This is a global player original podcast. Oh, I'm Katie Rhettwick. And I'm Sam Pritis. And welcome to our new podcast, You're Wrong About ADHD.
No, you are. No, you are. No, you are. This is stupid.
Stop it. Sam and I have been friends for nearly 20 years. A couple of years ago, we both found out we have ADHD. But I think it's fair to say we feel very differently about this.
Getting an ADHD diagnosis, answer lots of questions, but also raise new ones. Each week we're going to be talking about everything from our experiences being diagnosed as adults, to relationships, coping strategies, and how we manage these very special brains. So we can learn more about ADHD, and what it means to be neurodivergent. Hello, Sam.
Hi, how are you? I'm all right. I'm very excited about our conversation today. It's about ADHD and the menopause.
Which I know is a big subject for you. And I have to be honest, it's not something I knew much about. I certainly didn't know that there was a link between ADHD and menopause, or at least how those two things interact. But we've had quite a few messages on social media.
We've been getting in touch with us and saying how that has been something for them. And it's a big part of how you found out you had ADHD, wasn't it? It is. I had suspected for a little while that I had ADHD, but I hadn't pursued a diagnosis.
I felt that I was able to manage it. And then about three or four years ago, I'll be honest, my life fell apart. And I, whoever I am and whoever I believe myself to be completely disappeared. And I stopped being the person that I recognized, or aspire to be, I suppose.
And there are so many different ways in which my personality changed. I became really angry at everybody. I had no patience. I couldn't sleep at night.
And we both know how much that affects everything. I got really anxious about tiny little things. And of course, coupled with insomnia, that means I'm awake at three o'clock in the morning. Every morning, worrying about stupid things that wouldn't have bothered me the other four.
But on top of all of that, probably the worst and most frightening thing for me was my memory and how that was affected. ADHD, we now know, has made memory an issue for me. But you didn't know that then. I didn't know that then.
And what few strategies I had for dealing with that completely fell away. And I was suddenly left in the position of being somebody who could remember nothing. I couldn't remember conversations with the children that I'd had the date for. I couldn't remember simple lists.
I put something down. And then I'd walk away and I wouldn't forget, I'd wear a place date. My life became impossible. You know, that working memory is so important when you are managing situations.
Of course, I was coping with a father who has dementia and seeing in him how that was affecting him and his personality and recognizing some of those issues in yourself. So I turned up at the doctor with what I thought was Alzheimer's. Explain to her that I was forgetting everything, but also dealing with rage, which I know is also side effect Alzheimer's. Explain to her how it was affecting my relationship and my husband, how we were having real difficulties in our relationship.
He looked at me after one particular conversation. I remember looked so hurt and upset and said to me, I just wish, you could say something nice to me. And I thought I had. So my judgment had gone in every conversation, every aspect of my life.
So I turn up at the doctors secretly, I'm going to notice my husband and say to her, you know, I'm, I would have been 4950. I'm terrified. I think I have Alzheimer's. And thank God it was a female GP who knows about these things because she pressed control P and printed out a six page information document on the menopause.
And it was an absolute revelation for me. I went home and read it going, well, I knew none of this. I knew none of this. And it was only when I came to, as we know, look at ADHD through my son's diagnosis that I realized how much these two things interact with each other.
So that's my question. I mean, first of all, obviously you can tell by my son and say I don't know much about this other. But it is brilliant when you walk into a doctor's and they say, well, hang on, I've got you pegged. I know the exact doctor.
That's what you want. So actually, yeah, how then did you come to realize that, well, we've talked before about how you realize ADHD? When were you aware of the overlap between these two things? Well, it's really hard to know.
It's hard to remember that ADHD obviously. It's hard to unpick them because I went through the diagnosis for both of them at sort of the same time. And the treatment came along at the same time as well. So eventually I got pointed towards this place, the Newson clinic and it specializes in the treatment of menopause.
I found on their website a brilliant document. Let me find the name of it for anybody who's interested. ADHD and the parent menopause and menopause. And they have put together a bunch of facts and figures about what this means for women who suspect they might have.
And there's a list of all of the different things that you might have if you are struggling with issues related to the menopause. See if you recognize any of these fluctuations in neurotransmitters, so messages in your brain. Trouble with focusing, negative self-image, fatigue, forgetfulness, anxiety, mood changes, sleep issues, depression, all sorts of things. Hang on a minute.
