
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been given a label, whether it's a diagnostic label like, you know,
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Hashimoto's or type 2 diabetes or you name it, or it's depression, anxiety,
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bipolar, ADHD, one of those kinds of labels.
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Many of them are not getting the support they need for, okay,
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that's great to know what I have.
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It's great to know, like put a name to my symptoms. That's cool.
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But what do I do with this?
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How do I live my life knowing that I have this diagnosis? And so I like to look
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at the gut-brain connection, gut health. I do nutrient panels and GI map testing,
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which looks at a deep dive of the gut as well. I do hormone testing.
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I want to get into it and see what is missing and how can we address that practically
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without the overwhelm. That's key too because there's overwhelm enough.
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So yes, so my early life struggles have absolutely informed what I do now and
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why I'm so passionate about what I do now because so much was missed in my journey.
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I was diagnosed with bipolar the same time I was diagnosed with mononucleosis.
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Like that's not a coincidence.
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I was having a neuroinflammatory event that should have been supported in so
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many other ways. But back then we didn't know that the immune system and the
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brain were even connected. This was the early 2000s. They didn't know that.
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I would have liked to know that there is such a thing as neurodivergence,
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that my brain could process information differently, then I wouldn't have felt so weird.
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I wouldn't have felt like I was the only one. But to know that there's like
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a whole group of people whose brains just process different information differently,
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like that would have been helpful.
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And I wouldn't have felt like I was always like one step away from,
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you know, losing my mind because I felt things so strongly. So yeah.
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Even that piece though that you said right about about feeling so weird when
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I look back on on childhood I I can see the phases and I mean it was a little
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different I was homeschooled until grade nine so I didn't,
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feel the man you're so weird from other people as much but by the time I was
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in school like I remember there being a shift between being myself and feeling
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like I was kind of weird and then going oh I need to hide this.
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I need to pretend that I'm not the way that I am right and so thinking about
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how young kids learn to mask and then,
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as adults now we're expecting to show up authentically and it can take a long
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time to unmask because we don't know who's underneath that mask anymore we don't
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know who can be there and there can be so much,
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misinformation and there can be these labels misdiagnoses and all of these different
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components to it and something that you talked about as well was,
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it's important to have the knowledge of how our brain works but then also the
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next steps. What do we do now?
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How can we move forward with this? What can we do about it?
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And I think that's something that I really hope we can infuse into the ADHD
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community of women is reminding them that there is hope.
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It's not all just those statistics about things that aren't going to go well.
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They're talking about the neurotypical world. Let's find a way that we can help
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these women to thrive and see the good in them and see changes that they can
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make that will actually make a difference.
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So before I get on my soapbox about that, as far as the gut-brain connection,
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I'm very curious. I have had.
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So growing up, I feel like everything was fine with my gut. Things were good.
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And then I spent a lot of time traveling. I lived a semester in Peru.
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I lived a semester in Germany. I studied in Mexico. My minor was in Spanish in university.
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And so traveled all over the place. Pretty sure I picked up lots of different things on my travel.
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And then in my 20s, my gut felt wrecked and has not really fully recovered since
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then because there wasn't a lot of understanding of what exactly to do.
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So can you let us know, what is the gut-brain connection, and then how does that relate to ADHD?
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Yeah, so when we talk about ADHD,
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a lot of times we're talking about the neurotransmitter dopamine, right?
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Like if we're looking at what makes ADHD ADHD, there's a lot of science that
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it has to do with, like I said earlier, dopamine, whether you're producing enough
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dopamine or maybe you're just like, you know, not using it as well as you could.
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There's an issue with like the dopamine receptor function in the brain.
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And so this plays a huge role with the gut and also serotonin.
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That's the missing neurotransmitter that we don't talk about as much with ADHD.
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Serotonin is huge for emotional regulation and ADHD. Serotonin is known as a happy mood transplant.
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Mood neurotransmitter, but it also regulates bowel function and that circadian
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rhythm, which is so important for ADHD as well, which is your sleep-wake cycle.
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And, you know, that whole, and now it is, the sun is out and we are waking up,
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the sun is not out, we are going to sleep. Like that can really get shifted
14:49
around with ADHD. There seems to be a sleep cycle difference for those who have ADHD.
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But the reason that the gut-brain connection matters so much is over 90% of
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our serotonin is synthesized in the gut.
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And then there's studies, and the studies are a little bit, you know,
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I hear lots of back and forth on the studies when it comes to dopamine,
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but a good amount, I can't give specifics on percentages, but a good amount
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of dopamine is also synthesized by the gut as well through the microbes.
