Show Notes:
Beyond Medication: Discover the powerful connection between ADHD and diet.

Discover the power of nutrition in managing ADHD symptoms. In this insightful interview, we delve into the world of functional medicine and explore how dietary changes can improve focus, behavior, and overall well-being for children with ADHD.

Key Topics:

• The connection between diet and ADHD
• Personalized nutrition plans
• The role of functional medicine labs
• Practical tips for parents
• The future of ADHD treatment

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• 💻Website: https://sgintegrativehealing.com
• 🎥YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/motivated2heal

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Disclaimer: The information provided in this video is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions related to your health or the health of your child.

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Episode #114: Can Food Help Kids with ADHD Focus?

Beyond Medication: Discover the powerful connection between ADHD and diet.

(Recorded May 28, 2024)

Full Transcript of Interview:

Sandie: I think for, for people, the really big experiment is not to read the study. It’s to say, you know, I’m going to try this out in my home and start to remove these things and see, does it change my child’s behavior?

Tonya: Is your child struggling with ADHD? Tired of the same old solutions that don’t seem to work?

You’re not alone. Millions of parents worldwide are grappling with the challenges of raising a child with ADHD. While medication is often the first line of defense, many parents are turning to natural and holistic approaches to help their children thrive. In this episode, we’ll delve into the world of nutritional interventions for ADHD.

We’ll explore how specific dietary changes can significantly improve focus, behavior, and overall well being. Welcome to the Water Prairie Chronicles, a podcast for parents of children with disabilities. I’m your host, Tonya Wollum, and I’m glad you’re here. The information provided in this video is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as medical advice.

Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions related to your health or the health of your child. My guest today is Sandie Gascon, an integrative healing practitioner, author of Heal Yourself, and founder of the Integrative Healing Academy. Sandie, welcome to Water Prairie.

Well, thanks for having me.

So we are going to be talking today about a topic that for me personally is of high interest just because our family does have experience with ADHD and in multiple individuals. And um, so it’s always interesting to find out more of what could we be doing. You know, are we on the right path or are there other things that we could do?

And so I’ve been looking forward to this interview. Let’s start out with looking at research and studies that you have in your experience. How can dietary changes improve focus and behavior in children with ADHD?

Yeah. So most people are eating the standard American diet. It’s highly processed. There’s a lot of artificial flavors.

There’s food dyes. There’s preservatives. It’s very high in toxins. And so when we have, um, anybody with ADHD or any focus issues, but in particularly children, they seem to be a lot more, um, stimulated by these. chemicals. And you really don’t need to look at a study. You can remove them from your child’s diet and see what your child behaves like after, you know, a few days a week, and then put them back in your child’s diet.

And you just created your own at home study. And it’s really, really quite, um, incredible. And for us, Uh, we eat very clean. We, um, have very low chemicals, low toxins in our entire environment. And our, I have a five year old boy, um, and when he goes, if he was to be given a juice box or a sucker or, you know, something that we don’t eat with these.

Um, chemicals in it. It’s amazing to watch his behavioral changes. He becomes more hyperactive. He starts to, um, you know, be very rude, not really being able to empathize. Um, and he’s five. So the empathy is just starting to kick in, but he can see like, you know, how would that feel if that happened to you?

And so he’s, he’s starting to see these things. Um, but when you start adding These toxins like if we go to Lowe’s and he gets a sucker and there’s like blue and yellow food dye on that sucker And it’s high in sugar versus we tend to bake with like maple syrup and honey like Then he has that and all of a sudden you have on the ride home you have him fidgeting in his car seat and kicking the The, uh, seat in front and it’s very, very quick how, how it happens.

And it can take a little bit of time for that to get out of their system. But I think for, for people, the really big experiment is not to read the study. It’s to say, you know, I’m going to try this out in my home and start to remove these things and see, does it change my child’s behavior?

So you’re not even saying that you need to do a full elimination diet, just, you could just try one thing at a time and see if you see a change.

Yeah, exactly, because a lot of people, um, you know, if their child is diagnosed with something, they immediately start looking and researching and it’s like, Oh, I’ve got to cut out dairy. I’ve got to cut it. Gluten. I’ve got to cut out all these things and we’ve been eating dairy and gluten and you know, some people want to go plant based or some people want to go keto or low carb.

