Why ADHD Is Not A Psychiatric Disorder Or Brain Disease with Dr. George Papanicolaou

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

And you can bring 10 kids in here with ADHD, right? Or the label of ADHD, and each one of them is gonna be treated differently because they're all going to be different. Their genetics are gonna be different, their environments are gonna be different, their supports are gonna be different.

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I have a lot of it personally.

But it is a spectrum of how bad it is.

But- yeah, where I can sit and.

I can read a whole book and I can focus. I just get distracted. But I think we live in a very distracted world and I think we have a nature deficit disorder and I think we have a lot of reasons why we're seeing this. But what is going on that we see so much of this problem in America today and around the world?

Mark, it's always a pleasure. And I love talking about these topics with you because you're so well-versed. And I actually, in preparation for this, I went back and reviewed the Ultramind Solution. And then you read my book. I did prepare for the book. Well, you know, it's important to know how you think. So, yeah, I did. And it just reminded me of so many of the important things that we need to think about when it comes to the brain. And ADHD is one of the classic examples of how important it is to look at the whole picture. Now, you asked me earlier, and in your intro, you covered so many such important topics about ADHD that I hope, I'm sure we'll get to most of them as we talk today. The, the thing with ADHD, first off and foremost, is it's primarily been looked at as a medical model in the psychiatric world. It's a, it's a medical model. It's a, a It's sometimes seen more as a behavioral issue and it's treated with medication.

It's a brain disease.

It's a brain disease. And as you said before, the brain, it's really, it's a body disease that affects the brain.

Yeah.

Okay. And you said that. Now in ADHD, there are some issues around the brain itself that make adults and children more susceptible to this inattention. or their ability to fail at executive functioning. And the other piece is the self-regulation piece. And so you have this combination ADHD where you have self-regulation as an issue and you have the executive functions of an issue. And now it's been given this label, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And that's just a cluster of symptoms that everybody experiences to some degree in their lifetime. Now there's one kid in kindergarten that maybe he didn't pay attention once in his lifetime. You know, he's a spy. I don't know what he's doing, but he's doing something where you have to pay attention all the time. And then there's, you know, the other person, they're so disabled by their ADHD, it's hard for them to work. It's hard for them to maintain relationship and even marriages. And then everybody else falls somewhere in between. And I think it's important to understand that piece, that it's a medical model, and that when we see kids and adults, the other piece is that more and more adults are being diagnosed, and at least 4% of adults are found to have ADHD, and maybe even more. I think we'll find out there's more as we go on, that they carry on the traits of the ADHD, they go undiagnosed, and then as they're adults, it becomes more prevalent as life piles up, and their compensatory mechanisms become overwhelmed all of a sudden, they're getting older, and they're not eating right, and they're not exercising, their ADHD becomes more prominent, and then they come seeking help.

And on top of that, we live in an ADHD culture where we're all driven to consume huge amounts of information by the addictive nature of social media and the internet. and it literally is taking people who are not even ADHD and making them like that, where they're hooked on their phones and they're constantly distracted and they're constantly getting the dopamine hit. And it's magnifying it. And if you have ADHD, it's even worse.

Yeah. And here's how they come to us. They come to us as families, as a mom or dad bringing a kid in, and they're discouraged. They're frustrated. The child is feeling he's feeling alone because he's being labeled as a behavior disorder. He is unable to keep up in the regular curriculum in the school where you have to sit and get. And he can't sit and get, right? He has to move around. He has to see pictures. He has to have creative illustrations or she, you know, and it's, and that's how they come to us. And they've heard, oh, Johnny's so smart if he'd only work harder. You know, Susie, if she would just, you know, apply herself, you know, I sometimes I think she's a little bit lazy. Right. And they start to hear that language and then they start to inculcate that as their own identity. And that becomes a negative self-talk. That becomes discouragement. That becomes hopelessness for some people as time goes on. I mean, it's seen as a psychiatric.

Disorder treated by psychiatrist.

Yeah.

And maybe it isn't really a psychiatric disorder. It's not. And in fact, most psychiatric disorders are not psychiatric disorders. That's why I wrote the book, UltraMind Solution.

You even said it in that book. Right. Right.