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And so our gut, when I say our gut, I'm talking about the entire digestive tract.
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That's about 25 to 30 feet long tunnel of exchanging and transmitting information
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all the way from when you start eating and you swallow your food to where you go to the bathroom.
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That is the gut tunnel from beginning to end.
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And there is a separate nervous system with our gut microbiome called the enteric
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nervous system, which has to do with major concentration.
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And again, I can't, don't quote me on the numbers, but hundreds of thousands,
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millions of neurons that are in the gut that are communicating with the brain at all times.
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And they communicate through the HPA axis. And this is a major.
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Major, I think, missing puzzle piece
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with ADHD. So the HPA axis is our hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
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This is our internal, I call it God's internal stress alert system.
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When we pick up on a threat, whether it's a real or perceived threat,
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whether you've got a tiger going through your window or you have to respond
16:20
to an email and that requires executive function, your body is going to respond
16:25
to that threat the same way.
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It sends a signal from your hypothalamus to your pituitary gland to your adrenal
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glands. And that axis is also communicating with your gut microbes.
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And all of that interplay, that back and forth communication is really trying
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to pick up on, am I safe in the world or not?
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And unfortunately for people with
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ADHD, we have a very hypervigilant brain system, which is so protective.
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Like I really think that if we look thousands of years ago, we were the ones
16:52
that were surviving and causing all of the tribes to survive because we were
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ready. We were ready for action.
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Give me the dopamine of a good fight or whatever. I mean, not me personally,
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but like I'm thinking about my ancestors, right? Like give me the,
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yeah, I'm ready for fight or flight. I'm ready to go into action to help save
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my family, to help do what I need to do.
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This day and age, we are in an environment where we really, we have a lot of
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micro stressors, micro threats at all times that we can't just respond to through
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physical movement fighting. We have to sit and focus and put together a lot of concentration.
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And that seems like a threat for the ADHD brain and body.
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And so we've got that HPA access communicating with the gut microbes.
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The gut microbes are communicating with HPA access.
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Your gut microbes are also responsible for breaking down your food nutrients.
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We don't even make dopamine if we don't have the amino acid tyrosine and vitamin B6.
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That is one of the biggest issues I see with ADHD symptoms right now.
17:50
Sorry, so you said we don't even create dopamine if we don't have some of those
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nutrients that we need. The raw materials, yes.
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So it's like if you're making a cake and you don't have the flour or the sugar, you're.
18:04
What are you making, right? Or if you don't have the eggs, it's not going to, it's going to be flat.
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And so if we are trying to support dopamine synthesis in the body and our brain
18:15
is looking for, we've got receptors that like, we need that dopamine somewhere.
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If our gut's not making it from the nutrients that we get through food.
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So B6, tyrosine, those are big ones.
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Iron plays a huge role. So this ties into women with irregular menstrual cycles
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who are bleeding all the time, losing iron have low ferritin levels.
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I mean, we can get into it. I can go in so many directions with this.
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But ferritin is a lab marker that is not tested for most women.
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It's our stored form of iron. And we've got to be testing women on this.
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They say that you are fine if your ferritin levels are like,
18:52
I believe it's like 10 to, it's up over 100.
18:56
But most women feel pretty awful if they don't have ferritin levels at least
19:00
40 and above, even 50 and above.
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So we have women who are deficient in ferritin, which leads to iron deficiencies,
19:09
which leads to an inability again to make that dopamine.
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So that's one of those cofactors that your body needs to make dopamine.
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Same thing for zinc, because zinc is another one. And if we.
19:19
Are living with chronic stress, what that can do, that fight or flight state,
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one of the things I always say is a body and stress won't digest.
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So if we're in fight or flight all the time, and it's okay, it's not your fault
19:30
you're in fight or flight all the time. You might just have a hypervigilant
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nervous system, and this is just how you have learned to function.
19:35
But if you are in that state, it's going to stop digestion. It's all your digestion
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systems are going to go offline because the priority is survival.
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You're supposed to survive a threat, not break down food.
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So now we have an inability to break down the nutrients we need to make the
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compounds we need to feel good and balanced.
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And so that's where digestion really plays a role. Those B vitamins,
20:01
amino acids that we get from protein, we have to be able to break the protein
20:05
down to access amino acids.
20:07
So dopamine really needs, like I said, that tyrosine, which is an amino acid,
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B6, some of those cofactors, iron, zinc, but then serotonin needs tryptophan from protein.
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Serotonin needs B9, B12, as well as B6.
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And so many people, and I run tests, so many people are deficient on B vitamins.
