The Dr. Tyna Show
ADHD, Hormones + Perimenopause Chaos: You’re Not Imagining It | Adele Wimsett
Thu, 08 May 2025
EP. 211: In this episode, I’m sitting down with UK-based women’s health practitioner Adele Winslett to talk about the intersection of ADHD, neurodivergence, and the hormonal rollercoaster of perimenopause. It’s a raw, honest conversation about what happens when estrogen dips and the brain fog sets in and why you’re absolutely not alone. We also explore how midlife can unmask long-standing ADHD and neurodivergent traits that were once manageable and how this shift can feel both disorienting and illuminating. If you’ve been silently struggling or questioning what’s going on with your mind and body, this episode is a powerful reminder that there’s clarity and support on the other side. Topics Discussed: Can perimenopause make ADHD symptoms worse? What are the signs of ADHD in women over 40? How does estrogen affect brain function and focus? Is brain fog during menopause linked to neurodivergence? What happens when ADHD and hormone changes collide in midlife Sponsored By: Nutrisense | Head over to nutrisense.io/drtyna to get 30% off your first order BIOptimizers | Go to bioptimizers.com/tyna to order MassZymes now and use code TYNA10 Manukora | Head to manukora.com/DRTYNA to get $25 off the Starter Kit, which comes with an MGO 850+ Manuka Honey jar Timeline | Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopure Go to timeline.com/drtyna. Relax Tonic | Go to https://store.drtyna.com/products/relaxtonic and use code and use DRTYNASHOW Puori | Go to Puori.com/drtyna and use code DRTYNA to get 20% off On This Episode We Cover: 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:04:38 – Adele’s Background 00:07:22 – Perimenopause & Neurodivergence 00:12:10 – Dr. Tyna on Estrogen Dominance 00:14:56 – Understanding Labs in Perimenopause 00:21:42 – Key Symptoms of Neurodivergence 00:26:24 – Neurodivergence in Later Life 00:32:32 – The Impact of Self-Abandonment 00:33:48 – Unmasking Neurodivergence 00:36:22 – Medications: Adderall & Alternatives 00:40:28 – Hormonal Shifts & Changing Needs 00:43:14 – GLP1s & Dopamine: What You Need to Know 00:47:44 – Brain Noise, Hyperfixation & RSD in ADHD 00:51:53 – Effective Sleep Strategies 00:53:58 – Letting Go of Outdated Beliefs 00:56:05 – Exercise & Strategies for Managing Symptoms 00:59:34 – Embracing Your Uniqueness 01:03:28 – Understanding Your Brain’s Needs 01:07:33 – Overcoming People-Pleasing & Setting Boundaries 01:13:13 - Where to Find Adele Further Listening: Hormone’s Playlist GLP1’s Done Right University Check Out Adele Wimsett: Instagram Website More Adele Disclaimer: Information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only. This information is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional, or any information contained on or in any product. Do not use the information provided in this podcast for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing medication or other treatment. Always speak with your physician or other healthcare professional before taking any medication or nutritional, herbal or other supplement, or using any treatment for a health problem. Information provided in this blog/podcast and the use of any products or services related to this podcast by you does not create a doctor-patient relationship between you and Dr. Tyna Moore. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent ANY disease.
Chapter 1: How does perimenopause affect ADHD symptoms?
And the more that I've talked about it with friends and colleagues, the more they've come out and shared with me and talked about it as well. We maybe all were managing quite beautifully until middle age hit and the hormones started to shift in perimenopause and menopause. So without further ado, Adele wins it. Let's jump in.
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Chapter 2: What role do estrogen and progesterone play in neurodivergence?
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Adele, welcome to the Dr. Tina Show. I'm so excited to have you here. This is a long time coming. I was supposed to get you on years ago. And so thank you for finally making the time today. No, it's perfect timing.
It's a great opportunity and time to talk about it with everything that's been happening. So glad to be here.
Awesome. Well, tell the audience about you. I'll first share. I found you on Nicole Jardim's podcast and was just blown away with what you were laying down. And it was really resonating with me personally and also just with family members in my life. And so share who you are, what you do, and what we're going to be getting into today.
Yeah, so I'm a women's health practitioner, which doesn't really tell you much about what I do. But I help through the guidance and mentorship that I was blessed to have with Nicole Jardim, started working on supporting women with fixing their periods, addressing their hormonal imbalances. But within that, I got a diagnosis of ADHD.
