Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Magnesium, ADHD Meds & Cycle Tracking: Worth It or Not? | Mini Episode

Starting point is 00:00:00 My Rikely goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve? Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365. I get paid the second my team goes out big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. Steve, Bet365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older.

Starting point is 00:00:22 Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you were someone you know is concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. Or call 1-866 5 through 1,2600. Terms and conditions apply. We've got a section of the podcast called Biobank bye-bye. And I'm going to show you something. And I would like to know whether you would say bye

Starting point is 00:00:37 or bye-bye to this as in goodbye. Okay. And the only rule is we love a little bit of nuance. On social media, we often don't get enough nuance. So feel free to give balance. We do love balance. Yes. Okay. Starting with magnesium glycinate. Okay. Yeah. I think this is a cautious buy. Okay. So I think for some people it can help. We know that it can help with sleep. For some people, with like nervous system regulation and yeah some people get good benefit from it. I don't think it's going to like solve all your problems. Like I think you've just got to take it with a bit of like caveat that it might help, it might not, but it's not going to solve like all your perimenopausal menopausal ADHD issues.

Starting point is 00:01:21 So yeah, it's a cautious buy for me that one. Nice. ADHD meds. Okay. Well, yeah, again, I think it's very individual. One of the criticism I got about my book was that, you know, you're just trying to get all these women diagnosed and on medication. And absolutely not. I think ADHD mays can be life-changing for some people, male or female. They're definitely the number one thing that's recommended in all the evidence and the studies to help ADHD.

Starting point is 00:01:49 But not everybody wants to be medicated. Not everybody can take the medication. And I think there's plenty of other things you can do to support with that as well. So, yeah, I think if you're suitable for them and you're keen to try them, then buy if you're, you don't feel pressured into it, I think, because it's not for everyone. The criticism around ADHD meds is really, really interesting. The, the example that I will give is people with ADHD are known to have a higher rate of like death by traffic accidents. I'm away with the ferries. And I am a much safer driver. Yeah. When I am on my ADHD meds. And I can see

Starting point is 00:02:27 that. My daughter's medicated. I can definitely see. Yeah. The safety of it. So I think, Yeah, I think there's definitely safety aspects. And they say it about all sorts of things. You've got really bad ADHD and it sort of starts to affect your mental health. You know, getting on medicine medication can help that. So I think there's lots of pros and cons to it. I just think it's like anything. It's got to be an individual decision for you, like weighing up your pros and cons.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Like what are you like without it? What are you like with it? Yeah. It's an individual. It can often be seen as, I don't know, it's got this really big stigma attached to it. I don't take them every day. Then that's a personal choice for me. because it affects my sleep and because it can affect my nervous system.

Starting point is 00:03:05 And, you know, but the, I, I, exactly what you said, it's an individual choice. I think the frustrating thing is that it's not an, it's not an equal choice for all because the system's so hard to navigate. Because like, you know, where I'm, where I'm practice in Bolton, there's like four-year waiting time for an adult ADHD diagnosis. And then when you've got there, you have to sort of, you know, go onto a medication titration pathway if that's what you want to do. And then you've got to try and get your.

Starting point is 00:03:31 GP to take that on, etc. So there's like just so many barriers. And I think it should be an equal choice for people so that they can make that informed decision and individual choice. I think the difficulty is at the minute a lot of people are having to go privately and then, you know, it's just health inequalities,

Starting point is 00:03:49 isn't it, at large really? And then there's the issue of going privately and then the diagnosis not being accepted in the NHS because it's seen as like paying for a diagnosis, which is just an issue. in itself, isn't it? Yeah, so buy if you can, if it's right for you, I think. Yeah, a little bit nuance. We love nuance. We love nuance. You'll never get a straight answer at a me,

Starting point is 00:04:11 no, but that's good. You know, there's nuance and there's balance and everything, and that doesn't fit into a quick viral clip, you know, and that is the passion I have for this podcast for giving a platform to balanced points of view, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Tracking your cycle. Yeah, you see, I'm a big fan of tracking your cycle. I'm really bad at it myself. I never do it myself because I just can't remember from one day to next. But I think it's so helpful to know where your hormones are and how you feel. I do quite a lot of work with the PMDD community and that's so helpful for that being able to sort of know where you're at in your cycle because you can almost start to predict how you're going to feel. And, you know, I've got some patients

Starting point is 00:04:52 who will literally like planning meetings when they know they're going to be in their good phase, like the non-lutile phase, like the first couple of weeks and then plan to have much less pressure in their luteal phase. You know, there's all sorts of things. And I think with ADHD as well, we know that women's abilities change or how they feel, their confidence and how their brain functions,

Starting point is 00:05:15 their executive function can change throughout the cycle. So, yeah, that's a definite... I said you never get a straight answer to me, but I'm going to say definite buy for that. Nice. Yeah. Oh, no, I'm going to have some nuance, actually. Okay.

