Episode 62 – Burnout, Pain & Weird Symptoms? The ADHD Link No One Told Us About

Jane McFadden:
Hey ADHD mums, I’ve got something that might save you from that 2am Google rabbit hole, where ADHD somehow leads you to diagnosing yourself with 14 unrelated conditions and then you freak out at 2am. This takes all the guesswork out of it, it is called the ADHD Pre-Diagnosis Workbook, a guide for women and mothers. Think of this as your ADHD assessment survival kit, part cheat sheet, part pep talk and completely designed to help you from second guessing whether it’s ADHD or just mum life.

Here’s what’s inside, prompts to help you organise your thoughts because let’s be real, those shower epiphanies, they are gone by the time you tail off. Tips for talking to psychiatrists, because nothing screams classic ADHD like knowing that you’ve researched the condition to death, but still feeling the urge to act surprised when they diagnose you. And let’s face it, there’s always that moment of, do I sound too confident? Do they think I’m just getting meds? Should I sound like I don’t know? Should I sound like I do know? What if they don’t even diagnose me at the end of this?

This workbook is everything I wish I’d known before my diagnosis. It creates templates, all you’ve got to do is just plug it in. So you’re not walking in late to your appointment babbling about a year’s worth of random thoughts that somehow never make it to paper. Grab your copy now at ADHDmums.com.au and all of the links will be in the show notes.

So let’s go into today’s episode because if you’re anything like me, you’ve already started multitasking and you probably don’t even remember what this episode is called. Welcome back to ADHD Mums. We are going into something profoundly important today, and that is the connection between ADHD, physical health and emotional wellbeing.

It’s easy to think that ADHD is just about the brain because it is neurodevelopmental. And when we think about ADHD, we focus on the brain and how we get dopamine and that kind of can be our whole focus. And we can think that it just starts and stops here.

Inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity can seem like all of it, but aside from the comorbidity with other mental health conditions, there’s also a whole body experience that takes place. Many of us with ADHD also live with physical challenges, chronic pain, gut issues, fatigue, migraines, immune dysfunction. These aren’t random or separate, they’re deeply connected.

One of the things that really sticks out is ADHD is linked to higher levels of inflammation, irregular blood flow to the brain and immune system that’s just over activated. This means the anxiety, brain fog and exhaustion are not just mental, they’re actually physical too and they affect our bodies. Yet the medical system often splits them into two, mental health, physical health.

And then a lot of us feel invalidated when we have ADHD and all of these physical health symptoms. And at times perhaps we are told that those physical health systems are in our head or the chronic pain isn’t real. But the truth is that mental and physical health are entwined.

We know that that is what wellness is. But yet for appointments, we’re often pushed into mental health or physical health appointments. Let’s talk about the overlap between ADHD and physical symptoms and talk about the most common symptoms that seem to follow ADHD around.

Now the research shows that around half of the people with ADHD are also hypermobile. This means that their connective tissue is looser than other people’s. They are more likely to have joint pain, injuries, poor circulation and dizziness when they stand up.

Now chronic pain can be a real issue here. Pain disorders like fibromyalgia are much more common in people with ADHD. There is a chronic inflammation part that really heightens pain sensitivity and hinders recovery.

It’s very common to hear people with ADHD being prone to allergies, gut issues, autoimmune conditions. There is a part of ADHD and we haven’t quite figured out why that operates in a state of heightened alertness. This can really impact the immune system because it’s just overacting to perceived threats constantly.

Now what seems like random physical issues can feel like we’re carrying an invisible weight that no one can see. At times you can go and see doctors or specialists and be told it’s all in your head or have it just not go anywhere because no one’s across how to put all of the pieces together. One of the things that we do know is that there is a role of inflammation and stress in ADHD and the key driver behind a lot of those physical symptoms is inflammation.

Now chronic inflammation is not just inflammation in the body. It affects the brain and it can lead to anxiety, irritability, sleep problems and brain fog. The constant over activation of the immune system can absolutely drain your energy.

An ADHD brain on top of that is wired for hypervigilance. So if we add stress, parenting, neurodivergent children, mental load, we’re like pouring petrol on a fire and lighting a match because managing stress and reducing inflammation is really difficult when you are constantly in that fight or flight. So this isn’t just about getting through the day, this is actually about supporting your physical and mental health which are all connected.

