Estrogen, Progesterone, and Your Menstrual Cycle: Do scientific research studies prove that our ADHD symptoms are affected by our hormone levels? with Dr. Michelle Martel #121
What is scientific research REALLY doing for women with ADHD?
It might *feel* like there is no research being done to help women with ADHD...but my guest today has insight into what's ACTUALLY going on behind the scientific research curtain.
Dr. Michelle Martel, a professor and Director of Clinical Training of Psychology for the University of Kentucky, utilizes a translational, “bench to bedside” perspective to examine developmental pathways to Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), using multiple levels of analysis.
Her bio is impressive and our conversation is SO GOOD.
Her research uncovers what's really going on in the brains of people with ADHD and further - figures out what's going on internally with our hormones.
Dr. Martel brings tons of knowledge around how our hormonal fluctuations affect our ADHD symptoms AND what that means for our mental and emotional health.
I'm thankful for people like Dr. Martel who have dedicated time and energy to helping the ADHD community. Her research is not only fascinating, it gives YOU, Successful Mama, options to improve your life by understanding your body.
DID YOU KNOW? There's a place where you can get your calendar and to-do list organized one step at a time, so you enjoy more time with your kids while feeling confident + capable in your day... even when your ADHD hijacks your plan. Register for Daily Planning for ADHD Moms - sign up here --> bit.ly/adhdplan
Looking for a little more added support? There’s a place for you!
Here >>> JOIN THE MOTHERHOOD IN ADHD COMMUNITY
Dr. Michelle Martel 00:00
We did find after doing some of that work is that we do see an increase around the middle of the cycle in ADHD symptoms. We've also seen increases in binge drinking middle of the cycle as well.
Patricia Sung 00:13
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Patricia Sung 01:19
Hey there successful mama. Welcome back. And today we're talking with Dr. Michelle Martel from the University of Kentucky. She's a clinical psychologist. So she not only works with patients on a regular basis, she's also teaching and training our clinicians of tomorrow, which gives me great hope because she has a wealth of knowledge. I found her when I was researching about women's hormones and ADHD. And she wrote a wonderful article from a study that she had done with some colleagues on how women's hormones are affecting our ADHD symptoms throughout the full menstrual cycle. We also touched on why this area doesn't have a lot of research that's gone on in the past. And what is she working on now? I took a lot of comfort in knowing that the research supports that as women with ADHD, we are struggling with so many big scary monsters that come along with it, the comorbidities, it's not just ADHD that we're dealing with. There's the anxiety and the depression, the suicidal ideation, they've been shrinking the addiction, the eating disorders, like, I'm really glad I can sit here and tell you that you're not alone, that this is a thing. And you are not the only one dealing with these big, ugly problems that come along with ADHD.
Patricia Sung 02:32
Now thankfully, Dr. Martell is also a mom, so she gets it. She shares with us some strategies that make sense for mom life and how can we decrease the mental load or caring because when we learn those skills, we can then turn around and teach them to our kids. So let's dive in because this is some good stuff. And I can't wait for you to hear from Dr. Martell. Mamas Listen, welcome, Dr. Michelle Martel to the show. How are you doing this morning?
Dr. Michelle Martel 03:00
I'm well how are you?
Patricia Sung 03:01
Pretty good. So let me just start out with Can you just tell us a little bit about what you do on a daily basis and how you work with people that have ADHD in regular life.
Dr. Michelle Martel 03:12
So I'm a professor at the University of Kentucky and I'm also what's called the director of clinical training in the psychology department, which means I train graduate students to do clinical work with people as well. But what the mamas out there may be most happy or excited to hear about is that I do do some private practice work. I'm a licensed child clinical psychologist. And what that means is that I work with parents, kids, adolescents who are dealing with all kinds of different mental health issues. My research area, and my clinical practice focuses a lot on ADHD. But what a lot of people don't know is ADHD co occurs with lots of other problems. It has one of the highest what we call comorbidity rates, or just meaning it has one of the highest co occurring disorders rates. So it often co occurs with learning problems, mood problems, anxiety problems, conduct problems, kind of you name it. So I have a lot of experience treating all of those things. And by treating I mean, I'm a psychologist, so I don't prescribe medication, although I do work with a lot of psychiatrists to do so I can tell you a little bit about that. But mostly I do talk therapy, behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, and I work a lot with parents with kids with ADHD and kids with ADHD themselves.
