Latest / ADHD Strategies & Support for Women / How Common is ADHD? Prevalence, Definitions & What it Means | Ep 160

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How Common is ADHD? Prevalence, Definitions & What it Means | Ep 160 · ADHD Strategies & Support for Women

• 0:28
  Hello, welcome to Inspiring women with adhd.
• 0:30
  It's been so long.
• 0:31
  Hi, I'm Renee Allen.
• 0:33
  Excited to be here today.
• 0:35
  I got sick after all the wedding hoopla.
• 0:39
  My daughter got married earlier this month.
• 0:42
  It's almost Halloween now, and she got married in Miami.
• 0:45
  And my mom was here for a month, and it was just a busy time.
• 0:48
  And then she.
• 0:50
  My mom left.
• 0:50
  And that night I got sick.
• 0:52
  And I've been sick since.
• 0:53
  It's been a couple weeks.
• 0:54
  And I've been trying to push through some of it, but trying to rest.
• 0:57
  Well, had to rest a lot.
• 1:00
  And every time I thought of coming on here, I just thought, I don't have that kind of energy, and it's hard to fake it.
• 1:08
  Or I just couldn't get myself to do it for sure.
• 1:10
  And even today, I'm here and excited to be here.
• 1:15
  But If I'm not 100%, that's why.
• 1:19
  And I don't even know what a hundred percent is, actually, because, you know, it's come and go.
• 1:25
  In fact, was it last episode or the time before that?
• 1:28
  I was talking about why you can't possibly keep it all together.
• 1:31
  I have this microphone to the side, and I keep leaning forward, and I'm afraid I'm gonna move past it.
• 1:35
  So pardon me while I adjust things.
• 1:37
  I gotta move it here a little bit.
• 1:39
  So if I lean forward, I'm not like, it'll still pick up.
• 1:42
  But anyway, I talked about how when you're doing all these things, how your brain can't keep track of everything at once, Right.
• 1:50
  And how that could lead to dropping things.
• 1:53
  You know, something that's in your hand can either tip and fall and spill, or you can drop it.
• 1:59
  And I went to the grocery store on Monday, I think it was Monday.
• 2:03
  And they had all these buy one, get one free frozen dinner items at Publix.
• 2:09
  And usually I'm hit and miss with frozen dinners.
• 2:12
  There's some lasagnas I like or something, but they had a couple brands that I thought, oh, that'd probably be good.
• 2:19
  That'd probably be good.
• 2:19
  And you know how, at least for me, in the grocery store, everything sounds like this dream meal.
• 2:24
  And then I actually make it, and it's not that great, but.
• 2:28
  But I bought a lot.
• 2:30
  It's buy one, get one free.
• 2:31
  And I'm sure they inflated the price to begin with, but thankfully, I found a way to fit it in my freezer when I got home.
• 2:38
  We have two fridges, and so it's still.
• 2:41
  That was a challenge.
• 2:42
  But freezer boxes can Be slippery, you know?
• 2:45
  Cause they're just paper and they're heavy, so they can kind of just slide over each other.
• 2:51
  And I even bought some pot pies, you know, like Marie Callender kinds and things like that.
• 2:57
  I kept dropping stuff over and over and over.
• 3:01
  Oh, my goodness.
• 3:03
  Yeah.
• 3:04
  And I did not do self checkout.
• 3:06
  I usually do self checkout.
• 3:07
  And I thought, do not do this to yourself.
• 3:09
  One, you brought too many things, and it's just gonna be a disaster.
• 3:13
  You can't keep anything in your hand.
• 3:14
  But I'm a firm believer that when you overtax your brain in some way, it's not gonna function as well.
• 3:21
  It already has problems functioning.
• 3:23
  You know, the executive dysfunction is a problem functioning.
• 3:26
  Right.
• 3:27
  And so if stress, then, you know, like.
• 3:31
  And that stress could just be other people are watching or I'm trying to do too many things at once.
• 3:36
  You know, you're.
• 3:37
  You're giving.
• 3:38
  You're giving yourself an advantage.
• 3:39
  Instead of being an advocate for yourself, you're giving yourself a disadvantage by trying to perform in that situation.
• 3:46
  And I realized that being sick is a disadvantage too, because I just.
• 3:52
  It's my first time out of the store in a while and.
• 3:56
  And I just am still weak.
• 3:58
  And even though I've been taking antibiotics and stuff, I don't think I'm contagious.
• 4:02
  But, yeah, it was not a good performance at all.
• 4:06
  Nobody was watching, but I was aware.
• 4:08
  So that was my entertainment for myself that ADHD provided that day and still does.
• 4:16
  I'm still able to laugh about it.
• 4:18
  But I wanted to talk to you today about something that I looked into a couple weeks ago, and I.
• 4:23
  I think it's fascinating.
• 4:25
  It's how.
• 4:26
  How prevalent ADHD is in adults, in children, and compared to other disorders and what the difference is between a disorder is and mental condition.
• 4:39
  Mental health, condition, mental disorder, mental illness.
• 4:44
  And because every time I have a question and I have one answered, then another question comes and another question comes, and it might be that way for you, because with adhd, you may be extra curious and you might
• 4:55
  be a deep diver.
• 4:57
  You might hyperfocus on things.
• 4:59
  And there's a lot of reasons for that.
• 5:00
  It, it, it brings excitement.
• 5:02
  We're getting this dopamine boost when we get some information, and then when we have another question, it's like if you're in school when you were little and you're like, oh, oh, oh.
