This is a global player original podcast. Hi, it's Katie. And Sam, and welcome to this bite-sized episode of You're Wrong about ADHD. Today, we're hearing from Joseph Pack.
He is the founder of drug-free ADHD, talking about all the ways in which you can manage ADHD without the meds. And as somebody who can't take the medication, the drugs don't work for me, it's always good to hear different strategies, different methods for managing my ADHD. Things like breathing, meditation, and using cold water, using showers for therapy. Let's get into it.
Over the last, I think it's seven years now, I've been self-experimenting with ways to manage ADHD without medication. So this is really, I do find it very interesting. I have to say, I do take the meds, I find them very beneficial. But I have a friend who was diagnosed with ADHD some years ago, who believes that it gave him the neuroplasticity to develop strategies.
And he's now what he calls post meds ADHD. Yeah, that's great. And I find this a really interesting concept of pro meds, but I'm also very interested in the idea that we can work out how to live without them. That should probably be the only way to look at meds.
It may be, it should be. So what are your tips for living that way? What do you do that enables you to live well? Well, like I said, I've made a lot of mistakes over the years, but I've found some things that work extremely well, actually.
So they're not as easy as taking medication. So the types of people that generally come and learn from me have either had a very bad experience with medication, or absolutely don't want to take it for one reason or another. But it's to be, we have to proceed with caution. And I'm going to try to give some more basic tips today.
But there's like, I call it the fundamentals. So we've got cold exposure, breathing techniques and meditation. Now, cold exposure is really interesting because it's one of the only, if not the only way, to actually hack the increase of dopamine in your brain. The other two ways to do that are medication and doing something interesting.
But we can't always fabricate a situation where we're interested. But we can, if we choose to, get in cold water. So that's cold showers and ice baths. And I do that.
I've got to be facing. If I'm in a situation where I think I'm about to go overwhelmed, facing cold water, calms me down and then I've just got a moment to think. I have cold showers. I don't like hot showers.
I have cold showers and I'm getting really irritated because I always leave it turned down before he gets in a cold shower. And interestingly, during lockdown, pre-diagnosis, I was swimming in our local river and I would feel really, really crazy before I got in the water. And of course, the water made me feel great. And I thought that was nature.
I thought it was being in nature. And all of that. I now realize it was the cold water that was doing that. So there's some research done where they got, I can't remember how many people, quite a lot.
And they basically put them in 13 degrees Celsius water, which is actually not very cold. But they made them stay for one hour, which is a long time. And when they measured that dopamine at the end, it would be elevated by 250 percent above what it was before. And does that level remain?
For three hours. That's how long it was. That's amazing. So, and then it was also boosting neuro-pedephrine.
So giving you huge amounts of energy and feel good hormones. Now, obviously that's essential. The difference between the way that dopamine is released from cold water versus ADD medication is that ADD medication lasts longer, can last eight hours, maybe longer. But it can have quite a big crash.
So you can notice the difference between the medication is working now versus it's not working. It's all whereas with cold exposure, the decline in dopamine is extremely shallow. You don't even notice it going off. Well, we'll take meditation first because it's a specific way that I do it.
So I call it ADHD friendly meditation. So if you look at meditation as it's taught in Buddhism, for example, there's always an object of attention. So that would be the breath mostly in Buddhism, but certain types of Zen Buddhism might use a candle or beads that you pull through your hands, for example. But the problem is if you use an object of attention that is not part of the mind, the mind goes crazy with ADHD, even without ADHD.
But for us, it's 10 times worse. Now, there are certain types of meditation that use a mantra, mostly using yoga, not so much using Zen Buddhism, not so much using Buddhism. And it's important that we use a mantra because a mantra is just a thought. So if the mind's the thing driving is crazy, then if we put another thought in the mind, then it stops the mind that was automatically driving was crazy from driving was crazy.
And if you pay really close attention to what's going on in your mind with your eyes closed, you'll notice that you have a lot of different types of thoughts, but two core types of thoughts, automatic thoughts, the thoughts you do not control at all, and thoughts that you do control, the willful thoughts. So if you're able to put a willful thought, a mantra into your head and focus on it, every time your attention gets pulled towards the automatic thoughts and you notice it and you then rediver your attention back to the mantra, that's almost like a bicep curl for the brain. But every time you go backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, it makes it easier and easier and easier to then focus on that mantra. So it's had it forming in a way.
So give us an idea of a willful thought then. So just as an example, what that be. That could be like an automatic thought could be I'm hungry. Yeah.
And the willful thought could be I want steak. Right. Okay. But an automatic thought could be I'm feeling sad.
And I think if I eat this steak, it's going to make me feel better. See, it's so subtle and I've been very, very careful about how we explain these things. What is your mantra when you're meditating? Do you have the same mantra?
Yeah. What is your mantra? So I repeat a sound and I'm going to do it now. It sounds weird doing it out loud, but it's like a elongated I am sounds like I am like that, but it's internal.
So I can't hear it. Sometimes I don't say it. You don't know. No, no, no.
All in here. All in here. All in here. Because I want to create a thought and I don't want to create a sound because again, the sound would be an object external to the thought.
So it's concentrating your mind in what's going on inside and just what's inside. Yeah. And crucially thought, all somatic thoughts will continue, but we don't want to do anything about it. We just let them be.
So it becomes almost an effortless form of meditation rather than this meditation which is let's focus on the breath and make the mind be quiet, but every single person with ADHD goes after two minutes. I can't do that. I can't meditate. That's it.
I'm done. But it's actually a lot easier than you think. I think in terms of finding new ways to manage your ADHD, whether or not you're on the meds. If you enjoyed listening to this bite-sized episode and want more, you can find a full episode linked in the show notes or many more episodes like this one on the podcast feed.
And if you want to keep up to date with everything we're doing, do check us out on Instagram and TikTok. Just search your wrong about ADHD on your socials. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you again soon. Your wrong about ADHD is made in association with Apex content ventures.
This is a global player original podcast.