Neuroscientist (Dr Miguel): THIS Common Food Turns ADHD Into A Superpower, It's In Your Cupboard!

0:00Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas:Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail. Woo! And the super athletic-ish stuff, like fishing gear for chilling by the creek. Nice cast. Fitness apparel to push for higher reps. You got this! And golf balls priced so you can afford to lose one. Or a few. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. ADHD doesn't just live in the brain. Attention, executive function, it's almost like you picture ADHD as something that happens from the neck up and you forget that it's a whole body-mind experience.

0:41It's not a matter of trying to fix your ADHD or to fix your autism. Your body has got different rhythms and it's going to be different to somebody else's. You're not broken, your rhythm is slightly different and if you learn to work with it there's going to be amazing things that you can achieve in life. Dr. Miguel Toribio Mateus is a renowned neuroscientist. With 25 years of experience, he's here to help you master your ADHD and autism using simple nutritional hacks. When we think about food, we think about what food is good for you, what food is bad for you. You lose the whole context that food is very emotional, is very messy, and we are messy individuals living in a messy world.

1:18Just to try and make it all super clean and tidy, it doesn't quite work. Are there things that you've discovered recently that your mind is blown when you find out about it? One of the most important things that I've been working on recently is... Huge announcement just before we start. Tickets to the ADHD Chatter podcast live theatre show are selling fast. I'll be joined on stage by three leading psychiatrists and we'll be unpacking all things ADHD, how to process a late diagnosis or ADHD and of course the dreaded rejection sensitivity dysphoria. I really hope you can join me for a night full of validation, laughs and insights, and one that will remind you that you're not broken, just different, and that you have always been enough.

2:00It's on the 19th of May in London. You can find a link to the tickets in the description. I can't wait to meet you in person.

2:10Dr. Miguel, this is exciting. A neuroscientist, a real-life neuroscientist in the ADHD Chatter studio and not only that a really really nice one and one that i know is capable of helping the adhd chatter community in a really digestible way so thank you so much for being here thank you so much for having me and one with adhd and autism as well so you know autistic adhd neuroscientist one right at the cutting edge of the research as well and one who is who lives and breathes ADHD, autism, or DHD, which we're going to touch on a little bit later. As a neuroscientist, what is the one thing that you tell people about ADHD that still blows their mind every time you say it?

2:57I think the most important thing is that ADHD doesn't just live in the brain. So I think a lot of the conversation is about ADHD in attention, executive function. It's almost like you you picture adhd as something that happens from the neck up and you forget that it's a whole body mind experience and uh and your whole body is behaving in a slightly different way because your whole body is um uh it's got the nervous system running through it and the nervous the nervous system is actually experiencing the world in a in a different way in a more sensitive way than a neurotypical nervous system. If somebody is listening and they heard what you said and they think, oh no, I think ADHD is more just a brain condition, what would they learn if they stuck around for the next 45 minutes or so?

3:52Why should that person hang around? Because your brain is part of the nervous system, so it doesn't just function on its own. So then the brain is connected to your gut through the nervous system. The tip of your fingers are connected to the brain through the nervous system. So the way that you might want to eat or not eat or forget to eat or eat too much is a nervous system regulation response. And that's going to be to a certain extent determined by your neurotype, whether you're just ADHD, autistic, or a combination of both. And as for your interest in the crossover between the mind and ADHD and neurodiversity, where did that begin for you personally?

4:41What's your mission in this space? Well, my mission in this space is for people not to feel that they are broken, that there's something wrong with them. So I think we resonate because of that. It's not a matter of trying to fix your ADHD or to fix your autism or to heal it or to hack it. It's a matter of actually understanding that your rhythms in the body, just as the earth has got a night and a day and the rivers flow the right way and the sea has a tide that epsom flows, your body has got different rhythms. And that is determined by biology. and our biology is going to be influenced as well by our neurotype.

5:25So our neurotype is going to determine our own rhythm. And we were just talking before recording that sometimes if you're chatting to somebody who might happen to be neurodivergent as well, they might leave you on read for like a couple of days. And you think, okay, what's going on? It's fine. And then you kind of like pick up the conversation and then you have like a burst of energy and you exchange a hundred messages and, you know, reels and gifts and everything else. And you have a laugh and then you have a little break again. And that's your rhythm. And it's going to be different to somebody else's.

