ADHD Explained: What Everyone Needs to Know

Welcome back to the BeGreatWithNate Podcast. Today, we will Dive deep into the multifaceted world of ADHD in our latest podcast episode. Through personal narratives, we shed light on the real experiences of individuals navigating life with ADHD, offering a comprehensive understanding enriched with insights grounded in research.

In this episode, we explore ADHD Symptoms and their ManifestationsInsight:

1. Uncover the pressing need for awareness and understanding surrounding ADHD symptoms and their real-world implications. 
2. ADHD and AnxietyADHD and Depression Insight: Learn about the intricate relationship between ADHD and anxiety, a subject that garners significant attention in the current discourse, highlighting its relevance and impact on individuals with ADHD.
3. Emotional Regulation in the Context of ADHD Risk of not treating ADHDInsight: Gain a deeper understanding of emotional regulation within the ADHD spectrum, a topic that resonates profoundly with many.
4. Executive Function and its Role in ADHDInsight: Discover the critical role of executive function in ADHD, showcasing the eagerness of individuals to learn and comprehend more about it. 
5. And much more about ADHD. 

I want to thank Dr. Russel Barkely for his years of dedication and research on ADHD.

Transcription For this podcast: 

Nate (00:08.718)
or it looks like you are focused. Perfect, thank you. Is ADHD real or is just a mindset or an excuse to be lazy, procrastinate? In today's podcast episode, I have a deep episode with research and a lot of great information to help you or your loved one who struggles with ADHD. ADHD,

is something I struggle with and I've struggled with my entire life. It was up until probably the past six months where I was blown away from the research about ADHD. So if you or someone you know has ADHD, I'm telling you right now, this information that I'm going to tell you is something you're going to want to stick around for. This is serious stuff. I've spent the last five weeks on doing so much research on this stuff and gathered a

great little bit of notes here that I have to break this podcast into a couple of episodes because it would just be too much information and it may overwhelm you. But I took all this information, all this research, I have some references for you. I have one main reference for you today that's going to really help you. But I've saved you a lot of time from doing all the extra research. I would, you know, if you are someone that wants to do more research after this based on a particular person I would refer in this work today,

I would leave everything down in the description. But my goal was to do this to save you a lot of time. Now as always, I don't want you believe in a word I say. I want you to become aware and then you can take action or let this sit in as you listen to this podcast. Let it go through your body. Let it go through your mind. See if it resonates with you. And then the next step is to become a little more aware by taking small little steps of action. And then...

Whatever result you get there, my friend, you create your own belief. And I want you to do that with everything. So I never wanna come on these podcast episodes trying to tell you what to do and make you believe me. No, my goal is to bring awareness. And as I bring you more awareness, and then you go and take some small little steps and you start seeing results, then you create your own belief. So we're gonna go over a couple of things. The first thing I wanna explain to you is the person.

Nate (02:32.938)
that I'm going to be referring to that I find is the expert in this field is Dr. Russell Barkley. Without a doubt, this man has amazing passion behind ADHD, teaching about ADHD. His presentations on YouTube are phenomenal. I became obsessed with them. I probably watched each of them five times each as I went through these notes to try to give you a great podcast episode. And what Dr. Russell Barkley describes is the ADHD brain is very different.

to versus a regular person's brain. The individuals that have ADHD are going to have a lot more trouble with performance. He describes this as the brain that is a part of learning and knowing and doing, there is a imbalance there. So for an example, the back part of the brain is to learn and the front part of the brain is to perform. So knowledge.

in performance, knowing and doing. But with ADHD, this actually splits this apart, meaning this means you know what to do, but when it comes to doing it, it becomes very difficult for you to do it. So people with ADHD are not dumb, people with ADHD are not stupid, people with ADHD are not lazy, and they would, if they're...

Driven individuals, they may feel like they have a huge problem with procrastinating. And it's not that they automatically just woke up and choose to do that. If a person truly has ADHD, they're going to have a problem taking what they know and actually taking action. Right? So they know all this information. There's things that you could tell this person. And usually one of the things they reply is, I know, I know, I know. These people just struggle with doing what they know.

So Dr. Russell Barkley describes ADHD as a performance disorder. So for those who were diagnosed with ADHD and thought it was not real or never followed up with help, may be believed that they are lazy procrastinators. And usually they're told that they have the potential to do more or do better in life. They actually have a very hard time of activating the

Nate (04:59.246)
prefrontal cortex. So the you know the front part of your brain is usually where we can find the imbalance with individuals with ADHD like myself. So let me continue to remind you I have ADHD. What happens here is that this part of the brain has a lot of responsibility and we can find people with ADHD have huge imbalances based on the

these, the things that the prefrontal cortex is responsible for. So for an example, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for problem solving, memory, language, motivation, motivation. That's a big one. I want you to remember that one. Judgment, impulsive control, which we'll get deeper into, social behavior, planning, decision making, attention.

ability to delay gratification and issues with time management. And we'll go deeper into each of those, but the prefrontal cortex is responsible for those things. So if a person has ADHD, they're going to have imbalances with those, which as we get through this podcast, I'm going to be describing each of those plus a lot more things that people may not recognize or may not have come across information on about.

ADHD that may resonate with you big time. So here's some things that people with ADHD, some reminders. Number one, you know what to do, but you just can't do it. You know that you should be paying that parking ticket, but you're not going to do it. You're not doing it. And what starts to happen is people with ADHD have a really hard time planning for the future. Okay. So

What happens here when a person gets diagnosed with ADHD, there's usually two types of ADHD. And as I continue to do more research, there's a doctor called Dr. Amen, A-M-E-N, who has performed 100,000 brain scans on people and have seen seven different ADHD brains. But you can look into that. But to keep this super simple for you today, I don't want to overwhelm you. Usually they divide it or cut it into two. Either a person is hyperactive.

