ADHD is a complex, often genetic neurological condition characterized by specific brain function differences, distinct from general distractibility in today's overwhelming world, and requires understanding and appropriate treatment rather than simple medication or dismissal.
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How do I know the difference between
whether I have ADHD or I'm just
distracted because we're living in an
overwhelming time? Short attention span,
distractability, disorganization,
impulsivity, and hyperactivity. They
can't sit still. Psychiatrist and
clinical neuroscientist Dr. Daniel
Ammon. One pioneering psychiatrist says
that feeling better starts with
understanding your brain. And 90% of
mothers work outside the house. When
they have untreated
ADD, they often look depressed and they
get on something like Flexipro, which
actually makes them more ADD, happier,
but more distracted, happier, less
focused, happier, more impulsive.
You eliminate gluten, dairy, corn, soy,
artificial dyes, and sweeteners. 70% of
the kids lost their ADB. No way.
Someone's sitting here thinking, "Well,
I'm not going to achieve anything with
my life because I've got ADHD." What
The number one health and wellness
podcast, J Shetty. J Shetty, the one,
the only J Shetty.
I want to start pretty direct. Why does
it seem like everyone today has ADHD? A
lot of people do, but our society is dramatically
dramatically
elevating it. When you think of the
gadgets that steal our attention, the
ultrarocessed foods that our brain
really doesn't like, the chronic stress,
it's like, what's the simple answer? And
the simple answer is, let me medicate
you. and you'll focus better, but not
for long. And so, as our society has
taken more medication, we have not
gotten healthier. So, I think for people
who really have ADD or ADHD, and I use
those terms interchangeably
because the way we diagnose people, it
used to be ADD and by a vote of people,
they changed it to ADHD, which I think
was actually a big mistake. It's always
been there, right? You can actually look
in the Old Testament and you go, "These
people had ADD." The real ADD is
genetic. You get it from your mom or
dad. You can see it in your people. You
can see it in your ancestors.
And left untreated,
they're very serious problems. So if I
think somebody really has ADD and that
medicine would help them, they always
go, "What are the side effects?" Always
tell them, "Your appetite will be less.
Take it too late in the day, you may
have trouble sleeping." Um, sometimes
people get headaches or tummy aches.
Those almost always go away. If you're
prone to ticks, you may have more ticks.
But I want them to ask the other
question is what are the side effects of
not taking appropriate treatment for
ADD? And it's things like school failure
and drug abuse and incarceration,
divorce, bankruptcy. I'm so happy we're
talking about it because this is a
really serious issue because if you go
to places like prison, there's a high
percentage of people who have untreated
ADD that did not have proper focus or
impulse control. So would you say that
is ADHD being overdiagnosed? I think
it's overdiagnosed
and underdiagnosed.
overdiagnosed o overall because people
see this as the simple answer.
Underdiagnosed especially in people who
are not hyperactive
or females
because we still have gender bias in
this country. If you have a little boy
and he's not doing well in school, you
get really worried because you realize
he's going to have to take care of her
family someday. for a girl if she's not
doing as well. Well, you think maybe
she's not that smart and you hope she
marries somebody nice, which is
completely irrational
given that we now have three generations
of women who are in the workforce here
in California. 90% of mothers work
outside the house. And when they have untreated
untreated ADD,
ADD,
they often look depressed and they get
on something like Lexapro on an SSRI,
which actually makes them more ADD, but
now they don't care that they're more
ADD because serotonin, we'll talk about
it, they counterbalance each other. So
serotonin is the neurotransmitter
of happiness of flexibility. Dopamine
more the neurotransmitter focus motivation.
motivation.
Let's follow through and get this done.
And when one goes up, so serotonin goes
up, someone puts you on an SSRI,
dopamine goes down. And so happier but
more distracted. happier, less focused,
happier, more impulsive. Yeah. And I
think that's what so many people are
feeling today where they naturally feel
a sense of brain fog. They're
overwhelmed with information. I was
reading somewhere that we now consume 72
gigabytes of information per day which
someone had translated to reading a
100,000 words every single day which
when you think about that that is so
overwhelming. So how do I know the
difference between whether I have ADHD
or I'm just distracted because we're
living in an overwhelming time. So you
look for patterns of behavior over time.