6:00It's going to be certainly different to somebody who is neurotypical. And accepting that and working with your rhythm as opposed to feel shame because your rhythm is different is very important for me. Just putting that message out there that you're not broken, your rhythm is slightly different. And if you learn to work with it, there's going to be amazing things that you can achieve in life. And as a neuroscientist yourself and a doctor and someone who's completely devoted so much of their career to that crossover between neurochemistry and nutrition, are there things that you've discovered recently that even your mind is blown when you find out about it?

6:41yeah for me I think one of the most important things that I've been working on recently is on the nutrition front we tend to think about foods that are good or bad for something and and that's kind of okay but it can be limiting and it can also be a source of shame and you know and you've just written a book about RSD you know RSD is is is shame isn't it this kind of like guilt and feeling that, you know, you don't fit in. So in a way, the last thing I want with a nutrition conversation is for somebody to feel shameful because they have not chosen the right food that Dr. Miguel is talking about, or that they need to have more of this or less of that.

7:25So all of that, when we think about eating healthily, it's literally about executive function is about how much cognitive power you have in on that particular day in that particular moment are you ready to go to the supermarket to do your shopping to come back chop the vegetables prep them cook them freeze them batch cooking all of this sounds amazing but you could be on a day that you think you know I've heard you say these things before on a day you wake up and you say I'm going to fund this company. I'm going to buy like a hundred different URLs and register them and all of that. And then the next day you forget about that and you go and do something else.

8:06You completely abandon that project and you go and do something else. That's part of your story that you've shared with your audience. Well, this happens to the brain as well. Every day we have that story going on when we go and decide what do we eat. So are we going to prepare ourselves this wholesome food that we know. Everybody kind of knows what healthy eating is really in 2026. There's so much information out there. But have you got the cognitive capacity to do all of the steps, you know, to plan, to chop, to execute the meal, to, you know, and have you got the ability to repeat that process throughout the week?

8:45Because, you know, with ADHD, with ADHD, with autism we're going to have peaks and valleys of that kind of a cognitive ability and it may be that Monday is the perfect day you've done everything you've did your batch cooking on the Sunday you know you've eaten all the healthy meals and everything else but Tuesday is a bit of a dodgy day and all you can muster is something pre-prepared from the supermarket are you going to feel really guilty about that or are you going to say right what was the choice the choice was that I wasn't going to eat because I tend to forget to eat. Maybe some people do if you're on meds or you're busy.

9:26Or I was going to eat something that was going to be even naughtier, in inverted commas. So having the ready-made soup from the supermarket that has got maybe a couple of ingredients that people might question on social media, is that going to throw everything out of the window? Maybe not. and just a humane compassionate way of looking at nutrition i think is very important that takes that into account that nutrition is not just about the right foods it's about the capacity you have as an individual to to choose them and to implement them in your life i'm so pleased that you came on dr miguel because i think for me eating is such a uphill battle like specifically having to decide what to eat every single day and it just takes up so much mental energy the amount of times i've almost dreaded dinner time approaching because for me that is like okay now i need to think i need to decide what i want to eat i need to go to the supermarket i need to buy all of the different ingredients to make this thing that i've been told is healthy and it's just exhausting and that's just one day and then it repeats and it repeats like if someone is struggling with consistency and they do find the idea of eating well, exhausting and having to make good decisions.

10:44Somebody in that position, what is some advice that would make their life easier? I think thinking about nutrition as a wardrobe and you have your basic stuff that you like to wear all the time. And I have to say to my other half the other day, I need to go shopping for some shirts because I've been on a few podcasts recently and my autistic brain wants to wear the same shirt every time because it's soft and like you know it feels nice on the skin and you know and we have this joke going on in my house as well because like my mom is the same like she's got like 100 dresses but she's always wearing the same kind of like worn out t-shirt or worn out jumper or something and you ask her why and she says oh I really like because it's very soft and we know about that sensitivity that's part of the the story in neurodivergence so if you have that that basic wardrobe that has got the jeans your preferred jeans and your preferred jumper and your t-shirt and blah blah and you like them because they give you comfort that shouldn't be knocked off it shouldn't be something that's going to be a source of blame it should be something that is there and you use them as anchors because your nervous system is constantly asking itself am I safe in a situation?

