Why ADHD Changes How You Eat: Brain, Gut & Food Sensitivities

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0:44Enough Preamble. I'm Ben, your host. Let's get into today's episode.

0:56Dr. Miguel, welcome back, firstly. For those listening and watching, if you didn't see our first episode with Dr. Miguel, you've got to check it out. Neuroscientist, nutritionist. Microbiologist. Microbiologist, researcher, published author, check him out. ADHD, autistic. I'm really happy to see you. Me too, me too. Thank you for having me back. Dr. Miguel, I'm actually going to start because I love, I'm just going to read this out and you can tell me why you wrote it. A note to your becoming. I am allowed to be complex. I am allowed to not know yet. There's nothing wrong with the way I'm wired.

1:38Only the quiet that answered when I asked to be heard. I am not broken. I am becoming one insight, one unlearning, one tender truth at a time. That is from your book. Why did you write that? I wrote it because I think that's the simplest way to say it, basically. I wrote this book at a time in my life where I feel, and I still feel, I'm growing a lot. And I was living a lot of stuff in the past that was no longer resonating with me. You look emotional about me just saying that. Yeah. It was actually quite a healing process, writing the book, because I was given the chance to write the book that was a textbook.

2:21And basically, I didn't tell my editor. She was just basically just trusting that I was writing the textbook. And when it came to handing it in, I said, sorry, love, but I've kind of written something else. I don't think it's quite going to fit in with the idea of what you wanted, but I'm going to send it to you anyway. And she said, I love it, but sadly, it's not the book that I wanted. So I'm going to move you to another imprint of the publisher because I want the book to be published, but it's not under my umbrella. Okay. So anyway, so I part that there and I've only just come out of not having to do the professional book because I just feel like I don't feel like writing it right now.

3:02I might come back to doing that maybe in a couple of years, but at the moment I just don't want the pressure. I've got a lot going on. But I wanted to write a book from the heart. I wanted to write a book that was a reflection of my own healing. Yes. And that was a reflection of my own need for something else that is not just some superfood that's going to fix my inattention. Yep. It's not a magic supplement that's going to replace the meds. Yeah. It's not some highly analytical piece on why the meds work in one part of the brain, but they don't work on another and all that kind of stuff, which a lot of it is covered anyway, but from a very compassionate point of view because I've gone through my life through a lot of shit to be where I am today.

3:53And that's part of me. I cannot just say, oh no, I'm just going to write the book and ignore everything. Really the book and the whole piece about nutrition and the brain and the brain access and everything else it's just different iterations of how you need to take into account who you are in order to make choices about all of those things yeah and if you don't if you're ignoring the history of who you are the history of how you've become the person you are today the history of your becoming because you are becoming somebody new perhaps with a new diagnosis or perhaps you're at the stage that you are self-identifying and maybe that's fine.

4:36You don't want to go any further. All of that is just becoming and becoming and becoming. And then an American poet from the late 1800s, Walt Whitman, that I really liked because he was quite controversial in his time. He was advocating for, you know, just have sex with whoever you want to have sex, including like, you know, same-sex relationships. And he was talking about finding peace in nature and so on. And he said something that it's just a phrase that is a motivational quote in loads of Instagram pages as well. It's quite nice. I do contradict myself. I contain multitudes. So I found that when I wrote it in part of a context of, you know, it's a little essay that he wrote and this containing multitudes being big and not allowing the world to belittle you and make you smaller or push you to simplify yourself because you talk too much or you talk too little or they've asked you a question and like this is like the perfect example of like asking a question and Miguel is going to answer something completely different but it's going to be fun and then that's going to trigger another question and and like you don't take offense and it's cool yeah it's like we understand each other we feel safe in doing that yes try to do that with somebody who's like very stereotypically neurotypical.

5:57And I don't want to create a situation of them and us. Because it's not. But yeah, the whole thing about containing multitudes, about being big, about being loud, about your body is expressing itself and you're expressing yourself in every single thing that you do. It doesn't need to be loud. You don't need to become an activist for everything that you do. It doesn't need to be completely in your face. It can be quiet. it can be silent but that recognition that you are changing and you are in the process of becoming somebody that you are ultimately happier with yes is what the whole book has been about yeah and of course there's all the science there's like 450 references in there you know different studies and all the rest of it but ultimately for me it has been quite a spiritual experience to write it yeah but I think we can go to school and we can do degrees and we can read textbooks and we can learn the theory.

6:56But I think where neurodiversity is concerned, we need it on a human storytelling level that we can relate to and that we can connect to. It's not always the science, it's not always biology. And we don't have to try and know everything about the brain. This is about connecting with ourselves, understanding ourselves and that in relation to other people. So then where do you think we're at today with our understanding of nutrition and neurodivergence? We are a bit more advanced than we used to be. But when you take a look at nutrition from the mechanisms and also you look at it from a mainstream clinical point of view, there's always going to be an argument for how can you fix something that is broken as opposed to how can you support somebody who is different yes because that's the model the medical clinical model is let's find some symptoms and then let's find something that is going to decrease the symptom so okay if somebody has adhd you want to be super fidgety all the time or do you want to have maybe a little bit more inner calm obviously it can get in the way you know sure so ideally you'd like to be a bit more quiet rather than you know just fidgeting all the time or just going like that with your knee or like you know playing with the pen or whatever yeah yeah but the way i see it is that that is information is your nervous system is telling you something's going on and it wants to regulate and it's regulating itself by moving because movement is very powerful.