Nate (07:21.022)
more compulsive. And I happen to fall on the person that's more compulsive. The compulsive ADHD individual will have problems with being compulsive, being organized, which I would say is one of my biggest struggles in my life. And also being someone who can pay attention to be able to pay attention and then be able to refocus on something and if they understand that whatever they refocus on isn't important.

they're able to pull themselves back into what they're doing. People that have inattention problems can get hyper-focused. So for an example, if they're really interested into something, they can lose time in doing that one thing. And as they really dive deep into that one thing, they may have other responsibilities they're supposed to take care of, but they're hyper-focusing on what they're doing at the moment. So you can start seeing the timing.

of the time management can become a problem for this person. The next thing is just being distracted about things that have nothing to do or that is just not important. So for individuals focusing and they have ADHD and something comes up that's not as important or easily distracts them, they can find themselves getting distracted and then having a hard time understanding it's a distraction and getting back to what they're supposed to do. So this person again can lose.

time management is going to be a big one. And I think this is one of the reasons why, as I'm writing my book, The You Never Knew, I have decided to delete the applications on my phone that happen to take or easily just distract me from doing my work. So one of the things for people with ADHD is a supportive environment, which we'll be doing in part two. Right now, I just want to continue to bring you awareness about ADHD. ADHD is just bigger than you.

being hyperactive. Usually the hyperactive activity can occur at a young age, but here's another fact. Most time women are not diagnosed until they're older because when women have ADHD as children versus boys, little boys having ADHD, it becomes a lot more obvious that the boy has ADHD to the simple fact that they're a lot more distractible or distracting the class or distracting things than the girl at the moment. So usually you can find a lot of

Nate (09:46.922)
women going undiagnosed when they were younger with ADHD, which thing shows up as deep root causes to a lot of the problems that they have in their life. And they may think that something that just, they gotta get mentally stronger or something's wrong with them as far as like they, that something in their control. And as we go through this podcast more, I just wanna continue to bring you the awareness that this thing is not an excuse. Okay, you gotta be careful thinking this thing's an excuse.

The stigma around ADHD is the way it is because one in every four college students go into a psychiatrist office and they finesse the system to get assistance with stimulant drugs, to be quite honest with you. And there's a stigma around it that this thing is really bad. And my goal here is not to try to put a belief system on you. My goal is not...

they sit here and tell you that you have to go see somebody or you have to go take drugs and things of that nature. No, my goal for this podcast is to bring you awareness because if you grew up like I grew up and you especially if you grew up in the urban area where you know if your parents had a drug addiction like my parents do or if you grow up and going to see a therapist is you get clowned on or it's considered being soft. I'm making this especially from the heart for you.

because you may be struggling right now thinking that you're lazy or you just can't complete new goals. But you have to understand, this is a neurotransmitter imbalance. And that is a fact. There's studies that show this, there's brain scans that show this over and over and over again. This is not, you're not lazy. If you have ADHD, if you're undiagnosed, and you don't know if you completely do, then I'll have some, you know, in my conclusion, I have some.

ideas for you or suggestions, but for those that were, or if one of your children or one of your family members were, this podcast is meant to bring you more awareness of like, listen, the stigma is a real thing, but we got to be smart how we're going about this because the consequences are really big. And this is what got me like, wow, I got to pay attention to this a little more. Number two, time management can be another issue for those with ADHD, having trouble with the when or the where, not with the what and the how.

Nate (12:11.682)
People with ADHD have a really hard time when it comes down to planning for the future. The reason why is because people with ADHD have, basically the prefrontal cortex also utilizes willpower. Okay, so this is, Dr. Russell Barkley considers this as your conductor system, right? This is your conductor. This is the part of your brain that...

says it's going to do something and performs and gets it done and willpower, right? We all know what willpower is. Well, people with ADHD don't have as much willpower as people without ADHD. Meaning, what you'll see is if a person has a task today that they have to take care of, and in that task it takes them, for an example, let's just say you have that one meeting at 12 o'clock today. That one meeting, you're going to be having, you're going to have a lot of anxiety and stress for the simple fact that you only have a certain amount of willpower.

So you're saving that little bit of willpower for 12 o'clock. And you know you only have a certain amount of willpower. So when it comes down to you thinking that you're gonna go to the gym in the morning or cook a breakfast that's healthy and read a book and all that, that is gonna be very difficult because when you do those little things, you're going to be utilizing willpower. So by the time you have that meeting, you may not have enough willpower by that time. And over time, you start to recognize this subconsciously. So what does that mean? That means...

You're focused on doing things today because you fail to do things as planning for things in the future. Therefore, you're always working tight with deadlines. You can find people with ADHD, do the paper that they needed to write the day before it's due or the day of, or the week of if you get really lucky, right? But you're never, it's gonna be really difficult for that person to get a paper that is due three months from now and get them to work on a...

you know, a piece of that each and every day or each week up to the due date. Doesn't happen with people with ADHD because you fail to plan for the future. Not because you're lazy. It's because of the simple fact that your prefrontal cortex has a neural transmitter imbalance. So you're one of those newer transmitters. It's going to be dopamine. So when you're going through your day with a little bit of willpower you have, you're doing what you can to get small.

Nate (14:35.658)
little dopamine hits. So that's how that aligns with being compulsive. So instead of saying, I'm gonna work on this project, I'm going to build up this project and turn this paper in, or I'm going to have a retirement fund, or I'm gonna have a savings account, or I'm gonna cook my meals for later. Those things.

people with ADHD don't deal with that in that way. Untreated people with ADHD, or people who are not taking small lifestyle factors to change their position, are not going to be in that position. People with ADHD that is untreated, that's not seeing, going through a way to help themselves and support their ADHD, won't be doing that. What they will be doing is, we, my friend, we're really good at getting things done.

at the last minute, which then makes us have extreme levels of anxiety. So if you ever were diagnosed with anxiety or you feel like you have high levels of anxiety and you were diagnosed with ADHD, there's a huge connection between the two. A lot of people like myself with ADHD have high levels of anxiety because we're doing the thing that we're doing right now at the last minute. So it's do or die.

this paper is due tomorrow, it's a do or die situation. So the anxiety is real. And then we can sit down knowing or looking at goals that we wrote down one time, thinking about things we want to accomplish. And what starts bothering us is knowing that we can do more. Knowing we should have done this one thing weeks ago. Knowing that we should have communicated how we felt to this one person.

because you'll see that this messes with relationships. And now I find that we can go through this wave. One moment we have anxiety, and then one moment we kind of have small little episodes of depression, or we just feel down.