Jane McFadden:
So let’s talk about the why. We all know what the mental load is and I would imagine that most of us would have put it together that it’s going to have a huge impact on physical health. Often the mum carries the mental load and this can feel impossible some days or most days.

We often talk about the default parent, the one that the teacher talks to, the principal talks to, they book the appointment, they pay for the appointment, they go to the appointment, they manage what happens in the appointment and out of the appointment, the pharmacy, the school forms, the therapy schedules, the constant state of alertness, forward thinking and then having to plan in advance for everybody else’s needs puts so much strain on the nervous system and it is relentless which I believe to be most of the problem.

If you have a neurodivergent child or children, your load is going to be multiplied. Co-regulating, managing emotion and managing medication in a very tricky medical system is complex, expensive and emotionally draining. Navigating the school system is a whole other full-time job in itself.

There can lead to a lot of judgment and misunderstanding I believe from other people towards the ADHD mum. People could see you on the phone at pick up, they could just assume that you’re scrolling Instagram, that you are too snobby to talk to everybody or you’re too good but they may not realise that the constant juggle of email, text, last minute changes, support workers, therapists, keeping on top of absolutely everything and the weight of having to be on all the time is something that a lot of us carry silently.

When I sit and watch TV with my husband at night for about half an hour and 40 minutes after the kids go to bed, I can’t even think about watching something serious, like I have to watch a very light comedy and I basically have to do personal admin for hours it seems like at night time. But my husband will say to me, what are you on your phone for, why are you on your phone?

It’s like a lot of the time I’m actually just going through emails and the stress of what will happen if it builds up and how much then I’ll have to do weighs down on me like a ton of bricks. Whereas it feels like he has nothing in his brain and sometimes I feel envious of that.

We also need to be really understanding that there’s hormones and there’s trauma and then there’s ADHD blended in there too. So there is going to be so many hormonal changes and it’s so unfair that for a lot of us perimenopause and menopause follows right after pregnancy.

Because people are having babies a little bit later now, if you have your first baby at 35, there is no firm and fast timing on when perimenopause will hit. For some people it can hit at 35. I’ve known a woman who started perimenopause at 25. It is different for everybody.

For a lot of women getting pregnant, having babies and having your final baby or babies, you may think to yourself finally I’m getting my body back. I’m about to start feeling like me again and perimenopause hits like a ton of bricks. You may not even be believed, which means you may be in this postnatal phase of oh you’ve just had a baby, this is what motherhood is, yet you’ve got incredible sleep problems, crippling anxiety and all these random physical symptoms.

These life transitions, pregnancy, perimenopause, postnatal, menopause, estrogen fluctuations, breastfeeding, they’re all impacting dopamine and it can really exacerbate the ADHD symptoms. And of course we’re sleep deprived. We now have neurodivergent children to look after and we may or may not have been diagnosed in the midst of all of this.

Jane McFadden:
We also know that living with undiagnosed ADHD, feeling misunderstood, enduring that criticism and the layers of unresolved trauma can amplify symptoms. We know that people that have ADHD are more likely to experience trauma purely by being in a neurodivergent family themselves growing up, but also the risk-taking, maybe misreading social cues and some of the situations that we get ourselves in, we know that trauma and ADHD are absolutely linked.

A lot of us as ADHD mothers have been through trauma, so we may or may not have unresolved trauma amplifying everything else that’s going on. Now you might think that trauma is just emotional. It’s actually stored in the body and it impacts immune function, stress response and overall health.

Now there’s a couple of big doctors that have come out recently and said that who gets sick and who doesn’t is not random, which was terrifying to me. While medical science talks about illness in terms of genes or lifestyle, there are patterns of behaviour and personality that influence illness.

There are traits like compulsive caregiving and anger repression, which is often rooted in childhood experiences and they are actually significant risk factors in chronic autoimmune conditions. The statistics show that women are more likely to have an autoimmune disease than a man by far.

When we look at mum rage and we look at caregiving, my personal opinion would that women would have more repressed anger and also be more in that compulsive caregiving role. We also see the memes online around women or mothers crying in a cupboard, feeling completely overwhelmed and unable to continue and then having a cry and getting up, keeping going.

It’s that kind of energy that we may attribute to being strong or brave or doing it for our kids and it is all of those things, but those are also factors that link to autoimmune diseases.

Jane McFadden:
What I do want to talk a bit more specifically about is the work that Dr Arman does to chronic stress connection. So Dr Arman is a psychiatrist and he’s a brain disorder specialist. He is the CEO of the Arman clinics.