Right, and that's why when you are a woman who has just about been able to keep your head above the water, as so many women of my age, I now realize I have been doing. What happens is menopause then moves into the picture and what little dopamine you had completely disappears. And those hormonal changes can be completely devastating. It's really interesting what you say because we talk before about how people reach a crisis point and that's when you tend to come to diagnosis.
Because all the things that you've done before to manage to cope with what we now know is our ADHD before we didn't know what it was. But we had things going on that we were trying to cope with. For me, it was getting married having children, finding my coping stresses didn't work. For you, it sounds like the menopause was that crisis point.
And all those coping stresses you'd had suddenly fell away. It absolutely was. I don't like to claim I was coping terribly well before having actually eaten but I wasn't. But I was holding things together.
The house was a mess. I forgot appointments. I failed in all sorts of different ways. What the menopause then brought with it was the anxiety and the fear and the terror because of the issues I was having with my memory.
And I knew how much that was affecting my relationships, as I say. I think my marriage was in real trouble. And my husband would probably disagree because he's probably a lot more patient than I give him credit for and a lot kinder than I give him credit for. But I was horrible to live with.
I was full of rage and I had no patience and I snapped at everybody and I think you're much more likely to snap at the people closest to you because you mask for everyone else when you leave the house. You know, you hold it in and you keep it in and you come to work, you have to be on your best behaviour. I put on the makeup, I come in and I do my work. Then I go home and I completely fall apart.
And it was poor old Robbie that I had to deal with most of that or my kids. And I think that's the saddest thing about all of this really. I think it's how it affects the relationship to close this to us. And it happens at a time for our particular generation when we are dealing with so much women of my age have never been in the position that we were in before.
I'm 52 years old. My parents, both of them divorced in their 90s and I'm responsible for both of them. And my brother obviously is part of that team. But my mum when she was going through it was I didn't have that old generational thing to deal with.
We've got that, we've got teenagers, we've got husbands, we've got a job, we've got all of this. And we are trying to juggle all of those balls whilst the menopause and ADHD throws us off kilter minute after minute after minute and it was impossible for me until I went looking for help. And that was the big turning point for me. The very first thing I did, I got home from the doctors and logged onto Facebook and literally went online in that way that I do because I've got ADHD, I share everything.
And I wrote a post saying, I just found out I'm experiencing terrible menopausal symptoms. I'm setting up a secret Facebook group. Does anybody want to come and join it? And 150 people joined that Facebook group.
It brought by lots of different friends who were all in the same position. And for the first six months or so, it was extraordinary because we shared things that made us cry almost daily because we were discovering things about what the menopause means that we did not know up until that moment. And I feel so grateful to have had social media, to have that sort of safety net, to have that crutch that could keep me connected with people who could tell me what was going on with me. And of course then subsequently, I went and sought hormonal help from a clinic.
And it was only once I had had my ADHD meds sorted and my HRT sorted that I was able to piece myself back together a bit and that's exactly what I did. It's really fascinating to hear because obviously as I said several times already, it isn't something that I know too much about. And it's really fascinating to hear that intersection between menopause and ADHD. But I think also for anyone with ADHD, anyone who's been diagnosed late in life like I have, again, the story crops up again of something underlying all your life which has caused you problems that you've had to manage and then there comes a point when you can't.
And this I think is the real sadness or it's just the story, however you want to say, of undiagnosed ADHD? Absolutely, absolutely. And are we lucky, A, that we recognise it in ourselves? And B, that we have been able to find ways to treat it.
I know that meds at work for you but other things have and the meds do work for me. We know this from the thousands of messages coming into us. On social media, on TikTok and on Insta, we know that there are so many people out there who are still awaiting diagnosis and treatment is way beyond that. And we know how hard that is for people.
If you're a paramedic person, if you're late 40s, early 50s, a little bit later and thinking that maybe that's something that is resonating with you, go and see the doctor about it. Because I think that's a life-changing moment to be able to recognise that not only is that what it is, it's not you, it's not you, it's not the thing. I became this monster, I was an absolute bloody monster. I was a monster to everybody around me and I knew it and I couldn't do anything about it and then suddenly I could and everything changed.