Nate (16:49.994)
A reminder that your problem is not knowing what to do, but doing what you know. There's a lot of things that you already know to do, but you're not doing it. And if you listen to any of my previous podcast episodes that went over procrastination or went over being perfectionist and you were diagnosed with ADHD, or if you assume that you may have ADHD, if you have ADHD, that's going to be...

the root cause to those problems. People with ADHD struggle with planning the future. They usually find themselves having high levels of anxiety because they always do things when they're due or overdue and doing them at the last minute. This makes it hard for people with ADHD to accomplish goals, especially new goals. The depression episodes, as someone with ADHD, I find that depression comes from being tired of always being on the go.

having anxiety doing things at the last minute and struggling with knowing I can do more in life and I know what to do, but I'm not doing it. The depression is the tired, low side, opposite energy switch from the high go, go level of energy that manifests from anxiety. Dr. Barkley shows in his research, which like I mentioned before, I would link his presentations down below. I'm gonna link a lot of them. So,

you know, go check those out if you can. That ADHD is not a fake thing or an excuse. Dr. Barkley believes that ADHD is a neurogenetic disease. The stigma around ADHD can make some not take ADHD serious, especially if a parent thought it was an excuse or didn't find any help for the child. This can create a belief around ADHD for this person as they get older, struggling in life with responsibilities, planning for the future.

organization, money, relationships, and more that we'll dive into later in this podcast. Recent studies link genetic factors with ADHD. In addition to genetic scientists are studying other possible causes and risk factors, including brain injury. I have done some research on this and I found that there are other things too that can contribute towards ADHD. And the other things that I look for.

Nate (19:14.77)
I wanted to make sure that they were studied just so I can make sure that before I just start throwing this information out that there's some type of support behind these things. Anytime I have assumptions or hypothesis, I will let you know. But the other things are heavy metals. One that I saw that can be a big problem is lead. Birth complications for an example, mom being sick or drinking or being on drugs when she was pregnant with you.

brain injuries, especially sports or falling. So if you or anyone you love or anyone you know that has ADHD that played football, you have to understand that football is a contact sport. And I was a division one football player and I had five concussions in my career. And all the contact was right here on my forehead, right? Head to head. What is right here? It's the same area of what?

prefrontal cortex. See that? So it doesn't have to be direct there, but a brain injury can cause some problems, especially from sports. So why don't you keep a mind on that? Gut health. I found gut health had some things to do with this, but I have an opinion on that. My opinion on the gut health is I have a question, and there's no fact behind this, but it's just a hypothesis.

I find that if you have ADHD and you have an imbalance with dopamine, it's going to be very hard for a person to stick to a particular diet that is known to be healthy for many reasons. Number one, being able to be having the willpower to sit and cook or go to the supermarket, come back home, cook and prepare a meal and follow a routine is going to be very hard because a person with ADHD may have low levels of willpower. Number two, people with ADHD can have low levels of dopamine.

and the low levels of dopamine is a person's going to be on the hunt or the lookout. So if you give this person a good meal, a person that has, if this is my hypothesis, if a person has a real neurotransmitter imbalance that the root cause started and its development from the brain, then the reaction from that is following or having bad poor choices of knowing you shouldn't be eating the things that you're eating, which then you continue.

Nate (21:42.018)
to make a damage to your gut, because it's hard for you to follow a diet and be consistent. It's hard for you not to binge eat. It's hard for you not to be compulsive. So in my opinion, I have a hypothesis. I'm like, okay, the gut health, I can definitely see how if the gut health, if a person never had these problems before, and if you look back on the history and if they go see a professional and the professional figures out that this thing just started to occur, then I can see, oh, maybe

You know, the worst of gut health has gotten, then the more that had an effect on the neurotransmitters. But what if, I have a hypothesis of, I don't think, if you do it the opposite way, we have to be able to have an open mind of like, hold on, this person is not following their diet correctly due to willpower problems and dopamine imbalances, therefore always eating things they know they shouldn't be eating that's gonna cause stomach issues and then continues to do that over time and then creates a lot of gut.

problems. So it's just, you know, just a thought that goes to my mind. Trauma, I found trauma can be something as well. And for those that are regular listeners at a Be Great, Be Nate podcast, I try my best to always bring my traumatic stories to these podcasts, my traumatic learning issues that I had from trauma, but also the ways that we can heal from trauma.

Nate (23:10.318)
I'm really attracted to their work when it comes down to genetics and figuring out your genotype is going to be Dr. Ronja Patrick. I think she does a phenomenal job. So to keep this simple, I have found that I have a particular gene, Alpo3 and Alpo4. In Alpo3 and Alpo4 gives me, if you have one of them, it gives you a pretty high chance of having Alzheimer's disease. If you have two of them, you have a...

really higher chance of having Alzheimer's disease. So Dr. Ronja Patrick has both three and four, Alpo three and four, I have both. And she has dedicated a lot of her life to understanding what's, how to overcome this or how to try to prevent it as much as she can. One of the things that, and the reason why I'm telling you this, cause if you look up Alzheimer's, one of the things that cause a huge problem with Alzheimer's is dopamine, right? Very low levels of dopamine.

That happens to be one of the things, right? I'm pretty sure there's other things, but the thing that I want to bring to your attention right now is the dopamine. Well, with Alpo 3 and Alpo 4, I have a problem where I have a harder time converting Omega 3. And Omega 3, if you look at the brain, the brain is 30% of fat, right? Beneficial, good fat. And I have, Alpo 3 and Alpo 4 can create a problem genetically within my liver to be able to convert Omega 3 correctly.