And so there’s all these swings to these extremes. But if we look at those foods in general, they are Whole foods we have been eating for thousands and thousands of years. We didn’t have these issues a hundred years ago, like they didn’t exist. So what did we start doing to our foods? You know, what did we do to the grain?

Why are so many people reacting to grain right now? Why weren’t so many people reacting to grain a hundred years ago? Like, what did we do to it? And how do we get back to that instead of how do we cut it out?

For me personally, I’ve gone through some changes in a lot of studies of, um, of the grains in particular, and just how they’ve been modified and all through the years.

Um, and I’ve read some about that. original grain, you know, way, way back. We don’t have that anymore because it’s been modified so much.

We do. It’s called einkorn.

Is the einkorn that we can purchase? Is that the same one still?

Yeah. They, when you go back to like an einkorn flower, it is the same, but when we’re looking at our summer wheat or our spring wheat or winter wheat, we’ve been changing that, we’ve been modifying it, but it’s, people don’t even often react to the wheat itself.

It’s when you go to the store and you buy. Uh, at the store, it’s got the preservatives and the food colorings and it’s got all of these added nutrients and chemicals. So they start putting folic acid into it and all these things that are really not real. And so, It’s not so much even the wheat that we’ve changed a lot of people can handle if you were to go and get some winter wheat and make your own food, you would handle that well, but some people, their bodies have almost coupled it.

So there’s so used to saying, seeing gluten with toxins. So now gluten equals toxins. And so they do have to go back to something like einkorn. For us, we eat probably about 95 percent einkorn, unless we’re out and about. All the wheat we have here is einkorn and we do incredibly well with.

When I first heard about it, I, it was, it was someone that had actually had celiac and parents listening, if you are dealing with celiac, I think that is a different situation than what we’re talking about.

Yeah. A little bit more of an extreme. Yeah.

We aren’t saying go out and feed your child wheat right now. What this gentleman had done is he had tested on himself having the einkorn and at that point he had to order it from out of the country cause he couldn’t find it.

Yeah. It’s available now.

And I’ve seen it on Amazon. I don’t think I’ve seen it in our local stores, but it may be he made some, some bread with it and was able to make it like 24 hours before the second, the second serving of it. That’s when it started bothering him. But again, he had celiac. So it was a,

yeah, celiac is a little bit of a different reaction than say somebody who’s like.

I have these symptoms. I’m going to cut this all out. So I’m just going to, to get rid of it. And they might, you know, maybe on an IgG food test, have a little bit of a reaction. Or even, IgG reactions change all the time. So you can cut out the gluten and the next day you’re reacting to the rice. So it’s a little bit different if you’re having a really strong IgE reaction to something and a lot of times people with with Celiac They’re gonna have to do a lot of work on their body and repairing their body and repairing their gut before they can even introduce Einkorn and then there’s you know, souring sprouting soaking that all really makes a change, but it’s recognizing that foods that we were eating before Are not the same.

And if we can go back to that with, you know, our, our dairy and our gluten and the grains that we eat and the meat, even the meat we eat, what you eat at the grocery store, it’s a little scary what they do to that meat. Right? So, you know, buying from the farm and, um, going back, but then realizing everybody’s an individual, some people, and when I look, I have a client base of close to 500, there’s very few people who truly don’t tolerate Einkorn. There’s very few people who truly don’t tolerate raw dairy. But for those people who truly don’t tolerate it, well then we want to honor their body.

Yeah, because even in our family we have lactose issues. We have, um, we found two of us, it’s the milk protein, it’s not the lactose. We thought it was lactose for years.

And, and if you’re, if you don’t have the farm to go to, it makes it a little bit harder. Um, so I have started recently researching on trying to find, do we have any local farms that I can purchase from?

A2, A2, casein. Yeah, because the A1 is, again, we’ve changed the cows and there is. You know, some reasons why we’re reacting to that dairy now, um, you look at the way those cows lives, you, you look at the highly pasteurized dairy, you look at all of these things and yeah, the body’s going to react to that dead stuff you’re putting into it.