• 5:10
  And you're raising your hand all the time, the teacher's telling you, stop raising your hand.
• 5:13
  It's because you're Excited about learning, it's because you have more questions.
• 5:16
  And so if you have that now, just that same, you don't have a teacher telling you, put your hand down, you can keep learning.
• 5:22
  So, yay, yay, yay for that.
• 5:24
  But let me go over to this because it's kind of interesting because some people think, well, everyone has adhd.
• 5:33
  And that may be the naysayers of, like, ADHD isn't a real thing.
• 5:37
  You know, everyone has a disorder these days.
• 5:38
  I've heard these things.
• 5:40
  I've heard the.
• 5:40
  Hear people say stuff like this to my face, and I don't get it, but it just.
• 5:47
  To me, it just means that they don't understand, right?
• 5:52
  They don't know enough about it.
• 5:53
  And I used to be one of those.
• 5:54
  Didn't know enough about it.
• 5:55
  I didn't know I had ADHD till I was in my 50s.
• 5:57
  So I wasn't a naysayer to other people that had adhd, but I just didn't know enough about it to even think that I had it or any of my kids had it.
• 6:06
  And we all went through school and some with IEPs and some with a lot of special attention because of the problems that it gave us.
• 6:15
  I say us because of those family things.
• 6:18
  But.
• 6:20
  But adhd.
• 6:22
  So these percentages can change, right?
• 6:25
  That's what happens.
• 6:26
  It can change.
• 6:26
  But some people think everyone has adhd.
• 6:29
  Or.
• 6:29
  Or if in your family you start thinking, well, it just seems like a lot of people have it, you know, like my dad, my brother, my.
• 6:39
  This son, this child, whatever.
• 6:40
  You know, when you're starting to learn who has ADHD or they're getting diagnosed or you're learning more about it, you might think, well, it might make you think that maybe you don't have it.
• 6:51
  You know, like, if you haven't been diagnosed or something, because it's like, maybe this is just something that runs in our family.
• 6:56
  And that's actually what I thought.
• 6:58
  One, I didn't know what the symptoms were for adhd, but my kids who were like me, I just thought they were like me.
• 7:05
  I just thought they had a hard time not blurting out answers in school.
• 7:09
  They had a hard time sitting in their chairs.
• 7:11
  I didn't know that was adhd.
• 7:13
  I just thought they're like me.
• 7:15
  I was the child who did that.
• 7:17
  And I have a daughter who's a schoolteacher.
• 7:21
  My mom was a schoolteacher.
• 7:22
  My grandpa was.
• 7:23
  They've said they can point out the kids who do that, but for me, being the only one in the class who did That I didn't know there was a child in every class that did that.
• 7:32
  I just thought, this is me.
• 7:34
  And then I thought, oh, my kids are like me, they can't help it.
• 7:36
  They're like me.
• 7:37
  I still can't help it.
• 7:38
  I mean, I kind of can, but the impulse is there, right?
• 7:41
  So you might negate the validity of it because so many people you know have it, but maybe that's because it is highly hereditary.
• 7:52
  So maybe it is in your family.
• 7:54
  If it is in your family, it's more prevalent, prevalent in your life because you start think, maybe I'm not that much different.
• 8:01
  Maybe everyone struggles with this.
• 8:04
  The answer is they don't.
• 8:06
  They don't.
• 8:06
  And if there's someone in your family, like a non blood relative, like your spouse or something, like my husband, there's so many things that I do that he's never done before that come with my adhd and, and in
• 8:20
  some ways it blows me away that he hasn't thought that way or doesn't have a hundred thoughts in his, in his head at once.
• 8:25
  Now that when I learned that when he told me he didn't have anything in any thoughts in his head one time, I thought, you're lying to me.
• 8:32
  You just don't want to talk.
• 8:33
  You really didn't, you really didn't.
• 8:35
  But this is National Institute Health.
• 8:40
  There's a lot of chads, a lot of resources here.
• 8:45
  6% of adults have ADHD, that's how many have been diagnosed.
• 8:50
  There's a huge prevalence right now of adults being diagnosed with ADHD because they did not know they had it when they were younger.
• 8:57
  So the numbers of how many adults have ADHD could continue to go up at some point as public knowledge becomes more real of what ADHD is, what public knowledge is adequate.
• 9:15
  I guess that's what it is.
• 9:17
  Then the balance of those who have ADHD will be more consistent with who actually has it.
• 9:27
  But for many, many years, and probably still now, the numbers of people who have ADHD is lower than how many actually do because there are a ton of people who don't know and maybe never will know.
• 9:39
  Right.
• 9:40
  So I may catch up, but I would think there's always going to be somebody who doesn't know.
• 9:47
  So if you want it to be exact, it's probably not going to be exact.
• 9:50
  I'm someone in my head, I want it to be exact.
• 9:52
  I want to know.
• 9:55
  So 6% of adults have ADHD means 94% aren't diagnosed, don't think they have ADHD or have no idea.
• 10:06
  But of that 94%, the percentage who has no idea and probably does is probably small.
• 10:12
  So there's a small percentage of people who have adhd, but in your life it might be like, oh, I actually like one quarter of the people that I see every day have adhd.
• 10:26
  That would be kind of me in a way.
• 10:28
  I feel like a lot of people in my life, not counting the people in my yoga classes and stuff, because a lot of them don't.
• 10:33
  But a lot of.
• 10:33
  A lot of good friends that I have do.
• 10:36
  And I wonder too, if that's also.