He does significant work and I cannot recommend him higher. I’ll put a link to Dr Daniel Arman in the show notes. Dr Arman highlights that women often carry a heavier emotional and mental load, particularly in parent and caregiving roles.

Now this invisible labour includes managing household dynamics, anticipating need and emotionally supporting everybody in the family. All of these tasks demand significant cognitive and emotional energy. Now over time, this chronic stress and fight or flight that goes on starts to deplete the body’s resilience.

The lack of sleep, maybe lack of nutrients, lack of going to the gym or self-care or looking after our bodies, starts to contribute to inflammation, hormone imbalances and then eventually a chronic illness can develop. Now chronic stress affects the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. These are the areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, memory and decision making.

These changes exacerbate conditions like anxiety, depression, which is disproportionately diagnosed in women. Stress also elevates cortisol and that hormone, if it’s persistently high, can lead to systemic inflammation, impaired immune function and an overall more susceptibility to chronic illness. So this is not just parenting because otherwise it would be affecting the dads as well.

This is about managing the mental load that’s multi-dimensional. Dr Arman’s research really validates the constant vigilance of women that is not just exhausting, actually biological taxing. This is why so many women find themselves battling a long-term health battle after years of juggling overwhelming responsibilities.

And a lot of women talk about their partners saying things like, I don’t want to hear you talking about that again, we can’t solve it so I don’t want to talk about it or you just talk about the same thing over and over again and I don’t know what to say. Of course we’re going to continue talking about it because nothing is changing.

I love the way that Dr Arman talks about the role of hormones in chronic illnesses, particularly in hormonal fluctuations that women experience throughout their lives. Puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause. These hormonal shifts impact the brain function, they impact the immune response and inflammation. And this is the perfect storm for chronic health conditions.

Jane McFadden:
We’ve talked about the mental load, let’s just look at the brain differences for a moment. So Dr Daniel Arman scans brains. He scanned I think well over 250,000 at this point.

And he talks about the structural and the functional differences between the male and the female brain. Now I reckon this is one of the reasons that women experience chronic health conditions more often than men. Women’s limbic systems, which are responsible for emotional processing, are more likely to be more active than men’s.

This means that women are more attuned to emotional cues, they’re more empathetic, they anticipate need, but it also predisposes them to conditions like anxiety, depression or stress. They are more likely to experience rejection sensitivity. They are more likely to perceive like an interpersonal conflict, an argument with a friend is like a threat and get very stressed out going to fight or flight.

They have more heightened stress responses and this can be contributed to the chronic activation of that part of flight. Also in regards to trauma as well. And that has a risk of long-term health consequences.

So on top of these brain differences, society expectations are going to really come on top of this again. So women are often expected to be their caregivers. They sacrifice needs for their family. That’s how it’s supposed to go.

I recently asked my husband to attend a kids program because I said to him, I know if I go, I’ll get lumped with like running part of the program as a volunteer, not because of this podcast or anything, just because I’m a woman and the women seem to be given jobs. Whereas I know at this kids program, if he arrives, they’ll say, oh no, don’t you worry about it. You wouldn’t be able to run that. And that just seems to be the way it is.

You know, if the woman goes away for a weekend, it’s like, oh, how can I help the partner? The partner works away. No one jumps in and helps the female. And that just seems to be the expectation that we can and do and want to do more.

But this cultural norm really just reinforces the patterns of self-neglect where women really delay seeking medical care. We ignore symptoms and we don’t prioritize those small red flags and do preventative health.

Now, one of the reasons I wanted to mention Dr. Arman is because it just reminded me that it’s not just in our head. Yes, we have internal pressures and yes, we are responsible for our own lives, but being a mum, there is so much society’s pressure to be that person. And it does contribute to physical health struggles, but we don’t have the opportunity to rest.

So we get up regardless. This isn’t about weakness. This is about being a human in an environment that just asks too much of women.

Jane McFadden:
So far, all I’ve done here is highlight the problem. And I know that. But I want this to be a validating discussion where you feel seen and heard. I get it. This is a real thing. This isn’t a you thing. And it’s really, really hard.

Getting that balance right feels impossible. It more, I just feel like I’m not being present because I’m just so exhausted and short tempered. But if I work more, I feel like I’m not there enough. If I take time out, I feel like I shouldn’t be doing that.

