Dr. Jill Carnahan sits down with Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP, to discuss crucial strategies to help moms of neurodivergent children avoid burnout and overwhelm. As a dedicated expert in functional medicine and chiropractic care, Dr. Sam Shay brings a wealth of knowledge and practical advice for parents navigating the complexities of raising neurodivergent children.
Key Points
- Raising healthy kids involves modeling heathy behaviors and asking questions to open conversations
- It is important to set boundaries on social media and screen time in children under 13 years old in order to help appropriate neurodevelopment
- Healthy parenting is about trusting your instincts and knowing you already have much of what you need to be a great parent.
Our Guest – Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP
Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP Solves health puzzles for busy, health-conscious moms, entrepreneurs, and those on the Spectrum so they can exit survival mode and enter community. Dr. Shay walked his own health journey from being chronically unwell from age 6-18, including overcoming sugar addiction, severe fatigue, anxiety, digestive problems, chronic pain, severe insomnia, and poor nutrition, which led to social isolation, which then further compounded his health issues. He took control of his health starting as a teenager and dedicated his life to natural medicine, functional testing, genetics, and re-entering community. Dr. Shay is also a Stand-Up comic who uses comedy as “edutainment” on his Youtube Channel, along with his other functional testing teachings.
Website: https://drsamshay.com/
Functional Genetics: https://drsamshay.com/genetics-program
Dr. Jill Carnahan, MD
Dr. Jill Carnahan is Your Functional Medicine Expert® dually board certified in Family Medicine for ten years and in Integrative Holistic Medicine since 2015. She is the Medical Director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, a widely sought-after practice with a broad range of clinical services including functional medical protocols, nutritional consultations, chiropractic therapy, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, and massage therapy.
As a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and toxic mold illness she brings a unique perspective to treating patients in the midst of complex and chronic illness. Her clinic specializes in searching for the underlying triggers that contribute to illness through cutting-edge lab testing and tailoring the intervention to specific needs.
A popular inspirational speaker and prolific writer, she shares her knowledge of hope, health, and healing live on stage and through newsletters, articles, books, and social media posts! People relate to Dr. Jill’s science-backed opinions delivered with authenticity, love and humor. She is known for inspiring her audience to thrive even in the midst of difficulties.
Featured in Shape Magazine, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, First for Women, Townsend Newsletter, and The Huffington Post as well as seen on NBC News and Health segments with Joan Lunden, Dr. Jill is a media must-have. Her YouTube channel and podcast features live interviews with the healthcare world’s most respected names.
The Podcast
The Video
The Transcript
226: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Helping Moms of Neurodivergent Kids avoid Burnout & Overwhelm
Dr. Jill 00:00
Welcome to Resiliency Radio, your go-to podcast for the most cutting-edge insights in integrative and functional medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Jill, and with each episode, we dive into the heart of healing and personal transformation. Join us as we empower you with guests, medical experts, biohackers—all kinds of experts here—to talk about the ways to optimize your health and performance. Join us today.
Dr. Jill 00:25
I'm so excited to have my friend, a local expert here, Dr. Sam Shay. He is an IFM-certified practitioner and solves health puzzles for busy, health-conscious moms, entrepreneurs, and those on the spectrum so that they can exit survival mode and enter community. Today, we're going to be talking specifically to the moms of neurodivergent kids. I know you're out there. You may even be wondering if your kid is neurodivergent. We can talk about the definition and what that looks like. But today, you have an expert, and not only an expert but [someone] who I consider an absolute genius in this area. You will be able to see his expertise as we dive in.
Sam, thanks for joining us today.
Dr. Sam Shay 01:03
It's great to be here, Jill. I don't know how to properly address you—as Dr. Jill, Dr. Carnahan—because you were one of my instructors in IFM. So I have, I don't know, 21 years of schooling deference to the doctor. I just don't know. But it's also kind of adorable that we're also neighbors and colleagues. I'm very excited to chat with you because when I was going through IFM and you were one of the instructors, I really enjoyed the enthusiasm and depth in which you shared. I'm fanboyish just being here and giving back and sharing back.
Dr. Sam Shay 01:47
IFM and Dr. Kalish have been my two biggest influences. I studied with him for four years. Then the day he interviewed me—because I took his information on fatty acid analysis and the ion panel and recategorized it and reorganized it into six simple principles—he was like, “Oh, let me interview you.” Then I was like: “Oh my God, it's like the teacher returning back.” It's wonderful. It's so much fun to have such great instructors in this functional medicine community like yourself.
