Right. Next up, we've got Lucinda Miller, who I am absolutely thrilled to have here. She's an extraordinary person. She has founded she runs Naturedoc. She provides nutritional advice to neurodivergent children and adults. And that nutritional advice goes beyond the sort of basics of here you go, this is lovely and nutritious, to this is what's gonna work better for neurodivergent kids. That includes recipes for children who are much more challenging on eating. With ADHD, we have challenges around just getting particularly children to sit down and eat and and it'd be nutritious. And these are the things she's thought about. She's written three books.

And you very kindly sent me our most recent one, which I conveniently put here, not quite convenient enough to lean down. Nature doc is very significant. Okay. They have 23 therapists and helped over 10,000 people. It's over 25. She personally has a wait list of twelve months. And her website actually, when I looked at eight months, we need to set expectations properly, is now twelve months. That's the sort of level of following she's got. Right. She's gonna be sharing things about ADHD and nutrition. She's gonna share advice on what makes a difference. Welcome, Lucinda.

Hey, Henry. Great to be here.

It's absolutely wonderful to have you here. And thank you for it. Like, obviously, this is your new book, which published how long ago? When did it when was it out? It was exactly a month ago. Yeah. So it's amazing. It's just flown off the shelves. It.

Amazon are out entirely. They're having to reprint. So we yeah. But there'll be more copies there by the end of the month. But at Nature Dot, we still have a few copies, and there are few copies at Blackwell's.

But hopefully, there will be more internationally very, very soon. Okay. I'm gonna do this for you. Now look, it's Christmas is coming up, people. Do you have anyone neurodivergent in your family? No. Just awesome. Right. We are we're doing this this is a far side chat start. So we're in conversation talking about you and what you've done. This is also definitely definitely the point at which I I have gone, I should totally have got the questions up to starting to talk. I did not. I just seamlessly, seamlessly brought them up. The right. It's plucking from my brain inquisitive into your brain and the questions we agreed earlier. The right. Why do you do it? Like, I mean, I get asked a similar question like, why are you doing.

What you're doing? And why are you doing what you're doing?

So, Henry, yes. So I got diagnosed aged 31, and I'm now 54. So it's quite a long time ago. And this was around the time when the Internet had only just started. So it's pretty hard to find information about what to do for my ADHD. I just had one child and I was really keen to have another, at least one more. I ended up having two more. And at the time, I couldn't find enough information and there wasn't enough clarity from my psychiatrist to say whether I could take medication, whilst I was pregnant or, you know, if I was in the build up to pregnancy. So I sort of realized that I didn't have that in my armory, so I had to I well, I was a naturopath anyway, so I thought, well, I'm gonna look more at my nutrition.

And I realized very quickly that actually just basics, like, I wasn't eating enough protein at breakfast. In fact, I was having a very high carbohydrate breakfast. And this is why, like, within forty five minutes of eating breakfast, I would be all over the shop. I was my brain would just go completely zonk. I was totally scattered, and I felt like a dreadful mom, dreadful friend, a dreadful spouse, you know, everything was just chaos.

And as soon as I started eating a very high protein breakfast, which is sort of eggs and feta and things like that, it made a massive, massive difference. So my husband also has a diagnosis of ADHD, he'd been diagnosed a year or so before me. And, again, he started eating that way, it made a massive difference. So we started doing that with the kids too. We assumed that at least one of our children would have ADHD because it's strongly genetic, and two out of three have it. One has dyspraxia as well. So, yeah, so the food was really important, but it got to the stage where our son was five years old, and he'd had a reasonably okay first year in reception, but he was really, really struggling in year one.

And the teachers were saying, well, you know, he's really unfocused. He's finding it very difficult to write. We're not sure if he can stay at this school. Maybe he needs to go to a special school, but we can't diagnose anything till he's sort of seven or eight. And he was five, and I was like, so what do we do between now and then? So I did a deep dive into nutrition. And at the time, all this information from about the gut brain and the gut microbiome was emerging, And there was a lot more information about it wasn't called neurodivergent, but, you know, across the board, people with different brains, and looking at important nutrients and so forth is a really, really key for the brain. And actually within literally two or three days of.

Actually working on his gut microbiome, because he had some gut issues that we'd never quite got on top of, he woke up on Wednesday morning and he said, mommy, my brain's not playing hide and seek anymore. I can concentrate. And he'd, like, got dressed and he'd come downstairs, was making his breakfast and he kind of was doing some homework, and it was just like this is not the scattered child that I know. And so yeah. And over the next few months, and actually, we worked on his gut properly for about two years in the end, he started to make friends, his tics went away. One lovely thing was he found it really uncomfortable to hug and suddenly he said, oh, it feels all nice and cozy to hug. And, you know, school were much happier with him.

