0:00 Intro
1:02 Meet Selena from Neuro-Ink
3:27 Why Selena created a neurodivergent community event
7:18 Labels, diagnosis and the risk of being boxed in
10:00 Early signs, EHCPs and getting the right support
15:17 Working with your brain, not against it
16:40 Neurodivergence in relationships and family life
23:29 Understanding your own mind and sensory needs
27:00 ADHD systems: alarms, lists and reminders
29:20 Neurodivergence at work and in business
33:15 Ofsted, autism and harmful assumptions
36:20 Marginalisation, inclusion and building community
40:43 Dopamine, caffeine and the ADHD brain
45:27 Medication, CBD and alternative support
49:21 Vitamins, saffron and supporting brain health
58:24 Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and gut health
1:03:41 Food, gut diversity and eating the rainbow
1:13:39 Movement, school environments and teenage sleep
1:16:39 Ofsted inspections and what schools hide
1:21:59 What neurodivergent people really need
1:24:28 Selena’s vision for youth spaces and belonging
1:29:09 How to support Neuro-Ink
1:30:55 Wrap up

Intro

If you tell your colleagues, “Yes, I have ADHD. I’m autistic.” There is a chance that they’ll put you in that box.

What neurody divergent need, and this is so personal to me, they need acceptance. [music] They need connection.

The hardest thing is obviously like if you got a partner, I I find that I can’t enforce that upon her.

How you love someone is how you treat them, how you’re willing to learn about them, how you’re willing to support them, and how you’re willing to understand them.

This all starts here. Oh, absolutely.

Learn about your mind. Learn about your personality type.

You can communicate until you [music] are blue in the face.

It means nothing unless some of it is actioned. What Offset have put in the [music] training for their inspectors that is harmful.

I’ve had seven offsteads in my [music] time. Two as a lead, five as a member of staff. They’re all fake.

the Education Lounge podcast.

Meet Selena from Neuro-Ink

So, we’ve got a guest on this week and do you want to introduce yourself and tell us who you are, what you do?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, hello. Um, thank you for inviting me. Oh, that’s all right.

Uh, it was off the back of my event, which I think went really well. We’ll go into that later, I’m sure. So, my name is Selena. Um I have been a teacher for don’t want to say it 20 27 years in total. Mhm.

But that journey led me to what I do now. So I’ve kind of created my own role which is I’m an educational neuroscience consultant which basically is a posh way of saying that I look at the brain because that’s how we learn and I look at how it develops and grows and I use that to inform my teaching my teacher training and both my children are neurody divergent I’m also neurode divergent so it’s kind of led me down a path where I’ve specialized or have a team of people that help me specialize in looking after neurode divergent pupils, but now it’s ended up being young people and adults as well. So, it’s kind of grown.

So, your company is Yeah, my company is called Well, it’s a it’s a CIC, which is kind of like a cross between a company and a charity.

Okay.

Um it’s called Neuro Ink because um the ink of the pen comes from we have we we’re very universal. We don’t have anything to do with faith. We we we welcome everyone from every belief system. But I was inspired by um one of the sayings from my faith which is the ink of the pen is holier than the blood of a martyr. And so um because intelligence is very important in my faith and so I loved the word ink and also I like when I was in school I loved the Parker pens that I used to use all the time and I remember them.

I did that as well. So ink ink for me reminds me of the days that I was at at school and um neuro is obvious because it’s um both neurode divergence neuroscience. So I thought Neuro Inc. because I want to connect the two and show people how to communicate, how to come out of isolation and how to increase their intelligence irrespective of the foundation they start from or their brain type or whatever societal position they find themselves in.

Okay, do you spoke cuz you had your event last week. Last week before week before 9th of May week before which we both went to.

Yeah.

How did how did you find your first event? Let’s go with that first.

Why Selena created a neurodivergent community event

Uh yes. So um I’ve in person. So this was my first my first event that I organized. I’ve attended a few. So I got a taster and I currently uh run a program for a charity um to support moms who uh are suffering from kind of mid to low levels of postnatal depression and anxiety. So so they can go and get some coping strategies and support. I run a crash of 10 members of staff and it’s all neuroscience informed and we’ve been going for four and a half years we’ve only we’ve out of the four and a half years I think we’ve done and looked after maybe 380 plus children only 11 of those had minor tweaks to the service but the rest of it has been fully positive and they wanted more. So then I thought okay that led me to looking at the programs looking at charities and how they run programs learning and I decided to my my niche is neurode divergence it’s learning in general it’s respecting the learning process of every individual I think but neurode divergence I think are particularly marginalized within that kind of sphere within the sphere of education and that’s not to say anything bad about teachers or the staff that support them, but their their hands are tied behind their back because the system is very restrictive and budgets as you know is a problem.

So when I looked around there were a few neurody divergent connection events but not many and I wanted it to be different. So I booked lots of speakers who you met um mental health nurses. Uh I had Harry who’s the um awareness key um lead as well as the mind champion. She specializes in suicide prevention.

And I had Josephine Lacy who’s an amazing stand-up comic. Um she her her show is called Autism Mama cuz her boy’s autistic.

And um I had a couple of other speakers there. So anyway, in general, I I had the speakers and you know what’s that film? Uh can’t remember what it’s called, but he there’s a very famous phrase, if you build it, they will come. Can’t remember what it’s called now. Isn’t it? It’s um Kevin Cosner. Is that a baseball film?

Yes, it’s a baseball film. I’ve not watched it. I forgot what it’s called.

Field of Dreams. That’s it. Field of Dreams. And so I thought I literally did this in a month and I thought it’s now or never. Like Tony Robbins said, feel the fear and do it anyway.

But I was pleasantly s surprised like we ended up with around 60 people maybe just bit over and a lot of food and a lot of food but you know if you build it you got to have food and you know a lot of people were saying to me oh you know why don’t you raise money and charge and I thought no you were there the room needed a lot of love and I thought what’s better than love than tea biscuits sandwiches and cake.

I wasn’t expecting it to be as emotional as it was um but I had John, I think I was probably the only neurotypical person in that room and hearing everyone’s stories, it was um it was yeah, it was a lot.

Um yeah, but it was good that they, you know, me included. I’m not one of those speakers. I’m neurode divergent. So, uh, yeah, if I’m overmpathetic, it’s one of the traits of, um, excuse me,

[clears throat]

of being on the ADHD spectrum, and I was the first one to cry, and but I think that opened up the floor.

Yeah, it made everyone else comfortable enough to. Yeah.

Yeah. We recorded an episode a couple days ago, May’s episode on labeling, which we mentioned when we spoke the other week, I think.

Labels, diagnosis and what happens after identification

Yeah. But we we were meant to have there was a guest that was going to come on from America. He like bailed at the last minute. Um and the whole episode was on on labeling. And we did keep going into ADHD and all the different um neuro what’s the word? Neuro neurody divergent.

Neurodyiverencies. I don’t Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know what? When you put neurody divergence with a t and a s at the end, it actually comes up as wrong.

It’s not currently a spelling. But you know when you’re referring to neurody diverent and neurodyiverent you need to also be able to refer to them in a plural. So [laughter] neurode divergent. Yeah.

Well yeah anyway [laughter] and we kept going down the path of talking about the different things and we thought no let’s save that for because she’s going to have a lot more knowledge and a lot more to say on this topic than than we do. What are your thoughts on the whole labeling?

So I both love it and hate it. It depends on how it’s used and how the person who’s being labeled perceives it.

And that’s what we said. Yeah.

And how they also how they perceive it and also how they treat it.

How is internal whether it’s internalized in a negative and how it’s externalized. So before I start off with the warning label, first and foremost, being being labeled and being diagnosed is kind I’m going to refer to both of them because they’re one and the same.

However, I’m undiagnosed, but because I work in what I work in, it’s I know I’m ADHD because I have two sides of my brain that are constantly fighting. One that wants to be tidy and the other one that just doesn’t care.

Just for a second. So you said just to make it clear, you said ADHD. So ADHD is when you’re both autistic and you have ADHD traits as well.

So you’re a nurse and it’s combined. Yeah. So literally um I empathize with my daughter who is purely ADHD and ADHD the more I learn about it is also a spectrum like autism. Yeah.

So autism is ASD autism spectrum um syndrome disorder but it’s known as a spectrum and whenever you Google it there’ll be a spectrum that comes up. So there’ll be high functioning or asperes and my son has asperes or he’s high functioning um in terms of the autistic spectrum. I I’ll go into that detail a bit more but in terms of so there’s labels within labels is what I’m trying to get at but it’s useful. So let’s look at it from a logistical point of view first.

Early signs, EHCPs and getting the right support

if your child and it’s very hard to spot before the age of three unless you’re well versed in the in the subject which I was. So the first time I thought hm with my son is because we were in Maitius and my dad went to change his nappy and I could hear him screaming blue murder. It wasn’t a normal scream. It was blood curdling.

But I knew that my dad was he’s obsessed with his grandchildren and so I knew that maybe he’d hit his head or something like that. But actually it turns out that they put Issa to change his that in in the restaurant we were in Maitius there was no nappy changing thing.

Okay.