Dr. Jill 02:18
Oh, thank you. That's so kind. It is interesting because I feel like I learned from you too. Even when I do podcasting, one of the best-kept secrets is that every time I interview someone, I learn some really cool stuff. I know today will be no different because with people who don't know you—just like you described there, but let me sing your praises—you have this real incredible gift of taking complex topics, complex algorithms. I have my bioengineering background. I think in that way we think alike, of looking at all this complexity and saying: “Oh wait—A, B, C. Boom—this is how it's done.” Tell us first, how did you get into the world of functional/integrative medicine? How did you dive into this area?
Dr. Sam Shay 03:00
The shorter version—because my journey is in some ways really straightforward and in various ways convoluted and circuitous, like everyone's personal health journey—the simple version is that I followed the same cliche archetype of the wounded healer. I was born into this world, and my parents had a nuclear divorce when I was six, and that was basically the first conscious memories I had of my life. By nuclear divorce, it means me and my sisters were caught in the blast radius, and they did not handle it well. They weaponized the kids against each other, and they did all the wrong things. Starting at age six, I had crippling insomnia where I couldn't get to sleep. I had fractured sleep and I would wake up exhausted to a really loud, obnoxious alarm to force me to get up at 6 a.m. to try to go to school. And school itself was terrible. There was a lot of violence. There was a lot of humiliation. And the teachers and the principal and all the adults in the room just turned a blind eye when stuff was happening right in front of them.
Dr. Sam Shay 04:06
And then at home, I was told my cholesterol was too high at age seven. This is the 80s. In context, both my parents were medical doctors. Nutrition and all these other things that we normally talk about were not on the radar. They were both psychiatrists, so they thought everything was in the head. There was no understanding on how diet affected anything. So I was eating low-fat, high-carb, high-gluten, high-dairy things. According to my genetics testing—I did my genetics test eight years ago—all of these things were not good for me. Genetically, I'm better suited for a very low-carb paleo [diet] bordering on keto; you can genetically test for these things today. Are you keto, Mediterranean, high carb, paleo, or some shade of gray in between? I have genetic vulnerabilities to gluten and genetic vulnerabilities to dairy. I also had a coffee habit at age six because I was so exhausted. I literally had a coffee habit. But then it also turned out, for fun, I have the genetics [for] “caffeine-induced anxiety and depression.”
Dr. Jill 05:31
Oh my goodness.
Dr. Sam Shay 05:33
The ADORA2 gene, the CYPs—those two. I'm a bright red dot for both of those, and I get caffeine-induced anxiety and depression. When I lecture about genetics and health optimization in front of entrepreneurs and mompreneurs and whatnot, it's super fun to talk about: “You know, at least 10% of you have caffeine-induced anxiety and depression.” You can just hear everyone's collective sphincter clench, because “Oh my God, my business runs on caffeine!” Everyone gets super paranoid. And the amount of people that come up to me half looking over their shoulders like, “Is coffee really…” It's really funny. It doesn't matter how much coconut oil you shove in that coffee. I tried. If you've got the genetics for it, like I did, it just makes everything worse.
Dr. Sam Shay 06:33
And I had severe digestive issues. I had chronic pain from injuries I sustained from the violence in school, depression, and anxiety. My insomnia was so bad that it stunted my growth. I never had a growth spurt. I had insomnia from 6 to 18 and even beyond. I should be at least four to six inches taller due to all sorts of different metrics and whatnot, but I'm barely 5'6″. I should be about 5'10” or plus.
Dr. Sam Shay 07:05
Coming to the neurodiversity side of it, no understanding or awareness. Dr. Asperger died in 1980, the same year I was born. His work wasn't really brought to the West until 1981, I believe. And then his work wasn't formalized into the DSM until—I believe it was like '93. At least it made some big jump into the DSM.
Dr. Sam Shay 07:38
My father—like I say, I'm on the spectrum, but he's the bookend. He is farther down the spectrum from me than I am from normies. I was in this very bizarre situation—now in retrospect—that I couldn't relate to the normie world around me. But I also deeply understand what it's like to have a spectrum parent that's further down the spectrum from me. So I'm in this no man's land in the middle where I can't relate to everyone else over here, and I can't relate to my father over here. Or rather, he's not relating to me, despite my attempts.
