The Metabolic Syndrome and ADHD Link

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Come join me May 1st through the sixth, so that you can rest, rediscover your strengths, reconnect yourself and those physicians like you who are ready to leave, work at work and re-energize. This is the invitation for you. 2023 your year. Join me in Costa Rica in this really amazing, non-judgmental, intimate decision community.

I am gonna show you how to rest and how to recharge. Let's transform your brain up so that you can start to dream the life that you always wanted this year in 2020. I can't wait to learn all about what kind of year you're gonna have after this conference. Take care. Hello. Welcome to Beyond ADHD, a Physician's Perspective.

I am Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh . I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my adhd, but I now. See it as a gift that helps me show up as a person. I was always meant to be both in my work and in my personal life. In the past two years, I've come to realize that unlearning some of my beliefs.

And some of my habits were just as important as learning the new set of skills. I am so excited about today's topic, which is the relationship between metabolic syndrome and A D H D. I see this in my practice every single day. People look at me like, oh my God, she's a genius. It's not that I'm a genius, it's that I have firsthand real life experience with it myself.

It, when you have that real life experience, you're able to pull it out and make connections that somebody else might not have. So again, let's go through what is D H D A? D H D is a neurological neurodevelopmental. Disorder that affects our executive function and our executive function is this mental task ability to complete tasks, right?

So most of us, when we think about D H D, we think about the usual things like attention. It affects attention, okay? We think about impulse control, we think about the hyperactivity. Many of us might not be aware that there's more than those three. There is 12 executive functions and all of them, or some of them could be affected and sometimes one day more than the other.

And so when we talk about that, it's. Important for you to know, because if you don't realize that task response response inhibition. Task switching. Task initiation task. Completion management of time planning, prioritizing emotional control, time awareness, all those metacognition. There's so many of them.

There's 12 of them that can get affected, and if you're not aware of that, you might be blaming yourself and thinking you have this character. Defect is part of your condition, and you'd be surprised how many times my clients have this aha moments and even my patients when I asked them, okay, gimme all the things that you love about yourself and gimme all the things that you dislike about yourself, and many times all the things they dislike about themselves.

Are part of those executive function, and there they are sitting thinking that they are broken and they have a character flaw because they can't seem to do X, Y, and Z, when in reality it's part of their condition. And why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because metabolic syndrome a set of symptoms or a.

Things that come together. For example, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high blood sugar levels, if you have excess abdominal adipose tissue or fat around your waist, or you have any. Cholesterol levels that are elevated. All those four things put you at risk for developing metabolic syndrome.

And what people don't realize is that A D H D is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is, Affected how much dopamine levels are around. So usually your A D H D tends to be unfavorable when your dopamine levels are low, and you tend to do well with your A D H D when your dopamine levels are high.

And so certain things like food can really increase your dopamine levels. And so that makes sense why, three o'clock, two o'clock, you might be looking for candy or for something for you to use to help you enhance your dopamine levels, because they're probably a little bit low. So with that premise, I am explaining to you that many times your eating habits can be a response to your unmanaged.

And there is a link. Okay. You see what I mean? When a individuals with A D H D have a higher risk of developing this syndrome, because people with A D H D have higher rates of obesity, insulin resistance, and. That is concerning because if you're not aware that you're using food as a means to regulate your A D H D, you're not aware that the underlying cause is not that you're eating so much, but that you're using food as a way to increase your dopamine so that you can try to complete the task at hand.

If we were to treat and diagnose you with A D H D, then it would. Easier for you to not have to be overeating. You be surprised how many times I have diagnosed people with A D H D when they had been told that they were just depressed or they were just anxious or they just could not lose weight. And I would, we would sit down and go through the diagnostic criteria and then when, then we would do all the labs and everything, and then we would realize.

There was ADHD there and once they started, Getting treatment for D H D, they've lost 20, 40, 50, a hundred pounds because now they are now no longer using A D H D. They're not, they're no longer using the food to treat their D H D and, okay, so fine, whatever. We're a little, all a little bit overweight. What does that have?

Anything to do with anything. The reason I am talking about it today is because it has everything to do with everything. Why do I say that? Again, our current lifestyle. Sets us up for metabolic syndrome like most of us are living quick, busy lives. And that is ha that causes us to go through the drive-through to eat sugars to have diets that are high in sugars and probably cokes and caffeine is probably another way, or energy drinks is another way for us to increase dopamine, and most of us tend to be.

Like not exercising as much as we want, and most of us tend to actually even drink and smoke. And some of that is gonna increase our health concerns. And when you have all that things going on, It actually decreases or estimated life expectancy due to you using all those sources as a way to in, to help you with your A D H D.

It actually can diminish how much time we haven't deserved, like it can decrease our life expectancy by 10 to 15 years. So it is important to talk about it because you might not realize treating A D H D. Either with medication or with behavioral therapy, or with coaching or all of them together can help improve your impulse control and can encourage healthy habits.

So that might, now that you understand that you don't have that two second delay between the stimulus and response, That might help you enhance your response inhibition. You might set up a strategy to help you just take a deep breath before you answer or before you go grab the cookie and ask yourself, what do I really need in this moment?

So the important thing is to realize that if you're somebody who might have metabolic syndrome, it might be important for you to. Get curious enough to realize if you might have a D H D and whether you can treat A D H D, and that can help actually decrease your risks for being overweight, for developing heart disease for, having a stroke or diabetes.

Thank you for spending your time with me. I really believe that time is your most valuable. Please subscribe to the podcast, share with your colleagues, and don't forget to check out my website@hdlivecoach.com where you can find out about my upcoming coaching group classes, as well as free master classes and other exciting events that are happen.