8:43Because when you move your knee or when you're playing with the pen, it's basically you're trying to almost get rid of excess energy that you have inside. And what is driving that excess energy? If you just look at the kind of like mainstream medical model and say, okay, let's just give you saffron, which by the way, might work. Or let's just give you pine bark extract. Or let's just give you drugs for ADHD, the methylphenidate or lexamphetamine or whatever it is. Okay, but what you're trying to do is you find something that is not working by neuronormative standards and you want to make it more neuronormative.

9:23Yes. So you want to make somebody who is not normal, more normal. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Can you just, for people listening, give me your understanding of neuronormativity. It's a huge, long, horrible word, But how do you understand neuro normativity? Yeah, so neuro normativity is basically the set of rules that you are expected to play by in society to fit in with the normal neurotype, which is going to be a statistical percentage of people who if you break down everybody in the world, the majority are going to be more neurotypical. and then you're going to have like a minority.

10:06If you did a statistics curve, it's going to be, you know, like a bell curve where most of the people are in the middle and then you have the edges. And because we are at the edges, then what neuronormativity wants us to do is just to push us towards the middle to make us more normal, so to speak. So normality doesn't quite exist. And they are unwritten rules. Yeah, completely. The unsaid, unwritten, hidden rules of society. Completely. Yeah, there's no rule book. It's like, you know, it's heteronormativity. Allegedly, there are more heterosexual people than homosexual people or non-binary or trans.

10:48So that's the minority. Yep. So most people will have stories if you are part of that minority of how you feel pushed to be less gay or less trans or just to suppress your. To conform. To conform. Exactly. So how many people realize that they are trans at like, you know, 50? Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. But the struggle of all that life of living in a body that you don't resonate with. And you look at yourself in the mirror and you think, this is not me. I need to be affirmed as the person I am. Or just trying to put this costume on of thinking, you know, I want to wear glitter in the morning, but I feel a bit ashamed.

11:31So I'm just going to wear a jacket and a shirt and just like pretend that I'm not, you know, I'm going to fit in. So it's the same kind of thing. Let's talk about neuronormativity in nutrition. Yeah. There is complete neuronormativity in nutrition because the nutrition advice that is given to people is just not taking into account that somebody's nervous system might need something else. So even if you get a book on nutrition for ADHD and it's a cookbook for ADHD, if it starts talking about eat these foods for more focus or for less hyperactivity, I already have like a red flag in there. Yeah, because I'm thinking, okay, so what are you trying to do?

12:12You're trying to manage me to become more normal by eating more blueberries on the basis of some studies that may say that, you know, you eat blueberries in a super controlled, watertight environment, which is how clinical trials work. That has shown that, I don't know, some brain waves change more towards the calmer spectrum of brain waves, as opposed to the more kind of a hyper spectrum. And that is then interpreted as there's going to be less hyperactivity, less impulsivity. So blueberries are good for you if you have ADHD. Okay, fine. Are blueberries bad in that general sense? No, they are tasty.

12:53You like them, you know, or you don't like them. But, you know, I'm not going to demonize foods for that particular reason either. But from that point of view, they are trying to manage a symptom. whereas you might not have the cognitive capacity that particular day to go to the supermarket and buy them so you're going to feel shame because all of a sudden the algorithm just picks up that you've looked at something with blueberries yes and your feed is loaded with blueberries it's like one thing after the next and like food for adhd eat this way don't eat this way and people are very polarized about food as well, because it's very emotional.

13:31Food is how we regulate emotionally as well. It's not just nourishment. So there's always going to be extreme positions around food. Do intermittent fasting. You know, this is worth for me. I'm not hyperactive anymore. I don't have breakfast. Oh no, I am much better if I have breakfast, the whole kind of thing, you know, with everything. How do you find the truth then? Aside of everybody's individual and it depends on the day there are so many variables yeah in terms of how our bodies respond to food i'm guessing yeah yeah there are and our bodies can respond to the same food differently on a different day yeah depending on how we're feeling completely the conditions time of day etc what's your advice then when it's so easy and especially as adhd is to go oh shiny new thing over there yeah now we should be having lots of that fruit or that vegetable and now it's all about fiber what's your advice there so there are some truths in inverted commas yeah that apply to everybody okay and then there will be some truths that are probably more relevant to people with adhd because in some studies they have been seen to help with a particular issue in adhd rather than the typical symptoms that are more the DSM kind of symptoms, the hyperactivity, the inattention and so on.

15:00I tend to focus more on areas that are biology driven. So for example, it may be that looking at one of the things that I do, which is the gut and the gut brain connection, maybe that we have more susceptibility to have a tiny little bit more inflammation in our bodies, particularly in the nervous system. So that's called neuroinflammation because it affects the whole nervous system around the gut, the vagus nerve and the brain. Yes. How would I know if I have neuroinflammation? It's not something you go to your GP and say, can you check me out for neuroinflammation, please? And then you go and, you know, even if you have Bupa, you know, it's not going to be covered.

15:42So it's not a matter of how privileged you are. Yes. These things are available in labs where they will do very sophisticated analysis that are not available in public health services. Yep. Just because, again, if you go to the NHS or the equivalent in another country, for a doctor to prescribe a particular test, there needs to be a pathway to them prescribing a drug or some kind of therapy. So because that doesn't quite tally up yet, then, you know, you're not going to get those things in a hospital or with your GP. But what we do know is that in the labs that have looked at people with ADHD and people with autism, and they've done previous studies as well in test tubes, and they've seen that it's not like we have double the inflammation of neurotypical people.