Dr. Sam Shay 08:17
The reason why I really want to talk to the parents of people on the spectrum… I'm not necessarily speaking to parents who are on the spectrum, who have kids on the spectrum. Though that is a reality because doctor Asperger himself noticed that one in four first-order relatives had the same neurology going on or some visible signs of it—for me and my father in this case. And me talking about my experience about how I can help people navigate the normie world can help those people who have parents on the spectrum. But specifically, I—at least for today's chat—want to really focus on the normie parents of kids on the spectrum, so my mom.
Dr. Sam Shay 09:11
The reason why I'm so passionate about this and why I really want to be a real support and guide for parents of children on the spectrum is because there are so many things that parents of children on the spectrum… Just being a parent—the whole parent thing alone is hard enough. But now there are these additional layers of navigating not just your child's needs but navigating your child's unique needs—the sensory overwhelm, the lack of social queuing, the extra education and misunderstandings, the frustration, and, at times, resentment. And I'm just being super real here. I work with parents all the time—and so do you—and they quietly admit, “Sometimes I just really resent having to do all of this.” And I get that.
Dr. Sam Shay 10:23
My mom—spoiler: She and I have a fantastic relationship now. In fact, she's coming to visit me here in Colorado in three weeks from today, I think. It's the second time she's coming. We have a great relationship now. But I want to spare parents 25 years of struggle in order to repair a relationship by not having it be a relationship that needs to be repaired. This is going to sound strange, but hear me out: My mother should not have been a parent; she should have gone straight to the grandparent stage. She's an A+ grandparent by my standards. A+ grandparent, a D-, possibly lower, parent by her admission.
Dr. Sam Shay 11:11
And I'll share: What were some of the circumstances that I feel relate directly to what we're talking about today? My mother was also chronically sleep-deprived. She was also in chronic physical pain, downing painkillers. As you know, certain painkillers lower empathy. That's a fun one. I didn't find that one out until a couple of years ago. She was on painkillers. She was chronically sleep-deprived. She was hangry and dysglycemic because she was busy eating candy bars for lunch, going between patients, and just navigating stuff. She was also deeply resentful of my father when they had a divorce. He always paid child support. He did provide, but he was not present, and he was not protective, and he was not participatory in my life. So he just ticked the boxes of the agreement. So my mother was deeply resentful at him. And by extension, because I exhibited similar behaviors that he did that she found insufferable, she resented me. Massive projections. Massive!
Dr. Sam Shay 12:33
I'll give you an example. People are physically attacking me and humiliating me at school, and my mom thinks I'm just provoking them. And I'm like, “I'm doing what you're saying.” They say: “I'll be your best friend if you do this.” And I do this thing, and it turns out they're convincing me to do a thing that's really humiliating and embarrassing, and then they laugh and then attack. And I'm deeply confused because I'm taking what they're saying literally. And I don't understand how bullying works. I just feel like I don't understand. And Mama said what I was doing was provoking when really it was just vanilla cruelty on the part of small children. But it's the projections, plus the dysglycemia, plus the sleep deprivation, plus the pain. And she's trying to restart her life as a single mom.
Dr. Sam Shay 13:33
And all of this boils down to [the fact that] she never got the support that you and I offer parents today. Never got that. It wasn't even really on the radar. It wasn't even really an option. We'll not mess with the space-time continuum, but we'll just pretend we are: If I could go back and help my mom the way I am now so she can then raise me and ignore the fact that there'd be two of me in the same time stream—we'll just put the sci-fi writers to the side here—and if I could have helped her the way that I help moms now, my life as a kid would have been completely different, regardless if I was on the spectrum or not. And her life would have been better, my life would have been better, and everyone's life would have been better if I just focused on helping the parent.
Dr. Jill 14:33
Yes. Let's talk practically. First of all, let's define—for those listening who may not know the terms—neurodivergence, spectrum, and Asperger's. Let's give definitions. I can see completely how you, as this purely straightforward, literal kiddo… First of all, kids can see these weaknesses, and unfortunately, the bully kinds of kids will take advantage because they see that, and they deliberately were brutal to you. But how would a parent advise you differently if you could go back? So let's define the terms, and let's go into: How could a mother in your childhood have been different for what you experienced at the hands of the bullies?
Dr. Sam Shay 15:19
Sure. Yeah. My experience of childhood was less Christopher Robin, more Lord of the Flies. To give the biggest resource I can offer to understand Asperger's—and we'll obviously define it, but I just want people to know there's a giant resource that I spent five years to put together—that's a one-hour comedy show on what it's like to have Asperger's. It was performed live here in Denver back in June of this year. We'll give the link so people can watch it on YouTube.