11:57I'm sat here, my nervous system is scanning, thinking, do I trust you? Do I trust the setting? Am I happy to open up? You know, all of those things are happening 24-7. So they're happening around food as well. So your nervous system is saying, what do I need now? Do I need comfort? Am I happy to be a bit more adventurous and maybe add something that's a different texture that I haven't been happy to try before, maybe a different flavor. So I think keep the foods that you feel safe with as your anchors and then rather than overhaul your whole diet because somebody on Instagram says, oh, you know, this is the latest thing or this is the latest superfood.

12:39A sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that is a much better strategy because at the end of the day, as you say, it's an everyday thing. It's not a diet for a week that then, you know, you've done it and that's it. It's a diet for life. And if you're going to have to live with that diet for the rest of your life, how do you adapt it? So it becomes second nature, like learning to ride a bike or drive a car. So you don't need to overthink it every single time. So it could just be simple things that I'm sure we're going to be talking about. I don't want to like burn all my gunpowder at once. And it's honestly fascinating.

13:17I think without even realizing it, I think my anchor has always been pasta, tuna and cheese with jalapenos. And the jalapenos have to be dry and not stored in liquid. So they're crunchy. And that crunch gives me the sort of offset against the soft pasta and the sort of soft tuna as well. I'm similar to you. I mean, I wear this outfit all of the time. I've seen you. I mean, have you watched it recently? Yeah, so that's the thing. I have like six or seven versions of the same outfit because I love the t-shirt, this jacket is really nice, and I feel safe in it. And I suppose like the sensitivities and the softness and I suppose the sensory challenges and the textures, how does that complicate the nutrition landscape for somebody who potentially has sensory challenges when they come to deciding what they want to eat?

14:10Well, it does complicate it a lot. And the thing is that one of the things I've been working on recently for the last year, and I'm writing some papers about it that I hope to publish this year, the first one. And along with that, there's going to be a set of different questionnaires that are specifically designed to ascertain these kind of aspects for a neurodivergent person, because nutrition advice has been issued for neurotypical people. You know, until probably like very recently, we're starting to touch the very, very tip of the iceberg on this to be aware of the fact that maybe neurodivergent people have different needs when it comes to nutrition.

14:53And it's not about the foods need to be different. It's the fact that, as you say, we have sensory sensitivities. And again, there may be cliches that we just avoid, but no, we are seekers as well. We could be a mix of both. I could avoid something like the plague because it's like very alien to me like the smell of something already puts me off but then I'm obsessed with something else that's very spicy and like my food in general is quite spicy I cannot really do bland but in some cases I really feel like bland because that's comforting and and I wouldn't think of adding chili to that particular meal because that meal is safe and comforting and if I added chili it would spoil it So you know what I'm talking about.

15:39It's down to the minute thing of the chilies need to be dry so they are crunchy. So you need that crunchiness to regulate your nervous system. And what show me a nutrition book that tells you about that? Because there's no dietetic or nutrition book that tells you about that. None. There's no, there's literally like very little published in general scientific literature about that kind of thing. Of course, we do know about sensory avoidance in children, in autistic children. We know about, you know, picky children due to sensory sensitivities and so on. But it's limited to that particular niche.

16:21And what we don't know, or we're starting to realize now, is that those children growing to adults, if you were picky about the crunchiness of something when you were five years old, you suddenly don't become a 50-year-old who likes everything. You're going to be picky about something else as well. So, yeah, that's the answer to your question. yeah it does yeah i mean it has made me think because i never thought the texture with food was a block sometimes like if someone gives me scrambled egg on something soft yeah then i can't eat it but it was me neither it has to have something like toast like a toast like sourdough toast it's kind of like crunchy yeah yeah really it offsets the softness of the scrambled egg yeah Yeah, yeah.

17:08If the scramble deck was on kind of some sloppy vegetable that I would maybe love if it was with something else as a side. But that combination is kind of like icky for me. I just look at it and I'm already thinking, oh, my God, this is not going to satisfy me. And from a nutritional point of view, it's got all the macros. So it's got the protein and it's got the fiber and the polyphenols and everything else. So I'm thinking gut-brain connection, muscle, you know, power for my, you know, so I don't get hungry. So I get kind of, you know, a good protein intake. So my blood sugar is regulated. So all of that is kind of like ticking in.