So they put him under uh they put him on the table in between the sinks but there was a hand dryer and it went off.

Right now yes you could argue that any baby would cry but the level at which he went into well it was a massive difference.

So yeah, so going back to what I’m saying about labels, I spotted it and the reason I encourage because there’s also cultural stigma as well and I’m a Muslim so I can safely say that within my culture it’s very difficult to get parents to admit that their children is a neurody divergent because it’s still seen in a negative way.

It’s changing but it it’s got to change further. But going back to the label thing. So if you can get if you can spot that your child is a neurode divergent earlier and get them diagnosed earlier. Why is that helpful? Because it will open up the education healthare plans or EHC EHCPs they’re called earlier. You can get them support in the classroom earlier. You can apply for perhaps PIP or DLAs later.

That’s a little bit of money that you could get from the government to support them, like pay for extra tuition or whatever earlier.

That’s all useful.

When labels validate and when they create victimhood

However, one of the and it’s not all ADHD sufferers, but one of the traits that ADHD sufferers feel and and and and be overcome by is distraction and also procrastination and overwhelm. They’re very sensitive to overwhelm. So the average person that I visit, I won’t speak on behalf of everybody that I visited, including my daughter, they will either have a super clean house or it will be a complete chaotic mess because of the level of overwhelm. Now, if you get diagnosed ADHD, they will tell you you will go into overwhelm. You will find that you you struggle with X, Y, and Zed. organization and timekeeping and and keeping things even hygiene self hygiene can be an issue. So what I say if you are diagnosed or if you’re self diagnosed or undiagnosed and you just know it understanding your brain is great but a diagnosis on whatever level is not a deterrent from life’s responsibilities.

So what I teach is a way for neurode divergence to work with their brain. So life still gets done.

Your bills still need to be paid. Your room, your fridge, it still needs to be tidy within reason. It doesn’t have to be and span. Everyone’s living arrangements are their own. But if it’s affecting your health, and this is the problem, a lot of the ADHD uh neurode divergent I deal with, their living environment, their working environment actually has an effect on their mental health because it’s a mess. Yeah.

And because they know it shouldn’t be a mess and they don’t want it to be a mess, but they become overwhelmed. Yeah.

Right. So going back to the label question. So I know I’ve gone around the houses, but it with it’s very difficult to just simply answer a question.

Yeah. It’s nuance. It’s not it’s not a straightforward answer. Yeah. There’s nuances that are involved.

So labels are great for achieving help that they should get. Mhm.

Especially when they’re younger. Labels are still great when you’re older because it validates and every neurode divergent will tell you as you saw that they always feel out of step, different, weird, isolated, not wanted, not understood. You heard all of that on the 9th of May.

So that validation, it’s great. It’s a great feeling. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just have a different brain type. Just like some people are paralyzed, some people have use of their arms, some people are par paraplegics.

It’s just that the hand you were dealt when you were born. You were just born with a different brain type. So the validation is great. So that’s the great things about labels. What’s not great is when and I’m not saying neurode divergent fall into this, but they can based on my experience is fall into perhaps a little bit of victimhood.

Yeah. And I I mean that with the most love. Um and I’ve potentially suffered from it myself. Um and so um there can be a little bit of victimhood and there can little be a little bit of well I’m I’ve got ADHD so I can’t be Yeah. Like an excuse. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. [snorts] That’s um and that’s where it becomes a life problem because just because you have a brain type doesn’t mean you can’t be self-aware. Look at your life patterns and think, right, for example, myself, I am most productive between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. So, sometimes I’ll take a power nap when my schedule permits between my crash is between 4:00 and 7:00. As a mom, that’s the worst time to to to crash. So, what I’ll do is I’ll set my children up and then just have a power nap. And then I’ll wake up and I’ll just like charge through.

Well, yeah. You work around it. You work with it. Yeah.

Rather than having it be um an excuse to just I can’t do Yeah.

Yeah. Which is a a really healthy way of of doing Well, it’s definitely Doesn’t it feel healthy cuz I do like 1:00 in the morning till 3:00 a.m. It doesn’t feel healthy, but it does. The mindset is a healthy mindset. Yeah. Then Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

I brought this up to you before. I don’t know. like like about like the rhythm of when I feel most active is different from you. It’s like I feel amazingly productive in the early morning. I don’t. No, I’m not a morning person.

No. As in As in like 1 to 3.

Yeah, agreed. I’m more like Yeah. Super super early as super.

Oh, so are you are you talking about 1 to 3? The witching hour basically. Yeah.

So, yeah. Okay. But but then I’m just like I don’t really want to I I find the hardest thing is obviously like if you got a partner something you can’t live like I I find that I can’t enforce that upon her like it’s not you can’t but you can’t I mean I I disagree.

Neurodivergence in relationships and family life

I I must admit there’s a couple they’ve only just got married actually. They’re quite famous online. uh I forget the name of their f their page on Facebook, but she’s um a singer and she’s also got ADHD. She’s also an ex addict, drugs addict. She had issues with and she met someone who’s autistic.

The two really I can tell you as an ADHD individual, it is really hard. Like it’s like having two monsters constantly battling. Um, I don’t know if you you’re old enough because I’m much older than you to remember the Tom and Jerry, but there would be often like an evil Jerry.

No, an evil Tom and then a an angelic Tom and they constant that that’s pretty much the devil on the shoulder, an angel on the pretty much what it feels like.

I love their relationship because the work has been put in. So, he rec he has recognized that as an autistic person, rules, injustice, injustice, sensitivity, and all those things that come with being autistic. He understands his himself, his mind, his habits, his patterns. He has learned to not take what she does personally. Yeah.

So, he will start to say, “Ah, she’s not washed the dishes after I’ve asked for the 14th time.” Rather than that being a row, let me unpick why. Is it because she doesn’t care and she just knows that I’m going to do it or is let me just watch her. So they’ve done an amazing job at understanding each other. But the key thing is willing to compromise. It’s you can I say to cuz I have neurody divergent couples come up to me or one person who is new and they they book sessions with me. You can communicate until you are blue in the face.

It means nothing unless some of it is actioned.

That’s where the behavior is what makes the difference. The So, I say to my children all the time.

Love is a great word. It’s thrown around a lot. You can say you love someone, but your behaviors will dictate something else. How you love someone is how you treat them, how you’re willing to learn about them, how you’re willing to support them, and how you’re willing to understand them. And I was watching another podcast the other day with a gentleman. He’s on um he was on that celebrities go dating. He’s a psychologist.

Can’t remember his name, but he interviewed someone and this guy was famous. I’m not very good with celebrities and names as you can see, but he said something that really got me. He said, “When you decide to be with someone, you have to understand that you will find that you will fall in love. You have to find a way to fall in love with that person at least 15 times over your lifetime because we don’t stay the same as human beings.

Experiences change us. They release epigenetics and then that that influences how we react, how we behave.

You you grow. We’re neuroplastic. So our brains mold to our environment. Uh and we can change and evolve and we do change and evolve uh as we grow. So the person you meet is not going to be the person you end up with. So he said you have to be you have to it goes from limrance which is that initial burst of emotion and love and all of that that really obsess obsessive phase which is lirance. It goes from that and it phases into long-term love which is about familial connection whether you have children or not. you can have a family connection with that person whether you have children or not cuz lots of couples now choose not to have children. So um and whether they’re and when I say couples I mean all kinds of couples like um from the LGBTQ plus community, the heterosexual community, everyone. It doesn’t matter what whoever your partner is, you have to be willing to consistently learn about that person. Yeah.

Consistently make an effort and and I mean mutually. So, I would say try something new every week, whether it’s So, there’s this new thing called smash rooms. Like, I really want to take my partner to a smash room where you literally Yeah. have a baseball bat, covered safety gear, and you just have at it. Yeah. I probably think part of me that the autistic side is going to hate it, but I think the ADHD side needs it.

So, but what the point I’m trying to make is is that I believe that neurode divergence can absolutely be in a couple. I think two ADHD people have to work exceptionally harder because there’ll just be chaos everywhere. Um, but whether if you’re neurotypical, so long as you have that long-term curiosity about your partner, because actually the more you’re curious about each other and the more you’re willing to compromise and the more you’re willing to adapt and change behaviors or add behaviors in, then what’s what’s not to love? What’s what what could possibly go wrong? It’s just that people tend to get to the limrance part and then it becomes boring and then they don’t want to see over that hill.

Yeah.

But I can safely say that even if you look at all your relationship in my friendships once you get over the lirance part you met and you may you know you go out together you grab coffees and you turn that over into long-term love. my best friend. Um, she made me cry the other day cuz she text me and she said cuz she has a partner, I have a partner, but she called me her greatest love story. We’ve been together, so we were born on the same road. I was I’m older by 3 years. So, we’ve literally been friends for 43 years and it’s probably the best thing I have ever because there’s so much safety and understanding and just getting each other. like I can tell her anything and she won’t judge me on it. She might give me some advice that I sometimes don’t want to hear and vice versa. But that’s okay because you don’t want yes people around you all the time. But so absolutely being a neurody divergent and relationships can be navigated. But it’s that genuine love and care to know each other and grow with each other and compromise and behavioral adapt as you go through the journey.

