Stacy Beaupre shares her unexpected story about how she was diagnosed with ADHD as a young adult. Through her 11 year PA career she has worked in a functional and integrative medicine practice working with families with children with ADHD. She a...

Stacy Beaupre shares her unexpected story about how she was diagnosed with ADHD as a young adult. Through her 11 year PA career she has worked in a functional and integrative medicine practice working with families with children with ADHD. She approaches ADHD management through supplementation, food choices and physical activity

Transcript of this Episode

Andrea Heyman 00:00

Stacy Beaupre has a really surprising story about how she was diagnosed with ADHD as a young adult, following the unexpected death of her father. During her 11 year career as a physician's assistant, she's worked in a functional and integrative medicine practice, where she specialized with working with families who had children with ADHD. And this all came full circle, as she is a parent of two, one of whom has ADHD herself. She approaches management through supplementation food choices and physical activity, and really just has a very, very practical perspective on how to implement healthy lifestyle changes in a practical way. Stacy is a single mama to two very active girls. She spends most of her days in her car transporting her littles to various activities, General momming and boxing. Stacey also volunteers her time to medical missions to places such as Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Guatemala and looks forward to the time when she can go on another one soon. You can typically find Stacy five minutes late with a coffee and hand her girls and toes singing something from Hamilton. Most recently Stacy has started her own group called this inimitable life. She features her personal training as a boxer, her mommy in the Ross form and education concerning logical health and wellness to moms and women and to promote an all encompassing empowerment mindset. Her goal is for everyone to live a truly inimitable life. You can find her at her facebook group, and on her Instagram account. Adventures and feeding my fam is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman and I've been a registered dietitian for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges that comes along with trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests. We'll discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them. Welcome, Stacy, I'm so glad to have you on for another episode of the show.

Hello, nice to be here with you and everybody else.