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Chapter 3: How can hormonal imbalances lead to histamine issues?
I made it my mission to create a space for neurodivergent women to learn and understand the impact their hormones have on their traits. So I work with all women, but my specialism within that is looking at hormones and ADHD.
perfect, which is right up my wheelhouse because I am somebody who has always... When I was a kid, they diagnosed me as hyperkinetic. That's how long ago that was. So I was a hyperkinetic kid. I was told to avoid all white foods like cookies, crackers. You just basically process carbohydrates. And to make sure that my mom kept me active, make sure she exercises and gets outside.
And that was great. And It turned south on me when I moved to Oregon and into the dreary, rainy weather where I couldn't be outside all the time and I couldn't be active. And it really came to a head as depression. But I was always like a very high-level, high-functioning, gifted and talented programs in school. I was that girl.
No matter how punk rock I was, I was still showing up in all the advanced placement classes and kicking everyone's ass. And so no one really knew what to do with me or how to help me. And for me, it manifested as a ton. ton of anger and anxiety as a young woman. And then as I got older, I was like, oh, I have ADHD and it's a superpower, right?
Like as long as you can harness it, I could do 10 things at once. I've always been extremely successful. No matter what I embark on, I'm really good at it. I procrastinate till the 11th hour, then just crush it, you know? And I've existed on that cortisol loop for so long. And then perimenopause hit and it was like a Led Zeppelin on fire, just...
And that's about the time I found your interview with Nicole. And I was like, oh, this is happening. So let's talk about perimenopause a little bit. I'm like, what's going on there? Why did my brain decide to glitch on me?
This is just something that I'm so passionate about because I've actually just completed a three-month study. All of my back, I'm not a biochemist. I was doing this for my curiosity to understand the clinical needs of my community better. And this really... threw up so many hypotheses for me to say, well, what's going on here?
Why is the perimenopause a season where so many women are now getting diagnosed? It really seems to be a time where, like you've explained so beautifully, we've spent our life masking, we've had the help of all our beautiful estrogen and progesterone, all our strategies are working, we're spinning all the plates, and then perimenopause hits, and we're like, what fresh hell is this?
What is going on here? All my strategies that I had aren't working. Well, why? It's not just because we're accessing more information, there's more diagnosis. Something is happening, and we know there is a hormonal shift. So I wanted to understand what this was, right?
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Chapter 4: Why is it challenging to diagnose ADHD in women during midlife?
So when we look at progesterone as being this magical molecule, which I know is so triggering for women who feel like, I hate progesterone, I'm feeling tolerant to it. Actually, I think it's something else that's going on. Progesterone is a mood stabilizer. Progesterone regulates the nervous system, right? It does so much more than just protects the lining of our uterus.
It plays this huge role in supporting our emotional and mental health, how well we're sleeping. It plays this big role because it's sensitizing the GABA, the GABA receptors that help to calm us down.
So surely it makes absolute sense that as we shift into this season where we're becoming progesterone deficient and our adrenals are so tired as a generation of women, they're not kicking in to produce the progesterone that our foremothers had the privilege of, and we're just crash landing into this season.
So also, as we know, the estrogen is usually still at a pretty good level at this point, right? It's the progesterone that is coming down. So we then step into what we look at as this estrogen dominant pattern, not because we're producing too much, but because that progesterone just isn't there.
in sufficient ratios to help counterbalance the effect that estrogen can have on mood right so we've not got the supportive benefits of the progesterone we've got the impact of the estrogen dominating and then this is where it starts to get really interesting to me
is as I was looking, as I was going through the study, I started to notice this pattern of histamine-type symptoms in all of the women that I was working with. And we need so much more research on this, but we in the community are becoming more and more aware of this link with histamine and ADHD people, right?
We don't know what to do with the receptors in the brain, but there is this definite link. So if I add another layer to this, so when we become estrogen dominant and we're losing that antihistamine type effect of the progesterone and this estrogen is feeding this histamine, histamine is so much more than hives and sneezy noses, right? It has a massive impact on inflammation and mood.
Okay, so I'm like, okay, this is another layer that we're stepping into. If we've got this bubbling histamine issue all our lives and that protection of the progesterone goes and we're just looking at estrogen, it would make perfect sense that the histamine then steps up a notch and potentially plays a role. So this was really interesting to me.
