Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: What's worthwhile, worthy of our time, energy, belief and action. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. To me, it's building mind, body and spirit wellness towards peace of mind, vitality of body and joy of spirit. Let's pursue these topics together to find holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: So I help kids with ADHD and neurodiversity. Food is one of the biggest ways that we take intoxins that kids are eating, things that are neurotoxic. So the first place to look is packaged foods.
And what we're looking for is artificial colors, preservatives especially. There's been a lot of research on sodium benzoate, bha, bht. Those are common preservatives that we absolutely need to stay away from. And I mean, generally, I would say all preservatives. There's just some that we have more research on. Msg, monosodium glutamate, it wreaks havoc on the brain. Artificial sweeteners, fructose, that is one of the most awful ones out there. And hydrogenated oils. So if you're just getting started on that journey and you look at a package and it's got all these words you can't pronounce, just don't even bother. Just, you know, put that down. You want to be, you know, buying fresh produce, meats, fish, whole real foods.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Hey there, it's Ramsay here. That was Yana Kleeman. Yana is a functional medicine health consultant who is dedicated to helping children with ADHD and other developmental disorders thrive naturally. But she didn't start out with that mindset. In fact, she is a doctor of pharmacy. She discovered her true calling by healing through a personal health crisis at age 33, one that allopathic Western pharma based medicine could not cure. Yana's approach offers families hope to challenge predetermined futures through practical solutions to transform health. And it's not rocket science. I had a great time talking nutrition and lifestyle with Yana and I hope you will get a lot out of it too. Let's dive in.
Hey Yana, how are you doing today?
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Hi. I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me here.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for coming out today to talk about something that a lot of parents grapple with, which is neurodivergence like adhd. And I understand that you focus your work and efforts around helping people with ADHD through nutrition and lifestyle and by finding the root causes and triggers for individuals. And yet your doctorate and your background is in pharmacy. So let's start with how did you, as a doctor of pharmacy, come to really focus on functional treatments beyond pharmaceutical treatments?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Great. Great question. I. I didn't think I was going to be doing this. Actually kind of stumbled into functional medicine by chance. I was a pharmacist for over 17 years. At this point, I've spent in that industry, and I was really happy doing it. I always knew I wanted to be in healthcare, and that's what I was doing, or that's what I thought I was doing as a pharmacist. And at the age of 33, my own health journey kind of took me in a different direction. I just started having symptoms. What I felt like was out of nowhere, and my body just broke. That's what it felt like. I couldn't make it through the day. I would have to either lie down or collapse in the middle of the day. I just had complete muscle weakness. And at that point, I had two kids, and I was just not able to function in my life.
And after doing, you know, the. The typical workups and seeing a bunch of specialists and doing a bunch of blood work, I had a doctor diagnosed me with multiple autoimmune and autoinflammatory conditions, which was a shock. It seemed like, at least before that point, I was a super healthy person. I only had my annual doctor's visits. I never even read the forms. I just kind of marked off. No on everything. Yeah.
You know, so it just seemed like I went from being a super healthy person to just completely dysfunctional.
And, you know, with those diagnoses came really hardcore medications. And I had this doctor kind of tell me, I'm going to put you on all these things. And it may or may not help, but we're going to try to slow the progression. And even with this medication, which was the best that we have at the time, you may be bedridden within 10 years.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: But, I mean, what was. What was really going on? Like, what. What was really causing that?
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That was a question I had to Ramsey. And it's not an answer that I was able to get. It was just that, you know, it's in your genetics or whatever it is. You have these conditions. You just didn't come soon enough to get diagnosed earlier.
But it's your fault.
Yeah, it is kind of like what you have. Like, it's this thing that's in your body. Like you have, you know, this thing called, you know, autoimmunity.
And for me, as a pharmacist, the minute, you know, he mentioned these medications, I Was like, oh, these side effects are going through my head. Like, oh my God. And, you know, these. It was immunomodulators. And so those particular medications come with like pages of fine print, you know, of side effects and like a warning on a million things. Like one thing gets fixed in your body and another things, you know, billions of things can go wrong. So for me, I was like, oh my gosh, like, this is what my life is going to look like. Moving forward, travel, kids, like everything. My reality just completely changed. And he walked out of the room for a moment to get the medication. He was going to administer it right away. And in that moment, and I don't know what came over me because I'm a pharmacist, I'm data driven, I'm science driven.
