#1 Harvard Doctor: THIS food turns ADHD into a SUPERPOWER in 3 hours! - Dr Georgia Ede

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28:51So here's a hot take. There's no such thing as a brain superfood. Full stop. The terms, there's a whole chapter about this in my book, about the superfoods and the antioxidant myth. And this is a very, very important thing for people to take away because we are told all the time that there are certain foods that to fight the inflammation and oxidative stress that is causing our bodies and brains so much grief, we're always told you have to fight inflammation with these certain foods. You have to fight oxidative stress with these antioxidant-rich foods, these colorful, usually plant superfoods.

29:36But that's not the way it works. There is no evidence that that strategy works. And there is no food you can add to your diet that is going to help you fight inflammation and oxidative stress. it's a wonderful it's a very appealing concept because who you know adding things to the diet is very easy and you can do it quickly and easily it feels empowering it feels positive I'm going to do this thing for myself but but really the power the real power in fighting inflammation and oxidative stress is in subtraction it's in subtracting the foods that are causing the inflammation and oxidative stress in the first place.

30:25That's where you have real power. And so, because as we were talking about before, the refined carbohydrates, for example, these are powerful promoters of inflammation and oxidative stress. Alcohol is a powerful promoter of oxidative stress. Smoking is a powerful promoter of oxidative stress. So these are just a few examples of lifestyle changes that people can make, really important lifestyle changes people can make that can dramatically reduce the amount of inflammation, oxidative stress affecting all of their cells, not just in the brain. And this is extremely important because it's not just about ADHD.

31:07It's about all mental health conditions and all physical health conditions, these are really the main drivers of deterioration of the body and mind. And so if you can remove, kind of stop fueling that fire, it feels so much better. And protect yourself against so many of the chronic diseases that we all think are part of just the normal aging process, but which are not. I mean, we really can expect, we should expect so much more of our brains and our bodies. And if you feed your brain right, you can expect more from it.

31:48Dr Georgia Ede:Are there any more day-to-day foods that might be flying under the radar that people might be eating quite often and not knowing that they're actually building up their stress? Yes. So, so, um, there are, um, many people are under the impression because they've been given this impression by prestigious, influential, um, academic and other nutrition, uh, uh, information sources that whole grains are good for you. And, uh, whole grains are extremely poor in nutrients, extremely high in anti-nutrients. So they don't, it's not that they just don't give you almost anything that you need. They also actively interfere with your ability to obtain nutrients, not only from the grains themselves, but from other foods you eat along with the grains.

32:51And legumes are a close second. We are told that we should be basing our diets on these foods, whole grains and legumes, things like bees and peas and lentils, which are very low in nutrients, very high in anti-nutrients, really rich in natural plant defensive toxins, which can be really irritating to the gut lining and many other systems in the body. And they're mostly starch. And therefore, for the majority of us who now have something called insulin resistance, which is a very common metabolic disorder, which can lead to glucose levels running too high between meals or something called pre-diabetes and then eventually even type 2 diabetes in many cases, these metabolic problems that are rooted and insulin resistance.

33:44Insulin resistance is caused by high insulin levels. And if you're eating a diet that's too high in carbohydrate for your personal metabolism, which most of us are now doing, your insulin levels will run too high too often and you will develop insulin resistance. Grains and legumes are mostly starch and for very little nutritional value. And so So these are the whole foods that I recommend everybody avoids if they have that luxury. There are some people who should not avoid these foods. People who can't afford other foods should not avoid these foods. But also people who choose vegan diets should not avoid legumes because it will be very difficult to obtain the essential amino acids, the proteins that you need if you're not including some of these foods in the diet.

34:34But for everyone else, avoiding these foods that we are told to base our diets on is, I think, a very, very important principle.

34:44Dr Georgia Ede:What about fad diets? Because I feel like people with ADHD can be quite impulsive. We can get very excited about things in the short term. And I feel like that can make us quite vulnerable to marketing towards fad diets that claim to be for improving focus, mood, executive function. If I'm scrolling Instagram, I will often see an advert for a new fad diet. But I always wonder, and I'm curious to ask you, are there any common fad diets that claim to boost brain health but actually might be harmful? Well, yes and no. So most of the fad diets that you'll see come across your feed will have some real benefits to them because just about any change you make to the standard Western diet is going to be an improvement.