20:25
One of the biggest reasons is because when we're stressed, we run through B
20:30
vitamins as needed to deal with our stress.
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So now we don't have those raw materials. And that's one of the things I'm so
20:36
passionate about. It's like we don't have, there's nothing wrong with you.
20:40
We don't have a deficiency.
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Of, you know, whether it's, it's a willpower thing. You don't have a deficiency
20:46
of willpower. You don't have a deficiency of discipline.
20:49
You truly might just have a body that is working over time and running through
20:54
nutrients on a continual basis.
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And we don't have the replenishment that we need. Food truly is mood.
21:00
Food is therapy. It's a form of therapy for the body.
21:03
And then you factor in blood sugar, but I'll stop there for now because I think I went all over.
21:09
No, no, no. That's good. That's good. I mean, there's, I have a lot of words
21:12
written down here, but just even what you're saying as far as B vitamins,
21:16
I know within my family, I believe my ADHD came from my dad.
21:21
My sisters, I believe, have it as well. And we have all struggled with low levels
21:26
of B vitamins our whole life.
21:27
And I don't know if it was, you know, malabsorption or if it was like you're
21:31
saying, we're using it up. We're going through it a little bit quicker.
21:35
But I think that's interesting to note and to look at even family patterns for me for that.
21:41
I'm curious as far as I've been hearing a lot lately about the nervous system
21:46
and how, you know, we can't speak to our nervous system.
21:49
We need to show it that we're actually safe and some of the different tactics,
21:53
but those are all kind of external things, right? The relaxing your shoulders,
21:57
the belly breathing, the deep breathing, the, you know, all of those different
22:00
kinds of things, slowing your pace and stuff like that.
22:04
What would you say as far as a way of kind of healing the gut?
22:10
You're talking about these different nutrients, these vitamins that we need.
22:15
Are those affected by what we do externally as far as nervous system regulation?
22:20
Or can you, how do I say this?
22:23
Can you fix it from the gut outwards? Or is it a combination of the two?
22:28
Oh, I'm so glad you asked that because yes, the answer is yes, it's both.
22:32
So stress, when we think about stress, stress is emotional.
22:35
I talk about this in my book, Live Beyond Your Label. That's like my first foundational
22:39
chapter is that stress is emotional. Stress is also physiological.
22:43
And so I think for a lot of people with ADHD, especially women with ADHD,
22:47
we are just, there's a complexity there that men do not have.
22:51
It has to do with our hormone cycle. We could talk about that.
22:55
But as hormones are cycling throughout the month, dopamine is increasing and decreasing rapidly.
23:00
Our brain changes four times a month, depending on where we are in our cycle,
23:04
at least four times a month.
23:05
Yeah, go ahead. All right. Just a question with that. So as far as how our dopamine
23:08
changes, can you walk us quickly through the phases and what is happening with our dopamine?
23:14
I think that would help a lot of people. I've had people share with me,
23:16
you know, this week I feel like I can be really creative. I can get a lot done.
23:20
This week I feel completely useless and I just need to lay in bed.
23:23
Can you help us to understand what is happening with our dopamine during our phases? Yeah.
23:28
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. So when we're, for most women, and I'm going to
23:32
speak generally because, you know, I see lots of women with different things
23:35
happening, but for most women, you know, we start with.
23:39
We start with day one of the cycle is day one of the bleed phase,
23:42
which is the menstrual phase.
23:44
And so at that point, all of your female hormones are kind of dropped down to
23:47
the lowest level so that your uterine lining can rebuild throughout the next
23:52
month. And so day one is menstrual cycle phase, day one.
23:56
And then as you get to the end of that cycle, everybody's cycle length is a
23:59
little bit different, say four or five days, we enter the follicular phase.
24:03
With the follicular phase, hello brain, hello words, what we see is an increase
24:09
of all of those sex hormones. So estrogen, testosterone, progesterone,
24:13
all of those things are building.
24:15
And with that comes a significant spike in dopamine.
24:19
So a lot of women with ADHD, this is why they might feel really bad right before
24:23
their period and then start to feel better as they're getting off of their period
24:27
because estrogen is linked to dopamine.
24:29
And it's also linked to serotonin. And so it's very mood balancing,
24:33
mood protective. Progesterone, I like to say that that hormone stands for progestation.
24:38
That's what I tell a lot of my clients.
24:40
Progesterone is what we need to build a healthy uterine lining to sustain a pregnancy, right?
24:45
And so when there is enough progesterone, progesterone brings GABA with it.
24:50
GABA is a neurotransmitter that is very calming to the nervous system.