For sure. It’s interesting. I’ve already heard about that side of the whole years and years of [laughter] hurt, struggle, and also like heartbreak will make you the best psychologist on the planet. [laughter]

Understanding your own mind and sensory needs

I was saying to you on the last episode that um I spent a lot of time understanding my mind and doing all of the personality tests and and that sort of stuff. And after the event, I think you did it during the event, you did the test on whether you’re ADHD or not.

Um mine came out as I wasn’t. Mhm.

But I feel like I have a lot of the traits.

I don’t know if it’s more autism traits or I should definitely do an autism test.

That would be I’m sensitive to like a lot of noise, the fluorescent lights we spoke about.

Um the story you said about was it you said I was crying as a baby.

Yeah. With the hair. He couldn’t he never got over that until he was nine.

I So when I was younger when I had I had chicken box. I was like six or seven maybe. And the phone rang and it was deafening to me. Like I was screaming the place down. It was just the phone ringing. But but that’s because of inflammation. Yeah.

So when you’re ill, everything inside you is inflamed. And perhaps for you, your eardrums were perhaps inflamed from the illness.

And maybe that went off and then probably sounded so much louder than it actually was.

Maybe maybe I should take that test. I’m a bit nervous to do it. But no, do it. Do it because you know what?

It’s your brain. You’re stuck with it. I said this in my jewel yesterday. You’re this this piece this lump of matter in your head. You are stuck with it. So look after it. Be careful what you expose yourself to and learn about it.

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of learning about it definitely and like my personality just like understanding myself more in the last few years. Maybe I should do that. Definitely. Yeah. Definitely got me sophonia.

So you know the the when you have a noise like noises annoy you. Yeah.

Yeah. Because not every not every person who has that will be autistic.

This is my thing. I don’t hear what it is.

But not every but every autistic child or person normally will have a sensitive not to all sounds. Like for example, I can’t bear the sound of the central line cuz there are some places.

Oh yeah. But I know I don’t think anyone can. [laughter] But my son who is autistic and classically autistic I would say loves it.

What going through a bank station? But any station that he actually it’s like white noise to him. That and airplane engines I can’t bear it. The noise is just airplane engine is not as much because there it’s a consistent I like the the central line because it’s got like peaks and troughs and his creatures the high pitched.

Yeah. But I’ve always been able to pick up on but I think everyone hates when plates scratch with cut. I think that’s a given.

No, but then what is it like or I mean you’re too young. would be like the smallest the smallest like tap and stuff like that on a plate if you’ve got like misophonia is like deafening in your ears.

I don’t know me misophonics like if it’s it’s a neurode divergent thing cuz it’s not a neurotypical thing. Not every neurotypical has that. So if you have that and I often talk about dyslexics dyspraics and I so sorry I can hear it going off in the it’s fine. Ignore it. Ignore it.

Ignore it. Okay. Yeah. Um, I’ve really thought I I put it on airplane mode. You can you can jump off and Yeah. Can I jump off and do it? Get the cables.

I touched your leaves. You said mode. That’s what I did.

Well, isn’t it like an alarm or something?

Yeah, because I’m ADHD. So, part partially everything has to be off.

Um, should turn the sound down maybe. I don’t know. I’ve turned it off. Okay.

That bit.

ADHD systems: alarms, lists and reminders

It’s fine. We’ll keep it in. It’s kind of fine. [laughter] Yeah, it was the alarm to remind you alarm. I have [laughter]

I have an alarm for everything. Take your vitamin, Selena. Drop the cat to the vet, Selena. Um, don’t forget to put the wash on, Selena. Get to the podcast, Selena. Um, don’t forget this report, Selena. I I got a ticket the other day um from actually helping someone who was a neurody divergent, and I I panicked on the way here because I thought, “Oh my god, have I not paid it?” And then I went into it quickly and it was I don’t have to pay until the 29th. So I was like, “Okay, I’ll do it as soon as I get home.” So I haven’t sat there for that. So you literally But that’s me working. You’re working with it. Yeah.

My brain because I know I’m going to forget. So um one thing I found this to be classic ADHD, but we love notebooks and lists.

See, but I do as well, but I’m not You’re not neurody divergent. But that but nearly every ADHD person will have this issue.

I hate them. You are. I I need them. You need it. I’ve got you.

Yeah. I I I I’ve realized that I I can’t It It was fine through school and stuff like that.

But then I noticed like stuff seem to slip a bit more as I got older and in university for instance, I’d be like, I don’t know what time it is. I have no idea. And time blindness.

Yeah. And I’d like go out at 8:00 in the evening for breakfast and stuff. I was like, I really don’t know where I am.

What?

Yeah, I’m the complete opposite. I could I could tell you what time it is without even looking. I can tell you if it’s been a minute or two minutes. I just know.

He’s extremely sensitive. And then I’m like, not to sort of stuff. And you guys work together. It’s not easy. No, but you see it does work.

We work we cover we each of us cover the other bit. How long have you guys known each other? Uh school. Secondary school.

Gosh. So long term. So something’s going right.

Yeah, we’re both here. So [laughter] maybe the three of you should get together and write how to be mates when you’re when one person’s you’re a divergent.

Not even mates running businesses together. Yeah.

Is as well as mates is Yeah. But you you you have to have a solid foundation to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so.

Neurodivergence at work and in business

And my business partner is from India. We’ve been we’ve known each other for 15 years and we were it so it’s but I’m in business with both him and and my him and his wife. We’re very good friends. They just nuts. They call me nuts. But they get like considering they’re from India and India like is a place where the neurody divergent concept is not embedded yet. And so their experience of me is nuts. that that’s my nickname, Nutsy.

And and and and it’s fine, but you know what? They they just leave me lots of voice notes and then they’ll leave me the same voice notes. In fact, sometimes he just does a full stop on WhatsApp.

He’ll just say voice note, voice note.

So, he brings it back to the top of the chat so I remember to listen to it. So, you know, this is what I’m saying like it’s people can adapt and they can help you out. It’s, you know, so that that’s part of the label that I don’t mind. But what when it’s detrimental is when that’s one thing we didn’t mention about the label thing earlier on. I’ll go back to it.

It’s when other people use it to judge or other people use it to ridicule or belittle.

I think that can also be a negative.

When labels are used to judge or box people in

The way I the way I thought of it is if you tell someone that this person or or I am ADHD or whatever it is, it’s being in that box and being only that thing.

Yeah. Whereas I feel like there’s so many other aspects, but I feel like once you give someone a label, that’s [snorts] all they are. Yeah. To to outsiders.

I think that was the that was a thinking from a few years back. But I think now it’s evolved.

It’s whether or not that person wants to be put in that box as well. But so for example, if you go into work the office and that’s an an office is an incredibly difficult place for neurode divergence and if you tell your colleagues yes I have ADHD I’m autistic there is a chance that they’ll put you in that box and but that’s where that’s the other side of what I do at Neuro Inc. is I train um companies on how to audit anonymously and then make very minor adjustments which are all taxdeductible to allow their staff to work in a way that benefits the company and themselves so they don’t find going to work painful because I don’t know the specific the specific statistics off the top of my head. But I do know that I mean retain companies find it hard to retain staff anyway. A lot of companies do, especially the bigger ones, especially where there’s like a hierarchical system and multiple managers and and things like that. And systematic bullying is a thing whether you’re neurody divergent or not. You know, I know people who are neurotypical. one of my CES which is a crash educator who works who worked for me a couple of years ago. She she came to work for me because she left her corporate environment because it it damaged her mental health to the point if she didn’t get out there was going to be no return.

So they can be very toxic environments especially with large corporations.

I won’t go into the reasons why because that would be a whole another podcast.

But the point is is that you it it the label can either help or it can either not. But that can be but even if you let’s say a neurody divergent comes into the workplace or even yourself you’re neurotypical but you have sensitive hearing if you never say anything that’s still going to harm you. If you say something it may still harm you or it may not. The point is is that we have to now take that chance which is why the march that I’m going on tomorrow is so important because what Offstead have put and I really want to touch on offstead um what Offstead have put in the training for their inspectors that is harmful.

Ofsted, autism and harmful assumptions

There are so many things that need to be looked at when it comes to neurode divergent individuals.

Why are you going to focus on why first of all why are you going to ignore all of the other immediate necessary issues that need looking at when they visit schools? And you’re going to hone in your inspectors on the fact that they should be sensitive to not neurode divergent specifically autistic children are more likely to be extremists are at risk of being extremists. It’s such a specific sentence.

Mhm.

And Robert White, who’s also a very famous autistic um comedian, I actually had the pleasure of going to see him and he picked on my partner in the front row and it was hilarious.