35:41And so there are benefits to whole foods plant-based diets. There are benefits to the Mediterranean diet. There are benefits to lower fat diets. There are benefits to low-carbohydrate diets. There are benefits to something called the DASH diet, which is kind of a low-sodium, low-fat diet. All of these special diets have benefits over the typical junky diet that most of us are eating. So the problem is most of them just don't do enough. They don't make the changes. They don't pull the most powerful levers you have available to you. And so this is where really the metabolic piece comes into play.

36:29So all of those diets that we just kind of talked about, these diets, the way they're constructed in research trials, is they're almost always much healthier diets, whether they're lower in fat or higher in fat or lower in cholesterol or plant-based, whatever they might be. They're almost always higher quality diets, meaning they're more whole foods patterns, less refined foods, less factory foods, less junk food. And that's very good. You want that. But most of these diets pay little to no attention to metabolic health. They pay little to no attention to glucose and insulin regulation. And I know I sound like a broken record, but this is really a very, very importantly critical, fundamental piece of the puzzle that most people are not taking advantage of.

37:27and again within days to weeks if you can get control over those glucose and insulin levels you could potentially experience profound life changing benefits to your mental health that other dietary changes simply aren't capable of so you know a lot of people a lot of people understand that it kind of makes intuitive sense right well of course what we eat matters to the brain. I mean, we never used to actually think about it much, but people are thinking about that now. People do talk about eating for brain health. But most of the recommendations you hear, like eating more superfoods or eating less junk food, eating more superfoods, eating more colorful, more diverse diet, lots of fruits and rainbows, fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, more legumes, less red meat, less saturated fat.

38:22These are the things you hear all the time. More fiber. You hear these things all the time. And some of those have some merit, others don't. It could be a longer conversation. But none of those principles is paying any attention to glucose and insulin levels and how the brain generates energy. and whether or not these dietary patterns are truly reducing inflammation, not safe stress in the brain. So that's where the power is. So all these fad diets, yes, they do have merits, but you're leaving an awful lot on the table if you don't explore diets that do a better job of getting your glucose and insulin levels in control.

39:09So these are lower carbohydrate diets. These are paleo diets that exclude. So there are three dietary patterns I lay out for people in the book to explore. One is a kind of a moderate carbohydrate paleo diet. It's got about 90 grams of carbohydrate per day, which is at least three times less than most people are eating now. So it gets those glucose levels down into a healthier range without going into the ketogenic range, which people can definitely benefit from in many cases. But just starting by practicing that whole foods pattern, that allows you to have a serving fruit and starchy vegetable with each meal.

39:50So you don't have to remove all the carbohydrate or almost all the carbohydrate from your diet. But you're eating a much more nutritious, much healthier and safer diet than most people are eating right now. That's well worth exploring. and then the next level is exploring a ketogenic version of that same dietary pattern by reducing the total amount of carbohydrate in the diet down so that you're not just getting the glucose levels under control, you're also getting the insulin levels under control, which is the next level of intervention and that's a very powerful metabolic intervention. So when you do that, when you get glucose levels down low enough and insulin levels down low enough, now you've switched on fat burning.

40:39Most people want to burn more fat, and this is the way to do it. You burn fat, but the great thing is even if you're not trying to lose weight, because we think of ketogenic diets as weight loss diets, they can actually be constructed for weight loss, weight gain, or weight maintenance, depending on how you build them. But if they were only weight loss diets, those of us who follow ketogenic diets for a long period of time would have disappeared a long time ago. We just would have kept losing weight until there's nothing left of us. So ketogenic diets lower glucose and insulin levels to the fat burning point.

41:14And when fat is burning vigorously enough, the liver chops the fat into small fragments, ready to burn fragments called ketones that circulate in the blood. And these ketones can cross the blood-brain barrier and help energize the brain. And they can bridge any energy gaps there might be from damage to the glucose processing system in the brain, which the more we look for evidence of this in various mental health disorders, the more evidence we find. The brain is having trouble burning glucose for energy. And so ketogenic diets have this unique ability to energize the brain differently and fight inflammation and fight oxidative stress and improve brain healing, allow the brain to heal.