But when you go back to like, hey, here’s some. really Farm Fresh A2A2, that looks a lot different. And then if you’ve cut out dairy for a long time, your body starts, stops producing lactase. So then you’re adding in the enzyme until your body starts to kick in the production. So it’s like a gradual process for, that I use for clients because um, you know, dairy itself, when you’re buying it straight from the farm has amazing benefits.

But if you’ve cut it out for a long time, your body is going to be like, Whoa, what is that? We don’t know how to digest it anymore. So then we add in some support until the body starts to kick in and then we wean off the support and then they can have the benefit.

Yeah. I hadn’t even thought about that. I want to go back to what you were talking about just with your son.

If he just has a lollipop, you had mentioned the, the dyes. So it doesn’t have to just be that old red dye number five or whatever it was. Pretty much any of the dyes could be an issue.

And what’s scary, um, right now they’re trying to get rid of those in the United States and Canada because they’re very plentiful and the companies are really fighting back because in a lot of other countries, these are illegal, but here we’re feeding it to our kids.

Like it’s a food group.

Well, it’s, it’s, I’m sure that’s probably what’s inside the yogurt that they’re eating that are all those bright colors and all that, but there are so many natural dyes. That are food dyes.

So why are they fighting it? Right?

And then the other question was, you had mentioned the sugar and that you use honey and other things.

Is the problem with the sugar the fructose that’s bonded in there?

It can be. The fructose, it’s just, it’s so processed, it’s going to hit the cells really quick. It’s not natural. But when we are going back to, you know, pure maple syrup, raw honey, I make, uh, we make our own ice cream. We make our own muffins and all sorts of things.

And you eat that and you don’t get a hit from it. Like there’s not a, there’s no high, there’s no hit, there’s no crash. Like for adults, we normally crash when we eat that. We’re like, okay, I’m going to go have a nap. And the kids are like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, right? So, you know, those two extremes, um, and.

You don’t have that from it. It’s not like, Oh, I need to eat 10 muffins. You know, you have one and you’re fine. Whereas you’re like, Oh, give me another chocolate bar. Or, you know, I want to, I want to have more of that because we’re getting such a hit. And we feel that you can feel that, uh, release of all those chemicals in your body.

And then for adults, we feel that crash shortly after.

So it’s very interesting parents that are new to this. How so so taking an item out putting it back in kind of watching your child’s behavior saying and even your own behavior I think like you’re saying if you’re not gonna get the crash Your energy may be higher if you’re able to do some of this yourself, but like how would you recommend that they get started maybe?

Slowly. I wouldn’t try to cut everything out because these chemicals are incredibly addictive for the brain. And if you’ve been feeding, if your child’s been eating a lot of these foods, uh, then, and you cut that out, they’re going to go through massive withdrawals.

So, um, you’re going to want to start with like one meal at a time. That’s what I have all of my clients do, whether they’re kids or adults, pick the meal that’s easiest for you where you’re at home, where you can really, um, take time to make it and then change one meal and do that for at least a month.

Don’t even worry about the other meals just allow them to be the same and just focus on one meal at a time and we want to really you know cut out the chemicals and the toxins that we’re eating in our food but we want to think about it in our environment so pick one thing whatever you try to change pick one thing at a time because yes these food colorings and are going to have a very quick effect on our body and our neurotransmitters but toxins in general are going to lower It’s going to lower our body’s ability to detoxify, it’s going to lower our body’s ability to make our neurotransmitters properly, and the more we can reduce the toxic load on the body, the better health our body is going to be able to have.

The other thing I was thinking about, too, is some of our listeners may have children that are already taking medication for ADHD.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

How do you recommend integrating Nutritional changes with that. Would you just do it the same way? Does it, does it get to a point where they need to examine that medication and talk to the doctor about that too?

Ideally, um, yes, I would definitely want to do that because there’s so many things that we can do naturally to balance the brain without the side effects, without the dependency. And so it’s working with a practitioner that can help you if you’re. goal is to reassess that medication and perhaps have a more natural approach to it, then work with a practitioner and your doctor to combine that so that you have a plan of action because you can’t just stop a medication either.

Um, you want to have a plan of action to get the brain to a healthy place and be able to gradually move that away.

What type of timeframe might You know, you were saying with your son, you can see it right away because he hasn’t had it and then you’re adding it in. But if you have a child who’s their whole life, they’ve had all these extra things as part of their diet.