So I'm very, very excited about our guest today. She is somebody who is a bit of a celebrity in that Facebook group that I mentioned to you earlier. She is somebody who has become the guru of the menopause community, has set up a clinic to treat women at this stage in our lives and is, in my opinion, the very best person we could be speaking to about this subject and the name is Dr Louise Newson. Dr Louise Newson, it's such a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you so much for chatting to us today. Well, I'm very privileged to be here. It's really great and thank you for talking to you for opening actually because it's not easy to talk about your own experience sometimes. Well, I have always very much taken the view, especially when it comes to this sort of thing.
The ADHD menopause overlap has been a revelation to me. And again, thank you for part of your clinic because the little book clips that you give out to people again was a revelation to me. I was already going through a diagnosis at that point, but every single box got ticked by me in that book. It was like, oh, yes, that's me.
I felt seen for the very first time. So can we talk about that? Let's first of all talk about what is it about that kind of correlation of ADHD at menopause? That can be so difficult for women.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think firstly, just to unpick what menopause actually means because for so many people, it just means lack of periods or periods stopping, obviously breaking down the word. It just means stopping menstrual cycle. And for many years, that's all it's been thought of for like stop periods, stop fertility, just crack on, carry on, but people forget that it's about the hormones.
And the hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, don't just work on our fertility and the learning of our womb and our periods, they go into our bloodstream and then they affect every single cell in our body. And they affect our brain more than any other area of our body often, not for every woman, but for a lot of us. And we know the commonest symptoms, even when we just look at the thousands of people who monitor their symptoms on the balance app, it's the brain fog, it's the memory problems, it's the fatigue, it's the poor concentration, it's the low mood, it's the anxiety. Yet for many years, we've sort of been hoodwinked into thinking it's just about a few flushes and sweats and we'll just come through it.
And don't talk about it. When it is, don't talk about it. Precisely, no, precisely. And I'm different to a lot of medical specialists for lots of reasons, but I've also got a pathology degree and I'm very interested in the function of our body, the physiology and also obviously the pathology so when things go wrong.
But if we think about our brain, I mean, the brain is the most amazing organ, isn't it? It's incredible how it works, it really is. But the brain likes homeostasis, it likes things to be the same. So we need to eat regularly, we need to not sort of exercise too hard when we haven't been fueling ourselves properly.
If we're tired, we don't think so clearly. There's all sorts of things we know that when we personally don't have the same routine in our brain, our brains can become a bit wide in different ways really. But if we go back to the basics of looking what East is that it's a sort of more recent diagnosis really we won't. I didn't learn about it at medical school.
But we see people who have diagnosed quite a lot when teenage years and then we know teenage hormones are all over the place. And then there seems to be this peak again women who have hormonal problems and I'm very interested in the world of testosterone in women, but also in men as well. Search under researched areas, not just for women, but for men as well. And is it associated with a kind of testosterone in men too?
We don't know. And there's a lot of people that are medically gaslighted. So they're being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, long COVID, clinical depression, when actually they're perimenopausal. And with ADHD, some people will have ADHD.
Some people will be perimenopausal. And I think a lot of people will be both. And as you know with ADHD, it's a sort of spectrum really. It's not.
You can't do a blood test to say, I've got ADHD. And you can't do a blood test to say, right, I'm perimenopausal, I'm not menopausal. And that's where it can be quite confusing for people. But actually, it doesn't matter in medicine.
The most important thing for me as a doctor is to try and help people. Well, that is what I was about to say. That's for me that's been the biggest thing, because both my diagnoses came along quite a similar time. I've had friends say to me, well, how do you know you weren't just perimenopausal?
Or how do you know you didn't just have ADHD? The reason I know that is because since I have ADHD, there are days when I forget to take my medicine or put on my patch or do whatever it is I have to do for my HR treatment. And I notice those days. In fact, my husband was saying to me, have you taken your meds today?
Or did you remember to take your progesterone tab at last night? And he will notice a change in my mood and a change in my behavior. So clearly, whatever it was that was going on is being treated and managed. And I'm a different person.
I'm able to get on with the life that I need to lead and order to function and to meet the needs of all the people in my life that needs, as so many women are age, are facing so many cause on our time. And you have to be able to cope at this stage in life, don't you? It's pretty hard. I mean, I think life is hard, isn't it?
There's all sorts of things that get pulled in so many directions. And I don't want to talk out of time for the men that are listening, but women are used to multitasking. We're used to doing lots of things as a generalization. But we are.
And when that doesn't happen, it's really difficult. Or when we catastrophize quite little things that can really take hold. So I see a lot of women in my clinic who are perimenopausal and they say the thought of packing for suitcase, actually packing a suitcase is gone, how does it actually makes me feel sick? Or I have been vomiting, thinking about it.