42:10So it's a completely different state of mind that I really want more people to experience for themselves to see what might be possible for them.

42:19Dr Georgia Ede:So in your opinion, what do you think the best diet is for someone with ADHD? Someone who perhaps suffers from brain fog, poor concentration, time management, all of those executive functioning challenges that we associate with ADHD. What diet would you point someone like that towards? It's going to be a frustrating answer, but it depends. It has to be personalized. For some people, dietary changes for ADHD are about food sensitivities. In fact, some of the best studies that have been conducted so far in the field were done several decades ago. There were numerous studies, especially here in Europe, of children with moderate to severe ADHD.

43:02And the thinking behind these experiments were, well, maybe food sensitivities are causing some ADHD symptoms. So they placed these children on very similar types of diets. These were called few foods diets or oligoantigenic diets. These were diets that were low in common food culprits or eliminated a lot of the common food culprits, things like wheat and dairy and soy and chocolate and peanuts and things that researchers believed might cause problems for sensitive kids. So they stripped the diet down to just a handful of foods. These were things like lamb and chicken and, you know, vegetables and fruits and strangely margarine and apple juice.

43:54They were trying to replace the butter because they took out the dairy. And so these were mostly, they were very simple, mostly whole foods diets. and the response rate in these kids to these diets, no matter which study you look at, which study you look at, which research group you're looking at, 62 to 82 % of the kids got better. Some of them full remission within weeks of changing their diets in this way. These were not low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets. These were mostly whole foods diets where most of the potentially problematic foods have been removed. For some people, that's all it's going to take.

44:36And so, especially if you're younger and you don't have a lot of metabolic damage already, which as we get older, if we keep eating this way, we accumulate a lot of metabolic damage. But kids, kids are pretty resilient. Evolutionarily, we needed to be novelty-seeking in order to find new food sources and not be afraid to try new things. And people with ADHD have that in spades, right? We needed people with ADHD traits in the tribe, you know, go find something new for us to eat, you know, go explore. And then we needed, you know, people who were, you know, kind of plod along routine people to keep things running at home or in the cave or wherever it's going.

45:18You know, we need all kinds of brains. So, but that novelty seeking thing, the food industry has figured that out. They know that we want to see a new flavor, a new texture, a new crunch, a new color, a new package. And we just can't, like, we get cured. Like, what's that? I haven't tried that one yet. And then the ingredients blow past our hormonal stop sign that we can't stop eating this stuff. They don't satisfy us. So we keep buying them. But they don't have any nutrients and then they just have the intense flavor and the novelty and the refined carbohydrates that jack up our glucose, that light up our dopamine reward system and say more of that.

46:06Dr Georgia Ede:With the ADHD community, a community that might have lower impulse control and have a propensity to maybe gravitate towards these pleasurable foods, is there a provable link between ADHD and diabetes? Yes. So in adults, adults with ADHD are twice as likely, more than twice as likely, to have type 2 diabetes, severe metabolic dysfunction, essentially end-stage insulin resistance. Insulin resistance to the point that your insulin level, no matter how high your insulin level goes, it can no longer keep your glucose levels in control. What about supplements? Because again, going to that impulsivity piece, I feel like people with ADHD are vulnerable to going on that latest health kick.

46:54Dr Georgia Ede:I have a cupboard in my fridge. My partner laughs at me. It's full of supplements that I've bought impulsively thinking I'm going to be the healthiest person, but then I've got bored and abandoned them. Quite a common... But are there any specific supplements that you would say avoid? They're a scam. Most supplements are not worth the money. And there are some supplements that can be useful that may help to a certain extent. They're not going to get to the root of the problem, but they could potentially be helpful. But most supplements are not worth the money, especially supplements that claim to have antioxidant or anti-inflammatory properties.

47:40um so uh especially what i i call uh planty oxidants uh antioxidants that are extracted from plant foods and it's it's these these molecules do fight oxidative stress in plants so they work very well in plants they don't work very well in the human body it's extremely difficult for us to absorb these molecules because they're not essential our body doesn't need them So the body wisely doesn't waste any energy trying to absorb them. So these molecules often have to be altered in order to bypass those safeguards and be absorbed to a small extent into the bloodstream. But then even once they are absorbed, most of that molecule is rapidly detoxified and eliminated from the body.