24:54
So back to, this is going to tie into the nervous system question,
24:58
but the nervous system really wants to feel safe to function optimally,
25:03
not in fight or flight all the time, although a little bit of fight or flight goes a long way.
25:07
I do love a little bit of fight or flight when I need to get something done, right?
25:10
But we want to spend the majority of our in that parasympathetic nervous system
25:14
state, which is our rest and digest state.
25:16
And that's where GABA plays a big role in that. GABA gives us that buffer.
25:20
That it gives us a buffer from any kind of excitatory mood states in the brain.
25:26
GABA comes in and goes, hey, you're fine. You've got this. You can do this.
25:29
So all of those things are rising with that follicular phase.
25:32
Then after follicular, we have the ovulatory phase, which for most women,
25:36
and again, some women can have painful ovulation and issues with ovulation.
25:40
That's a whole other thing.
25:42
But most women really start to feel their best when they're ovulating.
25:45
And that makes sense just from an ancestral perspective.
25:48
We usually look our best when we're ovulating. It has to do with procreation.
25:52
That's when we can make babies.
25:54
And so we will feel our best. Our sex drive will be our best.
25:57
Our focus might be our best. Just overall, socially, we might feel more confident
26:03
and less like, oh, what are they saying? Oh, and overthinking everything.
26:06
We just feel more balanced.
26:07
So then we hit that luteal phase. The luteal phase is the one that starts to
26:11
get a little bit wonky for some people.
26:13
You're supposed to have a continuous increase of progesterone and estrogen and
26:18
then drop off at the end. Well, for women in perimenopause, what can happen
26:21
is progesterone, I say, progesterone leaves the chat first.
26:25
So when you're over 35, your ovaries are like, I don't know if I'm going to do this anymore.
26:30
So progesterone starts to decline. Well, that decline of progesterone,
26:34
while estrogen is still high, starts to feel very imbalanced because now we
26:40
have, like I said, progesterone is linked to GABA.
26:42
We have a decrease in something that's supposed to be very calming, very anti-anxiety.
26:47
We have an increase or not even an increase. We still have that high estrogen,
26:52
but then estrogen starts spiking.
26:54
So what used to be, if you can just picture a roller coaster,
26:57
it used to be like a gradual increase and then a leveling out right before you
27:01
start your menstrual phase.
27:02
Now we have progesterone almost flatlining and we have estrogen going voop,
27:08
voop, voop, voop. I know this is going to be sound only. So just picture the
27:10
roller coaster going voop, voop, voop.
27:12
That's estrogen. So progesterone leaves the chat first. Estrogen can't decide if she's in or not.
27:16
Estrogen's like, I don't know. What are we doing? Are we making a baby?
27:19
Are we stopping? What's happening?
27:21
And those are when the mood symptoms get crazy. So we're talking about,
27:25
when we're talking about ADHD, we're talking about women who already have a
27:27
sensitive nervous system, who already aren't quite sure if they feel safe and
27:31
connected to the world around them on an emotional level.
27:34
They're not quite sure, you know, So physically, there's a lot of physiological
27:38
imbalances that can happen as a result of that, like microbial imbalances that we just talked about.
27:42
Lots of different, I mean, even stress chemicals, things, blood sugar fluctuations.
27:46
We're just more sensitive when we have ADHD. So you take what used to be a pretty
27:50
steady drip of dopamine and serotonin and GABA with our hormones,
27:54
and now it's all over the place.
27:56
So we've got women who are like, oh my gosh, I have ADHD. Well,
27:59
no, you're just losing your dopamine.
28:00
But then you have women also who are like, whoa, I have no stress resilience.
28:05
And they didn't have dopamine to begin with, but they were able to mask and
28:09
they had some tools that got them through or any, you know,
28:12
Whatever it was, they had their things that worked. It doesn't work anymore.
28:15
And so now women are like kind of floundering in the deep end of the sea going.
28:20
I don't know what to do. And every month looks different.
28:24
Well, that sure is dysregulating to the nervous system, too.
28:26
Like, am I having a period this month? Am I having two periods?
28:30
Am I bleeding out throughout the day? Like, what's going on?
28:34
And it's super overwhelming. Well, that overwhelm, again, with ADHD,
28:38
we're just more sensitive to that.
28:41
And the nervous system's more sensitive. I heard, I believe it was Tamara,
28:44
Dr. Tamara Rozier. I think maybe you had her on your podcast before.
28:47
She wrote, Your Brain's Not Broken.
28:49
She told me once that the ADHD brain has more of a, I think it's an interest-based
28:55
nervous system that's like whatever is right in front of you,
28:58
that's what you're paying attention to.