I was helping people through medication. But something said to me, there's gotta be something else out there. I didn't know what it was. It didn't know it was going to be functional medicine, but I was willing to explore. And so by the time he walked in, I was dressed and I said, thank you very much, I'll follow up with you. And. And I left that office and, you know, as it turns out, I never came back. I found a functional medicine practitioner and I dove into it. I had everything to lose. So I did absolutely everything that diet changes, the lifestyle, the supplements, I did absolutely everything. And you know, within three months, I was a completely different person. I was already not having those episodes. I could get through the day. I was doing well. Within six months, I just felt great. And so after that, it was just impossible to go back into a pharmacy, hand people medication and call that health.
And that's what really started my journey. I got educated, I got certified and completely transitioned out of pharmacy.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: So what really is the difference when we refer to functional medicine practices, what exactly do we mean by that? How is it different from Western traditional allopathic medicine? Like, hit on some of the significant differences?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So functional medicine is.
It's a systems approach. It's about getting to the root cause of health issues, not by slapping a band aid on the symptoms. The symptoms are what we see on the outside. And we're trying to get down to what is at the root of those symptoms. And we treat that. And when I say treat, we address it through lifestyle, through dietary changes, and when needed, supplements.
And we also take into account the fact that we are all unique. We are bio individual. Our genetics, our lifestyle, our food, our environment will all play a role in our health and our unique Biology is going to dictate how we respond to that environment and everything that's happening in our life. And so there is no one size fits all approach. You will never have two treatment plans look the same for a person, even with the same symptoms. So I help kids with ADHD and neurodiversity. I'll have two kids with exactly the same symptoms. But once we start looking at the root cause, there will be completely different things going on. So it really is impossible to have a one size fits all approach. It's really tailored to what the person is needing and to what the whole person is needing. So if we're dealing with something with cognition or the brain, we're not necessarily looking at the brain, we're looking at the whole body. And the root causes kind of could be in the gut, they could be in the neurotransmitters and hormones like so many different systems, which is why it's so important to look, to look at everything. And of course, in our traditional healthcare system, we look at the symptoms, we name the condition, like, okay, your sugar is high, you've got diabetes now you have this thing supposedly, and then we give you medicine to treat those symptoms, which is going to be ongoing because once you stop the medication, the symptoms are not controlled.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Okay, so we were all individually different and there's many different causes, but there are some common causes, right. And there's, there's patterns. So tell us, talk to us about what are some of the typical causes of ADHD and other types of neurodivergence.
What are the things that, what are some of those root causes and what are some of the things that, you know, make the condition worse on, you know, that trigger it on kind of a day to day kind of basis?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, good, good question, Ramsey. You know, it's, there are, it could be anything that I've just mentioned any of the systems in the body, but some of the most common ones are nutrient deficiencies and in very nutrients that we would typically be getting from a well balanced diet. Research actually shows that people with ADHD have lower levels of certain nutrients like zinc and magnesium.
And interestingly enough, certain medications will deplete that.
Medications for adhd. And you know, we don't know exactly if it's a direct side effect of a medication that it's depleting the nutrient or if it's because of the most common side effect, which is a decrease in appetite. That happens in like 80% of kids taking stimulants, which, you know, if you think about it, is pretty detrimental because most of these kids are already picky eaters and not getting their nutrients. And now they have a decrease in appetite for medication. And, you know, they're not eating probably anything other than chicken nuggets and fries. And so they're not getting their zinc and magnesium for sure. And then that is making the condition worse. So we're giving a medication, it's helping the symptoms, it's making the overall picture worse. And so then we keep increasing the dose or adding on other medications. So something as simple as a micronutrient panel is going to let us know what nutrients does this child need? And that's a pretty easy thing to fix. Of course, diet, first approach, leafy greens, meats, fish are going to give us those nutrients. Nuts and seeds are going to give us those nutrients. And you could do the supplements when needed. But supplements, especially when kids, I don't love as like a first line approach without testing, without really knowing what we need to give and what doses. So nutrients would be the first. The second really common cause is the gut, gut inflammation, gut dysbiosis. So we have a microbiome, right? We have these trillions of bacteria, yeast, living in our gut, and when they are balanced, we're good. You know, things are working pretty well. When that's not balanced, it's going to cause anything from, you know, joint pain to hyperactivity, impulsivity, like neuroinflammation, things that we see in adhd, the symptoms that we see, and a big reason for that is like our neurotransmitters, right? So we know that dopamine is part of the dysfunction in ADHD. Serotonin is so important for mood and mood regulation.
