Jenna: Hello, happy people, and welcome to Office ADHD. Welcome, welcome. Before we get started, I want to make sure that I give you guys a few announcements. One, just a reminder. Please share the show with anybody you think like it. The best way for us to grow is for you to tell somebody else that you like our show. Two, make sure that you have entered that water bottle naming contest or labeling contest so you can win that Amazon.com gift card. And three, I’m really excited we are working on getting Fidget pins coming. Join the water cooler email list so that when they come out, you will get an exclusive promo code for the ones that I’m able to order. Now. I also am putting on the website another set of fidget pins that I need some help crowdfunding with in order to get going. They love to make these in rainbow colors, which don’t really show up well at the office. So in order to order enough to make them change the color to a sensible office color but still keep them fidgety, I need some help crowdsourcing. So I’m putting that crowdsourcing link on the website. I’m going to put the links in the description as well. I’m really excited about getting some office products out there that you can take to a board meeting where you can take anywhere you’re at and you could even take it to the doctor’s office and still feel like an adult while you’re fidgeting. All right, so today we’re going to be talking about some medical stuff, pills, different things like that, or different ways to treat your Add and ADHD, which means we have to start out with this disclaimer, I am not a doctor. Crazy. I know. Just so you know, when you’re taking advice from me, you’re not taking advice from a medical professional. And please take that disclaimer how you should take it. Make sure that you are talking to a medical professional before you start any medical treatments, especially because I don’t know your specific issues that you have going on. I’ve mentioned before that I first got diagnosed with Add, ADHD when I was in college. I started off on the Stimulants, so on Ritalin and Adderall later, not at the same time. That would not be a good plan. And part of that was to determine if I did in fact have Add or ADHD. As I’ve talked about before in some of the other episodes, that’s one of the things sometimes they’ll do to help with diagnosis is they told me when I first went on it to tell the people around me. So I told some of my floormates, because I lived in the dorms there at college, that I was going on a new medication and they needed to watch me and make sure that I didn’t start acting abnormally strange because obviously strange a little bit is just kind of our nature. Then they noticed that I was still the same person. And that’s part of managing your expectations. With going on medication for any sort of mental thing, it’s not going to take the Add away. It doesn’t suddenly make you a normal person. It doesn’t suddenly make it so you’re not ever distracted. What it does is it takes the edge off so that you are still functional. You still need to have coping mechanisms, you still need to have things in place to help yourself with your life. Any sort of medication or any sort of treatment, it doesn’t matter what it is, none of it is going to change the way your brain is wired. And that’s a good thing. You have a lot of amazing things going on in your brain and I just want to make sure that any sort of treatment plan that you enter into, you go in with that expectation that this isn’t going to change you. This is just here to take the edge off and to make it so that your life is possible, so that you can reach the goals that you want to reach. Just so you know, I did find that extended release tablets were a lot better than just taking the tablets, that when you take it, it just acts right away. Also, if you are really lucky, like me, you might be able to talk a doctor into letting you somewhat manage your dose on your own. I found that I really suffered from the side effects of especially the stimulants that I tend to suffer from side effects of medication. Everyone is different when it comes to medication. I can take a fourth a dose of NyQuil and I am out. Just out. And that’s the way my life is. That’s just one example of side effects. So for me, when I take Adderall or any of the stimulants, I can feel my heart rate because I can feel all the side effects going on. It still calms my brain a bit, but I can tell that the heart’s racing. So I only like to go up onto a full dose if I really need it. However, I chose after college to stop taking medications. They do have non stimulant medications and I’m hoping to get a doctor on the show at some point to talk more in depth about the different medications out there. However, at the time, and now, this was more than ten years ago, because not to completely age myself, but I did graduate from college more than ten years ago, they were just coming out with the non stimulant drugs and they were not sure how to dose them. So they’re like, we just start you off with this dose. That’s pretty high. I literally felt like my stomach was turning itself inside out and the doctor was like, oh, okay, we’ll just cut it in half and see how things go. And I was like, yeah, no, how about we don’t? So I really just have never gone back to them. And I’ve worked on other ways for me to deal with my ADHD. So I’ve just personally chosen not to go on medication. Other people do use medication all the time and that’s great. It really depends on your situation