Rethinking ADHD: Root Causes, Real Healing, and the Power of Functional Medicine

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor Hyman Show. 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. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey.

While I wish I could work with everyone one on one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the HymanHive, for live q and a's exclusive content and direct connection. For real time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor trusted supplements and health products at doctorhymen.com.

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Dr. George Papanicolaou
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. Sometimes it's seen more as a behavioral issue and it's treated with medication.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a brain disease. It's a

Dr. George Papanicolaou
brain disease. And as you said before, the brain, it's a body disease that affects the brain.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Okay. And you've 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. Right? You know, he's he's he's a spy.

I don't know what he's doing. But he's doing something he's doing something like where you have to pay attention all the time. And then there's, you know, the other person who 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 four percent 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
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 left out.

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 git. 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 and that that's how they come to us. And they've heard, oh, Johnny's so smart if you'd only work harder. You know?

Susie, if she would just apply herself, you know, sometimes I think she's a little bit lazy. 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mean, it's seen as a psychiatric disorder treated by psychiatrists. And maybe it isn't really a psychiatric disorder.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
It's not. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
In fact most psychiatric disorders are not psychiatric disorders. That's why I wrote the book Ultraminds You

Dr. George Papanicolaou
it even in that book.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Because 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. I think that's what we're talking about here. It's actually becoming part of conventional medicine. Recently interviewed for our podcast expert in nutritional psychiatry and the microbiome and psychiatry from Harvard.

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, Ritalin to help people focus. But it's just like pouring, water on a fire with somebody else pouring gasoline on it at the same time. You have to get to the root causes.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
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. 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, do mean overwhelmed?

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's an anxiety medication.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
She takes it because she gets anxious and overwhelmed. I said, Well, what do you mean? Well, I get anxious. Well, what do mean by anxious? I get overwhelmed.

What does overwhelm mean? And she started to describe all the symptoms of ADHD. And she's a teacher. She was 40 years old. I took her through the DSM IV classification, and then she went on to get a diagnosis.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's a psychiatric manual for how we label people with mental illnesses. Used it. I'm sorry, I had to It's good to sort of get a label, but I always say just because you have a label doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. You don't know the cause of your depression or ADD or whatever is going on.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
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 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 she did take Adderall for a short period of time.

I got her to work on her nutrition, so forth. And she's doing amazingly amazingly well. But the point I want to 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 got to normalize it.

We've to let you know everything's going to be okay.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, that's right. There's a stigma, George, around mental illness. 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. 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. 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. 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. What are we seeing in these patients that we find that then we can treat and help them get better?

Dr. George Papanicolaou
I start with the understanding that there there are some structural differences in the brains of a person with 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 know, so that's my first line of thinking.

And I know that I'm going to I'm going to find out what that is.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's important to remember for people that genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trick. So you might have a predisposition, it doesn't mean you're predestined Exactly. To have the

Dr. George Papanicolaou
that's exactly right, Mark. It's a point where I go next is I know the predisposition is 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 I can start working on at the very first visit?

Dr. Mark Hyman
You can modify.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Modify the very first visit without having to do any tests. And that is to go through lifestyle. And where and and 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 the the nutrition, the actual macro and micronutrients and minerals and phytonutrients that the child needs that they might not be getting.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
And then there's the impact that that diet he's on is having on his body, particularly on the gut microbiome. On the bad diet. The bad diet, right? Which is filled with all the things that you talk about all the time. The high fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the hormones, the pesticides.

Dr. Mark Hyman
The additives and colors and dyes. Those chemicals have been linked in research to ADHD issues. Absolutely. Really clearly.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Yeah. There's a diet, the fine gold diet is based on removing those 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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, there's inflammation in the brain. We never knew that before. 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 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. You have a case and I want to share a case where 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?

Dr. George Papanicolaou
First I interview. Like I ask. To tease it apart you have to ask like, are you eating? Mom, what are you eating? And I'll ask them.