Because it's the body. affects the brain, and the brain affects the body. The mind affects the body, but the body affects the mind. And I think the cure for brain disorders is often outside the brain. And I think that's what we're talking about here. Now it's actually becoming part of conventional medicine. I recently interviewed for our podcast, an expert in nutritional psychiatry and the microbiome in psychiatry from Harvard. And another one who was in Stanford studying metabolic psychiatry. so we now know that there are so many factors influencing our brain function that have been ignored by psychiatrists, and they're using psychiatric drugs like stimulants, like Ritalin, to help people focus, but it's just like pouring water on a fire with somebody else pouring gasoline on it, and at the same time, you have to get to the root causes. Right.

And I know we're gonna get to the root causes, but one of the things I just really wanted to mention is in that discouragement that parents come and they say, you know, they're worried about their child's performance. And even adults who now have piled up failure after failure after failure because of their inability to really deal with their ADHD. And they didn't even know they had it. Right. I had a patient. She was 40 years old. She, she came to me because she saw one of my nurse practitioners, and my nurse practitioner said she wants a refill on her Ativan, but she, you know, I'm uncomfortable giving it to her. And because she was a new nurse practitioner, I said, well, let me see the case. I saw the name of the patient. I saw that they were coming to get their Ativan again, and they had a gap of using it. So I said, you, know what? Schedule her with me. And she said, you, know, I use it because I get overwhelmed.

I said, what do you mean, overwhelmed?

It's an anxiety medication. She takes it because she gets anxious and overwhelmed. I said, well, what do you mean? Well, I get anxious. Well, what do you mean by anxious? I get overwhelmed. What does overwhelm mean? And she started to describe all the symptoms of ADHD, right? And she's a teacher. She was 40 years old. I took her through the DSM-4 classification, and then she went on to get a diagnosis.

That's a psychiatric manual for how we label people. How we label mental illnesses.

Yeah, I used it. I did use it. I'm sorry.

It's good to sort of get a label, but I always say just 'cause you have a label, it doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you.

You don't know the cause of your depression or ADD or whatever is going on. so I told her, you know, we did it. I said, you have ADHD. She was devastated. She was truly devastated. And, you know, she came back in tears because, one, all the regrets, like, why didn't I get diagnosed sooner? And then the, the denial. Maybe I don't really have it. Maybe there's something else wrong that can be fixed easier. Anyhow, it's like now eight years later, and I, I run into her because we're friends, and she got an ADHD coach. She did take Adderall for a short period of time. I got her to work on her nutrition, so forth and so she's doing amazingly well. Amazing. Amazingly well. But the point I wanna make is that ADHD can be a really devastating experience. And one of the things that I like to do when I'm working with my patients, this is the first thing we do. We've gotta normalize it. We gotta let you know everything's gonna be okay.

Well, that's right. There's a stigma, George, around mental illness. And that's really why I wrote the book, Ultramind Solution, because it was very clear to me seeing patients who I would treat their biology and their psychology would get better. And I wasn't treating their brain. I was treating their body. And I would notice the side effects of their ADD going away, their autism getting better, their depression going away, their panic attacks going away. And I'm like, what is going on here? so that really through the lens of functional medicine, what we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where we practice, is we go deep into these root causes. Yeah. So with ADHD, what are the things that are the most common drivers? Because it's not a Ritalin deficiency, as we said, right? It's something else.

Yeah.

What are we seeing in these patients that we find that then we can treat and help them get better?

I start with the understanding that there are some structural differences in the brains of a person with ADHD. There's a predisposition. There's a predisposition. It's genetic, it's physiologic, and so you can't ignore that starting point. Now, that's not the first, you know, so that's my first line of thinking, and I know that I'm going to find out what that is.

But it's remember, important to remember for people that genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.

Exactly.

So you might have a predisposition, it doesn't mean you're predestined to have the problem.

Exactly. And that's exactly right, Mark. That's the point. And that's where I go next is like, I know the predispositions there and I have tests that I can figure out what some of those predispositions are actually expressing themselves in that child or adult, and I will address them. But I also, as you just pointed out, is I go back to the environmental pieces first. And because those I can start working on at the very first visit.

You can modify.

Modify at the very first visit without having to do any tests. And that is to go through lifestyle. And where's the first lifestyle piece I go to? It's nutrition.

Right?

And because the nutrition does a couple things. There's the nutrition, the actual macro and micronutrients and minerals and phytonutrients that the child that they might not be getting. And then there's the impact that that diet he's on is having on his body, on his, particularly on the gut microbiome. On the bad diet. Right.

