Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef, and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids, and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

Today we are talking about sleep.

We're talking about circadian rhythm.

And I have to say, I have just, just finished an amazing book.

When I say finished, I've read it in a very ADHD way and scanned lots of the chapters and gone into the areas that I'm really interested in.

But this is a fantastic book.

It's called the Inner Clock and it's written by Lynn Peoples.

Now, Lynn is here with us today, and I am looking forward to really delving into these fascinating conversations.

But just to give you a bit of background on Lynn, she is a science journalist whose writing has appeared in the Guardian, Scientific American, Nature and many other publications.

And before her move to writing, she crunched numbers as a bio statistician for HIV clinical trials and environmental health studies, and holds master's degrees in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health and in science journalism from the New York University.

And she now lives in Seattle.

So, Lynn, welcome to the podcast.

I'm feeling very inadequate reading out that, that bio.

Oh, no, not at all.

Than so much for having me.

I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, so when I saw this, this book and I was like, oh, from a very personal perspective, I was very eager to read it, but also because sleep and ADHD are so intertwined, and I don't think I know anyone with adhd, whether they are diagnosed or not, that doesn't struggle in some capacity to find good quality sleep.

And whether it's to do with being a very early riser and you fall asleep early, that's my husband.

Or we are owls and we go to bed really late and we don't switch off until, you know, much later on in the evening, but we really struggle to then wake up and conform to this, this neurotypical way of, of working and being.

And so maybe we can address that a little bit.

What you found in the book and the research around maybe these sleep patterns.

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

The science is really lining up an association between ADHD and certain circadian rhythm predispositions.

So there is a study that found 78% of people with ADHD are night owls, essentially.

So disproportionate.

Yeah.

Number in the population are leaning later.

And that, I mean, as you mentioned, the sleep troubles and then these circadian rhythm troubles that are probably happening behind the scenes, these all go together and they can potentially exacerbate each other.

So if you're, you know, and I may wave.

May very well fall in the same camp, working, working through figuring out if I have ADHD myself.

But between the, you know, the active mind laying awake at night, perhaps you're already naturally wanting to stay up later, busy tackling your tasks and then sleeping in in the morning, missing critical morning light, which is necessary to recalibrate your circadian clocks in your body.

And it just, it sets you off on this kind of the snowball pattern.

So the science is suggesting that that might be both genetic, that our inner.

These.

These genes that regulate our circadian clocks could be different, associated with the same traits that ADHD is lined up with, as well as this behavior factor that like, kind of the consequences of the symptoms of ADHD could kind of interact and just make everything all that much more difficult.

Yeah.

That's really interesting that there's a genetic component there that actually kind of like frees us a little bit, because I see it, my husband sleeps very much like his father, and I've got a daughter that sleeps a little bit like my husband, and then I've got a son who sleeps like me.

Okay.

This is not like nurture.

This is just kind of.

As my kids have got older, I've just noticed their patterns.

Obviously, being a parent in this day and age, and we're constantly so aware of phones and scrolling and social media and all the stuff that comes with that.

Everything that's doing to our brains and sleep, there is a worry.

But if we removed all the social Media, you know, 20 years ago, we weren't on phones, but we were still having sleep issues, weren't we?

Yeah, exactly.

So I think there's so much of this is just biologically ingrained, and then we're throwing on top of it modern society's toys or tools or other pressures.

I guess what's interesting is that, yes, we have the genetics, but we're also learning so much, aren't we?

I mean, when you did the research to your book and you were uncovering all these like, I loved all the cool stories that you were telling from like different historical times and everything.

What were those connections that you kept noticing from history and what we're seeing now, like what hasn't changed really?

Yeah, I mean, I think modern society over the last, more or less, the last few decades is just really stretched what's called this chronotype curve.

78% of those with ADHD fall on the end of this chronotype curve which describes how your inner clocks are ticking.

There's the early birds, there's the night owls, there's everywhere in between.

100 years ago that curve was pretty tight.

Like there weren't that many people on any, you know, extreme end of it.

But because of the way we live today, which is mostly Indoors, you know, 90 plus percent of the time on average, we're in modern society, we're indoors, away from natural daylight.

We eat at all hours of the day, we're eating, you know, the midnight snack, we have refrigerators, we have all these opportunities, we have the corner store opportunities to eat late at night.

You know, we're traveling across time zones more, we're changing the clocks back and forth twice a year.