• 10:42
  If that's also just the people that you feel comfortable with, that you relate to, that you have so much fun talking to, Right?
• 10:48
  That, like, I've been surprised at how many of my very best friends, cousins, like, that we just have so much in common, you know?
• 10:58
  Or here's an example.
• 10:59
  Even as an adult.
• 11:01
  As an adult, like a young mom, I went to a camp and I was counselor and there was a teenage girl in my cabin and I don't know, she was probably 14, 15 at the time.
• 11:11
  The first night we stayed up till probably two in the morning, like reliving, like, Sesame street songs and just connecting on so many things.
• 11:22
  We had so much fun and we were really close.
• 11:25
  From then on, we were like sisters.
• 11:27
  And.
• 11:28
  And I never had a sister.
• 11:29
  And she didn't have any sisters.
• 11:30
  That could be two.
• 11:31
  But, you know, she had three brothers, I had four brothers, but we can just talk about anything but that person.
• 11:37
  And it was just, you know.
• 11:39
  And the other adults there at the camp, did I relate to them at that level?
• 11:43
  No.
• 11:43
  No.
• 11:43
  And.
• 11:44
  And I think about it and.
• 11:46
  And then she tells me, after I find out I have adhd, that she does too.
• 11:49
  I never would have spotted it.
• 11:51
  Never knew.
• 11:52
  But I didn't see her in school.
• 11:53
  I didn't see, you know, I didn't see that part of her life.
• 11:56
  We.
• 11:57
  We hung out and stuff, but.
• 12:01
  But it's just kind of interesting, isn't it, that the people that we connect with, we might have more people in our life that do have adhd.
• 12:08
  And then we might have some people in our life that we're, like, not as comfortable with because they're not as chatty.
• 12:14
  And maybe we're comfortable around chatty people, you know, at least I know I am, so.
• 12:18
  But it's not like every friend has to be chatty, but it is fun.
• 12:22
  Okay?
• 12:22
  But then there's.
• 12:23
  Then there's those friendships where I know my daughter's talked about this because she's had friends who are chatty and upstaging in an upstaging way where, like, it's hard for them to be in the same room in a big
• 12:37
  group of people because the other one's trying to upstage her.
• 12:40
  And I don't know.
• 12:40
  My daughter's an upstager, but she's very comfortable in a big group of people, but not when she's getting pushed out.
• 12:49
  Does that make sense?
• 12:50
  Anyway, I'm getting off topic here.
• 12:52
  Okay, so I was curious, because the disorders that at least I tend to hear about a lot are ADHD, OCD, BPD.
• 13:05
  So I was curious, how does it compare ADHD, 6% in adults, BPD, borderline personality disorder, one and a half to 2.7%.
• 13:18
  So it's less than half as many people.
• 13:22
  Less.
• 13:22
  You know, like ADHD is twice as common than borderline personality disorder, but they can be comorbid.
• 13:30
  So bpd, Borderline Personality disorder has a lot to do with emotional.
• 13:36
  Emotional dysregulation.
• 13:38
  And ADHD does have emotional dysregulation.
• 13:40
  So there could be some crossover there.
• 13:42
  OCD about.
• 13:45
  It's a little bit lower than Borderline Personality disorder, which is interesting because OCD seems to be something that people talk about a lot like.
• 13:53
  Like that they seem to understand better than borderline personality Disorder.
• 13:57
  But it's again, it's like half as common or a third as common as OCD, depending on the statistic, 1.2% to 2.3%.
• 14:04
  What about autism?
• 14:05
  And a lot of people who have autism also have ADHD.
• 14:09
  There's ADHD, autism, 2.2%, 1 in 45 people.
• 14:14
  So roughly one third as common as ADHD in adults.
• 14:18
  I don't know about children.
• 14:20
  I was just looking at the adult statistics.
• 14:24
  But all of these can overlap.
• 14:28
  People could have have both of them, but probably more common just to have one.
• 14:35
  The biggest disorder in adults, percentage wise is anxiety disorders.
• 14:41
  19.1%.
• 14:43
  That's pretty huge.
• 14:45
  Anxiety disorder isn't something like ADHD where you're born with it.
• 14:49
  There might be somebody from a child, you know from childhood who has an anxiety disorder, but it can be something that shows up at different times of your life.
• 15:00
  Major depression, 7.5%, ADHD, 6%.
• 15:04
  There's bipolar, 2.8%, autism, 2.2.
• 15:08
  Borderline personality disorder, one and a half to two, you know, kind of depending on OCD, 1.2.
• 15:16
  Anyway, so that's kind of interesting.
• 15:21
  But then I asked about narcissistic personality disorder because, you know, people say things kind of like ocd.
• 15:26
  People are like, oh, I'm a little ocd.
• 15:27
  You know, people use that to explain I'm obsessive about something, but then they don't really have it.
• 15:36
  Right.
• 15:36
  And people say that a lot about like he's a narcissist, she's a narcissist or something.
• 15:40
  But they're.
• 15:41
  Whether somebody who is called a narcissist or seems like a narcissist has narcissistic personality disorder is another thing that ranges between 0.5% and 6.2%.
• 15:54
  That is a huge span.
• 15:58
  It's a huge span.
• 16:00
  Like a half a percent to 6%.
• 16:05
  Don't know why that range is there.
• 16:07
  I'm looking into it right now.
• 16:10
  Pervasive pattern of grandiosity, grandiosity, like thinking that they're better than like they have this fantasy of how great they are.