Dr. Sam Shay 15:53
And by the way, the comedy show was designed [so] that families could watch it together. There's no cursing. There's no politics. There's nothing gratuitous. I don't dunk on normies, and I don't self-emulate myself as someone on the spectrum either. It's a thing to bring people together. It's really funny. I may be biased, but from the 4+ to 5 star reviews I got from the show, I think it's funny. It has a complete narrative structure from beginning to end—there's a complete flow—and it explains all of this in a really palatable, hilarious way. I will say that if you were to give a rating on it, it would be PG-13, not for many gratuitous references or swear words; it's just that the content is petty. Little kids won't really understand it. So it's, I would say, PG-13 for intellectual reasons. So that thing is there for people to really watch and enjoy.
Dr. Sam Shay 16:54
Now, the short version is that when I'm talking about the spectrum, there's the “autism spectrum disorder.” I really dislike that phrase. I even met Temple Grandin. She's one of my heroes. She's actually here in Colorado. She's an autistic professor of animal husbandry. She's also an advocate for helping people who think differently. I have one of her signed books here. I went and saw her here in Boulder. In the Q&A, I ran up in line to get to that mic to ask a question about autism spectrum disorder versus Asperger's, which I totally agree with. She said that it was a big mistake to lump everything under autism spectrum disorder because autism and Asperger's are not the same. Asperger's is verbal fluency. You have literalism, hyperliteralism, social awkwardness, awkward movements in gait and body control, and hypersensitivities, whether it's to lights or textures or taste or sound. Of the 60-minute show, I have three minutes just devoted to sound sensitivity.
Dr. Jill 18:13
Oh yes. I totally agree.
Dr. Sam Shay 18:17
You've come across this, right?
Dr. Jill 18:19
Oh yes. I dated a neurodivergent person, so I totally know.
Dr. Sam Shay 18:23
Right. Shrieking brakes, clattering silverware, or children trigger—
Dr. Jill 18:32
That's a pain response, literally.
Dr. Sam Shay 18:34
I say in the show: It feels like a kidney stone in my skull. A kidney stone, if any of your listeners have had, you have my condolences. If you had a kidney stone, you don't know when the pain is going to hit you, but it is like a knife through your body out of nowhere, and you have no idea what's going to cause it. It's the same thing with the sound sensitivity. It's just like a kidney stone in the skull.
Dr. Sam Shay 19:00
The thing to say about sound sensitivity is that because there's no blood gushing from the ear, there's no bruising, people don't take it seriously. And they think: “Oh, come on! What's the big deal?” Or they brush it off, “Oh, sorry.” It's so maddening, and it's also very socially isolating because I can't go to Red Rocks for concerts—one of the greatest, if not the best, outdoor venue for music in the entire western hemisphere.
Dr. Jill 19:39
It's right here.
Dr. Sam Shay 19:39
Right over there. I can't go because it's too oppressive.
With Asperger's, there's a lot of what's called special interests. And I talk about one of my special interests. Spoiler: It's dragonflies. They're super cool. I hope we have another podcast just for nerding out on dragonflies. But anyway, the special interests that we get hyper-focused on—to the point of, one could say obsession, but I would say just granularity. There have been articles and books written about [it], which I agree with, that the major technological, mathematical, and scientific advances across human history mostly have been done by people in the spectrum.
Dr. Jill 20:31
I could not agree more. That's what I actually want to emphasize: This is a form of genius. It really is. And honestly, anyone with a new idea that changes the world has to view things in a different lens. And at the core, that's what neurodivergent is: The ability to have your brain process things in a different way than it's ever been done before. And maybe I'm simplifying it, but that's my perspective.
Dr. Sam Shay 20:58
No, that's perfect. No need for me to editorialize. That was great.
And I talk about some of the bigger names. Einstein was on the spectrum. Turing, Oppenheimer—all on the spectrum. We're dropped into this world. Statistically, it's estimated that between 1 in 200 and 1 in 250 people have Asperger's. So it's 0.5% to 0.4% of the population. We're like an archaeologist or anthropologist dropped onto an alien planet, given no instruction manual, and just trying to understand what is [inaudible]. You say a thing, but you don't mean the thing, and you certainly don't do the thing, and then you have these things. If you're dating, you're supposed to gaze deeply into her eyes, but not too long because that would be too weird. But if you look way too quickly, that seems avoidant. There should be some sort of eye-gazing app that has a timer [inaudible]. “Begin eye contact. Connecting.” It would be nice just to have someone unambiguously explain the rules as they're happening and coach me in real-time. That'd be nice.