And as soon as I as soon as I ask the child what they eat, here's what happens. I'm gonna just pick this up. Mom's 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. Alright? 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and Blaming hot chips.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
And and she she's she's doesn't. She feeds the child that because that's what the child wants to eat. And because they they can't self regulate, she knows that there's gonna be, you know, there's 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
We also do food sensitivity testing for gluten and dairy, which often causes inflammation in the brain for these kids.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
I don't know when want me to talk about the testing piece, but the thing I want to say about the gut microbiome and 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 70% of our serotonin resides in the gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like a second brain.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Right, second brain. 30% of our dopamine resides in intestinal tract. When you're eating a bad diet and you're shifting the microbiome, you're shifting the balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria, you're now going to create an environment where a child cannot produce some of those neurotransmitters. You're going to 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 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 gonna not be able to concentrate well. That's the that's the real important impact of your diet. It's not just, oh, sugar is bad for them. Well, what's it doing to may notice

Dr. Mark Hyman
Microbiome. It after

Dr. George Papanicolaou
The microbiome. We gotta fix that. And that's why I said, I know what the predisposition is, but the first place we're gonna go is to the lifestyle and what because that lifestyle is affecting the most important thing and that's the gut.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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 because even removing food sensitivities, that's one study published in The UK.

So there's a lot of literature on this. Absolutely. It's not something that you get when you go to a psychiatrist and talk about. No, they don't talk about this. So so we're looking at the role of nutrition.

Yeah. 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. So you have leaky gut.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Everything I just mentioned. You know, with the leaky gut, the alterations of the microbiome, you're going to have less serotonin made, less dopamine made. You're not going get the nutrients that we just talked about. And so that we look there and we can do tests to determine. We have 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 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 if that's not happening, they're not getting their amino acids, then they're not going make these neurotransmitters. We can measure that, these are 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, since it has the most mitochondria in the entire body because it needs the most energy. And if that brain's not making energy because you're not getting the appropriate amounts and the types of carbohydrates, that child's not going to do well. And we can determine that on the organic acids or an ion profile.

Dr. Mark Hyman
These are kind of tests you don't normally get at And a regular these tests tell us about things like mitochondria. You mentioned mitochondria, I just want to loop back on this because there's a woman named Suzanne Goes, a pediatric neurologist, went to Harvard, Oxford and studies autism. She's found in these autistic kids, there's a subset of these kids that have impaired mitochondrial function in their brain. 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, Absolutely. Have energy

Dr. George Papanicolaou
You know we've seen that with our autistic kids, when we give them amino acids, when we give them methylcobalamin, which is a basic nutrient, you see changes in how they dramatic. When you address the mitochondria, you're see those dramatic changes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And they also have issues around toxins. Right? So talk about toxins and mental health and particularly ADHD.

Dr. George Papanicolaou
Right. So the toxins that we look for the most and they're tested for, you know, in schools as part of your 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 and cells. They're also going to limit the neurotransmitter metabolism neurotransmitters 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. Why do we And Because find 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. And how much? And and that's gonna be a that's gonna be a product of several things. One, go back to genetics. You just may not be a good detoxer.

Right? You may have, you know, SNPs, which are single nucleotide polymorphisms. Those are like one single nucleotide change in the blueprint that makes the protein. And if that is off, then that protein is not going to work correctly. Well, if your detox proteins and enzymes are not working, you just don't detox that well.

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.

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

Dr. George Papanicolaou
I wasn't in your class.

Dr. Mark Hyman
She was she was a young mother, but she was very smart and she kinda came to us. And it turned out he his school was across the street from a cement plant. And the cement plant burns coal and coal releases mercury and lead. Every day they go in the parking lot, at the end 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 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 in 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, could be nutritional deficiency, it could be magnesium issues, it can be your gut microbiome, can be gluten. When this state of inflammation is going on in the brain, what's actually happening? How do neurotransmitters get affected?

What's happening with the brain that causes all these psychiatric symptoms?

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you'll actually see altering of, for example, NMDA receptors being impacted, which can cause that issue with glutamate. Then there's this altered, you should have an altered balance of, for example, GABA, which is more relaxing, an inhibitory neurotransmitter versus glutamate, which is triggering. So if you're having those ratios change, you're going more into a state that's excitatory, is going to cause anxiety, depression. You'll also see some of those protective cytokines like IL-ten, which are going to help with inflammation, will go down because you're going to have more of the pro inflammation. And that is actually one of the big factors feeding into things like dopamine, which make you feel good.