How long would it take before they could really see, yes, this is making an improvement.

If you’re working on one meal a day and one meal at a time and one meal a month at a time. Say you’re going to work on breakfast for the next month and get everybody on board with eating a really clean. Breakfast and then the next month you’re going to tackle dinner because lunch is a little bit harder because your child is in school And there’s a little bit more Issues with with controlling that so it’s going to be a longer process because you don’t want to just cut it out Oftentimes as kids get older you’re gonna you start cutting things out at home They start finding it when they’re not at home, right?

So we want to do our best to remove these toxins as much as possible. But for me, it’s so important to, um, and the biggest foundation of my program is we’ve run the labs, especially genetics. And we’re looking to see what the, what does the brain need to come into balance? And a lot of people, they try supplements based on their symptoms and they don’t have an effect.

But when we actually look at the labs, we can say, Hey, this is what the brain needs. And a lot of times with ADHD, um, we can be seeing two different pictures either, um, in the brain when we’re looking at how our body breaks down dopamine, there’s a enzyme called COMT and people like myself, I am COMT plus plus.

So I have very high levels of dopamine and that can present very much as, um, you would think I had ADHD. If I was looking at something I’m not passionate about, but if you put me inside of my passion where I am really driven to do something that I’m laser focused, but if it’s something I’m not interested in, I’m going to be like bouncing around.

I’m very active. Oftentimes people with this ADHD diagnosis and this presentation of COMT plus plus with the higher dopamine levels, the reason why they can’t focus is because the world is not going fast enough for them. So those are the people you see them. Okay. Thanks. Put the person like, I listen to everything on 2x speed.

I speak very fast. I’ll finish people’s sentences for them. I will want to have like three tasks that I’m doing at one time. And if I was only doing one task, you would think I was ADHD, but because of my processing level, I’m doing three tasks. And then we have the other idea. The other end of the spectrum is the COMT minus minus, and those people break down their dopamine very fast.

They’re prone to very low levels. And those people often can’t get focused, so they’re jumping around from task to task and oftentimes they’re frustrated with themselves and that’s where this, this energy comes about because they can’t sit still. And so for, for people like me, we want to lower our dopamine levels and for people, the other side, we want to raise their dopamine levels and that we can all do naturally, but it tends to go under this one blanket statement of ADHD, but when we look at biochemically, you know, what is actually going on in the brain, we can be like, how can we help you get more focus?

Um, how can we, um, bring more passion to what you’re doing so that you want to do it, right? Because a lot of kids in school are labeled ADHD. They just don’t want to learn this. This is boring. Or, you know, they’re with a teacher they’re not attached to and they cannot focus on that task because they’re attached to their peers.

So there’s so many reasons why we get this diagnosis and it’s really, um, having this more holistic approach to it and diet, yeah, very important to minimize the toxins, but we want to have this broader, broader look at what’s going on.

It’s really interesting. So the, so the testing, the, All right. So it’s, I remember the plus plus and the minus minus.

Well, what was it before that?

Yeah. So we run, we actually are looking at genetic testing combined with an organic acids test so we can see genetically. What are you? Are you COMT plus plus, lot too much dopamine, COMT plus minus. CMT minus minus, too little dopamine. So like there’s a spectrum. And then from there, um, we can take a look at your serotonin levels to bring that into balance.

So for me, like I’m prone to, and I was actually diagnosed with bipolar depression at age 19. So I would swing. High dopamine, crash, no nothing. High dopamine, crash, and so I would go in these cycles of two weeks of, of, um, basically manic depression. And for me, it was bringing my dopamine down, raising my serotonin, gave me balance, and lo and behold, I am a very well functioning, happy individual who can focus and Um, you know, bring in all these other aspects because if I’m not passionate about something like try to get, we were talking about video editing earlier, try to get me to sit down and do that a little bit, a little bit of a challenge.

So, uh, you know, that’s where we want to, to look at the, the person as a whole and say, yes. Okay. You know, this diagnosis might be able to help us get more resources, but we want to look at why what’s going on in the body

typically would, if, if a parent has. A doctor that they’re working with, and their child has the diagnosis with ADHD, that typically has been like a lot of observational studies, things like that.

