7 Strategies to Reverse ADHD

Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is, Hey, Dr. Hyman, I have a kid with ADD and the doctors want to give me stimulants like Ritalin. Is there anything I can do besides take medication to help my child? Let me tell you something, this is a big problem because ADD is not a Ritalin deficiency. In fact, one in 10 kids in America is on a stimulant medication. We have almost 10% of all kids having ADD diagnosed in this country. So what's going on here? Is this a normal consequence of being a child? No. I mean, when we were in school, there was maybe one kid, that troubled kid in school. Now it's, you know, maybe one out of every 10 kids in the classroom more sometimes. So the real question is, what causes ADD? How do we think about it? and why is it so prevalent? Well, I've had tremendous experience with this in my practice and have seen literally hundreds of patients. In fact, I wrote a book called the UltraMind Solution about how to fix the brain by fixing the body first. And the key here is that the brain is connected to everything else in the body. We have these crazy ideas that the brain is this thing that's just sort of stuck on the top of our shoulders, in our head, and is separate from everything. Everything you do affects your brain. What you eat, what you think, exercise, whether you're eating things that are causing inflammation in your brain or anti-inflammatory foods, even your gut flora all affect your brain function. Because brain disorders like ADD and autism, even depression and Alzheimer's and all the other brain disorders are systemic disorders where the body is affecting the brain. Yes, there's a mind-body connection, but there's also a body mind connection. And in this young patient I'm going to tell you about, because his story is so amazing, he sort of exhibited almost in one person all the various things that can go wrong in ADD. And everybody's different, right? Just because you have the diagnosis of ADD doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you. It's just a name we give to people who share a collection of symptoms, meaning they can't focus, pay attention, they're inattentive and they're hyperactive. But these are really just symptoms. The question is what's the cause? And in this young boy, his name is Clayton. I've written a lot about him. I've talked about him before. It was so striking to me because it was one of the first cases I really had seen early on. He came in and he had a whole list of problems. He had asthma and eczema and bumps on the back of his arms. He had sinus issues. He had digestive problems, irritable bowel, and he had also anxiety and insomnia. He had muscle cramps. He had pretty much everything you name it. He had a whole list of symptoms, which is why actually I call myself a holistic doctor. Plus, he had ADD, he was kicked out of school all the time, he was disruptive, he had to repeat kindergarten, I mean really repeating kindergarten. And he was on Ritalin, then he had to stop Ritalin because it was causing growth stunting. And he was a mess. And he was really not functioning well and he didn't feel well. Now, most of the psychiatrists who treated him ignored all the physical symptoms. They ignored his digestive symptoms, they ignored his inflammatory symptoms like asthma and eczema and and itchy ears. They ignored his anxiety and his muscle cramps and headaches and all these things that were collectively driving him to have this huge disorder in his brain, they completely ignored. But those were the real clues to why he was sick. And so what we did was we did a very deep analysis of his history. We learned that he had antibiotics when he was younger, or very early on, that he had early introduction of gluten, that he had exposures to horrible processed food, that he was eating deli meats and trans fats and high fructose corn syrup and food additives and chemicals we know actually have been linked to ADD. Just a little aside, my friend Vani Hari was instrumental in getting Kraft to take the dyes and colorings out of Kraft macaroni and cheese because she said in Europe they don't allow it because the scientists and doctors there forced Kraft to put on the label that these chemicals cause hyperactivity in children. Whereas in America, we allow it without even any question. So she forced Kraft in America to actually take it out, which is actually a fantastic coup. But that's just one example of one thing that can create ADD. It can be food sensitivities. It can be environmental toxins like heavy metals like mercury. It can be abnormal gut flora. It can be nutritional deficiencies like B vitamins and zinc and magnesium. We can also look at all the other factors that make up a person's story and we can come up with a root cause analysis. That's what functional medicine is. It's a root cause analysis. And so for Clayton, rather than giving him more stimulant medication, rather than, he was on, I think, seven medications, antihistamines, nasal steroids, oral steroids, inhaled steroids. He was on headache pills, he was on anxiety pills, he was on stimulants, which he tried on and off. He was on a whole list of pills that were striking to me because no one said, well, how are all these things connected? Is it just bad luck that this one 12-year-old kid has all these problems? And on top of that, his handwriting was absolutely illegible. dysgraphia. You can't read their handwriting. And this is common in kids with ADD. It's common in kids with autism and you can't really read their handwriting. So all these things were a sign of a brain out of sync. And so what I did with him, rather than giving him more drugs and so forth, I simply took away the things that were causing the problem and I added in the things that his body needed to thrive. So you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff and the body has an amazing capacity to heal. So for Clayton it was quite simple. He had multiple food allergies. We got off of gluten. He had elevated gluten antibodies in his blood. We got him off of gluten, got him off of dairy, got him off of a few other foods he was reactive to on his tests. We put in probiotics. We actually gave him an antifungal because he'd been on so many antibiotics in his life that his gut was full of yeast. He had eczema and yeast symptoms and he had itchy ears, all symptoms of yeast. We gave him an antifungal, we gave him probiotics, we gave him enzymes, we gave him things to help repair the gut. And then I put back the nutrients that he was deficient in. When we did testing, it was amazing. He had zinc deficiency, B6 deficiency, magnesium deficiency, omega-3 fat deficiency. And you know what? He had vitamin E deficiency and beta-carotene deficiency. And it was pretty easy to figure out by looking at his diet. He had no grains, so he had no vitamin E. He had no grains also, so he had no seeds and nuts, so he had no zinc. He had no magnesium because that comes from greens and beans and nuts and seeds. And he had no omega-3 because he never ate fish. And he had high levels of trans fat. He had no beta-carotene because he hated vegetables. So you could pretty much tell this from talking to him and listening to what he ate every day. And after a couple of months of this elimination diet, clearing up his gut, putting in the right nutrients like fish oil, vitamin D, omega-3 fats, B6, magnesium, really simple stuff, He had an amazing recovery. In two months he came back. His mother said he got the most glowing school report he'd ever gotten. He had no more symptoms, no more headaches, no more asthma, no more eczema, no more digestive issues, no more stomach cramps, no more leg cramps, no more insomnia, no more anxiety, no more irritability, and no more ADD. It was by treating his body and his system, not the symptoms. It was by taking out the bad stuff, putting in the good stuff, and letting his body thrive. So we know that this was Clayton's story, but it's similar to so many kids who are in problems with ADD. Sometimes there are severe cases of ADD where they may need medication, absolutely. But for most kids, some simple dietary changes, eating real food, getting rid of junk, chemical additives, trans fats, getting off of gluten and dairy, getting on the right nutrients and magnesium, B vitamins, fish oil, vitamin D, probiotics, very simple stuff. Makes an enormous difference, can have profound impact and actually help you cure ADD without any medication. Now other problems might exist. You might have heavy metals we have to look for and Clayton had a little of that we had to deal with, but for the most part this is a problem that can be solved at home without medication by changing your diet by a few simple interventions that are well described in my book the Ultramind Solution. I encourage you to check it out. It really is a very robust way of looking at how you fix your broken brain by fixing your body first. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope you share it with your friends and family. I hope you check out things on Dr. Hyman, my newsletter. You can sign up for my weekly newsletter and get this video blog every week. And I would encourage you to submit your questions on drhyman.com so next week I may make a house call to you.