That they're eating.

That bad diet, right, which is filled with, you know, all the things that you talk about all the time, the high fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the hormones, the pesticides.

The additives and the colors and dyes. Those chemicals have been linked in research to ADHD issues.

Absolutely. Really clearly. And there's a diet, the fine gold diet is based on, you know, removing those from from the diet. So I can modify that right off the get-go and I can get them to start to think about how to change that child's diet and simply remove some things, right? And add some things in their place to start moving them in the right direction.

And the diet you're talking about that they're getting usually is an inflammatory diet.

Yes.

And what's fascinating to me as we start to look at the research on all these brain issues, whether it's autism, or ADHD or Alzheimer's or depression, they're inflammation in the brain.

Yeah.

And we never knew that before.

Yeah.

So do you take an Advil if you have depression or if you have ADD? No, you have to figure out why there's inflammation in the brain. And that's what functional medicine does. It's a, it's a methodology to get to the root cause of whatever it is. And in this case, it's inflammation in the brain. And all these kids often have other inflammatory issues, too. And you have a case, and I want to share a case where we We talk about this, but how do we sort of begin to tease apart what aspects of the diet are the most important in these kids? First I interview, like I ask, you.

Know, to tease it apart, you have to ask like, okay, what are you eating? What are you feeding? Mom, what are you feeding? And I'll ask them, right? And as soon as I ask the child what they eat, here's what happens. I'm gonna just pick this up. Mom's holding a folder or a newspaper or something, and as I ask the child what they're gonna eat, I see this. okay? I usually see she's gonna hide because she knows what's gonna come out. All right? We're gonna hear about, we're gonna hear about lucky charms and we're gonna hear about hot pockets and we're gonna hear about, you know, the Gatorade and, Blaming hot chips. And she feeds the child that because that's what the child wants to eat. And because they can't self-regulate, she knows that there's gonna be, you know, there's hell to pay when you're not giving them what they want. So yeah, so first off, you tease it out by doing a three day diet history, talking to the mom, talking to the child. And once you begin to tease that out, then you can get an understanding of what you need to add back in. And most of the time it's like everything.

We also do food sensitivity testing and checking for gluten and dairy, which often causes inflammation in the brain for these kids, right?

Yeah. I don't know when you want me to talk about the testing piece, but the thing I want to say about the gut microbiome in your diet is that inflammatory diet. Remember, and you don't have to remember, but for our listeners, that the gut microbiome does things for us. It's like another organ. And so 70% of our serotonin resides in the gastrointestinal tract.

Like a second brain.

Right, it's a second brain. 30% of our dopamine resides in the intestinal tract. When you are eating a bad diet, and you, you're shifting the, the microbiome, you're shifting the balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria. You are now, you're, you're now going to create an environment where a child cannot produce some of those neurotransmitters. You're gonna create an environment where they're not breaking down their food completely because of the inflammation. You could be getting something called leaky gut and that dysbiosis, that leaky gut, that leads to a lack of absorb absorption of some really important nutrients, and that begins to have a big effect. So now they're not absorbing their magnesium. Now they're letting too much copper in and not enough zinc. Now you're not getting enough iron. And we know that if you're anemic and you don't have enough iron, you're going to not be able to concentrate well. That's the real important impact of your diet. It's not just, oh, sugar's bad for them. Well, what's it doing? to, you know, you may notice that the microbiome, the microbiome. We got to fix that. That's it. And that's why I said, I know what the predisposition is, but the first place we're going to go is to the lifestyle. And what? Because that lifestyle is affecting the most important thing.

And that's the gut. Yeah. Nutrition is so huge. And we see this with these kids is they have poor quality nutrition. They're eating a lot of processed food. They're not getting the good nutrients they need. They're eating foods that are inflammatory. They're having gluten and dairy often. which can be very neurotoxic for some kids. They're eating additives and chemicals in their food that can trigger hyperactivity. And so there's this whole range of food interventions that have been shown to be very effective for these kids. Even removing food sensitivities. That's one study published in the UK. So there's a lot of literature on this, but it's not something that you get when you go to the psychiatrist. It's not mainstream about, no, they don't talk about this. So we're looking at the role of nutrition. nutritional deficiencies, food sensitivities, and lack of the right nutrients. What are the other things we should think about? The gut, you said. The gut plays a huge role, right?

