Okay. Monica, welcome. Hi, Henry. How are you going? Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Great. And the the the the hassles are are providing lots of content. Obviously, Jonathan, earlier, now you said, you so much. It's wonderful. Both of you got incredibly interesting things to talk about, which is why we're keen to Oh, thank you. To to have you involved. You're doing section on the inner pharmacy. I'll bring your slides up and hand over to you now. Okay.

So the way I like to start, I wanna start off with a question. And this is for people that have ADHD or, you know, parents of kids with ADHD. If you had to define ADHD, then what would you say? This is the first question I ask my clients when I meet them. So they'll often say, oh, it feels like there's no bees buzzing in your head or there's neon lights flashing in your head and you have to look at the lights. And this one particular person said she had bees and neon lights at the same time. So I can only imagine how distracting that would be. Some people say it's like walking around with your head in the in the clouds or you feel so overwhelmed. You just feel completely blank. So that's how it feels.

But that's not a great definition of what ADHD is. So by the time we finish tonight, I want everyone to have a really good working definition of ADHD as well. So as Henry said, my topic is about how do we prescribe and dispense from our own internal pharmacy. And it's really about understanding the brain chemistry and hormones to support ADHD and great executive functioning. So the objectives of this session is to describe some basic body and brain chemistry and get an understanding of how they work. Explore how to dispense from this in this pharmacy for free and seven strategies that make note for making important connections as well. So before we go any further, we're gonna be on this slide for maybe about five minutes. I was.

Years ago, I was trying to explain ADHD to a deputy principal of a school and I was saying, well, this is the behaviors, but under there is 88 you know, the executive functions and then this brain chemistry. And I thought, oh, it's really a little bit like a volcano. So we're gonna go through the different layers of ADHD to find out where this thing called executive function lives if you don't already know. So at the top of the volcano, this is the stuff that either people with ADHD feel when they have ADHD or people around them will observe about them. And ADHD is very much behavior based diagnosis. So there might be those frequent arguments, miscommunication, being easily distracted.

Maybe focusing on the wrong things. There's a lot of procrastination and perfectionism at the same time. There can be lots of poor planning and missed appointments, catastrophizing or exaggerating. And I won't go through all of them, but there's just a little handful of them. And when these things happen all the time, it's what psychology would call as impairing. But I prefer to say the word impactful. I like to try and keep my language as positive as possible because there's lots of positive attributes of that ADHD as well. But for the moment, we're gonna look at the tricky stuff. And when these behaviors happen all the time, well, they become impairing of the focus, relationships, productivity.

Managing time, emotions and memory. And these are really challenging behaviors. So when typically this happens, someone will go to their general practitioner, that's usually the first port of call or a psychologist. And to get an ADHD diagnosis, they will diagnose these core symptoms of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. But interestingly enough, you'll see a couple of other little volcanoes pop up at the same time. So I wanna go back to ADHD though. When these behaviors become impactful, they're impairing, people might become anxious or even despondent or feel demoralized or had one academic say, I'm disheartened. And you know what? That's a normal response to running late, upsetting your friends, not handing.

Uni work in a time and having to do another year at school or college. But that being anxious or despondent about those ADHD behaviours is a normal response. And what happens sometimes is that people will have a missed diagnosis of ADHD and they'll be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder instead. So you'll see these two little volcanoes and each little volcano, one on the left represents the coexisting mood conditions and that is where generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, autism spectrum, oppositional defiance, that's where they live. And then there's another volcano on the other side I'll get to in a minute. But there's little saying in ADHD treatment that ADHD rarely travels alone.

So yes, it can make you feel anxious. You may also have general anxiety disorder. I wanna talk about a little story that I had happened upon. I work for a psychiatrist sometimes and I do as adult intake sessions. And this lady came in for an assessment for ADHD and she said, you know what, I've been on three lots of antidepressants. I've had seen four different GPs. The chaos is still there, but I just don't care about it anymore. And that really highlighted to me that, oh, you know, there we need to be able to differentiate between what is anxiousness because of the, you know, traits of ADHD and what's generalized anxiety disorder. Because the anti anxiety medications and the antidepressants that she was on don't treat ADHD.

So we need to be aware of what are the behaviors, what's ADHD and what is anxiety and depression and they can travel together. I'm sure probably people have said that about eighty percent of people with ADHD will have at least one co coexisting condition. About sixty percent of people have two or more coexisting conditions. So we have to be aware of, you know, these these behaviors across people's experience. So on the other side, the other volcano is about the coexisting academic and we need to be aware of these as well. So there are a lot of people or a lot of kids and adults with ADHD might also have a condition called dyslexia, which is challenges processing symbols and numbers. And there's another one called dysgraphia.