All these things are just wreaking havoc on these inner clocks and they're exacerbating those differences.

So there's been studies that have shown that the spread of that curve has, has widened and, and so that directly impacts, you know, those night owls, I mean, even more extreme night owls than they would have been living, you know, probably with this, with the same biology.

Yeah, 100 years ago.

Yeah.

Those night owls I can definitely speak for because with ADHD are busy and they are trying to cram in a lot during the day, but there's also things that they're trying to catch up on and they're also desperately clawing back time or needing time to decompress after being non stop busy all day and doing so much for them, for other people, but also needing time for themselves.

And that only time that we get back is maybe at like 10pm and so between, you know, once our kids, I'm speaking as a mother, but once our kids go to bed and the kitchen's tidy and washing is away and lunch is packed and all the many, many things that we have to do, it comes to 10pm and we just need some peace and quiet and to go to bed doesn't feel like we're claiming any time back for ourselves.

Even though we know logically going to bed is a really good thing.

Like sleep is a really good thing.

We know we always feel better and especially with adhd, we, we know that our ADHD symptoms are lessened with the more sleep that we get.

But there's this like payoff of I just want some time to myself.

I just want to sit and watch Netflix.

I just need to do that.

We need that like wind down time because it's so.

And our life, like you say our lives are so much busier.

So sleep is kind of like the bottom of our priority list, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think on the whole as a society, it's starting to, you know, creep up on it.

But.

Yeah, but the reality, as you said, I mean, all these things have to get done during the day and these are realities that women face.

So there's, I mean, I guess, you know, coming from, from my research these last few years, the great news is that even just small tweaks can potentially make a really big difference.

So even if you do need that decompression time, you know, after you've put the kids to bed and everything else, you know, maybe that time involves having dim lights, which are calming to your physiology anyway, and maybe trying to opt for, you know, a tea rather than a glass of wine, for example, because wine is so easy to reach to when you're so, you know, wound up and stressed and you want to like calm yourself.

But that in turn will disrupt sleep and make things even harder.

That snowball effect comes back into play.

So I think there's like three key things I came to in researching this book.

And this is like, you know, one is contrast.

Increasing the brightness of your days and the darkness of your nights to try to get your clocks in sync with the sun and with each other.

And then it's constricting the meal times that you eat during the day.

So it's especially critical, like three hours before bed to try to stop taking in any calories.

And so that's like any snack, any sip of wine, anything that will kind of wake up your digestive and metabolism system.

And then it's consistency.

It's like trying to go to bed at the same time every night, seven days a week, and eating meals at the same time, exercising at the same time, which is also incredibly hard in today's society when it's like weekends or catch up time.

Right?

You know, you want to, you want to sleep in, but, but like, even if you can't do all those things, trying to get one or two checked off every night could really Help to sleep and getting the sleep help and waking up early and refreshed could then help you the next night and you get on a positive feedback loop rather than the negative feedback loop.

That can happen.

Yeah.

And I can see just those tweaks alone, how, you know, how helpful they can be for sure.

Just to hear you say to not eat anything three hours before bed is like, oh, I was thinking, you know.

But I do sleep better if I eat, say dinner at 6pm instead of like 8:30pm sometimes we do eat dinner at 6pm and I quite like that, actually.

Like just getting it out the way, kitchen, tidied, everything.

But it unfortunately is not that realistic most nights.

Right, right.

And it's hard because sometimes you want to be sociable and you want to go out and you want to have dinner and wine and not go to bed every night at 10pm and you've kind of like, you've got to weigh it.

You've got a balance.

Yeah.

You've got to weigh.

Yeah.

I mean, I still do that.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to stop having a life, a social life outside of these circadian clock rules.

But it's just, you know, keeping it in mind and the days that you can just thinking about those, maybe there's.

Like a 70, 30 rule.

Kind of like 70% of the time you are kind of sticking within these sort of circadian rhythm kind of guidelines for yourself.

And then we give ourselves a bit of 30% kind of bandwidth of flexibility and being okay with that.

What would you think?

I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good number.

70.

I feel like that's manageable.

Ish.

And it's not.

Yeah.

You know, with adhd, I think so many of us want to be like, we want to be perfect because we see how easily our life is derailed and how easily we can kind of like our dopamine chasing can.

Two hours later, we're still scrolling on our phone, we just think, how's that happened?

So we, we try really hard to keep ourselves in check.