and what medications you’re already taking. Otherwise it’s definitely a discussion for your doctor for taking regular medication. However, I also know that there is an Adderall shortage going on right now. So I thought it would be a good time to start talking about some of the alternatives to straight up prescription medication that are out there for Add. And I’m splitting it up into different episodes at different times because there are a ton of options out there. The first method I actually want to talk about is limbic rewiring. So the limbic system in your brain takes care of like your fight and flight. Just really in brief. I’m not going to go too deep into the Olympic system, but it takes care of a lot of your needs. Whether or not your immune system needs to get involved, whether you need to be eating and feeding. Some of those very basic should I be really stressed out should I not be really stressed out situations. And what do I need to do about it? Your limbic system is really involved in a lot of that. There are a lot of different limbic rewiring programs out there. The one I am going to focus on and talk about is the Gupta program because that’s the one that I’ve actually used a lot and that I find helpful. I’m going to tell you right now that there are a lot of things it helps with. Right here is from their website. It says, do you suffer from Chronic Fatigue syndrome, CFS, Me, long haul, COVID fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, electrical mold sensitivities, ciRS, MCAs, pain Syndromes, anxiety, panic, Adrenal fatigue, irritable bowel Syndrome, SIBO burnout, lyme, Disautonomia, Pots, or any related conditions? Yeah, so that’s a list of the conditions from the website. And honestly, now that I’ve been through the program, I believe it or I’m actually still finishing up the last parts of the program because, you know, Add, I go in and out of the program. As far as finishing things up, one of the things that it really especially helps with is the part, like it says, anxiety and panic and the overwhelm that comes with ADHD and some of us have depression that comes along with the ADHD as well. So the Gupta program really helps you retrain your brain to help stop some of those symptoms in place in a really friendly, helpful, gentle way so that you’re not causing more problems. You really are figuring out what is at the root of this problem. How can I really, in the moment, stop myself and really make this better? One thing that I love about this program is it really is just retraining your brain so there’s no medications. There’s no things you’re going to poke yourself with. There’s nothing like that. It really is a pathway to healing where you are really just retraining the pathways of your brain. You’re retraining your brain for success so that the pathways in your brain are walking down a good path. Your brain actually does work, like walking through a path in the woods. If you have ever gone to anywhere in the outdoors away from the city, you will notice that there are trails that people walk on and that they are very distinct from places that people and animals don’t walk. Because anywhere animals and people walk, the grass gets broken down. There are people that scuff their feet. There’s different places. There’s different ways you can tell that this is a well beaten path. Your brain is exactly the same way. Memories that you think about more often or different paths that you let your brain go down more often, your brain will easily go down. Your brain wants to go down that path. Your brain wants to walk that trail. That’s easy. Trails that you stop walking become overgrown, just like a trail in the woods would become overgrown if you stopped walking down that path. So if you’re ever trying to change your thoughts, think of it just as a path in the woods. Don’t try and beat yourself up. Just say, oh, we aren’t walking down this path anymore. We’re walking down this other path. And that’s why changing habits and doing all of different things in your brain that make changing pathways possible or you have to change a pathway. That’s why a lot of those are difficult is because if you think about it, bush whacking through the jungle is more difficult than walking down a regular, well cultivated path. The Gupta program helps you learn how to create those pathways so that you can make the pathways in your brain go where you want them to go. And you can stop that feeling of overwhelm, that feeling of like, for me, I get it a lot when I look at a room and I go to clean the room. That’s one of the things we’ll talk about when we get to a day on organization is that one of the things is we want to see everything in the room at once. And so trying to just, hey, go clean the living room is a little bit insane for our brains because we have a very hard time breaking that down into smaller tasks. And this is a good program for helping you when you feel that overwhelm, know what to do with that and how to help calm your brain. I’m going to put links to it in the description. One of the great things is that it has a free trial period so that you can try out the first three modules of the program for 28 days. Really. Then you can just see if it’s something that you feel like will work for you or not. And let’s move on to essential oils. Now, before we start, I feel like as soon as I said that, I felt all sorts of emotions coming from all of you listening. As soon as I said the words essential oils, I’m going to first tell you my take on essential