Patricia Sung 04:20
In all of your studies. What drew you into this area specifically with ADHD and mood disorders?
Dr. Michelle Martel 04:26
Yeah, so that's kind of a happy accident. I had this kind of interesting and bizarre interest, which I guess is a nice prelude to my whole my new hormonal interest in what we call pediatric neuro psychology, which is just a fancy term for understanding brain behavior, relationships and kids. And it just so happens that the guy that was my mentor in graduate school at Michigan State University, his main area of expertise was ADHD. And so I got all of my training in that particular area,
Patricia Sung 04:54
Which is amazing. One of the greatest disappointments for people with ADHD is that this isn't something that's real We talked a lot about in med school and training. So when women are going to like their general practitioner, or even their psychiatrist or psychologist, they just don't have that experience to pull from. So I'm like, Oh, bless you.
Dr. Michelle Martel 05:15
I think ADHD gets a bad rap people sometimes, you know, people with ADHD are just lazy. I can tell you my research focuses a lot on that question. And the, you know, that's not true at all. People with ADHD, as you guys know, can look very different from one another. And so you know, and obviously, it's not that you can't focus or concentrate, it's just that it's a little harder. We know that attention, just like mood and depression and anxiety. It's all on a continuous scale, it's all a continuous dimension. So it's just that, you know, it might be a little bit trickier for some people to focus and concentrate, but it has nothing to do with your personality or with any your underlying morality or anything like that. That's ridiculous.
Patricia Sung 05:52
I was saying, I'm gonna jump on that rabbit hole. What can we tell others who give us that feedback of you're just being lazy? Like, how can we explain it to them in a more confident way, that it's not an issue of just being lazy, and that it is a difference in the way that our brain functions?
Dr. Michelle Martel 06:08
Exactly. I often use the analogy like with depression, you know, people sometimes say, Oh, well just be happier. Okay, you know, obviously, everybody would like to be happier. Everyone would like to not struggle with focusing and concentrating, but in the same way that like, anyone can have a bad day, right? Or anyone can have problems focusing on something in particular, right, like your taxes, like how many people take their taxes out to be done, because most of us aren't like, yeah, let me spend half my day Saturday focusing on doing my taxes, it's the same thing. It's just that some people struggle a little bit more, just like people with depression have a bunch of bad days, people with ADHD tend to struggle to focus on more things. And let's face it, parenting, and being a mom in particular, oh my gosh, it's like all the multitasking all the focus, no break. So if there's a job that will won't bring it out, parenting is a big one.
Patricia Sung 06:56
Yeah, and I think that's why we've seen such a prevalence of women coming forward is you take away a lot of the support systems that we've put in place, even if we don't know we have ADHD, we put these coping mechanisms in place. And then the pandemic stripped away a lot of that support. And that's when women were like, I cannot keep up. It's too much.
Dr. Michelle Martel 07:15
Oh, my gosh, the pandemic was terrible. It was like a free for all at my house. We had three kids here. But my husband and I were both here. And even with both of us here, it was just it was chaos.
Patricia Sung 07:27
I can go down that rabbit hole too. But I'll keep it on desk there. I tried to keep my episodes in a shorter timeframe for ADHD brain. So I have a feeling that I could talk to you all day. So when we look at specifically, the article that I had found when I was researching was one that you're talking about hormones and ADHD symptoms. And I wanted to dive into that one a little bit, first of just how do our hormones affect our symptoms? And I guess let me back up first, like, how did you end up in that study first, like what even took you down that path to think, okay, this is something to address?
Dr. Michelle Martel 08:02
I was shocked that there hadn't been any work done in this area, I can tell you now that I've been doing it, I can speak better to why there was no work in this area. But I was trained originally in graduate school, working with people doing research on depression and eating disorder symptoms across the menstrual cycle. And that work has better established that there are hormonal effects on those kinds of behaviors. So as probably a lot of us know, we, you know, often people will tend to get into a funk at the end of their menstrual cycle, you know, it's critically, in terms of lay people speak, you know, people will say referred to as PMS, there's actually a new clinical disorder for really severe forms of that problem called premenstrual dysphoric disorder PMDD. And I have some colleagues who do some cutting edge work on that. So it's pretty well established at the end of the cycle when all your hormones are in freefall.