And it’s the cycle of never feeling like I’m enough, never reflecting at the end of the day that I did well. And this overarching perfectionism critique that so many of us do. So what can we do?

Dr. Armen talks about some of the ways that we can address this. And he talks about brain and health nutrition. So naturopaths often do this stuff where they have an anti-inflammatory diet with, you know, omega-3s, antioxidants, and an inflammation-free diet. Absolutely, you can find this online.

I don’t think the strategies that Dr. Armen has listed are groundbreakingly new. They’re things that we know about, but we don’t prioritize, or not many of us do. You know, stress management techniques, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, whatever it is that you enjoy, and start to support your own emotional resilience.

People talk about being compassionate to yourself. Also, exercise absolutely helps, and hormone support helps. Getting help at the right places for your hormones and overarching health. Continuing to ask and advocate for yourself as if you don’t have enough to do. But we do need to do this as well.

Getting the right sleep, prioritizing rest, supporting your gut. These are all some of the things and the key strategies that we need to be doing to take care of ourselves better. Now, I’m not going to go into each strategy because they’re pretty obvious. They’re everywhere all over Google.

I doubt anybody has not heard of these strategies before. However, I will highlight, do you do them? I read the strategies and thought of strategies and thought, is that all there is? I can’t, I can’t, I have to just put something better in the strategies. There is nothing else.

But yet, when I’m really honest with myself and I look at those things, I don’t want to do them. They’re boring. I don’t think there’s enough dopamine. I feel like they’re a waste of time, some of them, if I’m honest, and I avoid some of them, if I’m honest.

So if we keep waiting for like a magic pill or a special app or something that’s going to help us achieve the health and wellness that we used to have or want to have, that may not happen. It may just be slow, determined, small steps forward with little goals and trying to have accountability and get our health and wellbeing on track.

And that may be your focus for 2025. And if it is power to you, I want you to achieve it.

Jane McFadden:
Now, I wanted to do a really brief personal share in regards to my struggle with lipidemia. So if you are unsure what lipidemia is, it can be often misdiagnosed or dismissed as obesity, particularly for neurodivergent women. They can be told that they need to lose weight, go to the gym, change your food. And women with lipidemia often find that no matter what they do, there’s particular parts of their body that don’t change.

So for example, I have lipidemia in my legs and it doesn’t matter how much weight I lose or how hard I go to the gym. I still have a swelling issue with my legs. You can see water. They breathe easily. They’re dry. They’re a bit red. I think they look quite awful.

A lot of people would associate the word cancer. I’ll always wear a full length pair of pants or long dress. And it can be this chronic pain, swelling and sensitivity around touching the legs. And that can be really quite shaming depending on your relationship with your body.

It’s genetic as well. My mum was hypermobile. My mum had lipidemia, not that she knew that she did, but she was always trying to lose weight. And even if she lost weight, she never did on her legs.

But it is a chronic progressive condition that has an abnormal accumulation of fat primarily on the lower body. It can lead to pain, bruising, mobility challenges. There are a lot of people with ADHD that also have lipidemia.

There is a lot of overlap and there’s a lot of shared symptoms like fatigue and pain sensitivity, chronic pain. There’s lots of different stages of it where level one stage may not be particularly noticeable to the naked eye or maybe it is just to the person, but it progressively gets worse throughout every hormone shift. So going into perimenopause for me, my lipidemia will get worse as it will throughout menopause.

The part about lipidemia that I find to be the most difficult is that it’s incredibly painful. I can deal with wearing long pants and a long dress. It doesn’t worry me. The part that gets me is the swelling and the pain and that gets me down.

So the fact that I have to sit down a lot, my feet hurt all the time. And one of the biggest strategies for dealing with lipidemia is compression. So I have to wear compression pants 24 hours a day. And I’ve been doing this for two years. And I live in Queensland and I do it through summer.

It makes it incredibly difficult to go to the beach, hang out with my kid. And it is depressing and draining if I focus on it. I have to do lipidemia pumping at night. I do pool walking. I have to wear shoes everywhere I go.

And it can feel really isolating where if people see compression, they ask and they go, oh my God, what’s wrong with you? Are you okay? And I get that look of pity. And often with long-term chronic illness, I just can’t be bothered talking about it because I feel like people are going to look at me with pity. Like there’s nothing they can do about it.