So the hallmark features of ADD or ADHD,
the first one is short attention span.
It's really hard to focus, but not for
everything. And this is what fools
people. It's short attention span for
regular routine everyday things, school
work, homework, paperwork, chores. the
things that make life work. And if you
have a half an hour of homework, parents
will often say it takes him or her two
hours to do and I have to structure
their time. That's very common. But for
things that are new, novel, highly stimulating
stimulating
or frightening, people with ADD can pay
attention just fine because they have
their own intrinsic dopamine. And what I
find is love is a drug. Love is
dopamine. So say you're getting all C's
and D's except one A. and the A whether
it's in history or whatever, it's
because you love the teacher or you love
the subject. But it's not this one thing
we should be looking at. It's the
pattern of your attention span over
time. The second is they're easily
distracted. And what that means is they
see too much, they hear too much, they
taste too much, they smell too much. So
they're constantly
distracted by the world coming at them.
The brain is really good at suppressing unnecessary
unnecessary
noises or unnecessary thoughts. But when
you're preffrontal cortex, so we'll talk
about that. The front part of your
brain, the front third of your brain,
largest in humans than any other animal
by far. When it's sleepy, it can't sort
of suppress the noise. I grew up three
houses from the freeway in Southern
California and lots of noise, but I
never heard it because my brain went,
"Oh, you don't need to listen to that."
So, it would suppress it. So, someone
who has ADHD, can't suppress it.
Interesting. And so, the world comes at
them too much. And you you see it with
the clothes they wear. They hate seams
and they hate tags because their body
feels it. So, I've been married twice.
Both of my wives have ADD of one form or
another. And the first time when I got
married, I went, it's like right after I
got married, I went to my closet to get
a shirt and I noticed the tag was cut
out of my shirt. And I'm like, that's
weird. And then I looked at all of my
shirts and all of the tags were out and
I felt violated. And I went into the
living room with the shirt and I'm like,
"Why is my shirt missing the tag?" She
goes, "Oh, don't you hate tags? Like, I
hate tags. I thought you'd really like
that I cut them all out for you." And
I'm like, "I've never felt a tag in my
life. Please don't damage my clothing."
That's Yeah, that's fascinating to me.
So, because I can relate to what you
said, I'm very unaffected by outside
noise and definitely my brain creates
the same boundary that you said yours
does, where I could be in a really noisy
environment, but I can go totally
internal if I'm focused on something.
Now, does that mean that we're born with
ADHD or can we train attention? Well, we
can train attention, but ADHD I'm
talking about is what you're born with.
What you see it in your mom, you see it
in your dad. I have, they told you my
first wife had ADD, which means
three of my children have it. So, I know
more about this than I want to. And if
you think of distractability,
what does an orgasm require?
Focus. You have to pay attention to the
feeling long enough
in order to have an orgasm. And so if
that becomes really hard, well, that's a
problem for both the person and their
partner because their partner will like,
"Oh, she doesn't love me or I'm not
enough." when it has nothing to do with
that. It's just they're easily
distracted. People with sort of the real
ADD, they need white noise at night. And
I'm like, it's the middle of winter.
Like, why is the fan on? It's like, oh,
I need the noise or I won't be able to
sleep cuz I hear everything that's in
the house. So, short attention span, not
for everything. easily distracted,
disorganized. So, it's hard for them.
It's not natural for them. If you look
at their rooms, their desks, their book
bags, their filing cabinets, and time,
they're often late. And I like to be
early. I'm like, if I have if I have a
flight, I'm there two hours early
because my brain thinks of all the
things that could go wrong on the way to
the airport and the flight's important
to me. People with ADD, it's last
minute. Last minute. And I used to
fight. I'm like, "No, we need to go."