16:35It's just above the normal, above the average. It's almost like you haven't got a temperature if you're like 37.2, but you feel a bit uneasy because your body is kind of like 36.8, 37, and then a tiny a little bit more and you feel like a bit shivery. But it's not a full-on fever reducing drug like paracetamol or something. So this is the same kind of situation. Is that a sensitivity then that we're predisposed to? Yeah, it's because our nervous system is super sensitive. Okay. And again, the nervous system, it grows with us and it's not just a biological thing. It grows with the environment that we have grown in.

17:16So nurture and nature. It grows with, it's relational. So it picks up information from early life experiences, from whether your family was nourishing you with love as well as with food, or whether your family was neglecting you, whether you were bullied in school, whether you had to face difficulties, growing, all of these kinds of stuff, obviously trauma with capital T and small t. Does it have a memory then, the nervous system? It does have a memory. It does have a memory. And does it, you know, well, of course you do, the concept of neuroplasticity. Yeah. Is there a nervous system equivalent of that plasticity to?

17:57Yeah. Neuroplasticity applies to the whole nervous system. Okay. It doesn't just apply to the brain. Okay. Completely. Okay. So the nervous system is basically picking up all of these signals. Probably people listening or watching are thinking, okay, hang on a minute, I'm resonating. I was bullied. I have faced a lot of shit in my school years. Maybe I wasn't bullied, but I struggled. I was told so many times you're not good enough, you're slow, you know, pay more attention. Your marks are not high enough. You take too long to do things, you know, you're late, whatever. So all of that is kind of like being processed by the nervous system and is making you take different responses to situations.

18:39So you can go into the fight or flight typical thing, you know, you want to escape danger or you want to fight danger, either are going to make you a little bit aggy. Basically, you're going to live through life a little bit hyper on hyper, hyper vigilant mode. I talk about this in the book. I call it meerkat mode. A bit like a meerkat kind of exploring the territory all the time. And that can affect your relationships with people, with yourself, with food. You're on the lookout for like the tiniest little thing that is affecting you. Whereas maybe a neurotypical person who's had a relatively easy upbringing, you know, I'm not saying that everybody does, but, you know, let's just look at that scenario.

19:24They have food and of course they're going to feel bloated. Sometimes they're going to feel like a knot in the stomach or sometimes the food is going to go through them more quickly than other times. They're humans. They're going to experience all the sensations of a human being. But for a neurodivergent person with that hypervigilance mode activated, which many of us have, then you're going to be hyperanalyzing absolutely everything that is going on. and that interoception that I'm sure you've heard about, that communication between the body and the nervous system and interoception, which is more about the enteric nervous system and what signals it's sending to the brain, it can play both roles.

20:09It can be hyperactivated and you feel absolutely everything. So how many people with ADHD or autism also have IBS-like symptoms or super sensitive to foods that they think, oh I cannot have that hang on a second is it that you have a full blown allergy like do you need to carry an EpiPen for that or is it just that your nervous system is so on the lookout for any potential threat that absolutely any mix of two different foods are likely to mimic maybe a food that you do have a problem with and that's going to trigger a response and you feel I don't know you suddenly get itchy or you get immediate diarrhea or constipation or, you know, all sorts of things happening.

20:55So you can have those two, the fight or the flight, but you also can be quite susceptible to phoning and doing kind of like just people pleasing, extreme busyness and dressing yourself as, I'm so super busy, I'm never available. I need 15 minutes with you. Oh, I can give you like six o 'clock on the 20th of May. I'm thinking, are you joking? It's like, are you going to make me wait like two weeks or like a month to chat with you? or the freeze response as well like absolutely do nothing like animals when they're in danger you see there's a lot of deer where I live and you know manjacks like tiny little deer they look a bit like dogs and when you know I'm walking in the woods and I see a deer and I see a manjack and they see me and they stop completely it's freeze is the first response yeah and we do that a lot as well with ADHD and autism we kind of like freeze because we don't really know what's going to happen so it's almost an extension of the main two which is our nervous system telling us yeah like that's a reaction of our nervous system it's better not to do anything but then extrapolate that to a work situation yeah where your boss is being you know nasty with you but you think i'm just not going to say anything because i need the money in my bank account every month so i'm just going to play by the rules, I'm just going to keep my head down and do nothing.

22:19That could be an example of phrasing or like, yes, ma 'am, or yes, sir, as your kind of like phoning response, super people pleasing. And it's churning you inside because you're people pleasing to these people who are not aligned with who you want to be. So all of those things play a role in how you react to food and how you choose foods as well. Because when you're in, particularly in fight or flight, Your body is on high demand of energy to keep your immune system alert. Because if you are in real fight or flight and you are fearing for your life, you need to have a very active immune system.

22:58So if you get a cat, you don't bleed to death because you're going to get the immune system tending to the wound and closing it very quickly. there's going to be these inflammatory molecules that tend to the wound to seal it so you don't bleed to death basically. Some they call acute phase proteins or acute phase cytokines. Some of them you can see in a GP test like C-reactive protein for example. It's something that is a marker of inflammation. It gives you an idea whether you're going to have a heart attack or whether there's an infection going on in your body. sometimes it can be raised just below the normal the average and there's no quite not real reason for it and you think why is my cereactive protein raised and that can give you an indication of that neuroinflammation we were talking about it's not precise because it's quite broad compared to other molecules but it can give you an insight okay so you're spending a lot of energy and you're going to need a lot of energy so what foods are going to give you quick energy sugary foods or super processed foods that you're going to assimilate really quickly into your system and give you calories quite quickly and refined carbs ultra processed foods and you talking about it in terms of absorption into our bodies is that effectively why they are so popular?