Starting point is 00:05:25 Some people get a bit obsessed with it, don't they? Yeah. And then it can really like effect. Yeah, I have seen women who've got very obsessed with it and then it has a negative effect. But mostly it's a good buy. I think when it puts the limit on your potential, important caveat is if you are,

Starting point is 00:05:39 say for those women who book in meetings at those different times, I hope you're seeing a doctor about that because that shouldn't be normalized. Yes, but that comes from tracking your cycle, doesn't it? That's part of your plan, your management plan, that you're happy to go with and feels right for you, then great. But yeah, absolutely, you shouldn't be doing that without,

Starting point is 00:05:56 like you need to go and see your GP or somebody about that because that's not, that should not be how you're living your life without it being a plan. HRT. Yeah, so this is definitely number one in all the guidance, whether you're looking at the British Menopause Society guidance. You're looking at American, guidance Australian, like HRT is number one for perimenopause menopause management.

Starting point is 00:06:19 But again, it's not nothing. There is nothing that's right for every woman. Like, you know, some women can't have HRTRAs, Some women can have it, but don't want to have it. They don't want to, you know, I saw a woman the other week who's sort of been on contraception for 30-odd years of her life. And she was like, I just can't. I'm so glad that I don't need any hormones anymore.

Starting point is 00:06:41 I refuse to go on to HRT now as the next chapter. And, you know, and I think that's reasonable. That's her decision. But I think for me it's about women having that informed information. There's a lot of myths about HRT that stop a lot of women having it. there's a lot of myths amongst medical colleagues that stop women accessing HRT and that's the bit that drives me nuts. Something I find really interesting is how we're seeing a rising people taking HRT, but we're seeing a dropping people taking birth control. And I've heard that one of the main reasons is the natural hormones that are used in HRT in comparison to the synthetic hormones.

Starting point is 00:07:21 What are the biggest myths that you hear when it comes to HRT? I get lots of these sent on my social media. I get lots of inbox about this. So I get a lot of, you can't have HRT until your periods have completely stopped. That's just like total rubbish. You can't have HRT if you've got family history of breast cancer. It's a little bit more nuanced that one, but it's not an absolute no. I think the difficulty is there's still a lot of colleagues about who still hang on that million women study.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Like back in the 2000s. Like when I first became a GP, we couldn't. you know, it was like the last resort. Giving HRT was like the absolute last resort. And I remember my trainer going, oh, well, if you have to give them HRT. And we only ever saw women who were in their 50s who'd pretty much stopped their periods or hadn't had one for like ages and they had the classic hot sweats and it was stopping them sleeping and functioning. Never ever saw women who, you know, were in their perimenopausal era. Well, I did. No, I did see them. But I diagnosed them as something else, like fibromyalgia or anxiety stress because we didn't recognize it. We

Starting point is 00:08:23 recognise this perimenopause thing. And yeah, I think we've still got quite a few colleagues about who are still feeling that, you know, HRT is bad and it's dangerous. Yeah. And we need to move away from that now because we've got so much better HRTs. Like we've got body identicles. I mean, when I first became a GP, the main HRT we were giving was premarine, which is like, I think it's pregnant horse urine.

Starting point is 00:08:48 It's the estrogen taking out of pregnant mares urine. It's all, you know, very much different now. and we need to move with the times. Nice. Women need to get that information accurately to make the decision. Nice. Seed cycling.

Starting point is 00:09:02 You know, I think I had heard it like on some kind of social media thing but never really clocked it. It just looks like absolutely rubbish to me. I don't think there's any evidence for it. And obviously the evidence, you know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I say that all the time about loads of things

Starting point is 00:09:18 because we haven't got a lot of evidence for a lot of the things affecting women. But yeah, I think seeds are good for you, aren't they? Like there's lots of nutrition in them. Yeah. But I certainly wouldn't be like, eat them if you like them or you want the nutrition from them. But I wouldn't be like balancing your hormones with it. I don't think there's any evidence for that whatsoever.

Starting point is 00:09:33 We've already got enough to be worrying about before we go. Who can I bother doing that? Like who can actually be bothered? Yeah. Cycling. Yeah. Like if you eat sunflower seeds every day of your cycle, that will only do you good. There's got to be something good can come out of that, isn't there?

Starting point is 00:09:48 Yeah. If you eat it in the wrong phase according to seed cycling, and I say wrong with like quotation marks for anyone who's listening, but you're not going to negate health benefits of having seeds, you know? Eat your seeds, but yeah, just eat them at any time, I think. Yeah. It's the case. I'm going to say bye-bye to that one. Thank you for listening.

Starting point is 00:10:08 If you would like to hear the full episode with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in the... My reg league goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve? Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365, I get a game. paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends.

Starting point is 00:10:31 Come on, Steve. Bet365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you were someone you know is concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca or call 18665 through 1,2,600. Terms and conditions apply.

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Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Magnesium, ADHD Meds & Cycle Tracking: Worth It or Not? | Mini Episode

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