48:37It's as fast as humanly possible because we don't need them. We have our own built-in antioxidant defense system that works beautifully if we don't overwhelm it. So the brain makes its own antioxidants. there's a pathway in brain cells called the pentose phosphate pathway that builds antioxidant molecules and so um um whenever we eat the process of eating oxidative stress is unavoidable oxidative stress happens so we cannot extract energy from food without creating some oxidative stress in the process. It's kind of like collateral damage.

49:21But the body knows this. Evolution figured this out. Oh, well, if we need to create oxidative stress, if we can only get energy out of food by creating oxidative stress, we better be prepared for that oxidative stress because oxidative stress can be dangerous. So we have our own built-in antioxidant defense small system to mop up those antioxidants that we expect to see. But again, evolution was no match for our modern food environment. We're flooding, we're bombarding our system with so much glucose and so much vegetable, refined fats as well, just as problematic as refined carbohydrates in a lot of ways.

50:03So many oxygen-free radicals being created that they're just spilling over and terrorizing the village. They're like little bulls in a china shop and they're randomly bumping into and damaging everything they encounter. That's oxidative stress. And it caused a lot of damage. And so if you have a normal amount of oxidative stress, oxidative stress comes from the foods we eat, it comes from sunlight exposure. There are natural sources of oxidative stress that we have to be able to protect ourselves against. But if you overwhelm those systems with more oxygen-free radicals than we can handle, then you've got excessive oxidative stress.

50:47And there's no plant antioxidant in the world that's going to be any match for that tsunami of oxygen-free radicals. You have to stop the problem at the source. And so there are a few supplements which may be useful in helping reduce oxidative stress. One is N-acetylcysteine, and the other that comes to mind is alpha-lipoic acid. And the reason why I mention those is because those can cross the blood-brain barrier. It's very, very important that whatever supplement you take be able to cross the blood-brain barrier if you're trying to use it to support better brain health. But by and large, sprinkling superfoods and supplements on top of a fundamentally unhealthy diet is not the way to better brain health.

51:38You really do have to fundamentally restructure your diet from the ground up in ways that make biological sense in order to get the benefits that we're talking about. And there are tremendous benefits to be had for many people by following these food rules that most people are unaware of. So it's supplements. If you have a serious nutrient deficiency like B12 deficiency, if you choose not to or can't access animal foods, nutritious animal foods, which is where B12 comes from, you're going to need to take a B12 supplement. That's one example of a supplement that can be very, very useful in especially people who are following plant-based diets, which is a growing number of people.

52:27And so certain nutrient supplements, depending on your dietary preferences and also depending on your health, because some people, especially as we get older, may not absorb all nutrients as well as we used to. And so if there's gut damage, gut inflammation or aging, certain medications, certain health conditions can make supplements really important, essential nutrient supplements. But I'm very much a food-first psychiatrist, and we are designed, we are evolved to extract our nutrients from food, not from concentrated extracts and supplements. When you take a supplement, it is isolated it's not in its natural matrix with the other things the body expects to see it with and it can throw systems out of balance you can have you can have too much of a good thing so it's it's really important to choose supplements wisely and only when necessary and to to try them one at a time and really assess how it makes you feel so many i have people who have come to me taking two to three pages of supplements.

53:47This is not at all uncommon anymore. And a lot of people think, well, you know, the more the merrier. It's kind of like an insurance policy. Like, why not shore everything up? But the problem is these are very real chemicals with very real effects on the human body. And some of them aren't always positive. And so it's really important, just as with dietary changes to, if you're going to use supplements, try them one at a time, really take the time to figure out, okay, how is this affecting me? Is it making a difference? Is it worth my money? Is it making me feel worse? And because you can see that sometimes, some people do feel worse when they take supplements.

54:31And so just, you know, I would just say, I would say exercise caution and explore, keep an open mind, curiosity mindset, just as with dietary changes. All of this is personalized. The supplement that helps you might not help me or might make you feel worse. and so I think that's a really important thing to understand about supplements is that they can have benefits in some cases but mostly they are a way for supplement manufacturers to make money.