And that's about processing language. We might see it in kids with really messy handwriting and that's again processing language. We might see it in all the students and learn and people learning. They're not being able to get message out of their head and they might sit in front of a blank screen. They just can't get the message out. That's dysgraphia. That's processing language. There's another one called dyscalculia, which is the learning disability with maths. Coming back to volcano, ADHD can certainly impact learning. So being, you know, chucked out of class because the person's too chatty, they're the class clown. I'm sure we've got a few class clowns here.

It might be about not handing work in, forgetting to do work, forgetting to take work, you know, all those sorts of things that can happen with ADHD. On the other side of the volcano is this, you know, this behavior of self medicating. I talk about people with ADHD might eat too much, they might drink too much, drink to excess, they might smoke or vape too much or that you know, I also put screen time in here as well. So too much screen time. These types of behaviors talk to you know, really talk about an under stimulated brain. And if the brain doesn't print, you know, able to be stimulated itself, it'll seek it from somewhere else. And that's really important notion.

So underneath here, as we dig a little bit deeper is the layer of executive function. Now I really like using doctor Russell Barkley's theory of executive function and Barkley talks about seven executive functions. I divide them into four areas so my people can remember them better but we get to all seven. So the first one I wanna talk about, the first of the executive functions I wanna talk about is self awareness. Without self awareness and attention, the rest kind of don't matter. So there's, you know, attention comes in three layers. There's people with ADHD might be easily distracted.

They might alternatively hyper focus on things and they might not be able to shift their attention when they need to, which is what makes transitions difficult. Then we might go to inhibition on that volcano there. So the inhibition is about motor inhibition. So that's that fidgeting not being able to sit still, wanting to get up and do things. And then there's cognitive inhibition and that is making the wrong decision, making impulsive decisions. So it might be speeding. It might be about over overspending, you know, too much online shopping. It might be about gambling. It might be about needing to do, you know, assessment piece for work or for for uni.

But accidentally watching a whole series of friends instead instead, you know, on Netflix instead of doing their assessment. Not being able to cognitively make a good decision in the moment. And then the third one layer of inhibition is actually verbal inhibition. I'd like to talk about people with ADHD might take a lot of words to answer a simple question. They go off on tangents. They might blurt things out. They might say the wrong things. They might overshare. So as you can see, we've already ticked off in attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity with our four executive functionaries.

We haven't even got to working memory or emotions as yet. And Russell Barkley, I think says it the best. He says, to look at ADHD is just being in, you know, easily distracted or impulsive is to trivialize the impact of ADHD. There's a lot more going on than that. So I wanna continue again with, you know, just having a quick overview of working memory. I like to talk about it's the memory that we're using while we're working. It's that right now memory. And it's the only memory involved in our future success and it encompasses time management and planning and problem solving.

And then there's emotions and motivation is the last area. And whereas something like depression is a is a mood disorder, people are sad when they wake up, they're they're sad at the party, they can't get motivated. With ADHD, this they can be sad or they could be angry, but you know, it's often the emotion is right, but the volume is wrong. So I'm gonna say that again. With ADHD, the emotions can be right, but the volume is wrong. Whether that's being happiness or enthusiasm or interest in something or someone gives you feedback, but you take it as criticism. It could be about anger. It could be being, you know, more stressed.

You know, the the volume is often out of control and and motivation as well. Sometimes you could be started, you know, start five things and be really motivated. Or sometimes it's really hard to get motivated at all. That volume control can be wrong. So there are the seven executive functions in a nutshell. I wanna move down a little bit further and underneath the these executive functions is the brain chemistry and the brain networks and the hormones and the neurotransmitters. So, you know, things like medication can be really, really helpful, but diet, sleep, exercise, and stress management are also key for impacting brain chemistry. And I tell you, there's nothing more changes.

Brain chemistry more quickly than than being under stress or pressure. So we get this is where that volcano gets really interesting at at at the basis that brain chemistry. If the brain chemistry is not right, that impacts the executive functioning. If the executive functions aren't working, this is why these behaviors here happen. So if I see any of these behaviors here happening, I know there's something in the executive functions that isn't supported. And unfortunately, the fallout from that can be guilt or shame or negative self talk or low self esteem or lots and lots of frustration.

So that's why it's really important to figure out, well, where's the brain chemistry? How does it impact my executive function and and the behaviors that everyone sees at the top? So my working definition of ADHD that I think is, you know, is quite a good one is that ADHD is challenges with self regulation and it's self regulation of these executive functions here. So this is just a little tool I've put together so my my people can understand ADHD and executive functions better. So I call this the framework. So.