90 to 95% of serotonin is made in our gut. 50% of dopamine is made in our gut. So if our gut is imbalanced or there's inflammation, that is 100% going to affect the brain, that's 100% going to affect our mood.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Are you saying that the bugs in our gut are producing the neurotransmitters that we use in our brain? Isn't that a crazy concept? I actually knew that, but I think a lot of people don't.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's the number one question I, I think, you know, parents ask me is like, why are you asking us about our diet? Like, why are we looking into our gut? We're dealing with hyperactivity here. You know, we're dealing with tantrums. Like, why are we even looking at the Gut, and that's because it's responsible for so much of what happens in our brain.
And in addition to, like, this balance being off of the good guys in our gut, if there's an overgrowth of the bad guys, the toxins they produce can go straight to the brain and cause symptoms. Like, there is certain species of Clostridia. Without being too technical, like, we have research on some of these toxic bacteria that produce toxins that cross a blood brain barrier and cause these symptoms. So if we take care of the gut, we eradicate the bad guys, we feed the good guys, then we can improve symptoms of adhd, which is really why I feel it is a neurobiological condition more than a neurological condition. I think traditionally we just look at it as a neurological condition, but so much of what goes on in our biology affects our brain.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, so it's so interesting to me.
I like to talk a lot in my podcast about mind, body, and spirit connections. And in this case, the mind body connections are, like, literal and physical. Because like you were saying, what we take in, what we eat, the nutrients that we get. You mentioned zinc and magnesium, which are both prolific cofactors for all kinds of chemical reactions.
And we. So we need to have those as raw materials, and we get those from what we eat. And then we were talking about and describing the fact that the. The microbiome in your gut is actually producing a lot of these chemicals that we need. Like, it's, you know, it's the body within the body. It's the. It's the. It's the billions or trillions of individuals that live in our gut that are manufacturing the chemicals that we need. And, you know, there's.
In the gut, we have the, you know, the. We have the barrier in the intestines, and we talk about intestinal permeability and talk about leaky gut and having troubles with that. And then there's also a blood brain barrier which has a very similar kind of mechanism that happens to it, that there are certain things that are supposed to go into our brain and certain things that we don't want in our brain, but when we sort of throw off our eating or when we have dysbiosis like that, that really affects both having leaky gut and leaky brain.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Right, Absolutely. I'm so glad that you brought that up. A leaky gut does equal a leaky brain, because like you said, they are barriers. They are kind of composed of the same material. And if you think about it, in our gut, right, Our gut is meant to keep what's in the intestine inside and only allow the nutrients and water to go across so that we can absorb it and use it. Right. Our organs can use it. The same thing with the brain. The blood brain barrier keeps everything out of the brain other than the things that need to go in. So we know if there's inflammation and leaky gut and those cells, like those junctions come apart actually physically. And now bigger proteins can come through that and cause inflammation. The same thing happens in the blood brain barrier, it becomes leaky. And now toxins that are meant to be out cross the blood brain barrier, get into the brain, cause inflammation and cause symptoms. And I know today we're talking a lot about neurodiversity and adhd, but it doesn't. It's not just those conditions. It's anxiety and, you know, for older folks, Alzheimer's and dementia and all the cognitive symptoms and disorders that we know of that are caused by inflammation in the brain.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yes. So for parents who are sort of, you know, helping their kids and working through this, especially, you know, specifically ones who their kids are neurodivergent, what are some things that they really need to avoid? You know, because there's we, we sort of have thrown around the idea of toxins, like what are some of those and where do those show up and you know, our modern lives and what should we be avoiding?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: You know, there's sadly so many things that we need to be and parents need to be conscious of when shopping, when eating, when going to a restaurant. Food is one of the biggest ways that we take intoxins that kids are eating things that are neurotoxic. So the first place to look is packaged foods.