Yeah, yeah. So you have leaky gut. Yeah, everything I just mentioned, you know, with the leaky gut, the alterations in the microbiome, you're going to have less serotonin made, less dopamine made. You're not gonna get the nutrients that we just talked about. And so that we look there and we can do tests to determine We have, you know, very sensitive tests that can look at, we do organic acid tests that can look at amino acid levels, which are the precursors for making your neurotransmitters. So that if you're not, you know, eating enough protein, which kids don't eat enough protein, you're not eating enough protein, and then you have already disordered your microbiome, which includes your gastric acids, which includes your pancreatic acids. Those are very important for breaking down your proteins, your carbohydrates, and your fats. you get all the nutrients you need. So we need to make sure that they're, you know, if that's not happening, they're not getting their amino acids, then they're not gonna be able to make those neurotransmitters. We can measure that using organic acids. We can look at carbohydrate metabolism that's important in energy production, energy that's needed for the body to work, particularly the brain. Yeah. Since it has the most mitochondria in the entire body, 'cause it needs the most energy. And if that brain's not making energy because you're not getting the appropriate amounts and types of carbohydrates, that child's not going to do well. And we can determine that on the organic acids or an ion profile. These are tests you don't normally get.

At a regular doctor. And these tests tell us about things like mitochondria. You mentioned mitochondria, I just want to sort of loop back on this because there's a woman named Suzanne Goh, a pediatric neurologist, went to Harvard, Oxford, and studies autism. And she's found in these autistic kids, there's a subset of these kids, that have impaired mitochondrial function in their brain. And it's an energy deficit which can cause these neurologic symptoms. And so she provides the substrates or the basic building blocks for making energy in these kids that are supplements like CoQ10 and carnitine and other nutrients that are so important for building energy in the system. So we sometimes find this in these.

Kids, they have energy issues. You know, we've seen that with our autistic kids that we, when we give them We give them amino acids. When we give them methylcobalamin, which is a basic nutrient, you see changes in how they change. Dramatic changes. When you address the mitochondria, you're gonna see those dramatic changes.

And they also have issues around toxins, these kids sometimes, right? So talk about toxins and mental health and particularly ADHD.

Right, so the toxins that we look for the most and they're tested for, you know, in schools as part of your lead, lead, there you go, got lead. So we have lead, we also have mercury and we have arsenic. Yeah. Those are three very common heavy metals that you're gonna find in your environment. So those, each one of them are going to be able to block the energy producing pathways in cells. They're also going to limit the neurotransmitter metabolism in the brain. Directly. They're directly neurotoxic and they also have effects on the body's ability to make energy in their mitochondria. So we test for heavy metals in kids all the time. And why do kids have that? And why do we find that? Because I tell people it's not a matter of whether you're toxic. you know, it's not a matter of whether you have heavy metals, it's how many do you have? Yeah, yeah. Right? And how much? And, and that's gonna be a, that's gonna be a product of several things. One, we go back to genetics. You just may not be a good detoxer. Mm-. Right? You may have, you know, snips which are single nucleotide polymorphisms. Those are like one single nucleotide change in the blueprint that makes the protein. Um, and if that is off, Then that protein's not going to work correctly. Well, if your detox proteins and enzymes are not working, you just don't detox that way. And we can determine that. And then we can determine what your lead levels are. And then we have ways that we can bring those down.

And it's so common. You know, I remember this kid I had who was like 10 or 11 years old, just a terror, ADD, getting kicked out of class, disruptive behavior issues. And the mother was just desperate.

I wasn't in your class.

She was, she was a young mother, but she was very smart. and she kind of came to us. And it turned out his school was across the street from a cement plant. And the cement plant burns coal, and coal releases mercury and lead. And every day they go in the parking lot, at the end of the day, the cars were just dusted with this ash from the cement plant. And the kids were playing in the playground with this cement plant. And I tested him, and he had very high levels of heavy metals. And we detoxified him, we fixed his metabolic pathways, and this kid got better. So, you know, it's not that every kid with ADD has lead or mercury. It's just one of the things to think about. And just like I always say, with functional medicine, just because you know the name of the disease doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you, right? ADD can be many, many things and many, many factors. It could be gluten, it could be metals, it could be nutritional deficiency, it could be magnesium issues, it can be, you know, your gut microbiome, it can be gluten.