And dopamine is one of the ones that can go lower for somebody that's depressed.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And when you're inflamed, your dopamine

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
is And when you're inflamed, exactly, it'll go lower as those inflammatory markers increase up. So it kind of shifts the whole balance. So we need a little bit of each one. It's not, I always tell people, it's like, we do want a little bit, you know, do want some glutamate, want those things, but it's what that balance is. What happens is with inflammation, it changes not only causing the direct damage to the area of the body, but also changing that the neurotransmitter, the ratios, which will put you more in a state that is going to be more imbalanced.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think we know you we end up causing trouble with the overproduction of excitatory neurotransmitters that stimulate pathways, like you mentioned, NB or, or the lack of, of neurotransmitters that help us with mood like dopamine or, or serotonin. Right. And, and, you know, one of the tests we do in functional medicine is called an organic acid urine test, which seems like a crazy thing to do is check your urine if you're having psychiatric issues.

But in, in my patients is one of the most important tests that I do. And it's something we used to do only for people with inherited metabolic disorders. And you can get it a lot, but it's really about the more subtle changes that occur in the biomarkers that relate to what's going on in your body. And, you know, one of the one of the things we see is an increase in kinetic acid, which is just sort of a marker of a

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
pathway that increases up in terms of inflammation and is also a marker looked at when we're looking at neuroinflammation. And it changes tryptophan, and these are all precursors for things like serotonin. So kyanin pathways also a marker of concern when it comes to neuroinflammation. So

Dr. Mark Hyman
see like that sort of a sign of B6 to functional And that is B6 is required to convert tryptophan from your diet into five hydroxytryptophan in serotonin. And then when that's not working or when there's inflammation, it also blocks an enzyme. Can you talk about that enzyme, the ideal enzyme?

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. So so it blocks the enzyme that's going to help with it's causing more of the increased metabolism to, like you said, in terms of the five HIA, in terms of serotonin. So it's going to impact that pathway directly, which is going to be increasing up inflammation. But then again, the ones that are helping with things like anxiety are now getting blunted or impacted negatively where it's actually interfering with production of it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And one of the biomarkers we see on the organic acids is quinolinic acid. A lot of big words I know out there, but this is a biomarker you can check-in your urine that indicates that that the serotonin is getting shunted down a different pathway, which then leads to more anxiety, more depression. And you're getting this byproduct, which is highly inflammatory in of itself. And it's, it's a toxic kind of metabolite in the brain. And you can see it in the urine.

And I can tell when my patients' brains are inflamed, they have high levels of this, whether it's a neurodegenerative disease, whether it's ADD or autism or depression. And so, you know, we can start to understand the biochemistry of this and the neurobiology of this in ways that allow us to actually directly intervene with therapies that can fix these problems.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. And the carnion pathway is like kind of the precursor to all of those ones that you just discussed. And so also the great thing with like the OAT test, you mentioned, there's also a section that tests for catecholamines and those are all connected with norepinephrine, epinephrine, it checks for like HVA and all of those pieces in terms of your dopamine and also even like fatty acid metabolism, because we know fatty acids help to drop down CRP, which we're talking about with inflammation. And so if you don't have a good balance of omega-three, omega-six, omega-nine, you're going to be again more pro inflamed, which also is going to negatively impact your mental state. So and your physical body, obviously, but there's been tons of studies on just omegas as well, for the mental health.

Part of it is that down regulation of decreasing of the CRP levels.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So, you know, one of the things that I have been reading about, which I find fascinating, and it sort of of comports with what we're seeing in our society, which is this increase in dysregulated social behavior, right? Aggression, divisiveness, friends can't talk to each other anymore. Families are breaking up over political issues. There's just whatever's going on. There's just some something happening where our social cohesion is breaking down.

I mean, I think most Americans are pretty middle of the road and are not on the extremes, but the extremes are what we see and hear about. But there is still a level of real divisiveness in our side and a real level of like increased in aggression and school shootings and violence. And now, I mean, we see it every day and I become almost immune to these stories, which, you know, if you ever had had one, it would have been a big deal. And we didn't have this when I was growing up. It wasn't like every day or every week there's there's a new shooting in some school.

And and the the level of of just sort of oppositional behavior and anger and hostility. And I mean, it's it's like I, know, have a social media account. I just like some of the stuff up that's of benign and you get like a litany of hatred.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And I'm like, what

Dr. Mark Hyman
is going on out there? And why are people acting like this? And part of it's, you know, they can hide behind their social media handle or whatever, but I do think there's something fundamental happening to the brain. And I I've mentioned this before in the podcast, but when I was writing my book about the food system and the way our food was affecting us, I read a lot about the social aspects of it and particularly sort of studies that I came across around prisoners who, when fed a healthy diet, would decrease their violent crime in prisons by 56%. And I think a multivitamin reduced it by 80%.