17:46All of those considerations are neurotypical considerations. So what we haven't actually considered is that nutrition as a whole is very neuro-normative. the norms of nutrition have been kind of a white colonial neuro normative for as long as they have been around. They haven't actually considered the, you know, the ins and outs of ethnic origin of people that may actually, you know, I had a student last year who did a very interesting project and she was talking about how in Bangladesh, if you have she was from bangladeshi origin and in bangladeshi if you have cooked rice the previous day you don't need it the following day because it's considered to be dirty whereas we talk about rice cooked the previous day as a source of resistant starch and we were talking about how resistant starch is good for your microbiome and your gut microbes love it and you know it's like source of undigestible fiber in a way that is good for your gut.

18:47And it comes from some carbs that have been cooked and then cooled down, like rice or potatoes or pasta. But we haven't actually stopped to think that in some cultures that it's kind of like taboo, you don't do that. How dare you give me rice from the day before in Bangladesh thinking that it's going to be good for me? Well, it's the same thing. If we extrapolate that to another audience that is neurodivergent people, what do we value that for us would be outrageous but maybe for a neurotypical person that would be all over it and you know lap it up this is super interesting and i love that we're getting a bit geeky now and i want to i want to lean into that geekiness just for a moment i want to take advantage of your brain miguel yeah so you mentioned neurotypicals and that brain gut connection.

19:38So is that different, the brain-gut connection for a neurotypical, as it is for someone with ADHD? It will be on the basis that, okay, so it will be and it won't be in a sense, you know, there is no ADHD clear signature that would allow me to just look at somebody's poo sample and say, oh, he's got ADHD versus somebody who doesn't, because the literature is so mixed, It's very heterogeneous. It's not clear enough to say, oh, somebody with ADHD has got a lot of this and very little bifidobacterium or very little lactobacillus or something. And that's a clear, clear picture. There may be pockets of literature that are telling us a bit of the story, but the story is not completely clear.

20:25It's almost like trying to be a clairvoyant looking into a crystal ball and you get a glimpse, but you don't get the whole story. So you get a little, you know, like a crap clairvoyant, you know. I want my money back because you haven't told me the future. Makes sense. And the situation is a little bit like that. And also you need to take into account that a lot of the research is done in small samples. Yes. So you have studies on like 50 people at the time, 100 people at the time. We haven't got really big organized studies on thousands of ADHD people at the time, comparing them with thousands of non-ADHD people.

20:59But what we do now is that there may be quirks in not only the composition of those microbes that live in the gut. So are they different to somebody else's without ADHD? But also how they function. And that's really important as well. And that's that now we know that you could have an identical microbe. You could have something called fecalobacterium that makes butyrate, which is this fatty acid that nourishes the gut lining. So it makes the gut lining healthy. It makes the ecosystem in the gut healthy. But it also helps with mental health. It is like an anti-inflammatory, waxy molecule that smooths out the edges of mental health conditions in the brain.

21:49because it travels through the blood and the vagus nerve into the brain and it can do positive things in the brain. We do tend to know from the literature that in an ADHD or an autistic brain or a combination of both and in other flavors of neurodivergence, there may be a lack of two things. The microbes that actually make that butyrate, so that fecalobacterium may be lower, but also you could have a sleepy fecalobacterium, of bacterium so you could have one that is almost the same level as somebody who's neurotypical but is a bit struggling to make enough butyrate so on paper if you just look at the abundance you could say oh it's the same but when you look deeper into what they do you could have like you know an identical you could have a doppelganger you know somebody who looks identical to you but then they do completely different things you know so or like an identical twin but they have a different personality so it's a little bit like that um so yeah so there there is that there is all of that going on and uh and then the brain in a neurotypical person might not look completely different to the brain in an adhd or an autistic person when you look at some imaging but the way that the brain functions, which is not so easily seen in imaging, is going to be a different story.