Dr. Sam Shay 22:39
There's a spectrum, but it's like a tree where I've got the trunk of the tree. The trunk is neurodiversity. Neurodiversity means we think differently. And then there's branches off the tree. And we've got Asperger's going over here, and then we've got ADHD going over here. And then sometimes some of the branches cross, and occasionally there's both. There's OCD over there, and then they cross. And then there are sensory processing disorders, which are approximately one in six people over there. Neurodiversity is the trunk, and there are multiple branches. Even though I speak as someone who has Asperger's, the phenomenon of neurodiversity and speaking to trying to support parents who have neurodiverse children, there's like 80% crossover simply because they'll share a trunk of “our kid thinks differently,” and that affects their life, but it also adds variables to our lives as parents as well. And that's where people don't need to have kids who have Asperger's in order to seek help from one of us or whoever. It's just understanding that to think differently does create complexities. And it's a package deal. There's brilliance and genius in certain areas and very real kryptonites and social deficits over here.
Dr. Jill 24:25
When you talk about your childhood, that breaks my heart. And even knowing very close people, dating neurodivergents, I see that piece as the most heart-wrenching when it doesn't work. We know there's this brilliance, this ability to look at the world in new ways. Let's talk to the mom about: How would you help a child in these situations where they're taking things so literally, and they're being completely taken advantage of in this one area where there's this gap with the normal social situation? And you could say it better than I can, but how do you coach a parent on how to help a child who is neurodivergent in the social situations of childhood and bullying?
Dr. Sam Shay 25:06
The number one thing to help a neurodivergent child is to model. That is number one. And I don't mean to say that to put more pressure on an already high-pressure parent. I'm trying to add more guilt to a parent's load. I'm just saying what is. Someone who's neurodivergent—particularly someone like me on the spectrum—we learn very quickly to spot integrity. Very quickly. And if someone is not modeling integrity, we lose trust. And if we lose trust, then all the problems get magnified and worse.
Dr. Sam Shay 25:52
The irony is that my father is the person who coined the term ‘moral injury.' It's what he wrote his two books [on] and got his MacArthur Genius Award for. I edited a draft of that second book, which is what got him the MacArthur. He wrote the book on moral injury, which is “the betrayal of what's right in a high-stakes situation by someone in authority.” When you have betrayal, what is sacrificed on the altar of betrayal is trust.
Dr. Sam Shay 26:27
For example, my mother would tell me to eat stuff, and she would go eat candy bars. Or she would tell me to just smile more, and yet she was in this constant resentment face all the time. Or we'd have these big community dinners where she would pretend to put on these happy faces every week. Someone asked me, “How was school?”—and I thought it was a sincere question—and I would try to tell them honestly, and she'd cut me off because it would ruin the facade of what was going on. I was like: “I can't operate at home. It's a violent place in school, and I'm being gaslit at home.”
Dr. Sam Shay 27:17
The number one thing to do as a parent to help your child is ensure you keep trust, and the number one way to keep trust is to model integrity. It doesn't mean you're a perfect, unsullied individual. But part of building trust is being honest and forthcoming with your mistakes and demonstrating what you're doing to correct them if you and will misstep—because you're human—and to model integrity, model honesty, and model accountability. If that had happened for me, we wouldn't have had to take 25 years to rebuild our relationship.
Dr. Sam Shay 28:04
The other thing to do to help a child who is struggling with all of these issues at school, within the family, or whatnot is not psychological; it's physiological. I'm going to give a phrase where I wish my family had held this to account: “We are a sleep-centered, sleep-focused, sleep-friendly family. As a family, we prioritize sleep.” We can spend two hours talking about a hundred different sleep hacks, sleep physiology, or whatever. We can go through all the different ways, but the number one thing to do is to prioritize, emphasize, and hold sleep as sacred because there is no panacea. The closest one is sleep; better sleep. The closest one we can ever find across all diagnoses across all time and space is better quality sleep. That was not held as sacred, that was not held as important, and that certainly was not modeled.