But often it's at the price of like a very negative critical voice.

That's always kind of, you should be doing more, you should be better, like tomorrow, you need to do it, you know, differently.

And I love these conversations around sleep and wellbeing and lifestyle.

But I also want to kind of give everyone this compassion of it doesn't have to look perfect every day and there is flexibility.

Obviously you've done all this research, you've presented the facts and they are kind of concrete.

But how, if you want to put this like into practical terms in like day to day living and allow people to understand the power and the importance of the circadian rhythm, but also kind of say, but it's okay if it doesn't look perfect.

Yeah, I mean, I think I want to add, I like your 70, 30.

I'm like adding that to.

No.

And I think, I mean, yeah, balance is key because nobody's, I mean that's part of it is, I mean, public health messaging, right.

You, if you make something too difficult, people are just going to brush it aside and not, you know, it's going to be hard to even try.

And the reality is, and the scientists, I think are great in recognizing this.

I spoke with a researcher who's doing a lot of work on the timing of meals.

So that piece, that constricting meal time piece, there's research showing that eating within a six or eight hour window is amazing for your health and reduces risks of diabetes and potentially enhances longevity and all these things.

But it's like, who's going to eat between six and eight hours only a day?

Um, so that's really in extremes.

But you know, she's found that 10 hour, a 10 hour window hugely, but still hugely beneficial and potentially actually doable.

You know, again, maybe not seven days a week.

It's again just those days that you have control over that can make a huge difference.

It helps, you know, build up your ability to kind of, I don't know, withstand the insults that come from those days that you are breaking the rules.

But maybe not even call it breaking the rules.

It's just living but like, but trying to keep, just keeping these things in mind and I think awareness is huge.

I mean to know that such a small tweak could help you and then experiencing that.

For me, you know, I had all this data, talked to all these scientists, but it wasn't until I really followed these circadian hygiene lessons and tracked my data and kind of tracked how I felt that, you know, it's motivation.

It was like, I really do feel better, function better, my mood's lighter when I do as many of these things as possible.

And when, you know, if I eat too close to bed or drink alcohol too close to bed, I mean, I wake up not feeling well.

And the data for my Fitbit backs it up.

It's just my REM sleep's really short.

I've woken up a lot throughout the night.

Those kinds of things just reinforcing.

How long did it take for you to write the book and how long were you researching and I guess what changed for you from not knowing all this information to knowing it.

So it was about like a two and a half year process.

It was mostly research for the first like year and a half, but some writing involved.

So I am maybe more evidence than I am probably do have adhd.

But you know, it was hard for me to, to really discipline myself about, you know, how I was going to organize my time there.

So.

So lessons learned.

But.

But yeah, it was a lot of research and was kind of connecting the dots from my interviews with people and then my own experiences that I put myself through for the book again it was like this.

The personal data weighed even more in my mind, you know, in addition to the scientific research.

And like I said, the eating piece like played profoundly for me because I had never thought about that.

You know, I grew up in a family where we all had like ice cream or a bowl of cereal before we went to bed.

It was just the norm.

And not to say that that's necessarily bad.

You know, my dad still does that and he is extremely healthy at 82.

You know, it's not that like again these rules are not black and white and it, and you can break them and still live happily and healthily.

But as soon as I started tweaking some of those, I just noticed, I noticed a difference.

Yeah, the food thing feels like a manageable thing thing actually when you said that like that 10 hour window.

So if I'm right, that's like, if you have breakfast at like 10am you stop eating at 8pm or even if you have like brunch about 11am you can have you finished in, you know, and that if you know, you can have an early dinner, go out for dinner, whatever at 9pm, finish eating so it doesn't feel that unmanageable.

And actually, you know, for me now I've noticed as I'm sort of heading into my mid-40s to drink any kind of alcohol.

I never ever sleep well.

Like never.

I may fall asleep quickly but at like two in the morning, one in the morning, I'm like, eyes ping open, my heart racing and that's it.

I'm lying awake for two hours in the night.

And that could just be one glass of wine now.

Same here.

Yeah, it's rough.

It is rough and it's annoying, but it kind of, it's interesting isn't it?

Because it's kind of your body giving you that feedback straight away of saying to you like this isn't working and you can be persistent with it.

And for me now, you know, perimenopause, my ADHD symptoms, I need to weigh our way up.