29:00
You know, I like to say it's that whole out of sight, out of mind issue.
29:03
But so when you've got the overwhelm of irregular cycles, when you have
29:08
the overwhelm of maybe a physiological stressor in the body,
29:12
maybe it's a food sensitivity, maybe it's a gut health issue,
29:15
maybe it's like, you know, you were mentioning earlier, parasites,
29:17
something like that. And then you have the emotional overwhelm.
29:20
It is just, it can create a perfect storm of dysregulation, whether it's physiological,
29:26
emotional, and any kind of regulation support at that point can be helpful.
29:31
I like to start a lot of times with just basic blood sugar support because that
29:34
brings safety both physiologically and emotionally to the body.
29:38
Lots of women are under eating right now. GLP-1s surprisingly can be pretty
29:42
helpful with ADHD, but then it leaves women without the nutrients that we need
29:47
to make those neurotransmitters.
29:48
So yeah, so I'll stop there and let you ask. No, this is good.
29:52
This is all good information. I'm just curious. So as far as.
29:55
There's lots to go on here. As far as hormones, you were talking about progesterone,
30:00
estrogen, GABA is that kind of buffer to make us feel better.
30:04
And all these dips and these changes and all these things happening.
30:08
You were also talking about the gut, the digestive tract, and some of these
30:13
nutrients, these vitamins that we need.
30:16
Am I correct in thinking that the reason why we want to bring those nutrients
30:21
up to where they need to be is to maybe lessen how high the highs of the hormone
30:28
fluctuations are, like the highs and the lows?
30:30
Like how will that change our experience or what is it that we can do to prepare
30:38
for, say, perimenopause or menopause?
30:40
Because I know I hear a lot of times about, you know, this is what's going to
30:43
happen and there's lots going on and already I'm, you know, dreading it going
30:48
like, oh my goodness, can this be starting already? Are you kidding me?
30:51
I just finished having kids. Like, is this actually what's going on?
30:54
And it feels like it's this doomsday, you know, this is what's going to happen.
30:59
So how can we help our bodies, our gut-brain connection? How can we kind of
31:06
prepare ourselves as best as we can for some of those changes? What can we do?
31:13
Yeah, that's such a good question. As far as like the nutrients are considered,
31:17
I like to think that, you know, nutrients, food nutrients and food itself just
31:21
bring safety to the body.
31:23
And so I think about it that way, food being a form of somatic therapy.
31:27
It's true therapy for the body to feel regulated and calm. And so,
31:30
yeah, that is, I mean, B6, that same thing that we need for dopamine,
31:34
we also need for progesterone.
31:36
And so when there's a deficiency, I think sometimes the body can overcorrect
31:39
if there's a deficiency in one.
31:42
When it comes to reframing the season of perimenopause, any major hormone change
31:48
for women can cause some fluctuations in mood and brain changes.
31:52
So, you know, we often talk about the 3Ps.
31:56
Puberty, I almost forgot what that word was, puberty, puberty,
32:01
postpartum, and then perimenopause.
32:02
And a lot of women, they're going through perimenopause while one of their kids
32:05
is in puberty. And that's a whole other complication, right?
32:08
And so we've got a lot of executive function that is not functioning.
32:12
And it can be a struggle, but the brain is truly making some major neurological
32:16
shifts in perimenopause that are not, well, let me say this in a positive way.
32:24
It's not supposed to be permanently altering in a negative way what it's supposed
32:29
to be doing is bringing us into balance
32:31
and there's a lot of really interesting research that i think from you know
32:35
i i take a biblical approach to everything that i do and i i think biblically speaking,
32:42
god designed women with a purpose beyond childbearing right that we know is
32:50
specific and intentional because there are only two other mammals,
32:55
that can live thriving lives after they're able to have babies.
32:58
I believe it's chimpanzees and whales. I think that's it.
33:01
And have no idea why they are allowed to live past childbearing and everybody
33:05
else dies out, but we are.
33:08
And there's anthropologists, cultural anthropologists would say that it has
33:11
to do with the grandmother hypothesis,
33:13
that the grandmothers really step up and play a role in leadership and guiding
33:18
the families when the young moms are so busy dealing with the kids The grandmas
33:22
can step up and take care of the things that need to be taken care of.
33:25
But I would say just from a scriptural perspective, a lot of the women that
33:30
we see in the Bible that had huge roles in leadership.
33:36
And framing even, I mean, I think about Anna, who is in the New Testament,
33:40
is it Luke, I believe, where she is prophesying.
33:42
She was a widow for 60-some years or something like that.