55:13Dr Georgia Ede:What about creatine because there's a lot of content on social media at the moment showcasing the benefits that link creatine to improved ADHD traits, mental clarity. are there any actual credible studies that show creatine improves mental clarity so i've started looking into this because it has been such a hot topic i haven't finished researching it so i don't want to i i don't have enough information to give you the the kind of answer i'd like to give you about that specific question but what i can tell you is yes it does look like there's some signal there it does look like creatine can be useful um but what I was curious to know, this is what I always want to know, okay, well, what is this supplement, what problem is this supplement trying to solve?

56:00What's the root cause of the problem that this supplement is trying to solve? This supplement helps the body, helps cells regenerate ATP. ATP is the currency of energy in the body. So when we are extracting energy from food, we store it in little packets called ATP, these ready-to-use instant-use packets of energy. We break them open quickly. Tons and tons of them are being used constantly by every cell in the body. So they're ready-to-use packets of energy. The reason why creatine may be helpful for people with ADHD is that people with ADHD may be experiencing brain energy deficits. ATP is energy.

56:52If you don't have enough ATP, you don't have enough energy. The brain will start to run low on power. And that is the problem that we see across a wide variety of mental health conditions. We see this issue called, the fancy word for it is, cerebral glucose hypometabolism, which is just a fancy way of saying sluggish brain glucose processing. We are having trouble turning glucose into energy, into ATP. What's the solution? The root cause solution? Okay, we need to be able to, we need an alternative fuel source, a supplemental fuel source that the brain can easily turn into ATP. No supplementation required.

57:40And that is ketones. we can generate our own ketones our own internal ketone supplement if you will energy supplement so the again you get the glucose and insulin levels down enough get into ketosis the the body starts to turn some of that fat into ketones ketones cross the blood-brain barrier supplement bridge any brain energy gaps bring those cells that may have been struggling sputtering along with not quite enough energy, not quite enough ATP, even though you're giving them plenty of glucose, they're really not equipped anymore to utilize it to full capacity. You supplement those cells with ketones and even people with very severe metabolic damage, even people with type 2 diabetes, which is end-stage insulin resistance, even people with Alzheimer's disease, which is now called type 3 diabetes, because insulin resistance is a key causal factor in most cases of Alzheimer's disease, ketones will cross the blood-brain barrier easily, and cells can use them for energy.

58:49Even if the brain has lost a lot of its ability to use glucose for energy, it will not have lost its ability to use ketones for energy. so this is um this is the um internal supplement that can replenish your brain's atp supply no

59:11Dr Georgia Ede:no creatine required truly fascinating georgia thank you so much and speaking of the keto diet again i think that probably is a nice transition into what is slowly turning into my favorite part to the show, which is your ADHD item reveal, which has been patiently waiting underneath that cloth. I'm on the edge of my seat. I know. Every week I ask my guest to bring in an item that represents ADHD, and I'm going to reveal yours now. So I have a little bit, might need to explain what that is. I'll pass it to you, Georgia. Please. This is a Keto-Mojo ketone meter. So explain what that does. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen.

59:54So this is the actual ketone meter, which will display your blood ketone level here. On the top, it has a little insert for this ketone strip to measure ketones and get yourself into ketones. figure out how to eat and how to live, what lifestyle changes you need to make to get into ketosis and generate good consistent ketone levels can take a few weeks to maybe even two to three months to really get the hang of it. But once you have figured out how to do that, then you don't need to test as often. You might just spot check. But in the beginning, it's very, very useful to be able to measure. And so I use this in my clinical work all the time.

1:00:37I, this is my ketone meter, so I use it every day. I measure my ketones every day. And it's a really wonderful way to do a metabolic reality check for myself every morning, see where I'm at. And it helps me understand how to plan the rest of my day. So my ketones are lower than I want them to be. Then I understand, okay, I need to eat more carefully today, eat less, exercise more.

1:01:03And then if my ketones are where I want them to be, then I know it's going to be a good day. My productivity is going to be better. My energy is going to be in my mood is going to be better. My appetite is going to be under much better control. And so this is really the most powerful tool I have available to me for my own personal mental and physical health and for that of my patients as well. So this doesn't represent ADHD like your amazing disco ball, which I'm very also. This represents hope for ADHD. And the research that I'm getting involved in is at Oxford University and other places as well, potentially applying for some grants.