And they found felt that they he could learn through the mainstream style. And yeah. So he did really well. And, you know, he actually ended up going to a very good university, has a good degree, and he's now got a fantastic job, which he absolutely loves in an industry he adores. So, yeah, he's found his passion, which is very exciting. So that's really how I got into it, Henry, and, why I, am really passionate about doing it. And just, you know, because I helped him and I helped us, then people came to me. You know, they just did. And, you know, I could see even if they hadn't been diagnosed, I could see they probably possibly had ADHD. We obviously look after a lot of people with autism as well.

And dyslexics and so forth. And, you know, so I could see that there were patterns there. And so I started I think the great thing about having an ADHD brain is you can think out of the box and you sort of think of you know, you can you make different connections to some people. And I thought, yeah, I think this is gonna help, and it did. So that's, what we you know? So I just basically learned as much as I could from international conferences, from reading, from reading a lot of research, and then we run tests. So we run stool tests. We run urine tests. We run hair tests or blood tests, depending on what is needed. And that can assess exactly.

What that person needs, and we get very precise. So we've got evidence that they need it, evidence from research that we've done through PubMed or whatever. And then, obviously, we're very lucky because we've been doing it for so long that we've seen sort of evidence as in as an overall sort of trajectory of people.

Yeah. And I think it is carrying on from the earlier session. And what we're talking about is, you know, people with ADHD being different. We're talking about it being challenging, and we're talking about the things that can make a difference, and nutrition can make a very large difference. That's certainly, I found that I accidentally ended up always with the sort of high protein breakfast, and to act as high protein, full stop. Like, if I Yeah. If I don't, I'm I'm actually in real trouble. It's something I'm very I've always been quite aware of. We opened the the conference was opened last year by professor Weiss. We spoke earlier.

We talked about her. And one of the things she spoke about was how for ADHD kids, you've got to recognize that there are some challenges that you've got to give up for the bigger fight, which is to make sure they have good nutrition. And she talked about, and I know in your book, she talked about for breakfast having using smoothies. So a kid goes out the door with a smoothie. You haven't gotten to sit down, but you have gotten to eat that what they need and set them up set them up well. And I thought that was it was particularly powerful, that idea of, like, not fighting to get them to sit at the table, but really focusing, like, what's that nutritional part? The we talked to you talked previously.

About what you've done for your children for breakfast. Like, how how have you managed to to get breakfast into them?

So, yes. So first of all, we had a quite a long school run. So breakfast wasn't very often at the breakfast table as such, as you mentioned. You know, it was definitely in a sort of lunchbox, smoothies, and the car was probably incredibly dirty and messy, but they were well fed. And by the time we got to school, they'd eaten most of it. And and I felt that was more important than trying to have perfect manners.

And, you know, and also Well, I think that's a really important message, which obviously we've we've said last year as well. But, like, particularly with kids, like, there's a bigger battle. That's the nutritional aspect that's getting the food into them and giving up the other. And you obviously did that with with your own children, and you convey that in your in your book as well. But the other thing which is really important is a lot of people just are simply not hungry first thing in the morning, and especially a lot of ADHDers.

And obviously, medication is often given first thing in the morning too, and that can suppress appetite. And so you've got this double edged sword where you think if you haven't had breakfast and you're not hungry at lunch because of the medication, you know, that could end up being serious binge eating from, say, four or 05:00 onwards in the evening. And often, when you've got to that stage, it can be lots of snacks, ultra processed foods, etcetera, because they're an easy win, and they're gonna make you feel a little bit better quite quickly because of the sugar or, you know, whatever.

And so one of the biggest challenges that we have in our clinic is we're seeing parents say, I just wanna give them an amazing breakfast, but they just won't. You know, they say they feel sick, etcetera. They say they're not ready to eat. So if they are at school or if this is you as an adult with ADHD and you're not that hungry in the morning, one thing that can make a massive difference is increasing zinc levels. So, zinc is the second most abundant mineral in your central nervous system, and it, helps with all sorts of aspects of neurodivergence. It's one of the key nutrients for neurodivergence. It helps with emotional regulation, self regulation. It also helps to, with the reuptake of most of our neurotransmitters.

So dopamine, norepinephrine, etcetera. So it's really key. It helps to make GABA, and GABA keeps our brains very calm and cool and relaxed. But zinc also helps with a it helps to, create most of our gastric juices. So it helps with saliva. It helps with hydrochloric acid. It helps with pancreatic elastase. It helps with bile. So without enough zinc, then our gastric juices may not be fired up and we may not feel that hungry. Zinc is also really important for sense of smell and taste. And I think we've all can relate to this. If we've had COVID, we lose our sense of smell and taste, and everything tastes really, really boring because you can't taste it. It just feels really boring in the mouth. Right? And a there's been great studies.