So you are a physician's assistant, a PA, tell me your experience and what types of settings you have worked in your career? Stacy 03:02 Absolutely. I've been a physician assistant for 11 years I started off in cardiology. And then I moved on to having my own family practice. And this was in New Mexico where we had initial collaborative medicine practice, which was nice. And then I moved on to high acuity emergency rooms for about six plus years. And for the past two, almost three years, I've been working in a high acuity urgent care. So I've had a lot of diversity in my career thus far. Tell me more about when you worked in New Mexico. You told me before that you practiced a lot of functional medicine there. I did my practice in New Mexico was almost 90%. And based in functional integrated medicine, I had received some extra certifications through metagenics, which is a nutraceutical company that I had actually done research with in New York City when I was in school. And my practice was almost nearly based on functional and integrative medicine, both in adults and pediatrics. So for the listeners, can you define and describe what functional medicine is? Yeah, absolutely. So functional medicine can be very broad. I would define it in my own, you know, terms as integrating kind of some more natural approaches to the treatment of certain diagnoses. This can vary for me specifically, it was started off with diet and then in addition to diet, it was good quality supplementation, and of course, movement and exercise. So it's kind of stepping out of the normal traditional medicine, pathways and resorting to things that are more lifestyle choices natural based versus a prescription medication as a as the only solution for treatment of certain diseases. And which types of diagnoses were you working with primarily? I primarily did hormonal imbalances. I did bioidentical hormone replacement with women. And then my pediatric population was largely on an attention deficit spectrum, from ADHD to ADHD without hyperactivity is what it's called. So those are my two main areas that I focused on and use integrative medicine. Predominantly. I also did have a small subset of patients that were diabetics, had coronary artery disease that we were trying to get off of a lot of their traditional medications, and put them more on lifestyle change regimens. And as well as different supplementations, but majority was hormonal imbalance and kiddos with ADHD. Andrea Heyman 05:42 S 015 Final Copy AIFMF Page 2 of 13 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Andrea Heyman 05:42 So that's a really interesting combination. They don't seem related. Stacy 05:47 Not at all. But it was kind of how I fell into it. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 20. And I was actually in PA school when this happened. So I had kind of taken an interest in this in my own accord. And when it came to identical hormone therapy, again, something I kind of just slipped into when I started having my mom have some hormone changes, and just really trying to figure out how I could be helpful to her without necessarily putting her on traditional hormone therapy. So I did quite a bit of research. And both of those various separate topics, and then just kind of started to have patients who were up for having the integration and didn't want to just be started on traditional prescription medications and really see if they could kind of rebalance their bodies without having other prescription medications in their system. And then parents, of course, who really wanted to try to not use medications, predominantly in their kiddos with ADHD, I did certainly prescribe some of them. I wasn't opposed to any of the traditional medicine that I obviously went to school for and was educated on. But we definitely tried the integrative and functional medicine approach first. And then we would sometimes do that solely. And sometimes we would do it synergistically. And then there were some of my patients who just simply could not really feel like they could adapt to some of the changes that we approached. And it was a very small subset, and they would just be more of my traditional medicine patients, but they were few and far between. I would say, Andrea Heyman 07:22 That's really interesting. I want to dig into this little bit more. So Meanwhile, you were diagnosed with ADHD as a 20 year old. Yes. What was that like? And how did how is it diagnosed? Because I presume it wasn't just when you were 20? Stacy 07:37 No, actually, so my father was actually killed in a motorcycle accident about two weeks before I started PA school, and I was an RA. And as an RA, I had 72 students. So the protocol was that any traumatic event warranted a psych eval with one of our like, the psych team, basically, that was part of our, like our on campus living. And they had me do a couple different questionnaires. And they said, you know that your you scored really high for adult ADHD? And I said, Well, I kind of suspected and I remember calling my mom actually and being like, did you know this? And she's like, Well,I mean, it was different time. And, you know, we just put you in a separate room and give you a stack of papers. And we A S A S 015 Final Copy AIFMF Page 3 of 13 Transcribed by https://otter.ai knew you talked a lot and you got very distracted, but we kind of just put you in a room and the teachers would give you more work and you would do fine. And then you've just ran it off at recess. And you always got good grades. And it was pivotal. Because once I actually at that point, I actually moved on to a private psychiatrists and I got started on medication. And for the first time I was able to read like an entire chapter of a book in like a 15 to 20 minute period and not have to reread four or five times, just thinking that that was normal. So it was a huge change. And then of course being in PA school, when I start learning about the mechanics of medications and things like that. I was like, maybe there's a better way to kind of approach this holistically. And that's when I started to look into some alternate therapies for myself, and what were they for your so their size was number one, for sure is getting myself out and being busy and making sure that I was getting at least 30 to 45 minutes of pretty active exercise, not just necessarily a walk but cardio was big for me. And then also omega three fatty acids which have so many benefits neurologically from dementia to ADHD, specifically da che is great for that. So I started taking high potency, pharmaceutical or nutraceutical grade fish oil from metagenics, which I had a doctor that I was working with who was doing research with them. And then just food choices in general staying off things that were processed in high sugar and having a lot of protein and having consistent protein. I found that when my protein was really low and my sugar was also really low, I was very much more distracted. So I was only on medicine. for about six months and then I finally mid PA school or mid didactic year of PA school, I got off and managed solely with diet and exercise. And do you think your diet and exercise routine is as effective as when you are on medication? In certain points of my life since then, yes, there have been points that when I'm not able to necessarily commit the to the extent that I feel like was adequate and treatment, it really it does help and except for those times that I can't really do it. So for example, one after I had my first daughter, my ex husband was an Air Force pilot, he was sent to flight school for a year, I live 45 minutes away from where I worked, getting up an hour early to then exercise to then feed to then pump was just not conducive anymore, to not sleep and right. So that was another short period of time that I did do supplementation, and also traditional medication, which I had already known what worked for me, and it was safe for breastfeeding at the time. And so I was able to do that for a short period of time until I could kind of get myself back to where I can really, you know, dedicate a lot of time to do those other much needed changes. But the kicker was I wasn't diagnosed with celiac until 2015, which there's a lot of evidence about gluten and ADHD that I had kind of heard of, but I had never been diagnosed with celiac. But when I became gluten free, my symptoms were significantly decreased just by getting off of gluten. So that's fascinating. Andrea Heyman 11:38 Yeah. Okay, so then going back to your practice. So that's a really interesting story. I have

Stacy 11:45 I'm sorry, I kind of like digress.

Andrea Heyman 11:46 But I know I really like hearing about that. Because you're, I'm sure there are a lot of people that can relate to what you're saying. But also, I want to talk about your practice with kids as well. And in that experience, when you were treating children, kind of with these non pharmaceutical treatments, how successful Do you think they were? And do you think the families were able to implement the recommendations?