1:01:51We're going to be exploring the effect of ketogenic diets in adults with ADHD. The Oxford study in particular is studying the effect of ketogenic diet in adults with ADHD and depression who have both ADHD and depression. And so this is very exciting, kind of cutting-edge research. There's a lot of potential here. And the beautiful thing about the ketogenic diet is that it doesn't have to be an either-or intervention. You can use the ketogenic diet in combination with other lifestyle strategies, exercise, dietary changes, like whole foods diets, etc., even medication. For those who use medication, a lot of my folks who are on a ketogenic diet find that they either need less or sometimes even no medication to manage their ADHD symptoms when they're in ketosis.

1:02:58And so I even have some patients who only take their stimulant medication when they're not in ketosis. So the beautiful thing about the way the ketogenic diet works for people with ADHD and my clinical work is that stimulants, they can be very helpful for a lot of people, but there can be downsides. Sometimes you can't access them. Sometimes you can't afford them. And sometimes they give you side effects, like they might make you jittery or anxious or irritable or tense. They can wear off and they can cause a crash. They can cause a lot of anxiety. They can kill your appetite. And in kids, it can even lead to some problems eating enough food.

1:03:49So like any medication, a lot of side effects. So some people get benefits, but they also get jitters and that sort of thing. So it's not what you get with a ketogenic diet is calm, focused energy. Calm, focused energy. And you can't get that with a medication. So it's got a lot of potential. And I think one of the interesting things about being a psychiatrist, I'm a general adult psychiatrist. And I've been practicing for more than 25 years, and I've practiced in ADHD specialty clinics. I've practiced in college mental health for many years. College mental health was my specialty. I saw lots and lots of students come through who either really did have ADHD or claimed they did and were looking for medication.

1:04:38I have a lot of experience with ADHD. but being a general adult psychiatrist, what I can also tell you, which will be no surprise to you, is that most people, most mental health conditions come with some attention problem. Depression makes it harder to concentrate and pay attention to get things done. Anxiety, same story. Substance abuse, same story. Schizophrenia, same story. Bipolar disorder, same story, cognitive decline. All of these conditions impair our ability. Attention requires the whole brain to be functioning well. Concentrating, getting executive function is a higher order human skill.

1:05:23And it requires that everything be working properly. And so it doesn't take much to disrupt that attention network. And this is why I can tell you that, yes, some of my patients have ADHD, but most of my patients have attention dysregulation. And the ketogenic diet, the number one most predictable experience that people who try a ketogenic diet have, that the phrase that you hear most often is mental clarity. Often within just a few days, people feel like their brain is back online. Because really what the ketogenic diet does is it fundamentally changes the brain's operating system. And it's a shift that is very noticeable in most people and is for many people a state of mind they haven't experienced before and didn't know that they could access.

1:06:20So it's not an intervention that you should go home and start today without learning more about it because it is a powerful metabolic intervention. If you're taking medication, if you have a history of any serious mental health symptoms, if you're under care for any kind of medical condition, especially if you take medicines for diabetes or high blood pressure, heart disease, you can't just start a ketogenic diet without medical supervision because it is so good at lowering glucose levels and in many cases even lowering blood pressure that it can be dangerous if the medications aren't adjusted carefully.

1:07:00And there is a transition phase in the very beginning, and it's called keto adaptation, as the brain is shifting gears from mostly glucose-based energy to mostly fat-based energy, which is a good change to happen, it can be uncomfortable as the body is shifting gears, and actually people can feel worse before they feel better. So there's a lot more to learn about it, which I've put in the book, to help people understand the risks and benefits. So don't impulsively try this at home before you learn more. If you're as excited about it as I am, please do your homework first. But it's really one of these tools.