Dr. Michelle Martel 08:51
Again, this is for people who aren't taking hormone medications, oral hormonal based contraceptives, like birth control. But if you're naturally cycling, and you have that period, at the end of your cycle, not to make a bad pun, but we're all your hormones are declining, you may notice some changes in your mood, you may even notice that if you are on the pill, because the green placebo pills at the end of your pack the last week, those are just placebos, they don't have hormone. So you may have a sharp decline in all your hormones, even if you are on the pill. So but that was pretty well established that you know, we see these increases in depression at the end of the cycle. What's also fairly well established is that risk for eating disorders increases about midway through the second half of your cycle.
Dr. Michelle Martel 09:31
So as your progesterone is increasing midway through what we call the luteal phase towards the end of the cycle that can increase risk for eating problems. And again, if you're really observant about your own cycle, and you you're not on the pill or other kinds of hormone based medications, you may notice that too, I don't know if you noticed getting hungrier at the end of your cycle and wanting to eat junk food like chocolate might do. And that can put you at risk for eating disorder symptoms because you'll have this tendency to eat more junk and then if you're at risk For eating disorder symptoms, like you have a family history of that, then you may be at risk for purging or restricting or feeling, you know overly bad about that. So that can increase your risk for those things. But what was really striking to me is there was no work done in the middle of the cycle around when people are ovulating, which based on theory, you might expect to see some differences in like risk taking behaviors, and there was nothing done on the middle of the cycle, probably because the middle like when people ovulate is individual.
Dr. Michelle Martel 10:28
So it can be hard to figure out when that's happening, aside from the lucky people who actually have those ovulation pains, which I think is a pretty rare thing. So there wasn't any intention to that. And I think part of that's because it's hard to figure out when that's happening for women. But yeah, I was just amazed that there was no work on things related to mood problems, or eating disorder symptoms, like inattention, or problems concentrating, or impulsivity, which you could very well expect to be affected by hormones. And so I can tell you after having collected the data, which is really hard to collect, because we collect every day for a month, we have people doing ovulation testing, we have people spitting in tubes for the hormones, we have people completing questionnaires every day, this data super hard to collect, especially in samples that maybe are a little bit more impulsive, or do you have a little bit more problem concentrating and focusing? So we had to set up a lot of, you know, reminders and things I can talk to you about the skill set.
Patricia Sung 11:21
That was one of my questions is like, how did you do that?
Dr. Michelle Martel 11:23
Yes, so I can see. I mean, it was hard, I'll say, we did find after doing some of that work is that we do see an increase around the middle of the cycle in ADHD symptoms. And in college, especially in college populations, Washington State especially, that's the population we're studying. So we've also seen increases in binge drinking middle of the cycle as well. So that may be specific to the undergrad population that we've been focusing on mostly just out of convenience. So But interestingly, the binge drinking is really linked with surges, industrial midcycle, which is what is underpinning in large part ovulation. Um, which makes sense in terms of development. Because around adolescence, we see increases in estrogen as people are going through puberty, which coincides with increased risk for drinking, ADHD, though effects are a little different.
Dr. Michelle Martel 12:10
We see those effects just post ovulation as you see a sharp decline in estrogen. And then we see a smaller secondary increase in an attention at the end of the cycle, when you're also seeing those mood effects. And what our current grant funding is looking at is whether or not the increase in inattention that we see at the end of the cycle is because of this negative aspect piece that I was talking about earlier. Whereas in the middle of the cycle effects are more and impulsivity type thing where it's affecting, like cognition, like working memory, and things like that. So stay tuned. We don't know the answer to that. But that's what our current grant funding is designed to test.
Patricia Sung 12:44
So I like I have about 15 questions on what you just said. So first of all, how did you get a whole bunch of ADHD women, especially, you know, a lot of them are in this college age bracket to do all of these things for a whole month straight. Like that part alone. I was like, wow.
