Dr. Mark Hyman (44:55)
When you look at ADD and adhd, it's, it's, you know, it's basically described as a set of symptoms. The way we diagnose in medicine is, is based on, based, basically I think a very outdated model which is describe the symptoms and if somebody fits those symptoms, they have the disease. We say, oh, you have trouble focusing or pay attention, paying attention, you're inattentive, you're hyperactive. I know what's wrong with you. You have adhd? No, that's just the name of the disease, it's not the cause of the disease. And so we describe every disease, including particularly mental diseases, mental disorders, through this lens of describing symptoms, not causes. Functional medicine is about causes. So what are the causes? Well, I'm going to take you through a case because I think it'll be a very interesting way to think about this story. And this is a case that really blew my mind. So the mother brought in her kid to see me who was 12 years old and then two months later brought him back and the transformation was remarkable. But she brought his homework and we're going to put it in the show notes. So you can actually see graphically changes in brain function in just two months with a kid who had severe brain disorder. He had a broken brain and he could not write legibly to save his life. It was like chicken scratch or a 3 year old writing versus a 12 year old. And then within 2 months his handwriting totally normalized. And the question is, what happened? So I'm going to take you through what happened, I'm going to explain you a story and I'm going to, I'm going to actually help you understand how we need to start approaching these disorders and very different way. So basically one day this woman walks my office, professional woman, businesswoman, with her 12 year old son who had multiple psychological and physical diagnoses who were seen by many doctors, seven different doctors, right? He had, you know, a psychiatrist, he had a GI doctor, he had an allergist, he had a pulmonologist. I mean the list goes on. So nobody was talking to each other and always treated, they were all treating different things. So he, he was diagnosed with ADD and no one seemed to sort of say, how does this one kid have all these problems, right? Is it just bad luck or are they connected? And so functional medicine is about looking for the patterns in the connections that give rise to the clues about the cause. So basically he was, he was diagnosed with ADD when he was a little kid. He couldn't focus in school, he was zoned out, he was disruptive. I mean, he was kicked out of kindergarten. I mean, who's kicked out of kindergarten, right? He had terrible writing, we call it dysgraphia. He was pretty good math, but basically was a disaster. You know, behaviorally, academically, socially was just not thriving. And physically he had all these issues, right? He had asthma, he had environmental allergies, he had sinus problems, he had post nasal drip, he had sore throats, he got skin issues, eczema, nausea, stomach aches, diarrhea, headaches, anal itching, which we'll get to why that is. He had canker sores, which are immune things, right? All his immune inflammation, muscle aches, muscle cramps. He was hypersensitive to loud noises, to smells, he was sneezing a lot. He had hives, itchy skin, bumps, frequent infections. He couldn't sleep well. He had trouble breathing when he slept. He had like anxiety, he was fearful all the time and he had tons of sugar cravings. Now that is a long list of problems. My joke is I take care of patients and I'm a holistic doctor because I take care of people with a whole list of problems. And he had a whole list of problems. And nobody says, how are all these connected? They're all inflammation. And what we now know is that add, autism, depression, dementia, Parkinson's, these are inflammatory diseases of the brain, even schizophrenia, bipolar disease, all these are inflammatory brain disorders. So doctors were treating and all these specialists treating all the symptoms with seven different medications from five different doctors. Ritalin for add, allergy medicine, inhalers versus asthma, acid blocking medicine for his stomach, painkillers for his headaches. I mean, it's quite a drug cocktail for a 12 year old kid. And he didn't really get that much relief anyway on any of his symptoms. And no one said, you know, how is this connected, right? How is this connective and why is this kid suffering from all this? And so really this is just how medicine is. We see specialists after specialists, we get pill after pill, we get a pill for every ill. And it was just kind of a mess. So most, most psychiatrists are trained about the brain or really the mind, right? They don't really learn much about the brain. They don't, they think, you know, it's basically, you know, their job is from the neck up and it's all emotional, psychological. But we often misappropriate psychological or psychiatric diagnoses to physical things, right? If you have mercury poisoning, it can cause depression, right? If you have huge amounts of inflammation from an altered microbiome. You can have add. So you need to figure out what the root causes and not just be slapping on different drugs for different diseases. So, you know, it's important to understand what the physical things are, but not to get stopped there and not to just say, let's treat each one separately. We have to see how they're connected. So the