And I have to say my well being and feeling good, my mood and my focus and my concentration, all of that is, is probably like more important to me than having that glass of wine.

But it's taking, you know, it really has taken me a while to kind of make that choice.

Not saying that I won't drink wine, but I make a more intentional, more mindful choice about it.

Yeah, that's almost exactly for me what I have come to.

I mean, it's a slow process, knowing everything and then, but actually acting on it and making it part of your, your life.

It's a process.

I mean, I just want to throw in there not to like, not to beat a dead horse.

But the, the, the, that constricting to 10 hours, I mean, it really should be on the earlier side.

Like again, rules can be broken.

That's good to know.

But, but yeah, they, the research shows that the earlier the better because your body is more primed to handle incoming calories earlier in the day and your bigger meals should be on the earlier side.

Like brunch time is when your body is most ready to handle, especially carbohydrates coming in.

Okay.

So if you could, I mean, kind of the opposite of how we tend to eat, which is, you know, the dinner meal being the bigger meal.

I'd be interested to ask.

Tell me a little bit about what your thoughts are with power naps.

Siestas.

What does that do to our circadian rhythm?

Yeah, the scientists I talked to about that suggest that power naps can be great.

They can be really helpful to, yeah, keep productive through that circadian dip that happens in the afternoon particular.

But they advise to keep them short, like really no more than 20 minutes as early as you can during the day.

Because the later you have it, the nap, the longer the nap, the more that's going to encroach on your ability to fall asleep at night.

Okay.

And that's due to this combination of your circadian rhythm as well as your sleep kind of propensity or the sleep homeostat, which is this other system that interacts with the circadian system that I talk about in the book.

But yeah, earlier short can be great.

Combine that with a little walk outside in the daylight and you know, it could be good to go in the afternoon.

And what are your thoughts on like using caffeine to hack our sleep and I'm gonna give you a bit of a flip from the, from the night owl of the early, the early morning lark.

And I have heard this as well with, you know, other ADHD people.

I know you that quote of 78%, but I have heard where they are up and the minute the eyes are open.

This is my husband.

He's like Mr.

Efficient, Mr.

Like just loads of jobs.

But yeah, you know, like what he does between the hours of 6am and 10am Most people probably wouldn't be able to get done in a full day, but he's just like.

And then from about midday, his energy levels start dipping.

So it, I mean, I guess it's kind of a being like a shift worker or something that you have to kind of play to your, your genetic makeup.

But if you're constantly fighting.

So he, you know, his working day is nine till, you know, five, say, then he comes home.

We've got kids, we've got homework, we've got rotors, we've got dinner.

It doesn't quite work with our life because he's so tired by 9pm yeah.

I'm so fascinated by all this.

I mean, we are all, we all tic differently and.

Sounds like your husband.

Yeah, definitely has the genes in his circadian cox that just pull him earlier in the day and the other difference.

So, you know, we all fall in a different place kind of on that curve as to when we're inclined to sleep and wake.

But along with that is there's different times of day that we are prime to be most productive, strongest, fastest.

Those things are all slightly different for each of us individually, but they are tied to our circadian rhythms.

Like, for example, I mean, for me, I'm most productive late morning time if I'm keeping my rhythms sort of in check.

And on average, most people are at their peak athletic performance in the late afternoon or early evening.

So it's interesting, depending on the task at hand, you know, there's probably different times of day that you are best to try to tackle that task.

So, yeah, sounds like you and your husband are slightly different.

And it's unfortunate the way society has scheduled us.

You know, if his workplace could potentially be more flexible and allow him to work earlier, you know, they'd probably get more productivity out of them.

But it, it kind of also just shows that we all are unique and we have to lean into where those productive moments are, where and when we are feeling like we need to rest, that we have to rest then and not to judge.

Like we, you know, if you kind of look neurotypical, neurodivergent.

It's just differences.

It's not right or wrong.

But our society has.

I'm interested to know, in the research that you did, did you come across any countries, cultures, societies past and present that kind of like had.

Nailed it.

Like we're just doing things right or not right, but like just doing things.

So the circadian rhythm supported really well?

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's funny, I mean I think first person that pops into my mind, it's not, I guess it's not a culture, but it's.

I mean there's individuals out there who do live more according to their inner clocks, kind of, you know, by choice.

So there was a man I met when I did my experiment where I went down in the bunker for 10 days and he worked at this former nuclear missile silo and he, you know, lived, he lived out of a Winnebago and just kind of adopted this older fashioned lifestyle where he, you know, he listened to radio at night rather than like watching screens.