So when we think executive functions, I want people to be able to have a really good understanding of that as well. And it can be simply thought of as the the cognitive. And anytime we see the word cognitive, it's just about thinking. So it's the thinking processes that guides our thoughts and our behaviors and they take place in the front part of our brain right there. So these processes guide our thoughts and behaviors. It's like having a little mental toolkit for moving forward and it it's about heading towards what's next. It's about reaching our goals. So this is where I wanna get into the neuroscience and and the biology. So both are important.

We need to understand that the body and the brain are very much connected and they influence each other. So you're probably familiar with the sympathetic response which is that fight or flight response which is this thing that we use for survival. And the opposite of that is the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the rest and digest and the calming part of the nervous system. These are both at play and they're both in opposition to each other. So for example, when we recognize something that we find fearful like an angry boss or an angry spouse or or feel in under pressure, there's a there's a little thing called the amygdala in our brain right in the middle of the limbic system that's triggered. The.

Amygdala looks for changes in the environment and it alerts the nervous system. So what happens then is stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol is is found above our kidneys and it can activate the flight of light response in the cardiac system. So in the cardiac system, increases our heart rate, our blood pressure and respiratory rate as well. So when the threat passes, we have this thing called top down regulations. Our executive functions are able to reason with our body and say, hey, it wasn't an intruder breaking in. My boss isn't really that mad with me. Everything's okay. I'm going to survive. So we literally.

Breathe a sigh of relief. I think we've probably all been in those situations where we've been able to breathe a sigh of relief. And that's that parasympathetic nervous system kicking back in. What generally happens is slowly our heart returns to to more normal. It takes a while, but eventually our heart rate will come back down again. And then breathing is really important as well. We're going to breathe anyway. We breathe when we're asleep. We breathe when we're walking the dog. We don't even realize it. But we also have control of our breathing. That's something I think that a lot of people don't realize. They have control over their breathing which can impact this sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So.

Really, it's all about making connections. The thing about ADHD, it's not a knowledge deficit, but it is a performance deficit. So it's always about the point of performance. We know we have reports to write. We know we have assessments to do. We know we have to pick kids up at the right time. All of the things that we know, but they don't always happen. So what we need to do is connect the knowing part of our brain to the doing. And this is my take on it. How do we do connect knowing and doing? We have to know about the resources, medications, sleep, exercise, for example. Understanding those executive functions gives us the framework. It helps us engineer the environment, you know, at that point of performance.

And for me, I think mindfulness is the next most important thing. I honestly believe next to medication, mindfulness is the next most important tool in the toolkit. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. So what does your internal pharmacy look like? Some people have a very old fashioned pharmacy. There's lots of stigma in there, bit of judgment. They haven't got any, you know, any new processes going. Some people have a very cluttered internal pharmacy. They've got, you know, they're researching lots of things. They're trying lots of different types of strategies. But what I would like everyone to leave tonight with which is a nice, clear, calm pharmacy with, you know, really up to date knowledge.

So let's dig into the the chemicals now. Just a quick revision. So too often I hear people say that dopamine is the woohoo chemical. It's just about reward. It's more than that. It's also about anticipation. It's about moving forward. And dopamine is what we call the neuromodulator and it allows the passage of signals through the nervous system. It's involved not only in reward, but also in movement. It's involved in emotions and memory and the reward mechanism. A couple of years ago now, I heard this fellow called Doctor. Andrew Huberman, which I'm a huge fan of. The very first he's a neuroscientist. And the very first thing I heard him say was dopamine.

Doesn't care about the deeper meaning. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting particularly for my clients. And he said, it really just wants more dopamine. So that makes a lot of sense. So when we have our kids that we might think, well, you know, they can't have ADHD because they're able to concentrate on, you know, their their fortnight for, you know, two hours. They're getting lots of dopamine, which gives them lots of focus and lots of reward, which impacts.

Their emotions. They're really happy to do it. So anything that's contrasting to that that's not as interesting, the dopamine won't follow. Dopamine doesn't care that they really should be having dinner with the family. It just wants more dopamine. So that's why shifting attention can be really, really difficult for some people with ADHD. And it's really about that pursuit and it's about anticipation of things beyond our skin which is opposite to serotonin. So I'm gonna go quickly through what other major neurochemicals and hormones are at play. I'm gonna start with adrenaline and it's also called epinephrine as well. And adrenaline is responsible for the fight or flight response. It allows more.

