The 14 Day Meal Plan That Turns ADHD Into A Superpower! | Dr. Jolene Brighten

Alex Partridge (0:00)

Because in your book, you have this 14-day meal plan that really is a collision of your two worlds. On the one hand, you've got this huge experience, 20, 25 years as a nutritionist, and on the other hand, you've got this huge experience as an ADHD woman, and all of the research you've done in that department, and those two worlds collided, and you've developed this plan to supercharge female ADHD brains, and a lot of the food in that plan is in front of us on this table right now.

So let's start with Guy. Why is Guy on the plan?

Jolene Brighten (0:32)

Oh, so Guy is going to surprise a lot of people, because we often hear things like, you should be dairy free, or if you're perimenopause right now, you've lived through the fat free era.

Guy is rich in butyrate. Now butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that your microbiome should be making for you. Unfortunately, ADHDers have less microbial diversity, and then as estrogen declines, we have even less microbial diversity. That short-chain fatty acid butyrate helps the lining of your intestines heal. It also helps the blood-brain barrier heal, and it's anti-inflammatory. It helps with lowering neuroinflammation, and it helps with lowering systemic inflammation as well, but also the gut lining. And it positively impacts that vagus nerve that we were talking about, which helps that rest and digest. So you get out of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn state of the nervous system that so many of us can find ourselves in, myself included, as my time blindness was trying to tell me that I would never make it here on time today.

Alex Partridge (1:38)

So interesting, Jolene. And we move on to saffron, which when buying the props for today's episode, I realized is one of the most expensive pound-for-pound foods you can buy. I think it's like the weight of a postage stamp, it was like £4.50, which is about $7, I think.

But is it worth it? What's the science behind saffron?

Jolene Brighten (1:58)

So saffron is absolutely worth it. Now I'll say all the science comes from supplements and standardized, but I think that when you look at eating meals, so what cultures are eating saffron? They're also including ghee, turmeric, other things that can be really beneficial. So saffron, for my peri-menopausal women, helps with sleep, helps with hot flashes, can help with mood. For PMDD, it's been researched and been found effective. The standard of care for PMDD we discussed earlier is SSRIs. That only works for 30 to 50% of women.

I'm talking about women who think about leaving this planet before their time. So saffron has been shown to be beneficial for that. And then interestingly enough, they did a study on children with methylphenidate, Ritalin and saffron, and found that when they take saffron, it made their ADHD meds work better.

I started to implement that in my practice, and what I found is that luteal lag we kind of get into for women on ADHD meds when estrogen is dropping or taking a back seat to progesterone, and they're like, my meds don't work. I have found that bringing on saffron actually helps them have better efficacy with their medication. We also know that saffron can help mitigate some of the side effects of drugs like SSRI. So it is worth it. It is very, very expensive. The good news is you don't need a lot of it. I'm always a food first person, but I will say that for some of these things like PMDD, ADHD that are diagnosable conditions, the research, clinically speaking, is validated on supplement form, which is about 28 to 30 milligrams that you would take of that.

Alex Partridge (3:32)

So interesting, Jolene. Then you brought salsa with you today, which surprised me.

Why salsa?

Jolene Brighten (3:40)

Oh my God, my book was written on chips and salsa.

Alex Partridge (3:42)

Let me tell you.

Jolene Brighten (3:44)

So salsa is actually, surprisingly, a great way to boost your dopamine and your serotonin. So I always tell people like 20 minutes of physical activity will buy you two to three hours of focus and peak cognitive performance. But you might find yourself in a situation where you can't exercise. Eating salsa, specifically, it's the burn, the capsaicin, can help boost those neurotransmitters. And it may feel counterintuitive, but it's actually incredibly healing for the gut as well. And researchers are so interested in capsaicin, which is in the salsa, the thing that burns your tongue. They've been trying to figure out how to put it in a capsule to sell a supplement. And as it turns out, it's the repeated dose in food that actually has the most benefits.