How is ADHD the ultimate superpower? How can you harness your ADHD superpowers, help your kids unlock those powers for themselves, and bring them to light? We answer these questions and more in this episode of Incorporating SuperPowers as host Justin Recla is joined by the CEO and founder of Our Road to Thrive Foundation, Dana Kay. As a mother of a child with ADHD, Dana is passionate about assisting families in finding healthy alternatives to manage ADHD in children. Dana shares how you can see ADHD from a different perspective and not see it as something lacking. Join Justin and Dana in today’s episode to understand more about ADHD as the ultimate superpower.

Welcome back to Incorporating Superpowers. In today’s episode, we’re going to tackle a topic and we’re going to look at superpowers. We’re going to look at the ultimate superpower, ADHD. A lot of you are probably going how is ADHD the ultimate superpower. When you get through today’s episode and you’re done listening I think you’ll have an understanding as to how it is a superpower and if you have a child that has ADHD, or maybe you’re an adult with ADHD, then this episode’s going to give you some insights to that superpower so you can bring back peace and harmony into your home. So you can bring your children to life, so you can actually harness your ADHD superpowers, help your kids unlock those superpowers for themselves, and bring them to light. My guest today is a board-certified holistic health and nutrition practitioner. She has been in the study of the ADHD world for quite some time, and she too believes that ADHD is a superpower that most people just don’t fully understand. I am excited to have this conversation, because I know for myself looking out at the ADHD world and how it’s had an impact on society, and people just not knowing what to do. 

Activate Your Superpowers

I think the framework that we’re going to lay ADHD in, and what we’re going to put it in today, the container that we’re going to look at it through today is one that you may not have considered before and I invite you to this conversation because what’s going to come from it I think is going to open up your eyes to see that ADHD is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s nothing to be worried about. It’s nothing to have impacted your life in a negative way because there are solutions out there. When you understand it for what it is, ADHD the ultimate superpower, beginning to help your children unlock that ability is literally, truly a gift. So, I’m super, super pleased to introduce my guest today, Dana Kay. Dana, thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you so much, Justin. It’s a pleasure to be here, and I can’t wait to discuss this topic with you today.

So, Dana, talk to me a little bit about it… Let’s take a first look at your background. What makes you certified to talk about ADHD?

I am a board-certified holistic health practitioner, and I am the founder of the ADHD Thrive Method for kids, and I have worked with close to 1,000 families now that have kids with ADHD, and really I think my most qualified part is that my son was diagnosed with ADHD when he was four, and I went through this journey in trying to work out ways to help him be able to really bring home this superpower that we’re going to discuss today. Really, at the beginning of the start of this journey when we got diagnosed the only option that was presented to me was one of medication.

Not knowing what I know we went down that path, and it just muted him, and so really I think that’s my biggest qualification is I’ve been through it.

I love that fact, because that’s where a lot of modern medicine goes, right? They look at ADHD as an illness, or a disease, or something lacking. What if it’s not something lacking? What if it’s something that is meant to be more than? Because my experience with ADHD is that kids that have ADHD can process information so much faster. They understand things so much better at a higher level. They just don’t necessarily have the facilities or the experience to express it, and then we get frustrated with that as adults, and we think the problem is with the kid, and then we have to medicate them.

Yes. You are so right.

I know you know this because you live in this world. You experience this world with your own children. I know for myself, but let’s paint the picture for the listener here, how then is ADHD a superpower?

One of the biggest things, as you said, they process information a lot faster, but when you don’t have control over the speed that you process that information it becomes all jumbled in your head. Very much it feels like the body is in this state of inflammation and it doesn’t know what to do with it. A lot of the time what that comes out as is a kid that might be bouncing off the walls and the adults are like, “Just sit in your seat,” or it might be coming out of that kid not being able to handle their emotions because their body and their brain are working so fast that they don’t know how to control that.

Even we as adults sometimes don’t know how to control that, so you can’t imagine a kid being able to do that as well.

Folks if you’re listening, to paint the picture, let’s say you had a 120 hour work week, you broke up with your girlfriend, your boyfriend, right? You got into a car wreck, and all those things are happening all at once, and you don’t know how to express it.

That is a really good analogy.

All of that experience happened in a blink of an eye for a child with ADHD.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah.

Because how much information does the human brain absorb? I know I’m sitting in my room, we’re having this conversation and I’m receiving data from the pictures on the wall, or the chairs, the plants, the ceiling fans, the music that’s playing in the background, everything, and it to at times can get overwhelming with the circumstances, so imagine if your superpower is to absorb as much data as possible. How do you communicate that to the rest of the world? And I think you hit it. You know you did because you’ve identified this. It exists in the body. So, talk to me a little bit more about that.

Look, I find that kids with ADHD because they’ve got so much going on in their brain you want to make sure that the body itself is functioning optimally so it can communicate with the brain, so the brain can do what it needs to do. The kids that I work with tend to be in a state of inflammation and that inflammation can come from so many different things. The world these days is so fast-paced. As adults, we’re so busy, so we’re leaning towards getting packaged foods for dinnertime. There’s so much more toxicity in the world. There are so many more medications out there.

I find it’s actually really interesting when I have conversations with families. I always ask about their health history. So many families that I talk to them, their kids had multiple ear infections when they were younger and were on multiple antibiotics. I would love to have kept a note of that, of every single person I spoke to, to work out what that percentage was, but what happens is when you have antibiotics it breaks down your gut. Now, the gut talks to the brain via nerve branches and two-way chemical messengers. If your gut’s broken down then it’s not going to be able to communicate to your brain properly and so your body will be in that state of inflammation.

This is good. This is really, really good folks because you’re probably going, “Okay, well, how do the brain and the bodywork together? Because ADHD and everything I’m being told are that it’s all in the mind. That’s why the medication’s there because the medication treats the mind.” This is so much bigger than that, and we’re going to dive into how big that is on the backend of this conversation, but before we go on break, Dana, where can people go find more information about you?

Yeah, definitely. My company is called Our Road to Thrive, so you can go to my website ourroadtothrive.com. I also have a really big flourishing free Facebook group where I am doing free training all the time. It’s called the ADHD Parent Nutrition Support Group, so you can look that up on Facebook, and you can join the group, and partake in everything that we have to offer.

Fantastic. Folks, go take a look at the site. If you know somebody that has a child with ADHD share the site with them, share the Facebook group with them, share this episode with them, because I guarantee that there’s information out there that they probably haven’t considered just yet, and if they’re still frustrated, they’re still having trouble struggling understanding ADHD as the ultimate superpower then take a look at Dana’s offerings, and her education that she provides, because it will change your child’s world. It’ll change your life as well. Stay with us. We’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.