Back to School, Back to Flares? What Your Child’s Skin and Focus May Be Telling You with Dana Kay

Introduction to ADHD and eczema connections 0:00

Hey team, welcome back to the eczema kids podcast. We are officially heading into back-to-school season and if you're thinking about lunches and schedules and sleep and skin flares and getting everybody out the door in one place, today's conversation is one that I really wanted you to hear because what if the Eczima that you are seeing on your child's skin and the trouble they're having with focus and Big emotions and meltdowns or behavior aren't completely separate issues. My guest today is Dana Kate.

She's the founder of the ADHD Thrive Institute and the author of Thriving with ADHD. And Dana came into this work because of her own son's ADHD diagnosis. Today she helps families look deeper at the factors that may be contributing to their children's symptoms. There is so much crossover With what we talk about here, the gut health, inflammation, food, environmental exposures, nutrient deficiencies, and those outward symptoms that can be clues that a child needs more support. And we get really practical about back to school food and breakfast and what Dana sees on functional testing in a lot of our clients and a few simple places that you can start without trying to change your child's entire life overnight.

So whether your child has ADHD or struggles with focus and big emotions, or you're simply trying to understand what their skin may be telling you about what's happening inside their body, you are going to get a lot out of this one. I know I did, so let's get into it. Is your childhood struggling with itchy nights and endless flare-ups? I'm Andrea McHugh, mom of four and host of eczema kids. Here you'll find natural solutions that actually work so you can heal your children's ectomote without steroids, without the overwhelm, and finally see calm, healthy skin Let's get into it.

Hi Dina, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Really excited for this conversation because I think that this is gonna be a big one for a lot of the families listening because ADHD is one of those things that just gets labeled really quickly but it doesn't explain it in a way that actually helps parents move forward and your story mirrors mine in lot a

Dana Kayu2019s personal ADHD journey 2:06

ways and it brings a really different perspective to it and So I wanted to start there and start at the beginning. Could you please first introduce yourself to everyone listening, but then also talk about what was going on for your childhood that made you realize that something deeper was Yeah, so my name is Dana Kay, I am originally from Australia, and I live in sunny Seattle. I always say sunny as a joke, we were just talking earlier and it's quite cloudy and overcast here, at least it is not raining, it was this morning though.

Um, i've lived here for over 11 years with my husband and my two boys. You're so right, what got me into this journey was my oldest son and believe it or not, completely removed from this health and wellness space. I was actually an accountant. Don't tell anyone. Good. Thank you. Plan to continue in that field my whole life and I probably would have done so. If my son's health hadn't grown as much as it did, he was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of four. At first, I was always questioning, is this normal?

Is this is normal, the preschool teachers would say, no, his normal has just got a lot of energy like all the other boys. But when it started to infiltrate our life, his meltdowns became more and more dramatic. His energy just seemed so much higher than every other child. At his age, my gut really told me that something was missing and that's when I got him diagnosed. relieved with the diagnosis and the medication, it meant I wasn't a bad mum. It wasn' my fault. And that pill that we'd been prescribed, we were going to get that magic pill, that was gonna fix our family.

I jumped off to the drug store and filled that prescription. At first, it helped a little bit. He was able to play with his younger brother calmly, but then things started to wear off or not work as much. His dosage increased and then he started experiencing some side effects. So the doctor prescribed him another medication to counteract the side effects of the first, and this sort of continued until my son, who was now five, was on three very strong medications. And when the doctors suggested a fourth medication, to contract some new side-effects that popped up, I just knew that something wasn't right.

That's when my career path completely changed. I went back to school, did my holistic health science degree, multiple specific certifications in this particular area. And I really learned that there is an underlying driver of most symptoms that are categorized as ADHD. Now, today my son, he is 16. He is thriving. he hasn't been on meds for years.He is a athlete superstar.he's in high school,he is driving on his own. Oh my gosh, that's a whole nother story. He's a great student, but most importantly, he's happy and my family is happy.