And and then I just started lying. It's like
like
the flight is at noon. Uh when really it
was at 1:00. And because her
organization wasn't such, she didn't
really catch on to how much of that is
training. Like I feel like I grew up
with a mom who is very meticulous with
time. So my mom trained me to always
believe that if you're not early, you're
late. And so I also live in a world that
you do, which is I'm always at the
airport early. I'm always making sure of
anything that could go wrong. Security
could take a bit longer. There's so many
other things that to me I've always felt
came because I had a mom who was super
organized and I've inherited that by
watching her even now like my mom
trained me how to make sure we locked
all the doors at night and you know we
didn't grow up in a really safe area so
there was this very hyper attention to
make sure so I'm very good at that and
how could have been because her brain
was busy in the front and she also gave
that to you. Yeah. Right. So, some of it
is training, but if she had ADD, she
wouldn't give that to you and you would
often be chronically stressed because
she wouldn't get you to school on time
or she wouldn't be there on time to pick
you up or it's really important you have
a soccer practice and you're late. the
the level of stress in ADD ADHD families
is very high because of the
distractability, the disorganization.
And the fourth one is procrastination.
They don't do things until someone's mad
at them to get it done. They need stress
in order to get stuff done. And that
just makes everybody around them
stressed. Uh, and it makes them stress
because, you know, they're often late
because they actually don't start
getting ready until it's like, "Oh my
god, I'm late." And then they always
show up like either right on time,
flustered, or 10 minutes late, always
apologizing. And that's different from
people who perform well under stress.
This is someone who needs stress in
order to perform. In order to perform.
Yeah. Right. If your child's struggling
in school, make sure they're not taking
their iPad to bed. So often it's because
kids are sleepdeprived. They look like
they have ADD because parents are really
not properly supervising the kids. You
eliminate gluten, dairy, corn, soy,
artificial dyes, and sweeteners. 70% of
the kids lost their ADD. No way. So the
first thing is not let me give you this
drug in my mind. The first thing is do a
digital detox and do an elimination diet
and do it for a month. Food is so
important. If they really have ADD or
ADHD, they're going to have it 3 months
from now or four months from now. Let's
do this
and see because I think if someone
really has ADD, withholding medicine is
like withholding glasses from someone
who can't see. And that's neglect. When
I first started imaging, it was on an
ADD woman. So, I went into a lecture on
brain spec imaging in my hospital in
April 1991. And I walked out and I had a
new patient. and her name was Sandy and
she was 44 and she was beautiful and
undermployed. She had an IQ of 144 and
she was a lap tech and she was in the
hospital because she had a suicide
attempt the night before in an impulsive
act when she and her husband had a
fight. And I'm like, ADD, ADD, ADD. She
had an 8-year-old son that had ADD. And
I'm like, I think you have ADD. And
she's like, oh, adults can't have it.
And thinking to myself, but not saying
it because I don't have ADD. It's like,
I'm the doctor. Adults totally can have
ADD. And I said, "Can I scan you?" Cuz
I've just learned about this new
technology. And I scanned her twice.
Once at rest, once when she did a
concentration task. And when she tried
to concentrate, the front part of her
brain shut down rather than what it
should have done was turn on. And I put
the This is why I love imaging. I put
the scans on her hospital table and I
was explaining to them and she started
to cry and she said, "You mean it's not
my fault?"
And that's the moment I got hooked on
imaging cuz I already knew the diagnosis.
diagnosis.
She it immediately evaporated shame. And
then she's like, "All right, let's talk
about adult ADD." and she had all of the
things including the impulse control
issues, but because she was so bright,
she didn't bring enough negative
attention to herself and never gotten
the help. And after I treated her, she
finished college. She stopped picking on
her husband. Because another trait that
a lot of people don't understand is they
become negative seeking,
conflict seeking, and excitement
seeking. And those are all dopamined
driven behavior. So if you have a low
level of dopamine, well, if you pick a
fight with someone, now all of a sudden
there's some excitement going on. If you
jump out of an airplane, that has a
whole bunch of dopamine associated with
it. But and I experienced this. It was
that poking. It's like, we're going on
vacation. Why are we having a problem?
and activating their frontal loes,
they're less negative. And I'm just
publishing a study on negativity bias.
So, I'm very interested in are you
positive or are you negative? Now,
unbridled positive thinking is a
disaster. You die early. But negative
thinking, you actually have low function
in your frontal loes. And many of the
ADD people I see tend to see the glass
as half empty and that wears on them. So
if we highlight the short attention span
not for everything disorganization procrastination
procrastination
impulse control it's like the break in
their brain is vulnerable
and they say things often that you
shouldn't say. It's like the inside
voice gets out. They do things that it's
like wish I hadn't done that. So they
actually live with a lot of regret. And
your preffrontal cortex is called the
executive part of the brain because it's
like the boss at work. It's involved in
focus, forethought, judgment, impulse
control, organization, planning,
empathy, learning from the mistakes you
make. And when it's sleepy,
you have all those problems which just
describes ADD. And um strengthening it
is critical to your humanity.