Blood flow to the muscles and heart and lungs and it's only released in stress. So I'm gonna dig a little bit deeper now. We're gonna talk about noradrenaline or norepinephrine. It's consistently circulating at low level. It's always there, but it responds to stress and it increases our heart rate and our blood pressure. It can impact mood, regulation, the ability to concentrate. It's there for arousal. I think it's really, you know, very much about the shoot as well. Then it's cortisol. So cortisol often gets a bad rap. People think that it's just the stress chemical.

But we actually it's actually responsible for alertness and we need it in the morning. We have most cortisol response in the morning when we're trying to wake up. It works in opposition to melatonin. So we need a certain amount of cortisol to wake up in the morning. We don't need it to be flooded through the day unnecessarily. So it's released to increase alertness when we perceive danger and it goes down when the danger subsides as well. So another brain some more brain chemistry is about brain derived neurotropic factor. Hence, it's a protein produced inside nerve cells when active. So it stimulates and encourages new new brain cell growth and can produce new brain cells which means more connections. So and more synapses.

So I heard this little saying years ago and I love it. It says, we learn by making connections. So if we can have new brain cell activity, we can we can learn more. We also learn more by, you know, connecting with other people in our community, but we learn by making connections. And then caffeine. It caffeine isn't a naturally occurring chemical, but it is a molecule and it's significant when when we ingest it because it impacts the absorption of other neurochemicals. So we're gonna go into a bit of serotonin now. And this is a naturally occurring substance. It's a neurotransmitter and it carries signals between cells. It helps with mood regulation, memory, and sleep. And then oxytocin, it's a hormone and a neurotransmitter.

It's involved in bonding, empathy, trust, sexual activity, relationships and building it. When a woman has a child, their body is absolutely flooded with oxytocin. And I can tell you as a mom, that minute that child is born, you would die for that child. This that you have this response that is quite fierce. And then it's useful in regulating emotional responses and positive communication. And then melatonin. So melatonin is a hormone in your brain that produces response to that darkness sleep wake circadian rhythm cycle. So we need melatonin to be secreted so that we can fall asleep at night. The flip side of that, in the morning, we have cortisol release so we can wake up.

So it's important to understand those two. So now, I want to dig a little bit deeper and go into these opposing forces. So things like serotonin and oxytocin, they're what leave them in a long frame as the here and now chemicals. So we get pleasure from this and sensation from serotonin and oxytocin are released. On the flip side, dopamine gives us pleasure from anticipation. In most circumstances, they counter each other. So when the here and now chemicals are activated, we experience the world around us and the dopamine is suppressed. When dopamine is activated, we wanna move to future possibilities. And the here and now chemicals, they're repressed a little bit. So why is this important? Can understanding.

This the body and brain chemicals impact our relationship? The answer is absolutely yes. And I think we all need to be really aware of them. Gonna do a little little case study. So here's Hamish. Hamish has had a really busy day in his job in the marketing department. In fact, the last meeting ran late. Now, he is running late for his football game. So he was supposed to be home at 05:00. It's 05:30. He's racing to get to the game. He is driven by dopamine and bit of epinephrine as well. Here is his partner, Mandy. She's had a lovely day. They had a retreat for the day and she did an hour of yoga and she did a lovely values exercise that she cannot wait to tell Hamish about the minute he gets home. So she is driven by serotonin.

And she's in the here and now. And there can be clashes when this biochemistry is in opposition. You know, what could go wrong? Well, Hamish doesn't know what he's coming in for and and Mandy isn't ready for him, you know, barreling into home wanting to get out to play football. She wants to connect. So now I wanna go into, well, what can influence the internal pharmacy? So what are the actions and what is the science behind it? So I talk about the big seven. So nutrition, hydration, sleep, exercise, breath work, mindfulness, self reflection, stress reduction, and connection. And what I love about this, these ones are free.

These don't even cost us anything aside from maybe if you have to buy buy a new pair of, you know, running shoes. These cost nothing. The only thing we really have to buy is is, you know, food and water. So I came up with the notion of we have an internal pharmacy, like a bit of a script pad. So I'm gonna go through. So these are the things that we need from the pharmacy, and these are the really, really simple actions that we can do to prescribe and dispense from it. And under here, everything is free. Most of these are freely available to us. So I'm gonna start off with nutrition. And you know what? Nutrition can be really challenging for people with ADHD. It's that planning, that challenge of the executive function of planning.

A lot of people will have a reduction in appetite when their medications are on board and then they might even binge eat when that when the effect of the medications worn off and they overeat. Overeating can be a challenge if, you know, particularly if it's not treated. They might make incorrect food choices at working memory. If I eat this now, it's not gonna be good for my future. They can get cravings. So we really need to make a good effort about those nutritional building blocks. Foods that are rich in magnesium and tyrosine. When people have ADHD medications, they're not dopamine or we can't eat dopamine, but we can eat foods that help with the processing and the building of or creation of dopamine within our bodies.