24:26Because our bodies get them so quickly than whole foods. To a point, yes, but also because they tend to be hyper palatable. Yes. They tend to be super tasty. Yes. So they're either super crunchy or super salty or, you know, super something. Yeah. And it's going to just hit the spot. And companies invest in making them tasty for that particular reason with flavor enhancers and, you know, aromas and so on. So they smell delicious, although it may be all synthetic. I don't want to demonize ultra processed foods because that particular day that you're cruising down this kind of river of life and it's a bit choppy and your load is massive because you're carrying a lot.

25:20And it could be grief, could be trauma, could be work-related, could be relationships, could be whatever you're processing at that particular time. Your nervous system is an extension of the immune system. I don't see them as separate, they're kind of like working together. And so you have this high demand for energy, for something quick that's going to soothe you, that's going to give you access to calories and glucose as well to make your brain tick. because your brain is kind of like going at the speed of light. And the only thing that you can get that is going to soothe you that particular day is something ultra-processed or is something very beige.

25:59Sure. Or is something that you're repeating. Yes, comfort. Comfort. And the way I look at these things is rather than actually think, okay, I'm going to now feel extra guilt or shame for having them because everybody's telling me how bad they are, maybe leave that for later as opposed to prioritize that when you've got so much on your plate that literally in health neuroscience this is called allostatic load it's basically the load that you're carrying on this boat that you're navigating the river of life on yep and if it's loaded with stuff that is psychological or physical it could be that you've got pain or you know you're very well exactly and that is increasing your allostatic load so it means that if you're really loaded and it thinks it feels that you might sink any moment and then you add another layer of worry oh my god this has got two ingredients that i have been hearing on instagram people saying don't have them you're gonna get whatever yeah and then that's adding another box of cargo to the boat that is already almost sinking.

27:14Isn't it better that you think, okay, well, I know this might not be an ideal meal, but it's going to soothe me and I'm going to have it because it will invariably have something okay for me. It might have some fiber, it might have some protein. So I'm just going to focus on the good things and use them as anchors to allow me to feel a bit more stable in this choppy waters kind of situation where I'm in, as opposed to feel I'm just going to sink completely. Because I've seen so many people just literally sink, just worry so much about absolutely everything. And it was me as well, like for three and a half decades, I lived on laxatives, purging, cutting out complete food groups, then going into the next diet and doing, you know, I've just binged on something for three weeks.

28:06and then I would exclude it altogether. I would binge one night and then not eat for two days because I was doing a fast. So I understand it because I've gone through it as well. What are the lies that you see that we're told by the media or big companies? What are the main nutrition lies that you see that have this kind of effect, right? Where people stop eating, cut things out. like are scared of what they're eating what are the big ones well yeah and i wouldn't even say is the mainstream media or companies to be quite honest i'd say social media is to blame for a lot of this okay i had these problems before social media so there was nobody telling me sure what to do.

28:59You know, I started using laxatives because my grandma had like laxatives, you know, in her drawer. And I thought, okay, maybe if I go to the toilet more, I can eat more and that will balance out. And then that started that process of thinking in my brain that developed into different variations over years and years and years. Yes. Do you believe that eating disorders are an outcome of unrecognized and unsupported neurodivergence? Not quite, but they are really overlapped. So what the science that say is that people with neurodivergence have got a much higher risk of developing an eating disorder at some point in their lives.

29:49And then if you look at the different eating disorders, because they are not all the same, the ones that we have more risk of binge eating disorder and bulimia. So slightly less anorexia, for example. But then there's another phenomenon that is not quite an eating disorder in the classic sense, but that is now being considered as one anyway, as a form of disordered eating, which is orthorexia which is about being very focused on eating only things that you see as being good for you and that has been driven a lot by the media so it's something that we may have had for a long time but that it has exacerbated by exposure to the availability of content telling people what they should be and should not be eating because wow it's just and So it's the opposite of binging or eating fast food or ultra-processed food.

30:50This is like... Restriction. Only eating... Exactly. So it would be... Really healthy stuff. Yeah. And I was a version of that before I even knew of this concept when I used to be plant-based, gluten-free. I like plant-based, by the way, so I'm not slagging it off for anybody out there thinking, you know, I'm slagging it off. Mostly plant-based anyway. but you know I had a phase of my life where I was plant based gluten free dairy free and I was traveling a lot and I was going to funny places as well but it wasn't an excuse I could go to France and have problems What do you mean you were going to funny places?

31:23I was going to France but I was also going to Georgia and you know and Jordan and places where even if you got to a good hotel at like 11 at night they didn't have like a plant based menu Yes like back in like you know like 2001 or something Yeah yeah Because there was a lot less awareness or gluten-free or, you know. Yes, less choice. Yeah. Or certainly places like Armenia or something, you know, that I used to go for a while. So I would just land there, eight o 'clock. I would look at the menu in the hotel for the room service. And it was all like, you know, a typical thing like a burger, carbonara, pasta.

32:00I'm thinking dairy, meat, gluten, all in one meal. I was freaking out. And I would look at a couple of restaurants nearby and they were either closed because it was too late. or they were just meat or, you know. So basically I would just starve myself and then the following day and then I would go to the hotel breakfast and it was mostly gluten and stuff. So I wouldn't eat until lunchtime or something and I would spend hours and hours not eating and that is unhealthy. Like looking back at that, I'm thinking, okay, so I was carrying nuts with me all the time. But you know, there's only so many nuts you can carry with you to last you for two days.