Did you know that sociopaths have 10%
less volume in their preffrontal cortex?
So they're a little less human, if you
will. Even 10% has that impact. 10%.
It's huge. And this is why you should
never let a child hit a soccer ball with
their forehead. It's just so stupid. And
like I'm not a huge fan of allowing kids
to play tackle football because it's
more likely to damage the part of them that
that
is the boss. And people who have ADD are
often executives of their own companies
because they don't work well often with
other people. And so they're
entrepreneurial and some wildly famous
people have said they had ADD like the
person who started JetBlue. He was
public with that. It can look false. It
can be masquerade. you have ADD because
your parents gave you an iPhone when you
were a year old. And I think we're
wising up. That's not a good thing to
do. But still,
children should not have smartphones
until they're 15, 16. Social media.
Australia banned social media under 16.
I think that's so great, right? Taking
the neuroscience and making it public
policy. California, you can't start
school in the morning before 8:00.
Taking the what we know with
neuroscience, kids who get just an hour
less sleep have a higher incidence of
depression and suicide. So, all right,
cut out the zero periods. I love that
neuroscience and then public policy. Do
we know what causes ADHD? It's genetic.
people are not producing
enough dopamine and the medicines we use
like rolin or aderall they increase the
availability of dopamine now the problem
is is if you don't really have it what
you have is society induced ADHD the
medicine will disrupt you and make you
worse and early on I realized when I
scanned people cuz I've scanned 30 or
40,000 people who have ADD of one type
or another. It's not one thing. Early
on, I'm like, "Oh, it's seven different
things." And so, my book, Healing ADD, I
talk about seeing heal the seven types.
And so, can I talk about the type? That
I was just about to ask my next
question. You you're already you're
already one step ahead of me. So, let me
let me ask you. So, type one is the
classic most people think of ADHD. short
attention span, distractability,
disorganization, impulsivity, and
hyperactivity. They can't sit still. And
one of my kids when she was born, we
thought she was going to be a boy
because in her mother's womb, she was so
active. And the lore is the more active
a baby is inside their mother, the more
likely they are to be a boy. She wasn't.
When I held her older sister, we could
watch movies. She'd sit on my lap. She
was just calm. Her sister when he tried
to hold her was like trying to hold a
live salmon. She's so wiggly. And then I
take her to the mall. She would have
been one of those children on the little
yellow leashes, the big bird leashes in
the mall. But I wrote a column in the
local newspaper. So when I went to the
mall, people recognized me. It's like,
Dr. Ammon, I loved your column. Why is
your child on a leash? So, what I used
to do with Kaitlyn is put her in her
stroller and tie her shoes together so
she couldn't get out cuz she's like,
"Where are you going?" And I remember
just holding her hand. I take my little
pinky and wrap it around her wrist
because and I had spiritual problems
because of this child. We would go to
church and I don't know why Catholics
take children into church rather than,
you know, send them to children's
church. But anyways, she was so active
and blurting out and I'm like the only
child psychiatrist in the county and if
my child is the worst one that's bad for
business. So I used to take her out and
threaten her life and now I'm worried
about her eternal soul. and I adore her
and she's 37 now and Haven is just like
her, which is, you know, my six-year-old
granddaughter is just like her. It's
genetic. And when we first got her
diagnosed, the doctor who was really
great looked at me and then looked at
her mother and goes, "So, who has this
cuz it's genetic." And I'm like, "It's
not me. I do everything early." now
written 42 books. Every one of them's
been handed in early. And her mom goes,
"It's not me." But then I was so
grateful cuz it took her like 12 years
to get through college. And she just she
asked her this one question. This is a
great adult ADD question cuz she was
still in college at the time. She goes,
"How do you study?" She goes, "Oh, I can
never study at home. I get so
distracted." I go inside my little car
underneath a street lamp. No kids, no
noise, nothing. there I can study and
the doctor goes you have ADD
it was very helpful for me and for her
that's type one that's type one classic
type two is inattentive ADD
short attention span distractability
disorganized procrastinate but they're
not impulsive and more common in girls
they're not hyperactive in fact they can
a little bit hypo active. And those
first two types were described in the
DSM when they first created this
diagnostic category in 1980. I describe