Once done at Stanford University, Japan. So global studies finding that many neurodivergent people, whether it's ADHD, whether it's dyslexia, whether it's autism, the kids are born with a slightly low zinc status. Now this is not any blame. It's there are many genetic reasons why. It's one of those very fragile minerals that we all need, but it's quite difficult to get or get enough into the system. And this might mean that the baby, even from the beginning, finds it difficult to digest food, aca, milk. So they have colic. They have reflux. Then when they start weaning onto food, they find it rather bland and boring and not a very exciting experience compared with, say, play.

And therefore, they become distracted and less likely to want to eat. And so they'll eat things that feel exciting in the mouth. And those things that feel exciting in the mouth are things like waffles, crunchy food, nuggets, because they've got a bit of feedback. They've got that feedback. And that's why so many neurodivergent people need a sensory diet. They need the crunch because they're not getting quite that exciting smell and taste that many others are getting.

But going back to that, so the zinc, as I said, can really help make food taste delicious and helps turn on those gastric juices first thing in the morning. And one of the biggest indicators for zinc is that lack of appetite in the morning. And there are other indicators as well. And some kids, which I'm, which and adults sometimes do this too. So there's something called picker. Picker is where you tend to put non food items in your mouth. So if a woman is pregnant, for instance, which is very and this is very, very common in neurodivergent women is they really crave random things like coal or really, really icy drinks. And that's because often their bodies indicate they need zinc and or iron. And so.

Lots of neurodivergent children tend to put things in their mouths. And some people think, oh, it's a sensory thing. It's a fiddle thing. But, occasionally, it can be due to a low zinc or low iron status. And my kids, when I first of all, they wouldn't be that hungry in the morning. Secondly, they would chew on their T shirts. They chew on their collars. They chew on their sleeves and on their hoodie strings. And there'd be holes everywhere, and it would all be soggy and yuck. And, and what was extraordinary is when I learned about their high need for zinc having done some tests, I gave them more zinc, and all of that behavior went away. And they stopped putting random things in their mouths, they started to eat much better.

So it's just one of those things to think about if there is a difficulty with eating first thing in the morning or just generally highly selective eating. Zinc may be really, really important for both the eating patterns as well as the overall kind of trajectory.

I loved it when you're talking about the sensory diet. Like, it and it's it's made me think quite quite hard about my my own diet. The and also, one thing Ben and Jerry's, the ice cream, their big point of difference is that it has a very different mouthfeel from other ice creams, particularly when it was launched with all the chunks in it, often quite quite large. And it was always thought that was their secret the secret of their of their difference, the fact that they were essentially, know, an ice cream with a different sensory palette as well as obviously that taste palette. Fascinating. You saw the bit on my toes about all the chewing bits, which I did as a kid. I can't even remember that. Welcome.

To the soggy t shirt club. Yeah. And their corner of this thing was was safe. Right. You talked you touched on zinc. It was something I would you'd like to introduce. As a charity, one of the things we've a phrase we've sort of taken is essential for some good for everyone. We use it particularly on corporate stuff where we're saying like these changes essential for some good for everyone. Something like zinc, it sounds like it could very much fit in that category where for neurodivergent people, it might be, you know, an enhanced benefit. But, you know, most people benefit from those kind of supplementation particularly, obviously, no idea what they test to see if they're of supplements, smoothly going through. Omega three.

So it's one of the most talked about supplements around ADHD. It's had some research with it. Could you talk to us about that? Yes. So the pioneer behind omega three research.

Is a lady called doctor Alex Richardson, who has a unit at Oxford University, and she's made this her lifelong mission to understand more about the role and the, you know, the the sort of roles between omega three and the brain. So and she's done research on dyslexics, ADHD, even autistic people. So she's looked at a whole gamut of different people, and these have been some schools school studies as well as other group studies. And, essentially, omega three fatty acids, which comes from salmon, sardines, trout, but also seafood, so things like prawns and crab and things like that. These have to be the oily fish rather than the cods, which are the white. And these help basically they they contain something called DHA.

And DHA is the most abundant omega three in the brain. And essentially, one of the one of the ways it helps is that oil, if you can imagine, so any kind of good healthy fat, is going to cause the cell membranes to be nice and flexible. And this can provide what is thought as flexible thinking. So if brain cells are connecting well, then that's going to really help our neurons basically to connect. And for the things like the dopamine and the adrenaline and serotonin, everything to to work a bit better. Okay? But the studies that have also been done on omega three are things like, is also an eye development. And many many people with ADHD.