medications he was on were kind of nuts and they weren't helping much. But he's not alone. Most kids on tons of medications, from allergy medication to antidepressants to stimulants. And we're seeing kids with mental, behavioral, emotional problems like Clayton had. And they're now getting drugs like antipsychotic medications they give to schizophrenics like Risperdal or anti seizure medications, Trileptal or antidepressants, like I said, like Prozac or all the stimulants like Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall or Vyvanse. Now, when we dug below the surface with Clayton, we found all sorts of stuff. Now, in functional medicine, I don't actually treat disease. I don't really care that much about the name of your disease, but I care about what is going on in the systems in your body that is out of balance. And how do I figure that out? And what are the basic categories of things that matter? Right. It's our lifestyle and our nutritional, exercise, sleep, relationships. It's various factors that cause us to get out of balance. Toxins, allergens, microbes, poor diet, stress, all these things wash over these systems and create imbalance. So my job is a detective to figure out where this particular child's imbalances were and fix them and see what happens. Right. I just kind of put things back in balance, like tuning up a car, and then you kind of hope, crush fingers. And usually it works. Sometimes you kind of get stuck or there's something else you missed, but. But it's actually quite effective. So first step was nutrition. I mean, Clayton had, which was his name, had the worst diet. All he ate was junk food, processed food. He, I don't think he ever saw a vegetable in his life. And it's typical of a lot of these kids who are on the spectrum of autism or add. They typically have very finicky dietary habits. They typically eat tons of carbs. They love gluten and dairy. But he wasn't just eating, you know, whole wheat bread and, you know, sheep cheese. He was eating junk food. Trans fats, food coloring, additives, tons of Sugar and all these things have been associated with add. Now when we looked at his lab testing, we found some really interesting things. And I think most people do not dig below the surface to look at labs. And we did a deep dive. We found he had omega 3 fat deficiency, EPA and DHA, which are incredibly important for brain function. 60% of your brain is DHA and if you have low levels, it's associated with ADD as well as eczema immune deficiency. A lot of the things that he had, we looked at his vitamin levels. We saw low levels of amino acids like tryptophan. We saw metabolic pathways that were indicating he had a deficiency of B6, which is important for making serotonin from tryptophan and helping his mood. Right. His mood was unstable, he had sleep issues. And so that, you know, B6 was a big factor. And it's often with kids with ADD or autism. And we see, you know, also vitamin A deficiency, which is important for immunity. And the omega 3 deficiency and vitamin A deficiency led to little things like bumps on his backs. We call these hyperkeratosis pilaris. I could touch his skin, I could see little bumpy things. That was because of these nutritional deficiencies. He was low in vitamin D, he was low in vitamin E and beta carotene because he ate vegetables. Right. So it's a diet very high in junk food, which is nutrient poor and very low in nutrient dense food. He had low levels of zinc and link. Zinc, we know is important for immune function, regulates hundreds of enzymes, it's important for getting rid of heavy metals, it's important for ADD and autism. And it was really consistent with his symptoms of infrequent infections of eczema, allergies, hyperactivity. Also had low magnesium. Magnesium deficiency is really common and it led to, you know, headaches, anxiety, insomnia, muscle cramps, spasms, aches, hypersensitivity to loud noises. All these are signs of magnesium deficiency. And we do testing and you know, I recently started a co founded a company called Function Health to help people get access to their own labs and to be able to look at some of these deep nutritional testing as well as metabolic testing and many things we're going to talk about with Clayton, things that are often missed by a traditional doctor or not checked. When was the last time your doctor checked your omega 3 level or vitamin A or magnesium or vitamin D? These are all part of our standard function health panels. And I think it's really important for you to think about. So go check out Function Health. You can Sign up for the wait list and it gives you really great guidance on how to optimize your health using personalized recommendations. So the next thing we looked at besides nutrition was his immune system because he had so many inflammatory things, right? He had, you know, infections, he had asthma, he had sore throats, he had allergies, he had all these inflammatory things. So it was like flashing red light. Inflammation, inflammation. Inflammation is at the root of so many problems, including brain diseases. So we looked at the factors that cause actually inflammation, such as food allergies, environmental allergies, molds, toxins, chronic low grade infections, maybe he had a whole bunch of these things. We found some testing, we looked at food sensitivity testing, and he had a lot of foods. He was reacting about 18 different foods, including dairy, peanuts, yeast, citrus