Dr. Sam Shay 29:16
The other physiological piece is blood-sugar control so people's cortisol levels and blood sugar levels don't go on this roller coaster. I had developed two addictions growing up. I had the coffee habit, which I don't really call the addiction; it was more the habit. But the addictions I developed to cope were sugar and video games, and this up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. No one becomes a social genius when they're dysglycemic. Those would be the three things: Model integrity, being a sleep-centered, sleep-friendly, sleep-focused family, and really handle the diet piece for the whole family. Those three alone will provide a tremendous foundation for now handling all the nuances of different social queuing, facial expression recognition, gestures, proper social… What is the right distance between two people when you're talking to them, pausing, when you're speaking?—which I'm not exactly modeling at the moment, but that's ironic and hilarious and whatever. Have the physiological foundation. Have a foundation really set and the integrity first, and then everything else will be much easier.
Dr. Jill 30:53
Oh, so good! I have a couple of questions coming out of this. Two things. Number one is in our world of video, social media, and screen time, in my experience with Asperger's or children on the spectrum, they are a little bit more prone to dive in—we talked about with the dragonflies, right?—maybe a certain video. And I think that potential for being sucked into a screen time addiction is maybe even greater. I might be wrong. So I want to talk about that.
Dr. Sam Shay 31:24
It's not that the capacity for interest is more; it's that the access is more. If I wanted to get involved in dragonflies… I did a book report, which I still have, in fourth grade on dragonflies. I even drew the little circle. I took a protractor. Remember those things? I had to hand-draw the thing, and I calculated out the percentage with the little pie chart, the little slice of the pie. But now I could spend a day just researching everyone else's excitement about dragonflies, and I wouldn't have to take weeks like I did before. Is your question related to the screen addiction—
Dr. Jill 32:17
Would a mother or parent do things differently as far as guidelines and rails around… Because I can see that even for me, I love to go deep, and I can get stuck for hours in a topic. I know that about myself.
Dr. Sam Shay 32:27
It's [inaudible] joke. Give up.
Dr. Jill 32:31
[laughs] So how would a parent be a guide to let them dive in but maybe make some boundaries or whatever around going too far with screen time?
Dr. Sam Shay 32:42
There are a lot of organizations around parenting that I really mined this deep. I'm a big fan of Jonathan Haidt, and I think he just released a book called The Anxious Generation.
Dr. Jill 32:54
Yes. I just talked about that book.
Dr. Sam Shay 32:56
Oh, he did. Okay, yeah. Jonathan Haidt—he's the one who's the digital historian who identified when things started going off the rails with social media down to the year. I don't think that giving kids access to digital cocaine is a good idea.
Dr. Jill 33:17
Agreed.
Dr. Sam Shay 33:18
I really don't think it's a good idea. As someone who was a video game addict starting in the late 80s, if I had access to a smartphone, I'm not sure I would have made it just being stuck on the phone. To me, Jonathan Haidt's work and his organizations, I think, would have the much bigger picture of things. Basically, no smartphones until high school. And if parents are like, “Oh my God, they'll be left behind,” it's like, “No, they're not going to be left behind,” because what are they exactly learning on the cell phone except from being overstimulated? In terms of “How do you thread that needle of help learning to explore something they're very interested in, and also what digital tools do they have to explore with?” there are all sorts of softwares out there. I'm blanking on which ones there are, but there are ways to create boundaries. I'm a former video game addict. What I did was I took the CDC's guidelines on alcoholism, and I just translated one standard drink to one standard hour.
Dr. Jill 34:38
Brilliant! Heavy drinking, according to the CDC, is over 14 drinks a week for males and over 7 drinks for females. Now, heavy gaming or heavy screening would be over 14 hours a week of non-study, non-research, and non-educational screen time per week. So 14 hours is between a quarter and a half-time job. That would be heavy gaming or heavy screening. That's not addiction. There are like nine criteria for addiction. This is just about flags. The number of hours is not an addict make; it's just a flag if you look deeper. Binge drinking is over four drinks within a two-hour period for males, over two drinks within a two-hour period for females, according to the CDC. So binge gaming would be over four hours straight of gaming without a break.
Dr. Jill 35:39
It makes perfect sense.
Dr. Sam Shay 35:41
The other one, which is not written anywhere on the CDC, is you game more hours than you sleep. Unequivocal. “Oh, I slept eight hours.” Yeah, but you gamed nine. “I only gamed five.” But you slept four. That's a checkmate right there. Each parent has to monitor: What are the thresholds here?
