Transcript
A (0:02)
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day.
B (0:14)
Hi, I'm Tana Amen. And I'm here with my Amazing, wonderful husband, Dr. Daniel. Amen.
A (0:19)
Greetings again. We're so excited that you're with us today. We're going to talk about ADD in girls and in women. It's something very near and dear to my heart because my wife has add.
B (0:32)
Which I did not believe. For the record, I thought it was nonsense when I met him.
A (0:36)
She believes it now because it's true and several of my daughters have it. And ADD in girls and in women is often not diagnosed because they're usually, usually not a big pain in the neck like boys are. So boys tend to be diagnosed because they can be more hyperactive, more impulsive. They bring a lot of negative attention to themselves. But girls and women often are not diagnosed because they tend not to be hyperactive or maybe not even terribly impulsive, but they have trouble with focus, they can have trouble with organization and distractibility and. And so they underachieve for their potential. And it can be chronically frustrating.
B (1:25)
Well, let's talk about why they might not have some of those classic symptoms that boys have of being impulsive and some of the other things. And what I learned was that it's because, and not that I suffer from this, but they have a lot more anxiety. And so the anxiety, that high level of anxiety keeps them from acting out.
A (1:46)
So I wrote a book once called Unleash the Power of the Female Brain. And in it I talk about. The female brain actually has some very specific strengths that it's wired more for connection, for empathy, for impulse control. The female brain is significantly stronger in the front part of the brain. Forethought, judgment, impulse control, planning, empathy.
B (2:13)
And think about it. If you're raising a baby and you know that baby needs to survive and you're raising the next generation of people and you're trying to train them, that's required. I mean, that's a necessary thing.
A (2:23)
But because of the increased activity, there are also vulnerabilities, like to anxiety and depression, too much empathy. So they can't go forward and make decision unless everybody agrees. And one of the things we learned was that 90% of the IQ for women is in their frontal lobes. So any sort of frontal lobe injury, which is why I'm completely opposed with girls hitting soccer balls with their head can impact their life dramatically more than a frontal lobe injury will impact a Male's life, because in males, their IQ is more widely distributed in their brain, but girls and women can have ADD, too. And how I actually figured it out, besides I had it in my own family, was that the little boys I would see who are hyperactive and impulsive, causing trouble at school, I would always look and go, well, where did they get it from? Because ADD is highly genetic, so you totally got it from your mother.