And what we're looking for is artificial colors. Any, you know, I think we've had great strides. There was like one red dye that is now banned in the US and yay. I'm so glad that that happened.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: But we're all okay now.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: It's like, you know, a grain of sand. It is just a tiny little stride that we've made. There are, you know, all these other colors still out there that absolutely need to be avoided for our neurodiverse kiddos.
Preservatives especially. There's been a lot of research on sodium benzoate. Bha, bht. Those are common preservatives that we absolutely need to stay away from. And I mean, generally, I would say all preservatives, there's just some that we have more research on.
Msg, monosodium, glutamate, that is just one of those, really. You know, it's hidden into so many things just to make it more addictive and more appealing. So you want to keep buying that food. It wreaks havoc on the brain. Artificial sweeteners, you know, sugar is a toxin as well. Kids with ADHD or people with ADHD actually have a dysfunction in the way they process glucose. So any kind of quick sugar is going to be problematic. But if you're going to have a sweet treat, I would already suggest have real sugar rather than an artificial sweetener.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: How about fructose?
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Fructose, that is one of the most awful ones out there. And hydrogenated oil, so that's a really hard one to stay away from. They are in almost every packaged food, even the healthier options, and they're absolutely going to be in fast food.
So eating fast food daily weekly is going to be a problem.
They have got the preservatives that I mentioned. They have the hydrogenated oils. There's more ingredients in there that you cannot pronounce than things in there that are actually food.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: It's generally a good rule of thumb, right. If you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be eating it unless you really know exactly what it is.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you're just getting started on that journey and you look at a package and it's got all these words you can't pronounce, just don't even bother. Just, you know, put that down. But on the whole, you know, you want to be shopping on the perimeter of the store, you want to be, you know, buying fresh produce, meats, fish, whole real foods that are going to spoil, you know, if you keep them in the fridge for a few days and that you need to, you know, cook from scratch for the most part. Of course, you eat fresh fruits and veggies, too, but if they go bad, they're probably saf. If they can sit on your shelf for six months, then you likely want to stay away from them.
And for kids, too, in sports, you want to watch out for Gatorade, vitamin water, all of these things that are so popular for kids in sports, water is the drink of choice.
And clean filtered water or bottled water, because again, you mentioned toxins. And water is one of the ways that we get a lot of toxins in if it isn't filtered or bottled water.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: So it sounds like a lot of the things that are just sort of really foundational and basically good for you, just in general.
But now it seems like this population is just especially Sensitive to the effects of junk food. And you know, I, it's only within the last couple of years that I stopped enjoying a can of ginger ale per day which was highly loaded with high fructose corn syrup. And actually I feel way better since I stopped drinking soda and eating white bread and trying to avoid seed oils as much as possible.
But I, I mean, I think with, with kids like this, it's just that much more important to dodge that. Right, and you were saying just sugar of any kinds, right? So.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: And it's. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: I was just gonna say that what you put on the plate is equally as important as what you want to keep off. And sometimes reverse engineering it and thinking about like, what can you put on the plate that could, you know, move the needle or be a better option is an easier way if, especially if you're not, haven't been, you know, thinking about these things before and really intentionally eating healthier or picking certain foods for, for yourself or your kids. You know, thinking about like, maybe we can have, you know, a serving of berries as a snack today instead of a bag of chips, you know, or we maybe have our regular dinner, but we're just going to have a side salad and maybe some avocados on the side in addition to what we're having. And so now we're eating a little bit of the good stuff. And because we're eating a little bit of the good stuff, we're eating a little bit less of the french fries or whatever else might be on the plate and then slowly kind of going at it that way. Just what can we swap out, you know, maybe for breakfast where we'll have a chia pudding, a homemade chia pudding, or you know, eggs, eggs, organic free range eggs, high in protein, really great, with a side of, you know, I don't know, avocado toast.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: It's a good thing I already had breakfast.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: That's one of my go to's, that's why it came to mind first.