32:35Yes. You can just travel with a whole kilo of nuts in your bag. And it's not a healthy thing to do anyway. And I see a lot of variations of that as well with regards to supplements, with regards to only organic or, you know, only that kind of bread, but not that other kind of bread. And a lot of stuff that what I've tried to do in the book is to go through all of that in a very compassionate way that gives people a lot of choice of different foods that going back to that question about the truth about how you know a food is good for you. well it will be good for you because it nourishes lactobacillus in your gut or it gives your bifidobacterium a bit something to munch on and they grow or it will be good because we know from studies that it's good for lowering that neuroinflammation that we've talked about or it will be good for you because it's good for your heart and it brings oxygen to your artery so So, you know, like cocoa is excellent for the heart and the cardiovascular system because it helps bring oxygen to the cardiovascular system.

33:47It reduces a little bit of inflammation. It helps balance cholesterol levels. It does a range of different things. What are the best foods for neurodivergent people to reduce that neuroinflammation? So fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds for different reasons. So if you just take one, so fruit, so many different fruits. What do they have in common? Well, they will have fiber. They'll have water. So you eat water at the same time because I forget to drink water a lot of the time. It's boring. I find it quite boring. So, you know, I'll drink kombucha or something or I'll drink tea. So it's still hydration, but it's a different flavor.

34:28But with fruit, you're having your water. Hydration is super important for the brain. So a 1 % reduction in hydration in your body is going to make you feel a bit sloppy anyway. 2 % is going to make you tangibly less able to focus. And your cognitive function, executive function is going to be affected as a result. And that's literally just like a tiny percentage of dehydration. So it's better to almost like have a little bit more water than you go to the toilet more often. Yes. have the six glasses of water or seven glasses of water a day as opposed to only have two because you're going to feel the brain is going to work much better.

35:08Is there a problem with me instead of having seven glasses throughout the day, having two big drinking sessions of water? There's going to be a... Like flooding the system. Yeah. Is that a problem? I don't think it's a problem. I'd rather you do that than not drink the water. Sure. It probably would be better if you had less kind of like water binges, so to speak. Yes. Because the likelihood of that kind of doing the right thing is probably going to be processed down your gastrointestinal system really quickly. It's going to go into your kidneys and it's going to make you want to pee quite quickly.

35:49Yeah. As opposed to a little bit throughout the day. Okay. That's probably going to be better. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. So fruits good. Veg different. Veg, kind of like for the same reason. So you're having water and you're having fiber, both have polyphenols, these antioxidant, anti-inflammatory molecules that work directly on the body, but they also work through the gut microbiome, through the microbes in your gut that will chomp at the polyphenols, will make them more available to the human body. and those pre-digested polyphenols will calm down the inflammation that might be in excess at any given point.

36:34And of course, you're going to have micronutrients, you're going to have minerals, you're going to have vitamins and so on. So there's going to be a number of different things in there. Same things, seeds and nuts. So you have the other advantage of fats in there. so you have omegas you know a balance of omega-6 omega-3 if you have like pressed oils like olive oil for example it will have some other omegas in there that we talk a little bit less about and some other fats that are you know monosaturated fats and so on that are also beneficial for the body for different reasons so i think there's just so much in every of those plant foods that is going to be beneficial for the body and it's not that i'm against animal foods you know i fish for example sure because i have this thing that i don't eat meat but i marine things so i like you know things in water i eat but things on the earth i don't okay but i think it speaks to some of i know what you say in the book which is like we've got all these quote unquote rules and we put all this pressure on ourselves and we shouldn't eat this and we should eat that and we have to be like this and it's okay like it's okay not to be perfect yeah yeah and also there's no concept of perfection in my book yeah something that i wanted to go completely away from from my own lived experience of disordered eating i didn't want to have another a rule to you know tick the box and say oh this is the way to eat or yeah you know I don't give grams I don't give I give a few recipes just as loose ideas so people who want like the loose ideas so they can put them together they have a few in there I don't go into how you make them and you know blah blah blah it's kind of like that's another book for another time I may not write it because I've never followed that recipe in my whole life because I end up changing it completely as the kind of brain that I have you know I end up doing something else completely yeah and just make people feel that every choice will have something beneficial even if it's not obvious yeah and for me again people who might think but what about those processed foods that I have or processed meals or beige foods that I feel very safe with because I'm autistic and or I have ADHD and I have my safe foods.

38:59You know, it's a very neurodivergent thing. I don't think you can split it between autism, ADHD. Some foods can make you feel instantly safe, but they happen to be foods that maybe are not trendy at the moment. It's like oats. Some people, oh my God, oats, the glycemic index on oats. Don't do that. Have TEF instead of something that is like 10 times more expensive and it comes in a little pouch like that and it's like 15 quid. And I'm thinking oats are like a pound in little. Porridge is freaking great. And it's got all these benefits. It's got beta-glucans. Rather than actually analyze every single thing that is going to be good for you in every single ingredient, which is very much the food as medicine movement.

39:44Yes. Which I think has some value. But it can also promote a fact-up way of thinking. Yeah. Which is everything that I'm having needs to have some therapeutic value. and if it doesn't or if it's classified as bad for me, I'm killing myself with that. So I must avoid it altogether. And I wanted to go away from all of that altogether and promote a way of eating that literally the whole book, I keep going through little mantras. So there will be a chapter about a particular part of the brain or something and I explain why that might be relevant to somebody with ADHD. and then I give you a little mantra to repeat or like a little affirmation or like a little exercise or maybe like a journal impromptu.