• 16:21
  A constant need for admiration, lack of empathy beginning in early adulthood.
• 16:29
  Yeah.
• 16:30
  And that says it's more common in men than in women.
• 16:33
  So that's interesting.
• 16:34
  Right.
• 16:38
  But back to what about people who don't have adhd?
• 16:43
  What is the percentage of people with no mental health disorders?
• 16:50
  77% of adults.
• 16:52
  And that means in any given year, doesn't mean they've never had one because there might be somebody who had severe depression for two years and, and got past it, was able or were able to get out of that.
• 17:06
  And there can be different reasons for sinking into depression or even like a postpartum depression or grief related or you know, over someone's lifetime or dealing with anxiety and, and, and then, and doing better, getting past that somehow.
• 17:24
  And it could be the situations that they were in and working through that with therapy.
• 17:30
  Some disorders aren't lifelong, but some maybe so 77%.
• 17:41
  This to me is super validating because I don't know, I feel like sometimes when I'm struggling with something with adhd and I think everyone has their struggles, which is true.
• 17:56
  Right.
• 17:56
  Everyone has their health struggles, their, their life struggles, whatever's going on in their life, situational, financial, family, friends, all that kind of thing.
• 18:09
  And then I think everyone's dealing with something like this.
• 18:12
  But then when you hear 77% of adults have no diagnosable mental health disorder in any.
• 18:21
  In typical 12 month period.
• 18:23
  I think yeah, there are a lot of people who are functioning really well mentally.
• 18:27
  It's nice to hear, isn't it?
• 18:29
  It's actually kind of, it's kind of, what's the word?
• 18:36
  Like the opposite of scary.
• 18:38
  Comforting.
• 18:39
  It's comforting to know the world is operating under, you know, majority of people who aren't dealing with something like this.
• 18:48
  And it doesn't mean that it's scary if everyone is, but, you know, just depending on the degree.
• 18:52
  Right.
• 18:53
  But it's nice to know because I think sometimes we, you know, we hear things, especially about the rise of anxiety and kids and things like that.
• 19:00
  So it's nice to know, although this is an adult statistic, but it also makes me feel like, yeah, this is a hard thing.
• 19:07
  Most people don't have executive dysfunction.
• 19:11
  And I can feel.
• 19:14
  I cannot.
• 19:15
  I can feel okay about feeling guilty, about feeling bad about it.
• 19:22
  I say this is that I laugh, but it's just because I'm having a hard time getting the words out.
• 19:25
  Right.
• 19:26
  But sometimes when I'm discouraged by that or think this is a big challenge, I can think, yeah, it is a big challenge.
• 19:34
  And, and you're working through it, and you're working through what you have.
• 19:38
  And not everybody deals with this and it can be hard.
• 19:41
  And I think that's good to do that because it's also easy to discount it and just think, what's the big deal?
• 19:46
  Especially when other people around you don't see it as very, very hard.
• 19:52
  And it is.
• 19:54
  So the word mental illness.
• 19:56
  So what.
• 19:57
  What do you.
• 19:59
  How does it feel to you?
• 20:00
  Like, would you.
• 20:05
  I guess I know that ADHD is a disorder, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
• 20:11
  It's a mental health disorder.
• 20:13
  And knowing that if there's 6% of adults who are diagnosed, and let's say that 4% are undiagnosed, so let's say there's 10% of adults, and I'm just making this up, say 10% of adults actually do have executive dysfunction
• 20:28
  and ADHD.
• 20:29
  90% don't.
• 20:32
  So of those 90% or those 90, whatever percent that don't have disorder in a given year.
• 20:41
  Was that 90?
• 20:42
  Oh, no, that's 77%.
• 20:44
  Where'd I get up to the 90?
• 20:48
  That means that the, that the word disorder is actually correct, that the brain usually functions better.
• 20:55
  And so your brain isn't functioning in the way that.
• 21:00
  That it could or that it does for a lot of people.
• 21:03
  Right.
• 21:03
  And by could, I don't mean that it could change for you because maybe medication helps it change at times or methods help you work with it, but some things will.
• 21:17
  Will always be there or, or may always be there.
• 21:20
  So.
• 21:21
  So disorder, it's, it's.
• 21:24
  It's not, it's not the norm.
• 21:26
  Right.
• 21:27
  The neurotypical, the neurodivergent, you know, it's not the typical, but then also there's mental illness.
• 21:33
  So is ADHD a mental illness?
• 21:37
  And the answer is yes.
• 21:39
  But in the diagnostic manual, it's not considered that.
• 21:44
  It's.
• 21:45
  It's.
• 21:45
  It's defined as a mental health disorder, not a mental illness.
• 21:48
  The word mental illness is something that's used more by the public.
• 21:53
  And so I think of, you know, when someone says that person's mentally ill.
• 21:59
  If someone said that about me, to me, there's a stigma there.
• 22:04
  I don't want someone to think I'm mentally ill.
• 22:06
  But mental illness is what a lot of people call a mental health disorder.
• 22:12
  And so I'm just gonna pretend like that's not something that people say.
• 22:16
  But, yeah, mental illness, it's a condition.
• 22:20
  It can range in severity.
• 22:22
  It's something that can be anywhere from moderate to mild to severe.
• 22:26
  So maybe I need to change in my mind what mental illness means.
• 22:30
  Someone's mentally ill, seriously, moderately, whatever.
• 22:34
  It means something's not functioning right with their brain.