He was the one to flag this up on his social media and cuz I didn’t realize there was a march on tomorrow and he he made fun of it because that’s what comedians do. and he said, “Yes, you’re going to meet a lot of extreme people at this March tomorrow. People are extremely into Star Wars cuz a lot of us are anorax. I’m obsessed with Lord of the Rings. I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. I’m obsessed with um Michael Jackson.” Michael Jackson. Yeah. Cuz I did that straight after my last event. And you know, he said, “You’re going to meet extreme bird watchers.” [laughter] And it’s true. Like I mean yes there are neurotypicals who have their interests but autistics and neurody divergent take hyperfocus to a whole another level. You know my son he’s 17. If you put a Boeing 747 or I probably said that wrong. He’s going to tell me off for it engine on this table he’d be able to dismantle it and reassemble it. I don’t know any other 17year-old that can do that. So the yes, can they be sensitive to extremism?

But that’s true. Look at the whole Andrew Tate thing that’s going on.

That’s true of any that I mean lots of neurotypical boys got sucked into that. Yeah.

You know, so why is that not in you know adolescence was an amazing TV um uh miniseries that launched a thousand conversations because it’s a thing. You know the m misogyny in schools. It’s a thing. So why is there nothing in there in your training for inspectors on misogyny and protecting boys and the ex the violence against girls and women um and the sexualization of our youth which is also you know what what where is that you know correct me if I’m wrong maybe it is in there but why is it why are you picking on autistic children and extremism it just I also think like they should well obviously these are terrorist groups or cells or whatever, they they’re more likely to pick on they select people who are marginalized.

So the more effort that you make to not marginalize people, the less, you know, less problem should be demarginalization.

Exactly.

Marginalisation, inclusion and building community

And rather than just marginalizing them even [laughter] more so. Yeah. Right. So yes, if they’re what is their thinking? Let’s try and play devil’s advocate here. They’re thinking right these children are naturally isolated because they’re socially excluded. They can’t they don’t have the normal social cues.

They they hyperfocus. So they’re conversational are varied but within the subject area and then they struggle to have other conversations that neurotypical children will have. So yes I and coming from experience I would say my children myself um have I feel felt isolated and marginalized and not been able to connect with people over a lifetime sure but that is not so you can highlight it and make an issue of it in a in a negative way which is what they’ve done or you can just look at marginalization in its totality and say yes we can have neurody divergent that are marginalized we can have neurotyp difficult. So what can we do for inclusion and then look to the government give out grants to yes people like myself who work on bringing communities together you know or and maybe in some cases where children are at risk or from behaviors at home or whatever behaviors in school home issues maybe look to have compulsory community events that they have to volunteer at. not slave labor, but like and I don’t mean them going around with like high vis jackets picking up rubbish. I mean like for example, they have to run co-run a youth club. Yeah.

And and and you can give them an objective. So for example, uh there’s so many neuro positive neuron developing activities you can do. One of them that my teenagers absolutely love cuz teenagers are very competitive is cups on a man. And it’s just literally a game where you have so let’s say I’ve got a eight in a group. So I’ll have like six and then two two people two teams. So six on each team. And there’s the red cups and there’s the blue cups. and their mates have got to stand like that and everyone is holding a set of as many cups as they can grab and they’ve got to find a way of covering their mate with cups but the first cup to full team loses and then there’s normally like chocolate or whatever they want like Jenga but more fun see what I mean so like why are we not this thing how much the cups cost me like5 from the pound shop not even do you see what I mean but it’s an interactive game.

It’s got them focusing, moving around and actually problem solo solving. So there’s lots of but they don’t come to the experts. They don’t come to frontline people like myself. They they listen to ministers listen to experts.

Experts collect evidence. Where they getting this evidence from? I do not know. I can’t remember the last time I went to a school and they said, “Well, a government official came in and decided to interview all our teachers about their experiences of teaching and what works best and what doesn’t.” Where so where are they getting their information from? Because 27 years in education, no one no government official has ever come up to me and say, “Hey, Selena, what’s what’s your opinion on education? Like what would you change? What would you what would how would it be better? How would we improve it?

My opinion, someone sits in a room goes, “Okay, I’ve got it’s top down, not bottom.” Well, they’re like, “Oh, no. I’ve got to do something on terrorism.” Maybe Yeah. I’ve got to Yeah. So, it’s become a tickbox exercise essentially. Like that’s that’s a problem I see a lot, I’d say, in the modern workplace, but especially in the public sector. Yeah.

So, which is why we have places like this. Yeah.

Yeah. basically your knowledge about the brain and pl neuroplasticity, the mind gut connection, the food that we eat, how that affects all of this. I feel there’s probably a good conversation in that.

So, yeah. Um, any initial thoughts or can we spoke about it while we were just before we started recording?

Dopamine, caffeine and the ADHD brain

For sure. And this is going to sound it’s not going to sound healthy, but go for it. [laughter] I have both sides of the brain, so I suppose I’m going to get shot for this.

My daughter’s 14. She has ADHD.

The only way, well, not the only way, but one of the major ways that I can get her to zen because we have a dopamine deficit. When you’ve got ADHD, there’s an issue with dopamine, which is why her t-shirt at the event said, you know, dopamine in short supply, try again later or something like that. Um, you know, the base level is lower. the base level is lower and for some the peaks and more the peaks are I when she is laughing when she is happy when her dopamine oh my god same with my partner he he calls it ADHD and he says he’s not ADMHD but he clearly is when they’re high they’re high but when they crash they crash hard and everyone gets pulled in with them and and and my son and myself and our autistic side of our brain we love stability and just not stagnant, but when I love boring because it means everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do. Everyone’s where they’re supposed to be. No one’s in hospital. No one’s hurt. No, there’s no drama. It’s I’m like the antichrist of drama. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that, but right. So,

it’s not one of my traits. [laughter] She she she’s 14, but she loves coffee.

And I actually find the caffeine fake mimics the high of dopamine and it just makes her function. She’s not she’s undiagnosed because there we go. Here are the issues. She’s undiagnosed. Three and a half years waiting for CAMS. Saw them again a month ago. Not her diddly squat from them. Not because CAMS itself is well-intentioned, but they are overrun. Yeah.

There’s not enough funding. They need far bigger service. So that’s why CIC’s like myself work, but we can’t do the clinical side of things. So apparently now you can go straight to your GP and have the right to choose. So now you could choose to you might have to drive to Bristol to get a diagnosis, but you know what? If that means I get a diagnosis in 3 months as opposed to, you know, 3 years, then I’m all for it.

But um yeah, so so caffeine and neurodyiver and ADHD uh individuals, I think it works quite well. Is it healthy in the long run? probably not how much you have, but I think she has only one cup a day kind of like with caffeine’s like one of those weird ones where I think like for me it’s like it’s really good for getting me going and waking me up and but I don’t think it solves like focus issues like especially for a little bit but not yeah it no how does it work if the whatever the chemical is it takes the place of the sleep hormone you know and it blocks that receptor for a certain period of time because these Yeah. The whole these are these are chemical what we call neurotransmitters. They’re the chemicals that teach our neurons how to communicate.

Yeah.

And the type of communication, right? I don’t cuz if we get overly scientific, it can put people off. So, yes. I But again, we’ve got to work with what we have. So, I’ve recently been introduced to a drink called Trip, which I haven’t given to my child, but I tried it yesterday, which is CBD. Yeah.

And oh my goodness, for a good hour and a half, I felt like the Dalai Lama was sitting next to me.

No, I was so zen. And I’m always anxious. I would say I live quite a high stressful life cuz I’m dealing with everyone else’s stresses. And for an hour and a half, I actually I still cared, but I didn’t care. If that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. You’re like, “It’s it’s there, but it’s not.” So, I didn’t it didn’t get me up high or anything because that’s what CBD is is perfectly legal and it’s allowed, you know. So, and I’ve never actually tried anything CBD before, but it was recommended to me by a friend of mine and she she knows that I’m neurody divergent. And she could see that I was just walking around like this. And she was like, “Can you please just take have this drink? I’ve got one. Just try it.”

It was delicious, but it did send me out, but again, it lasted an hour and a half. The thing is if we go on before we go into the gut medication, I’m both for it and not for it.

Medication, CBD and alternative support

There are some Yeah, there are some neurody divergent that I know on and they’re like the ones that I mentioned with their dopamine highs and lows are so intense. Yeah.

And because of that, they make very unhealthy, reactive lifestyle choices.

Because I was actually reading a medical report the other day from the National Center of Clinical Excellence. I think it’s called NICE. The acronym is NICE.

Um, and there is a huge amount of people who have ADHD and they use cocaine to actually help them function normally. So, they’re they’re not addicts.

I thought that would make it worse, but they’re not. No, that’s the opposite. No, because it cocaine disrupts the neurotransmitters and it raises your level of dopamine. That’s why it’s so addictive. So for a neurotypical person it would be extremely addictive because it would raise your level of dopamine and the more you use it the higher the lower the higher the high becomes the tolerance level. So you have to then ingest more and more and more and so but any drug really.

Yes, absolutely. Down to dasipam, you know, benzoazipams are incredibly addictive. Whatever it is, sugar I equate sugar with cocaine.

They’re both white. They’re both powders. They’re both dangerous. So sugar’s harder to quit apparently.

Apparently it is. Um and so they actually use it to normalize.

Yeah. which is insane because whether you inhale it or smoke it, es especially if they smoke it, they have to use metals, metal devices to so that when you go on to drug websites, good ones, what they try and do is understand the addict or the user and they will actually tell them the healthiest, it’s the what the lesser of all the evils, the healthiest way to consume it.