But you know, that that's another way of kind of looking at food and trying to get a little bit more of the good stuff that'll push out, you know, the bad foods.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, all right, so we talked a bit about sort of the basic and the good stuff. But you mentioned also the idea of testing and what kind of tests can be done and, and what are those tests going to teach us?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: So while we're on the topic of food, you know, one of the things that is quite common that is a trigger for inflammation are food sensitivities.
And that is when our body creates inflammation in response to the food that we're eating. And that can lead to leaky gut and all these other things and ADHD symptoms, you know, at the end of it. Now, the tricky part about food sensitivities is that they're not true ige allergies. It's not the same immune system, you know, triggering that we get. It's not immediate, right? Like if you have an allergy to peanuts, you eat peanuts, you're going to be in the hospital in two minutes or you need a EpiPen, right? There's a quick reaction and you can see it right away to the foods that you're allergic to with sensitivities and intolerances. You may eat something today and not have a reaction to it three days from now, you know, and how, you know, that is really difficult to track. Like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm feeling really anxious or I can't focus now, and, you know, I may have eaten something three days ago. So that's where a food sensitivity test I feel is really important, especially for kiddos, because it's so much harder to track down symptom to food. And it is a quite a common thing to see.
And, you know, we talk about, I mean, gluten, dairy are the two things that I will always say. Those are the places to start if you want to start eliminating triggering foods. You go for gluten, dairy. They're kind of the villains. A lot of people know about those, and it's true. But the tricky part is when we start to react to foods that are healthy.
There's people that are reacting to broccoli, people react to beef. There's so many different sensitivities, sensitivities that I've seen over the years that, yes, you can probably track it down if you're journaling and writing down every single thing you eat and trying to be mindful of symptoms. It's more possible to do in adults. But with kids, it's, you know, really, really difficult to get down to that level of specificity without having a test. So, you know, if we're talking about young kids, a food sensitivity panel is probably one of the first places I would say to start. And you always want to work with a practitioner, you know, for two reasons. One is the test that you're going to get through. A practitioner is not something that you can order online. And I don't recommend those because they're. They're highly Unreliable. And you might see, like 40 things that you're reacting to and think that you need to eliminate basically everything that you're eating, which is not the case.
And the second thing too is you need to be able to take that within the context of the person.
So, you know, testing is really important, but you've also got to understand how are the results relating to the symptoms that we're seeing for this particular person.
And you don't necessarily wipe out everything from the diet. You may work from, like, super triggering things down to things that are less triggering. So there really is a system to it. The other thing is the gut, because as we talked about, the gut is one of the main, you know, areas that are imbalanced in kids with ADHD and adults as well, by the way. That is a place to look. And yes, you can guess something is going on, but that is, I also think, the pitfalls that people fall into where they're like, okay, I think something's off, whether it's with gut or food, and they'll just start throwing random supplements at it or trying different diets, and maybe it makes a small dent, maybe there's no difference. And then they say, well, you know, it didn't help me. You know, my ADHD is so bad, nothing is helping me. Or, you know, they didn't really give it the due diligence of really finding out what is going on. You know, when we talk about the gut, there's so many things. There's the bacteria, there's the overgrowths, the pathogens, leaky gut inflammation. There's so many things in the gut that could go wrong. You really want to know exactly what you're treating so you can, you know, go through it. And likely there are root causes rather than just one root cause, which is why I think testing is so important. And those two are probably kind of the. The main ones that will give you the most information.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: And we've talked a lot about.
About diet and eating. Are there other sort of lifestyle kinds of changes that are effective, too? And what. What kinds of sort of lifestyle things would you potentially recommend.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: The. For adhd? Exercise movement has actually been shown to cause a staggering improvement, like on par with medication, even. And it's daily movement, of course. If you can get your kids out at doing any kind of activity outside in the sun, you know, for 30 minutes a day, that's amazing. If you're in an area of the world where that's not possible and it's freezing and gloomy outside, it's okay. As long as they're moving their bodies and doing some kind of exercise on a daily basis, that works wonders for the brain. It works wonders for easing and alleviating those ADHD symptoms. And it's so easy to do. Like, it doesn't need to be like this arduous, like, oh, you need to exercise for 30 minutes or else it's like to anything they enjoy.