And we sort of now have that peace and calm in our house that I always dreamt of. I mean, as much as a house with two boys can be peaceful and calming, I'm going to be realistic here. Of course, of course. Happy screams, right? Exactly, exactly. Yes, I resonate with everything that you're saying so much. I used to work in dental and the same thing, you know, my children's health started crashing. It's like, well, we need to reevaluate and move forward in a different direction. And, what a blessing.

But at the time, it's really, really rough. What were you starting to learn as you were uncovering things and Do we trial and error, I suspect, at home? What were some of those underlying drivers that were contributing to his ADHD? Yeah, look, there's definitely a number of drivers. I sort of like to start with this analogy, and you might have a similar analogy.I always use this little trash can as my example to say, obviously ADHD,there's some evidence that it's genetically predisposed. However, it doesn't mean that it's your destiny and that these symptoms sort of can't be reduced or removed altogether.

So, you know, when I think about contributors, I'm based on my experience with working with, now over, 1,600 families, we're all born with this metaphorical

Inflammation, toxins, and gut health 7:00

trash can in our body. And our goal through life is to keep the load on this trashcan. as low as possible. We want to keep the toxic load in our body low. However, some of us are born with our trash can already filled up. My son, he was induced. He was on medication as soon as he born. And so he had a little bit of trash in his trashcan already. Now, things go in that trash can. It could be poor diet, it could environmental toxins, bacteria, that sort of thing, and that builds up and builds. Now what I've learned with working with the families and studying genetics quite deeply is that a lot of the kids that we're working or have a have compromised detoxification pathways.

And so with the trashcan, just like it was in our house, you'd want to put it on the side of the road on a Monday so the garbage truck can pick it up and empty it. So you can bring it back inside. But with these poor genetics, I could go deep into genetics but I'm not going to, it'll bore you. A lot of our kiddos can't empty their trash can, their garbage trucks not picking it out very well. What happens is that trash builds up, and then it tips over into that body. And it causes chaos in that body.

Our trash can becomes too full. The body can't detox it. And then that starts showing up as symptoms. That starts causing something, which is the number one driver, inflammation in the body, and that inflammation can cause a whole host of symptoms, ADHD, eczema, as I'm sure you've talked about so much on this podcast. So I'd say the No. 1 driver. of ADHD is inflammation in that and we need to work out why that inflammation is there in the first place. I was excited to have you on because there are so many correlations between these two conditions and I just believe that they're all on the same spectrum and then for some it turns out to be this neurologic disorder and sometimes it's autism.

ADHD, and sometimes it's eczema, you know, the exact same thing is happening that you just talked about with exema. Like, there's nowhere for the body to dispose of these toxins. The detoxification channels are all backed up and then they start taking it out through the skin because there is nowhere else for it to go. And you could think. If you're in this situation and being your best self, you could think, well, at least it's coming out in some capacity, right? But it is alarming, to say the least.

I was wondering, when you are in the boat and you see that your child's detoxification abilities are clearly compromised, what do you recommend to start incorporating? Yeah, look at, you know, then if you had to do only one thing is you want to reduce, reduce things that are contributing to that inflammation. And so, the number one input into our body is food and we're getting that food on a daily basis. What goes in? comes out, whether it comes up poorly in the skin or it come out poorly, in neurological symptoms or behavioral symptoms is we want to start reducing.

And so I know a lot of families sort of get a bit scared when, when we say food, because it's so hard these days with, you know, the, food that's given to our children at schools and things like that. So we wanna just start producing some of those really foods that are going to cause inflammation. And ideally we like to do that through lab testing. I like, to look at labs that, are showing us what foods are contributing to inflammation in the body right now. But lab, testing is not available for everyone.

Functional lab-testing, whether it's budget, or whether, you know, it just not possible right, now and so generally when it is, not possibly, the top inflammatory foods out there, We've got gluten, we've dairy, soy is another one, artificial flavors, and artificial colors. You can do an elimination diet to really start reducing that inflammatory exposure. But if lab testing is available, then looking at something called a wheat zoomer will really tell you the level of reactivity to gluten. food sensitivity panels to look at what is currently causing inflammation in the body right now so we can reduce that.