So I have to supplement with a pretty high load of omega-3 and fish oil so I can be able to benefit from omega-3 because a regular person that does not have that issue versus a person like myself that does have these genes will have a harder time of getting the benefits or being able to assimilate omega-3 due to the genetic mutations that we have that can create an imbalance of the digestion and the assimilation of omega-3 through the liver.

So why did I bring that up? Because as I continue to do more research, I found that there's certain genes that can cause a huge imbalance within let's just say digestion or elimination. So if there's a gene, like I spoke about before, like Gilbert syndrome, where a person has the inability to clear out bilirubin, which is dead red blood cells, correctly.

Nate (25:27.958)
then it can create a person to have a lot of anxiety or a lot of brain fog or a lot of problems. And it's my opinion that one of the reasons why is because these toxins can cause imbalances or problems in the neurotransmitters. So I think as we are continuing to develop through science and nutrition, and we're learning a little more about the importance of genetics, but actually figuring out the specific...

genes that you may carry and how that may be playing a part in your life, I think we can start understanding. So there's certain genetic mutations that I have found that causes an imbalance for one, only one of them. The main organ I was focusing on in the genes was the genes that can create issues with detoxification in phase two of the liver. I haven't gone to all genes. There was a couple ones. And selfishly, I was doing it because I had...

these genes. And when I got my gene test done, I was like, okay, I have to figure out, you know, why, right? I like knowing the information, but I like to master the why. So I say that to say when I was digging in, I was taking the genes that I have and I'll put this gene and then I'll put ADHD and I was looking for research studies. And there was a few of the genes that I had that showed that this particular gene due to the lack of assimilation can cause this

particular neurotransmitter deficiency, which then can show up as ADHD. So I just want to throw that in there because I'm trying to give you, based on all the research I've done of all the possibilities that can cause it. So I don't just say, Hey, one person said it was genetic. So it's just genetic. I'm a person I'm like, okay, genetics I can see, but I want to see if there's other possibilities. So as this podcast, I mentioned neurotransmitters a couple of times and some of you may be familiar with it. Some may not. So neurotransmitters are actually chemical messengers.

that your body can't function without. Their job is to carry chemical signals, messages, from one neuron, nerve cell, to the next target cell. The next target cell can be another nerve cell, a muscle cell, or a gland. So they're like your messengers. When you research neurotransmitters, or which neurotransmitters are out of balance with ADHD, you can find many different research studies.

Nate (27:51.346)
on different imbalances within the brain. But the two that consistently show up that I see is dopamine and norepinephrine. Those are the two that I keep seeing. Now, I also saw serotonin and GABA, but I think what I did is I sat down with a piece of paper and I just went through 20 research papers and I saw all of them do the research on the neurotransmitters that are associated with ADHD.

and the ones that came back more consistently that showed up was dopamine and norepinephrine. Not saying that serotonin doesn't have anything to do with it or GABA doesn't have anything to do with it. Not saying that at all. But anytime I wanted to take a little bit of time to do a little more extensive research on figuring out the relationship with serotonin, I kept getting depression. And so...

you know, when I want to do deeper research in the journals or the research or meta-analysis, I always, the serotonin was always more correlated with depression. So I just wanted to make that clear of the two that was most consistent was dopamine and norepinephrine. So dopamine, if you look up dopamine, there's a lot of, you know, research that was done on dopamine. And I think one person that I spent the last six weeks on going down,

the rabbit hole with was Dr. Andrew Huberman. I never in my life watched him before. I saw his face a couple of times, but I guess he's pretty big on social media and YouTube and stuff. To be quite honest with you, I haven't really been on social media that much, or if I'm on social media, I just post and try to leave. And if it's on Instagram, I follow a lot of sports pages and stuff like that. So I say that to say I have come across his work in

talk about, you know, a beast. That man is a beast. He has great energy to him and he's extremely knowledgeable and he's awesome. So I found his teachings about dopamine after doing the research, extensive research to try to see how I can summarize it for you today. And there's a couple of things that I wrote down that to keep it simple for you, okay? Dopamine when balanced is one that can help a person, it makes the body feel like you're on the right path in life.

Nate (30:15.178)
Like you're doing the right thing. Dopamine is just not only about getting a quick hit. Dopamine is actually the building up process and then the hit. A couple of years ago, I spoke to my father and I said, dad, why is addiction so hard? My dad is an addict. And he told me, pa, listen, addiction is hard. When I was in a program, he's in a program, a rehab program that he goes to every day. He said, pa, when I was in a program, one day we had a speaker.

And that speaker was clean for 30 years. And I'm like, well, why does he still call himself an addict? And he said, Pa, once an addict, always an addict. And he said, one thing that really stuck with me is that man said that he never focused on getting clean for 30 years. He never focused on getting clean for one month. He focused on just overcoming that one day, staying clean for that one particular day. And what does that have to do with anything for this?

The next question I had from my dad, which is going to connect on why I'm talking about this with dopamine, I said, well, why is that? And one of the things my dad said, he said, pot, look, when it's about getting high, only 50% of the job is feel good when you get high. The other 50% is the process of getting high. And I said, what do you mean? He said, it's contacting the dealer. It's...

making a way to the dealer. It's the drive to the dealer. It's the transaction through the dealer. It's the way, you know, wherever you're going to go and enjoy the drug. It's going to that destination. It's sitting down and then it's preparing. That is the other 50%. And when I was working on studying dopamine and seeing how I can help you understand that a little more, I wanted to bring that story in to let you know that dopamine is just not getting boom, a quick fix.

or boom, you know, a quick cookie. It's the process of going through it and getting that. People with ADHD can have low levels of dopamine, meaning we need extreme things to feel good. So little accomplishments is cute. This is what can make us compulsive. We wanna do big things. The little things don't really excite us as much as doing something huge, okay?