the next five types. The third one is
overfocused ADD where the problem is not
so much you can't concentrate,
it's you can't shift your attention that
you get stuck. And if you can't shift
your attention, you cannot pay
attention. But it's a different
mechanism. And I found this to be a
particularly true in children and
grandchildren of alcoholics. And they
tend to be argumentative, oppositional
oppositional
worry. If things don't go their way,
they get upset. And on the surface, they
appear selfish. They're really not
selfish. they're just not flexible and
stimulants tend to make them more
worried and more upset. Type four is
called limbic ADD. It's where their
emotional brain is too busy and it's
sort of like ADD plus
mild depression and the glass is always
half empty for them. Type five I think
is such an interesting one is temporal
lobe ADD. They have problems in one or
both of their temporal loes. Often goes
with learning problems, but mood
instability, irritability, temper
problems. One of my first great cases
was Chris. He his third psychiatric
hospitalization. This time he took a
pencil and put it in the neck of one of
his classmates. Stimulants made him
hallucinate uh all the other medicines.
And I'm like, I'm scanning you. And he
had left problem. which goes with
violence. I put him on an
anti-combulsant, an anti-seizure
medicine, became the sweetest kid. And
then he still had trouble concentrating.
So then after I got the temporal
override, I gave him a stimulant.
Masterful. I mean, this kid just did phenomenally
phenomenally
well. And then the ring of fire, that's
one I may be most known for. The problem
is not low activity, it's too much
activity. Please don't give them a
stimulant because they can become
violent and aggressive. Actually use a
supplement to calm things down in their
brain. Very effective. Then the last
one's anxious ADD where they're really
anxious and so they tend to be early to
things but disorganized, distracted, so
on. So knowing the type and that's why
rolin has a bad reputation for the right
brain it's miraculous for the wrong
brain it's a nightmare a lot of people
who have ADHD say they feel emotions
much more strongly and deeply can they
start to regulate their emotions is
there a way to do that or is that
medication well and sometimes with the
medicine they don't like it because it
feels like it suppresses their emotions
interesting And my daughter Caitlyn when
I put her on rolin cuz she was
hyperactive and then she was
dramatically less hyperactive. But I
found I had to titrate the dose down
because I could see it putting a lid on
her personality, which is not what you
want to do. And so often you want to
work with someone who's really
knowledgeable to titrate the dose up and
down effectively. If you're a baseball
player, so just thinking of athletes,
the medicine gives you a better batting
average. If you're a linebacker in
football, you might be a little bit less aggressive
aggressive
because you're more thoughtful, right?
So if you want to play with abandon, you
probably don't want a stimulant. on
board. But I find for some of my
professional athletes, they're just much
more focused and less likely to get
technical fouls because they're not a
hotthead. And when you see the world
like I see it and you're watching, you
know, someone have a meltdown on the
court, I'm like, I wonder what's going
on in that person's brain, right? Rather
than just judge them is bad. I haven't
scanned Draymond Green, but I want to. I
saw a study that found that children
with untreated ADHD are nearly twice as
likely to develop an alcohol use
disorder or other substance abuse
problem. Why is that? Because of the
lack of impulse control and they don't
like how they feel. Right? If you've
been told every day to settle down or
you've brought negative attention to
yourself over time, it activates
your emotional brain and you want to
settle it down and you don't have good
forethought or good impulse control and
you're more likely to drink and it's
just so prevalent. Plus with society.
During the Super Bowl, there were 30
beer commercials and the rest of them
were Jack in the Box, right? So, it's
like we we're just being flooded with
these awful messages that take people
who have ADD, make them more ADD, and
then they engage in habits that aren't
helpful. Do you think there should be a
ban on alcohol advertisements as much as
there is obviously on smoking? Like,
yeah, it's not a health food. I mean,
the American Cancer Society came out
three years ago and said you shouldn't
drink because it increases your risk of
seven different types of cancer. The
surgeon general last year said we should
put alcohol cancer warning label signs
on alcohol. I think when you just look
at our society from the digital
addictions and social media and
technology to the bad food, the
ultrarocessed food that so many people
that's 80 or 90% of their diet to
marijuana is innocuous which is a
complete lie. Alcohol is a health food.