Things like chicken and almonds and avocados, my favorite on here is chocolate. Hooray. We can eat chocolate and knowing that it's helpful to produce our dopamine. Things like oatmeal, watermelon, wheat germ. There's a there's a really great YouTube video and I've just got a reference there that I would recommend if you wanna find out more about nutrition and and neurochemistry, I would highly recommend that. The next one is sleep and rest. And for some reason, we seem to think that sleep is one thing we can cut down on. And really, it's number two on the internal pharmacy prescription sheet. It's the next most important thing we can do. So when we when we sleep, it helps create new synapses or connections between brain cells.

As when we sleep, it actually has a process of detoxifying the brain and removing unwanted cell debris. It's called the glymphatic system and it works two to three times faster when we're asleep. So we need that. If we don't have that, that's why we wake up groggy the next day and it's harder to manage that decision making. It you know, so this sleep is one thing. We all know seven to nine hours is ideal. There's also another concept that of non sleep deep rest. It's called NSDR as well. So it might be what we call, you know, having a power nap. This week, I've decided I'm gonna not gonna call it a power nap anymore. I'm gonna call it my reboot.

And even if during the day, if I can have ten minutes just to shut my brain down, much like we would a computer that's been overloaded, it can make a huge difference. And some people say, oh, but I can't fall asleep for the day. You don't need to fall asleep in that in that power nap or the reboot. There's a thing called yoga nidra, and this is like a body scan. You're not meant to fall asleep. That it is, you know, a great strategy to have through the day. When we're walking around, our beta waves are activated. When we do something like yoga nidra, we go into alpha waves and that's that's when our brain slows down. We can be have a relaxed awareness without paying attention. And when we're in that state, more serotonin is released.

And that keeps us calm. So sleeping at night's really important. And even like a power nap or reboot to the day can can make a lot of difference. We don't want to be going anymore, I would say, than than forty minutes. We don't want to upset our circadian rhythms. You wouldn't have a two or three hour nap at, you know, 6PM in the afternoon or the evening. That would really wreck your sleep in the evening. But, you know, being able to be strategic with sleep and rebooting can be really, really helpful. Exercise. It's even better for our brain than it is for our body. So exercise can improve physical, cognitive, and emotional physical functioning. It impacts neurotransmitters. Physical exercise can increase levels of norepinephrine.

Dopamine and serotonin in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. And again, BDNF which is brain derived neurotropic factors, it's a protein that helps create new brain cells and new connections as well. And it can help with learning and behavior. Now breathing and breath work, like I said right at the top, we we probably don't appreciate how breathing and breath work is. Like I said, it's the first thing we do when we come into this world and it's the last thing we do before we leave. So it's really very important. It bookends our life. So if we can understand it better, you know, it's a great advantage for us. So understanding the body and brain chemistry.

When we when we go into that fight, flight or freeze response, our breathing is impacted. So here's a couple of great strategies. I particularly like I actually love box breathing and that's a little strategy where you breathe in for four seconds, you hold that for four seconds, you exhale for four seconds. And this is the funny bit. Then you hold that for four seconds and we're kind of not used to doing that holding thing. But it's really, really impactful. If we do four or five rounds of that, we can sort of have an immediate impact on our breathing and therefore our heart rate.

And the Navy SEALs, the US special forces, they use box breathing as a strategy. So it's good enough for them. There's science behind it. It's good enough for me. And I know it works. I have lots of clients that we've talked about it and they've used it in difficult situations and it has made a huge impact. There's another one called four seven eight breathing. I actually prefer box breathing because I just think the maths is easier. It can be used in stress. So these strategies can be used when they're stressed, when they're feeling stressed, but they can also be practiced outside of that stressful situation. So this is when if we can you know, what we practice grows stronger. So if we can practice.

Box breathing or four seven eight breathing outside of the situation when we do need to use it, we'll be a lot better at it. So I would typically encourage my people if they're gonna do a minute of mindfulness, you know, do some box breathing while you're doing that. So ultimately, when we can control our breathing, we can better control our thinking. So how do we do that on the whole? You know, as we walk around, we're often breathing as a society. We're probably breathing a lot more than what we need to. Some little simple things that we can do. We can slow the rate of our breathing, mindfully. We can do this by inhaling more deeply, taking notice of that. We can also do it by exhaling more deeply.