Nate (32:42.418)
Secondly, dopamine is another thing that can be a motivator or it can be something that can get us going. And there's a huge correlation between dopamine and willpower. And that's why if a person has low levels of dopamine, we can usually see this person have low levels of willpower. So if they have issues with drinking or issues with cheating or issues with eating.

junk food and they're trying to lose weight. If they're in an environment where that's there for them and they have low levels of dopamine, it's going to be very hard for them not to do that one thing. Because it takes willpower to say no. It takes willpower to back off. It takes willpower to leave that situation. Since people have low levels of dopamine, we're looking for that next little boost.

Nate (33:39.79)
communicated and related to the adrenaline, right? And you know, we speak about adrenal fatigue a lot on this podcast. I've done podcast episodes where I was interviewed about adrenal fatigue. Norenephrine, to make it simple, it's kind of like the battery. It's the kind of thing that gets you to get through and get up and get going. Dopamine is to get you to stay motivated and get you to complete the job. When a person has low levels of norenephrine,

they feel extremely tired. And that's why you can find people that have ADHD, can be huge coffee lovers. It can get the adrenals going, it can get the adrenaline going, it can get norepinephrine going, it can give you a nice little dopamine hit. But the problem is, is that for a person is untreated or is someone who was diagnosed and hasn't done anything to make sure that they're helping themselves with ADHD, we can find ourselves become

addicted to coffee, addicted to caffeine. And there's other things that we're gonna get into that you can really, really get addicted to. Actually, I'll just get into it right now. If a person with ADHD that's undiagnosed or a person with ADHD that is, was diagnosed but didn't follow any practical steps, if this person comes across nicotine or like tobacco,

or those little vape pens, you're gonna find your little best friend. It's gonna be very hard for you to not be sucking on that pen all day or smoking tobacco and one or chewing tobacco because research has shown over and over and over again that tobacco and nicotine can actually stimulate norepinephrine and dopamine.

So it is a stimulant that is a strong stimulant to the brain. Now we have more drugs that can do that, which I'm not gonna get into today, but I want to bring that one up. So if you're a mother and you're noticing your teen is out here just pulling on that vape and you keep telling them stop and you're yelling at them and you're doing all these things, or if you find yourself after work pulling that vape, on lunch pulling that vape, or smoking some type of tobacco.

Nate (36:08.862)
Just and you can't see yourself going without that. And then what do you do? You can see the combination between the nicotine and the in the caffeine cigarette coffee vape monster Red Bull Because this is known to be self medicating

Nate (36:30.722)
The thing you don't want to do, if you're someone with ADHD and you put yourself in a position where you just want to test it out to see how you can make your neurotransmitters and your situation worse, weed and alcohol can do those things.

I've learned that alcohol actually is the biggest precursor when it comes down to ADHD. It causes a lot of problems, a lot of problems.

I find weed, when I work with clients, weed, both of them are good at making a person just feel, you know, remember I told you the anxiety can be a real thing or the depression thing can be a real thing. It can help you. I like to describe my ADHD as a brain that doesn't know when to stop and just focus on one thing. And a lot of us, we can see or we can say, oh, my ADHD is a gift.

And I've said that my whole life. I'm like, and I believe that there is a gift side to it. I still do believe that it's a belief. Dr. Russell Barkley says that only people that say they have a gift for ADHD, they found only 20% of them were more creative than the rest. And with the 20% that was quote unquote gifted, when you sit them down and you align their gift versus all the cons that come with ADHD, this f-

person can find that they're really struggling to make their gift more suitable in life because of the consequences of ADHD along with it. And I have some things that I'll go over with you with research of showing the chances or the problems that people with ADHD will have in life.

Nate (38:22.038)
So to get a little more deeper into this, we have the hyperactive impulsive dimension of ADHD. So the hyperactive impulsive dimension, which is characterized by not just physical hyperactivity, but to cognition, impulsiveness, and problems or trouble with decision making, and a strong indication towards immediate rewards. So a person becomes extremely compulsive.

has a hard time when they're making a decision, they're indecisive, and when it comes down to anything that looks extremely rewarding, instant gratification, these people can find themselves doing those things or being pulled towards it. The emotional dysregulation, individuals with ADHD tend to express the emotions impulsively and have trouble with monitoring them once expressed. So,

One thing that I've learned is that people with ADHD have a hard time turning the inner self talk off. And what Dr. Russell Barkley explains in one of his presentations is that we have two selves, we have the inner self and then we have what we express to the world. And a person that does not have ADHD has the ability to be able to hold back the inner thoughts and inner emotions. But a person with ADHD doesn't have that switch.

So these people can say things and do things that they don't truly mean at the moment. And it's hard for them and they don't get the cue. So they could be in a group of people and they can say things or do things. And then they didn't get the cue from body language that they made someone uncomfortable or things like that. They just say what they feel, especially if they're angry. Then that person goes to sit down, thinks about, reflects on things. And there's a couple of things that happen. Number one, they overthink, did I talk about too much about my personal life if it wasn't anger?

that was expressed. It was just, you know, information. Wow, maybe I said too much. Wow, I think I told them way too much of my, I should never shared all that. Or number two, after having an episode, that episode, let's not call an episode, just a burst of energy of anger. They sit down and go, Oh man, I think I took it too far on that one. Oh man, that wasn't nice. And then they feel guilty after. And then their goal is then they apologize.

Nate (40:43.218)
Executive attention. So now we're going to go and break down into Dr. Barclay's six disruptive executive attention in individuals with ADHD. Number one, persistence towards goals. Individuals ADHD find it challenging to stay focused on long-term goals, struggling to maintain attention on tasks that lead to future rewards. Number two, resistance to distraction.

ADHD individuals find it hard to resist distractions, which often leads to issues with a specific goal, not completing the primary goal they were focused on to begin with. Struggling to maintain a balance between focusing on a task and not getting swayed away by irrelevant events. Number three, working memory. This involves holding information in the mind to guide behavior.