40:32So it's very practical. It's the kind of book that you want ideally in paper, if you can get it in paper and like get different color pens and highlighters and make it into a complete kind of messy workbook. Why does our tummy rumble? and what is mine has been rumbling yeah that's right yeah how does it make that noise it tends to be because it needs food or it's had food and it's passing through or you haven't had enough food so this morning i've not been feeling really well for a few weeks i've had this like lingering colds and so i've been eating more than my body needs and i've been fine with that and because of my programming i've been struggling not to weigh myself okay because you know i'm down to a weight that i feel more comfortable with i don't want to put on weight but equally i don't want to be stressed by that because i have 30 years of that shit yeah that i've kind of like little by little started to come out of so now that i'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in that kind of like you know disordered eating life i don't want to go back to thinking oh my god i've put on two kilos okay well fine you've been feeling like shit for the last two months but were you listening to your body that and knowing that you're ill is that why you've consciously decided to eat more yeah i need things that maybe required less effort even though i could make them at home because i'm quite resourceful like my mom i mentioned my mom in the book as well my mom's pantry and how she's like very adhd my mom bless that she's got dementia at the moment and like you You know, she listened to this and could understand it.

42:14She'll probably forget it five minutes later. But she's always been an inspiration for me in terms of like cooking. Very kind of, oh, I'll just put three things together and make a delicious meal. No recipes, no measuring. So I'm pretty much like that. Like, you know, we had some friends at the weekend staying with us. And my other half was asking me two weeks in advance, what are we going to give Anna and Nick for dinner? And I'm thinking, are you kidding me? I don't know what's going to happen in my life in the next 10 minutes. I'm not going to be planning a meal in two weeks' time. That's me.

42:46So I can make stuff that would come in a pot. But equally, if I go to the supermarket and I get, you know, teriyaki, blah, blah, blah, with like three different types of beans and whatever, and it's probably got something slightly, if you want it to be super purist, that I would not have in a meal. But rather than hyper-analyze everything, I'm thinking, right, it's got fiber. It's going to be tasty. I'm going to put it in a pot and put it in the microwave, which I never had a microwave until about five, six years ago. Because I was kind of like, oh my God, a microwave is going to kill me. I cannot have it in my house at all.

43:25I cannot use it. I just don't even want to have one. So now I love the microwave now and the air fryer and all of that. I'm thinking comfort and ease. So I go and I get that. And also they have like two for five pounds or whatever. and I'm thinking, it's good value. I'm going to have a nice meal out of that. And I don't need to worry about it. And maybe when I'm feeling better, I'll want to replicate that my own version and I'll do the individual ingredients and make my own, you know, whatever, chili non-corner with like 10 ingredients and things. Oh, I'm being so virtuous. But I've gone through the space of time through the spell that I didn't have a lot of cognitive capacity to do that.

44:08and I'm having to respect what my body is saying. So going back to why Tommy rumbles, so I've had less food this morning, which is how I normally work. I don't have like a full breakfast. I have like a bit of smoked salmon or protein shake with a banana or something quick. And also because of my meds, they work better with protein in the morning. So I normally start the day with like some whey powder, and something very small just to have a good amount of protein from the word go. So this morning I had that anyway with my mitts, but I also had some smoked salmon before I left the house and a banana.

44:50It's probably not enough right now because it's kind of like lunchtime. Yes. And my body's saying, ooh, are you going to give me some soup soon or something? Okay. And the juices are flowing through. So they're like pockets of wind, basically. There's a little bit of food going through the tubes. and in between the food there's like a little bit of wind and it's moving about and that's making the kind of like rumbling noise. So there's not enough food in your system. Yeah. That's what it is. Because my tummy's rumbling as well. Yeah, yeah. So it's air. It's air. It's literally air. It could be air that you've eaten, that you've basically just eaten the air as you were chewing as well.

45:32So it's not necessarily just that it's a lack of food although in most cases when it's rumbling it's just telling you you need to eat yeah when there's so much information out there when there's so much rubbish on social media when there's algorithms wanting us to go down rabbit holes how much can we just like i know there's that phrase in the trust your gut but like am i right in thinking i should just try and listen to my body i think so So, yeah, because we don't do it enough. If you rewind like 200 ,000 years when we were roaming about and foraging for foods and hunting and whatever else, you had to be acutely aware of what your body was telling you because you were much more tuned to hunger cues, to cold, to day and night cues because you didn't have the distraction or the luxury of turning on a light.

46:26Yeah. You know, you may have been able to do a fire. you know, like campfire. But when it was nighttime, it was nighttime. And you had to start kind of like winding down towards your biology knew that it had to wind down your cortisol and wind up the melatonin. And you were more attuned with your biology than we are today. Yeah. So I think we've lost a lot of that. I was talking about the value of community thing initially. And this is another thing that I feel is really important to go back to our bodies. and particularly for neurodivergent people because it's really tempting when we get diagnosed to just think that neurodivergence happens from the neck up and you literally just like look social media, you look at big influencers talking about ADHD, you know, I'm talking people who have like millions of followers and it's like ADHD or autism or whatever and they're talking about parts of the brain and executive function and it's all dopamine.

