Dr. Miguel Toribio-Mateas

What I'm doing at the moment is developing this range of tools to understand why is this happening to more neurodivergent people?

Because the more I share my story with other people who are neurodivergent, the more I'm hearing the same stories.

Different flavors.

It's not all about, you know, I was also abused or whatever.

There's a lot of that, but you know,

It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's had like trauma with like a capital T. It may be like micro traumas.

It might be that you've grown queer and you couldn't accept yourself until later in life.

It may be that you're trans.

It may be that you grew up in a place where people didn't understand you, even if you were like completely, you know, like...

heterosexual and there was kind of like you were white and kind of like normal by neuro-normative standards and people looked at you and they didn't see any different but it could also be that you grew up in a society that was racist and you know and you were the only black child in school or the only Indian child in school or whatever you know all of those things are going to play a role all of that conglomerate of things that you've experienced in your life are going to play a role your relationships with yourself

with others, with your parents, with your family, romantic relationships, all of those things, when you stop at the supermarket to decide what you're going to buy, your brain doesn't just think, this is good for me, this has got 20 grams of protein.

It's also taking into account all of those things as well.

because you're looking for that safety that that food is going to give you.

And I think we need to take all of those things into account when we put together plans, the ideal meal plan for the ADHD brain, because it's going to be slightly different for everybody.

I think it's not mutually exclusive.

So I don't want to just be all about the trauma.

And I don't want to be all about the polyphenols.

I think the polyphenols are brilliant.

And when we look at science that doesn't actually look at trauma in particularly, there's been a few articles published in the last couple of years that have been very interesting, talking about something that people are sharing on social media as well, how we tend to have

more incidence of things like hypermobility, for example.