Individuals with ADHD often find it difficult to hold on to the necessary details to complete a task, especially when distracted. 4. Self-awareness or self-moderating. ADHD individuals often find it a struggle with self-monitoring, finding it hard to track their process towards a goal, which in a vital moment of achieving a long-term goal,

they never get to accomplish it. And when they do, usually we can find if we achieve that long-term goal, it took longer or was a lot more energy for us to do. So I want to throw that in there. So that's saying you'll never accomplish a long-term goal, but it's not as easy, it's a lot more difficult. I remember when I was in school, especially doing science, and I had to study, and when I completed my paper,

It took me so much energy and so much time compared to my classmates. And I used to think like, yo, man, like, yo, I gotta, maybe if I had all day to do this paper for seven days, I would have got it done better or whatever the case may be. And one of the reasons why I was struggling is because at ADHD, I actually had a man named Mr. Casey in college who was the sports counselor who pulled me to the side and told me, stop acting like a child and go get help.

Nate (43:09.934)
It's a true story. Told me, stop acting like a child and go get help. And I told him, I don't need nobody's help, bro. But I eventually, he, I sat down with somebody and learned a little more about myself, but the stigma got to me. I saw help for one month, felt great, got the best grades in my life. Life was, I couldn't believe on, you know, how much getting help helped me. But then I got the stigma.

You know, because remember I went to school for Western medicine. I have a bachelor's science in movement science, strength and condition nutrition. But then when I graduated in school and as I graduate, I was getting a lot into the Eastern medicine. So I wanted to find a way how to heal myself holistically with everything. And which, which is still something you can do with ADHD. I'm not saying it's something you can't, but what I am saying is I got so far in that belief that I was turning my back.

to any possibility of being helped by Western medicine while getting a Western medicine education. So sometimes you gotta check your belief systems and see if they're working for you. Number five, inhibition. This refers to the ability to control one's impulsiveness, both in terms of emotions and actions. Individuals with ADHD find it challenging to inhibit responses, leading to impulsive actions. And number six.

emotional regulation. Here, we will dive deeper into the emotional aspect, discussing how individuals with ADHD often find it challenging to regulate their emotions, leading to quick, sometimes inappropriate emotional responses. So we talked about that, those bursts or, you know, just sad emotions or whatever the case may be. Now, here's the risk at not treating ADHD.

or for those that are undiagnosed from not having ADHD, there is a significant amount of adults who are undiagnosed and untreated because of the symptoms often look different in adulthood than in childhood. Remember in childhood, you can be like all over the place and look like you don't care about school and you're always told you can do better. When you get to an adult, you're chilling it out a little more. You're not all over the place unless you are in hyperactive.

Nate (45:33.918)
ADHD person, a person who just can't sit down all over the place. We all have that one person that, you know, they started 17 different businesses and they're just all over the place. Number one, addiction, especially towards tobacco, weed and alcohol. I also want to throw in, you can be addicted to coffee and caffeine. You can be dependable on coffee and caffeine. Uh, coffee and caffeine can be treated as a drug.

If you go, if you've been drinking coffee your whole life and we take you off coffee, you will get withdrawal symptoms. So when I say being addicted to coffee and caffeine, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a cup of coffee. No, I'm going to have my coffee in the morning. What it means is if you're depending on it all day, if you're having it in the morning, then you're having it for lunch, and then you need another one before, you know, your day ends or you have another one during work to finish off your day, you know, depending on that.

We gotta be careful because coffee, caffeine, tobacco, these things are stimulants. But the difference with these stimulants is that they have a different reaction in the body. And what I mean by that is caffeine irritates the digestive tract. Caffeine can immediately just dehydrate the body, specifically coffee can dehydrate the body. If you're trying to heal from digestive issues and gut issues.

I don't know so many people who can drink coffee black or just a shot of coffee. Not saying I don't meet people. I do, but I'm saying not a lot of people that I come across have a coffee, but no, they're having a cappuccino, they're having a latte, they're having a little oat milk. All these things with their sweeteners, all these things in a combination, if you're trying to heal your gut, can be very hard to heal your gut. You see what I'm saying? So coffee has, coffee can...

have a huge effect on the adrenals, coffee can have a lot and I will have a podcast episode on coffee. If you're someone that drinks coffee and how to actually manage coffee better. But if you have too much coffee, and you don't have ADHD, some holistic things that we can do to get you to back a little off coffee because it will mess with your sex life. It would turn on your sympathetic nervous system.

Nate (47:58.642)
Men will have a hard time keeping an erection and ejaculating early. Women will have a hard time getting wet and having contractions during sex and orgasms. The more stressed the body is, the faster it wants to orgasm. So men that are listening, those are two things women are not going to be looking forward to. Okay, number two. Usually don't have a retirement plan. This can be due to struggling with planning the future.

So this is another thing that can be shown up in a person or even a savings account or financial discipline. Number three, weight issues. This is due to compulsively eating, looking for that dopamine hit and not looking what you are eating now or the consequences of what you're doing now and you're planning, you're failing for the future. So sometimes I work with a client and they had a couple bad days of eating and then I'm like, hey, look, it's okay. We just got to plan better for the future.

and I noticed that they continue to do this throughout 12 weeks or 16 weeks of coaching, I sit down and I didn't see in their paperwork that they put anything with ADHD. So I'm like, hey, did you ever get diagnosed with ADHD? Like, oh yeah. I'm like, okay. I'm like, look, this can be an ADHD thing. It's hard for you to plan for the future. The reason why, and I'm not saying, hey, I'm diagnosing you. No, not at all. I'm saying, hey, this can, I'm just bringing some awareness.

Because the last thing I want is a person to be paying me and I'm giving them all the things that do, we're doing everything and they're not following through and they think it's their fault as far as, you know, oh, I'm just lazy. And then they spend more money if it's not with me with somebody else. This can cause money problems. This can cause anxiety issues. You see what I'm saying? So hey, if it's this, hey, look into this a little more. Okay. Number four, dental issues. Usually because they plan to fail for the future planning dental.

appointments. Number five, untreated ADHD is associated with significant educational impairments, including a higher likelihood of being held back in school, a one-third dropout rate from high school, and only five to 10 percent completing college. This is in one of the presentations and came from studies from Dr. Russell Barkley, which I'll have down below for you. Individuals with untreated ADHD

Nate (50:23.882)
are more prone to driving issues, including more speeding tickets, car accidents and license suspensions, largely due to in-vehicle distractions and being impulsive. Now, I never been in a car accident, I never had a speeding ticket, and I never had my license suspended. So I'm not saying this is not applying that everybody with ADHD is going to have all these problems. No, these are just some consequences.