Food's one little bucket under the reduce. We've then got environmental toxins, which I'm sure you have talked about so much on the podcast because that's a big driver as well. So if we could really look, okay, well, what could be contributing to the toxic load in our environment, in Things like cleaning products, just buying a better alternative. Personal care products. We're putting that on our skin on a daily basis. So looking where we can just start reducing, you know, I don't do it in a fear-based way.

I'm not saying move to a farm tomorrow. One product at a time, when one runs out. let's buy a better for you version. And so we just start to slowly reduce that exposure. The biggest area that I look at is reducing what's happening in the gut, looking at functional lab testing, what is happening with that body. and targeting an approach accordingly. The biggest area is that gut because of the gut-brain connection. That gut brain connection is pretty much center of everything when it comes to kids with ADHD.

It's like one in two have anxiety of kids these days, one they might have allergic conditions, eczema, asthma. One in five have allergies, and one six have developmental delays. And one 32 kids have autism. But we've got to look at why that has increase so rapidly. And that's because 80% of the body's entire immune system is within the gut wall, along with billions of nerve cells and an extensive amount of beneficial bacteria. So all our kids' health and all health is literally connected to everything that occurs in the guy.

But I have so many families that I speak to that come for me, you for guidance for their kids with ADHD. And I asked whether there's a family history of sickness, constipation, diarrhea, have their kid's been on antibiotics? And they often tell me they have. I wish I'd sort of kept a chart of like how many families I've spoken to and how kids have been in antibiotics. But most antibiotics work by killing bacteria or preventing it from growing. But unfortunately, most antibiotics can't distinguish between the good and the bad.

That means that they can wreak havoc on the gut's healthy bacteria and people suffer lasting changes to their gut. We've got a large percentage of these kids taking antibiotics and an increasing percentage kids having these diseases and disorders, but I want to tie ADHD to the guts. Yeah. That brain connection, you know, in essence, our brains are deeply connected to our guts. And if our gut's aren't functioning well, Our brains and not going to be able to function well either. 90% of serotonin is made in the gut.

50% of dopamine, which a lot of families who have kids with ADHD will know about dopamine is produced in the gut. And these neurotransmitters are the ones that help us manage emotions, balance our mood, help our cognitive function. Emotional dysregulation is a common symptom of ADHD, but many parents don't realize that emotional dysregation actually starts in the gut where serotonin and dopamine are produced, plus other neurotransmitters. I don't want to go into all of them. So it's not about the emotions themselves, but the fact that the correct amount of these vital neurotrasmiters are not being made in first place.

You know, so we improve gut, we improved the emotional dysregulation. That was one of the first things that improved with my son. He used to have daily meltdowns. that was a warning sign from his body. he didn't have any gut issues that I could tell. But one of the first things that started to improve when we went down this path was his meltdowns reduced. His tantrums got fewer and further between.

Testing patterns and nutrient deficiencies 15:30

They lasted for a short amount of time. That's just one part of it. The brain has many areas involved in gut function. You know, the main area is the frontal lobe. If you're just listening to this podcast, I'm pointing to the middle of my forehead, but the brain talks to gut via two-way chemical messengers and nerve branches directly to that frontal lope. And the front lobes is involved with attention. focus, executive function, planning, organizing, problem solving. I mean, all of these areas are ones that are affected by ADHD.

And so because the frontal lobe is in the brain, many people are under the impression that the when in reality it's also the gut that's causing the problems. It's like this super highway. They're talking to each other constantly. So if your gut's broken down, it sending bad signals up to your brain, you're not going to be able to focus. You're going not to able pay attention. That reduce level is about diet, about environmental toxin, and it's about looking at the underlying areas that we need to start reducing that inflammation.

And one of those main areas is that gut. Yeah. I mean, it is relatively new science. The gut brain access, we've known about that for a while. But the main driver is the gut, like you said, there's 80% of your immune system there, but the the mean source of communication is actually the guy. It doesn't go brain to gut and then gut to brain. mostly that. Like you said, that's where all the neurotransmitters, all those things start to happen. And I was just wondering on the stool tests and the tests that you run, what kind of patterns do you typically see?