Dr. Michelle Martel 13:00
So yeah, our first study was actually not only when people with ADHD, we kind of sampled that whole attention continuum. So we did have a subgroup who had ADHD, and we found that the effects were actually stronger for women who were more impulsive or who had ADHD. Our current grant, though, is designed to really oversample women with ADHD. So and to facilitate that more to your question is we pay people to participate. And it's based on how much data you're able to provide. And we let people know. So you know, obviously, we have this like incentive, like you know, the carrot. But we also send a lot of reminder, so we get people to tell us what's the best way to reach them text or email, we send daily reminders, if they miss a day, we send that we will either send a follow up or call because we can look at people's data as long as they provide data every few days. So we're not really concerned if unless you go a few days without collecting data. So between the reminders and the money, we've been pretty successful, but it's still a challenge. And it's I think, a challenge for the women completing it, right? I mean, it's a lot to do for at least 28 days, sometimes longer, because some people cycles go longer.
Patricia Sung 14:04
So have you seen a pattern in what was more effective, versus like, people who were preferred the email or text and whether or not one was actually more effective than the other?
Dr. Michelle Martel 14:16
Yeah, I think the texts end up being more effective, frankly, just because it's, I think, you know, people with their smartphones, right, like they're more likely to see it. And we've also made all our tasks that you can do it from your smartphone, because we know people are on the go. And they may not be able to sit down in front of their computer that they can get online on their phone real quick and do things and also keeping it short has been really helpful. We always want to collect more data than it's like practical to collect from people. So we try to keep our evening questionnaires to 20 minutes. It's this idea that no matter how busy you are, even if you're like out with friends or whatever, like you can still just check in with us and you are a few little things like that makes us happy.
Patricia Sung 14:51
You also mentioned you know, at the beginning you were like how is there not more research done? You're like, oh, well now I know. Why is it that this area has been And I don't know if neglected is the right word, but maybe just not endeavored upon,
Dr. Michelle Martel 15:04
I think, partly because it's hard to collect the data. You know, I think some people were like, Oh, this would be interesting. But this is going to be so much more to like, try to get people through this, like long protocol, especially in this population. That's one big piece of it. Secondly, I think historically, funding hasn't been good for this line of work. I mean, historically, women health issues have I don't want to say Nord, but have kind of just been neglected, but NIH to the National Institute of Health, and specifically the National Institute of Mental Health, which is where I get my funding from, for the most part, there's been a renewed emphasis run collecting that kind of data or because they want attention to be focused on women, because obviously, there are differences.
Dr. Michelle Martel 15:40
There are some differences between men and women, your magnitude can be disputed, but you know, obviously, the menstrual cycle is a big difference. And so they do want data on you know, some of the unique challenges that women face, because there has been some recent data that even medication dosages might need to be titrated differentially based on biological sex, and or hormones and things like that. And so I think that this really falls in that area. And for someone who doesn't know the word titrate, what does that mean? It just means it needs to be adjusted, kind of like the idea of, you know, if you've taken your child in to get medication for ADHD, they'll start them on one dose, and then they may like move them up gradually until they reach an effective dose. It's it's that idea. And the idea that you might have heard like drinking men and women are differentially sensitive to alcohol, women can usually show effects at a lower dosages or after having had less. So it's that idea to.
Patricia Sung 16:29
Okay, before I move forward, is there any more like good, like tidbits we can pull from the studies that the women would benefit from? Because I know we went through like, there's a lot of information. I know, some people are like, Oh, my head hurts. But yeah, like, I don't want to miss anything. Is there anything else more from like, that work with the hormones that he that we can pull from before I?
Dr. Michelle Martel 16:49
Yeah, I think the practical takeaways from the ADHD work is that there may be especially if you're naturally cycling or not on medications that affect hormones, you may notice that you have more problems focusing at different points in your cycle, our research suggests middle of your cycle, right after ovulation and at the end of your cycle. So just I think having that information or knowing that that's normal can be really helpful, because you know, you could make better use of like some of the strategies I can share with people for how to manage things better at those times.