Dr. Sam Shay 36:09
There are a couple of skills that I wish every child on the spectrum would learn. It doesn't mean it's going to be comfortable for them to learn it. But one of my [mistakes]—if not the greatest mistake I ever made growing up—was not getting into martial arts until I was 30. That was the single biggest mistake—not getting involved in martial arts, specifically jiu-jitsu.
Dr. Sam Shay 36:36
Uniquely, jiu-jitsu is really therapeutic and super helpful for kids on the spectrum because, one, they have to learn their bodies. They learn to interact. They're very approximate to people. They learn self-defense so they don't get assaulted in school for 10 years like I did. They learn confidence. And of course, it's all dojo-specific. And there are some environments that are better than others, but generally—not always—the black belts and the instructors don't like bullies, and they monitor and try to prevent their dojo from being infected.
Dr. Sam Shay 37:24
The other thing about jiu-jitsu in particular is that you can study it. And there's a term in jiu-jitsu called nerd assassins. They never say it this way, but specifically, these are aspy individuals. Rail thin, nerdy, but they study, and they go deep into the technicalities. And they just become nerd assassins on the mat because they can study all of that stuff—apply their genius to martial arts.
Dr. Jill 38:06
I love this, because that was my next question. So often these social clues—what happens is the norm, whatever that is—we intuitively have this idea of eye contact or whatever. And it's learned, but it's subconscious awareness, or we model behavior. Whereas a neurodivergent may not have that same ability to just intuit, but they can follow rules, and they can follow rules better than anyone. What I love is a lot of these social things can be like: Oh, if A, then B. They'll have a complex calculus equation in their head for a social behavior, and they'll follow it, and they will look just like a normal person, right? This is what I experienced in my relationship: I could see this behavior, totally normal, but what I realized was behind the behavior was a calculation. And if I messed up that calculation by doing something that wasn't expected, I could see that come through. So talk just a little about that, because to me that's fascinating. And part of the brilliance is they can work around.
Dr. Sam Shay 39:05
When you see my show, you will die laughing at me.
Dr. Jill 39:09
I can't wait! I can't wait!
Dr. Sam Shay 39:11
The dating section is for you. Like Asperger's on a dinner date. “I just don't understand why I'm still single.” “Well, based on your mixed messaging, fear of commitment, and…” It's just like, da-da-da-da-da. You displayed an avoidant attachment style. It's like the aspy literal answer. “Later on the lonely car ride home…”
Dr. Jill 39:44
I can't wait. If you are listening and want to watch it, we're going to include a link. I cannot wait to watch it.
Dr. Sam Shay 39:52
Going back to your question on the algorithmic nature, an aspy is not born with software for social queuing. What everyone does by instinct, we have to learn by algorithm. And that's like: Eyebrow goes up here with the left nostril flaring this way. And how much of the front teeth are showing? And are the lips curling up or curling down? And the gait, the posture—everything becomes algorithmic. I think it takes until about age 30 to 40 for someone on the spectrum to achieve social parity, which can be called masking, that they can actually blend enough because they have enough algorithms to know how to respond.
Dr. Sam Shay 40:49
But the thing is that we keep studying. What you'll find is that people on the spectrum in their 50s and 60s—assuming they're not jaded, excluded, damaged, or something to the point where they're just off from society—are the most astute observers of human behavior out there. I feel like we frontload our social inadequacies. But on the other end of 40—again, assuming not jaded, not damaged, not excluded, not harmed in some formative way—then we're able to get through that difficult period. On the other end, it's way better—way, way, way better.
Dr. Jill 41:37
That was my observation. Even the people you mentioned, like Temple Grandin, are bringing insight into social cues because of how brilliantly they've studied and integrated that.
Dr. Sam Shay 41:50
Yeah, because it's not instinctual; it's algorithmic. And you can detail and break down the actual algorithm of how these social games play. And it's no different; the same skill set. It's a package. The same skill set applies to analyzing labs like we do, or analyzing lifestyle, or whatnot. And that's also one reason that helping parents with children on the spectrum—there's an opportunity here. I experienced this with my mom. There was a level of frustration and resentment that was palpable in moments and extended moments when she was raising me. And there was almost a hopelessness, like, “How is this kid going to navigate?” One of the things that can be on offer is that if working with someone who is an adult who is on the spectrum and can sit and explain, “Here's how you can feel better quickly in a straightforward manner, based on labs, based on data”—which you don't have to analyze—I can analyze it like, woop, “Here we are.” These are five things to do right away to make your life and your child's life better.