oils and holistic healing in general. I feel like they’re a great addition to medical doctors. I will never come to you and say, never go to a doctor again, for I have found the one herb that will heal you forever, my child. Like, no, I’m not going to turn crazy on you like that. There are some people that I know are 100% into some of these holistic healing methods and they’re like, the pharmaceutical companies are out to get you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do feel like there are some issues with the way the pharmaceutical companies charge for things. There’s some issues there. However, I am going to tell you right now that having met people that are in residencies and going into medical school and different things like that and knowing some doctors personally outside their practices, I 100% honestly believe that the majority of doctors out there care about people. And they went through that grueling, terrible, awful experience of learning everything. I mean, it wasn’t completely awful. Obviously there were interesting things, but they went through that experience of learning all of those things so that they could do their very best to take care of you. Does that mean they know everything? No. Does that mean absolutely every doctor out there is amazing? No. And not every doctor matches every patient. If you’re with a doctor that you don’t like, it’s okay to find another doctor because there’s just personality differences and things. I just feel like overall, that the majority of doctors are in the profession because they want to help you. Do they know everything? No. Obviously, nobody knows everything. And I feel like the good doctors are the ones that will say there are these other vitamins or things that you might take that could still help. One of my things that I also feel like there are other methods out there. There’s essential oils, there’s acupuncture, there’s different holistic things that do help. And I feel like, hey, peppermint is not going to hurt me and it could help me. So if it does help me, then I would rather take that than taking other chemicals. So I feel like holistic medicine is generally worth a shot, especially if it’s not way too expensive. And if it helps, it helps. And if it doesn’t, then it didn’t hurt you. So as long as it didn’t hurt you, if it’s something that somebody is like, here, let me shove this weird thing down your throat and yeah, don’t do it. But if it’s something where they’re like, hey, let me put this oil of something you’re not allergic to. So maybe the oil of this orange on your wrist and we’ll see if it helps you. Yeah, why not? Okay, let’s see if it helps. If it helps, it helps. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. That is basically my take. And I have found that personally, some of the essential oils are helpful, some of them are less helpful, but I have found that a lot of them are helpful. So let’s talk essential oils for ADHD for a minute now that we’ve gotten that huge disclaimer out of the way. First off, when I started researching this, I thought it was hilarious. How many of them if you just search, like if you just throw out the search essential oils for ADHD, you’re going to find a bunch that are like, this will calm them down. This calms them down. Like if you think of the stereotypical, I’m going to just close your eyes and think of the stereotypical person selling essential oils. Like this nice hippie child or something selling you essential oils. And then suddenly walking in on the stereotypical ADHD person, I can see why the vast majority were like, let me list all of these essential oils for calming. Let me just start there. So one of the things just to start off anyway, it’s with essential oils. If you’re going to use essential oils for your ADHD, the first thing that I would do is I would stop and say, okay, what specific symptom do I want to be treating? Do I want to be treating focus? Do I want to be treating my anxiety type responses? So do I want the calm? Do I want the lavender and different things like that that will calm? Do I want to be treating an energy thing? Because sometimes our energy actually goes down from expending a lot at once, which I think is backwards because you think of us as having all of this energy all of the time. But sometimes we’re like toddlers where we run and run and run and crash, run and run and run and crash. So we sometimes have to treat that crash. That’s where I would go with essential oils is to start by focusing on the symptom you want to treat. And then let’s talk for a second about how to use your essential oils. Probably the most popular way to use essential oils is in a diffuser. For those of you that use essential oils and diffusers instead of using perfumes to make your house smell good, I have to say thank you because many of us are allergic to perfumes and the essential oils, we can smell those. Okay, so I have found that the diffusers are best for the oils where you’re trying to control an emotion, or not so much control as you’re trying to create or you’re trying to boost a certain emotion. So if you’re trying to boost calm, then you’re going to want to put like a lavender or maybe like a chamomile, something soothing. Sandalwood is another calming one you can put into your diffuser. That’s going to be something you can diffuse. All of the citrus will give you more of a happy, uplifted feeling. So if you just want to smile more, all of the citrus. So the sweet orange, all of the citrus. What are some of the