So, if you are going to do it, try to do it this way as opposed to this way or this way or this way. And most people would be horrified. That’s like a how-to guide, but they’re going to use it anyway. And every human life has value and is and it belongs here. You know, the universe gave birth to you essentially. And so, our job is to save lives. And if that means that sometimes you have to teach people how to do something that’s bad but not so bad, then I’m all for it. Doing something bad in the safer way.

Safer way. Right.

Going back to your question about with uh you know the gut. So do I medication for ADHD people in some cases like I just mentioned is necessary but it’s one of my friends used it to and then used it so that he could be more open to therapy. So the more he couldn’t he wasn’t open to therapy when he was just going to therapy but once he started the medication he found therapy actually useful actually he could connect with it and so he’s now using his medication less and less and less one thing I absolutely agree is that the medication is not a life commitment you cannot be on it and should not be on it for the rest of your life. It’s a same with every the way I see it’s always a symptom treatment rather than a root cause treatment.

It has to go it has to go back to self-awareness, working with your brain type, building a community, and that’s where people like me can help with that.

But you you have to take the bull by the horns.

Vitamins, saffron and supporting the ADHD brain

But there’s also like I think there’s a lot of things that we don’t know about alternative medicines. Like I was looking at things like saffron.

I was telling you that. Yeah. Saffron.

Saffron’s not many people know that it has a good effect on the AD ADHD brain. Things like vitamin D. Yeah.

It’s very common in very common. My daughter’s both me and my daughter are tend to be I think zinc as well and magnesium tends to go with zinc.

They pair together. So like there’s loads of ways that you can optimize your brain and that’s essentially what you’re aiming for the things behaviors that you can put in place that help you manage anything like Yeah. So if you can’t do your three score meals cuz my daughter is addicted to popcorn.

Yeah. So, what I tend to do is give her lots of little healthy things that she can nibble on and her dinners are actually really small, but I’m working with her brain type, you know, and so yeah. So, um but I I must admit I heard about saffron, but what’s your Well, take on saffron.

They’ve um they’ve done some trials with it. saffron on its own, but also saffron in conjunction with things like rtoolin and and they’ve found that made it made the courses with drugs more effective.

How are they consuming the saffron? Cuz in my experience, you can boil it, but you can normally rice that in curries and stuff.

I I think they they have turned it into some sort of pill that you can take, I guess. Yeah. um like with most things.

But I I think my big thing is generally there’s some people doing research on this, but often with alternative medicines, they will not get the funding for research because there’s no real money at the end of it.

Well, yeah. Let’s I mean, now we’re going to go down the rabbit hole of pharmaceutical benefits. Yeah. Let’s face it, there’s no benefit.

There’s no benefit to the populace being healthy.

And I think that’s more prevalent in America. They thrive on drugs.

Well, there they don’t have NHS, do they? So, no, the more people go and do they have to push to visit more drugs. And so, thank God we do have the NHS. But that doesn’t mean that the NHS don’t push the drugs. They’re beneficial to them. Yeah.

To a lesser extent, but it’s still there. Yeah. Absolutely. For example, Dr.

Sinclair. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He was on the Diaryio not long ago. He’s the anti-aging doctor. Oh. Oh, yeah.

But as and and I actually don’t like that term because what he’s doing in his lab is absolutely revolutionary.

He because anti-aging, it’s not just so that we have collagen and no wrinkles, although that would be great without the use of Botox and collagen and fillers and all of that.

um he’s found that on his journey to looking at aging, he’s been he’s effectively stumbled on cell cell renewal.

Yeah.

So he’s already in his lab reverse the effects of cancer in rats and mice and other animals. They’re on the verge of human trials.

Mhm. So that because a cell when it’s new is effectively perfect perfectly functional same as stem cells the same thing or no not quite they’re mitochondrial it’s mitochondrial based yeah so effectively what he’s in using mitochondria and in using he didn’t go into detail because obviously those are his secrets but he’s effectively made a liquid when he when I watched the show what he was talking about reminded me a little bit of crisper. Do you remember crisper?

The gene the geneology technology that you can if you consistently inject yourself you can change your genes your genetic makeup which is scary cuz some people were injecting themselves to become dogs and horrible things. [laughter] I mean like it was very painful to watch and and in America you can just buy these packs of crisper.

Of course you can and inject.

Of course you can. and and so it’s terrifying. But um but anyway, what he’s done is he’s found a way of teaching the cell cuz as as you grow older, cells almost forget how to renew. M Yeah.

Especially when they’re mutated. So too much exposure to the sun mutates your skin cells and then they when they have to rebuild, they do rebuild, but a little bit less.

They’re adjusted to the environment.

Exactly. So he’s found a way of teaching cells to go back to ground zero. Right.

I I just think I could go into the science, but it’s very complicated and and and and it’s but essentially he’s just found a way to renew cells. So, yes, that benefits the aesthetic industry, the beauty industry, but it also technically and he was hunted by pharmaceutical companies. He was threatened.

I was going to say I’m surprised he’s still alive.

Yeah. Because effectively what he’s doing is going to be revolutionize

[snorts]

the cancer cancer treatment. There’ll be no need for chemo. There’ll be no insurance companies too, right? [laughter]

I mean I can hear Proctor and Gamble knees shaking from here, you know. So and we have to be we have to be brave. We have to be we have to stand up and say to these massive corporations, these global, you know, leaders, no, there is a different way. And the populace needs to be healthy. So find a way to make money out of health. Actually being healthy.

Open up more gyms or whatever you got to do to make your billions. But but yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, there’s less money in that. That’s the always I’m going to go home and buy some saffron tablets now. See how it affects.

But the CBD thing definitely had a nice effect. It had a nice effect. It calmed it down.

And I could already this morning feel like I really want one of those drinks.

But I thought to myself, “No, Selena, like try and get through your day.

You can get CBD oil.” Oil. Yeah. And put it on. But this wasn’t it wasn’t a fizzy drink.

It was sparkling water. It was just infused. So it wasn’t too unhealthy, but I’m sure there were probably some E numbers in there somewhere.

But um the next thing to try and Yeah. It’s called It was called I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it. It’s called trip, which is ironic cuz Yeah.

No, you said it before anyway. Yeah. I’ve had it a few times. All right. And how did you find it? Very good. It tastes amazing as well.

Never even seen it. The raspberry one is the one I had.

Yeah, you can find it in some Never even seen it.

Look out. I think I What’s it like?

My friend’s actually a supplier, so I just buy it straight from her. But you It’s It’s not the cheapest thing online.

Yeah. So, I actually stopped myself from going to a house buying a crate cuz I thought I really don’t want my children to see stuff with CBD on it in the house. So, I might buy the odd can and just hide it. But, um, but they’re going to watch this so they’ll know. Yeah. the whole other thing. Yeah. Yeah.

But you can, like I said, I think C CBD oil definitely has a big and if you don’t want to have the drink and the fizzy drink.

Yeah. But I mean, look look the the the plant itself can be manipulated. It can be used in a healthy way and I would much rather have a plantder derived although you could say cocaine and everything is plant derived but but I would rather have something that’s I mean caffeine is a drug people forget that yeah if caffeine was found now it would be a drug right so what’s the difference between CBD caffeine and alcohol uh alcohol nicotine they make a lot of money off of Right.

It’s follow the money every time.

Absolutely. I I agree with you. But if they That’s why they’re legal.

I I I see very little difference from an intoxicated person on weed and an intoxicated person on alcohol.

They’re very I think they’re very different.

I I think one person’s friendly or Yeah. One person is friendly.

Right. But that what I’m saying is the level of toxicity. One doesn’t outdo the other. Different types. They’re different. Yeah.

So how is it weed is not legal? I think that certain things are made, it’s the whole conspiracy thing, but certain things are illegal because it sort of can spiritually awaken you and take you to other realms and stuff like that.

So like things like mushrooms and psychedelics like Yeah. And we this CBD is a legal part. The THC is the trippy part. Yeah.

And that’s not legal. No.

So they specific things that could awaken you spiritually maybe. I don’t know. There’s like a big I I think that’s why there’s like very few things in nature that mimic the effect of serotonin.

Yeah.

Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and gut health

So like I think Well, this is I don’t I don’t know why we’re talking so [laughter] we’re talking about we’re talking about the neurode divergent brain and we you know we’re talking about what what makes it so let’s so oxytocin is a funny one with neurode divergence because that’s the hug hormone they call it because it’s the one that you get from hugging and physical touch. But obviously now that depends on the neurody divergent.

My son’s autistic, so you’d assume that he’d be the one that, you know, goes into overwhelm, but he’s the one who’s extremely tactile, loves being touched, being hugged. My daughter is ADHD. She’s like, “Oh my god, don’t touch me or I will kill you.” You know, you know, and so I literally have to pin her down and hug her. Um, but so there is that stereotype, but the point is oxytocin is very healthy for the brain, but very difficult for neurode divergence to produce. So that needs to be a whole area perhaps on another podcast that we focus on. Serotonin like you said is so we’ve got dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin the three that we need and they’re all very difficult for neurody divergence.

