ADHD, Food & Chronic Illness with Patricia Sung
In this episode, I chat with registered dietician Nicole DeMasi about ADHD and intuitive eating.
Highlights:
- What is Intuitive Eating?
- How Nicole into this specialty
- The most important thing for ADHD'ers to keep in mind about Intuitive Eating
- A common misconception about Intuitive Eating
- How to find out if Intuitive Eating is for you
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Summary
As someone constantly juggling the multifaceted roles of motherhood while managing ADHD, Patricia Sung found herself on a personal odyssey when chronic illness came knocking at her door. Facing the debilitating effects of mold toxicity, Patricia unearthed the profound, yet often overlooked, connection between food, ADHD, and chronic illness.
Patricia's journey through the medical maze brings to light the frustrations many face when seeking answers for complex health issues. We explore how modern medicine can fall short, especially when it comes to the interconnectedness of bodily systems.
Throughout the episode, Patricia generously shares resources and community support available for moms navigating similar paths. Her platform, @motherhoodandadhd, offers a haven of free materials and the Successful Mama Meetups—a place where moms with ADHD can connect, plan, and support each other.
Highlights
(00:00) ADHD, Food, & Chronic Illness Journey
(03:38) Healing Through Food and Stress
(08:45) Navigating ADHD, Food, and Illness
(18:18) Online Resources for ADHD Moms
Transcript
This episode contains content on food and eating that may be sensitive to some listeners. The Adulting with ADHD podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. Please see a medical professional if you think you have ADHD or have ADHD and need additional assistance. For podcast archives, please visit patreoncom. Slash adultingwithadhd. This is the Adulting with ADHD podcast self-empowerment for people with ADHD. Today, I'm very excited to have with me Sara Sung, the host of Motherhood and ADHD podcast. Hi, Sara, how's?
01:09 - Patricia (Guest)
it going Good. Thanks so much for having me back.
01:12 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, it was so good to see you at the conference and I'm so glad I ran into you because we talked a little bit about the topic today, which is going to be ADHD, food and chronic illness. So do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about you first before we jump in?
01:28 - Patricia (Guest)
Yeah, sure. So I support moms who have ADHD to be confident and successful and build the life that you want for the family that you have in the season that you're in and for the brain that you have. And I do all that through community courses and coaching and obviously the podcast, and I just, I absolutely love helping people with ADHD figure out how to be happy and be successful and juggle all the things, especially for moms, and it's just so much to keep up with, and when you have a way that makes sense for you, it's so much easier to be happy. I know it sounds weird. I'm like I'm going to help you be happy, but I want you to be happy. I want you to really enjoy your life Well that's great.
02:16 - Sarah (Host)
I was listening to you talk and being happy. It sounds simple, but it really. It can be so hard, so I value that a lot. So, yeah, how did this whole topic of chronic illness and food become interesting to you?
02:32 - Patricia (Guest)
So it started right back when I first started the podcast and really diving into getting to know all of the women I was working with, like talking to people in my Facebook group and you know different listeners of the show and realizing so many people had this theme of chronic illness and it was definitely like disproportionate to the population as a whole. Like when you look at how many people have a chronic illness versus how many people I was finding with ADHD that had a chronic illness, I was like, well, this, this can't be a coincidence, it's clearly related, but there's obviously not a lot of research there. And then a couple of years ago I got diagnosed with mold toxicity and I got extremely sick. I almost died. It was awful and in that process, a lot of what I was doing was with my food, which seemed unrelated to me.
03:29
When you look at modern medicine, food's not something that's really talked about. And so in all this research of trying to figure out, I guess I should back up a little bit. I was so sick and nobody could tell me what was wrong with me. I saw dozens of doctors. I literally was like, if anybody can tell me anything, I will talk to anyone. I will try anything Like someone has to tell me. Someone must know why I am this sick. For like because it was like no reason. Every specialist I went to was like you look fine. Like I don't. Like clearly something's wrong but I don't know what it is. And it was this ridiculous uphill battle trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
04:09
And a big part of my healing was with my food. And when I can like look back through my whole life, I can see where there is that connection between food like my stomach, all my gut issues and stress. And like fast forward, like when I look at my childhood and then I fast forward. When I was really sick, I was eating about 30 different foods total. Like the sum total of all the foods I was consuming, including spices, herbs, was 30 things. Like it was awful, straight up awful.
04:45
And when you are that sick, it's all consuming, it affects everything you do, everyone around you. You have such little energy and to be able to like to take that experience and be able to help other people forward, that really matters to me because I for me, like I can't waste that experience and struggle and hardship and just like let it be there to me Like I need to use that to fuel me forward because otherwise it was just awful. So like when I put together like all these themes I was seeing with my clients and my community and then where, when I got super sick, it was like whoa, this is not a coincidence, these things are all related and I just went down the total rabbit hole of researching how does it all connect? Because I just couldn't live like that anymore. Wow.