other ones that I’m not thinking of right now? Grapefruit is a good one for that. Lime, lemon. I love lemon in a diffuser. Those ones are all good for just uplifting your spirits, making you feel happier. The diffuser is also good for if you’re sick that’s not on ADHD, but like, if you’re trying to get things into your nose to help clear out your nose, like eucalyptus or a peppermint or a wintergreen or something in there to clear out your nasal passage. But overall, if we’re talking about like, mental states, I tend to personally find that the diffuser is better for kind of an emotional thing. If I’m working on focus or concentration, then I find that’s better if I put a few drops of that on my neck, like kind of about the same place where you’re going to find your pulse on your neck. If you use two fingers, you can find your pulse, so you’re going to want to put it either there or on your wrists. One thing you’re going to want to be careful of is that some essential oils are hard on your skin, especially if you have sensitive skin. So you’re going to want to use a carrier oil is what they call it. So an oil that kind of dilutes it just a little bit. I would start with getting like a tablespoon of the carrier oil and then put like ten drops maybe of the oil you want to try in it, and then you can try and increase it from there, depending on how caustic or intense the oil smell is. Or intense the oil is. One of my favorite carrier oils is actually olive oil because I pretty much always have that on hand, and it’s really great. In fact, I know a lot of massage therapists use olive oil as one of their massage things. Some people don’t like it because they feel like they’re being basted to be cooked, which that’s their deal. But olive oil is one of my favorites. You can also get coconut oil. That’s not hard. I can’t think of what they call it. But coconut oil, that’s in its oily liquidy form as a carrier oil. Mineral oil you can use too. You don’t want to use anything that has perfumes in it, though. But you’re going to want to use a carrier oil if you are going to be putting on socks or you’re not going to be walking around right away. Your feet, the bottoms of your feet actually absorb oils exceptionally well. So that’s another place to put it. Peppermint is a really good one for staying awake and focus. It actually helps me with my headaches, too. You can put that on the inside of your shirt just so you can smell it more. That one is more just having that smell really close. Or you can put it on your wrists, or like I said, on your neck. There are some that you’re going to read different things, tell you to put them on your temples, like on the temples of your forehead. I would be extremely careful with that because getting the oils in your eyes really hurts. Some of them can be kind of damaging. Overall, it hurts really bad. And since it’s oil, think about oil and water together. You can’t use water unless maybe you use a ton of it to rinse your eye out. You have to use straight carrier oil. So you’re going to go get some olive oil, put it on a rag, and wipe your eye out, which is awkward and gross. I avoid putting the oils on my face for that very reason. I will put a few of the lists that I found onto the website. I’ll put a link to it on the Show Notes description so that you can find the list. But like I said before, you pull up the lists of the oils, have kind of in mind what it is that you’re trying to treat, exactly. Like what symptom is it that’s causing you the most problem. And it’s not that you can’t use the oils to treat more than one symptom at a time, but I find that it helps if you pick one to be your main symptom you’re working on. So the main thing I’m worried about today is my concentration. So I’m going to focus mostly on getting the concentration ones out there, and then maybe I’ll have a calming or uplifting thing going in the background. Or the main one I’m focusing on today is uplifting. So I’m going to put those on my wrist and I’m going to maybe have some focus things going off somewhere else. You can also put them in your bath, by the way. Just don’t go overboard. I know it looks like you’re not putting in very many drops, but they really diffuse fast in a warm bath. All right, so I’m going to put those lists out there. Just so you know. Two oils that come up a lot in these lists are vetiver. I’m not sure if I’m saying that right. The oil of tranquility and Frankincense. I personally am allergic to Frankincense, so I can’t use it. But frankincense comes up a lot about anything mental because it tends to be a general brain booster oil. So that’s a good one. And again, one thing to watch out for is that if you’re allergic to it in real life, you’re going to be allergic to the essential oil more likely than not. For example, I have hay fever. So I tend to avoid a lot of, like, the chamomile and some of those other flower based ones. I’ll smell a little bit of it just to check first. All right, so if you have questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, I love when people come and send me an email or give me a feedback on that, or if you want to post something on the blog, that is great. Let me know. Let’s keep the discussion going, and I hope you all have an awesome day, and I hope you find that helpful. As always, thanks so much for listening. And if you want to know more about anything we talked about today, or if you want to be part of the discussion, join us@officeadhd.com. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
