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The Little Things

When ADHD and perimenopause collide

22 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

1.516 - 6.202 Louise Erie

Hi, I'm Louise Erie and this is season six of our New Zealand Herald podcast, The Little Things.

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6.362 - 12.189 Francesca Rudkin

And I'm Francesca Rudkin. Good to have you with us. As you may have noticed by now, we're releasing podcasts every two weeks this year.

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12.209 - 31.905 Louise Erie

They're available at the same time, Saturday mornings. In this podcast, we talk to experts and we find out all the little things you need to know to improve different areas of your life. We like to cut through the confusion and overload of information out there to help simplify life if we can. We sure do. How's your week been? All right? Yeah, no, it has been fine.

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31.966 - 55.148 Louise Erie

But I do have a question for you. Yeah. How's your underwear game? Because mine, I have just noticed. What brought this on? Well, I think I must have bought all my undies at the same time and they've all just decided to kind of fall apart at the same time. But they're not good. Are you wearing holey undies? I am. And I just think at this stage of my life... Are they like sexy, lacy holey undies?

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55.169 - 55.229 Francesca Rudkin

No.

55.529 - 72.159 Louise Erie

You just got the cotton, boring undies. And I think that what's happened, Francesca, is I have spent my life looking after everybody else's... including their underwear needs. And I've just let mine go. Like, it's the last priority. I don't know. Are other people like that?

72.179 - 85.969 Francesca Rudkin

Well, that's funny you should say that because I put on some knickers the other day and I put my fingers through them and I just continued to wear them. And then I did say to my partner, though, hey, look, if something happened to me in the night and you had to take me to the hospital, could you just check my underwear, please? I mean, you still think about that.

85.989 - 93.779 Francesca Rudkin

I mean, that was something that your mum said to you. That's an old-fashioned thing. Well, what would happen if you were taken to hospital and you're dirty undies or something?

94.059 - 99.125 Louise Erie

I would love to just do a survey of medical professionals and say, do you even notice the underwear?

Chapter 2: What happens when ADHD and perimenopause collide?

806.067 - 825.087 Francesca Rudkin

And that's what so many of our parents did. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but the more I've learned about neurodiversity, the first thing I did was go back to my primary school and go, I wish I could apologise to Stephen and I could visualise the kids who we just thought of were the naughty kids and the troublesome kids and the difficult kids. And now I realise...

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825.067 - 830.455 Francesca Rudkin

Yeah, and now I'm just like, oh, bless, school was just a nightmare for them. I'm pretty sure they were all neurodivergent.

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831.216 - 831.537 Sonia Gray

Totally.

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831.557 - 835.523 Francesca Rudkin

And they just got dropped in the naughty box and left there.

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835.543 - 860.947 Sonia Gray

So then what happens, and this is where, you know, for a lot of women it becomes anxiety and depression, and I'm totally generalising here, but for a lot of males... If you're told the way you are is wrong from an early age, that has massive impacts. You're going to then go, well, I am wrong. I am wrong. There's people, there's teachers, parents, whatever, telling me that I am wrong.

861.308 - 881.061 Sonia Gray

I'll fulfill that. And yeah, it can lead down a really dark path. The problem I have with diagnosis is that we kind of go, all the ADHD people are here in this box, all the autism here, all the dyslexia. Well, we know now that the co-occurring conditions and it's just the person in front of you.

881.142 - 901.146 Louise Erie

I could be wrong here, but I feel what you're saying is that right now we have a sort of static view. There has been quite a static view of these things and they've been put in boxes. And what we're hoping in the future is that that has evaporated to a certain extent and we're just seeing it as the fluid intertwining of things.

901.166 - 905.732 Francesca Rudkin

Yeah, and that you're seeing the individual in front of you, not a neurodivergent person.

905.712 - 911.159 Sonia Gray

Totally. And we're all products of our environment, you know. It's not just our brain wiring.

Chapter 3: Why are women often diagnosed with ADHD later in life?

1782.959 - 1798.134 Sonia Gray

But then electric, I'm not going to... You've got to plug it in. I need some sort of hybrid with minimal time at the petrol station, but I don't have to do... When there's a list of things you have to do, everything that you add takes energy.

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1798.814 - 1801.357 Unknown

It's before I get to here, I have to stop and fill up the car with petrol.

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1801.497 - 1809.625 Louise Erie

I will warn you about the electric car. I absolutely cannot stand having to use a public...

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Chapter 4: What impact does a late ADHD diagnosis have on women?

1809.605 - 1819.922 Louise Erie

electric, you know, we went on a big road trip, we had to stop a lot. And watching people at petrol stations stop and get their petrol and drive off while we were sitting there for half an hour.

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1820.323 - 1822.106 Sonia Gray

Yeah, no, that's not me.

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1822.126 - 1824.87 Louise Erie

Do it at home. Do it at home. We'll work on this one.

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1825.391 - 1854.173 Francesca Rudkin

You're listening to The Little Things and our guest on the podcast today is host of No Such Thing as Normal podcast, Sonia Gray, talking about ADHD and midlife. We'll be back after the break. Welcome back. Sonia, okay, so we've had a bit of a chat about what it's like when ADHD and perimenopause collide. So what can we do about it? Like medication can be really useful.

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1855.235 - 1884.373 Sonia Gray

You know, I wish I could say, I wish I could go to the research and say, oh, these are the findings. This is what helps. There's no research. Literally no research. I was so shocked. What have you discovered when it comes to research? One shocking stat that completely blew me away. They did a review on all the studies, a recent review on all the studies into ADHD of something like 1,749 studies.

1884.873 - 1907.657 Sonia Gray

Only four were focused on women. This is nuts. Four. I mean, there were a few women in the other studies, some of them. But, and the excuse was that sometimes they give us, women are hard to study because of the hormonal changes. Gosh, that doesn't make it more important, does it? Yeah. Can I throw another terrifying stat at you?

1907.677 - 1911.061 Francesca Rudkin

I'm surprised that someone didn't kind of go, that's really interesting. We should be studying this.

1911.321 - 1936.018 Sonia Gray

Well, I'm thinking that. They are now. They are now, slowly. But there's a lot to catch up on. But another stat that I read which shocked me. There are five times more studies on male erectile dysfunction. Mm-hmm. than on PMS. So PMS affects about 90% of women. Erectile dysfunction affects 19% of men, but there are five times more studies on these poor men with erectile dysfunction.

1936.572 - 1957.652 Louise Erie

Look, I'm not knocking it. It must not be very nice, but PMS is snowboarding right in the park either. And honestly, for crying out loud, right? I mean, we've talked to Stacey Sims a couple of times in this podcast about the exercise research in men. It just seems to be a pattern, right? Yeah, yeah.

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