And something else that I also thought that came through was the women that had happened to have testing done on their liver methylation pathways, how their body was processing the estrogen, also came up. Now, my study didn't have the capacity to then test all of those women. I'd have loved to. And there's actually a study going on in the Netherlands about this at the minute.
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Chapter 5: Is there a safe way to use ADHD medication for women?
That is the most perfect example you could have shared to highlight this. And you think that is you with all the knowledge you have, all the access to testing, your incredible experience and understanding of hormones. And it's still like, what's going on?
You know, I know certainly in the UK, we have this kind of like conveyor belt, you know, come and get your HRT, we'll slap this patch on you, off you go. Okay, you imagine how many women are going, this is meant to help me and I feel horrific. And no one is making these connections. You know, they're being exacerbated.
They're feeding this inner narrative that so many neurodivergent women tend to have already is that they're not good enough. There's something wrong. We gaslight ourselves. We think we're too much. We're too over the top. We're too dramatic. All these things. And so we sit with this stuff and think there's something wrong with us.
And it's just no one's informed enough to say, right, you know, you're a neurodivergent woman. If you're someone who chooses to go down the route of HRT, what considerations do we need to take into because you have ADHD?
we know you're more likely to have this histamine reaction and methylation issue in relation to estrogen our current practice here is when a woman's on hrt and they don't feel good what do they say up your estrogen yeah it drives me nuts we've got women on dangerously high levels of eastern and they don't need estrogen they're not methylating it they're flaring up these histamine things they're getting awful periods and moods
And we're just going, oh, just our pure estrogen. It's crazy to me, this system that we're operating in. So that was a perfect example. Thank you for sharing that.
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Chapter 6: How to balance personal needs with social expectations during perimenopause?
And I was like, something is wrong. I think the hormones are off. But it is. And if you're not getting the, I'm sorry, the histamine symptoms, like the hives. And for me, it's the hives and the itchy and the prickly, sort of like a prickly heat rash all over my skin. I get bumpy everywhere, little tiny bumps. And I feel crazy because histamine is doing terrible things in our brain.
Yeah. And, you know, I love, there's so many things to speak to there. You know, this postnatal time is a massively vulnerable time for ADHD women. We know the Journal of Psychiatry in 2021 did a study that showed we're much more risk of PMDD. We're much more risk of postnatal depression. We have a much, we have a greater risk of having a harder perimenopause. You
And quite often when I see women, they're like, I'm just the most awful person to my husband. I'm the worst mom in the world. I find myself behaving in a way that I would hate myself. And then that judgment comes in and they're mortified at what they've done because we're forgetting that these are the most powerful biochemicals in the body and your brain's covered in receptors for them.
How can we expect the brain? We're already pushing up a rock, up a mountain. We've spent decades in this burnout boom cycle, overworking to overcompensate for the perception that we've seen. You know, like when you were talking about your experience growing up and being a high achiever, I was the same. I was immense as a kid.
My IQ was through the roof, you know, and this expectation of me to achieve academically, I got a massive dopamine hit from it. I wasn't a naughty girl. I was a good girl, you know, until the lid came off in my teenage years. And then, you know, that all went a bit wrong. But these are really powerful points for us. You know, we get missed.
These things get missed in us because we've masked our way through. We pick up, our nervous systems are so sensitive. And I believe our hormone systems are as well. And our nervous systems are so sensitive that we walk in a room and we've picked up who likes us, who doesn't like us, what the energy is. We are on all the time, right? Which is a blessing and a curse. But the impact on our adrenals
is huge particularly if we've got rejection sensitivity dysphoria running alongside this this terrifying fear of getting something wrong our adrenals are just go go go go go you know so no wonder we have a harder perimenopause because there's nothing in the tank to kind of keep these estrogen and progesterone production going for us so we don't crash Yeah, it's hard.
So when we step into this season, then it's like, oh, you know, we need to make sure we're getting really good sleep. I mean, if you're not sleeping, that's the worst advice you ever want to hear, isn't it? It's like, I know I want to sleep, you know, and being able to have the bandwidth to put in the practices that we know we should be doing.
I've never met an ADHD woman who doesn't know how to eat well and how to look after herself, but it's just too much. We don't have these hormones here to help us go, right, this is how I need to increase my capacity, my mental capacity right now. So I can actually do the stuff I know I should be doing for myself. So we go into this paralysis.
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