Or even longer exhales. So it's really simple strategies that we can do. Next one is mindfulness meditation. And like I said earlier, I really think that mindfulness is the next most important thing to medication. So the first one is being more conscious in the current moment. And mindfulness allows us to be object objective of our thoughts and not caught up in them. So particularly if we can be mindful of our thoughts in a nonjudgmental way, have some self compassion. So instead of being, you know, being triggered by something and saying, oh, I'm really anxious, we could take a step breath back and think, I'm noticing that I'm feeling fidgety. I'm I'm noticing that I'm my breathing is getting faster.

So, you know, it gives us it's it's the wedge for awareness. We wanna watch for negative self talk as well. Because words I always say to my clients, words have a lot of power whether we say them to ourselves or someone else says them to us. We wanna be watching for that response and seeing what our what our brain is telling us to do. And then when we're able to pay attention to our thoughts, our attentional networks and our emotional networks, they both can't be in charge. So if we're able to notice our emotions and turn on our attention, we can be more attentive in the moment and therefore make better decisions.

And one of my I have a friend about thirty years ago had told me this saying, and it was a bit of a sleeper for me. Took me a while to sort of really process it, but I understand it a lot better now. The saying goes, it's better to do nothing than to waste time. And if you're like me, you probably thought, well, isn't doing nothing wasting time? But it's not. We can get caught up in a lot of time wasting behaviors such as doom scrolling or gossiping or just, you know, drifting off into space or whatever whatever. But, you know, it's if we can have some time of bringing our attention to the current moment and and being very intentional doing nothing, we can, you know, have a much better experience moving forwards. Then human connection.

Doctor Ned Hallowell, he's a psychiatrist in The US. He talks about connection is the new vitamin c. When when we can, you know, stimulate oxytocin and serotonin that those are the here and now chemicals, it's we do something as simple as a six second hug, you know, of course, when it's appropriate. And that six second hug is known to produce more oxytocin which is that bonding chemical as well. So stress management and self reflection, also on the internal pharmacy, Something like journaling. So you might be writing about three new things like gratitude exercise. Noticing three new things every day that you're grateful for. Because when we learn to do that.

Our brain starts to get rewired for looking for positive things in the environment as opposed to defaulting to the negative and being on alert and being ready to go into fight or flight. So this is a great way of rewiring our brain. The next thing is planning. So I know a lot of people that I work with, they say I don't like to plan. They they they think that other people without ADHD don't plan. They actually do. Or they might say, I don't know how I'm gonna feel then. I had one lady say, don't like planning because my plans mock me. And you could see the emotions in that. And another guy said, oh, my plans that mock me, they judge me.

So, you know, what we wanna do is get better at it and we wanna you know, when we plan it, it takes a load off that working memory, which is one of those executive functions. So we wanna declutter that working memory. And when we when we do, you know, according when we're doing, you know, things like self reflection and goal setting, we're actually creating some optimism in our brain. And that stimulates dopamine, and that's about pursuit and moving forwards.

So I always say to my clients, it's much easier to hit a target if we can see it. If we have ideas in our brain of things we wanna do, we can't see it that we can't see inside our brain. But if we can externalize it, then we can see it and then we can hit that target and we can pursue it and can feel good about what we're doing. Now, it'd be remiss to not talk about how the impact of hormones in women is part of ADHD experience. So changes in hormones can impact women across the lifespan. So it can start at puberty, adolescence. It then changes in adulthood. It changes in pregnancy. It then changes again in perimenopause and menopause as well. So this is why, you know, for some women with ADHD, some weeks are better than others.

And this is because estrogen in the first couple of weeks is a cycle. It's plentiful and serotonin and dopamine travel with with estrogen. So the first two weeks are okay. Things tend to go okay. Then over the next two weeks, things tend to get a bit harder as the estrogen decreases, progesterone increases, which means that less estrogen means there's less dopamine available. I've had many And women say to me, look, my medications don't even feel like they're working right now. It can be that significant. Further to that, some years can be better than others as well. So estrogen levels dropped by about 65% after about the age of 51 when menopause occurs. So it starts gradually dropping over the next ten years.

And then that reduced estrogen again causes lower serotonin, lower dopamine availability to the brain. As I said before, less oestrogen equals less dopamine. It also equals less serotonin when there's less serotonin. Serotonin is a building block to melatonin which means that sleep is also interrupted, which is difficult. Now this next slide is called promoting and preserve preserving the neurochemistry. Now, I'm not gonna there's a lot of on this slide, so I'm just gonna go flick through this pretty quickly. But we have the ability to promote dopamine availability with, you know, taking medications, diet, sleep, exercise.