And in juvenile detention centers, when kids were fed healthy diets versus the crap that they were eating, the violent crime went down by 97%. The breach of restraints went down by 75%. Suicide, which you mentioned, went down a hundred percent in an age group of teenage boys, which is the third leading cause of death. And it's just simply cleaning up the diet, which is moving them from an inflammatory to an anti inflammatory diet. So I have this theory, which is that a lot of our social disruption right now is really related to some level of neuroinflammation.

And when I was sort of reviewing your work, were talking a lot about what happens to the adult in the room, which is sort of the person that knows we shouldn't go punch somebody in the nose, right? Would want to.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Who's in charge, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
The adult in the room gets disconnected from the ancient limbic reptile brain. And there's this weird disconnection that happens where the adult is gone. And so where the, it's like, we call it the amygdala hijack, which is the hijack of our, of our behavior and our thoughts by this ancient part of our brain, which is all about survival, fight or flight. Right. So can you talk about the science around this phenomena that we're seeing around neuroinflammation affecting the connection between the kind of grown up mature person who's supposed to know how to conduct themselves socially and in life with the ancient part of our brain that just, you know, would kill anybody or do our stupid shit or anything

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
like that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So how what is the science behind that? Can you unpack that?

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And and also the trauma, like, you look at kids, what what they said have shown the trauma from all these events, like, that you were talking about. There's just long term we don't even know yet longer term issues with things like anxiety and depression as a result of the trauma that's happening It's during that genetic thing. Exactly. There's complete changes. So we have what's called the prefrontal cortex, that develops for kids up until, you know, 26 years of age.

We have what's called the amygdala.

Dr. Mark Hyman
We have So they don't rent cars. That's why the the car rental companies don't rent cars to anybody over 25. Of that reason. They know their brain's not fully developed. Grown up in the room is not in the car.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Is not actually going to be the one driving, right? So we have the hippocampus, which is like for memory. And those actually both take a hit for anxiety and depression, which makes sense. When somebody has significant depression or anxiety, you'll see a lot of memory issues, like flightiness for people with anxiety, brain fog, forgetfulness. They all

Dr. Mark Hyman
even call it pseudo dementia.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
When people

Dr. Mark Hyman
get older,

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
they get pseudo dementia depression. Exactly. And actually, even the risk of dementia is up higher for people with mental health issues as well, likely because of the neuroinflammation. So you'll see those areas. Amygdala is more connected with anxiety, and that's what controls emotions and that piece with the nine year old driving the bus versus the adult driving the bus.

And so if you're constantly getting taxed with that in everyday, day to day trauma, that is going be more dysregulated. I mean, they've had studies that show women passing, like in terms of being anxious during pregnancy, an impact on their babies that are born, the baby, the child having more anxiety and things like that. So the development of the prefrontal cortex, which is like impulse, impulses can develop up until 26 years of age, other areas of the brain that get affected, amygdala, like I mentioned, hippocampus, and other centers that help to regulate our emotions. So if there's constant inflammation on those areas or constant stress, which causes dysregulation of cortisol levels, those could potentially impact long term too as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So do you think my theory is right, that a lot of the social discord is happening as a result of brain inflammation is caused by all the factors we talked about?

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. I mean, they have tons of studies on technologies impact on dopamine, and that every time you have a hit, like even a ring on your cell phone or, know, like when you get your text, you get a dopamine hit for that. So one of the pieces is the more and more you have it, the more of a result you're having less your body's constantly needed to push out dopamine for everything with technology. One, example I had, it was great because I did a urinary test and, I was trying to get the person I was actually working with someone that I didn't know was a big gamer. And so, we did the test, and at the evening, the cortisol was, like, was the same that you would have in the morning to wake up because your cortisol should be higher in the morning to wake up.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And low at night.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then I said, what were and I knew right away. I'm like, were you playing, like, video games? And she looked and was like, how did how did you know? I'm like, number there's just a lot of like hyperactivity. Her dopamine levels were high, norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol was through the roof.

So of course, she's going to have sleep issues, which she was having. So you'll see that too. I mean, a lot of young people that are also on technology, they're staying up till late at night, as you know, and it interrupts their sleep. And if they're not getting good quality sleep, of course, they're not going to be able to focus in class. Of course, they're not going to be able to emotionally regulate as well.