23:13So there are, it's a nuance. I know that you want clear answers, but like the science is very nuanced. No, that's what we want. We want to unpick your brain and to absorb some of the amazing stuff that you've learned. I mean, leaning on from that, if someone has ADHD or autism or ADHD, If they really wanted to lean into trying to maximize the benefits of a diet to help them manage their ADHD, are there any nutritional precautions they should take? Is there anything that they should be avoiding? I wouldn't say so much precautions. I would say trying to prioritize perhaps some foods that we know from the research out there that have been saying to help support the system as a whole.

24:03so rather than actually trying to avoid certain foods or to just only include foods and then make it all quite regimented because then we fall back into the same trap as we were talking about before you might have a day that you find it very easy to stick to all the rules that you have created for yourself and you might have another day that you find it completely difficult and then you self-sabotage and then you feel guilty because you self-sabotage and then you repeat the cycle and that could lead to either not eating which happens or to binging which happens as well and then feeling crap because you've done that so we want to avoid all of that so rather than precautions i would say we know from literature that certain food groups are really supportive so protein for example particularly early in the day why because it's going to set you off for the day in terms of your base levels of how you can control your blood sugar in your body.

25:07And one of the reasons why we might find it difficult to stick to eating healthily, so to speak, or have cravings and so on is because we might have a bit of a sugar dip. So we might think, oh, what's going to give me sugar? The brain is thinking, give me some sugar so I can function. And you're going to think, you know, like a chocolate bar or a snack, you know, it could be like a healthy looking snack, but it's got a lot of sugar added to it. You might think, you know, quick pasta or, you know, rice or bread. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things. But ideally, you should be thinking protein in the day, early in the day, is going to allow you to stick to your kind of, how should I say this?

25:53To your best intentions, so to speak. And mix this with fiber as well. So where are you going to get fiber? Fruits, vegetables. Am I going to give you a list of better fruits and a list of better vegetables? I could do, but, you know, I think think color as opposed to anything else. Because the more colorful the vegetable, the more it's going to have not only just the fiber, but these things called polyphenols, which are antioxidants. They also nourish the gut microbes in your intestines. and those are going to then by metabolizing, by digesting those colors and fiber are going to make substances that nourish not only your gut but your brain as well.

26:41So I would think protein, fiber and also some healthy fats. So healthy fats. So if you eat fish, tinned fish is super easy. It's accessible. So not everybody's got a lot of money to just go to the fishmongers and also the cognitive capacity to go fishmongers, prepare the fish, serve it, make it look pretty, blah, blah. A tin of sardines on toast is going to give you loads of omega-3, loads of protein, it's accessible, it's economical, and you kind of like tick two boxes in there as well. So try and think of the basics that we know from the literature that are going to support your whole system as opposed to think, oh, I need to be prioritizing that so much, or I need to be avoiding that so much, because I think it's healthier to think in those terms.

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28:47Just a note, though, this code is only applicable on the web browser and not the smartphone. Back to the episode. It's so refreshing, Miguel, to hear a neuroscientist come on and say how, talk about the shame that is surrounding this conversation. I think what you're saying is so interesting and talking about specific foods that are potentially good for focus and productivity and all of that kind of stuff. But to shine a light on, I think, the bigger picture, which is the shame around certain eating habits that many people with ADHD or neurodivergent conditions experience. And one of the stories that I hear time and time again is that people understand what food is good.

29:29They understand what food is bad. And sometimes they stick to that structure and that discipline or diet. And then in the evening, they can binge, particularly at nighttime when they're very lonely or the world's gone to sleep. but they're wide awake and they have nothing else to do like where does your empathy and understanding for that side of it come from because to hear someone like yourself open up and to share that does that come from a personal experience it does yeah so i started behaving funny around food uh probably in my teens like early teens and uh so i'm a 70s baby I know I look fabulous, but I'm 53.

30:12And there was a lot of talk about, you know, cutting down fats and, you know, what was good at the time and all this kind of stuff. You know, like now carbs are the evil and sugar, you know, and ultra processed foods. There was a lot of this kind of like restrictive chat about certain foods. And that was all pervasive. It's on TV, you know, people chat about it. And we know from really good quality research that has been published, you know, for a while now, but like recently as well, how in families where there is a kind of obsession around what is healthy and what is not, and you talk about that more readily than maybe in other families, children then grow up to be quite regimented about foods and to be quite rigid in their own thinking about foods.