1:07:44Like I said, my item doesn't represent ADHD. It represents hope for ADHD, like untapped potential. and like that's the thing about one of the many many things about adhd is there's so much so many people with adhd are not able to reach their full potential and they don't even know what's standing in the way and i am not saying that this that this intervention is going to cure everybody's adhd but what i am saying is you don't know what's possible for yourself until you try and um and i really want to give people that hope

1:08:22Dr Georgia Ede:Do you think it's a bit of an injustice that many psychiatrists, many doctors, when they've diagnosed someone with ADHD, the first course of treatment that they will recommend is ADHD medication? Do you think they should first suggest going on a keto diet before considering medication? Well, yes and no. So we have no clinical trials yet for ketogenic diets and ADHD. So I can understand why this idea is not current standard of care in mental health practice. What I do wish is that all mental, that my dream, my tiny little dream for the world, I really strongly believe that every person with a mental health condition, whether it's ADHD or anything else, every person with a mental health condition deserves a metabolic evaluation.

1:09:29It's very simple to do. People can even do it at home. I can tell you how to do it right now. Everybody deserves to know where they stand on the insulin resistance spectrum. because if there's insulin resistance in the body, which is what you'd be measuring for, there's very likely also insulin resistance in the brain, which means that the brain is not fully energized and therefore there's tremendous potential in these simple dietary changes to unlock that capacity. So I do wish that every mental health provider had a basic understanding of the powerful relationship between brain metabolism and mental health.

1:10:13I developed a continuing education course for clinicians of all backgrounds in ketogenic diets for mental health more than five years ago, the first one, because I wanted clinicians around the world to be able to understand this relationship, what the science tells us, how to evaluate people and what kinds of conversations you can have that can inspire change and hope and to see what's possible for people. So it's very simple and mental health care providers are, we're trained to talk about feelings, not data, but there are a few key pieces of really easily accessible data that can give you a wealth of information about what's going on inside your own cells.

1:11:07And you can change those numbers within days to weeks. You can bring your glucose and insulin levels down within days to weeks and really, again, sort of fundamentally change your brain's operating system. So this is why I believe so strongly in this exciting field of metabolic psychiatry and why I speak about it and write about it and talk about it and why I'm so glad you invited me on because I think people with ADHD may not have heard of this intervention because we don't have the studies yet. but you don't need to wait for the studies. You really don't need to wait for the studies to be able to access the benefits.

1:11:50This is a very low risk, very high potential benefit intervention. We have more than a hundred years of experience with ketogenic diets and brain health. These are safe, low risk, very high potential benefit interventions that can help people within days to weeks.

1:12:07Dr Georgia Ede:Fascinating, Georgia. And we'll have to have you back too after the Oxford study results have come in as well. I would love to come back and talk about that. I want to move on, finally, to the ADHD agony aunt section, which is this washing machine over my right shoulder. When familiar viewers and listeners of the show will know that it's the washing machine of woes, because my item is a washing machine, because it represents memory loss, because I always leave my clothes in the machine after the cycle's finished. And I do ask all my guests, do you leave your clothes in the machine after the cycle's finished?

1:12:47I am fortunate enough and embarrassed to say that I don't do my own laundry. My partner does my laundry. And the reason for that is I have some degree of ADHD myself. It runs in my family. And I had a devil of a time doing my laundry and keeping my clothes clean. I hate doing laundry. I procrastinate about doing it. I stumbled across an old diary from when I was in middle school a while back. And there's one page that says, I have to wake up an hour early tomorrow morning to look for my basketball uniform. So I can't be trusted with laundry.

1:13:35Dr Georgia Ede:Very relatable. You've got your partner to help you. I've got the Timo app, which helps me remember the laundry. But yeah, often still, it is the smell of damp coming from the laundry room that reminds me. This week, Georgia, somebody has written in to the washing machine of woes and asked, I have ADHD and I've really struggled with binge eating my whole life. I'm a bit of a yo-yo dieter. Does this stem from ADHD and how can I control my yo-yoing diet? Did the person sign it? No, anonymous. Oh, okay. So anonymous, shy person. I love your question because this is exactly what I'm going to be talking about at the Food Addiction Conference two days from now in London, is this powerful connection between loss of appetite control and food choices.

1:14:35So binge eating is extremely common, becoming more and more common all the time. And so what's driving binge eating isn't necessarily a lack of control. I mean, it is a lack of control, but why? So we want to go deeper. Like I'm a psychiatrist, let's go deeper, right? Right. So, okay. So you eat too much sometimes. Sometimes you feel completely out of control of your eating and you've tried multiple times to try to get this under control. Now, if this shy person were sitting here, I'd want to ask a lot of questions. So what have you tried in the past to try to get this binge eating under control?

