Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

ADHD diagnoses have risen 200% in the last five years. Sarah Warley, founder of BeBright and The Key Clinic, says that’s not overdiagnosis. It’s ancient biology trying to cope with a modern environment it was never built for.

She joins Sarah Ann to unpack what’s actually changed, and why the answer isn’t as simple as real or not real.

Full episode out now: search ‘Live Well Be Well’ on YouTube & Spotify.

ADHD diagnoses have risen 200% in the last five years. Sarah Warley, founder of BeBright and The Key Clinic, says that’s not overdiagnosis. It’s ancient biology trying to cope with a modern environment it was never built for.

She joins Sarah Ann to unpack what’s actually changed, and why the answer isn’t as simple as real or not real.

Full episode out now: search ‘Live Well Be Well’ on YouTube & Spotify.

Your brain isn't broken. It might just be swimming upstream.
This week I'm joined by Sarah Warley, Founder of BeBright and The Key Clinic, for a deep dive into ADHD, autism, and the "post-diagnostic gap," because after years of watching families get handed a label with no map for what comes next, she built the clinic to answer the question nobody else was asking: what's actually driving the symptoms?

What we explore together:

•Why understanding what's actually driving your symptoms matters more than the diagnosis itself

•The neurodiversity clusters: ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and why almost no one fits neatly into just one

•Why labels can be both a relief and a trap, and how to know which one you're in

•Retained primitive reflexes from infancy that quietly shape adult anxiety, focus and coordination

•Why the "Great ADHD Myth" documentary got the debate dangerously wrong

•What neurodivergent burnout actually looks like, and why it hits the highest achievers hardest

Love, Sarah Ann 💛

My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm.

👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.
https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let's be friends!
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/
📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah
🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin
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Sarah Warley:
🔗 The Key Clinic: https://www.thekeyclinic.co.uk/who-we-help
🔗 BeBright: https://bebright.ai/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:19 Swimming upstream: symptoms vs. biological drivers

01:56 The neurodiversity clusters and how they overlap

04:45 Labels: helpful or limiting?

07:57 The origin story: a friend’s daughter and the gluten-dairy transformation

15:19 Is ADHD overdiagnosed? The Great ADHD Myth documentary controversy

20:08 Why parents see themselves in their child’s diagnosis

20:39 Oestrogen, dopamine and perimenopause-triggered diagnoses

24:37 The symptoms to actually look out for

26:38 Retained primitive reflexes explained

29:14 Why the reflexes don’t develop

30:39 The Moro reflex and the woman who hadn’t left her house in 5 years

35:48 What a diagnosis really is: epigenetics and neuroplasticity

39:54 Nutrition, biochemistry and the Walsh Institute

42:48 The five biotypes of depression

45:07 The zinc-copper imbalance: 70-80% of ADHD cases, per the Walsh Institute

47:56 Arthur’s story: from breakdown to a first at Oxford

54:10 What neurodivergent burnout actually looks like

55:56 Sarah’s own ADHD diagnosis: the Bloomberg interview

58:07 Medication: Sarah Warley’s honest take

01:01:31 Why the Key Clinic is multidisciplinary

01:03:19 21st century scurvy: light, senses and mitochondria

01:06:17 Hypersensitive hearing and the hearing curve

01:07:58 Doctor Bérard’s suicidal-depression discovery

01:13:23 Music, rhythm and neurodivergence

01:20:23 How to actually find what you love

01:21:37 Turn your hobby into your job

01:23:44 ADHD as an evolutionary advantage

01:24:15 Why creativity is being cut from schools, and why that’s a mistake

01:27:05 Becoming your own parent

01:28:37 Fun span, not just lifespan

01:29:21 “It’s not you, it’s a lousy cut”

01:30:38 Closing thought: a neuro-extraordinary mind, not neurodivergent

01:32:38 A message for worried parents

01:33:34 What does Live Well Be Well mean to you?

This week's Live Well Be Well Moment with Patric Gagne, author and self-identified sociopath.
We delve into Patric's childhood, when she first realised she was different from everyone around her, what school and friendships looked like, and how she learned to mask — and why understanding this changes everything about how we think about sociopathy in young people.
My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5
This episode is sponsored by:
NOWATCH: The compassionate health tracker Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today. 👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://nowatch.com/
PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm
👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN
More from me: The Great British Veg Out How to support your gut by eating more, not less https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/p/t…
Reset Your Health If your body feels off after stress, travel, or burnout, this is where to start! https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/s/r...
Free 5-recipe PDF for busy weeks https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahma...
Join thousands reading The Compassionate Cure → https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/
Let's be friends! 📷 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin 📹 Subscribe https://youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah?si=UbuuWvMjAcTkELPN 📱 TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast?_r=1&_t=ZN-96iOW29jTRm

This week's Live Well Be Well Moment with Patric Gagne, author and self-identified sociopath.
We delve into one of the most fascinating questions of the episode — what does love actually look like for a sociopath? What does Patric feel for her husband, how do relationships work differently for her, and what happened when she found herself in an unhealthy dynamic she kept returning to?
My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5
This episode is sponsored by:
NOWATCH: The compassionate health tracker Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today. 👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://nowatch.com/
PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm
👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN
More from me: The Great British Veg Out How to support your gut by eating more, not less https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/p/t…
Reset Your Health If your body feels off after stress, travel, or burnout, this is where to start! https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/s/r...
Free 5-recipe PDF for busy weeks https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahma...
Join thousands reading The Compassionate Cure → https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/
Let's be friends! 📷 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin 📹 Subscribe https://youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah?si=UbuuWvMjAcTkELPN 📱 TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast?_r=1&_t=ZN-96iOW29jTRm