So you have to think about all the factors. That's really what we do. And we have very specific tests which we can do to identify this in functional medicine. And you can bring ten kids in here with ADHD, Right? Or the label of ADHD and every, each one of them is gonna be treated differently because they're all going to be different. Their, their genetics are gonna be different, their environments are gonna be different, their supports are gonna be different. And, and that's what we do in functional medicine. When a child or an adult comes to me, I spend up to 90 minutes just teasing out every piece of the, of the puzzle I just talked about.

So tell us about Joey, 'cause he's one of your patients. Joey.

So, so Joey came to see me and there's a multitude of issues. The one that was the presenting main presenting issue was the fact that he wasn't doing good in school. He was told he had ADHD and the mom and the dad had taken him to the primary care and the immediate desire of the primary care physician was to start him on a stimulant. And the parents weren't- Like Ritalin. Like Ritalin, Adderall, and such. And they just didn't want to go down that road. They had heard a podcast, they had read one of my blogs, and they decided to come to the Ultra Wellness Center. Here he comes. So, you know, going through the entire history with Joey, we found out that Joey had had, from a very early time in his childhood, he had had gut issues and he had eczema early on in his life. so what were his gut issues? Lots of colic, dairy sensitivity and eczema. They sort of resolved a little bit as time went on. Then he developed some seasonal allergies and then he developed the ADHD. So he was being treated with antihistamines during, you know, springtime. Yeah, they cut back dairy and that was it. So Joey comes, lovely, lovely kid. Very, very bright. And quite honestly, his behavior in the room wasn't as off the wall as some of the kids can be. And when I did ask him questions, he could articulate pretty clearly. Well, I could see him starting, you know, start to- Fidgeting. Yeah, he was starting to fidget as time was going on. But I think his dad was fidgeting more than him. This is very inheritable. So, what did I do? So the same things that we always do. I did his genetic testing. So we do a test called DNA health, and that lets us know about several important genes. I can learn about those detox genes I talked about, but then I also can look at some of the methylation genes. And, and again, in your ultra mind solution, you do a great job in explaining methylation. Methylation is, is a process that the body uses in, in thousands of, of inter of, of reactions to activate. molecules to do their job. Yeah, I'll just say it's one of.

The most important chemical reactions that happens literally millions of times a second.

Yeah, millions of times a second. It's protecting and repairing your DNA. It's part of the detox pathways and it's really important in neurotransmitter metabolism. And so two of them, one called the MTHFR gene and one called the CMT gene really control methylation. And the CMT gene in particular is responsible for metabolizing the catechol neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Those are the three neurotransmitters in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobe that are responsible for behavior, executive function, self-regulation, concentration, and learning in the prefrontal cortex.

So, and these are just variations in our genes that aren't like a mutation per se. They're just differences among individuals that make you more or less likely to have a different issue.

Yeah, they're the genes that make us, you know, give you blue eyes, give me brown eyes, right? But they also are responsible for some really critical life-altering reactions in our body.

In fact, one third of our entire DNA codes for enzymes, which regulate most of our body functions, and those enzymes are all controlled by nutrients. And when you have variations in those enzymes, you may need higher amounts of certain nutrients. So while 400 micrograms of folate might be good for one person, another person might need 4, 000.

That's. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, so I checked the genetics and I found that he had a variation in his CMT gene that actually left him with really low levels of dopamine. So at baseline, he had low levels of dopamine.

Which is what makes you focus and pay attention and be alert, right? Yep.

And so, interestingly enough, when you take that child and you put them under pressure, they actually function better because now their dopamine levels start to come up under pressure.

Is that why I always do better writing my books under deadline?

Yep. Yep. so, so, so there's this, there's this thought that I've had that, you know, kids procrastinate, adults procrastinate so that they, they find themselves under pressure because now their dopamine levels go up and now they're in the sweet spot and they can get their work done. So, so I found that he had that, that particular gene. And of course, you know, I don't, I've already talked about what the worst diet could look like. Well, he had the worst diet. and so he had, you know, we did an ion profile and we found that he was missing important nutrients. He was low in his B12. He was his B2 riboflavin was low.

And it's important for energy production.