So the testing that you’re talking about, that’s over and above what they may have already been exposed to.

Yes. You’re not going to find this from a regular doctor. Some functional medicine doctors are a little bit versed in genetics. But there’s, um, it’s definitely much newer and the work with the neurotransmitter balancing has really grown over the past few years.

Cause this is the first, the first that I’ve, I’ve heard of that. And I, I think it’s, it’s a great, a great approach to understand more and with genetic testing, having so much more out there as a family, we went through genetic testing for my daughter because of her visual impairment.

And they’re looking for a disease diagnosis.

like specific genes that are going to give you a disease, a more probability of a disease. I don’t like to look at those. I look at genes that tell us what’s going on with our enzymes. Uh, how can we affect these with supplements and herbs? So for somebody who’s COMT minus minus, and they’re, they just can’t get their dopamine up.

Well, those are a lot of people we see being put on a drug like Adderall because it’s going to be raising the dopamine. Well, we can do that naturally by giving the body. the precursors, which is the step before. So we literally say, Hey, here’s some DOPA, L DOPA, and your body can take that and turn it into dopamine.

And then we say, here’s a herb, Ginkgo. And that slows the breakdown. But again, we want to test because we can assume that we’re, we’re low dopamine, but it might not actually be that there can be so many reasons why we’re not focusing and we want to run the labs and. You know, really see is this is this truly the case because you can do a lot more harm than good if you don’t know and you know, this is a very small part.

We’re just looking at dopamine. This goes and ties into a factor of detoxification, which is called the methylation cycle. And a lot of people have heard of MTHFR and they start to take MTHFR and they start to take methylfolate to, um, counteract that. But this is a huge cycle. It’s not one enzyme. And if you’re not looking at the entire cycle and you’re just fueling one part of that pathway, you can cause a whole disaster at the other end if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So it’s so important to get these labs and take a really good look, not only what’s going on with the brain, but what’s going on. with our detoxification pathways. And then as our kids get older, we also want to look at their hormones because we’re seeing so much hormone imbalance right now because of the meat and the milk and the stuff that we’re eating at the grocery store that is pumped full of all of these, these hormones.

Now we’re seeing really big imbalances there in both boys and girls. Um, and we want to make sure we’re testing to see what’s going on.

So you’re able to work with someone to walk through these. Part of what you do, how widespread do you work? And I’m, I’m assuming that you work remotely as well as

I work remotely right now.

We just had our, um, I also run an academy where I train people to become practitioners and we just had somebody joined from. Japan. So that was our 28th country now that I have clients in. So, um, that’s pretty amazing. So we, I work with people all over. I’m still taking on clients. I also do have my, um, we’re almost at, uh, we’re at 19 practitioners right now who have went through my program to learn this and to help people to balance their brain and balance their body.

So if not with me, I, I know all of my practitioners equally versed in this material.

We’ll post the contact information so that if you want to follow up on this, um, and we’ll have the website for you as well. This is information I wish I had known way back when we were first starting to talk to talk about this as a family, but I’m glad I have it now.

And it didn’t, it didn’t exist back then.

True, true.

Because I remember when I, um, I went off the medication that I was on, it took a good year to safely move off of that. And even then, we did not have this genetic information. I was guessing, I was playing, you know, doing trial and error. Thankfully, I was guessing right.

Um, but it didn’t exist back then. And I started my journey, um, when I was diagnosed with lupus and moved to this more natural path. So I weaned off my medication in 2013. Um, we didn’t have that then. Genetics I added to my program, uh, six, five years ago. So, um, just even then it was very new and I had to do a lot of research and put things together because, um, it, we, we knew the genes, but we couldn’t test to see what was active.

And now we can really test to see what’s going on and what’s active and kind of correlate. Cause you know, we’re all built on epigenetics, genes turn on and off. So we look at, okay, what is the framework? What is going on? What is the blueprint, but how is it being expressed right now in the body? And that’s where we run our other labs.

That’s another piece of it too. So if a gene, if you have the gene, it doesn’t mean that it’s on or off at the time. How so once you’re, you get going with this, you’re either trying to turn them on or they’re trying to turn them off.