Or I can no longer go on the tube. I used to hop on the tube to work. I can't. And it's easy because I'm pretending I'm working from home for other reasons.
But that's sort of a waking up at 3-4 in the morning. And really fearing what how to save your children. Or something which we all have a fleeting worry. But when it takes a hold, it actually means that that part of your brain has been used for something that's not very helpful, but you can't make a difference.
And so that can be really hard for people to unpick. And think, well, is it because I'm torn in a thousand directions? Is it because I don't like my job? Is it because my mother's ill or my children's, you know, having a tantrum or whatever?
Or is it me? Is there something biologically going on with me? And, you know, I worry that a lot of women, I'm men, but a lot of women are being diagnosed with ADHD without looking at everything else as well. And what we don't want to do is be medicalising people for the wrong reasons.
You know, as a doctor, I look really holistically. I know there's a massive debate now about HRT. But actually HRT is just giving hormones. But we have to think about diet, lifestyle, nutrition, everything else as well.
How much do those things play a part? Do you think? Oh, they play a huge part. But actually, you know, if I said to many of my patients when I first met them, do you know what, love?
Get off the sofa, start running, do some yoga, eat better, stop comfort eating, stop drinking to numb your symptoms. And sleep eight hours a day. They probably feel really dejected and feel really more inadequate than they do already. But actually, when we've got our hormones back and symptoms improve, then we've got more energy to exercise.
We've got less muscle and joint pain. We've got more stamina. We've actually got more motivation to cook properly. I really recognise that.
I really recognise that about ADHD. And what you've described there could be a description of ADHD, couldn't it? Because actually, that's exactly what we've talked about. It's having the motivation to do the things that are going to help.
It's interesting that listening to you both talk, and listening to you talk about your experience, Katie. We've talked before on this podcast about how, you know, people who come to diagnosis of ADHD later in life, it tends to be, they've reached a crisis point. Things don't work and things aren't working. Things are falling apart.
So there must be, you must be seeing lots of people who are coming in and saying, you know, don't know what's going on with me. Hang on, there's a very many of them. And that is bringing them to their ADHD diagnosis that has, you know, since then been completely hidden from them. Absolutely.
And as you know, there's two things really, isn't there? You don't want to be labelling people and giving them a label, which can sometimes be thought of as a sort of excuse almost. But the other time, you don't want to not be diagnosing somebody that can really help them to sort of identify with what's going on. And so there's a bit of a thing in my mind.
Like, we don't want to be jumping to a diagnosis too quickly, but we don't want to be missing diagnoses too. And again, it often depends on personality types and also what the treatment is. So there's one thing, obviously, the conversation's been going on, increasingly about metaphors and perimenopause to the extent lots of people are bored of it. But actually, I'm sick of all the talking, it's about the action.
You know, it's like, what's being done about it is more important. And that's the same, you know, if you've got a group of people, men and women with ADHD, yeah, fine. But what are you doing? How are you making your symptoms better?
And how are you controlling it? And how's it affecting your family and your work and everything else? And I think this is what we have to be really careful of when we're destitute of labelling or diagnosing people. It makes perfect sense because a lot of the things we've been talking about in this podcast are we've found out we've got ADHD, but what are we actually going to do about it anyway?
What does that actually mean? How do you handle it? Yeah. And I think, I mean, I was looking recently about some of the clinics, the ADHD clinics and the huge amount of money that they charge to make the diagnosis and also who's doing that testing and everything else.
And then obviously, the medical side of it, of course, some people really benefit from medication. Some people might be medicated too quickly or with the wrong types or whatever. And they benefit from medication. Yeah, they didn't trust them.
And so we have to be really, really careful, I think, anything that people make money from my memory worry because, you know, and I know I run a private clinic, but actually so much of our profit goes to helping people, you know, the balance app is free. It's helped over a million women that money to fund it has come from profits. It's very different when people are just doing it for their energy. So you have to be really careful because there's lots of sort of trendy conditions, really.
Am I sensing, Louise, that you are a bit skeptical about the numbers of people who are being diagnosed with ADHD? No, I'm not skeptical at all. But what I am thinking is part of being a doctor is looking, how does that fit in with the person's expectations, knowledge, beliefs and actually what they want to get out of the consultation? And as a GP, I've done a lot of work about consultation processes.