No. And now the big new thing is
psilocybin. It's great medicine. And
it's an anti-depressant. It'll treat
your PTSD
and it's increased
psychosis to emergency rooms 300%.
It is not innocuous. Now, might it
become a a good treatment? I don't know.
But I feel like I've seen this party
before, right? One of the big benefits
of being 70 is you've seen lots of
things. The early 80s, benzo are
innocuous. their mommy little helper. We
know benzo are highly addictive and
increased the risk of dementia. The
early 90s alcohol is good for your
heart. You should drink. It's a lie. You
shouldn't drink. It increases your risk
of stupidity and cancer, right? And if
you're ADD and you have sleepy frontal
loes, now you drink, you have sleepier
frontal loes, still not a good thing.
And then pain is the fifth vital sign,
right? The Purdue Pharmaceuticals came
out with let's let's get more people to
take opiates and came out with these
campaigns and spent billions of dollars
on marketing and it was a disaster. And
then the whole marijuana is innocuous
during not this presidential campaign,
the last one. Joe Biden was debating and
they asked him, "Should the federal
government legalize marijuana?" And he
said, "No, I don't think there's enough
research." And Cy Booker, the senator
from New Jersey, shames him on national
television and he said, "Man, are you
high like the science is settled." Well,
as more places legalize it, the science
is getting settled. It's bad for us,
right? If you use as a teenager, it
increases anxiety, depression,
psychosis, and suicide in your 20s. I
published a study on a thousand
marijuana users. Every area of the brain
is lower in blood flow. And I got so
much grief for it. And two months ago in
Jamama psychiatry
on a thousand marijuana users the memory
and learning centers are lower in blood
flow and activity. This is not innocuous.
innocuous.
It's all these lies that then increase
the expression of ADD. And so you know
how do you know? You look at someone's
history over time, right? All of us have
ADD moments, but that's not ADD. Having
ADD is these hallmark symptoms have
followed you most of your life. So for
parents who are listening right now and
they're starting to see a young child
maybe have one of the types or some of
the symptoms, what would you encourage
them to do? You know, I have a free
online test called addypetest.com.
they could take that for people if
you've been struggling and it's like you
really believe it's not just
environmental right I mean the first
thing if your child's struggling in
school make sure they're not taking
their iPad to bed so often it's because
kids are sleepdeprived they look like
they have ADD because parents are really
not properly supervising the kids do a
digital detox and then I have to say
this because there's this great study
published in the Lancet replicated that
when you put kids on an elimination
diet. So what does that mean? You
eliminate gluten, dairy, corn, soy,
artificial dyes, and sweeteners. 70% of
the kids lost their ADD. No way. So the
first thing is not let me give you this
drug. In my mind, the first thing is do
a digital detox. and do an elimination
diet and do it for a month. And I was
like, "Oh, I can't do that." It's like,
"It's not that hard." My wife, Tana,
wrote a cookbook, Healing ADD at Home
Through Food, or The Brain Warriors Way.
That's her big cookbook. It's been
reprinted like 53 times. I'm so proud of
her. And find foods the kids love that
love them back. Food is so important. Do
that first. And I always tell I'm like,
"Look, if they really have ADD or ADHD,
they're going to have it 3 months from
now or 4 months from now. Let's do this
and see." I have an online course called
Healing ADD at home in 30 days. And it's
basically before you give them medicine,
do these things first. And it's so
helpful. Why does changing our diet
affect ADHD? Why does removing gluten,
removing processed foods, etc. Why does
that impact it? Your brain is 2% about
your body's weight. It uses 20 to 30% of
the calories you consume. And so if you
have a fast food diet, you're likely to
have a fast food mind. And both gluten
and dairy when they go to your stomach
when it mixes with stomach acid, it
turns into something called glutiomorphins
glutiomorphins
which work on the heroin centers or the
opiate centers of your brain and it just
sort of spaces you out. For milk, it's quomorphins