• 22:38
  And for me, I don't like hearing that anyone has to deal with that.
• 22:43
  You know, it's a state of being unwell.
• 22:45
  Just like, you know, I'm sick right now.
• 22:47
  Do I care if someone says, renee, are you ill?
• 22:50
  Are you sick?
• 22:51
  And I say, no.
• 22:51
  I mean, I say, yeah, you know, I've had a cold or whatever.
• 22:54
  But an illness is, you know, having symptoms, having things that aren't functioning quite right, and it's a imbalance in the system.
• 23:02
  You know, it could be fatigue, it can be pain, it can be fever, nausea.
• 23:07
  All those things are illnesses in the body.
• 23:10
  And when it's affecting the brain, it's.
• 23:14
  It's the mental illness.
• 23:16
  But your actual diagnosis is not a mental illness.
• 23:20
  It's a mental disorder.
• 23:23
  And, and somebody who has some of the symptoms but isn't diagnosed with the disorder might have that condition, that mental health condition.
• 23:32
  Or, you know, maybe.
• 23:34
  Maybe that would be more apt is to say, just like, if I had a cold, it's a mild cold.
• 23:39
  Maybe something that's not diagnosed, you know, like what she's sick with.
• 23:43
  I don't know.
• 23:43
  She's just having this, this.
• 23:44
  This, you know, I'm feeling ill.
• 23:46
  I'm not well.
• 23:47
  I feel like in the old movies, like the Jane Austen's movies, you know, they.
• 23:50
  She.
• 23:50
  She's not well.
• 23:51
  She's.
• 23:52
  She's feeling ill or whatever.
• 23:55
  But I'm just curious, in your mind, what would you rather think of having, like, a disorder, an illness?
• 24:02
  And I shouldn't care about either one but yeah, I think things run deep.
• 24:08
  You know, when I was little, it was like, oh, that.
• 24:11
  That always seemed like somebody who couldn't.
• 24:15
  Was it a severe.
• 24:16
  Just disadvantage, I guess, and really struggled or wasn't seeing things clearly?
• 24:23
  Maybe that was it.
• 24:24
  So I, I'm, you know, it's just something to evaluate in yourself and maybe to help others see is as if they're talking about other people.
• 24:32
  Like that.
• 24:33
  Well, what does that even mean, you know, like, have that conversation.
• 24:35
  What does that mean to have a mental illness?
• 24:37
  It means something's not working right in the brain.
• 24:40
  Huh.
• 24:40
  And the brain has to have these wires go, you know, wired correctly to be able to function.
• 24:47
  I mean, even just like with smelling or seeing, it's not just if your eyes work or if your nose works.
• 24:53
  It's the pathways from the brain to interpret what the nose is doing or what the eyes are doing.
• 24:57
  I don't know if you know this, but.
• 24:59
  Or I don't think I've shared it on the podcast, but with COVID there.
• 25:04
  There are a lot of post Covid problems that came up.
• 25:09
  I don't know what they call them post Covid.
• 25:11
  I don't know.
• 25:12
  I can never think of the words when I'm on a podcast.
• 25:14
  And I should, because that's what I'm here to do is to talk.
• 25:16
  Right.
• 25:17
  But there's, there's after effects that people have, and, and some are like somebody who lost their smell or lost their ability to taste while they had Covid and I say had, like in the 2020 year when things were
• 25:32
  really bad.
• 25:32
  I know people still get Covid, and I don't know that it's as severe as it once was.
• 25:37
  But then people say, well, you know, when I used to get a cold, sometimes I'd lose my ability to smell or things didn't taste the same.
• 25:42
  But it seemed like with COVID it was more severe, like, I can't taste anything or I can't smell anything.
• 25:48
  And I got Covid November 2020.
• 25:51
  Toward the end of that year, I went to go visit my daughter to help her move and.
• 25:56
  And we both ended up with COVID And I had to postpone my flights and everything.
• 25:59
  And we had Thanksgiving alone instead of with others.
• 26:02
  But she lost her sense of smell and taste completely.
• 26:08
  I lost my sense of smell and taste partially.
• 26:12
  And so a lot of things, like if I was drinking a soda, which I have a little energy drink thing here that's like carbonated, I could taste the carbonation, but I couldn't taste the flavor of the soda.
• 26:24
  But other things I could taste just fine.
• 26:25
  So when we had Thanksgiving dinner, I was enjoying Thanksgiving dinner.
• 26:29
  I could.
• 26:29
  Well.
• 26:30
  And I said we didn't have Thanksgiving dinner, but my friend's daughter drove about a half hour.
• 26:35
  She had a new baby and little kids and everything.
• 26:36
  She drove about a half hour and dropped Thanksgiving dinner off in boxes at the fence.
• 26:42
  And we talked.
• 26:43
  It was like in some movie, you know, I'm on the porch and she's on the other side of the fence and we're talking, and it's like melting snow outside.
• 26:49
  I see like some movie because it just didn't seem like anything normal.
• 26:53
  We were having so much fun talking.
• 26:54
  We couldn't get close.
• 26:55
  And.
• 26:56
  And I've met her before, and I love her and adore her.
• 26:58
  And I love her and adore her even more because she brought us Thanksgiving dinner.
• 27:01
  But.
• 27:02
  But I could taste the.
• 27:05
  The gravy and the potatoes and stuff, and my daughter ate it, but she couldn't taste the flavor and everything.
• 27:11
  And.
• 27:12
  But some things I couldn't taste or smell, and I couldn't really remember what those things were.