05:39 - Sarah (Host)
That's huge. So what's an example of something you've been able to bring to your community of ADHDers and apply?
05:50 - Patricia (Guest)
with the food.
05:51
It's actually been like a newer thing for me, like I'm just now integrating it into what I'm doing, and it started with like realizing that so much of the chronic illnesses were all rooted in our stress response. At like the grand scheme of things, people don't talk about that much they would like we say like oh, stress is bad for you, you're going to have a heart attack, and like that's about it. Like there's not real, like meaty advice when it comes to dealing with your stress and the consequences of not dealing with it. And as I keep like digging into all of it, I'm like oh, this is a huge part of our bodies as people with ADHD and understanding how our stress response works.
06:41
What's realistic rest for people with ADHD? I mean, the other day we were talking about this in my community and there were probably 20 moms there chatting and when I asked what do you do for rest, not one mom said I sit quietly and do nothing. Like that's not how people with ADHD rest. We rest actively and a lot of times we're told that's not how to rest. We're told to rest by like doing nothing, which is, like you know, kryptonite for our brains.
07:09
Like we're sure, yeah, don't make me do nothing. So, like weaving those themes in understanding our stress response, understanding how we rest, and then, like just now I'm starting to talk about like how does food enter that and how does your body receive that food and why would it consider it like an invader when it should just be like a banana is a banana? Who cares? And your body starts taking in these outsiders, coming in as a problem, as an invader, instead of nourishment and energy and what it should be. So I'm just now pulling all this together and being like whoa, I feel almost like a little bit. I don't know, I hate the term woo-woo, but I feel a little woo-woo when I start talking about all these things.
08:00
But at the same time, like when you look back at like cultures from thousands of years ago, like everybody back then like understood the value of food and how different things were good for you. Like when, like you know all those like things your grandma says of, like well, you're sick, drink this, eat that. Like those things do have a different, like they make a difference, it's not just old wives tales and all that Like they truly matter. And when you understand how your body functions and how your stress response functions and how food can be like interpreted as like a bad thing, when it's actually like really shouldn't be all of a sudden, like your body just starts making so much more sense and how you can make like choices that make sense for you yeah, absolutely.
08:45 - Sarah (Host)
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09:28 - Patricia (Guest)
For me it's to remind every person listening that this isn't in your head when you start noticing these correlations between how you feel and different foods that you're eating. Sometimes when, like, depending on what, like who your doctor is and their background, they often will say, like this is in your head. You're making this up, like why don't you talk to the psychiatrist? It must be anxiety and what I would say is, like trust yourself when you know, even if you don't fully understand, like, what the connection is. You're like just something's not right here. Trust that gut feeling that if something feels not right, something's not right. Like maybe you can't put a name to it yet, but something's not right. And like I don't ever want to like poo-poo modern medicine. Like I have been to every specialist under the sun and they all have taught me something, but like there's just not enough research at this point and there's not enough like communication between all the different like disciplines. So like, like my gastroenterologist didn't really talk to my neurologist, didn't really talk to my rheumatologist, and like there wasn't enough connection and communication. So like, when you talk to doctors, like their specialty is their specialty and, depending on their personality, they may not work with other people Like not not in like a bad way, but it's just like they're focused on their specialty and they don't worry about all the other body parts because that's not their specialty.
10:55
But when our bodies are under high stress for a long time and your body starts to think like benign things are invaders, like that's not a coincidence. Like your gut makes most of your hormones, your gut makes most of your neurotransmitters. Everything's connected. When you think about your vagus nerve and your parasympathetic balances in the limbic system, all those things work together. And when you're stressed, they're not little things anymore. Your whole body is being affected. Your gut is managing like the majority of your systems. Like we don't realize how much our gut influences everything else.
11:37
So it makes a lot of sense that if you're having food issues when you're sick, it's like well, yeah, because your gut is driving a lot of systems. So like of course it makes sense that now your gut's having problems when you're sick and like that's why, like when I'm like I hosted a retreat last year. Hopefully I do it again this year. The whole theme was like how do you slow down, how do you rest, how do you take care of yourself? Because when you have ADHD like you're. So like I hate using the word sensitive because it makes it sound like a bad thing, but we're not, like we're just very aware of all of our surroundings and so we take in so much information like that makes us more susceptible to being overstimulated and being stressed out because we took in so much information and when we look at, like how can you take care of you in a realistic way and lower your stress and heal your body in a way that like fits with your ADHD, it's like now it's doable, yeah, to take care of yourself yeah, totally.
12:43 - Sarah (Host)
So on on the same topic. What is something that is often challenging for us when it when it comes to food and chronic illness?