Ideally we would love the non beneficial genes to turn off and the beneficial ones turned on. We’d like that. And when, when I’m going through my program, our whole goal is to give the body as much tools as it can to start repairing and healing itself. But in the meantime, we see what is being expressed and how can we find balance, right? So for me, if I did not have the support on board for my brain, I wouldn’t be able to do what I would.

What I’m doing, my entire mother’s side of the family has been diagnosed with severe mental health issues. And I was able to break free and balance my brain naturally, but it is something that I have to keep up some ongoing support for. Because this is just how my brain functions. And it needs balancing, otherwise here I’ll go off and manic land.

Crash later. Uh, so we want to make sure that we’re running the lab, seeing what the blueprint is and then running the other labs to course. to, to really correlate and be able to make the best decisions with our supplements and our herbs.

And then you mentioned that, that you were diagnosed with lupus, how are you doing now?

I thought that was an easier one, right? Um, I was diagnosed with lupus back in 2009 and I was. Um, I believe about 2014, 2015, I had my antibodies down a lot of the symptoms that were associated with the diagnosis was a side effect of the medication I was on. And so once I was able to wean off of that, balance my brain, repair my detox pathways, those antibodies went down, those symptoms went away.

Um, and it’s just been a journey in itself to, to get here. Back then, we didn’t have access to a lot of these labs. They weren’t so easily available. We didn’t have access to online practitioners. We only had who is in your city. And, um, there was a lot of trial and error for me. So my journey took a very long time.

I learned a lot along the way of what not to do. And it’s really helped me create my program now, especially working with so many clients around the world. But now we have access to so much. It’s amazing.

I’m glad that was not a lingering battle for you to have to take. I have seen your full story on your website.

Listeners, go and check out her website. Her, her backstory is really interesting, the path that she’s taken, but it’ll help you understand more of where she’s coming from too. All right, I’m going to change gears here. So this season we’ve been, um, having each of my guests repeat some statements and give some advice to this kind of a, a, a, I call it a fun way to give advice, but, but it also gives me a way to share.

So a little bit of extra information in, in different ways. So, um, so listeners, you may have seen some of this on, um, on a reel or on, on another video that, that brought you to this video. But, um, but my intent is that this will help us find a way to, to share a little bit of information to get people back to the, to the interview.

And I have four of them for you. For parents considering dietary changes to help their child with ADHD, the most important thing to remember is.

So for parents considering dietary changes to help their kids with ADHD. Go slowly. Don’t try to transition them overnight. It’s going to lead to a lot of resistance, a lot of counter will, a lot of upset children, suffering from withdrawals, wanting their sugar, wanting their fix.

So do it slowly. Pick one meal a day. Pick the easiest one. Don’t try the most difficult. Most people do breakfast, unless it’s too rushed in the morning, then they choose. dinner and just make really slow changes and look at eating foods that are real. They don’t have a whole list of chemicals behind them.

So focus on, um, clean meat and, um, farm fresh meat and dairy and eggs and work on getting fruits and vegetables and grains that are unprocessed. So anything that’s It’s in a box, try to stay away from that. Uh, if it’s preserved on the shelf, then it’s going to take those years that it’s preserved on the shelf off your life.

I like the way you finish that. That’s, you know, you hear about shopping the outside of the store. Of course, it depends on the store, whether that’s true or not. But, um, but, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll have to pass, pass that one on. All right. Number two, one practical tip that can make a big difference for parents implementing dietary changes for ADHD is

one practical tip that can make a big change for parents implementing dietary changes to help with ADHD would be to just.

Try to reduce those dyes. If you’re going to start anywhere, start with the food dyes. That’s the easiest way. Um, you can look if they’re bright colored and there’s a lot of, um, brands that are moving away from the dyes and going to natural dyes. So if that was one shift that you made, that would really help.

Just try it. Right off the bat, because for a lot of parents going to the Clean Whole Foods, that can be really tough. It could be a struggle for their kids. But if you’re choosing something like um, Annie’s Organic, Homegrown Organic, they have a lot of the same things that you can buy at the store, but they’ve removed the high fructose cornstarch.

syrup, they’ve removed the food dyes. And so it’s a bridge. It’s almost like a bridge until then you can start to introduce more of the real foods.