Also have dyslexia, and often they find it difficult to track words when they're reading. Often they jump ahead, things like that. And so eyes, it can really help with eye health. But the key thing, which I think I think is so important for ADHD is is executive function. I think executive function seems to be the biggest problem that so many people are challenged with. I know what it's like to feel scatty, disorganized when it's when you, you know, you shred your bills and you file your envelopes. You know, I've been there, and, it's chaos. So, anyway, executive function is essentially helped mainly by your frontal and prefrontal cortex, which is the front bit of your brain. Okay? And, omega three is one of the most abundant.

Oils and nutrients that help to mature that prefrontal and frontal cortex. So we all know that teenagers, whether they're neurodivergent or not, have a problem with self control. They make stupid mistakes, etcetera. But usually when they mature, you know, they start to make more sort of grown up rational decisions, etcetera. But neurodivergent people very often have quite a delay in that, so their executive function takes many years to catch up. Where so whereas a typical neurotypical boy might be 25 by by the time of their executive functions has caught up. Whereas, someone that's neurodivergent, they could be thirty, thirty two. And so this is why very often, I think ADHDers are late bloomers.

It's almost like they're ready it's when their brain is ready to actually do be able to do everything and juggle everything. But omega three has been found to help with that with maturation of the prefrontal and frontal cortex. So it helps in turn with executive function. Obviously, there are many other things that you can do. There are lots of therapies and and, you know, counseling and all sorts of things that you can do and organization skills and things for executive function. But overall, it can really help. And one of the signs that you may be low in omega three is very dry hair. So very sort of, you know, sort of or dry, dry skin. So.

A lot of people with ADHD also have atopic issues. So they have eczema. They have very dry skin. They often have asthma, find it difficult to breathe. And, omega three is very anti inflammatory, so it can help with those things, but also as well with the brain. But one of the biggest signs for low omega three, which loads of people have, and sometimes they don't have ADHD, sometimes it's not due to omega three, but it's just something that Alex Richardson has found is very common in kids and adults with ADHD is something called keratosis pilaris, which is the dry bumpy skin at the top of the arms. It's looks like a bit like chicken skin. If you went to see a doctor, they'd probably say slap on cream and it will go away.

But and a lot of people say, yes, it's genetic, but, you know, ADHD is genetic too. And I suspect that it's an inflammatory marker because I see it higher in people that have lots of ultra processed foods. I see it in people who have quite an inflammatory diet. I see it with people who are low in omega three. So I think across the board, it's probably many things. But what's really interesting is many, many people have said, so their followers or clients or whatever, they've taken omega three as a supplement, or they've really stepped up their fish intake. So they're eating it four, five times a week. And that could be pate. It could be.

You know, it could be fish cakes. You know, it could be kedgeree. But, you know, it's it's I find it really difficult to get fish in every single day. You know, it's pretty hard unless you're really a routine person. And but many, many people actually take a supplement on top, and they find that the skin gets smoother within about three months. It takes about three months to build up, but equally also they find that they just feel more focused, feel calmer. The whole body feels just a bit more grounded, and they just feel a bit more organized. So it's something to try. I certainly can spot someone with ADHD across a room because they often have the chicken skin on their cheeks, especially children. They look sort of slightly ruddy and red.

And the I just generally find the more neurodivergent and complex the child or that person might be, can be that this keratosis pilaris can also be on the torso and the tops of the legs. So that's where you need to work a little bit harder. But as I said, it's not always omega three. There are other aspects as well, and inflammation is something that is, something I'm very passionate about. There's a brilliant researcher. Well, he's actually more than the researcher. He's the head of psychiatry at Cambridge University. He's called professor Edward Bulmore, and he has a brilliant book called The Inflamed Mind, and he links inflammation.

With loads of different mental health outcomes from depression to anxiety, but he also cites ADHD and autism as not as causes, of course, but as an exacerbation of. So it's where a lot of people would say, you know what? I'm hypermobile. I'm in pain. I've got fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, these quite inflammatory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis. And my when I'm flaring, my ADHD is much, much worse. And so therefore, if you tackle the inflammation, then the ADHD can just seem you can live with it much more easily. And I love my brain. I love my ADHD brain, and I wouldn't want it to go away. But I know I mean, even just a few days ago, we'd both had a bit of a cold, and I wasn't feeling a 100%.

And I could feel, you know, body and brain was definitely wanting a reset, you know, and I felt quite inflamed.

It's very, very interesting. And when you doing one conference doesn't normally create another, but we're we don't follow the rules for starters. This conference, which is UKAN, which is earlier this year, which is it's a medical ed conference. So and honestly, it's very, very good. One of the speakers was specifically talking about inflammation and ADHD and the commonality of autoimmune conditions being present, and also that when people have something interacting with their immune system, that actually they felt very strongly that people's ADHD got worse. That was something that they felt was actually quite clear, which then, to your point of using food and using nutrition to lower your.