He kind of set a regular bedtime for himself and a wake up time and, and his eating schedule and he was like outside most of the day or like, you know, when he wasn't down in the bunker, he was Kwistal window or whatever.

So he was just, just seemed more in tune and he was, had this like old fashioned sort of disposition and even the way he dressed.

So it was like you know, sort of a time capsule back in time.

So I think, you know, the Amish culture like in Pennsylvania and the US and Ohio that you know, they sort of shun technology, a lot of it and they spend more time outside.

You know, they're really.

It's kind of going back a little closer to how humans evolved.

You know, we evolved mostly outdoors.

You know, we were eating during daylight hours, we weren't raiding a fridge at midnight.

And they're, you know, sort of still living that lifestyle which is just more in tune with nature and the planet's like natural day, night cycle.

So, you know, I'm not as well versed, you know, in populations across the world, but there were studies of.

Actually now that I'm saying that there's studies of different indigenous populations out there and even looking at once electric lighting was introduced, how that changed their kind of their rhythms, like when people went to sleep and when they woke up and not surprising it changed.

You know, people stayed up later probably part partly behaviorally because they could, they had a way to see and do things, but also the Science suggests that light at night does prolong how long it takes our melatonin to start rising to help kind of trigger the biological effects that lead us to be able to sleep.

And it delays our rhythms.

So a few things at play there.

Yeah.

I've been to Iceland, not in the summer, but near the summer.

And we went to Lapland, Finnish Lapland, in the winter.

And at 2:30pm it went dark in.

In Finland.

And we were speaking to people in Iceland and they were saying, you know, 11:00pm in.

On a summer's day in Iceland, it's like bright sunlight.

People go hiking.

He was telling me that they have the best time because they finish work, then the kids, like, they have a barbecue and then they chill and then they go hiking.

And they're not in bed till like 1am every night.

Yeah.

And it's not even dark.

Then there's like two or three hours of darkness maybe.

I don't even know if that's true.

And that's their cycle for the summer.

And he and I said, but then you have to get used to the complete extreme in the winter and how that plays havoc on their mood and their hormones and sleep and all of that.

And I guess if you are indigenous to that country, I wonder if biologically and genetically you kind of just deal with it like you're more resilient to it.

I don't know what you know about that.

There is some data suggesting that.

That those populations that moved or migrated to these regions at an earlier time are just more adapted and perhaps less prone to like, seasonal.

Effective seasonal affective disorder in the wintertime.

Yeah.

I spent some time in Alaska during the midnight sun around the summer solstice and hung out with a group of people who lived in Anchorage.

And they were talking about this like the.

I mean, they almost described it as this kind of manic depressive or this bipolar experience throughout the year.

In summer, it was just like that.

You know, you're taking advantage of all that daylight and you're just going, going, going.

And then in the winter, it's almost like.

Yeah, it's the opposite.

It's almost hibernating.

Right.

And it's.

It's interesting because also when you think about the impacts of light we can see with.

Light obviously creates the picture of the world for us through our visual system.

It impacts our circadian system, which is what we're more recently understanding and still piecing together.

Then it has more and more effects that we're actually still adding to as well.

But one of them is a stimulating effect.

If you got light late at night, it's not only delaying the onset of your melatonin, it's not only potentially kind of shifting the hands of your clock, but it's also directly stimulating your brain and keeping you alert.

So all those things together.

And I mean, I experienced this myself.

We were camping for a few nights in Denali national park under the midnight sun, and I was just, like, wired.

You know, I wasn't sleeping well because it was never dark.

And we were staying up later on a campfire talking till, like, yeah, two in the morning.

But I was, you know, I had.

It was energized during the day.

It was sort of manicy feeling.

But I guess for a short period of time, that's okay.

But when it's like weeks and weeks at a time, that's hard.

And like you say, that's that.

That sort of stimulating.

I mean, I find that when it's a full moon, I know there's lots of energies and everything with the full moon, but I can almost feel the brightness of the full moon kind of stimulating me, and I feel wired from it.

I'm very sensitive to all sorts of things, and I'm quite sensitive to the moon and that brightness of the full moon.

I'm wired for about four nights, just before and just after.

Is there anything to do with the circadian rhythm?

I mean, I find it so fascinating.

Me too.