Dr. Michelle Martel 17:18
Also, my work doesn't directly address different important reproductive windows, at least not yet. But obvious next directions for this work is like, how does birth control affect this, I would expect because it largely stabilizes your levels, it might improve your attention across most of the cycle with the exception of possibly towards the end of the cycle, because you go on this placebo hills. But also it suggests that any times of your life where you are experiencing larger fluctuations in your hormones may be times where you're more at risk for ADHD related symptoms. I mean, menopause comes to mind because we do see these increases in attention when estrogen is declining, which happens when you're going through menopause. But also your pregnancy is a big unknown. I know, you know, people talking about pregnancy brain, I certainly remember feeling a hot mess during that period. So what our work suggests, as you might see increase in attention, perhaps directly post pregnancy, when again, you're seeing these large fluctuations. But what our work doesn't address is whether large increases in hormones, like what you see in pregnancy might also affect attention. That's an unknown. So that's another important direction for future work.
Patricia Sung 18:26
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Patricia Sung 20:06
Yeah, I always tell people like usually the times the ADHD becomes more apparent is if you have a big life change like you'll see in kids when they go from like elementary to middle or middle to high school or high school to college, that big transition, where their whatever they had set up that work for them now has to change. That's or like for women, you're changing your job as in now your mom or a big responsibility at work, you'll see those times where it's like big red flags, and then the hormone shifts of puberty. Pregnancy, postpartum menopause. Like, there's always another one.
Dr. Michelle Martel 20:38
That's right, right. Is it like the only thing constant life has changed or something right? So much so especially for parents?
Patricia Sung 20:46
Yeah, I know, that's kids job to grow and change. But it does make our jobs always different. So soon as you think you might know what you're doing. Yeah, now you don't anymore. It keeps you humble, that's for sure. Ah, okay. So what can moms do to manage their ADHD better?
Dr. Michelle Martel 21:07
A lot of the strategies that I can talk I can like, talk specifically about for moms also work with kids to the extent that you can either do it with your kid or do it for your kid when they're young, or teach them to do it for themselves as they're getting older. One of the big ones is, to the extent possible following routines, and I know this can be harder for people with ADHD than for people without ADHD. But to the extent you can set things in stone in your routine in stone, meaning you know, in like a year, you'll have to change it because your kid will need different things. But I always find you know, as a parent, like the day to day just craziness.
Dr. Michelle Martel 21:36
To extend it, you can put the important things in your routine, so much the better, because it's like less to remember less to deal with, I pack the healthy lunch the night before, so it doesn't get lost in the chaos in the morning, I have kind of my mix and match healthy breakfast, kind of all that stuff bought and ready to go for the morning, dinner, we have a few things in rotation. bedtime routine is kind of critical, frankly, for my mental health, you know, just this idea of like having a bath, you know, to wind down like doing booked time in the evening, last trip to the potty, you know, maybe a few sips of water. But you know, then taking the cup out of the room, not leaving the toys in the room like, so you know those things to the extent that you can, whatever works for your child and your family. Having that all set, I think is really helpful. And ditto for me, like, frankly, it's not uncommon for me to forget my lunch, you know, again, I try to do all the same things like put my lunch aside, so I am less likely to forget it, things like that. So falling routine is a big tip I can give people you know.
Patricia Sung 22:37
and I'm just going to let everyone know that I did not tell her to say that, because that's actually what I do is I teach classes to moms on how to follow routines, like how to keep up with all that mom stuff. So just you know, she did not know that. And I didn't tell her, but also a great endorsement.