Have you read um TJ Power dose dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins?

Um no book’s called dose. This is dose. Oh, I have to Okay. I’ve read um Dr. Daniel Arman’s book change your brain change your life which where he touches on not done that. Okay, that is that is also it touches on something like that.

I will look into that as soon as Yeah, that was the dopamine ADHD graph.

Yeah, I could have drawn that for you, but but I’ll show it to you like you can see. I think we brought this up a few episodes ago.

Yeah, I’m still I’ve still not finished it, but the book is basically on those four. Yeah. Yeah.

And so what what did you learn about the cuz dopamine you’ve spoken about a lot.

Yeah. But what what did you learn about serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin?

Um what they are and how they sort of affect I’m not I’m like serotonin is like I’ve not finished the book yet.

No, serotonin is the most I think is why one of the hardest to actually have if you’ve got Well, you got the gut microbiome.

Gut health, IBD and the mind-body connection

Yeah. So, I’ve I’ve 10 years ago I got diagnosed with an uh u UD um no an IBD.

Sorry.

IBD I was going to say you that’s a urine urine in tract infection.

[laughter]

Although I had UC ulcerative colitis. Okay.

Ouch. That must have been very uncomfortable.

I can’t even describe. No, I wanted to be out of this world. I was done.

Yeah. Yeah. I the Nike trainer that I was with a couple of weeks ago, she was diagnosed with the same thing and she said she wanted she wanted to be done with life.

Yeah.

So I ended up in hospital. I was 25 and the surgeons they just came in and wanted to just cut out 80% of my gut and like just take it out completely.

I don’t know. Best decision I’ve ever made is to just say get out of my room.

Take the marker pen and get out of my room.

Yeah. Um, give me an eraser while you’re at it. Rub it off.

They were like, “Yeah, the surgeon is not going to be in until Monday, so I just want to mark when I’m going to cut you open today.” I was like, “Sorry, what?”

Like, literally, get out of my room. But I don’t know what it was, but instinct, spirituality, whatever it was. I said, “Your actual told me, yeah, I’m not doing this.” But my gut had like swollen up.

Um, the inflammatory marker should have been below five. Mine was 140.

Oh, that that’s kind of the number I had because I know about this condition. That’s the number I had in my head.

And clearly I didn’t get the message. So the year after I went back into hospital again. Okay.

Um and since then I have been fine because I’ve learned about how my mind all starts here. Oh absolutely.

I’ve learned about my mind. I’ve learned about all this stuff. I’ve done work on getting through childhood stuff that’s still sort of trapped.

Yep. I’m not going to go into all that in this, but no.

Um, diet, exercise, that sort of stuff.

It was a dopamine. Yeah. So, b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically uh and then I’ve come off the medication as well for the last seven years, right?

They’re like they’re saying you should probably take it, but I don’t want medication. I don’t want to rely on it. I don’t want to pay you any money. No.

And I have been in remission for like 10 years, nine years.

So, what was the key thing? What’s what’s if you could say something about your gut and microbiome and and all of those things, what would you say? What would be your message?

I would say to learn about your mind.

Learn about your mind. Learn about your personality type and learn what’s what works and what doesn’t. Because the reason I’m bringing this up is because dopamine 90% of it’s produced in your gut. Yeah, that’s right.

So, if you can look after the mind and the gut, everything else sort of works. So I thank God that I never said yes to going have that surgery because I would be living a very different life right now. Yeah, I had said yes to that.

But yeah, that’s the reason I bring it up because dopamine is created there. So if you can have a biodiverse gut

[snorts] like all the you have like caffeine all the time and with your gut.

Yeah. [laughter] There’s a book there’s a book called gut by Julie Julie Julia Enders which I read a few years ago. Um, but yeah, it’s it’s about having a diverse.

Food, gut diversity and eating the rainbow

So they they say eat the rainbow. That’s what I’ve heard. Eat the rainbow.

And unfortunately, eating the rainbow is not cheap. Skittles.

Yeah. [laughter] Um, definitely not Skittles. That was definitely not. But have a bit of green, have a bit of orange, have a bit of And and try to avoid the beigy colored.

Yeah.

Because the beiges aren’t in the the rainbow. It’s um similar to what you were saying about having the the base level um how it changes.

Carbohydrates are great for you, but the problem is with our carbohydrates, especially in the West, is they’re mass-produced.

It’s not the four ingredients. It’s they’re Do you know what my I’ve got a personal trainer, right? And he said to me, he sent me a video of like a a YouTube short. You know how like a croissant’s supposed to have like what four four ingredients like butter and

Yeah, that’s it. butter, flour, or flour something. Yeah.

The little break bakery. You know they have the little bakery section. God. Guess how many ingredients?

20 68. Why is it to preserve it? Most of us preserve it.

Because they don’t ever rot. Like when when I go to Oh, yeah. Did you ever watch big size big size super size? That was just people have people This the first Big Mac is still around. [laughter] The same.

No. Is it? It’s a cheeseburger, isn’t it? Whatever.

It’s a cheeseburger. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, okay. So, when I watch that documentary, but even when you Mr. Whippy, the ice cream vans that go around.

Yeah. I My They were all eating them outside.

My son never finishes his left. It It kept its form really didn’t for it. When I say not a week, not take

because at first I left it there a couple of days because I was just ADHD busy and I thought it’s outside birds will have it. From the time the pigeons and foxes do not eat something told you a lot, it was sat and then it became a science experiment. So I moved it into my back garden which technically I was changing the variable but I forgave myself because it wasn’t prop a proper science experiment.

It stayed in the exact same form. No rot, no mold.

It was there literally two months later.

So then I thought, right, Selena, you’ve made your point. Throw it in the bin now. But I just thought, oh my god. And I did the same with the chips from McDonald’s. They never they shriveled a bit and they went a bit darker, but they didn’t rot. Um and and so look, have a treat now and again. when I’ve been desperate, when I’ve been on the motorway and I’ve got the kids and there’s starving and have I stopped at a McDonald’s, yes. But I mean, I avoid McDonald’s for other reasons as well, but in general, it’s not the kind of thing I really want to put into my kids’ bodies.

Think about it this way, right? You’re just going to the the preservatives and things that keep these foods and whatever looking like they are.

Um, how do I put this?

The the the things that that will break down the food is the enzymes and whatever the environment, which is what your body does. Your body breaks down that stuff. And if you’re putting stuff in that food to stop it from breaking down, your body cannot break that stuff.

Of course, like it’s the same environment. Yeah.

Like fairy liquid is um this is from that book I was talking about about the gut. Fairy liquid is is or any washing up liquid is sort of based on how your body’s enzymes would break down food and stuff.

So as soon as you put it on an oily that’s what your body does. Same enzymes same up and neutralizes it and whatever.

So if the foods have 68 ingredients and they have all these preservatives that stop it from breaking down. Your body also cannot break that down.

So I’m part French. I my family’s from Maitius. So we we I’ve got family in France and so when we go to Paris the first thing I have absolutely and um but they will they go off. You have to eat them because literally they say if they’re left on the table they go off.

Why? Because it literally just has those three ingredients. You cannot if you take a little quason into the middle of Paris they would actually take offense.

They’d probably like throw you out.

This is not a quasa. What are you talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like ordering cappuccino in Italy after 11:00. Yeah.

Gut diversity, nutrient-dense food and working with your body

If you if you were to have the same meal every day for all of your meals, your gut biome will adjust and it will become used to that one thing. Yeah. That’s right.

So, if you get used to that and then you introduce something else, it’s going to go crazy and it’s going to make you feel sick.

So, you’re going to need to have to vary vary everything to get that that that there’s also there’s also you can something that I do is I try to eat more nutrientdense vegetables. Anyway, if I’m if I’m picking something to eat like and I have like the choice of a regular potato or sweet potato or something, I’m allowed to go for the sweet potato.

And it’s the same with like I’ve mixed up here and there.

Yeah. If you if you have the chance to have a I think it’s like a broccoli versus cauliflower. Yeah. Right now, they’re kind of similar.

Broccoli broccoli is technically man-made. It’s it’s it’s a bread specifically from cauliflower and something else to make it but it’s like carrot. Carrots apparently are purple and they’ve made them orange. Yeah.

But it’s apparently more like nutrients dense. So it’s sunflower. Um broccoli. Broccoli.

Yeah. Thank god because I prefer broccoli. I was hoping you were going to say broccoli.

Yeah. Broccoli or broccolini. I like the I like a little bit of broccoli. So I’m just unlikely to buy buy cauliflower just because like I know that that’s going to have more nutrients. So but I I I think look if we neurody divergent have to be careful what they eat but the problem is is they often are not because especially at that age especially at this age I mean teenagers awful anyway. I mean, I can, but when I remember cuz I’m one of those old people that can still remember what it was like to be young.

And I and and so I remember walking to school and they would have Coke first thing in the morning with a Mars bar or a Snickers back then. I don’t know. Do we still have Snickers? Probably not.

Marsbar. Mars Bar. I think they’ve got Marsbar anymore. I think that’s the one. I know one of both.