• 27:16
  But after we got better and we were back then, you know, it was 10 days.
• 27:20
  And then you can go out in public and go to restaurant and stuff.
• 27:24
  We go somewhere and I order this veggie sandwich.
• 27:28
  And I just had a ton of grilled onions on it.
• 27:32
  And it was super good.
• 27:33
  I think it was like a giant portobello mushroom cooked or something like that.
• 27:38
  And it was.
• 27:41
  And she could taste everything she was eating.
• 27:44
  And I thought I could taste everything I was eating.
• 27:46
  And then I realized that I wasn't tasting or smelling the onions at all.
• 27:51
  It was just the everything else.
• 27:54
  I could feel the texture of all those grilled onions, but I wasn't tasting them.
• 27:57
  I thought they just have no taste.
• 27:58
  This is so weird.
• 27:59
  But I could taste other things.
• 28:01
  And so that was the first thing I knew that was different.
• 28:05
  And then that next year it switched to where, like, I realized that all my.
• 28:11
  My senses of smell, most of them were off and.
• 28:16
  And I even took about hyperfocus.
• 28:20
  I have a ton of essential oils.
• 28:22
  Even though I'm not a big essential oil person, I'm super allergic to them.
• 28:26
  Like, I get hives and stuff, so I don't even know.
• 28:29
  I just got it.
• 28:29
  It was just one of my shopping things where I just started ordering them because I found this company that was like, it wasn't an mlm and you could get them with free shipping, and my friend and I would
• 28:38
  buy them whenever they go on sale.
• 28:39
  It's like, oh, let's get some more cedar.
• 28:41
  And, you know, I diffuse it and stuff.
• 28:44
  Anyway, I got out all my 50 plus however many essential oils I have and a notebook and opened them and smelled all of them and made columns of what smelled like.
• 28:55
  It actually smelled like what didn't smell right and what I couldn't smell at all, or what smelled really horrible.
• 29:01
  And there was a very, very small percentage that I actually smelled correctly.
• 29:05
  And then I noticed once when I drove by a skunk that, you know, that had been hit by car that I couldn't smell the skunk.
• 29:13
  And this is like two years later.
• 29:15
  I didn't know how long I hadn't realized I wasn't smelling skunks.
• 29:18
  So.
• 29:18
  So some things were just gone, but I could smell other things correctly.
• 29:23
  And some things I couldn't smell correctly at all.
• 29:25
  And it turned into parosmia, which I know I'm going way down a tangent, way off on a tangent here, but if you haven't heard of Bosnia P A R O S M Parosmia M I A Anosmia is the
• 29:44
  lack of smell or taste.
• 29:46
  I guess parosmia is distorted.
• 29:50
  And for a bunch of us, certain smells and the taste was exactly the same as the smell, were extremely putrid.
• 30:03
  And if you want, I'll make a different episode about that and talk about it if you're curious.
• 30:08
  Because I'd be happy, shocked about it for a long time.
• 30:10
  And, like, so bad.
• 30:12
  Where there were some days I couldn't eat anything without gagging and it would change without notice.
• 30:21
  Like, for a long time I could eat chicken and all of a sudden chicken turned on me where it tasted completely rotten.
• 30:28
  And then the smell of it and anything that you would eat, a lot of times those smells and tastes would get stuck.
• 30:34
  And then everything would taste and smell like it.
• 30:37
  And then your skin would smell like it.
• 30:39
  And every body smell you had.
• 30:41
  Like, if I'd do flat iron with my hair because of the heat on my hair, my hair would smell like it.
• 30:47
  My body smells when I go to the bathroom.
• 30:48
  Smelled like those awful onions.
• 30:50
  And, like, onions went from not being able to smell them to being so awful that I could.
• 30:56
  I would like onions and garlic.
• 30:57
  I was in a little shopping area once in Los Gatos, which is kind of between Santa Cruz and San Jose, and I could smell an Italian restaurant from across the street.
• 31:08
  Had to go a block away because it made me so sick just smelling it outside because of the garlic and the onions.
• 31:14
  So it was just a Strange smell distortion that also affected my taste buds.
• 31:20
  And what a lot of us learned in this Facebook group that we're all like, hey, you know, like, once we learned the name of it and came together, it was awful, awful, awful.
• 31:28
  But it wasn't that.
• 31:31
  The, like, a lot of people go to Ents at your nose and throat, and they're like, oh, you're.
• 31:34
  You know, like, your nose isn't.
• 31:36
  You're not able to smell.
• 31:37
  It was.
• 31:38
  It was the inability for the.
• 31:39
  Of the brain to interpret what was happening.
• 31:42
  So it was a brain disorder that is connected to the nose.
• 31:47
  And part of getting past it is anytime that you could actually smell a glimpse of it or taste a glimpse of it, you had to, like, develop this pathway with your brain and try to bring back memories of
• 31:58
  it.
• 31:59
  And like a smell training, it was bizarre.
• 32:02
  And I'm.
• 32:02
  And I still have some effects of it.
• 32:03
  There's some things that don't taste normal, don't taste right, but a lot of things are better.
• 32:08
  Like, peanut butter used to be horrible.
• 32:09
  That was one I couldn't smell for a long time.
• 32:11
  But one day I was eating cereal, and I know this sounds crazy, just eating Cheerios, and all of a sudden it started tasting like peanut butter.
• 32:17
  And I thought, what's going on?
• 32:18
  Like, am I even able to eat, smell, and taste better peanut butter again?