And it is all about patterns. That's such a good question because there's four sort of base tests I like to use. I prefer actually the organic acid test over a stool test. three different stool tests on the one child, on one sample, and they all give such different results. Because stool testing is not a perfect science. There's a lot of stool test out there that can be based on old technology, there's other ones that don't test enough, but it does give you a great overview. If budget allows, I like to do the organic acid test, which is a urine test.

I'd like do something called the gut zoomer, or which has a stool, test plus some others which I'll talk about separately. But in terms of gut, they're my main two. The patterns that I generally see, a big one is yeast overgrowth, so candida. Sometimes it won't show up in the stool because it hides in something called biofilm, which is like this mucus-like substance, unless we've done sort of a bio-film disruptor beforehand. But I see it a lot on the organic acid test. And so yeast and candido can become invasive.

It can attach to the intestinal wall. OCD symptoms. It can cause brain fog, inability to focus. That's a big pattern I see. Another one that I say is C. diff or costridium. I love seeing that when it comes up and that's because it can lead to inhibiting an enzyme called DBH, which is dopamine beta hydroxylase. And that will then lead a further derangement of all the neurotransmitters. So you know, kids that have those big mood and emotions, that's actually a classic sign that maybe they've got that clostridia or overgrowth.

And we can just target that and it's amazing to see such an improvement in that child once you actually target what you need to reduce. You need reduce that Clostrida or you to need that yeast. Another big one, which I'm sure that you've talked about is mold. It's like fungal over growth in the gut. where there's more mold in the environment and in our houses these days than ever before. And if you've got poor genetics relating to detox or other genes that will stop that mold being neutralized, you can have this invasive fungal overgrowth.

It can start to grow and colonize itself in a body. So we see that on the organic acid test. And we target that and then their symptoms can start to improve from there. What about nutrient deficiencies? Do you see typical patterns there? Yeah, definitely. Look, big ones for ADHD is the zinc to copper ratio. A lot of traditional doctors will not do a zinc and copper test. If you advocate hard, you can try and push for it. But big, copper and zinc are really meant to be in a one-to-one ratio, they track each other very well.

I see a lot of elevated copper and low zinc. That's a huge one. Another one that I've seen is ferritin and iron panel. If you've got low ferretin, then we want to support that. There's lots of studies around that, particularly with ADHD. We were talking about this before we came on, vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is needed for so many of our processes in our body. I live in Seattle, which is not very sunny, even though I call it sunny Seattle. In the summertime for about four weeks, it's really sunny.

So, you know, vitamin D is another one. And magnesium, supporting a child with magnesium can be really, really beneficial. Omega-3 fatty acids, sorry. Those are probably the nutrients that we start with, even if testing's not available. Good quality omega-threes, fish oil, Vitamin D, magnesium. Then if you want deeper testing, looking at your zinc, your copper, and your iron and ferritin. Thanks for that. There's a lot of crossover, but definitely some differences in the patterns that I see in our population.

But yes, those foundational nutrients are helpful for everyone. I mean, I broke my leg last year and was like, vitamin D I really need. All of it. So thank you. That was just informative. There's one other one that no one really talks about, and I think I'd love to just quickly talk about it that's really specific to sort of that mood and ADHD. So it's called a CryptoPyrrole test. I do this with everyone in my program. Now, pyrroles is a normal chemical byproduct in the body. However, when it's elevated, it attaches to, has a dramatic affinity for B6 and zinc, and it actually draws these elements out of the body and then they're excreted through the urine.

And it can result in a traumatic deficiency of zinc and B 6, but it is frequently identified in behavioral disorders, ADHD, depression, aggression, violent behavior. In the general population, elevated levels happen in about 3% of general populations. I've worked with over 1600 families, I see it elevated in 40%. You can see, it's a very common pattern. Symptoms will include things like poor tolerance to physical or emotional stress, poor anger control, mood swings, short-term memory, sensitivity to light and sound, tactile sensitivities, And even poor dream recall.

Now you don't have to have all of it, but it's a really simple urine test and it is either a yes or a no. And if it a, yes, it like, wow. I've seen kids go from daily, daily meltdowns, tantrums aggression, those sort of behaviors.