1:15:12And a lot of people say, well, you know, I've tried, you know, I've tried counting calories. I've tried portion control. I've tried avoiding certain foods. but it always seems to come back, especially if I'm under stress. So there are several things that trigger that vicious cycle of overeating. And remember we were talking before about there are two kinds of, evolutionarily there are two kinds of hunger that are built in, hardwired. So one is the hormetic hunger, which is we have to eat for nutrients and energy. And the other is hedonic hunger, is we like to eat things that are pleasurable and we want to seek out more and more of those things.

1:16:01There's a third type too we're going to talk about in a second, which is emotional hunger, which is driven by stress. So for people with binge eating, they're much more likely to have food addiction. There's a tremendous overlap between these two diagnostic categories. And this has been shown in a number of research studies. So people with binge eating score much higher on scales of food addiction. And so the types of foods that people tend to overeat are very telling. So the other thing I want to ask this shy person is what kinds of foods tend to trigger you? What kinds of foods do you feel like that you easily lose control over?

1:16:43They're almost always foods that contain refined carbohydrates, not necessarily always sugar, not necessarily always sweet. Some people are savory overeaters, macaroni and cheese, pizza, and some people are sweet, ice cream and cookies and so forth. But it's all the same. It's all refined carbohydrates, sugar, flour, cereals, fruit juices, et cetera. So the first thing is understanding what triggers the overeating. And again, it's that roller coaster. So you get this, the glucose spike, the insulin spike, then you get the crash, then you get the stress hormones. So, and this triggers this vicious cycle of overeating because the third type of hunger is emotional hunger, stress-driven hunger.

1:17:34You get this rise in cortisol, The glucose spike, the insulin spike, the glucose comes down, the adrenaline and cortisol pour in to keep the glucose from bottoming out. And now what happens? You've got this flood of stress hormones in your body. What do stress hormones want you to do? They think you're in a stressful situation. They think you need fast energy. The fastest energy available to the body is glucose. Glucose burns faster than fat and ketones. So what does it do? It tells your liver to pour out more glucose into the bloodstream, even if you just had something sweet. And it makes you seek out foods that are high in glucose because it thinks you need fast energy.

1:18:24And this is all artificially driven by eating the wrong foods. If you eat foods that can't spike your glucose and that are nourishing, you will not over-trigger the hedonic pathway and you will not trigger the stress pathway. Most people know that all diets are hard to stick to, but most people know that the time their diet is in the most trouble is when they're under stress. And that's not your fault. Binge eating isn't your fault. Stress eating isn't your fault. if you understand how it works, you can actually take control of it and you need so much less willpower when you are stable from within.

1:19:13And it's again another plug for it. There's a wonderful study conducted by Dr. Jen Unwin, who is the organizer of this International Food Addiction conference that's taking place in London in a couple of days. This is the second year of it. And she conducted a study that's now one year out. They put one year data on this, where low-carbohydrate whole foods diets coupled with education and support, a very simple online program, this was conducted in more than one country, brought tremendous relief from food addiction. I believe the figure is two-thirds of people still in remission a year out. So there's tremendous hope for this shy person, whoever she or he is.

1:20:04Dr Georgia Ede:That's fascinating, Georgia. And thank you so much. On behalf of the shy, anonymous listener, thank you so much. To finish with, I want to deliver you a letter that was written by the previous guest where they wrote their three rules to live by. Yes, I've been looking forward to this. I'll lean over, Georgia, and pass you the letter. Thank you, Alex. If you could kindly open it and read the three rules. To the next guest, ADHD Chatter. You're in the right place. Oh. Three rules to live by. Self-care is non-negotiable. I like that. Be kind to yourself. if in doubt slow down and breathe three very punchy and good rules i think thank you another shy person yes sometimes less is not signed georgia once again thank you so so much on behalf of everyone who's grappling to understand their brains and figuring out how simple dietary changes can make a big difference to their brain thank you so much thank you very much for inviting me and it was really, really nice that you've had me on and it's been really nice meeting you.