In addition to nutrition, when helping a child with ADHD focus and find balance, it’s also important to

When helping a child with ADHD learn to focus and find balance, it’s also important to run some functional labs.

See what’s going on with your child’s brain, help with supplements and herbs that are completely customized to your child, not to their symptoms, because symptoms can really overlap. And you can have two people presenting with the exact same symptoms, have a totally different brain chemistry, and need totally different support for their brain.

So work with a practitioner that’s going to help you get the right labs, and from those labs, you can make the best decisions to give your child the best support.

All right. The final one, this is probably the longest one to read, but so just paraphrase if you need to

paraphrase.

All right. So as research on the connection between diet and ADHD continues to grow, The most exciting potential development I see for the future is.

So the most exciting potential I see for the future with our children is having the ability to run these labs and give our child the customized support because that is the research we want to, we want to look at. We want to be seeing what our child needs to have a balanced brain. Because it’s possible for pretty well everybody to get their brain more into balance and The more we have parents aware that this is available to them and that they don’t have to immediately go to Medication they’re able to do a lot of this healing naturally then and they have the support available Right it before we didn’t now we do so Keep, keep looking, keep searching open up to the possibilities that it’s definitely possible.

Excellent. Excellent. All of those were great. Great advice. Thank you for sharing those with us. You’re very welcome. We mentioned your practice a little bit. Tell us more about what you’re doing, how people can get involved with you and any, any special activities that you have going on right now.

Yeah. So right now I’m still working with clients.

I tend to tackle the more complex cases. I help people, especially when they’re on multiple. medications and they’re really interested in a natural approach and healing naturally. Um, I do have right now, 19 practitioners who are certified through my program at the Integrative Healing Academy, where I train people how to analyze labs, design protocols, and go on to become practitioners.

And there we do have three levels, which is really great. We have level one, which is available for people who just want to learn this. They want to be able to have the tools to help themselves. and their family. Uh, we offer, um, wholesale functional medicine labs through our academy. We’ve made it really affordable for people to come in and get this information.

And then in level two, that’s where people go on if they want to, to become practitioners. And level three, we help them build their business. So my focus right now is really shifting gears to teaching and getting my students really well supported. And then my graduates are ready to start and build their business because we need more people bringing awareness to this information.

So many people don’t know that these labs exist. They don’t know which ones they need. They don’t know which order to get these labs in. So it really is my focus. And right now I’m also working on doing a TEDx talk. We’re just in the application stage, but the talk is written and it’s all about this. It’s all about the importance of the functional medicine labs and getting, um, raising the awareness for everybody because it’s not just people with ADHD.

Like this is for all health issues, whether you’re healing from an autoimmune issue, whether you’re having anxiety where you’re, whether you’re suffering from depression or fatigue or hormonal imbalances, thyroid imbalances, this program is totally holistic and we’re going to teach you how to really put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure out what your body needs to heal.

When is, when do you think the TEDx talk will be?

My assistant right now is compiling a list of TEDx events. Um, so I’m going to be hitting the application button this week. We’re hoping it’s going to be done by the end of the year. I’d ideally love to find a place for August or September to be able to do it.

I just actually gave my talk, um, at a local. Um, event here and that went really well. So I’m ready, ready to do it. We just have to find, you have to align with the theme. Everything has to fit together with the TEDx talk, but it’s, it’s really exciting.

Well, whenever that is out and public. Make sure that I get the link and listeners, if you’re finding this after it’s been presented, we’ll have the link in the, in the notes.

If not, come back and check the notes to be able to see where it is. Awesome. This has been great information. I have so many other questions that I could ask you, but I want to be respectful of everybody’s time that are listening as well. I’ve learned a lot with this. Um, I’ve got all these ideas now of, of, of with our family, what, what we need to talk about.

But listeners, if this is something that you want to follow up on, check the link in the show notes, you can always check out the website, ask questions, and then make your own decision. But, um, but we’re just trying to give you some information to, to help you help your children and help you make, make choices as you go.

Thank you for joining me today. This, this has been great. And I really appreciate you taking the time to, to share this with our audience too.

Thank you for having me. I really, really enjoyed it.

Remember, every child is unique, and what works for one may not work for another. It’s important to consult with a healthcare professional to develop a personalized plan.

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