So whether it's two percent, twenty percent or hundred percent of people who are diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD, it's actually what does that label mean to them? How does it impact them at school and society with their family? And what treatment is right for them? So, you know, you've described about your treatment, it's been great, others say it hasn't.
But actually, it's not about an individual treatment often as well. It's like, what else can we do? What else should we be doing that's going to help us? And some people will, you know, I do, I've probably got ADHD, but I've not been diagnosed, but I can manage things.
Yeah, but I can manage things also. I do yoga regularly. But I know if I don't do yoga for a couple of weeks, my mind is all chaotic. I can't settle.
I just catastrophise a lot. And I'm just like, I can't cope. I can't cope. I do an Arabic, dang, a yoga.
And then I'm suddenly giving my yoga teachers a reason before and after your yoga practice. You're a completely different person. That's right. For me, other people go for a run.
I can't do yoga. I can't do yoga. I have a great friend who actually was the one who recommended me to see you, who was a yoga teacher. And I attended classes by my lovely friend, Joe.
And even she had to admit at the end of the six sessions that I am not cut out for you. Because I cannot relax and be quiet. I was constantly talking and fidgeting. No, no.
But I have ADHD. Yeah, but I think that's where everyone's different. So not everyone with ADHD will have the same symptoms, the same characteristics. They won't have the same family.
They won't have the same life. And the thing is, I think in medicine, you have to be careful to sort of blame every symptom on the diagnosis that you've made. And I think that's something that's really difficult. You know, with the menopause, of course, I could say, oh, I've shouted at my daughter's morning.
That's because I'm menopause. And of course, it's not. It's just because she was being slow and she just catches the bus. You know, or whatever.
So I think it's, and that sort of goes big. And then the other thing in medicine, it's really easy. And I know I get a lot of pushback on social media, saying, oh, she's doing this diagnosis in the menopause. What about other conditions?
And of course, we've seen people who have had brain tumors that's affected their mood and their memory, as well as being menopause, or people who have palpitations might have a heart condition as well. People with ADHD have allowed to have different conditions as well. And there's a big brain diagram. There's a big overlap.
And as clinicians, we're trained to look and pivot and change our diagnosis and work with patients as well. So I think it's really important. Well, I think what we should say before you go is that there is somewhere to go. And you've changed my life.
You've changed a number of my friends lives. And we are all hugely grateful to you. Your name comes up in conversation often. I'm sure you know that.
But that's the important thing. We are where we are. We have moved forward in so many ways. Thanks to people like you and other women out there in the media shouting about the menopause.
And things can only get better. We just have to keep pushing and talking and thinking and discussing and being brave enough to go to the doctor and ask for help. I think so. I think what is happening is a groundswear of people.
You know, it's people who are being affected are realising. And that's really important. Exactly the same with ADHD, actually. When people get together and talk and share, that's when things, really magical things happen, actually.
And I can see that's happening. So it's amazing that you're talking about the role of hormones in ADHD. And I think I know we've concentrated on women, but I would like to extend it thinking about testosterone in men as well. Dr.
Eason, thank you so much. Really interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
I'm at notes from that. I'm at notes today speaking to you and speaking to Louise about just how your hormones are affected by menopause and how that can impact on your ADHD. What did you make of that? It's such a big deal.
I found the conversation really interesting. I'm so bit challenging at times. I do feel that I need to push back a little bit on that whole relationship between ADHD and the menopause and which is which and whether one's more or less responsible. I, because I have ADHD, often forget to take either my ADHD meds or my HIV.
Of course you do. I have ADHD and what's really interesting about that is that when I do be that my ADHD meds, I know what they are responsible for fixing in my personality essentially. And I know that the HRT is a really, really big one for fixing my rage and my libido. My ADHD meds are really important for things like memory and emotional dysregulation.
And when those things go, when the meds are not there, those monsters rush back and are becoming challenged again. So you can tell the difference. I can absolutely tell the difference. And just to say, Newton Health does have all of those resources that we discussed on their website.
Do go and have a look at that pamphlet that we mentioned about the confluence between ADHD and the menopause and the booklet that we mentioned really, really did help me. It's got a little tick list that you can fill in and it's really worth checking out. That's everything from us for today. You can listen to your wrong about ADHD for free on Global Player.
Download it from the app store or go to Global Player.com. See you next time. This is a Global Player Original Podcast.