Dr. Sam Shay 43:23
This is going to sound a bit solipsistic here, but if a parent who has a child on the spectrum sees an adult who is on the spectrum who is successfully helping the parent, then suddenly there can be a different lens on which you view the child: “Okay, there's something really special here that can manifest itself in a unique way. And I can now be enthusiastic about supporting that instead of trying to corral, conform, and compress this neurology into the normie box.”
Dr. Jill 44:09
Yes. Oh gosh, I love that. I want to end on that. And maybe we can restate: What do you wish your mother would have known 30 years ago? If we could summarize it in a statement for those who are listening or parents who are like: “You know what? I feel lost sometimes.” And let's just end with a compassionate plea to these mothers, because I know, probably like your mother, there is the overwhelm—all the different things you described.
Dr. Sam Shay 44:36
Dysglycemia, sleep deprivation, pressure—all these things. She was an adult; she did have agency by her own admission. She really screwed up. And we also have a fantastic relationship now. It just took 25 years. But if there was one real message, it's: Change the term ‘neurodiverse' to ‘neurodistinct.' I am not a pathology. I'm not a disorder. I'm not a burden. And care for the child you have, not the child you want. I'll ask any parent who has more than one kid: Kids are different. That's a mindset piece that I wish she would have done differently.
Dr. Sam Shay 45:38
And then, related to mindset, I wish she would have prioritized her own health and her own sanctity of her own body. Mom's self-sacrifice—I think it's baked into the DNA. But investing in her own health would have not only made her happier and healthier, but it would have directly benefited me as opposed to pathologizing me. Instead, if she would have just helped herself, it would have helped me anyway. Everyone wins in the family if the parent prioritizes themself as opposed to sacrificing themself in terms of their health and their well-being. And the simple things I mentioned before, like sleep and dysglycemia.
Dr. Sam Shay 46:30
And yes, we have much better tools now than we did in the '80s. We have gut testing. We have mitochondria tests. We didn't even get into those. I teach mitochondria testing to other practitioners. There's gut testing. There's hormone testing. Genetics—a huge field of dialing in your specific diet and getting answers for the long term on so many different levels. The tools that parents have now to learn what they need to do for their own health and well-being are so much better and so much easier to access that I wish my mom had that awareness and the access to those tools.
Dr. Jill 47:09
Sam, this has been one of my favorite interviews. And I just love all the learning and [things] that you've shared at such a personal level because I know people can really relate. I know moms can relate, and there are so many valuable pearls. If people want to find more, they want to consult with you—you have a free guide—give us where we can find you. Where can people follow up?
Dr. Sam Shay 47:31
It's really easy. It's a DrSamShay.com. Shay is spelled S-H-A-Y, not E-A. I'm not a stadium. So it's DrSamShay.com. And if people want to schedule a free 15-minute chat with me, I'm available. They just schedule right there on the website. Or they can go to DrSamShay.com/freebie, and there's a three-day nutrition lifestyle guide. Very simple. We talk about sleep, diet, exercise—very simple, very practical. And I really, really, really want to help parents. I obviously help other people too. But I've really done some soul-searching. And to me, because of my personal story and just looking at the family unit, if I can help the parent, then the whole family benefits.
Dr. Jill 48:29
I could not agree more. And Sam, I just want to say: I've heard you, I know you, I know your brilliance, and what you shared today has been so powerful. And I hope people get a chance to meet with you for the 15-minute free consult. Get your free guide. You have so much to offer. And we just scratched the surface of the kinds of things that you could do. So we're going to have to do part two of this. But thank you for your gift in the world. Thank you for sharing so personally about the pain that you've gone through and how it's transformed your view. And thank you for all the pearls that you gave us today for those mothers who are at their wits' ends, trying to be a great parent.
Dr. Sam Shay 49:06
I thank you for the opportunity, Jill. I'm so grateful for people like yourself. We're not only teachers on stage, clinicians like me, but also you teach the public through podcasts like this. And it's that education that we did not have access to 40 years ago, and now we do. And thank you for doing this, and I'm honored to be a part of it.
Dr. Jill 49:28
You are welcome. And thank you, guys, again for joining us for another episode. You know you can get the transcripts, the audio, the video, or whatever at JillCarnahan.com, YouTube, or Stitcher. Wherever you watch it, please stop and leave a review. And we will see you next week.
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