Can symptoms improve beyond an ADHD label? 23:00

Then in three, four weeks of being on that nutrient support, like completely different child. So I assume what your answer would be, but do you think if you're experiencing ADHD, and the behavior feels unmanageable, do you feel like you can pull out of it that there is a brighter future for your kid? There is so much more of a bright future. I'm not completely against medication. There's a time and place for it for sure, but it shouldn't be the first port of call. A lot of this stuff you could literally target and they can feel better.

I would say that probably less than 20% of the kids that are actually diagnosed with ADHD probably have true ADHD, whereas the others just have symptoms that fall under the spectrum of ADHD. I do a lot of genetic testing in my business and one of the tests that I use, it has sort of like a report on it that says, what's your likelihood of attention and focus? Are you a high risk of having ADHD like symptoms or are you at a low risk or a moderate risk? And I've done hundreds and hundreds of these tests and I'm probably seen a higher risk for ADHD symptoms in like 3% of kids that have done.

Which you would think it was like 90% of the kids that I do. Cause that's the population I work in, but it's not. So it like, well, if it not ADHD, what is it? And so that why we can actually look into the body. Let the Body tell us. Why that kid is suffering. You know that meltdown, that tantrum. That's just a white flag from the body saying, Mom, mom, something's wrong. I just need to be checked out. So we didn't really get into it. How do you know this might actually be ADHD? So interestingly, ADHD is meant to be a diagnosis of exclusion.

What that means is to diagnose ADHD, you must exclude everything else before they get a diagnoses. Do you think in reality that happens? Of course not. No, not at all. I mean, you could go to the pediatrician and say, fill out a form and, say my kids got meltdowns, my kid's got tantrums. Can't focus at home. Okay. Your kid has got ADHD. Here is a medication. that is not the right way to diagnose ADHD. And so, I think that you really just need to sort of take an assessment. Are they melting down every day?

There's something going on in their body. If it is purely just a focus issue at school, Okay, maybe they've got true ADHD, but let's go down this path. Who eats well? You know, who doesn't feel better when they eat well. There's no side effects of eating well, there's not side-effects of, you know taking some of these supplements, There are no effects removing some environmental toxins. If you do all of this and you've still got focus issues, okay, Maybe you have true ADHD. But if you all do this, and they're feeling better, acting better.

When I eat poorly, I feel terrible. My mood is not good, my brain is no good. my body doesn't feel good." But the way that comes out in a child who can't regulate their own emotions and know how to express themselves is in meltdown, is a tantrum. These are clear warning signs that something's going on in the body. Yeah. I honestly do believe we're the lucky ones. If you're dealing with this pediatric population and you're seeing these warning signs early. I mean, eczema is the exact same thing. It's like your body's saying, hey, it's not right.

But goodness, they're young enough and adaptable enough that you can fix it. You can. And it is usually these simple things. That's where we start to go. Because, right, there are no deleterious side effects from eating healthy whole foods. and well prepared and welcome by. I mean, it's just, we start there, start to calm down the body and everything improves. The mood improves, the sleep improves the skin improves it all. works together and it's cohesive and they bounce back so quickly. And then when you are still seeing undesirable symptoms, it'll be downgraded for sure.

But if you're still noticing things, then that's when we go into testing. It's like, okay, here, there's this specific thing that, yeah, we can start to target that. That's just such a beautiful path. Good news. Yeah. And I love what you said that, you know, kids are so adaptable, they so are. Um, You know you can have, as I said with my son, like I think within a couple of weeks of, reducing some of that inflammation, he was like a different kid. It was his body. You would never be able to sit at breakfast and eat breakfast.

He'd be just bouncing off the walls. A couple weeks in, He would sit, at the breakfast table and ate breakfast, and I was Who is this child? Nice to meet you. They are so adaptable and it can change so quickly. When you're working with adults that have a lot more deeper dysfunctions, it might take a little bit longer, but kids can really quickly change.

Practical first steps for families 28:30

For the parent listening and they're thinking this sounds a lot like my child, what are just three practical things that they could do today to start just with helping with the moods and helping the tantrums? What I say to every family is Rome wasn't built in a day. You do not need to make all of these changes overnight. And so, uh, if you feel like you want to just start making small changes to food, why don't you change one product at a time? Whether that be, you know, changing to a better snack.