33:46
Old old lady and she was prophesying about jesus and his arrival and like what
33:51
an important role that she had to wait her whole life for that she had to go
33:55
through menopause for right but that was the role that god gave her i think
33:58
about deborah one of the judges in the book of judges
34:01
i don't know how old she was but she ruled for a really long time and i doubt
34:04
she was like 20 when she started you know we're accumulating a lot of life wisdom
34:09
and the brain changes that happen
34:12
in this shifting season, they are happening to help us to be more aligned right
34:17
and left-brained and to help us to stay more in balance.
34:20
When estrogen is really high, we are very much concerned about caretaking.
34:25
And that's important. And that is needed for sure when our kids are little.
34:29
And if you don't have kids, it's needed in general for whatever role that you're playing.
34:33
Women have a little bit more of that caretaking nature and has to do with estrogen.
34:37
Men just don't have that same thing with oxytocin estrogen and oxytocin are
34:41
linked oxytocin is a hormone of bonding and connection and we have the ability
34:45
we have more oxytocin receptors than men do we have the ability to do that in ways that,
34:51
that's needed for the kingdom because men just can't do that as well now when
34:55
when menopause shifts and our estrogen goes away.
34:58
What i'm kind of looking forward to is less of the filter, less of the need
35:05
to care for everybody else to my own detriment, right?
35:09
Because so many of us have been doing that for so long.
35:13
It's a time to really step into, okay, who has God called me to be in this season?
35:18
And I think in Asian cultures, they call it the second spring.
35:22
And that's what we should have to look forward to that. Yeah,
35:24
there's like this weird season, maybe 10 years, maybe 15 years where there are
35:28
some structural changes happening. in the brain. There's definitely structural,
35:31
changes happening in the body and they don't feel great.
35:34
But knowing that on the other side of this, like I'm going to be like,
35:39
Erin 2.0 where my right and left brain are aligned and I'm not going to be driven
35:45
by my hormones through cycling throughout the month all the time and I can just kind of have more of a
35:51
almost like a logical not that I'm not logical I don't want to generalize that
35:54
women aren't logical at all so please I'm not saying that but
35:58
we absolutely are impacted by our hormones our hormones make an impact on our
36:02
neurotransmitters and our emotional state and how we care for other people one
36:07
of my favorite shifts that's already happening is my filter is going away and
36:10
I'm able to say hard things.
36:12
That I never wanted to say before. And that's exciting to me.
36:16
Like, I don't, I mean, yeah, do I care what people think of me to an extent?
36:19
Sure. But I don't care if it's something that I feel like I need to say that has to be said.
36:25
We hold ourselves back so much. So, yeah.
36:28
And I think that's such a beautiful way of putting it, too, is helping us to
36:31
have that understanding.
36:33
You and I talked at the beginning, too, of wanting to understand the why,
36:36
the reasoning behind things, how things work, what is happening and why.
36:41
And I think that brings a lot of hope, just even in understanding,
36:45
like you said, of the fact that this is supposed to happen in this way and that
36:50
there is something on the other side to kind of look forward to.
36:54
And I think that's, I haven't really heard people talk about it that way before.
36:58
So I think that's a refreshing perspective. Also to remind me,
37:01
I mean, me as a mom of fairly young kids, they're three, five, and seven,
37:07
that feeling of, you know, drowning in motherhood at times, but to know that
37:11
that state isn't for forever and.
37:15
That we are designed for more than that and that we can serve in God's kingdom
37:19
through our family, but we can also do that in other ways as well.
37:24
And like you said, when you're not in that caregiving role as much anymore,
37:29
to be able to look up and say, hey, how can I love others? How can I serve others?
37:33
I think that's a really interesting way of looking at that.
37:39
Before we have to get going, I wanted to know if somebody is,
37:44
listening today and you know they've heard about different hormones and you
37:50
know vitamins and all these different things that gut brain connection,
37:53
what could they do practically speaking just starting today are there any changes
37:59
that they could make to lifestyle or diet that would help them or would you
38:03
recommend that they go and get testing done,
38:07
yeah yeah I think that one thing that I am seeing across the board for all women,
38:12
I put myself in this category as well, is that we do everything in a hurry.
38:17
We are hurried. And from an ADHD perspective, I would argue that that gives
38:22
us a rush of adrenaline that sometimes we need, right? Like I'm not just time
38:26
blind because I don't know what time it is. I'm time blind because I wait to
38:29
the last minute because it sure feels fun to rush.
38:32
It's like, am I going to get there in time? I don't know. Let's see.
38:35
You know, pedal to the metal, right?