foods, gluten, especially gluten. And he had gluten antibodies, which again, are not checked by most doctors, but actually were elevated. And so we found he really was sensitive to gluten. So gluten basically is a huge factor for these kids, often with ADD or autism. It triggers this low grade chronic inflammation in the brain, an immune response, and makes leaky gut worse, causes canker sores. So when he had canker sores, I was clued in that he might have a gluten issue. It can be celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. And he had elevated anti glidin antibodies, which is basically an autoimmune reaction to the proteins found in gluten and that and that are found in wheat, rye, barley, spelt and oats. Now, so massive inflammation. And we knew we had gluten issues, we knew we had food sensitivities and some other things that were causing it. And he also had tons of gut symptoms, right? So we looked at his digestive system, nausea, diarrhea, stomach aches, anal itching. He had a sensitive stomach. He led lots of antibiotics for sore throats, and he had then yeast overgrowth because of all the antibiotics and abnormal gut flora. We looked at his stool test. He had leaky gut, which basically creates the damage in the gut that allows food, proteins and bacteria to leak in. And his immune system was just so pissed off. And it wasn't just affecting his asthma and allergies, it was also affecting his brain. The next thing we looked at were toxins, because we take a look at nutrition, we take a look at gut, we at take a look look at immune issues, we look at the causes. And so we started to look at whether or not he had any environmental toxins, which we know can Cause ADD and even autism. And heavy metals were an issue for him. He had high levels of lead and mercury and he had similar problem exposure to other kids, but they're often not looked at and not treated. They might check up blood lead level, they don't ever look at a challenge test. And genetically, nutritionally, he couldn't really detoxify these. And we know mercury and lead are associated with GI symptoms, autoimmune issues, cognitive problems that lead has been actually very well linked to add, and behavioral issues, cognitive problems. And there's no doubt about the data on this. You don't believe me, just go to PubMed and put lead and ADHD and you'll come up with plenty of scientific papers to explain how this actually is all working. So basically, maybe, you know, the world is polluted, right? We have so many cement factories, coal burning factories, all of which spew out lead, mercury, it goes into the soil, kids are playing in the dirt, or maybe there's toys made from China that are coated lead paint, or maybe the people have leaded paint in their house or eating from lead covered glasses or I mean, crystal glasses or, or fancy plates. But basically he was exposed to all these dangers of the industrial revolution. And he also had a little bit of mold in his house and he had food additives that, you know, we can't measure those things, but I'm sure they were causing a problem. So basically his problem wasn't Ritalin deficiency or bad parenting, right? The cause was in his diet, it was environmental toxins, it was in his microbiome. And so we basically constructed a very simple treatment. So we think, oh my God, there's so many things, you know, he's got 25 different diseases, right? What do you do? So it was quite simple. We basically looked at the causes. So we basically looked at the nutritional deficiencies, the toxic environmental toxins he was exposed to, the food sensitivities, all the processed food. We got rid of the gluten, all the yeast overgrowth, and we found out what sort of was causing him to be out of balance, right? So basically the body is a system of equilibrium and either you have too much of something that's causing you to be out of balance or not enough of something that's causing you that you need to be in balance, right? He had all these deficiencies of nutritional stuff, but all these other things like yeast overgrowth and heavy metals and gluten, they were irritating his system. So he can't just do one thing. And I think in medicine they go, well, let's do one thing and see what happens. Well, we won't know unless you do a randomized controlled trial with one intervention and one outcome. Well, that's just BS because, you know, if you want to grow a plant, you know, well, I'm just going to give it water but no soil and sun and see what happens. Or I'm going to give it soil but no, you know, water. Or I'll give it sun but no soil and water. You know, it's just the whole thing is an insane, backwards, antiquated framework for thinking about disease. And it's why we are in this really powerful transformation in medicine right now and hasn't quite caught up to the clinic in most cases, but it really is where we're all going. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body. The kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store where I've hand selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, doctorhyman.com has the world's best selection of top quality premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out Dr.hyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's Dr. Hyman.com D R H Y M A N if you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center@Ultra Wellness Center.com and request to become a patient. 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