Hi, welcome to week two. Last week, in episode two, we talked about some of the components and the ideas behind some of the ADHD symptoms, like the neuro inflammation and microbiome, and this week, we're going to dive into some more ideas and mechanisms that we could kind of use to support these, these areas and these thoughts.So today, we're gonna start on the microbiome, we touched on it a little bit last week, your microbiome are all the bacteria, the yeast, the funghi, all these organisms that exist on our skin, down digestive tract, in our genitals, and it's very much a symbiotic relationship. It's, a good thing, we have them, but they need to be in balance. So we inherit our mix of bacterias, and funghi and all our microbiome from our mothers, during the birth process. And then as soon as we're born - it will depend on how we're born, whether we're born vaginally, or whether we're born by C-section - will then alter that that mix vary slightly depending on on how, what we're exposed to. And then as we grow up, whether you're breastfed, whether we have antibiotics for any illnesses as we're growing up, whether we're exposed to stress, maybe infections, or we go travelling, and we kind of pick up different infections and different microbes. It's also affected by the food we eat. So then the food that can nourish us also nourishes our microbiota. So depending on those kind of nutrients, again, will depend on on kind of what your levels of of those microbes are, and how happy they are. So everybody's microbiota is very individual, depending on all these influences over their lifetime.So why does it matter? Why does the microbiome matter? Well, there's a lot of evidence, and there's a lot of things even reported in the news about the gut microbiota, and the gut brain access and that connection between how we're feeling and our moods, and what's happening in with our microbiome. Our microbiome is hugely influential in our immune system and in our immune system regulation through our digestive tract and then beyond. So we were thinking about these overactive inflammatory immune responses that we've been talking about last week, our microbiome can help modulate that and help kind of balance that out. That's hugely, hugely important. The microbiome can also produce vitamins and nutrients, it produces some things called short chain fatty acids, which are really essential for any energy metabolism in the body. There is some evidence that when our microbiome is out of balance, and slightly more pathogenic bacterias are dominating, there's some evidence that a strain called clostridia, that can interfere with the dopamine pathway. There is an enzyme that's needed to convert the dopamine to noradrenaline, and there is some evidence that excessive Clostridium in the gut can interfere with those pathways. It's slightly more likely in more autistic symptoms than ADHD symptoms, but then we know that the autism and ADHD symptoms can be quite comorbid and overlaid with each other. Another more pathogenic strain when it's out of balance are yeasts like Candida and they have biofilms to kind of protect them within in the gut, and protect themselves like a barrier, but they use nutrients and minerals to make them, which can lead to some nutrient disruption in the body. And lastly, both these microbes release toxic metabolites, which are kind of like poison in the body, and they cause inflammation, and could be linked to the neuro-inflammation we were talking about last week.So what can we do to support our microbiome? Well, we can have probiotics. Probiotics are live strains, the scientifically found live strains of bacteria and yeasts, which you can take as supplements, but you'll also get live natural forms of probiotics and fermented foods, like kombucha, kefir, kimchi or sauerkraut, which are really useful to add to your diet to kind of help boost that diversity. The other thing we can do is to have lots of prebiotics. Prebiotics are the food for our probiotics. So prebiotic foods, where there's lots of fibre in just all fruits and vegetables and all the polyphenols all the colours in all our fruits and vegetables, those colours are really, really useful for feeding our microbiome. But the really specific prebiotic foods are things like lagoons, chicory, garlic, onion, leeks, asparagus, bananas, apples and oats, things like that. And they're really good at feeding this bacterias and the yeasts and really help it function well and help it really support us. If we need to take antibiotics, because we're ill, we absolutely should. But while we're taking a course of antibiotics, you can also take some supplementary probiotics. There's many, many different kinds on the market - some of them are specifically useful for maybe when you're on an antibiotic. So it's always good that an antibiotic will kill the thing it's targeting, which is great, which does make you feel better, but the antibiotics can cause a lot of collateral damage, really, to other strains that don't need targeting, which is leading to some of these worries about antibiotic resistance. So it's really good idea to just take a probiotic alongside any antibiotic courses to keep up that diversity. Reducing stress loads, and reducing alcohol consumption can also really help support our microbiota. And then if we want to look at testing, there are a couple of really good tests to to understand if you feel like there are symptoms of dysbiosis and things aren't quite so happy. Then an OAT test is not organic acids test, I find really, really helpful and enlightening. It's a urine test that can be done, which will measure these, particularly these pathogenic bacteria and yeast that we've just talked about, to kind of give some idea if they are contributing to any kind of imbalances. But it also gives a really nice idea of how energy production is going on, and also about your dopamine and serotonin levels, kind of the active levels of those hormones and an insight into some vitamins and some B vitamins. So I think that's a really useful test and particularly useful for symptoms like ADHD and ASD and things like that when there's a neurological component as well. And then lastly, a stool test could be quite useful for understanding your microbiota balance, and that might be used and more appropriate when there's more gut symptoms. Maybe your constipations or diarrheas and kind of bloating and other more gut based symptoms rather than mainly neurological symptoms.