38:37
But we live that way. We live pedal to the metal. And so I think my very first
38:43
piece of advice that I would say is, ask yourself.
38:47
You know, just whatever you're doing, like maybe right now, as you're listening
38:51
to this, what is your state of hurry?
38:53
Are you listening at 1.75 times speed guilty, but are you listening at that
38:59
speed while also doing laundry or also
39:02
like getting a workout in, or also we do so many things at once because we are
39:07
constantly trying to cram things in.
39:09
I would ask you just to observe how many things you're doing in a state of hurry,
39:16
and what would happen if you slowed down on just like one or two of them.
39:21
If you chose one thing to do today, slowly and not in a hurry,
39:26
what would that feel like to the body?
39:28
I think for a lot of people with ADHD, it wouldn't feel very safe and it would
39:32
be a little bit scary because we have lived our lives in a state of hurry,
39:36
in a state of emergency. And so just shifting that could be really helpful.
39:42
Noticing like, how am I breathing right now? How am I breathing when I'm in a hurry?
39:45
What would happen if I slowed down and took a few breaths? I love using breath
39:51
prayers where you combine a passage of scripture with breathing because I think
39:55
the hardest thing in the world if you have ADHD is like, yeah,
39:57
I'm just gonna lay there and meditate. No, that's not gonna happen.
39:59
But I love using something like when you say Psalm 23, one, the Lord is my shepherd,
40:03
I have everything I need. So inhale, exhale.
40:06
The Lord is my shepherd. Exhale. I have everything I need. That brings safety
40:10
to the body. That's like one of the only things in our autonomic nervous system
40:13
that we can control is how we breathe.
40:15
So just taking ourselves out of that hurried state or just observing it,
40:19
like don't do anything about it. Just observe it.
40:21
I think the other thing, and that's, I mean, that's going to have a cascade
40:23
of effects throughout your entire body.
40:25
So that will impact your hormones. That will impact your neurotransmitters.
40:28
It's going to keep you in a state of repletion and not depletion.
40:32
I think that's important.
40:33
The other thing I would say is think about like, what are the things that are
40:38
draining to you that you are forcing yourself to do that you don't like that
40:43
you really don't have to do? And how can you remove them from your plate?
40:47
I think women with ADHD were notorious for taking too much on.
40:51
It's more is more, right? And there are a lot of things you're probably doing
40:55
that you don't need to be doing.
40:57
Even something like meal prepping. I have a whole, my next book that's coming
41:00
out in January, I have a whole section about meal prepping, like just according to your mood state.
41:05
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do things because we see somebody doing this on social media.
41:10
Meal prepping is the worst thing for ADHD. Like it's just, it requires so much executive function.
41:16
It's a lot. And so don't put pressure on yourself to do something that doesn't fit who you are.
41:21
Find your own way to do things. Most women at this point, you know,
41:24
you hit your thirties, forties, you've figured out some ways that you need to
41:27
function that work for you.
41:30
But I think just taking time to evaluate what's really draining and what you
41:35
don't need to be doing, but you're adding on just because you think you need
41:38
to be adding it on, I think really observing that could be a helpful step. Does that make sense?
41:43
Yeah, absolutely. I think part of that too, I talked to an author the other
41:47
day, Dr. Jenny Byrne, and she was.
41:50
She was saying about, you know, what society expects of us.
41:54
And she also said beneath everything, we have these assumptions, right?
41:57
So if I don't meal plan, am I assuming that now I'm irresponsible?
42:02
I'm not going to get my family fed well, whatever it is. And addressing those
42:06
assumptions beneath it as well of if we let go of something,
42:11
what are we assuming is going to happen?
42:13
What are we assuming about ourselves, about what others might think of us and
42:18
being able to address that? Because I feel like often that is beneath what we
42:22
do, right? You talk about meal planning and I've gone through phases where I had a, I had a,
42:28
thing on the fridge where it was my meal plan and it worked really great for about,
42:32
a month okay yeah and then that's pretty long and I was so bored and I didn't
42:37
want to do that and so now you know I'm like you're right it is I've kind of settled back into,
42:44
a tiny little bit of structure of this is what kind of meat we're having and
42:47
then I just make everything else around that but it gives me the creativity
42:51
and the autonomy to say this is what I'm in the mood for today.
42:55
I don't like being told what to do, even if I put it on the fridge myself.
42:58
I don't want somebody saying you have to make tacos tonight. I don't want tacos.
43:02
So I think that's a great reminder as well.
43:05
And I think it's good to be reminded over and over again, too,
43:09
of the fact that, yes, we do often live in a hurry.