Stacy 12:16 Absolutely. So by the time we had families had kind of gotten to me, they had been exhausted in so many ways, they were exhausted with medical system, they were exhausted with the type of meds and the side effects they were having. So I feel like I caught parents in desperation, which is motivating, is far more motivating. I think, sometimes than just traditional motivation, when there's this kind of like, please, I am drowning, I need your help. So I found the commitment to some of the recommendations was a lot better than say a parent that maybe had a newly diagnosed kiddo who had not really felt some of the strains. And in the parents that were really committed to all encompassing helping to treat their kiddos with the different integrative approaches, the kids did phenomenal. I mean, they did absolutely phenomenal. The ones that necessarily kind of just did like maybe one thing or didn't do it for enough time, I found their results to be varying. And what those parents knew, we would usually need to find a happy medium of, let's do some extra fish oil supplementation, let's talk about some natural forms of caffeine, and then maybe we'll have the Adderall dose be so small, that it's just enough for us to make it through school, and then we can kind of figure out the rest of it from there. So it was kind of a spectrum.

Andrea Heyman 13:30 Do you think there ever was a case where the family and the child implemented the recommendations really, really well, but they just weren't effective enough?

Stacy 13:40 I never saw them. I never never

Andrea Heyman 13:43 Oh, my gosh, Can you say that again?

Stacy 13:45 Never, there was never a time where I had a family and kiddo that were so dedicated to the changes that I had recommended that they did not see at least improvement enough to positively change their household dynamic never happened. The only time I really saw a lot of treatment failure, which is what we refer t o in our in the P world medical world, was when I had not an all in kind of commitment. Or there were some other factors. Maybe that kiddo was not just an ADHD kiddo, but had a bipolar component that required a little bit different treatment on its own that I was not actively treating.

Andrea Heyman 14:22 So so when I asked you that question, I actually didn't think you were gonna give me that answer.

Stacy Oh, no.

Andrea Heyman Which is amazing, which, no, that's a good, it's a good answer. It just shows that, wow, how effective lifestyle approaches can be be for sure for a variety of diagnoses.

Stacy 14:44 Absolutely. And as I said, you know, a lot of my patients parents were in desperation at that point, too. They had already been to the traditional psychologist, psychiatrist, regular pediatricians in town, and I wasn't providing any kind of miracle. I was actually giving them you know, very Simple, but caught, you know, you'd have to be cognizant of these things information. And it just was, you know, when you're at a point and I get it now that I have my own ADHD child, when you're in that desperation, you will do anything. And as a parent, I think you will do anything for your kid regardless, I don't want to negate that. But there's a point of like, I am dropping and sacrificing other things, because I know that this is integral and changing at this point.

Andrea Heyman 15:27 Right. So you've mentioned your own daughter. So this has come full circle for you.

Stacy 15:33 Yes, it has. I'm raising myself apparently, according to my right, we all kind of do that. Right.

Andrea Heyman 15:41 So you have implemented a lot of these practices with your daughter as well,I presume

Stacy 15:47 I have, Yes, Yes, I have. I can't implement all of them. I am in a co parenting situation. So I do have some some things that I'm not able to do, maybe to the extent that I wish I could, but we're in a really good spot where we're in kind of that mixed mode right now. And she's not currently on any medications. So yeah, we're kind of, we're figuring it out. And she's in fourth grade. So we're just starting, I think, to see the tip of the iceberg on really cause and effect with her and what things that we implement diet wise exercise. One thing for sure is that if she is not busy enough during the day, and has not had enough time to really get her energy out per sentence are significantly worse. So that's one thing that we are really able to focus on and agree on as co parents and really, really, really see a difference on days where there's no physical activity versus days where there is a good amount of physical activity.

Andrea Heyman 16:40 So tell me then just kind of to get nitty gritty, like what's atypical breakfast and lunch for her that you would give her?

Stacy 16:52 Oh, sure. So breakfast is at least some form of egg whether it's like a fried egg with ghee, or we do scrambled or we do omelets, typically with some form of veggie, whether it be like zucchini or spinach or tomato, which I guess technically isn't the veggie but or she's chime in sometimes we do full fledged protein shakes with some MCT oil, get some really high fat content along with that protein. And then she gets some kind of complex carb, she's not gluten free, but we do a gluten free grain if you will waffle and then some peanut butter as well. So high protein, high fat for her and usually some form of a vegetable. A typical lunch for her is some sort of organic, no nitrate or deli roll up have some sore in the form of like a ham and cheese. Or, again, like a whole grain bread. She'll typically have a yogurt to veggies, typically carrots or some sort of pepper kind of changes I let them pick typically the weekend before and what they want their for their veggies for the week, some sort of fruit most commonly like a raspberry or a blueberry and then they get one snack items. So that can be like an Annie's gummies it can be a gluten free nutrigrain bar, which I don't think they're called actually nutrigrain bars, or some sort of like package something. Mostly they have a bento box and it's all homemade regular foods that we are in she's had that forever. I mean, they my kiddos have always had warm hot breakfast in the morning, with a very few exception that they have a high protein shake, which always has a vegetable in it as well and some form of fat. So it's our norm.