This is like, we're just starting to try to tease this out, but there's a researcher here in Seattle who's really interested in the lunar effects on our circadian rhythms.

And he studied local college students around a full moon and was comparing them.

I can't remember the details of the study, but comparing to these groups of people and the impacts of the full moon, time of month on their sleep timing, it showed that they were delayed.

But because they're in an urban setting and then looking at this other population, he's hypothesizing that it's not the light of the moon, but potentially something else about that comes with the lunar cycle.

So whether that's like, you know, a magnetic field change or something like that, that, you know, we evolved with all these cycles, right?

We had the day, night cycle, we had the lunar cycle.

Some creatures on Earth had, you know, the.

The tides.

All these things were cyclical.

So it made sense evolutionarily for our physiology to adapt to that and to be able to predict and anticipate those changes, which is exactly what our circadian clocks are doing.

You know, on A day to day basis.

So, yeah, time will tell, you know, the impact.

But there is something, there is definitely something.

It's, it is fascinating.

And I guess as women as well, like, we're working with our hormones and we know that, you know, a lot of women feel that towards the end of their cycle towards menstruation that our sleep goes down because our progesterone is kind of going down, estrogen is going down and all of that.

And how does that, like our hormones impact the circadian rhythm and vice versa, like, what's the interaction there?

Yeah.

Also some cool research coming out explaining some of those connections.

We're finding that, you know, birth control pills manipulating our rhythms can, I mean, they've even suggested, like, break our clocks.

Birth control pills really dampen those rhythms that we have throughout the day.

They're finding that drops in estrogen, especially, you know, the major plummet that we get around menopause, that, that really dampens circadian clocks for women.

And they're now suggesting, I mean, there's more research that needs to be done here, but they're suggesting the likely tie between that and a host of chronic diseases.

Those risks that rise for us as we hit middle age and beyond.

Yeah, that, that could have to do with these dampened circadian rhythms.

So we.

Are you talking about things like dementia, diabetes, cardiovascular.

Yep.

Okay.

Yep.

All these systems in our body are running on rhythms.

I mean, that's, you know, I guess I haven't even gone back to the basics here, but I mean, our bodies are filled with these timekeepers.

There's trillions of them, like every cell in our body.

And it's driving our different systems to again, anticipate the changes throughout the day.

So it's like anticipating when that food is coming in, for example, and being ready with the right hormones and everything to handle it.

And so when that system is not as primed and as ready to deal with things, then these things coming in are more insulting on our body and can cause more harm and are just.

Yeah, they're finding a lot of mechanistic explanations for why that might lead to some of these conditions.

So would you say things like processed food, all the electronics, the phones, the lighting, all of this sort of artificialness that's kind of crept into our, you know, modern society?

Would you say that is directly impacting our circadian rhythm, which then is impacting the increase?

Maybe this is why we're seeing this rise in dementia and type 2 diabetes and, I don't know, like these chronic diseases that have Just become so pervasive.

Do you think they're all interconnected?

I think it's a player.

I mean, again, speaking for all the scientists that I've talked to, I don't, you know, there's a lot of things at play in our modern world and a lot of.

Yeah, like toxic chemicals that we are facing and the way we process our food these days.

You mentioned that.

So it's not the only player, likely, but the science really is suggesting that it is potentially a major player.

Even some of those insults that we know about, like toxic contaminants and the impact on our body.

There's now studies that suggest those impacts on our body may be via their impact on circadian rhythms.

Air pollution, for example, we're finding, can affect your circadian rhythms.

And when we know air pollution causes these other effects, so, you know, our lungs and our cardiovascular system, it could be potentially through its impact on our rhythms.

So again, early, early days in some of this research.

But yeah, I mean, yeah, these things, the way artificial, artificial light in particular, very clear that that is, it's really just kind of dampening that contrast in our days that our circadian clocks need to keep time.

Yeah.

And I know you've, in the book you talk about, you know, the blue light glasses and the, the led, circadian lighting, all things like that.

Like, do they live up to the hype?

Like, what do you recommend?

Because I can see, I mean, with any think, especially with ADHD and sleep, anything.

Like, people jump on the kind of marketing and the materialistic sort of bandwagon, and all of a sudden there's a million products that become overwhelming within overwhelming.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's kind of like, well, what, what is worth money?

Like, what's worth spending money on?

And what do we not need to spend the money on?

And we can do kind of like ourselves.