43:13
Sometimes we, I mean, motivation, right? That sense of urgency that can motivate
43:17
us, especially for things that are not otherwise interesting,
43:22
where it's not interest-based.
43:24
We're not able to be creative that's I talked to my husband about this is that,
43:28
on the days where I get to do,
43:31
an interview like this I get to work on my podcast I get to work on the course
43:35
that I'm creating I feel great and I feel like I don't need supports to.
43:42
Be like somebody else but on the days where I have to do laundry and grocery
43:47
shopping and the things that I really really don't like to do them.
43:52
Those are the days where I need some, you know, extra like body doubling or
43:56
some sort of motivation because it's so hard to get into it.
44:00
And, you know, negative self-talk is really big for those of us with ADHD.
44:04
And just, I think a lot of women in perimenopause in general,
44:07
some of that is protective, right? Like you're an inner critic,
44:11
you built an inner critic so you would get stuff done.
44:14
So you could be motivated, but that inner critic is a drill sergeant,
44:17
not a friend, not a coach.
44:19
And I have a whole chapter in my book, Live Beyond Your Label,
44:22
about how your self-talk impacts your health because,
44:25
One of the, shame is, I would consider shame to be one of the most toxic emotions.
44:29
And people with ADHD struggle with shame, I would argue, more than neurotypical
44:33
people because it just seeps into everything.
44:36
My youngest son coined the phrase shame box. And I love that.
44:39
Like, I got onto him for something one day and I was like, but do you understand
44:43
that you were supposed to do this and you didn't do that?
44:45
He put his hands over his face. He goes, stop, you're putting me in my shame box.
44:48
And I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't want that to be the case.
44:54
And I would reference Romans 8.1, there's no condemnation for those who are
44:57
in Christ Jesus. And if you are condemning yourself or shaming yourself for
45:01
what you are or aren't doing with your meal prepping or your laundry or whatever,
45:06
oh my gosh, I have a pile of laundry, I have to sort it.
45:08
Right, right. Like if you're shaming yourself for that, that is not of the Lord at all.
45:13
Like that is that is from the opposing side that wants to take you down right.
45:19
And so i would i would just really speaking the truth to yourself as much as
45:22
possible and pouring scripture into yourself as much as possible to remind you of who you are who your,
45:28
identity is truly in because it's not in what you can do or can't do or what
45:32
your hormones are doing or and what your mom said about you or your grandma
45:36
your psychiatrist or whatever like that's no but like none jesus doesn't say
45:40
anything negative about us. He puts no labels on us that are negative.
45:44
Once we are his children, once we have accepted him into our lives,
45:48
right, and experienced a transforming love of Jesus, we are redeemed and we
45:51
are forgiven and we are loved and we are like all, it's only positive, nothing negative.
45:56
So yeah, I had to preach on the shame box because that's a rough one.
46:00
I think that really can take us down.
46:02
No, and I think that is a really good reminder. Just one last quick thing on
46:05
that topic was the other day I felt like I had.
46:09
A God moment reminder of the fact that when we are looking to other people,
46:14
to other humans, to the world, to our accomplishments, to satisfy and to fulfill
46:21
us, we are always going to be disappointed.
46:23
I felt bad, my poor husband, but I was like, I'm realizing I'm looking to you
46:28
to be Jesus and you're not.
46:30
And until we go to the real source, we're always going to feel like it's just not enough.
46:36
And so I think that was a really great reminder of the fact that who has created
46:41
us, he has not created us wrong. And that is who we need to build our confidence
46:46
on. So thank you so much for joining us here today. I know you do have to get going.
46:50
If people want to go to find out more about you and what you do, where should they go?
46:55
Yeah, well, I post a lot of random fun information on my Instagram,
47:00
which is at Sparking Wholeness.
47:02
And my podcast is called Sparking Wholeness. I have over 350 episodes now,
47:07
just all sorts of mental health topics, various topics.
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I also, my website is erinbcary.com. You can learn about my two books,
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Live Beyond Your Label. My upcoming book is out in January called Kitchen Therapy.
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Super excited about that one. It's all about the food mood connection.
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And then I have some courses available right now on my website as well.
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I've got one that is nutrition for perimenopause. That is a faith-based course.
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I'm excited about that one.
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I've got one for ADHD that's helpful for parents. It came from a webinar I did
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that was really helpful, getting into a deep dive of the root,
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what's driving ADHD, and what can we do practically. So I love all the nerdy
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information. I love sharing it with people.
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Well, amazing. Well, thanks for sharing it with us today. And hopefully I can
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have you back on again around the time when your next book is coming out. Absolutely.