• 32:22
  Because it was so awful.
• 32:22
  So apple.
• 32:23
  So awful.
• 32:24
  So I ran and got a jar of peanut butter to, like, get that smell and have the memory and, like, form it.
• 32:29
  Sure enough, the peanut butter actually didn't smell like peanut butter.
• 32:32
  But somehow that memory and taste came back while I was eating the cereal.
• 32:38
  But that was the beginning of peanut butter coming back for me, if that can make any sense.
• 32:42
  So the brain is super, super complex, and illness is the name of, like, a disruption in a normal function, whether it's a mental function, a physical function.
• 32:57
  So something that normally, like, your body's able to perform in a certain way and function a certain way and just go through the process of what it normally does.
• 33:05
  Our bodies do these amazing things, and most of the time we don't even think about it.
• 33:09
  But when it doesn't, when you can't taste or smell things normally.
• 33:14
  And I know there are people who still deal with parosmia, like they're stuck there in a bad place.
• 33:20
  There are other people who have got out of it faster than I did.
• 33:24
  And I tried everything they said, you know, vitamin A drops, everything that anybody said, besides flying to Texas, there's some doctor there or some chiropractor there that does this procedure that cured a lot of people.
• 33:36
  And some people spent money and didn't do anything, but most of them, it helped him.
• 33:43
  Yeah, I'm doing a lot better than I was, but I still miss tasting foods like I used to.
• 33:50
  But it has helped me, not just helped me stay slimmer.
• 33:57
  I used to eat so much all the time.
• 34:00
  So that's, that's.
• 34:01
  I'm grateful for that, I guess.
• 34:05
  Gosh, with ADHD it can be an open book, huh?
• 34:07
  The oversharing is real.
• 34:10
  I've just, you know, done the up and down weight thing for a lot of my life.
• 34:14
  I know a lot of people have.
• 34:17
  Okay, yeah.
• 34:18
  So mental illness, mental health disorder.
• 34:21
  I guess this is where I got the 94%.
• 34:23
  Okay.
• 34:23
  77% of adults have no active diagnosable mental health disorder.
• 34:27
  In a.
• 34:28
  Within a typical 12 month period, 94% of adults do not have a serious mental illness.
• 34:35
  And I would say that's me.
• 34:37
  It's.
• 34:38
  ADHD is definitely something to work with, but I wouldn't call it a serious mental health disorder, you know, that limits daily life to where you can't go out at all or you can't interact with people like schizophrenia or
• 34:53
  something like that.
• 34:53
  I don't know that much about it, but there are some that people struggle with a lot more, have to be hospitalized a lot.
• 35:01
  So what can I do to end on a better note here?
• 35:06
  I don't know.
• 35:07
  It's good to be back.
• 35:08
  I'll be back some more.
• 35:10
  I kind of liked.
• 35:11
  I don't know if you watch on YouTube at all, but while my mom was here, I recorded in our piano room.
• 35:16
  We call it our piano room.
• 35:17
  It's really the dining room.
• 35:18
  You know, the old school dining room that's off of the kitchen where you're supposed to have a big table and a hutch and stuff.
• 35:23
  We put a piano in there and a couch instead and some guitars on the wall.
• 35:26
  So I finally put that bouzouki, it was a Greek guitar.
• 35:29
  And I kept kind of like being in the corner of the couch and kind of falling in between the podcast.
• 35:35
  I finally put another hook up on the wall.
• 35:37
  Yay.
• 35:37
  So it's up there and it's not gonna get ruined.
• 35:40
  But it's pretty.
• 35:41
  It's pretty, pretty, pretty.
• 35:42
  But it was kind of fun to record in there because I think it was easy for me to just go in there and there weren't a lot of choices.
• 35:49
  There was just the wall and the pictures.
• 35:51
  Cause I come in here and I can so easily get distracted and look at what's behind me and think, should I move that?
• 35:58
  Should I?
• 35:58
  Da da, da.
• 36:00
  All that.
• 36:01
  But I'm dressed in my orange and black today.
• 36:03
  It's almost Halloween.
• 36:04
  I wore my orange shirt for the class this morning and I'm going to go to boo at the zoo with my grandchildren.
• 36:13
  So I'm feeling well enough to do that.
• 36:15
  I hope I'm well enough to be here.
• 36:19
  Ash.
• 36:20
  This isn't the longest one, but I guess that'll be fine because like I said, did I say that when I began?
• 36:24
  Because I actually redid a few of them.
• 36:26
  So I started and then I just get so messed up.
• 36:29
  But I just wanted to get myself going and thought even if it's not like a full episode where I deep dive into something, it is something that I was curious about and figuring out about ADHD in comparison with
• 36:46
  other things.
• 36:47
  And then also even just recognizing that adhd, because so many adults are discovering in adulthood they think that the, you know, the percentage will change.
• 37:03
  But also the percentage getting diagnosed every year is really high for adults.
• 37:11
  There will eventually become a corrected percentage of how many adults have adhd because there are so many adults being diagnosed right now and there have been for the past, I don't know how many years, but experts are guessing
• 37:25
  between 8 and 10%.
• 37:26
  I was saying 10% and I just wonder if it's highly hereditary and people keep having children.
• 37:33
  Like, does the percentage say similar, you know, like as.
• 37:36
  I don't know.
• 37:37
  But boys are diagnosed with adhd they say are being diagnosed usually three times the rate of girls because their symptoms are more evident.
• 37:47
  Girls can hide them a little better and maybe it doesn't impact their school as much.