Andrea Heyman 18:42 How does your other daughter feel about these eating habits when you in especially when you initially implemented them? Stacy 18:49 Well, she was like, Oh, no fair. But what was the reaction?

Stacy She's just never known anything different to be on. There are definitely days that I think both of them are like, Can we just have some Cheetos? And I'm like, no, it's to the point where they're really good about understanding like, why am I not letting you have this in the middle of the day? Well, especially my oldest I said you're going to crash you're going to end up having some sort of crash and tell me how you feel when you crash which is like I'm tired and I'm really cranky. So there's been kind of like a self evaluation instilled in her and this is not a perfect system every day Don't get me wrong like there are definitely days where a you know something's missing and we go you know, full fledge, here's your peanut butter and jelly instead of your really nice like ham and cheese, if you will, but but there's also days where you know, she'll just come home and nothing z in and she's like, I just didn't want it today. So it's never it's not always as very like, pretty perfect system. But what I have instilled in both of them is the why and I think a lot of kids want to know why. And for our family, it's always been easier to have a why for these things. Instead of just know you can have it It's a, this is the reason you know, and I, you know, when it comes to even birthday parties and things like that, they know that if they have these things, it's almost they can, you know, they'll say to me, you know, I don't feel good or I feel I do feel tired. And you know, I'm Thank you for letting me have this treat mom, but I definitely don't feel good. So they've had that self recommendation. I don't want to say like self knowledge, or losing my words, but idea of like, what's in their system and how they feel.

Andrea Heyman 20:29 So I was gonna say, I bet that you've really instilled since you've talked about the why, institute that one small change. And then there's all this, that was the initial step, and there's all this effect of good that came from it. And now they've kind of bought into it. So once there's like a commitment to a small change, and it gets instituted with good results, which kind of just naturally happen as a result, it kind of snowballs after that, and that's what I found, sometimes I would have parents that it would take a month or two, to get on board with this, it was not an easy thing. So it was just, you know, it's it took them a while to do so to get on board. But they they're stuck with me as their PCP and we worked it out or it didn't happen often. But it did happen. They just couldn't commit and I was not the right provider for them. And they found a provider that was right for them and approach them the way that they needed to be approached.

Andrea Heyman 24:38 So I really like your stepwise approach because I know from my practice as a dietitian, there are very few people that can change everything all at once and make that stick. So I appreciate the practical nature that you're taking this.

Stacy 24:57 Absolutely and sometimes honestly Andrea, it's just Just like, how about you all, just try to work on more water this week, I do the same thing. Like, like, let's not even get into this, let's just about everybody take your weight cut in half. And let's try for everybody to reach those water and ounces goals this week, let's just start there. And I've had parents be like, well, that's not an unlike no judging here, let's just start with something like that. And then after a week, you know, I'm able to meet with them again, which is great or was at the time, and you know, they've accomplished something small, and they're like, okay, we were able to do this. Now what, okay, well, let's work on bedtime, or let's work on physical activity, or let's work on that one veggie that you start integrating that you can tolerate, you can't make these changes. And I think that's, that's a global thing, like any major change. When I went, when I found out I had celiac, I mean, I knew I had to change immediately. But I cheated a lot more in the beginning, then, in the end, but I once I really saw the opposite side of how I felt just like some of these parents when they saw the opposite side of behaviors improving, and night times being easier and mornings being easier. It's almost like they were now having rewards for maybe the little bit of sacrifices that they had already made. And then it just snowballed from there.

Andrea Heyman 26:18 Right? It becomes its own very obvious and easy motivator.

Stacy 26:23 Absolutely.

Andrea Heyman 26:25 So you've got this incredible social media mission on Facebook and Instagram, will you tell us a little bit about what you've got going on there.