Adults with untreated ADHD often struggle with financial management, including impulsive spinning, leading to credit card issues and difficulties in paying bills on time. Number eight, many adults with untreated ADHD find it challenging to maintain long-term relationships, experiencing higher divorce rates and difficulties in sustaining friendships. Remember earlier I told you, I'm like, I'll get to that later. Some people that don't have ADHD that

So I have ADHD and I'm engaged to someone that has OCD, right? Bad mix. But the thing is we work so well together, right? So, but it could be bad if I just didn't use the little bit of willpower that I have to, you know, take blame for things that I do, right? So I remember I told you organization. So I may go in the kitchen, may pull a shot of espresso. And then as I'm doing it, I'm so focused on, I got to clean this up that I

forgot that I left the milk out. And then I'm like, Oh, the milk. And then I go reach for the milk. And then the bottom of my hand that has the little bit of extra espresso from the machine that I was carrying to the sink to clean off is dripping on the floor, but I didn't realize it was dripping on the floor. So then I put everything away. I'm like, yes, now, you know, she's gonna be happy. I did my job. I took the time. And then she knocks on my office door like, Hey, you dropped coffee all over the kitchen. I'm like, Oh, my God.

So instead of responding out of anger, I'm like, you know what? That's my fault. And that was not smart of me to do. I never take victim to have an ADHD, blaming my problems or telling everybody, hey, I didn't complete your program because of ADHD. I'm sorry that I didn't show up for this because of ADHD. I'm very careful on that. And honestly, to be quite honest with you, if I didn't feel like this stigma was...

Nate (52:43.754)
causing an effect with a lot of people as far as being scared to either look more into it or just think it was an excuse or thinking ADHD wasn't real. And knowing the research that I've done and taking a couple steps holistically and with Western medicine of seeing somebody asking more questions and learning more about myself, I wouldn't expose myself if I didn't think this was important for me to share.

my story with you in hopes for some of you that may have been in the same situation as me find wow this is so relatable wow I can't believe this explains a lot and when you go continue to do the research after this podcast you may notice that a lot of the problems that you have are the consequences of a belief that we may have had behind ADHD as being an excuse and not real.

So relationships can be a real problem because remember, if you have issues with emotional regulation, that means that you're exploding at one point, or you're just yapping off about your emotions, and then you're unaware that someone's getting sad because you're saying mean things, or you're confusing them, or you're not organized and everything's all over the place, and you're driving your partner crazy. That can, you know, that seems to be something if you have bad money habits and a person doesn't.

especially if your partner doesn't know you have it, or if they do know you have it and you're not doing anything to help out. And just like I told you, we're gonna be here for, I have notes, it took me weeks to put this together. I wanna make sure that I give you a respectful part two of the research that shows natural ways that you can treat it, how to support your environment, how to go through what doctors and what does that look like for those that...

never been through that situation. So I'll share all that with you. But number nine, individuals with ADHD tend to engage in riskier sexual behaviors, leading to a 10-fold, a 10-fold increase in pregnancies and a four-fold increase in STDs. Again, I never, I didn't fall in this statistic. I didn't fall in the...

Nate (55:10.726)
educational impairments as far as dropping out. Now, your boy is dyslastic. So as I'm reading my notes to you, you probably heard me screw up a couple words. You know, I'm proud of myself. I only probably screwed up about four or five of them, but I struggle with that. My brain reads backwards. So as I'm reading, my brain wants to go the other way. That's how mine shows up. And my brain assumes certain words look like another word. For an example, brain looks like Brian to me and vice versa. But I say that to say, does it mean

All of these have to show up for you, but these are the statistics of people with ADHD. So as we wrap up, it's clear that understanding ADHD from this perspective offers a more deeper look and model for this disorder, providing insights into the nature and the association of the brain, cognition, as far as the neurotransmitters, and how it can show up with money.

taking action in life, procrastinating, and all those good things. So what happens here is that if you have ADHD, it's gonna be extremely hard for you to take action. You know what to do, my friend. You're not doing it. You fail to do it. The front part of the brain is the performance part of the brain. The back part of the brain is the knowing part of the brain. It's the knowledge part of the brain.

Taking what you know and putting it into work, it's something that's going to be very hard. And I like to call this the 50-50 brain. 50% of you knows what to do, 50% of you just doesn't do it. And a lot of that for people that don't have ADHD is just overthinking. But the more deeper you get into that, or my little segment of a 50-50 brain, I have to sit down and say, whoa, gotta be careful here.

If a person has ADHD, they have a 50-50 brain. And for me to tell that person that they are not doing enough, I have to be careful. But I say that to say, if you ever come across my content or any information on the internet about being a procrastinator, or being told that you could have done better in life, or you have more in you, or you have so much potential that you are not, you know, whatever, always being told you can do more.

Nate (57:30.718)
And you see yourself struggling with caffeine, you see yourself struggling with accomplishing things, you see yourself struggling with being disciplined, you see yourself struggling with willpower. You could be a person that could be too hyper focused, or you lose track of time when you are interested in one thing and you don't know how to jump from that one thing to the next. You got bills certain, for an example, you have certain car bills or certain bills that are due and you just procrastinating on paying it.

you have certain debts that you should be paying, but as soon as you get the little bit of money, you become compulsive and spend that too fast. These are all things that are related to ADHD. So my next podcast episode on part two, my goal is to bring you through on some holistic things that we can do for ADHD that have come across and I've been trying a way to set up an environment to have a successful day, week, month in life with ADHD.