Immune response and to to manage it well, you can see that sort of that sort of direct link. When you were talking about skin, you also talked about hypermobility. We have another fantastic speaker, it's fantastic as you, in doctor Jessica Ecklace who her piece is on bendy bodies and bendy brains. She is the chairperson of Royal College of Psychiatrists Neurodivergent Special Interest Group. And is one of the things she's identified is that eighty percent of women, fifty percent of men have a linked issue with their connective tissue if they have ADHD. And some of that connective tissue link will lead to some having hypermobility, some having IBS, something that is that is Down syndrome. And genuinely, I'm really looking forward to.

Her speech. So she's closing out the conference. But you'll link through what you were saying. You're seeing differences in in in some people children with their skin. Just fascinating. I wonder if there's a crossover with with her work as well.

Yeah. So, yeah, I Jessica echoes that I you know, she she she's an amazing, amazing researcher, and I follow her very closely. We're sort of in a sort of psychiatrist sort of group as such, and, so, you know, across the board. And she's fascinating. And I think she's gonna give a very powerful speech. But in terms of tracking inflammation, we definitely do that. And that's what we've been doing for twenty five years. So we're looking at many inflammatory markers in our clients. So there is obviously we do test omega three so we can see whether someone has got too low omega three or whether, you know, they've got enough. Also, we do track other inflammatory markers too. So there's something called quinolinic and kinuronic acid.

Which are where the brain is inflamed or the blood brain barrier is is compromised. We're looking at glutamate, and it's really interesting what Joseph was saying about he can't tolerate any ultraprocess foods at all, and he also has a history of seizures. And very often, a high glutamate diet, which is essentially an ultra processed diet, can also trigger seizures. So I just wonder whether there was a sort of, you know, link there, but obviously, we'd only know through testing. And then there's something called high histamine, and histamine, again, is inflammatory. So if anyone does have allergies or hay fever and gets very inflamed, they might find that they sneeze, they itch, they feel very hot.

And many people with neurodivergence also have some kind of high histamine state, whether it's mast cell activation, whether it's histamine intolerance, and that can filter down to things like POTS and and all sorts of other other areas of health. But very, very often, we find that especially the hyperactive type of ADHDers tend to test incredibly high for histamine, and they have a very speedy brain. So their brain works too fast. It jumps ahead. And that's something that I can relate to myself. That's the way my brain works. And when my histamine is better, my brain tends to work slightly at at at times one rather than times two and a half, which is quite a lot of the time.

That's interesting. That's the we've had some questions in. It's I know it feeds into something you wanted to talk about, which was vitamin vitamin d. And then we've had questions on gut health. So over to you on those.

Okey dokes. So vitamin d, as we all know, is a very important nutrient for our bodies. Every single cell in our body has a vitamin D receptor, which is essentially a a socket where the vitamin D goes in and plugs in, and then it can work its magic. Vitamin D's a natural steroid. So it basically helps to bring down inflammation. It helps with, obviously, strong bones, immunity, etcetera. But what was very interesting, there was a study done where they took a group of people taking methylphenidate, and they found that many of them had a low vitamin D status. So then they added in the vitamin D because, obviously, they wanted to lift it to get to the normal stroke optimal level. And during that period.

They found that the methylphenidate worked better and the ADHD was was was you know, it just everything worked better, which was great. So, I'd again, vitamin D is a key key nutrient that helps to turn tryptophan, which is the first most important amino acid that basically converts along along the line down to to dopamine and then down to norepinephrine and epinephrine. So, essentially, if you don't have enough vitamin D, then it's harder for the body to make the dopamine and, then it kicks out to the adrenaline. So vitamin D is really, really important, and I think it's something that would be very interesting to explore more in terms of research.

And then the second question, I'm just trying to remember what you asked me, Henry. It was about gut gut health. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. And we've we've had someone actually ask specifically about that. Okay. Great. Okay. So inside our bellies, so in the low intestine of of our bellies, we have some we don't just make poo. It is something there's some something there called the gut microbiome. And imagine it's this wonderful soup of different microbes, different bacteria, viruses, even parasites, yeast, etcetera. And most of the time, these these live in harmony and, they're very, very beneficial. So the good bacteria, so the beneficial bacteria.

Help with all sorts of aspects of our lives. They help to reduce inflammation. They help to with our immune systems to work well. They even so bifidobacterium, for instance, helps to make B vitamins. So as and also, obviously, it helps the bowels to move and so forth. There's been links between the gut and the brain. So, basically, there's been tons of research looking at this something called the gut brain axis. And it's thought that neurotransmitters, are our brain chemicals, are actually made predominantly in the gut. So 90% of serotonin, for instance, is made in the gut. No one quite understands the way that those those gut neurotransmitters, whether influencing the brain or not. But it is thought.