Energy production. That's mitochondrial. That's the that's the mitochondrial cellular activity that provides the energy for your neurons to work. And he was low in his B vitamins. And that's really critical because, you know, particularly and then folate, folate. was normal, but his MTHFR gene had a variant that made it less active. Why is that important? Because the MTHFR gene is responsible for methylating folate. And that's part of the- that makes it active. That's why it's active. If you don't have active folate, you can't use it. And folate's a very big important part of how your neurotransmitters and your brain's gonna work. So he had two genetic issues. a poor diet, and he had an imbalance in his gut. He had just general dysbiosis and overgrowth of a lot of bad bacteria. And so I treated those things. And how do I treat that? They meet with our nutritionist, and the first thing we do is we put them on an elimination diet. We take out all the bad things. So we're taking out sugar, we're taking out processed carbohydrates, we're taking out foods with coloring, we're taking out dairy, gluten, soy. And I can just tell you when I met with Joey six weeks later, just based on the nutritional changes that I made before I had my lab results, we started them on that diet before the lab results came in. He had already, mom was already talking about how his attention had improved. Now, I had added some magnesium in on the first visit. I added some fish oil. There are studies that show that children with ADHD, when they get at least four grams of omega threes daily, you see an improvement in their executive function. You see an improvement in their behavior. So I put them on fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D, that diet. By the first visit back, mom was already saying teachers are seeing a difference. and that she was noticing a difference too. And he was sleeping better.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's so great. And you see these changes in these kids where they've been struggling for so long and it's just heartbreaking to see what it does to the families, the kids self-esteem, the kid gets picked on or doesn't do well in school. I mean, it's just these consequences of these problems are enormous for people and they're not that hard to fix often. And it just reminded me of a case I just want to share briefly of Clayton, who came to me at 12 years old, But his mom was really struggling with him. He had very disruptive behavior. He had ADD since he was in kindergarten. He was kicked out of kindergarten on and off Ritalin and struggled, not doing well in school. And he also had all these other issues. And what happens is this silo effect in medicine where the psychiatrist treats the ADD, and then there's all these other problems a kid has. Kid had asthma, he had eczema, he had intestinal bowel, he had headaches, he had anxiety, he had anal itching. He had, I mean, allergies. He had trouble sleeping. I mean, he had all these issues in muscle cramps and twitching. And when I looked at his full history, I'm like, he's got an overwhelming amount of inflammation. All these problems are inflammatory issues. And, and, and it was so related to the inflammation in his brain. And so what I did was I sort of did a workup on him and I found, you know, his diet was terrible. He only ate junk food, never ate a vegetable in his life, processed food all the time. He, you know, was treated by seven different doctors on seven different medications. No one said, how is this all connected? You know, they're all siloed, right?

Yeah.

And, and I started to sort of dig deep and I did the tests we do here in functional medicine. I did nutritional profiles. We looked at all things you mentioned, amino acids, organic acids, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants. and I looked at his stool test, and I looked at heavy metals, and I looked at food sensitivities, and I looked at all these factors. And it was just fascinating because even by his history, I could predict what he had on his test because he didn't eat any real food. So he had no omega-3 fats. He had extremely low levels of magnesium, which comes from Whole Foods and grains and beans. He had extremely low levels of zinc, which again comes from good food. He had low levels of B6, which is important. It's also for neurotransmitters and folate. and he had all these other issues that were also going on. He had a little bit of lead in his system, which can cause behavior issues. He had a leaky gut and he had overgrowth of yeast from lots of antibiotics. And so I basically cleaned up his gut. I got rid of the bad stuff, put in the good stuff, did an elimination diet, added all the nutrients that he was missing, two supplements, and I got rid of the heavy metals and we did a gut healing program on him, but just very simple stuff.

Yeah.

And his mother brought him back two months later. Not only was his ADD completely gone, all those other problems were gone. And what was really striking to me, hopefully we can put it in the show notes here for the podcast, is handwriting sample when he came in was illegible. And a lot of these kids have ADD or autism. They have what we call dysgraphia, which means their penmanship sucks and you can't read their handwriting. 12 years old, he couldn't write within the lines. It was all over the place. It was illegible. Two months later, mom brings his homework back, perfect penmanship. I'm like, holy crap, what happened here? And I went, how did his brain go from incoherent and dis-synchronous and chaotic to coherent and synchronous and functional? It wasn't because you gave him Adderall. I didn't give him Adderall. I fixed the inflammation. I fixed his gut. I got his diet cleaned up. I gave him the nutrients his brain was missing. I changed his brain function in a way that was just so dramatic. And this kid then went on to become a astrophysicist. And I was like, whoa, this is amazing. And I just wrote one of those things. I wrote about it in the Ultramind Solution, because one of those stories, it just sticks in your brain. Absolutely. Because when you see it, people get better and they go, I feel better. I'm focusing better. Okay, I feel better. One thing, but when you see the handwriting sample, you go, wait a minute, what happened here?