You know, if you're in Florida like me, just jump in the pool and go swimming, you know, Right. Have them ride their bikes, kick the ball around with their friends. It's any kind of movement. And I know that sometimes people kind of think, okay, well you know, my kid plays sports, maybe they have practice once a week. It's more of the consistent bits rather than those like once in a while sprints. And if you have that consistency, you will start to notice a difference.
Movement is incredible. And the other one is sleep. So really optimizing sleep, that could be difficult for ADHD kids. A lot of them struggle with sleep. And that's again, the importance of getting down to why.
What is going on in their bodies that's disrupting their sleep. But other than that, it's having that sleep routine fine tuned, right? No screens two hours before bedtime, keeping the room super dark, keeping the room cool, having maybe a little mindfulness routine going into bedtime, like some breath work, even a three minute meditation where they just sit calmly and focus on their breath. As you know, they're kind of winding down and going into bedtime.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yes, that all sounds, it is important for everyone to do those things, but I think this population especially, we haven't talked a lot about medication today, but I know that you know a lot about medication.
What are some of the pros and cons of medication? Can you describe for us? And then also as parents and you know, kids are really kind of improving their habits and lifestyle and diet and, and all that stuff. What kind of impact might there be upon either their need for medication or the impacts of the medication? Because it's like you're not gonna, certainly you're not going to abandon medication because we, we never advocate that people make abrupt changes like that. But how, how do those fit together?
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I would never recommend anybody discontinue their medication. And you know, even, even though I'm doing functional medicine and my approach is completely holistic from the natural perspective, there is absolutely a place for medication. And I think any child or person struggling with ADHD needs to get it addressed in any form that's helpful for Them, whether it's medication, therapy, holistic approaches. Because the point is you need to get helped. The problem is that prescription medications have just become this blanket approach. A child gets diagnosed at the age of seven and they get handed a prescription. And as a pharmacist, I've seen how that prescription just keeps getting refilled. Refilled. They're 10, they're 15 there. It just keeps getting refilled. And sometimes the practitioner is going to be on top of it and see them on a regular basis, but oftentimes it's their general, you know, doctor that keeps the refills going. They run out of refills, the pharmacy calls and they're not actually being seen. It's not being tailored to their needs. And the only time we really see that change is when either the child is having severe side effects and the parents have to, you know, get that addressed or the medication stops working over time. And in both of those cases, you know, the next step is to either increase the dose or to add on another medication. And unfortunately, when there are side effects, oftentimes doctors will add a prescription medication to manage the side effects of the first medication, which you can understand only leads to more side effects. So having said that, you know, there is a place for medicine. And if your child is already taking, doesn't replace getting down to the root of what's going on. If they have nutrient deficiencies, you need to replete them. The medication will not replete it. If they have an imbalanced gut, you need to help them balance it through diet and lifestyle, whatever it is that you need to do. Because as they grow, things only get worse.
And the medication that's out there, I mean, there's really stimulants and non stimulants, right? The stimulants are the go tos, they are the most popular ones. And the side effects of those medications, one of the ones that's problematic for children is appetite suppression is very common, happens about 80% of the time.
And the other things, it can actually cause irritability. As a drug wears off, it can cause rebound of symptoms, which is typically worse than the symptoms in the first place as the drug wears off.
And so when, you know, then parents start to think about the non stimulant drugs, which is the other group, and those typically cause drowsiness and dizziness and so the kid becomes kind of slower, right? They're not so hyperactive, but they're also just sluggish and overall can have like personality changes, especially when the dose is high. They kind of lose their, themselves. You know what makes them them, they lose their personality because they're just. The drug is controlling their symptoms, but it's also not allowing their full expression of, of who they are. And you know, what I found is that, yeah, maybe, you know, some people will be on medication and it's working, which is great if it is. But if you're taking care of the whole person, if you're taking care of the whole child and you're fixing the gut, you're getting rid of toxins. We didn't, you know, touch on it too much today, but if there's a toxin overload in the body, you need to flush out those toxins to allow the body and the brain to function properly, replete those nutrients and you might actually start to take away. Of course, with a doctor's approval, under the supervision of a doctor, either take away medication or decrease doses. Even if you can't get off of it fully. Your child can oftentimes go from two to one medication, go on a lower dose, which overall is going to improve their quality of life and you know, prevent the accumulation of medication as they grow.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: You mentioned detox.