It's also about motivation. If we're motivated to do something, we set that the target, we can be optimistic about it, that creates dopamine availability. We can also on the flip side, preserve the dopamine that we have. So that might be simple things like shifting time, you know, doing some mindfulness, having a break from something, simplifying tasks, breaking them down. There's there's hundreds of things that we can do to preserve our natural occurring dopamine. The time management, mind mapping, monitoring, delegating. A lot of people with ADHD tend to be people places. I say, yes, I can do it. But then it's hard with the the plan how they're gonna do it and then they get stressed. It's setting alarms.

So as we start to to put this all together and to what wind down, I also wanna recap the the the significance of ADHD and executive functioning. So our executive functions, they're our cognitive or thinking processes. They take place primarily in the front part of our brain and our executive functions guide our thoughts and our behaviors. And our brain chemistry impacts the accessibility to our executive functions. So again, I just wanted to show you know, I have I've created a little script pad. I would love to see the script pad on every general practitioner, every psychiatrist, every psychologist, coach, OTs, anyone that talks to people about their mental health. As.

Non medical practitioners, we can't prescribe medications of course, but everyone can prescribe these really simple things from an internal pharmacy. So here they are in that rank order that I went through before. Now particularly nutrition hydration, when people are on ADHD medications, they need to ensure that they're well hydrated because they can be very dehydrating. It's regular well planned meals. Two two meals a day with three different colors of nutrients can make a huge difference. Early sun exposure, getting to sleep on time, exercise, breath work. And when I had this little my little model here, I leave a couple of extra boxes and that's not because I've run out of ideas. It's because I want people to put in.

Their own actions that might help them with their own body and brain chemistry or give them that joy. So a good example could be music or art or meeting up with friends. So there are lots of things that we can do. And I know I understand at the moment that an accessibility to medications is difficult in The UK. So in the absence of that, I would never ever say this is instead of always use, you know, go with what your your medical practitioner is saying. Medic ations as prescribed are really important. The absence of that or supplementary to that is our internal pharmacy. So in as we finish up, when we understand our body and brain chemistry, we have the keys to our internal pharmacy.

And I really love this quote from Deepak Chopra says, the brain is an instrument at the service of the mind. You are much more in charge of your biology than you think. So that's it for me. This is who we are. I'm happy to ask any questions answer any questions. And the sort of things that we do is work with individuals, families, high schools, schools, workplaces. As you know, John does couples. He worked with uni students. And I'm also talking at the US Conference. My topic there is how do I tell my kids I have ADHD, which is often a big conversation as well. So I thank you for that, Henry. And thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to talk about my internal pharmacy at this conference. No. I can't hear you.

Oh, I've done it again. Like, section so far. I had someone message me saying, Mike overspill. It caused me into wild panic, particularly, frankly, because I just gone to the loo. And I had a horrifying feeling that everyone had, well, accompanied me. They then said, no. It was me. I think they had another tab playing by mistake. So I'm like, oh my gosh. There's some wonderful comments coming in over the chats. Monica is just a brilliant coach, which is just nice just to see in this saying, I love this talk. I find it so overwhelming. It's just too good to be true. It's hard to imagine what control feels like.

What do you have to say to someone in that place? It's hard to imagine what control feels like. I mean, I I guess that could partly be when do they get a diagnosis of ADHD? I mean, sometimes if people have had an early diagnosis, they they might have some awareness of this. But the later diagnosis, you don't know what's been going on. So it's all been a little bit of a mystery. So that's where mindfulness is so important. I always say to my clients, whatever's happened in the past is good information. We wanna move ahead with the best neurochemistry, the best awareness, the best understanding of executive function. The only moment we have is one in the present.

This lovely question. Who is this lady? This is brilliant. I need to find this video later. Replied to Monica Hassall. Well, international coach. You coach people across the across the world and present on ADHD.

I listen to lot of podcasts when I do my walk in the morning. So a lot of good information. And.

The video you will be able to find later is gonna be on YouTube. So it will be there for you. I'm just checking the questions. If you've got any questions, do put them into our chat matrix. If you go through to the Q and A platform, go to globaladhd.com, you'll find there's a place to and I'm to put it into the chat. You'll find there's a place to add questions. Please do that. Right. So we've got some questions for you, which have been put there. Well done. Who did that? I do try and pull questions from the chat as we've just done. Oh, great. The chat what other people won't know We can't do two things at once. Know. It's very dangerous. What a lot of people don't know is that.

The chat that we see is consolidated between YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Oh, come And there's a lot going on. And so it can get lost in the stream. So do try and put it into the platform. And I do need to do a shout out for donations. Please consider donating. It's the only way we can do this. Monica's donating her time. None of our speakers are paid. They all do it out of love and wanting to help and change the world for people with ADHD. And Monica, we're very grateful for your time. You're and she's actually on holiday right now, but she, you know, Yes.

