Cold Water Swimming Silenced My ADHD: Full Transcript

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Mel thank you very much for coming on to my podcast thank you for asking me that's right just give a little introduction into who you are uh I'm Mel Anderson I'm a personal trainer kettlebell coach and a menopause strength coach what's a menopause strength coach explain what that is I work with women who are approaching going through and

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see I I think back in our day it wasn't really that common or it wasn't a recognized condition it definitely wasn't recognized Condition it's been around forever I mean it's a thing it's you know it's a it's definitely a thing that's not I think it's there are possibly certain things in Modern Life that make it more uh prevalent now definitely but when I was a kid it was really the only thing that was talked

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few ungraded yeah in there but here's the thing academically I was quite intelligent I was in top groups for everything you know I didn't find it really hard academically but my behavior helped held me back so much so like in in one year I was actually made to sit in the class a year or so below me as punishment but I just thought that was funny I just showed off and was like

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me and I was on my own nobody got it but then suddenly I can't remember the actual day or anything like that but I remember very clearly going oh know everyone else me wow I need to change who I am fundamentally and from that day I would say probably in the following year I very gradually dropped every friend I had and found a brand new group of friends from a different town that

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amazing is she look how good she is look how much she does and I started to burn myself into the ground over delivering an over giving and saying yes which is people pleasing yeah yeah 100 yeah I I used to get and now that I've been diagnosed I look at it and I've studied it and I know all about it and I know exactly what I was doing but I used to get this insane drug-like buzz if somebody would

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Brighton Brighton and then yeah bank manager don't know why that happened yeah that was an accident massive but again you know I went for this job and I was going I just need to do something while I think about what I want to do I've been backpacking for a year I've been like working in cafes and

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husband Johnny I met him uh I was 30 so 20 odd years ago 30 31 I met him when I was living in Brighton yep yeah so he was uh I always said I'll never me I'll never get with somebody who I'm meeting a club because it's like everyone's out on a it's like a cattle farm in it like so I always said oh don't worry meet someone in a better environment than that but he was playing I've never heard anyone do that no one's in a club

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is fantastic because it gets it it gets the message out there but so first of all no one was talking about it and we come from a generation of women that just got on with it yeah you know just crack on you know this is just what we have to put up with so for me when it started one of the most sort of difficult things for me was losing all my strength and energy and as

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your ADHD as well definitely yeah I think so I think depression and anxiety and those sort of things are comorbidities of ADHD so they've you very often find these things in people that I have ADHD as well so yeah and I think and really it was going through the menopause that triggered me to find out that I had ADHD because that masking that I told you about when you're menopausal when you've got

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take a really good look and then I decided to study and go right I need to properly educate myself and this is I don't know if this is part of my ADHD ADHD or not but when I experienced something in my life I want to learn everything about it I get books I listen to podcasts I read research I do all that sort of thing so that's what I did with that I learned about it and I was like okay this isn't going to go

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um um relaxing not going for a long walk or doing hard work yeah before yeah yeah oh definitely if you're not active rest yeah yeah 100 yeah yeah I don't think I ever used to walk even like going for a run would be like you know and then instead of relaxing instead of taking time to chill out I would just flake out yeah then I'd be going I'd be

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don't make some [__] changes all right now right so I had one of those moments I was sitting at the breakfast bar my kids were upstairs Jamie was working in the studio and I was sitting there going oh my God everyone's got a life and all I do is work and clean and cook and this is what my life's gonna be like soon they'll be off to University before I even know about it or moved out he'll

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going like four or five times a week and actually neglecting work quite a lot but the second reason that I did it was for my anxiety because it was crippling it was by this time it was crippling and what things would you get anxious over that's the thing not a lot I would literally just wake up in the morning and the minute my eyes opened I would feel like I had an anvil on my chest and so it wouldn't be anything particular

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was able to switch something on for 45 minutes and then go away again or the clients I had I've got such good relationships with my clients I could you know not be a hundred percent and it was all okay do you know what I mean so I'd created a life for work where I could not do back-to - back clients and I didn't work that much yeah because of it um so yeah and then you know

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call it the blue green effects right so it's like blue water blue sky all the nature around you and your body's in survival mode when you go into freezing cold water so you literally everything quietens down it's the most incredible how long was you in the water for the first time I think we were in for about 14 15 minutes but it was like it was

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mind that is what sorted out my anxiety I've been reading tons about it like lately that's why I've started doing the ice baths with with your mental state with like for men with testosterone because over 40s start losing them testosterone so to try and replenish that mental health you know every so everything you're saying solidifies that really yeah 100 yeah I think there's there's still so much research that

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you attach to your body and some people come and go why do you use those you're only getting in the river but there's a number of things one is if there's any um what they call these ones or anything like that or boats we've had boats go past us if there's a bright orange thing they'll see that and they might not see you in your navy blue swimming costume right

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bring your fingers and thumbs together that's like a sign that you're starting to become hypothermic right so that sort of dexterity so what we say in our little group is even if that starts to feel slow okay that's that's a sign yeah because often when you start to get hypothermia you actually start to feel really warm so it's like a it's a bit of a twisted thing that the human body does right I

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kind of helps to continue to protect those things into old age right so in nowadays there isn't thought to be so much risk to taking it for a long period of time but it's a very personal thing there are some people that don't want to take HRT for whatever reason and there are a lot of other things that you can do but for me personally and it took me years to get my HRT right for me

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yeah so I I would tell anyone to give it a go do it safely learn like 100 learn all the risks involved get all the safety gear you know afterwards you need to wrap up super super warm that's why we're all like wearing these great big dry robes and things and I was going to ask you about that so my my uh my thing that I'm doing with the cold baths and the ice baths at the moment I struggle

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of layers of loose baggy warm clothes a warm drink not hot one because you know if you're kind of going yeah sure so a nice warm drink don't get in a hot shower or a hot bath straight away because you've got to let your body your core body temperature something nice like a like warm porridge or something like that or a soup or something is is good um and movement obviously yeah yeah but

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fits yes and there's a lot of kettlebell workouts on there that are beneficial yep in every single way you could imagine yeah for sure yeah definitely like and I Target menopausal women because I think you know the Kettlebell is an amazing tool for menopausal women because I had one and it was good for keeping the door open yeah a lot of people love those really good

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holding that in front here is a challenge like your grip strength has to be really spot on to hold that in place so yeah I swing a 20 kilo kettlebell and I snatch like above my head like 16 kilos but then that's four kilos and that's but it's new to me right so probably and this is using new muscles as well yeah yeah sure because Kettle obviously snatching and everything is something

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as well sometimes it's very exciting sometimes yeah so I can't remember what the question was now there you go find the focus hyper Focus yeah Jamie said to me a little while ago if you could take your ADHD away would you and I was like that's a really good question because it has caused me the majority of my life it's caused me pain and anguish and stress and but no I wouldn't not now I don't think