I mean, I've got loads of recipe guides and, um, recipes on my, on, my website and uh. You know I talk about this a lot, but if he wanted to start with food. Just make a product change. Start with a bit of breakfast. change one meal at a time, you don't need to do everything at once. It's the same with the environmental shifts, one product at at time. I remember when I first started, obviously I didn't have the help that I provide to families now, but we did testing and he had 40 food sensitivities.

So on day one, after I got that result, I removed gluten, dairy, soy, and 40 food sensitivities. Let's just say I was on my bedroom floor in a panic attack multiple times saying, what am I going to feed my child? Do not do that. Just start small, low and slow, one step at a time. And then if you want to go a little bit deeper, looking at some, you know, base supplements to really start supporting that body. We've talked about a couple of those nutrients throughout. I will say supplements are not the be all and end all.

You cannot supplement your way out of a body that's riddled with inflammation. And so between you and me, well, it's not going to be between me and you, but I think I spent over $180,000 on random things throughout my journey to try and help my son. It really doesn't need to that hard. And then I thing the third thing is support. having people around you that have been through it or are going through. When you're on this journey, you feel very isolated, especially the mum, because a lot of the time the mums are the ones there with the child more than the father.

And this is just a generalisation, but you know, You feel like you are on an island on your own. you know, and there's nothing out there that's going to help and you're stuck in this emotional roller coaster in your family life. Just know that you are not alone and this hope you can step out of this. I want to ask you if someone comes to you and the child is used to a particular sugary breakfast, what are some breakfasts? People get really hung up on that. And it is hard. It's hard to make that shift from something that would support your blood sugar and stabilize your body sugar versus what they're likely eating now.

So what were some of your favorite go-to breakfast? moderation is key for me and chaining someone from where they are to where you want to go. If your kid's used to eating Lucky Charms and that's all they eat for breakfast, don't go straight to a green smoothie with all of these things. It's just not realistic. What I did actually, and this was a really good transition for, I knew that I needed to remove dairy from the diet for a period of time. I chose the dairy-free milk that I was going to do and I did three quarters of the normal milk and one quarter of a dairy free milk.

I let him have that for a few days. Then I reduced it down to half and half. And then I'll let that have for few day. He didn't even notice. What I started to was I start mixing in the cereal that he was used to, to a better version. the percentage. So I wasn't just going here, this is the new thing that you're going to eat and too bad we're not having the other thing. Really reducing what they're having and doing it slowly. Look, there's a lot of things out there with oats. A lot people say, oats is not great.

Everything in moderation. I love overnight oats. You want to make sure they're certified gluten-free. They can have that cross-contamination. And I can tell you, I've probably done about over 2,000 wheat Zuma tests in my business for families. Most kids with ADHD are extremely reactive to gluten. Generally, that is one that we want remove out. Oats can have a lot of cross-contamination, so making sure they're certified gluten-free. Overnight oats is really good. It's so easy. You do five bull jars and do it for five minutes on a Sunday and they are ready to go.

That's a really great breakfast. Even just little improvements on what they currently having, whether you ground some nuts and seeds into a fine powder and just sprinkle a little bit of that over their current cereal. You know, it's, about making these small shifts. It doesn't need to happen overnight to bring them on the journey as well. There is so many better for you versions of things. You what we want to do is, okay, well, let's start changing the products that we're having, then let start reducing the amount of products we are having.

Meaning that. you know, gluten dairy free or low inflammatory is not necessarily healthy. If you're just changing packaged goods with packaged good, you may not get to where you need to go. So, there's some of my sort of easier breakfasts. You know I make a big batch of bacon on the weekend and I put it in the fridge. I'll make like egg muffins, whereas like eggs and some vegetables and you know, ham or whatever and do them and put them in the oven on a Sunday and they're ready for grab and go as you're going.

Yeah, all of that is really good suggestions. And I think through line is like, have a plan.