So all of those things have these kind of added effects that can cause issues. But definitely technology with dopamine and as much as the parent can work with reducing it in small bits, don't try to say stop I say let's cut fifteen minutes at a time so it doesn't seem as significant. But that's what the great thing about tests are because you can actually see and show and demonstrate, and then it's easier to get people to say, oh, okay. This is why.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. I mean, I I had a nephew who was a super addicted gamer and, you know, just didn't have a life other than gaming. And long story short, he lived with me for a while, and I took it all away. I literally just hit it. And it was literally like watching someone go through heroin withdrawal.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like he went ballistic. And I was like, wow, this is like a highly addictive thing. So I think that, and he had ADHD and it just made it worse.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you know,

Dr. Mark Hyman
it made it a lot worse. I think, I think we, we have this incredible moment happening in the field of psychiatry where we're beginning to understand the brain in mental health, not just the mind. And, you know, talk therapy can be helpful. Sometimes psychiatric medication can be helpful, but it's a pretty limited tool set. And now we have a whole new set of tools.

So when you when you see sort of someone come in and, you know, they could have anything or anything from schizophrenia to bipolar disease to depression, there's a process you go through to try to figure things out, you know, like like, you know, because depression is not a Prozac deficiency. Right? Exactly. And, and, you know, it's kind of how we treat it, right? We, we, we, we, I call it the naming, blaming and taming game.

This came from my mentor, Sid Baker. He says we, we named the disease by the symptoms and then we blame the name for the cause. And then we tame it with the drug. So we say, oh, the reason you're hopeless and helpless and have no interest in life and don't can't sleep and have an interest in sex and no one have an appetite and you feel sad and you wanna cry all the time is because you're depressed. That's what's causing your symptoms.

Well, no, that's just the name that we give to people who share those symptoms. The cause could be you're eating gluten and that's causing brain inflammation, or you had a been having a bad diet and had reflux because you eat 20 fried foods and end up on an acid blocker for ten years, which depletes your B12 and zinc and magnesium, or because you maybe have no vitamin D and that causes depression. And you're

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
looking to see like, where does it land? I always say that for autoimmune conditions, it's like, to me, it's all the same thing. There's different names, you know, but it's like, where does it I say like land? And then that's why people have like three autoimmune conditions. And I'm like, is it really three different ones or is their system just attacking itself and Yeah.

It's finding their

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like Aspen trees, you know, like they all look like separate trees, but they're all one underneath.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Still the same.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so that's kind of how most diseases are. They're not comorbidities or not things that just happen to be randomly showing up. I'm like, you know, this kid that I was mentioned before at ADD had like 12 different diagnoses, and was on seven different medications and was seeing five or six different specialists. And no one asked, how are all these things connected? Like, are these just, yes.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And when did it start and how did it start? Exactly. And things like that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, the beauty is that we can start to actually think differently about how to approach these problems and start to think about the common things, the common root causes and how to one do the diagnostic evaluation, which can pick a lot of these things up and also the treatment strategies. And it can be something simple, like, you know, like I mentioned with depression, I mean, can be a B vitamin deficiency. And I was writing my book and I think I was talking to somebody on the phone about it, whatever. And he heard me, we were talking, it was like, I was fixing my TV in my office and it happened to be working when he was there. And he's like, oh yeah, I listening to what you're saying.

And, you know, I was really severely depressed. And, and then I took, you know, these B vitamins like B6, Folate and B12, and it went away. Actually methylfolate or is actually a prescription drug, quote drug, which is an activated form of folate that psychiatrists use for treating depression.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's all like kind of this like one thing at a time. It's like still the drug model. It's not really a holistic view of the body as a system. What Doctor. So, Krauss, when someone comes to you, see you and they're suffering from whether it's depression or whether it's more PTSD, or maybe they're having some psychotic kind of borderline issues or bipolar, where do you start?

And then how do you kind of find the things that are driving the problem? And then what are the sort of steps you take to help resolve that?

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I think my most important thing is to also meet people, like, where they're at. So, initially, I'm trying to just extensive. You just wanna

Dr. Mark Hyman
I just want people to do what I wanna do. I know how to get you better.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would

Dr. Mark Hyman
be You don't get to choose.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would make life a lot easier. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty, actually, convincing because I said, look. Let's try this for ten days and

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
see if can That's what I say. I'm like, let's try removing this food for a week and see how you feel. And then people come back, they're like, oh, yeah. It worked. So I think the one thing when people see like naturopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors, they're going to get tons of lab work done initially.