Or Opal Fruits. That that that is that’s Starburst, isn’t it?

Yeah, Starburst. Yeah, it was Opal Fruits in my day. Um, that’s terrible breakfast. But I don’t force my children to have breakfast. My son, he likes his breakfast. He But this morning, there’s no stigma. He loves pesto pasta, especially homemade pesto pasta. So this morning, he had pesto pasta for breakfast. But you know what?

He’s full. It’s got green in it. And off he went to school and it works for him.

My daughter doesn’t often have breakfast. And I’ve started as long as she doesn’t have a can of coke on the way to school because but then I get that she’s craving the caffeine. Um I’d rather her have coffee.

So I said cuz there’s less chemicals in the coffee. Especially if it’s grout if you have one of those machines. It is. Yeah. It is proper coffee. It’s proper coffee.

Not my what’s it called? Meet whatever it’s called. The the powdered stuff that you can buy. Yeah. Yeah.

I forgot what it’s called. Type of specific type of mold that Yeah. All the doctor, one thing I do like about the other podcast we were talking about before is even though it’s become a bit dramatized, but the doctors on that podcast say one thing and they say breakfast isn’t actually the most important meal of the day. In fact, intermittent fasting is the best way to live really. And so if she skips breakfast and lunch, so long as she’s alert, you know, I’ll just give her a dinner time to heal.

Time to heal. So the fact that she doesn’t eat and I the popcorn she makes is homemade. It’s never packet bought.

We we buy the kernels, we make it ourselves. So we’re using olive oil and then she she that’s her favorite thing. But there’s less calories in that. Okay.

Nutrient- wise, not great, but at least it’s homemade and there’s not a load of chemicals, fiber, and there’s there’s some some a little bit of fiber in there. But she then she’ll have a small bowl of vegetables.

um like she had prawns and broccoli and and and I’d made a curry the night before very small amount and that’s her kind of you know happy so if your child is alert if you’re alert without like I haven’t eaten at all today I will eat when I get back because also I know that will be during my crash as well so I’m working with my body and that’s what we have to learn to do work with our brain work with our body the food thing whether you’re neurotypical or neurody divergent it has to be the m that your your tummy and your brain, two major organs. All the other organs feed off of them. And so you need to be careful what you’re eating or work with your brain type. And I would say if you’re if you could intermittent fast, then do that.

And then just have, you know, whatever you want to eat within reason later on. But, you know, work with your brain because even in neurotypical, they have their slumps and they have their ups and downs during the day. So you just you’ve got to work. Yeah. I think it’s like um very personal cuz like some people I don’t think really function very well with fasting of any type and then they I can I I can um go through to you know 12 1:00 without without without eating. It takes it takes my body like at least an hour minimum hour and a half to actually wake up and realize what’s going on.

[laughter]

I wake up to be like okay I can accept food food now. Yeah. Whereas if I if I like I used to have breakfast before going to school um with my sister in the morning.

She’d be fine. I’d feel sick. Yeah. Yeah.

I wasn’t a big breakfast person. I still not as bad now. No.

Um but I’ve started to I mean I still eat cramp but I also eat healthy stuff as well and I work out three times a week and you know look there’s also the saying life is too short not to have cake. You you can’t go through your whole life living on spinach.

It’s all about balance you know and so it is a balance and it’s about movement. And so that brings me on to something that we should really touch on is movement and ADHD and neurode divergence. I think that’s really important out of everything we’ve spoken about.

Movement, school environments and teenage sleep

We’ve spoken about the brain, we’ve spoken about hormones, neurotransmitters, we’ve spoken about the gut, but movement is important. And I think what do I what do I want my CIC to achieve? Well, eventually I’d like it to be morph into a charity, but I want it to achieve a kind of neurolink, a place where people can move around, come and connect, no phones, yes, cake, sandwiches, and just have a chance to not be alone. But I also want to be able to wake schools up and maybe go as far as help to change legislation because offices, schools, they’re all institutions, so they need places. Um I mean, what’s the big deal? Put three or four exercise bikes in the back of the classroom. Adapt. You said you did this for I did this for a school. Yeah. Yeah.

And then [clears throat] and the achievement rate and the retention rate of the children and the quality of the work went up. Yeah, it went up by huge amounts.

It’s like this um the school in what Scandinavian country was it? Sweden, Norway where they probably they started at 10:00 rather than 8:30 and all the great because of the the uh the the sleep hormone um is it melatonin?

Melatonin. That’s it. Sorry. Melatonin which is legal to buy in America but not legal to buy here.

Yeah, exactly. So that is not released in teenagers until roughly 1:00 in the morning. You will find that children will do better at their GCES because let’s face it, that’s their endgame.

League tables, global league tables, all of that. How we compare to all of the Asian countries who have a huge amount of infant suicide, but that’s a whole another topic. Um, make it later. It’s not going to affect parents because by that stage, most children travel to school by themselves anyway.

Yeah. And it it a you’re reducing their stress levels.

You’ve upped the expect, you know, they’ve upped the expectation of these GCSEs. There’s some of the stuff they’re doing at GCSEs now that I didn’t touch until I was in my A levels.

Yeah.

Yeah. There’s stuff I’ve seen that I’ve not done. Didn’t do my GCSEs.

It’s insane. They’re 15, 14, 16, you know. So fine, if you’re going to do that, then something else has to give.

If you increase the length of the school day, but start it later. I don’t think any parent would argue with that really, you know, because you’re working with their bodies, but teenagers, you’re working against their natural makeup. And yes, they get on with it. Yes, they turn up, but they’re grotesqually unhappy. You go into any school, the level of mental health difficulties that schools are dealing with, there’s more that than teaching going on. I can tell you, they may

Ofsted inspections and what schools hide

I’m just going to say it. All maybe just speak on behalf of the schools that I’ve dealt with. I’ve had seven offsteads in my time. Two as a lead, five as a member of staff. They’re all fake.

Every single one of them box are boxes are ticked. Books are marked even though the children haven’t seen the work.

Children with behavioral problems are hidden in rooms that Offstead inspectors are directed away from. This has been my personal experience of Offstead because the way they’re doing it is unhealthy and it’s wrong. Let’s not forget Ruth. I think her surname was Ruth Perry.

Oh yeah. Offstead has blood on their hands.

Um the headless who committed suicide. I’ve not heard now my child’s school, their head teacher also, we haven’t got confirmation, but the suspicion is that he committed suicide because the last time I spoke to him, he was a pery perfectly healthy 42 43 year old man.

Next thing I know, he was gone.

And so, so this is this is a major I’m just I’m actually going to do a video on it later on today. Offstead is fake.

What they do, okay, what they’re doing in schools is coming in and checks. I’m I have no problems with checks and balances, but the way you’re doing it, I can safely say that your report is going to be fake because if I have had experience of seven offsteads and every single one of them, the data that you were exposed to was falsified. I’m not going to mention the schools because I get it. I get why they’re doing it. They have to do it because the pressure you get put under if you’re required to improve or satisfactory is mindblowing.

So, I get why they’re doing it, but Offstead said, “Hello, your reports, they’re false because that you’re not being shown the true the true character of the school.” Yeah, I remember even and I know I’m going to get shot, but I don’t care. I don’t care cuz I I’m not tied to any school and I’m not going to go around telling on schools because I do get it. I do understand where they’re coming from. But it’s for honestly, there was one school they hadn’t marked any of the books. So they brought all the teachers over from the sister school and they were marking books for a month. Yeah.

One classroom belonged to two assistant headteers. Not one book was marked. What does that tell you? The I mean the children weren’t learning in that school but for other reasons.

Mhm. Um, I actually was part I was very new to teaching and I watched a headteer actually screaming at the behavior the students that were behavioral challenges within the school and actually locked them in a room with a TA that was not soundproof but it might as well have been and made sure that the offstead inspectors didn’t go anywhere near those kids. They got outstanding. Yeah, I’ve seen um like when I was at primary school, I just remember like whenever there was an offstead in inspection, we were like told you have to do this, you have to behave because we’re having like we were literally told like but you see and people would act differently like Oh yeah, 100%. I grew a pair because there was my last school before I went off and became a consultant. It was then taken over by a superhead who was just not on the right path. Anyway, so we got told what we got told. I broke all the rules and I thought I’m going to do what I’m normally going to do cuz my children will tell they will be able to tell if I’m being fake or changing things. Then they’re not going to behave normally.

Then I’m going to have baby behavior issues. So we had I told the story, didn’t I? The three prototypes. We built pirate ships. Yeah.

And it was completely offcurriculum. It was my classroom’s work and it was completely off schedule. I turned around to the office inspector and I said to him, “Yep, I’m not doing what the school said. I’m doing what I’m doing because I know that this is what my children enjoy. This is how they’re learning.”

And I got out they they stopped grading teachers by then because there was a I went through the whole phase of when they used to grade teachers as well.

That was horrific. I would literally vomit the night before sick with worry cuz you’re you know you I’m in the prime of my life. So I’m saving up for a house. I’ve got so many responsibilities and you just pin that offstead grading to you effectively losing your job and therefore losing your life prospects. I mean it’s just not right.