Is that, let's talk about that. What, what kinds of toxins in the body are particularly of interest here? And how does the body go about doing detoxification? How can we make sure that our body is effective at doing detox?
[00:38:27] Speaker B: That is such a good. We can have a whole podcast on detox.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Maybe that'll be the next one. But give us a little bit.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: There's so much to say here.
The toxins that I commonly. Heavy metals are a huge one. What I commonly see in kids, glyphosate kids, adults, I think almost everybody has got glyphosate in their body.
It is unfortunate. I wait for the day when we can finally have that band. But it is a huge problem, not just for adhd, but a whole other slew of other things that it causes in the body.
And some of those preservatives that we've talked about, preservatives in food, herbicides, pesticides from the environment. So those are the common things that we see. And oftentimes if you test like a kid these days or you know, probably a Gen X, I don't know, but let's just say a grown up, you will probably have a much more toxic child. They are so much more exposed to toxins from, from everything, from the environment, from food, golf courses, farms. It's in the air, it's in the water. It's in the food we eat and what I see. So one of the kind of flagship tests that I do in my practice is nutrigenomic test. It test genetics on the key systems of the body. So inflammation, detoxification, mitochondria, methylation, and. And some other areas. What the patterns. Now, there's no one gene that's going to say, you know, this is ADHD or this is autism. But there are patterns. And the patterns that I see in the kids I work with is that they have a huge vulnerability with detoxification and a propensity for aggressive inflammation.
And so now they've got inflammation coming in from triggering foods or from toxins in their body. And they have this aggressive inflammation. Their body turns on this inflammatory response. They have trouble turning down that inflammation, and now their body has trouble detoxifying and getting rid of these toxins in the body. Because our bodies are great. We're meant to kind of handle some amount of toxins, right, coming in. And every day we detox. But if there's a vulnerability in that system, now we have these things building up, plus the issues of leaky gut, maybe leaky brain. And that's how we get this picture of inflammation, your inflammation and. Which leads to hyperactivity, irritability, focus issues, all the things that we see in adhd.
Now, do you want this the solution?
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Well, I was gonna just say that inflammation is kind of, in many ways the result of toxins and other, you know, troubles. It's sort of how the body responds when it is under attack, either from, you know, actual pathogens or from chemicals that it doesn't recognize, or it gets confused and thinks it is its own enemy, which is, you know, autoimmunity. But. But what do we do about all that?
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. This is, you know, all the case. And I think why we've seen an increase in chronic conditions from autoimmunity to ADHD is exactly that. This inflammation that's kind of underlying all of this.
The key, I mean, detox sounds great. I think everybody's talking about detox. Women love to detox. Everyone loves a good detox. The problem is jumping straight into a detox can cause more harm than good, especially when we are looking at people who have trouble with that system.
So what happens is we might take supplements to detox, and then these toxins start moving out of the tissues where they're hiding. So our body is really smart. We take those toxins when they come in and we sequester it. We hide it in the fat Tissue, we hide it in the organs because the body's trying to keep us safe. It wants to get it out of the bloodstream because it recognizes how toxic, toxic these things are. So once we start doing a detox, we're actually moving these toxins around. We're taking them out of the tissue and they enter the bloodstream. Now, if we're not eliminating them properly, they can cause more inflammation and more damage than good, which is why that's never the place to start. If there's a, you know, heavy metals or any kind of toxins in the body, we always want to address the inflammation first. We want to optimize methylation, which is a huge part of detoxification. And a problem that a lot of ADHD people have is methylation. Another whole podcast.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: We're going to have to do so many podcasts together.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: I'm sitting here just like biting my.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Tooth tongue because I want to jump in and talk about methylation.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, go ahead. Yeah.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Nope, not gonna do it. Not gonna do it.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: We'll see that one.