And then some practical things. I think when it comes down to the practical things, as far as if this is something that you want to learn more of, I left a lot of information down below.

For those that know, and I'm going to say this one more time, I have both backgrounds of Eastern and Western medicine as far as educational purposes, but I want to be fair in this subject, in this category. I know that especially in the holistic world, there can be so much stigma about doing anything with Western medicine approaches.

So for an example of not so much with therapy, but more with the medication side. And when I sat down with my psychiatrist, I hired a psychiatrist, I found a good psychiatrist, I went in and I did a couple sessions and I went in with a notebook. And one of the things I told him is I said, look, I'm going to be honest with you. The medication thing, I'm not comfortable with.

Nate (59:38.41)
He said, no, it's totally fine. He said, what is a diabetic? And I said, a diabetic, and I said, what kind? He said, type one diabetic, what's a type one diabetic? I said, the type one diabetic is an individual that does not develop enough insulin. He said, amazing. He said, what is someone that has bipolar? Or what is someone that has ADHD? What is one thing they have in relationship?

I said, well, my best guess is some type of inbound to neurotransmitters. I said, yep, they have that in a relationship. So if a person does not have enough dopamine or norepinephrine.

and they take a medication.

does that make them wrong if that medication helps them with their neurotransmitters? And I said, I don't know. I heard it's like speed. They said it's like meth. It's the cousin of meth and all these things. And he said, okay, listen, my goal, he hit me with one of my lines. My goal is not to force you to do anything. I want to educate you. I want to support you. And anytime you come in here, anything that you need or you want to go over with this stuff, you can.

And I had a list of things. I'm like, look, I struggled with this my whole life. And then this is what I've seen shown up. Dr. Russell Barkley showed in his research that.

Nate (01:01:04.418)
People with ADHD don't really take it so serious as far as being untreated until the third or fourth decade of their life. People that are untreated, usually you can find women, higher rates of being untreated. Remember, because I told you, when they were younger, they didn't have all the obvious symptoms of ADHD like boys did, because boys would just, ah.

Nate (01:01:35.606)
says that they notice a dramatic improvement in people when a person comes and when they get diagnosed in their 40s and 50s, one of the most, the biggest feedback they get is that people wish that they were diagnosed and treated earlier in their life. Dr. Russell Barkley also mentioned, there's no psychiatric drug that's effective like the ones for ADHD.

He also mentioned, and one thing my psychiatrist mentioned to me, because I told him, yo bro, my family struggles with addictions, I'm not doing none of that stuff. What's the natural way? Here's what I found on the internet. Here's what I found on the internet about how to heal this. The good thing about it is the things that I showed them actually were kind of like research papers and it just wasn't from Reddit. I went into...

And I spoke to him, I said, listen.

Nate (01:02:39.762)
He said to me, sorry, I lost my train of thought. He said to me, Dr. Richard, I mean, not Richard, Russell Barkley mentioned that people that do get diagnosed notice a dramatic improvement in their life. And the point that my psychiatrist was trying to make to me is that do we make diabetics feel guilty that they have to take insulin? And I said, no. He goes, well, if you go on the internet right now, can you find some things that show

that you can help diabetes naturally. I said, yeah, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, and type two, yeah. I came across a couple things with type one, but I haven't found anything efficiently. He said, when it comes down to ADHD, and you start to really learn, well, this is what he said, people with ADHD, and Dr. Russell Barkley said this too, that truly have ADHD, never get addicted to the medication. It's a very small chance of them getting addicted.

The people who get addicted are the people that have normal levels of neurotransmitters, then get on the stimulant, and then now their body depends on that stimulant because it became dependable. People with ADHD have lower levels of neurotransmitters to begin with, so they're not going to be dependable as much as a person that had normal levels of neurotransmitters and never had ADHD on the stimulant medication.

That's something he said to me. I just want to get that out strong because I've been on here for an hour and four minutes. I didn't want to lose train of thought on that one. So does that say you should go take the medication or stimulants? That is not my... I'll be irresponsible of saying that, that I can't diagnose you. Right? I'm not a doctor. Number one. Number two. This is for educational purposes only. And number three.

as someone who was medicated in college for a month or two months around that time, it scared me on how much I noticed a difference in my life. So I saw stigma, I ran away from it and never did it again. What I'm saying to you is you don't have to jump in. This does not say you should go start taking medication. What I'm saying is the first step is just become a little more aware. Check out the research I have down below in the presentations.

Nate (01:05:05.11)
And then maybe schedule a meeting with your doctor. Just have a conversation, right? Have a conversation with your loved ones. Do some type of inventory in yourself and see, do I have this? And see if anybody else can, oh yeah, you definitely like this, you definitely like that. Not to get diagnosed, just become more aware. That's what I'm doing, I'm in an aware stage. I went to go see a psychiatrist, I'm looking at other ways. I'm not saying.

I went and I started popping pills and feeling better. No, I'm saying, yo, this information blew me away and it got my attention a little more to figure out how can I deal with this. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and the next podcast will be going over the holistic ways versus the Western ways of dealing with this, how that works and how to create an environment to support this because there is a way and a system that you can support ADHD and part two. If you enjoyed part one, share this with a loved one. Maybe this can help people.

Leave a review, and those really help. If you watch this on YouTube, let me know your thoughts down below. Did you have ADHD and you learned a lot that you never learned before? Or do you believe that you may have ADHD and it just went undiagnosed and you wanna go, you know, speak to your doctor about it. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you in the next podcast. Peace.

If you enjoyed this blog, Join my newsletter, where I send out weekly holistic health tips to help you become the best version of yourself :) 

👉 ⁠Join my Tribe⁠

👉⁠Book A Call⁠

👉⁠Join the BeGreatWithNate Academy⁠

👉 ⁠Website ⁠

Want more from Nate?⁠ Click here  ⁠

TIKTOK✅⁠BEGREATWITHNATE⁠

Youtube✅- ⁠BeGreatWithNate⁠

IG✅- ⁠BeGreatWitNate⁠