Breakfast ideas and gradual food swaps 34:30

What I've found a lot of times, because like our reality was so bad that the just like the slowly, you know, changing, like that, I couldn't do that because I wasn't sleeping and, but luckily, one was a baby. So she had no choice. Like I was nursing her and I could do whatever for myself. If you make these changes and they're young enough, maybe they, have a fit for a day or two, but honestly, like even kids with these challenges, they change and they adapt so, so fast. And, you know, and if you make it about like, Hey, we're, everyone's being healthier.

The whole family's on board. We're supporting healing. It doesn't have to be as slow. I mean, just for these changes that, without a shadow of a doubt. This will help them and yeah, a hundred percent. And we were in that same situation and so, uh, you know, but I know a lot of families, they may be starting from a higher base of like all their kids eats is chicken nuggets. So if you are going to have a little resistance, we can take it slowly. But at the same time, I've got families that come in and be like, okay, now I don't need me to do this.

and I helped them do it. It's having that support and that guidance from someone who knows what to, do what steps to take to help it be successful as possible. Thank you so much for being here and for your time today. This was so insightful and thank you for Being so vulnerable and sharing your story with us. You know, I just know the biggest takeaway from this conversation is just that this is a signal. If you're noticing undesirable behavior and if you are noticing skin challenges and all these things, this a really big warning sign from the body.

And there's so much you can do to start taking action. And once you start paying attention and your awareness, there are people like you that really understand this neurological condition. So thank you for your time and research and all the things. For everyone listening, where can they find, follow you, gobble up your book, all of the thing. No, thankyou. It's been a pleasure coming and I think it's important to understand that there is hope. Because there it is. You don't have to live on this emotional roller coaster anymore.

And there are things that you can do. So, you know, thank you for having me on the podcast. Thank you, for sharing all your knowledge with your listeners as well, because we know how hard it is to suffer through all of this. I am on social media and on their website, ADHD Thrive Institute. That's the name of my business. My book is Thriving with ADHD. It was an international bestseller in children's health. You can find that on Amazon or you can it cheaper on my website. I'm on YouTube everywhere under ADHDthriveinstitute.com.

Perfect. All that will be in the show notes. Thank you so much. Thanks you. So much I hope today's conversation helped you connect some dots because that's really what I want you to take away from this episode. You don't have to look at the skin in isolation. Our kids skin and gut and immune system and nutrient status and sleep and mood and ability to focus. all influence their overall health. And when something isn't going well, those symptoms are information and they're an invitation to start asking better questions.

But I also don't want you leaving today's episode thinking that you need to change 47 things before school starts. Dana talked about starting small and I love that. Start with breakfast, start packing better food, protect sleep, reduce the exposures that can control. That's the name of the game, right? Thankfully, we can control a lot. So pick one thing and start there.

Closing thoughts and resources 38:00

And if eczema is the thing screaming the loudest in your house right now, start with the skin. Go to eximakids.com and grab the eXma Kids Trio. It's the herbal oil, it's a comfort spray, and the soothing cream. I created these three products to work together as a simple daily routine for dry, itchy, reactive, eczema prone skin. It works on school days, it works, on the weekends, that works all the time. If you're brand new, start with the four ounce trio. if you already know you love it and you are dealing with a lot of skin, That's why I make the eight ounce and the 16 ounce trios.

This is so much product guys that comes in the mail at one time because I know, I Know Exiba and that is why we, the size of our jars, even our smallest jars right are like a million times bigger than others out there. So don't wait for the first big fall flair to start supporting their skin. Get the trio in house now and establish a routine ahead of the school year, so you're prepared. And if you are listening to all this thinking, okay, Andra, but I need help figuring out what's actually driving my child's eczema and I don't want to deal with this anymore, I do offer deeper support and you can learn more about working with me at eximakids.com or sign up for an alignment call through the link in the show notes.

But if need one simple place to start today, start with the Trio friends and i will see you back here next week. Take care. Thank you for helping with my eczema. Love you. Thank for listening today, friend. I know healing your child's skin isn't easy, but you're doing it one smart step at a time. If this episode gave you a little hope or a better night's sleep, leave a quick review so more exhausted parents can find exema kids and finally rest easy too. Follow, share, and let's help more kids heal.

Take care.