47:26And I'm thinking, okay, so it's very pocket-y. I'm just going to show you this fancy illustration of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. Yes. Why do we process visual information differently to sound? And they show you the auditory cortex and the occipital lobe. And it looks really fancy. And you think, oh, wow, my ADHD is making those parts of the brain work differently. And it might do. But it's also making your body work differently in the sense that your gut has got so many cells that are in your brain as well. So the nervous system around the gut called the enteric nervous system has got twice as many glial cells as the whole of the spinal cord.

48:14The glial cells are immune cells, but they also are key for relaying information about the safety of a situation because they are part of that immune nervous interaction. They need to be alert to something going wrong. So they are sending signals to the brain as to does something need to happen? Does the immune system need to be more active or less active because you've perceived a threat that could be a real threat or something that you're kind of picking up from the surroundings? So if you get more attuned to how your body feels and you really know, like for example for me has been a process of attunement or reattunement to where I'm really hungry because what I know that happened to me for many years is that my unprocessed trauma from childhood was making me binge and binge not only with food but I had like sex binges you know from early on you know drug binges sure food binges yep it was basically a way to feel that i belonged that i was seen yeah that i had comfort and for different reasons in different environments sure we're going to be extremely sensitive to what goes on inside to how our nervous system has developed from before we were born, even, you know, from when we were being carried by our mom.

49:47Yeah. From transgenerational situations that we know as well. And obviously, there's the genetics and everything else. Sure. But also from our environment. And when we, you know, one of the things that we do talk about a lot is regulation and co-regulation. We're always co-regulating. now we're co-regulating picking up safety from you you're picking up Miguel is so cute you know I'm doubting whether I'm straight at this moment you know what I mean because it's just gorgeous my wife's listening to this bit you know what I mean we're picking up yeah constant feedback right exactly and for a brain that is kind of like a hundred percent able to regulate things make sense not all the time and it's not going to be a matter of being perfect or perfection in by any means but they make kind of sense yeah and there's kind of like a hidden rule book in a way that you can tick the boxes and say this makes sense by my rule book yep i'm going to do x now for the neurodivergent brain and nervous system the rule book is kind of like a a little bit scatty.

51:00It's going to be like completely chock-a-block in some pages and some pages are going to be blank. It's going to be very kind of like ADHD. Some pages are going to be very autistic and like super detailed with like, you know, like a bullet journal with like drawings and everything else. And then you're going to have two chapters that are empty because like you didn't manage to do them. That's like, you know, ADHD. And they're going to be like, you know, spelling mistakes because he's dyslexic as well and all the rest of it. It's just going to be a bit of shouting as well and like ticks because he's got a bit of Tourette's as well.

51:29mixed in there's going to be all sorts of things going on in there and and then you're unable to process what your eyes are telling you what your auditory cortex is picking up through your ears what your nervous system is actually picking up in terms of a temperature around you yeah sensory you know is the chair comfortable sure do i feel safe in the chair is this moving a little bit and is doing my head you know you know all of this kind of stuff and it just gets overwhelmed and you're going to the freeze response you do nothing or you're going to have it's a stress response anyway you're going to react with a stress response you're going to react with stress with fight with flight you're going to you want to flee the situation yep you're going to completely phone and say i'm gonna have the gluten you know i maybe know that it doesn't really agree with me but i don't want to be the funny one in the group and say oh i'm gluten free yeah i'm gonna have the noodles and then deal with the situation later because I don't want to be like, you know, the one sticking out.

52:31Or you're going to do nothing. You're going to freeze. There's all of this. And it can be glitchy as well. Sometimes it can be hypersensitive and you overreact. You could be a bit angry or you can kind of have a meltdown or, you know, all these kinds of like flavors of reactions that we have. And all of those things are just data. Your body is just expressing itself and when you stop thinking of those as faults and just understanding that the fidgeting the reactions that you have the anger your body and your brain working together and trying to regulate how you feel all the time yeah because your brain and your nervous system is always asking itself am i safe here okay am i safe here like constantly and is that its primary thing safety pretty much because if you go back to you know again rewind 200 000 years and you you're in a tribe and you want to feed the tribe and you know and to promote a healthy environment for the tribe to to flourish yeah you're going to think safety where do you camp where what cave do you go into where do you feel that you can light the fire where do you think that it's going to be plenty of food but not too difficult to get because there are too many lions or too many other predators or dodgy terrain to walk on with like you know with no shoes on or it's pretty much all going to be at the very basic level it's going to be about feeling safe yes and i think the brain develops and the nervous system develops on on that assumption of safety that is never going to be absolutely perfect all the time.

54:18Sure, sure, sure. And of course, we are able to withstand stuff as we are developing. But if there's been a lack of safety for whatever reason, for neglect, for bullying, for abuse, for assault, for trauma with capital T, trauma with little T, it could be that tiny little bits of trauma all your life. It could be that you're the only black person in a community and you feel that, you know, you always got a bit of like funny looks. Sure. It could be you're the only gay person in the community. You're the only lesbian. You're the only trans person. And you didn't even know you were trans at the time.

54:54Yes. You know, there could be so many. That build up. It's not just, oh, Miguel just talking shit on like the, you know, the hidden 20. There's so much science behind this. It's science of micro stresses, science of micro aggressions in marginalized populations. or like, you know, those people at the, at the edges of that bell, basically what most people are at the top and, you know, around the middle and then you have the edges. And you do feel the pressure to, to be more normal in inverted commas. And all of that. Because it's quote unquote easier, right? It's safe. Yeah. It's safer to just be less camp, even if you're gay, because you're going to get less looks.