Dr. Michelle Martel 22:53
I mean, I think too, you know, it's it's hard to like find the time to like, be thoughtful about it. But I, yeah, whatever time you put into that it will pay dividends like, you know, I like weekly grocery trip is designed for me around the routine. So it really does help during the week, you know, to do that. Another big thing is using different tricks for helping to remember things. So I mean, I use and again, whatever works for you is the best thing. But for me, I use a lot of reminders and notes on my phone, you know, I set alarm reminders, I use my calendar, I have the ongoing grocery list and the notes section. So anything you can do like that to like take the load off your brain, and having to keep these things in your mind all the time, I think is really helpful, even to the point where I have like a set aside time to go to the groceries, I have my ongoing list, you know, I have my list of reminders for work, I have the 15 minute before whatever's happening, reminder to go off on my phone, sometimes I set a bedtime reminder, because you know, time will get away from all of us. So those kinds of things. And then the last suggestion I have is in terms of main suggestion just to break big things down into small things I think everyone struggles with but perhaps particularly people with ADHD is feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task you have in front of you. And so I find if I can just get started on a small part of it again, just thinking about breaking it down into smaller things. You know, that can be really, really helpful. You know, like teaching your kid to read, you know, it's like too big of a goal, right? But you could do like a small book or to a night and point out certain words you want them to learn.
Dr. Michelle Martel 24:24
So like breaking things down into smaller chunks that feel manageable for you is going to make it easier for you to feel like you're making progress. And frankly, raising kids is like one nonstop big task, right? Like you want them to like have manners and go to bed on time and go on potty training and learn how to read and you know, if you think about it in that way, you just feel totally overwhelmed and sit and cry in the corner all the time. So instead if you're like, Okay, we're gonna try to at least be in bed by this time and we're gonna read two books, you know, and we're gonna, I'm gonna remind them to say please a few times like okay, you're working towards the goal. Oh, that's all of it.
Patricia Sung 25:01
Yeah, I think that's one of the hardest parts about having ADHD is that we have this like, all or nothing mindset. And so we feel like if we embark upon a project, we have to finish the entire thing right now. And it may literally not even be possible even if you wanted to. But it takes a lot of practice to get into that habit of looking at it in pieces. And then our brain can kind of get behind like, okay, instead of trying to the idea of teaching our kids to read is like, so big, like, how do I even go about that? If you're looking at it as like, Well, how about we just start with like, when we read the book, I point to the words as we go so that they start to recognize that like, these squiggly lines mean that I'm saying this word, even those little things, that little goal is still a very worthy goal. And you're still doing great things for your kids, even though they don't know how to read tomorrow.
Dr. Michelle Martel 25:51
That's right. I know, I feel like parenting is all like that people are like, my kid needs to do all these things right now, like, well, they will do all those things, but they will not do them. All right now that's too much, because so like pick, like three small things that you're going to work on for the next few weeks. And then in a few weeks, or a month or two, you may be like, okay, they've got the bedtime thing is going pretty well, we can move on to move into that time earlier, or having them start getting their close outcomes, you know, like you can move on to something else. But for the short term, you just got to pick small things on the path towards the big goals. That's parenting forever. It's just the goalposts keep moving. Hopefully, they keep moving. And obviously, in some ways, they stand still for a while. And that's okay, too.
Patricia Sung 26:30
That is a good reminder. Yeah, we're always pushing forward and everyone moves at their own pace. It's okay, if we pause and go,
Dr. Michelle Martel 26:37
Yeah, my daughter is like, always, like she you will think you're making any progress here. What am I doing? And then two months later, all of a sudden, she's got it, which clearly she was like getting it. She just wasn't showing me she was getting it. So I just have to now be like, I'm have faith that she's actually getting more than it looks like. And one day, she'll surprise me and just do it all.
Patricia Sung 26:55
But so it's like a an amazing thing. But also a frustrating thing about watching kids learn.
Dr. Michelle Martel 27:01
I mean, like, if you could just show me back here. That reinforcement?
Patricia Sung 27:07
Yes. And then all of a sudden, it's just like, you know, like, they're the same height, same height and all sudden, they grow two inches. I feel like the same way in their brain development. It's like, are we getting anything done here? And then all sudden, they've got it and it like, oh, okay.
Dr. Michelle Martel 27:19
I can say one strategy that underused but I think are super helpful, especially helpful if you're parenting a child with ADHD is frequent reinforcement and don't have to be like stuff, it can just be like, Great job, I noticed that you picked out your clothes today, or I noticed that you picked up that book on your own to look at it. And that's something I think parents are particularly bad at for themselves. But I think particularly helpful for all parents, but also helpful for parents with ADHD, remembering to reward yourself to like, you know, I did a good job today, like my kids survived for another day way to go self like after my kids go to bed, like maybe I can do something nice for myself, like a bubble bath, or reading a book for pleasure or having a glass of wine or whatever does it for you. Because I think parents forget, or we don't have time to do those things. But it's very important to reinforce yourself, because you're doing a really difficult job right now. With no vacations.