All right, well, you guys are gonna have to stay tuned. It's gonna have to be another podcast.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but, but detoxing is something that the body does naturally, right? Like, that's the first thing that, like you see all of these ads and stuff online or on wherever. It's like detox formula. As if the body doesn't detoxify itself naturally, but it does it. Like the body has all of these systems in place. But you, but what you're saying is so smart that the first, the first thing that happens in detox is that your body sort of goes and roots through the closets and starts pulling stuff out of the closets. But the stuff that it pulls out of the closet is still toxic at first. And the body has to do some work in order to neutralize the toxins in our body to make them no longer toxic, and then it has to flush them out. So it's really a three step process. Right. And so what I hear you saying is don't start step one. If you don't give the body the tools and supplies it needs to do the treatment in step two and then actually get rid of it in step three. Because otherwise, man, you don't want to see my closets, like, falling out into the middle of the room because it's not going to be pretty.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I love the way you said that. It's a great analogy.
Absolutely. The things you can do for your kids is, number one, hydration, water Clean, filtered water. You want to keep them hydrated. Number two, there are foods that help us with detoxification. Our cruciferous vegetables. So cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus. Everything in the cruciferous veggie family is great for detoxification. It's great for our liver, it's great for so many things, but those are the foods that, you know, we need to eat greens every single day. The color green should be on our plate. And not like green number 50, but green from nature.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Man, are there 50? Oh, I had no idea that.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I. I just.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: You just make.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: I just. I just made that up. But, you know, whatever makes green brilliant blue and yellow. 5. There we go. Now, they have these fun names like Brilliant Blue and Sunset Yellow to make food coloring sound enticing for kids. So, yeah, a combination of those. So that's not. Doesn't take green, but the green you find in nature.
Yeah, absolutely. Does it? This has been so green smoothies are actually a great way to get it into your kids, by the way.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Well, this. This has been way more fun than I think that perhaps it ought to have been. It's a serious topic, but we were having a good time. I love it. I always like to ask people, what are you excited about? What are you excited about? Coming up. What you got coming up that gets you excited?
[00:46:57] Speaker B: So right now I've got a masterclass coming up in the beginning of April. It is for parents, and it's going to walk parents through exactly what I do, essentially. Right. Looking at triggers, looking at inflammation. How do we help our kiddos naturally what they can do at home to start this journey to help their kids? Because there's so many things you can do. Yes, testing is amazing. It lets us get really precise and granular. But the things that you do at home are going to move the needle for your child. And that's exactly what I'm going to teach. So I'm really excited about that. If anybody wants to sign up or join anyone interested in that, you can sign up on my website.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Yeah. What is your website and how can people get a hold of you?
[00:47:43] Speaker B: It's atypically awesome dot com.
And actually, if it's okay for your audience, Ramsey, I'm offering free strategy calls for parents. Yes, these are getting a little bit more granular on what might move the needle in each specific case because like I said, everybody's going to be different.
So if anybody goes to my website and fills out the contact form, if they put what's worthwhile in the comments, then they will get a free strategy call with me.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Oh, that is fantastic. Thank you so much.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: Well, this is, I think it's really such an important topic because, you know, that the prevalence of neurodivergence, it seems like, has grown significantly in the recent past, and it would be great if we could turn that around. And, you know, I just find it so refreshing, your approach.
It just lines up so well with the, you know, basic foundational ideas that, you know, how much of a difference that clean food and water and eating whole foods and avoiding things like, you know, additives and preservatives and chemicals and just tons of sugar. You know, I think that's really good for everybody. But I think, I think for, you know, the, the kids that we're talking about, it's just that much more important. And so I think it's a really important, great message for parents that the basics are important.
And sure there's, you know, there's medication options, but those are not the end all to the be all. Those are not going to fundamentally solve the issues that may be causing this stuff. So I just really appreciate your work and thank you for coming on and I had a blast.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me on. I had a great time. This is a really energizing conversation. Thank you.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Where to go from here? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to learn more about me, Ramsey Zimmerman. And please reach out to me and let me know what you think. I don't want this podcast to be some message in a bottle thrown out to sea. I want to hear back from you. Please send me a message or an email or hit me up on X, LinkedIn or Instagram. And please leave a rating and review for the what's Worthwhile podcast on Apple, Spotify, Iheart or Amazon.