That's always really important to me in the assessment because I'm going to look at environmental factors like I mentioned, like metal, lead. You mentioned when you were saying about juvenile delinquency of changing food, there are studies that even show there's higher rates of schizophrenia after the age of 14, actually Juvenile delinquency and schizophrenia if they've drank from private well water and poor So even when you go talking about food, it's like, what is the quality of their water? What is their environment by way of pollution? Had children that we've had

Dr. Mark Hyman
parasites who

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly, even parasites where they've had ADHD, and then they found that there was a lot of mold in their bedroom, they removed that and all the kids' symptoms were gone. Or I've had even adults that were exhausted, and then when I did the assessment, I find out they drink four ounces of water. And I'm like, okay, if you try to drink water, they come back. They're like, I feel completely new. Like, how is your body eliminating toxins?

So that's what I said, meaning people are at because there could be just basic things that people aren't even aware of. But typically with assessment, it's going to include like their metals. It's gonna include things like you said, like a O test. I'm gonna look at other infections, organic acid tests. I'm gonna look at if someone's like that rule of like ever since of like, I got sick at this time.

And then ever since then, this happened. For women, a lot of times, hormones so, like, after they have a beat, after they have a kid, you'll see those hormones drop down, which hormones actually are like estrogen, can be, if it's in a high amount, more pro inflammatory and testosterone more So anti you'll see when there's a shift of that or, the cycle or perimenopause, autoimmune conditions will go up too. So I'm looking to see like what that pattern is of like when it actually became dysregulated and getting as much like laboratory assessment, but like really having deep in-depth conversations because of their

Dr. Mark Hyman
you can, Oh yeah, I was fine until I moved in that house.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Tell me about that house. Well, you know, it was okay, but it was a little damp basement or had like, I think we had mold in the bathroom or something. And you get you get these clues. And I think, you know, in traditional medicine, sort of ignore most of those clues. Like, you know, your psychiatrist didn't ask about mold or how much tuna you

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
ate or, you

Dr. Mark Hyman
know, right.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Or were you inflamed Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
No, that's true. And I, you know, I think you mentioned lab testing. You know, I co founded a company called Function Health and we do a full panel of lab testing and we look at a lot of things that do affect psychiatric health from your nutritional levels of vitamin D of evaluation of the B vitamins for homocysteine and methamylonic acid, which are ways of looking at B12, folate and B6. We look at red cell magnesium. We look at zinc.

We look at also other factors like metabolic health, insulin resistance, which can affect depression. Look at sex hormones can affect mood. Look at

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
heavy

Dr. Mark Hyman
metals. So we we get a really and we look at inflammation, you know, we've I don't mind blowing to me, but in our population, we've done 5,000,000 biomarkers on over 40,000 people and forty six percent have high CRPs. Thirty percent have high ANA. Sixty seven percent have a nutritional deficiency, whether it's iron, like you mentioned, homocysteine problems or magnesium or omega threes. And we look at all these things as part of a fundamental panel to see what's going on.

And it's amazing if you start to fix these things, people get better. Sometimes you have to go deeper, right? Not just always just cleaning up your diet and, and, and eliminating inflammatory foods and adding a, a number of nutrients that may be helpful for your brain or nutrient deficient in. It may also be like, okay, well, I gotta deal with the heavy metals or I gotta deal with Lyme disease or I gotta deal with obesity or I gotta deal with mold. And those are, those are things that we don't really deal with well with traditional medicine.

But if you're a single functional medicine doctor, you know, they can see you in your practice in Connecticut.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They can

Dr. Mark Hyman
come to our, our center in the, in Lenox, Massachusetts, the Ultra Wellness Center. And we deal with all these chronic complex issues. And we deal with the sort of the crisis in mental health. And I, you know, I did a documentary series years ago called The Broken Brain. And it's really about, you know, how most of our brains are not working properly.

And we don't really have a great way to deal with brain disorders because our whole thinking has been completely wrong.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And focus and, I mean, I have so many, like, I feel like over half of my patients, you asked about brain fog or focus. It's like more than half of them have an issue. It's this like of the activity with their brain and managing everything that they're doing and rates of, what, ADHD going up Is and it truly that? Or is it, you know, we're just doing too much as society? Part of what I talked about in the presentation giving for IFM, too, were the other things outside of, like, even diet is, like, the benefits of, like, sauna how that showed to decrease CRP levels.