And I just said to him, I break rules because I know what is best for them. So I said, if you want to go and tell my headteer, so be it. No problem. I actually I actually went up to him and spoke to him like that. But he just went on the contrary, it’s the opposite. This is the probably the most honest atmosphere I’ve been in since I got here. and your kids are happy and they’re learning. They may not okay be able to do everything on the curriculum tick list, but this is a stepping stone because now you’ve got rapport and trust and and depth.

They trust you to deliver the content that’s boring. Yeah. No one likes long division, you know.

Well, some people might. I don’t. Um I liked. [laughter] Of course you did. I loved it.

So, yeah. So going back to right so we we’ve covered the gut we’ve covered the the chemicals in the brain what neurode divergent need this is so personal to me they need acceptance they need connection but not pockets because there’s pockets of charities doing great work what I want to do under Neuro Inc is what I’m creating at the moment which is Neurolink I want to create cuz I’ve been in business for a long time now and I’ve gone to every networking event under the sun. And then it dawned on me, this is what we need for neurody divergence.

What neurodivergent people really need

We need all charities together in one big room and have neurode divergent come and and if they can’t come because there they have issues with socialization and noise, we should have quiet rooms, booths to allow them to just climatize or we should have links where they can join in online, have their screen on or off. But we need to start pulling our resources together because I didn’t even like I said I didn’t even know about safe which was for Asperers for children with Asperers.

The Essex one. The Essex one. Yeah.

Socialization for Asperers. Yeah. And so it dawned on me like what now that I know I’ll happily join. It’s £25 a month and then my son will have some sort of level of connection with others like him. So the next time we I do my event um I will make sure that I invite them over so that they can meet. Um I’ve recently been uh connected with a lady called Theresa who has started a charity I think voices of the unheard or unheard voices. It’s something like that. She her son is deaf. She has twins but her son is deaf and he’s also neurody divergent.

Uh that’s a tough that’s a tough hand to be dealt and so we we we’ve literally just connected yesterday and we want to bring together. So charities have now got to because look we do the job on the behalf of the government. There’s lots of gaps that need plugging rather the government doing it just give us the money and we’ll do it for you you know so because also we’re front liners and we know what’s needed. Uh, so that I think that’s my greatest wish to give the legacy to my children that I’ve built them a community that they can take on and continue.

This is what I was going to um ask about because you said your aim was to open up a chicken place. Yeah.

Is that different to this or is that This is going to be completely opposite to the gut biome talk we just spoke about.

Neuro-Ink, Neurolinking and Selena’s vision for community

You can have healthy chicken. I mean, but look, is that is that part of the same thing or is that different? It it’s part it’s part and parcel of the same thing. Yeah.

So, uh I don’t know if it gets that big that we’ll be able to host it. We’ll need a ginormous like Excel level kind of um venue. But but what I want to do is we have a problem with our youth.

They’re enamored with things that aren’t very good for them.

And I get it. They want a sense of belonging, a sense of empowerment, a sense of validation, a sense of achievement, a sense of what’s that word? level. So, you know, like in the army they have ranks. That’s it.

So, I came up with the bright idea with my partner. He really likes chicken. I really like people. So, and he as he was just mentioning it, he would love to have his own chicken place. And I said, “Well, God, if you wanted me at that chicken place, you would have noodles as well.” And then he was like, “Noodles?

Who does you do chicken and chips or chicken and rice? Who does chicken and noodles?” And I was like, “Noodles are fine. [laughter] off the world.

I was like, “Are you crazy? Noodles is great.” And I said, “I don’t know one chicken place that does offers noodles as well, unless you go to like a Chinese takeaway.” But I said, “What we need is like a a chicken takeaway place that has so you have different types of chicken, maybe jerk, maybe not a jerk, but but you know, like fried, grilled, whatever, Perry Perry, but then you have the option of chips, noodles, and rice, you know, and that’s just the menu. Um, and then you get all the bodybuilders coming. But I said also if you look at I mean I I don’t know how far wide the audience for this podcast is is you know how far wide it is but there’s a place called Ilford Lane and you go on Ilford Lane it’s full of restaurants but the busiest ones are the chicken and chips and the takeaway joints especially there’s one particular one a new one that’s opened up down the end. And then I thought to myself, oh my god, okay, the noodles is healthier. So that’s me not feeling so guilty. But if that’s the way I need to get these guys in. So what I want is a really trendy friends like, you know, central perk like venue that has chicken and chips, but also has um interactive game area for neurological gaming. They won’t know it’s neurological gaming, but I will.

And my staff that will serve them will also be mental health trained. We will have subsidized meals for those who are brave enough to book oneto ones. So it will be like a youth center meets takeaway chicken joint meets therapy center. So it’s just everything.

So it’s cool because we’ll have a DJ booth as well. We’ll have a podcast booth because kids love YouTube and they love Instagram and Snapchat. So that but we can manage the healthiness of what they’re putting out and we can give them the opportunity to record their own and learn and it’s like building a building building a community.

I know a fabulous CIC in grays who it’s called stems. It’s a barber shop with also a music studio in the back so the kids that come learn how to cut hair but play music. I mean what a fabulous idea. Sounds like your kind of place.

[laughter]

Yeah. Yeah, it does actually.

Yeah. But it’s open to all, not just young people. But I I want to then rope in some celebrities because especially the influencers. And I’m hoping I’m going to be able to like like not pay them and just say, “Come on, like get these kids in.” Yeah. Come in and let these kids come in. You know, they’ll only come here if you come here. Elon Musk has asperes. He does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

I’m sure he if I grow. I’m sure he’ll be number one at my door.

[laughter] Um but yeah, I won’t let him in with Trump, but um that’s a whole other conversation, but yeah, that’s that’s the aim. I don’t know if I get it. So, if any corporations are listening out there, I’ve already got one fairly healthy bank to potentially match fund me. So, but we need we need grant funding. We need donations and I run a pledge uh pledge pound. So, we just want people to sign up and give us a pound a month, set it up, direct debit, and then forget about it because a pound is negligible. I we won’t ever ask any more than that. So hopefully that will spread.

Yeah, cuz it’s easy to do and it and it shouldn’t it doesn’t even it’s less than a cup of coffee. Yeah. And it’s not per day, it’s per month.

How to support Neuro-Ink

Well, if you can give us some links, we can leave them all in the description. 100%. I will send you Neuro Neuro Ink. Neuro Inc. That’s right. Neuroink.

Not Eurolink. No, Eurolink is the program we’re going to run. But um Neurolink is not Elon Musk’s brain thing. Is it really?

Yeah. Don’t use that name. He was already taken.

Oh, is he? [laughter] No, but it’s it’s a program, so it’s not going to be trademarked or anything.

It’s just the name of the group that we’re going to call it. So, he can’t he can’t see me for that. Hopefully not.

He’s got Asperers. Like, that’s what I’m doing. I’m bringing together your people. [laughter] Um, so no, it’s just I’m eurolinking. Maybe I’ll put call it Eurolinking instead. Eurolinking people.

But the the CIC is called Neuro Inc. Um, and for those of you who don’t know what C Yes, it’s a company, but it’s a community interest company. So, we are responsible to the higher powers like HMRC to make sure that any profit, any grants, everything we do goes back into the community, which is exactly what we’re doing.

Yeah.

Perfect. Well, we’ll leave some links and stuff um for everyone to have a look at.

Um do you want to grab this from the studio room? Oh, yeah.

We just got you a little something to say thank you for coming on and spending your time with us.

I hope I don’t kill it. That is so pretty. Thank you so much. I actually you can kill it if you want. [laughter]

I literally do not know one ADHD person who’s ever kept a plant alive, but I I two of my favorite flowers is orchids and roses. So that’s really lovely.

It was between those two anyway. So yeah, that is lovely. And I really will try I’m going to go and chat. How do I keep an orchid alive?

I think you just don’t over water it. I think that’s the thing with Right. Okay. Do you have to repot it a chat? I think it’s fine. Probably not.

Go downstairs so it’s going to block your block your camera if you leave it. Oh, right. No. Okay.

We’ll put it down here for now, but thank you so much. Thank you for spending the afternoon with us.

So, yeah. Well, thanks for thanks for coming on. Um, if you have any comments, um, leave them down below. We’ll leave the links for Euro Inc., not in Euro Inc.

down below as well. Um, and I’m sure we’ve got like half the stuff we didn’t even get to talk about, but I’m sure we’ll find another time to go into

I mean, I’ve already been booked off the back of my vent on another podcast, but regularly, like every single month, she wants me in. So if you want like cuz there like you said we can just go on and on and on.

Offstead and education and ministers are going to consistently annoy us. So there’ll be plenty to I’m sure there will be.

Yeah. I think was it the school system generally will we didn’t go into that will be the next one.

That will be the next one. The school system we didn’t Yeah. We I’ve just outed offstead. So well we were going to talk about running your own school. The uh the chicken place. We’re going to talk about institutions education NHS policing. All this stuff we didn’t get to talk about but we Yeah. So absolutely just grab me another date and yeah. Yeah. Thank you again for watching this month.

Wrap up

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The Education Lounge podcast.

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