Yeah.

And I think this is what we see in these kids and we see the same case along the whole spectrum of, I mean, autism ADD, I think it's just a spectrum of dysfunction of the brain of information. It is.

It is. And it's getting down to those, getting granular and really getting into the don't guess, test, test and test until you get to the most granular level where you get to the root cause. Now, I added to Joey, I added teosinte. because his CMT left him unable to have enough dopamine in his brain.

So tyrosine is the amino acid you make dopamine from.

Exactly. I gave him tyrosine at the second visit, and that changed everything. I mean, that was like his brain started functioning at a really high level. Now, he came back third visit. This is like a year later, and still struggling, though, with just you know, anxiety and still some, you know, sleep issues and, you know, that's, and still having a hard time with organizing himself. Yeah. And that's the other piece I tell people. There are just some habits, some skills that still may be hard even though we get the brain functioning. Now we have the brain functioning at a high level and it's able to start to take in, rewire, it's plastic. And so now, after years of being totally disorganized and chaotic, you know, he's 13 years old.

I mean, he hadn't been able to learn those things.

He has to learn it all over. So I had it, knew there are some things that you can do. So I had him start working with an ADHD coach that would teach him how to use a task list, how to use a calendar, you know, set up cues so that he can figure out when he's procrastinating. And so that began to make a big difference. And so, you know, mom then sent me a picture, texted me actually, a picture of Joey at his desk. Well, he wasn't at his desk, but on his desk was a task list and a calendar with boxes checked off. And then she said, I would never have imagined that two years ago Joey would ever have been able to do this and he was doing great in school. So it's not just- Often these kids are like Rip Van Winkle.

They've been in the ADHD zone so long they're kind of not functional and they don't learn the basic skills or the emotional or intellectual development that allows them to function at a higher level. So they have to literally learn that once their brain comes back online.

You know, I didn't do this with Joey, but I've been doing this a lot with my patients recently. probably, you know, and that is getting them to meditate. Meditate. Meditating, as you know, calms the brain and it changes the neurologic functioning of the brain. It's going to increase the size of your hippocampus, which is your memory center. It's going to increase the size of the corpus callosum, which attaches right brain to left brain so that you can have your calculations and your creativity feeding each other back and forth. So you become even more creative. It's going to, you know, it's actually going to shrink down the amygdala. So, and that's the area of agitation and irritation and anger that shrinks down. You get more self-control. So meditation is something I really recommend for adults and kids with ADHD. Powerful.

Yeah, it's really powerful.

There's an incredible discussion.

I mean, we really have it all wrong when it comes to ADHD in this country. We're focusing on it as a brain issue instead of a body issue. and we're missing all the real causes, which is our diet, not only the chemicals, but the gluten and dairy, the processed food, the lack of good foods and nutrition, the damage of our microbiome, the toxins that can be there, and the other factors which we, which we look at at the Ultra Wellness Center, which is very different than most people do. And we see incredible results. I mean, sometimes it's a little harder, challenging cases, but we really see people get better. And for people listening out there, I mean, if you have somebody with ADHD in your family or you have it, try an elimination diet. Try to take a basic multi fish oil, magnesium and vitamin D and see how that goes because that alone can help a lot of people. And if you get stuck, you can come see us here. We're here and we have an incredible group of physicians who probably have over 70 years of functional medicine experience more than any in the country, I think. And we take care of people from all over the world and now where you have remote virtual visits and consults which are great. They're fun and You get to connect with us and you can find us on the web at ultrawellnesscenter.com. I encourage you to check us out and don't despair because there is hope and we need to sometimes do other things besides what we talked about, like limit devices and get out in nature. I was going to say, I was.

Going to- But those are also important aspects.

I don't want to underemphasize, but that's another podcast. Yeah, that's another podcast. So, George, thank you so much for being on the Doctor's Pharmacy. and if you love this podcast, please share with your friends and family and social media. If you've suffered from ADD or know anybody who has and you've learned some things about how to help yourself, please share it on comments. We'd love to hear from you and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And we'd love to see you next.

Time on the doctor's Pharmacy next week.

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