55:40Yes. So even if you wanted to wear the pink shirt and like, you know, whatever, the flowery outfit, that's what your body really wants to wear the leery outfit. Yeah. But you think, I'm going to get the looks and maybe I don't feel so comfortable in my body. So I feel like, you know, I feel like hiding. Or, you know, I'm going to wear the extra size as opposed to like the one that is a little bit tighter because I feel safer kind of like hiding behind that. Yeah. Or I'm going to wear a baggy jumper. Yes. You know, there's all this concept. If you drill down to the basic stuff, it's always going to be kind of like comfort safety.

56:16What have you learned works for regulating your nervous system? A lot of it is basic stuff that is just so simple that you think it's not going to work. I'm not going to bother. Okay. Simple is best. Yeah. So things that I also have seen people that I really respect do in environments where people have extreme sensitivities. So, for example, some work that I do with a group of people who have struggled with suicide from 18 to 30 year olds. and they work with some great therapists and they do a bit of dialectical behavioral therapy, which is a way to work in a group that is very practical. It doesn't feel like you're being therapized.

57:07Okay. And there are really cool things that you can do if you feel like you're panicking. And I have had panic attacks in the past as well and anxiety and just looking for five things that are around. So if I feel like I'm panicking, I can see already three, I can see five circles in there. I could go a little bit more granular and say, I'm going to look for five green things. So there's a green chair, the green table, another green table. Maybe I don't allow myself to repeat the same item. So there's a green sticker down there. There's like a greenish bag there. So you're getting yourself out of your head.

57:48Okay. We tend to be a lot in the head. Yes. and sometimes I see myself as being almost like a head on legs. I feel like a walking consciousness. I know what you mean. It's like you're so much into your own head. That is like the weight of it. And then you disconnect from the body. Yeah. And because I'm not a natural athlete, people rave about exercise. Oh, I've been transformed by, I don't wake up in the morning and I feel like running 5K. It's not me. but also i do realize that when i do movement of some kind i feel better so integrating movement integrating awareness of those things like quick things like you know green microphone okay i'm getting out of this high yeah find five things breathing before eating because if you just spend 10 seconds, 10 seconds just breathing.

58:46And particularly if you do like an exhalation that is a little bit longer than the inhalation. So you just inhale like normal and then exhale a little bit longer. It doesn't need to be twice as long. It could be just a couple of seconds. It could be a heartbeat longer, you know. That one little bit longer is sending a message to the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system saying, come on you need to wake up and that's the rest calm digest regenerate part of the nervous system is the one that's going to drive anti-inflammation as opposed to pro-inflammation is the one that's going to put you in a safe space is the one that's going to make you feel safe in your body so when you do that as opposed to rush to the fridge when you're stressed and you may not be hungry you're trying to regulate by eating which is what I did for many years like you know I regulated by you know taking drugs and I regulated by having sex like every five minutes was I just horny all the time maybe that was the narrative I was telling myself that's a way that you can explain it then yeah exactly but it was very much a regulation thing I was kind of like trying to feel something.

1:00:08Yes. And with food, it's even easier because you don't even need to go on Grindr to like find food. You can just go on like, you know, Uber Eats, you know, or just pop to your local supermarket. Yes. It's there or your corner shop. Yeah. And there's just such an overabundance of food. It's quite easy to just like think, okay, I'm just going to eat the wrong thing in inverted commas. I'm going to eat too much or whatever. so just centering yourself grounding yourself even just a few seconds is one of the again just so simple but really really effective Miguel I felt this last time like we're just scratching the surface and there's so much like behind and underneath all of this stuff that we're only getting to really jump on little bits of it's great to see you again and you're part of the hidden 20 family and so seeing that you've released a book and you've written a book and it's already a freaking bestseller in spain it's available on pre-order now in the uk go and get it we're really proud of you and thank you for bringing so much of you as well as your expertise I think that you are a human it makes you not just this super brain expert and I think that's what people in this community respond to rather than someone talking down to them I think you talk about community that's really important so thanks so much coming back on and sharing your brain with Last question.

1:01:46I've got a second badge for you, Miguel. Who would you like to give it to? I'm going to give it to my husband. Why? Because he's actually come around a lot through my journey of being diagnosed. Initially, he was all like, of course, it's your ADHD. Of course, it's your autism. Everything is your ADHD and everything is your autism. to now respecting my rhythms a lot more. And that's something that I talk about in the book as well, that we all have different rhythms and sometimes you feel like life is a struggle because you're fighting against them. Yes. And the more you actually go with your natural rhythms, which might be, you know, you go to bed earlier or later or you are hungry at particular times of the day or you want to be more social or less social, you know so many things the more you are aware of those rhythms and you respect them the happier you're going to be inside because it's going to be less friction yep and there was a lot more friction before my diagnosis than there is now and that's all you can ask for yeah and there was that process of getting to know what the diagnosis meant is this going to be a weird thing that i've I've got a husband who's like autistic now at like, you know, late 40s and ADHD.

1:03:07Is he a nutter? He's like, you know, all of this kind of stuff to actually being quite respectful of that. So I think he deserves the badge. I think he does. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming back. Thank you for having me. I really, really enjoyed it. Best of luck with the book. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you.

1:03:31That's it for today's episode of The Hidden 20%. But just before you go, a favor. The Hidden 20 % is a charity and we do this to bring you the truth, the latest research and the real stories that matter. So if this episode spoke to you, then please hit subscribe. And if you can, donate via the link below. Finally, a big shout out to you all for listening and our brilliant team who make this all happen. Phoebe, Charlie, Kristen, James, John and the guys at TYX Studios we'll see you next time