• 37:52
  That's kind of my guess too, is that maybe girls are able to function in a school setting more, more easily or kind of hide their inability to sit still or whatever they find.
• 38:03
  They, maybe they're better at finding coping mechanisms than, than boys are.
• 38:08
  And I know a lot of people say there's masking but, but also like if you're pretty intelligent child, you may come up with a way to take care of it.
• 38:18
  Like for me, like as, as a child, like doodling, drawing, French braiding hair, you know, all those things that you can do to keep yourself in your chair and you're not getting in trouble while you're still learning.
• 38:29
  Whereas, you know, like one of my children anyway didn't, didn't come up with any of those, you know, just got out of his chair or just roughed it along, but more than half of women with ADHD are not
• 38:42
  diagnosed till adulthood.
• 38:44
  I don't know.
• 38:45
  I mean, I guess that makes sense if the adults, like, if the men, you know, more boys.
• 38:51
  At least when I was growing up there were no, there was nobody diagnosed with adhd.
• 38:55
  But one boy that we found out later did and his dad knew because he was a doctor.
• 39:00
  But that was, that was it.
• 39:02
  No children.
• 39:02
  No children, no children.
• 39:03
  And then my kids, kids, I mean my kids, friends, we heard of it, but only, only with boys, you know, and so there's going to be these kids who grow up and then they find out and maybe a
• 39:14
  lot of people don't find out.
• 39:15
  They just, you know, they just fall into the cracks or they, they thrive where they can and you know, but anyway, so, yeah, but that, because the hyperactive boy is what stands out.
• 39:31
  That, that is why a lot of girls are missed.
• 39:36
  Also, it says up to 75%.
• 39:39
  I know, I already started saying my goodbye to Life.
• 39:42
  Up to 75% of women with ADHD are initially misdiagnosed with something else because having undiagnosed executive dysfunction or even emotional dysregulation, it can cause anxiety, it can cause depression, or the anxiety is diagnosed instead of the adhd when
• 40:06
  it's a symptom of the adhd.
• 40:07
  Does that make sense?
• 40:08
  You know, the, the ADHD symptoms are causing the anxiety, but the ADHD is the root cause.
• 40:16
  And I, that's what I've heard of the most in the friends that I have met or talked to or women I've talked to is there are so many who say I was diagnosed with anxiety, I was treated for
• 40:29
  anxiety.
• 40:30
  And then later when I learn more about adhd, it becomes, it becomes a thing where the actual, where the woman is saying, hey, I've learned more now I'm going to go back, look into this some more or maybe
• 40:44
  a therapist helps them figure that out.
• 40:47
  But it's, it seems self driven in a lot of ways.
• 40:50
  You know, with the information coming out more and more and more.
• 40:59
  40% of men were not diagnosed until adults.
• 41:02
  61% of women diagnosed as adults.
• 41:06
  I'm actually surprised that, that 40% of women were adult diagnosed as children.
• 41:15
  But you know, maybe some, some places besides where I lived were better at that.
• 41:20
  So man, I'm, I'm curious about why 40% of men are missed as children.
• 41:30
  I mean, I shouldn't be curious about that happened in my family.
• 41:33
  It's like the mom didn't know anything, the doctors didn't see it.
• 41:37
  You know, and if you're.
• 41:39
  You just think of it as a behavioral problem or an inattentive problem.
• 41:44
  You know, they daydream, they're not interested in school.
• 41:48
  Who knows?
• 41:49
  But it says the percentage of adults diagnosed later in life is expected to decrease dramatically over the next few decades.
• 42:00
  Because ADHD is like 75, 80% genetic.
• 42:06
  I mean, that I don't know.
• 42:08
  Some people say 45, 40 to 50%.
• 42:11
  40 to 50%.
• 42:12
  That your child will have ADHD if you have ADHD.
• 42:15
  And that can change.
• 42:16
  Why do I have an alarm going off?
• 42:18
  Is it really that late?
• 42:19
  It's time to get ready to go to the zoo.
• 42:21
  This is why I said alarms, because the time blindness is real.
• 42:26
  I mean, here I was, looking at the clock earlier and ready to wrap it up, but then I got a new, new wave of energy.
• 42:34
  So, anyway, I'll.
• 42:35
  I'll let you go.
• 42:36
  It's good to see you.
• 42:37
  It's like a real friendship, right?
• 42:39
  Where we say hi, and then it's like, I gotta go.
• 42:41
  Then we get a little more time and then we really have to go.
• 42:44
  But I'm glad I could be here.
• 42:46
  And I don't want to be sick anymore.
• 42:50
  One of these days I'll make extra episodes and have them ready if I get sick or something.
• 42:54
  But the problem is, is I never want to.
• 42:58
  I never want to wait.
• 42:59
  When I make extra episodes, I think I'll just make, you know, put out two or three.
• 43:02
  This week seems more fun, and maybe that's part of my impulse problem.
• 43:07
  But it's good to be with you.
• 43:09
  And I'll be back.
• 43:10
  Let me know if you have any topics you want me to look into.
• 43:13
  I can share with you.
• 43:14
  And I'll be back again.
• 43:16
  Bye.
• 43:18
  Help other women find the show Rate Review Share with someone you know Help other women find my show Rate Review Share with someone you know Hurry before you forget.
• 43:43
  Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow Without a call Time for a.
• 44:10
  Rewind I run out of time to sing Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short the silence of sound has yet been found but not by me.
• 44:33
  Sam.