Naturally, starting with the basics can go a long way and not require going crazy high tech or spending a lot of money.

Yeah.

Maybe investing in like one of those sun lamps or those bulbs that are brighter and heavier on the blue wavelengths rather than the warmer wavelengths for the daytime.

And using those, but like more importantly, focusing on getting outside, like even just like 10 minutes here or there, 20 minutes in the morning is ideal.

But getting doses of daylight throughout the day, trying to be as close as possible to a window, if you have the option, not everybody does.

But incorporating as much of that just brightness, especially of the blue wavelengths or what the sun offers, those full spectrums.

And then at night it's, I think it should be pretty easy to some extent.

You can save energy just by turning the lights out and especially overhead lights.

So just focus on maybe a table lamp.

I've got a whole suite of electric candles throughout my apartment that, you know, I can like turn on with a remote and especially this time of year.

It's really cozy.

Yeah, that is nice.

And it's, it's a nice way to kind of wind down and, and as I've gotten used to that, I mean, the eyes don't need that much light to see.

We evolved our rods can adjust pretty easily.

So it's not like you're going to trip and fall with minimal amount of light.

And those for those table lamps, that's when you want kind of the warmer dimmer bulbs.

So they do make, you know, now with LEDs, a variety of kind of colors, even some that you can use the same light bulb and change the color throughout the day.

But that, you know, that takes a little more thought and work.

So if you just want to keep it super basic, just like maybe overhead lights keep bright and blue, turn them off at night, table lamps turn on at night, have them warm.

Dimmer and blue light blocking glasses can help.

I don't think they're necessary, but like if you are having to sit in front of a computer late at night or you're at a friend's house and they refuse to turn off the overhead lights.

Speaking for myself being obnoxious, I, you know, I might put those on.

I don't use them on the regular.

Yeah, I think what you're saying is going to relate to so many people because when with ADHD or neurodivergence, I have noticed my whole family, we hate the big bright lights.

And so we have everything's on a dimmer and we have light low lighting.

Or I go into my kids room and they've just got, you know, just like a lamp on.

And that's not because they know all about the circadian rhythm.

That's purely from an intuitive perspective.

Bright artificial lights are like overly stimulating.

Like it's a sensory thing for me.

Way before I knew about adhd, I craved outdoor light like I craved to be outside.

And the artificial lighting in the office where I used to work would give me a migraine.

It would overstimulate me.

I'd leave work and I'd be like just jittery and irritable and I didn't really make the connection.

And then when I stopped working from an office and I work from home and I had more Access to being outside and not those awful lighting.

I was a much calmer version of myself.

And so I genuinely think, like, as neurodivergent people, we're kind of so sensitive to all the external stimuli that we're kind of.

The research.

The guinea pigs.

Yeah, we kind of, like, are so sensitive that we do all the guinea pigging and then we feed it out to the rest of the population and kind of say, we told you this was not good for you 20 years ago, but everyone told us we were too oversensitive.

Right.

Now you have the data now you believe.

Yeah, exactly.

And so it just.

It's just funny because we.

We feel all of this so much and what impacts our sleep for someone else.

It might take 10 years of doing that thing, but we could just do it for like, two months and our sleep's completely derailed.

But again, obviously, I'm generalizing and hypothesizing, but tell me a little bit.

I know that a lot of people take melatonin with ADHD and it helps to regulate or improve sleep.

And I'm interested to know what your thoughts are.

And especially because here in the uk, we can't get melatonin over the counter and why.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, I forgot that that is the case there.

Yeah.

I guess fortunate in the US we can.

It is wildly popular now for good or ill.

I think there are a lot of doctors that are concerned that it's being overused, especially among children.

But it can be very helpful in certain circumstances.

And I have still now, you know, I don't take it that often, but when I do, I've learned from scientists how to take it properly, because if it.

If you don't take it right at the right time, it can actually make things potentially worse.

So by that, I mean, if you take it right before you want to go to bed, it may actually delay your onset of melatonin and your ability to sleep at least, you know, the following night.

Because your best time to take it is when your natural melatonin is starting to rise.

And that happens about two or three hours before your typical bedtime.

So if you take it right before you go to bed, it's kind of stimulating, or this.

This natural rise, which again, is pushing everything off.

But if you take it two or three hours before bed, it gives a little.

A little extra to your melatonin rise, which is going to help help you fall asleep in two or three hours.