And also in studies that they did in Europe, for men, that there was like decreased chance of like things like schizophrenia, forest bathing, forest That's crazy.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Just want to

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
stop that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You just said take a second Sonic and help reduce psychiatric symptoms and even schizophrenia.

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly, schizophrenia. That's crazy. Yeah, and this was a study of men at large for like decades. And they showed that there were lower rates of things like schizophrenia. If you look at, also it decreases CRP levels, which we keep talking about with inflammation.

You also look at like forest bathing. There was a study in Japan to show that the CRP levels went down significantly with more forest bathing and lasted for a period of time. So these are all the things that you can get people to do in small steps that just shows there's that lack of connection. Like loneliness, I think, is a huge factor. And that's one of the biggest things we're always trying to work Even at in our with anxiety, they've shown the most effective is doing that with group therapy, like treatment.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Totally,

Dr. Jaquel Patterson
yeah. Plus therapy. Think it takes a community, but it's like you doing things to detach yourself from technology, like, you know, grounding, sauna, those things, but then also your community of people around you to be able to support you as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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 gonna 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 her kid to see me.

He 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 gonna 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 three year old writing versus a 12 year old. And then within two 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 to actually, help you understand how we need to start approaching these disorders in a very different way.

So basically, one day, this woman walks in my office, a 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 all was treat 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 and the connections that give rise to the clues about the cause. So basically, 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, was kicked out of kindergarten. I mean, who's who's kicked out of kindergarten? Right?

He he had terrible writing. We call it dysgraphia. He was pretty good at 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 postnasal 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 infection. He couldn't sleep well. Had He 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. I my joke is I take care of patients, 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 were treating all the symptoms with seven different medications from five different doctors. Ritalin for ADD, allergy medicine, inhalers for his 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, 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 cause is 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.

Let see how they're connected. So the medications he was on were were kinda nuts, and they weren't helping much. But he's not alone. Most kids go on tons of medications from allergy medication to antidepressants to stimulants. And 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 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. What 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 one of the basic categories of things that matter, right, is 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 balance. So my job as a detective to figure out where this particular child's imbalances were and fix them and see what happens. Right?

I just kinda put things back in balance like tuning up a car, and then you kinda hope, crush fingers, and usually, it works. Sometimes you you kinda get stuck or there's something else you missed, but but it's actually quite effective. So the 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 his life. And it's typical of a lot of these kids who were 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, you know, most people do not dig below the surface to look at labs. And we did a deep dive.

We found he had omega three fat deficiency, APA 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 b six, which is important for making serotonin and from tryptophan and helping his mood. Right? His mood was unstable. He had sleep issues. And so that, you know, B six was a big factor.

It's often with, with kids with ADD or autism. And we see, you know, also vitamin A deficiency, which is important for immunity. And the omega three deficiency and vitamin A deficiency led to little things like bumps on his backs. We call these hyperkeratosis pilaris. So 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 is 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 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. He also had low magnesium.

Magnesium deficiency is really common and it led to headaches, anxiety, insomnia, muscle cramps, spasms, aches, hypersensitivity to loud noises. All these are signs of magnesium deficiency. And we do testing. And I recently started 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 gonna talk about with Clayton. Things that are often missed by a traditional doctor are not checked.

When was the last time your doctor checked your omega-three level or vitamin A or magnesium or vitamin D? These are all part of our our standard, Function Health panels, and I think it's really important for you to think about. So go check out functionhealth.com. You can sign up for the wait list. 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 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 inflam 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 and 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 and so we found he really was sensitive to gluten. So gluten basically is a huge factor for these kids often with ADD or or autism.

It triggers this low grade chronic inflammation in the brain and 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 his l he had elevated antiglottin 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 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 had 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 a 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 took at immune issues. We look at the causes.

And so we started to look at, you know, whether or not he had any environmental toxins, which we know can cause ADD and even autism. And and heavy metals were an issue for him. He had high levels of lead and mercury. And he had, you know, similar probably 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 date on this.

You don't have to 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 we have, so many cement factories, coal burning factories, all of which spew out lead and mercury.

It goes into the soil. Kids are playing in the dirt, or maybe there's toys made from China are covered with lead paint, or maybe the people have leaded paint in their house or is 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 a 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, body is, a system of 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 that you need to be in balance. Right? You have all these deficiencies of nutritional stuff, all all these other things like yeast overgrowth and heavy metals and gluten. They were irritating the system. So we 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. 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 Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out.

I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor 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 doctor 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.

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