That the vagus nerve plays an important role. So vagus nerve is this wonderful wondering what nerve that goes from back of your brain all the way down to your gut, and it goes to all your organs. But it's basically a superhighway sending signals up and down, up and down all day. Several pieces of research have found that those signals, about 90% go from the gut to the brain and only 10% from the brain to the gut. So your gut is 90% more influential potentially on your brain than the old brainio itself. So what's going on in the gut and these gut microbes are very important. So as I said, they are the these gut microbes are the building blocks for our neurotransmitters, and I'm going to give you example of two. Now.

Obviously, there are many neurotransmitters that influence our brains. And most of the time when we're thinking about ADHD, we're thinking about dopamine and norepinephrine because that's what the drugs do. Right? But, actually, there are other very important neurotransmitters that are key for the new neurodivergent brain, full stop, whether it's ADHD or not. And the two that I'm gonna talk about are acetylcholine and GABA. So acetylcholine is a very key neurotransmitter. It's important for learning. It's important for memory. It's important for working memory and processing. It's important for self regulation and emotional regulation. Now we all even if you're super bright in terms of ADHD, there's often difficulties with the regulation.

There are a lot of lot of ADHDers who find working memory very hard. They find processing very hard. But equally, we're worried about our short term memory as well. I think we can often be very forgetful. I had an uncle who very sadly passed away with dementia, and there is a very high number of ADHDers who do go on to develop dementia. So I think it's very important to be invested in supporting your acetylcholine. The second really important, neurotransmitter is something called GABA, and GABA keeps us cool, calm, and relaxed. Now what was Joseph talking about? He was talking about cold plunges. He was talking about, meditation. He was talking about mindfulness. And all of those can induce more GABA.

So GABA, as I said, keeps us cool, calm, and relaxed. It helps us sleep. It helps with that risk taking that so many young people you know, us as ADHDers, you know, many have gone down the route of taking narcotics, drinking too much, being reliant on stimulant, on on stimulants like coffee caffeine and so forth to try and survive. And GABA can make you feel very cool and relaxed as if you've just been in a meditation session. And so we all need more GABA. The trouble is these high glutamate foods, the ultra processed foods tend to.

Create more glutamate and not enough GABA, and they're meant to work in harmony. So there's meant to be more GABA and less glutamate most of the time. Anyway, basically, we want to get that balance better. And, again, when you look at the genetics, we do a lot of genetic profiling at Nature Doc, you see that people find it very hard to make this GABA as equally almost more so it's harder for them to make the GABA than it is the dopamine or to reuptake the dopamine. So working on GABA is really important too. So going back to the gut microbiome is lactobacillus. Many, many people have heard of lactobacillus. It's in most yogurts, in most kefirs, it's in sauerkraut, kimchi.

All these cultured foods that we've all been told to consume because they're so good for our overall health. And so these all actually contain some GABA themselves, but also help to the cultures, the lactobacillus also helps to make the GABA. And then lactobacillus also is a key building block for acetylcholine. So if you've been on antibiotics and which tends to carbon bomb the whole gut microbiome temporarily, sometimes it takes a little while for things to catch up. And we run stool tests. And as I said, we've been doing this twenty five years. We run stool tests on several thousand people. And I would say the common bacteria that tends to be low is the lactobacillus. So we sort of have identified.

That it is a very fragile one, and it's quite difficult to build up. And if you need it so much for making GABA and acetylcholine, then, we can see why some people can go really out of sync, especially if they've got a very sensitive brain. And ADHDers do have a sensitive brain, so the that going out of balance can be more easy than someone with, you know, that that who doesn't have those challenges. So, obviously, diet is really important here. So adding in lots of kefir, yogurt. If you do like the sauerkrauts and and and and kimchi and things like that, there's miso. So miso soup got very popular.

So whether people are going off to I know not everyone's in The UK, but wagamamas or whatever, you know, you'll be getting a kimchi and your and your miso soup all in one. Apple cider vinegar. So lots of people like salad dressings. You could use vinegar, for instance. So all of these things do contain some lactobacillus. And then the cousin is called bifidobacterium. And bifidobacterium, again, you find in many different of these cultured foods. And, again, it's very key for making GABA, but it's also very anti inflammatory. So, and it also protects you from, like, significant infections and things like that. So those two are the usual ones that you find in live bacteria supplements. Sometimes people call them probiotics.