I'm happy to be yeah. Feel like my job is to curate good information to people. I don't do any clinical studies, but I like to curate good information for people. And hopefully, you know, make some models to make it easier to understand.

I mean, that's a good definition of good coaching right now. Like and just one just one testament to you that you've you've got that. Right. How much do you feel nature, particularly genetics, and nurture factor into neurochemistry in rewiring the brain? Is it possible for any everyone to benefit from these techniques, or do some people require additional support more time?

Well, it's kind of a big question, but I think what's good for people with ADHD is good for everyone anyway. So, I mean, there's obviously, you know, people if they're not brought up in a family that values good nutrition, that's going to impact your your habits. A lot of this is about habits as well. We know that ADHD is genetically there's an underpinned genetically. So there's going to be some part of this, but it is also about the environment. In fact, there's a there's a model that we didn't show tonight because we've changed everything, but then this is what impacts performance. There is what's happening in your brain impacts your performance, your ability to access your executive functions.

The environment, the people in your environment, but also your learned behaviors as well. So they can impact your performance. And remember, ADHD is about the point of performance. And that's why I talk about those executive functions being the framework. And Berkeley put this beautifully talks about, if we can't do it all in here, we have to engineer the environment. So and create strategies that help us get outside. That green time is really important for many many reasons. Exercise helps us breathe. If I go for a morning walk in the morning, I just don't go for a walk. I listen to podcasts so I'm learning. I'm taking pictures of beautiful things and sending them to my daughters and, you know, communicating that way. I'm doing.

I'm doing tricep dips. I'm I look crazy when I go for walk. You wouldn't come for a walk with me because you'd be stopping doing tricep dips and learning things. And I stop and do my mindfulness while I'm on my my walk as well. So I I do a whole lot of things. So it's it's about, you know, habit stacking as well. A lot of what we talk about is is this sort of good habits, but remembering to do them. That's where working memory comes into play and planning them and making time real. So that's prob I hope I've answered the question.

No. I think, like, you've got to now you you made the terrific mistake of mentioning podcasts and you've got an inevitable question, which is, are there something you recommend? Oh, absolutely.

ADHD Experts podcast that's created by oh, I can't remember the organization in The US, but it's it's fantastic. There is the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman that I spoke about, I heard him initially on not a neuroscience podcast at all. It's like a business podcast. But Andrew Huberman now has his own podcast series and it's based in it's neuroscience based and it is fantastic. He has actually done a couple of episodes on ADHD. He didn't really talk about executive functioning, but that's not his specialty. But he he has fantastic episodes on how to set up your environment focus. So Andrew Human podcast, I highly recommend that. ADHD experts, highly recommend that. Doc Brendan Mahan in The US.

John and I both been on his podcast. It's called ADHD Essentials. And I'm hoping to make my own podcast later this year. I've got to plan that. So, yeah, there's lots of good information out there. And it's free. What I love about podcast is that you don't have to sit down and read a whole book. You can get a lot of good information in about an hour. So, you know, and audio books too. That's another great way to to process information. Question is, can you share your slides? They're just coming from I'm not sure about that. Yeah. No. I'm Yes. Sorry. I'm trying to read the chat.

Yeah. No. You're happy to share your slide your your slides afterwards? Oh, yes. Yes. I'm happy to share my slides afterwards. Perfect. So we'll we'll put them off onto the we already have them. We always have a plan a b strategy on slides. Navy seals always have a plan b. And plan a being that people could share them with us because then they get to control them. And plan b being that I do it, and we all get to relive COVID days with next slide, please. And I have ADHD, so my attention wanders, and I'm not very good at it. And I think I have to be reminded. It's oh, it's not a good place. The I think that's it. We're out of time. It's you've been absolutely wonderful. I found that fascinating.

Al. Thank you so, so much. Well, thank you for having us. John and I love talking about ADHD. We can't stop talking about it, in fact. So yeah. But yeah. Thank you so much.

No. Well, thank you for yeah. You've broken your holiday to do this. You're an incredible inspiration and interest, and your idea of your focus on creating great knowledge is a wonderful thing. The comments coming through are absolutely lovely. So I've put some of them up, just had thank you for such a great talk. And I did put them up, so if you rewatch, it was actually partly for you. So when you rewatch, you'll be able to see all those wonderful comments coming in. That's it. Goodbye. Thank you so much. And that's our final link with Australia, I think. So thank you very much. And, yeah, hopefully, see you next time. Goodbye. Thank you.