Patricia Sung 28:08
No paid time off, that's for sure. All right. So the women in the ADHD community know that this area is so worthy of investigation and research. And is there anything that we can do as a community to be supportive and encourage these kinds of studies to happen? Because like, from an outsider's perspective, I have no idea how all this happens and the nuts and bolts like is there anything we can do to be supportive in getting these things accomplished?
Dr. Michelle Martel 28:38
Yeah, so national grant funding agencies like the National Institute of Health, also National Institute of Drug Abuse funds, some of my work, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, most of it falls under NIH, so National Institutes of Health, they actually are paid directly by your tax dollars. So you can reach out to your congress people and let them know that you want this kind of work funded, that's probably your best kind of direct route. Probably as organizations accept donations. I'm not sure you could think about that. Um, you could also obviously, think about if there are research studies in your area that you see advertised, sometimes we advertise over Craigslist, or Facebook or Instagram, or through university forums, if you can sign up to participate. That's like a huge help as well.
Patricia Sung 29:19
Is there some kind of like, like a central place where you could go and be like, here's all the ADHD studies, can I participate in any? Or is it just like, I have to like filter through pencils for a while.
Dr. Michelle Martel 29:28
I think you can do a search just for ADHD research heavy research studies. Yeah.
Patricia Sung 29:34
Alrigt, as we wrap up, I mean, I could ask you 100 More questions, but trying to watch my time, which is not a talent of ADHD people, something I've worked really hard on. I want to ask you a couple of my lightning round questions. All you have to do is just answer you don't have to explain anything. If you don't want you can just answer or if you want to explain you can. Okay, question number one. The best thing that I've read or listened to recently is
Dr. Michelle Martel 29:56
I like to read for pleasure. So I really like teen fantasy so I'm reading a book right now that's really good. It has like a villainous female badass main character. The shadows between us, I believe is what it's called. Super. I'm super enjoying it.
Patricia Sung 30:13
Oh no, I love young adult fiction. It's like such an easy read and it's fun and enjoyable. Okay, my most boring about me fact is,
Dr. Michelle Martel 30:24
I really get up in the morning for my coffee.
Patricia Sung 30:27
Number three, when I'm having a rough day, my go to quote, Song poem, book activity, whatever is
Dr. Michelle Martel 30:33
I really like Hyperbole and a Half. It's a blog, but there's also a book or two by her now about mental health issues really focuses on depression, and I just, she's got a great sense of humor. And number four, don't tell anyone I I really enjoy terrible music and terrible TV because I obviously also in my reading, like to escape life not experienced more life's.
Patricia Sung 30:57
Okay, number five, if I had a magic fairy wand for one spell, I would,
Dr. Michelle Martel 31:03
I would have to make mental health services more readily available to everyone, I do some kind of consultation on an inpatient unit. And it's just sad to me, that's so many kids who really need services fall through the cracks.
Patricia Sung 31:16
And number six, my best piece of advice for mamas with ADHD is,
Dr. Michelle Martel 31:21
be kind to yourself, it is so hard, even without ADHD, and especially with ADHD. Parenting is just really, really hard. It taps at all the weak parts. So I like to think that you come out stronger, but that doesn't help with the day to day sometimes. So just hang in there. You know, you're doing a great job. Keep up the good work, keep trying to improve, but know that you're enough, just as you are.
Patricia Sung 31:46
I say that is a beautiful way to wrap up for the mamas that want to find you and read your work and learn more about what you're doing. How can they find you?
Dr. Michelle Martel 31:53
Probably the best way to reach me is email. And it's michelle.martel@uky.edu.
Patricia Sung 32:02
Well, thank you so much. That was awesome. And I could pick your brain for another four hours, but I promised 45 minutes. So thanks. I really appreciate it. It's such a treat to chat with you. So thank you. It's a pleasure. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhood in adhd.com