So I just don’t see the point in talking about it because it makes me feel down. Like for example, I went to a mum’s dinner recently and someone saw my compression because it goes down right down halfway down my foot. Like I was wearing like a nice kind of thong and I had pants on and compression. And as I put my foot up under the table, someone saw my compression said, oh, have you hurt your foot? And I just avoided the conversation because I was like, I’m in a mum’s night out. I so don’t want to talk about my chronic health conditions and lipidemia.

However, that probably isn’t the right attitude because it’s great to give more light to some of the chronic inflammation or chronic illnesses that are associated with neurodivergence.

Jane McFadden:
Now, just a snapshot, some of the chronic health conditions that are associated with ADHD would be hypermobility, which I spoke about before. And then there’s obviously the comorbidity across mental health with, you know, anxiety, depression, autism, lots of information there in trauma.

But there’s also POTS, eladanos, lipidemia, fibromyalgia, as well as musculoskeletal issues. There’s obviously substance issues, addiction issues. There is so much physical and health comorbidities within ADHD.

So on the 12th of February, I’m going to fly down to Sydney for an operation I waited for two years for. It is going to be a major operation where they are basically going to do liposuction on all of the lipidemia fat and there’s water and swelling and inflammation.

Now, when you have lipidemia fat, it doesn’t go away. That’s not fat that will ever go away by itself. It will actually accumulate and get worse. If you can get the lipidemia fat operated on, the idea behind it is that you are left with as little as possible and then you try and maintain that.

A lot of people have multiple operations. I’m hoping to only have one. It is going to be a really major operation in terms of the recovery. I’m going to have help at home. I think I will be in hospital in Sydney for five days. My husband will be at home with the kids.

However, I’m also really excited that it will be about a year’s recovery. It is going to be incredibly painful. I’m aware of that. And it is also going to be a long recovery in terms of mobility. A lot of women say feeling good can take 12 months. It is a 12-month recovery.

However, I am really hoping that it will reduce some of my pain and I know the way that my mum’s progressed, that hers became very painful. The reason I’m sharing it on this podcast is one, to bring awareness to lipidemia and also because I’ll share on Instagram my journey of recovery. I’m happy to share some before and afters. How embarrassing. I never thought I’d do that, but I will.

So I thought if you are on my Instagram and are going, what operation? What is she doing? I want to have an episode to be able to refer you to. This is the episode on lipidemia. I will be posting on Instagram about my recovery and the results.

Jane McFadden:
If you are unsure if you have lipidemia, you can always go and ask to get a GP referral to a specialist and go check it out. Or you can read about it online. There’s so much information online about lipidemia.

If you are battling chronic health, I really urge you to seek help. If your GP has told you that it’s normal and that’s life and that’s mum life, try somewhere else. Feel free to keep trying. You keep asking.

There are some great women’s health clinics that have psychiatrists, naturopaths, gynecologists, all in the one area, all in the one clinic. Look up and see whether you have a women’s clinic near you because if you can have holistic care, that would be great. You don’t need to battle alone. Feel free to share in the Facebook group. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

I really urge you to seek help because you deserve it. And if you have chronic health conditions or you have chronic pain, I see you because it’s really bloody hard. And often people say to me that I look fit from the outside, but they don’t see the struggle with the pain.

And sometimes I feel like pregnancy has aged my body like 25 years. And I’m not joking when I say that. My feet are broken so much so that they’re like two sizes bigger than they were. And they are completely flat. My arches just completely gave up on life during my pregnancies.

I put on 20 kilos and lost 20 kilos three times. My body is not what it was and it’s chronically in pain. I feel like my right shoulder of carrying children and rocking them to sleep for years and years, carrying children around much longer than what I should have been, has ruined the right side of my body.

I feel like my posture, my whole spine is like twisted to the right constantly. Yet I have no time to seek the help that I need. I don’t have the answers for this, but I wanted to shed light on the problem. And if this is you, I urge you to seek help.

Jane McFadden:
If you’d like to know more about my lipidemia operation, I will post online. I will also probably post more in the Facebook group because it’s a closed group. So jump in, join the group.

Thank you so much for listening. I really wanted to shed light on chronic health. If you have anybody like a psychiatrist or a gynecologist or anybody that specializes in these long-term chronic health conditions that would love to come on the podcast, I would love to have them.

Take care of yourself and try and do some of the lifestyle changes that we talked about. I’m really trying to get more on my health this year. Thank you so much for listening.