12:51 - Patricia (Guest)
There's no one right answer, there's no one plan that like, if you can just find this one thing, it's going to fix it. Like different foods are going to bother different people, and it feels just so overwhelming Like I remember when I, like was going through my like what foods I could and couldn't eat, it was so overwhelming of like how am I going to do this? This feels impossible and also like, as you're sick, your body can change and like something you could eat before, now you can, or you couldn't eat it, now you can. Like your body is just like constantly like changing system and so it's a lot to deal with, it's a lot to take in and it's a lot of work to eat differently than other people.
13:35
So I think that's like the hardest part is that it just feels so big and to like get started feels monumental. Yeah, like. It's just. It's like how can I possibly even get started on this, which is really hard for us. When we have big projects, like we already, we get struggle with it, let alone something that carries this much weight and stress for us. Like then you're stressed about being stressed, about the thing that's going to make you less stressed. I mean it's just like, oh man. So that to me is the hardest part for ADHD, is it just feels too hard?
14:09 - Sarah (Host)
That wall of awful. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Wow. So let's say you're an ADHD and you want to. You want to tackle this. What's the first step there? It sounds like there's many.
14:22 - Patricia (Guest)
Yeah, my first step is always trust yourself. You know something's wrong, even if you don't know what it is or where to start. You know something's wrong. It's not made up. And keeping that true to yourself and knowing this isn't a worthless endeavor, go for it, keep pushing For me. I think that was the one thing I clung to when I was so sick and seeing doctor after doctor who just tell me like well, you look fine, this looks fine, that looks fine. The scan came back clear. It's like well, thank you, I'm glad that that is fine. But what's wrong with me? Right, right, trusting in your gut that like, yes, you know that there's something that needs to be fixed, even if you don't know what it is. And then the second part would be just keep it easy. Like.
15:10
We tend to overcomplicate things because we get stressed out. So whenever I would get really frustrated about like I can only eat these things, my husband would remind me of like don't focus on what you can't eat, look at what you can eat. Like what can we do with that? And I would spend a lot of time like imagining I was on that show Chopped. I don't know if you've ever watched it on the Food Network where they put like they would give the contestants a basket and it would be like totally random things of like a loaf of bread, a piece of chicken, cheetos and peppermint candies and they would have to make something out of it Like that's what I would like.
15:44
Go in with this like challenge mentality, of like okay, I only have these three things, but what can I do with these three things? Like, if you're trying to go gluten-free, don't go on Pinterest and try to find 17 recipes that are gluten-free. That's too much. Just look like what do you already eat that's gluten-free? Can you eat just those four things that you know you like you can eat, you know how to make? Can you just eat those four things for the next week or two weeks while you're doing your gluten-free test? Just stay off Pinterest. Don't overcomplicate it. Keep it as easy as you can. Truly ask yourself how do I make this simple for myself? And go with that route.
16:25 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, I have to totally back you up here, Cause I I've been working with a nutritionist and you know it was like all these different pyramids and colors and blah, blah, blah. And then finally you know she got a hang of how my brain worked and she goes you know what, Forget all this, go get this book. And it was like the zero sugar something, something about how sugar is evil. But she's like just cut your added sugar. Like just do that, like forget the pyramids, forget all the colors, and would you believe it, it helped so much.
16:57 - Patricia (Guest)
Just you know, and I think those like really simple rules like I hate even calling them rules, but like when we're trying to make changes of just picking one thing for us, like a lot of times it's easier to cut one thing out entirely than to try to moderate it.
17:15
Like saying like I'm only going to have one dessert a day makes you just want more dessert, instead of saying like, okay, I'm not going to eat sugar, that does mean I can still eat honey and maple syrup, so like can I find some desserts with that? Like I'm not saying I can't have anything sweet, I'm just cutting out like the refined sugar. Okay, then, like that black and white rule makes it way easier to be like well, but I mean I only sort of had like half a dessert earlier, so I could have like half of one later, and then you just end up like spending so much time spinning in circles about like how you could manipulate this into being something better than it is. It's like just let it go and making those really simple changes that are like clear lines, like that takes like a lot of the decision fatigue and like the mental gymnastics that we do out of it when it's very clear cut.
18:11 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, totally. This has been such a good conversation and I know it's going to help so many people. Where can our listeners keep up with you online, Sara?
18:22 - Patricia (Guest)
So I have the same handle everywhere. It's at motherhoodandadhd. It's the same as my website. So you know, head over there on my website I have a ton of free resources for you to download like whatever makes your heart happy. You know, obviously with ADHD I just keep churning out more and more free things. Like I'm over there, like let's oh, look, I can make a thing for this, oh, I can make a thing for that. So there's like so many resources there to help you. And then I have my community of successful mama meetups where we hang out If you think you have ADHD or you're sure you have ADHD like come meet your people, hang out. We plan our week together and then we hang out like social time for the other half, and it's a really beautiful community of moms who get each other and understand, like, how your brain works and we'd love to have you.
19:09 - Sarah (Host)
That is so awesome, Sara, thank you again for being on the show.
19:13 - Patricia (Guest)
Thanks so much for having me.