Stacy 26:36 So this is like a baby project. To me. It's like my new baby. I just started it about two months ago, I started a Facebook group and an Instagram. And I don't I don't even know if it's like a I consider it a vlog or we'll just call it a group for now because it kind of doesn't fit anything specific, but it's called this inimitable life. And the whole purpose of me starting this was, I'm at a point in my career that I want to have eventually over the next year so kind of start bowing out of clinical medicine and really start getting into this around of ways that I can empower moms and women to live their most inimitable life. And inimitable just means it cannot be compared to others. It's uniquely on its own it there's just no comparison. So the best life your most inimitable life is the one that is your solely and cannot be matched by anybody else by any other standard. So what that's meant is health and wellness being a huge forefront in all this talking with parents, moms and women in particular, real conversations about body positive about nutrition, about supplementation for themselves and their kiddos. And then also, what does that mean for them as a woman and as a mom, does that mean that they've always wanted to do something, but never really felt like they could do that. So it's starting to have, you know, affirmations and manifesting what they've always wanted to do, which makes them be better for themselves and better for the people around them. And this kind of resulted as some changes that had happened in our family the past two years, and kind of seeing how I've achieved the things that I have achieved with most sub optimal situations per se, but coming out ahead and really being in a spot where I feel like I am living my most inimitable life. I also do boxing on the side, and I'm a boxing trainer. So that's another part of this that I've started to branch out and you know, encourage women, have you ever like wanting to go kayaking, go kayaking, let's talk about that. What does that really do for you like, so it's kind of an all encompassing empowerment and wellness for moms and women on a very raw level. And thus far, it's been great and successful. And I look forward to kind of seeing where it goes and where it kind of brings me in that realm of wellness, I could almost see it being a new kind of primary care practice where you also get to integrate your functional and integrative medicine background, it would be amazing. I would love to figure out some platform to do that. So we'll see, you know, medicine is evolving. And the beauty of all of this with COVID is that, you know, we have some opportunities this year that really are helpful in you know, kind of supporting these changes because we have to pivot we have to start moving in different directions because the norm in the status quo that we've created in so many avenues medicine life is changed. So how do we kind of move forward in that so I'm excited. I'm very excited for it. I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm mostly on the excited side because I feel like this is a void that can be filled by something like this.

Andrea So we'll see what happened but I often think that you're nervous because it's for a good Reason, because you're pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. But you're nervous because you know, somewhere deep down that it's the right direction to take.

Stacy 30:12 Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm a single mom. So I mean, you know, getting out of a full time pa job is very scary. But I've done what I've done thus far in the past two years. And I think that this is you're right, the nerves are coming from saying, this is something that is in my soul that is in me, and I want to embrace that and really be able to live that for myself primarily, and then to be able to help other people do kind of the same. Oh, my goodness, I could talk to you forever in a day. This is an absolutely incredible, so tell us where we can find you, especially on those new platforms there for you. Yes, so I can be found on Instagram at this in the middle life, all one word. And then on Facebook, also same title this in the middle life as a group. And there are a couple of questions if you join the Facebook group, because it is a safe space. And it is a female only Avenue because of the type of topics that we have. But my Instagram page is open to anyone, you can follow me there, you can send me a DM, if you have any ideas of things maybe you want to hear about I am doing a zoom vlog today, this week on the flu shot and kind of some different perspectives on it, as well as some of my personal physiological thoughts on flu, etc. So it's things like that. So I can be followed on both those avenues. And I try to kind of feature what's happening in the world right now. And then also, taking what some of the readers are having interest in expanding upon that.

Andrea Heyman 31:44 That's fantastic. I sincerely think you are going to be doing some incredible things very, very soon. And I'm really, really excited to be following you and to have met you, and then connected with you.

Stacy Yes. Likewise

Andrea Thank you for sharing so many of your thoughts with us today.

Stacy Thank you so much for having me. It's been amazing. Really. Thank you. I absolutely loved this conversation.

Andrea Heyman 32:10 Stacy makes me feel like I can accomplish anything, particularly when it comes to feeding my family. If you like this episode, it would mean a lot if you took a minute to leave me a review and share this podcast with a friend. This is so that other busy moms can be encouraged by the episodes I have to share. I would love to connect with you on social media, Instagram adventures and feeding my fam, my facebook group adventures and feeding my fan. And the Facebook group is really the best place if you want to go deeper and have conversations with other women about topics that you've heard in this podcast. That is the place to do it, where folks it's a safe spot. They're sharing their tips and ideas and really connecting to one another. This is where we cultivate, grow and share. So head over there, check out the Facebook group and check me out on Instagram. I'll leave the links in the show notes. Until next time, take care