But they're now mainly called live bacteria. And, this is why a lot of there are certain strains that people have found that are better those scientists have found that are better for the brain and the mood. But, generally, I would say go food first if you can, unless you're dairy free for whatever reason, or you can't tolerate the high histamine foods, which are things like the miso and the sakara and the kimchi. But, sometimes you just say, hey. I've just got those kind of foods. I really don't I just don't like them. And that's okay because actually you can rebuild the gut microbiome. It's a bit slower, but you can through eating lots of fruits and vegetables, especially different colors. So the different pigments.

In all the different fruits and vegetables and berries and so forth, all contain these things called polyphenols and polyphenols contribute to a healthy gut microbiome. Also, very interestingly enough, those pigments and polyphenols, also, there's been research to find that these also can help ADHDers. And I'm not and it's difficult to establish exactly why, but it's thought that these antioxidants help to bring down the inflammation. So and those are in cocoa, they're in nuts, and they're in fruits and vegetables, especially berries like blueberries. So, I am a 100% chocolate. I have chocolate for breakfast every day, and that has changed my life since. So that so I will have eggs and feta.

Then three or four squares of dark dark chocolate, and I'm flying for hours. I'm I used to not be able to I literally had to scatter mine all morning, and now I am super concentrated.

On that, I I will be going downstairs and getting some dark ice. I should have a little chocolate. We've got lots of questions, and we're running out of time. So, like, I think we need to enter some a quick fire sort of round if that works for you. Yeah. Absolutely. Go for it. Because I think your, you know, your depth of knowledge is just so well, just it's so incredible. Right. Right. And if you people still want to submit questions, go to globaladhd.com and click on the the schedule and the listener's name, and you can submit a question there. We've also seen some over the chat, which I will pop up one of those one of one of those now.

I don't know you can read that. So does a basic multivitamin contain enough extra zinc, or do I need to look at a particular zinc supplement?

Okey dokes. So first of all, if it's a multivitamin, then it won't contain zinc necessarily because zinc is a mineral. So it's just that's just one of those basic things. So they often do contain a little bit of zinc because often these multis are taken because they're for immunity. But there's usually not quite enough. And most people do well on about fifteen milligrams of zinc. So to look for that And how does that.

And is that more or less than the sort of? So the RDA.

That twelve plus yeah. So so for an adult, fifteen is usually you just need a little bit more for ADHD for for about three months.

I told her not to think because magnesium and zinc are gonna cancel each other out. Any ideas on that?

I haven't seen that to be the case, Hannah.

Fair enough. And one on seafood, if it's frozen, does it lose all its essentially, lose all its goodness?

Freezing doesn't freeze out any of the nutrients at all. So frozen food is great, and that's what's fantastic. You know, when you're ADHD, you need things in the freezer. You need instant food. And, actually, things like prawns defrost pretty quickly, for instance. So it's a really good way of doing a zinc rich and omega three rich sort of, you know, last minute supper. So, yeah, go for it.

Yeah. I discovered and please don't tell the people who get very annoyed about plastic. I I discovered this if you got tuna or other fish, which is each one closes its own plastic and frozen. If you put it in hot water, it defrosts in, like, ten minutes, and it ends up being a really fast way to get quite good food. But, obviously, it's plastic every time. It's plastic. They're for not good. The okay. We've got a lot of questions in there. Chaz, a lovely one, just saying, wow. You describe my breakfast struggle every single morning. I'm not a big eater, chewing clothes, and hair, very selective, not diagnosed, highly suspected nine year old girl. And.

Heard someone the first question in forgetting to eat is a huge problem for me. What are the, what are the quick, quick grab healthy calorie dense snacks that you found really help ADHD is?

Yeah. So I think we can all relate to that forgetting to eat. I would say chunks of cheese, nuts, seeds, handfuls of seeds. And actually, in the book, there's a very simple thing that we my husband and I have lived off for at least the last ten to twelve years is we have a big jar of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cocoa nibs, and goji berries, and a few chocolate, like dark chocolate drops. And and that together is a brilliant you just grab and eat. And I I we will have that that, you know, if we just haven't had time to have a proper lunch, etcetera. And that's brilliant. You know, just hummus and crackers or apple and almond butter is a really good one too.

Okay. Thank you. The You talked to this a little bit earlier. I think someone's talking more directly to it. I find fermented foods cause me to have hives. Mhmm. Is there any alternatives? I find also too many probiotics make my IBS play up.

Yes. So that sounds like you're probably a high histamine, And so there's something called histamine intolerance. And I've written a blog on that on h..com. So have a read of that and see if that sort of fits with your profile. There are some supplements that you can take, things like quercetin and vitamin c, which can really calm that down and actually, I find really helps my brain to calm down. Also, Epsom salts, you can put, get an a a bucket of of water with Epsom salts and put your feet in, and that again can stabilize them ourselves. So I would keep away from those fermented foods for now and, you know, work with someone to get the right levels in for you.