So if you cut.

If you get caught in this insomnia, insomnia cycle, which happens to me a lot.

You know, if I want to try to go to bed at 10, I think about taking melatonin maybe 7:30ish or something and taking a small dose, like less than a milligram.

A lot of the products, at least in the US are like 5mg and that is way more than you need and has a higher likelihood of making you kind of hungover or drowsy the next day because it's so much.

So smaller dose earlier in the evening.

And that could potentially help you fall asleep earlier and avoid kind of that, that vicious spiral snowball effect that can happen by.

That's really interesting.

So why do we do know why we can't get it over the counter here in the uk, but in Europe and America we.

I wish I had an answer to that.

I mean it could have to do with the fact that, I mean there is concern that it's, you know, being overused and potentially has, has effects that we don't fully understand yet on your physiology.

I think on the whole scientists think it, you know, it's pretty safe when used appropriately and you know, maybe not super regularly, but I don't have an answer for that question.

I'm curious now.

I'll look it up.

But yeah.

And when you say not regularly, so you would you say that if you're dependent on it to sleep, is that a problem?

I think so.

And I, I can't directly point to a study or data offhand.

I just think there, there is concern out there and I think it's, you know, we might not understand fully how that's going to affect how your body naturally produces hormones on the long term.

If you keep putting this artificial supplement into your body, the key is to.

I guess stimulate the melatonin naturally by doing the things like getting outside early on in the morning.

Look.

And maybe not putting sunglasses on first thing in the morning.

Getting that natural daylight.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And that then stimulates the melatonin to hopefully come into play when it needs to.

Towards the end of the day.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Those three things, it's like that, the contrast, light, dark, constricting, again, the mealtime has to do with your melatonin too.

I mean, keeping your rhythms in check and then consistency.

So if you like are doing these same things, at least some of them every day on the regular, you're going to get a natural melatonin rhythm and it's going to be a stronger rhythm.

So again, if you, if your circadian rhythms are disrupted, if you're kind of your schedule's all over the place, then that melatonin rises may not be as strong and that's going to make it harder to fall asleep.

One of the things that I loved from your book was about the breast milk and how if you pump breast milk in the morning and you give it to your child at night, it's got all different kind of like hormones and stimulants to.

Because it's like morning breast milk.

And if you give your baby breast milk from the night, it hasn't got the same components to kind of keep them satiated and alert during the day.

And that to me was just like how clever is the human body and evolution?

And we're trying to mess with all these things but actually that in itself that like with the breast milk was just, for me just mind blowing because it's like we, we've been dampened, our intuition's been dampened so much by society and technology, but actually our body, it still knows.

It still knows what we need, when we need it and how we need it and how to look after ourselves.

And I think that breast milk analogy was just amazing.

And it's, I mean, not that a parent doesn't have a gazillion other things to worry about, but thinking about that, it's pretty easy tweak, you know, like maybe labeling a.m.

and p.m.

breasts or milk that you've pumped and could help everybody sleep through the night if you time it right.

Right.

I think, I think it, yeah, really fascinating.

Well, I just want to thank you so much for this conversation, but for the book and I think for anyone that is interested in sleep and improving sleep and understanding the circadian rhythm, I think this is a fantastic book because it really delves into brain health, productivity, mood health recovery.

And yeah, for me it was, it was a real eye opener and it also helped me let go of certain things as well.

Like there was some things out of my control and so thank you so much.

I presume it's available on all platforms and anywhere you can buy books.

Exactly, yeah, you can find it.

You can find it anywhere.

And my Website, Lynn P.

Peoples.com I have links to a bunch of sites to purchase from and has more details on the book as well.

If you uncover anything else very interesting that you think we need to hear about, please come back because I'd love.

To talk to you.

I would love to.

It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you, Lynn.

Likewise.

Thank you.

If you've enjoyed today's episode, I invite you to check out my brand new subscription podcast called the Toolkit.

Now this is where I'm going to be opening up my entire library.

My vault of information from over the years, my workshops, webinars and courses, my conversations with experts about hormones, nutrition, lifestyle and bringing brand new, up to date content from global experts.

This is going to be an amazing resource for you to support you and guide you even more on more niche topics and content conversations so you can really thrive and learn to live your best life with adhd.

I'm so excited about this.

Please just check out it's Toolkit on Apple Podcast.

You get a free trial.

Really hope to see you there.