So that's actually a really interesting answer because it went beyond. So it went beyond. It was like, if you this is happening, then this might mean you're this category of person, I. E. A higher histamine, and you need to understand that. And that could unlock a lot else for you, which I I guess it's actually a pretty big deal.

Yeah. There's so there's a story about so I saw this lovely medical doctor, and she'd been hospitalized for six weeks with anaphylaxis. And every she had so sensitive to you know, if a nurse had been smoking a cigarette and walked past her, she would have anaphylaxis. I mean, she was reacting to everything. She was determined to come and see me. She's very hypermobile, mast cell activation POTS, chronic fatigue, you know, the full Monty. And, anyway, she got her mom to bring a bucket and some Epsom salts, and she put her feet in the bucket of water and Epsom salts, I don't half an hour or something like that. And she was able to get to me, to my clinic.

Do the consult with me, and she didn't need to go back to hospital. It seems stable. I mean, it's it's remarkable. It's absolutely remarkable what it can do. Interesting.

I don't wanna make this question, so I just thought I'd ask it. I know what my answer is. Question, whenever I read about suggested extra vitamins and minerals, zinc, etcetera, the supplements often say seek medical advice first, but that's not always possible. What do you recommend? What do you think?

Well, the reality is that if you train as a doctor, you still might only get four hours of nutrition training in the whole of your medical training, unless you're part of something amazing called NutriTank, which is being rolled out to The UK medical schools as an add on. And that's a sort of almost like a, yeah, CPD that you do, and then you learn more about nutrition. But if you don't cling on to that, there's not much to so this is where the doctor really doesn't understand. And so the only right now, the only blood test that can actually assess your nutrition properly, through a GP is iron, so which is very important. So iron is the most abundant mineral in your central nervous system and helps to convert dopamine into.

Sorry, to convert tyrosine into dopamine. So it's very, very important. They so you can do iron. You can do b twelve. You can do folate. The NHS do not offer vitamin d. They do not offer zinc anymore. So they will do calcium, but basically, you will have normal calcium unless you're super sick. They obviously do potassium and sodium, but, again, those are electrolytes. So, again, it's whether you're super sick. So, really, there's very, very little nutrition testing or understanding. So they probably won't know. But what has come up over and over again in my training and also, you know, clinical work over twenty five years is that.

If you stick to there's something called the RDA, which is the recommended daily amount, and there's something called the UTL, which is the upper tolerable level. Okay? There's everything is written in the NIH website, which is part of PubMed. So you can Google it. You can type in NIH zinc professional sheet, and it will come up or whatever. And in there, if you stick to somewhere between the RDA and the UTL and take it for no longer than three months, that should be totally and utterly safe.

Okay. Lucinda, thank you for that answer. Thanks for that comprehensive answer covering it. A very interesting covering the reality that if you really want to ask that nutrition question, it's a personal question you need to test. That's not gonna be very accessible and then some sound advice. It does yeah. Thinking about it, it sounds to me like it's one of those things that people's yes. I mean, just not realistic in our current NHS. Don't I can't imagine what would happen if I went to my GP and said, I'm thinking of taking more zinc. What's your view? Know. I just okay. So I'm listening Just.

Quickly, though, Henry, very many psychiatrists now in The UK, and I don't know whether this is the same globally or in Australia, whatever, are now embracing the nutrition aspect because they know that you need a dual approach to really help to stabilize someone. And so many, many of the psychiatrists that we work with are giving, you know, the basic recommendations like a high protein breakfast, lots of omega three, you know, good quality multivitamin and mineral just to cover most bases. And it is helping a lot of people. It's not everybody, and that's where personal advice, you know, can be Yeah. Sought through clinics like myself.

Yeah. And I think, obviously, if people are, like, particularly complex or if they're worried, then, obviously, they do need to go and talk to their GP and and or talk to their professional. Yeah. I think that's probably why that disclaimer sits there most of the time. The Lucinda, you're amazing. I've really enjoyed listening to you and to and learning from you. Thank you so much. And I look forward to delving into your book, which I'll plug again because I like it.

Well, I hope your kids love it too, Henry. Luck. See you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Take care, everyone. Kids are a bit younger. They'll they'll hopefully, they'll enjoy the results of it. Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for doing all all that you do. You are an extraordinary person with extraordinary knowledge and and coming here and sharing it. All of our presenters, no one gets gets paid. Like, it's it's all done as a a a donation of time and expertise to support getting that knowledge out there. Lucinda's done that. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you, Lucinda.

Alright. Take care. Bye, everyone.