ADHD Is a Whole-Body Problem: What to Look at Beyond the Brain

**Dr. Mark Hyman** (0:00)
When I think of someone with ADHD, it's not a brain problem, it's a system problem. These are not brain disorders. They're systemic disorders that affect the brain. So basically, when you have depression or ADHD or autism or any of these behavioral or psychiatric conditions, it's a brain on fire.
And so a lot of times, the reason for the brain on fire is the gut.
It's quite simple. It's your body is connected to your brain. So everything that's happening south of the border of your neck is affecting what's going on in your head. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Office Hours. Today, we're doing things a little differently. I'm here with Emma, one of the producers of The Dr. Hyman Show, and we're digging into a topic that I think is going to surprise a lot of people. Emma, what are we going to talk about today?

**Emma** (0:43)
Last week, you had a conversation with Jenna Free on an incredible episode about the impact our nervous systems have on ADHD management. One thing we wanted to dive a little deeper on is the functional medicine lens of ADHD and how other symptoms of our body may heighten symptoms. So Mark, my first question to you is, what other systems in our body may impact ADHD symptoms?

**Dr. Mark Hyman** (1:03)
Well, everything affects everything. That's how the body works. The body is a network, it's a system, everything is connected to everything. So when I think of someone with ADHD, it's not a brain problem, it's a system problem. There was an incredible scientist, Martha Herbert, who was a mentor of mine from Harvard, who was a neurologist, a pediatric neurologist, who talked about autism or even the whole spectrum of ADHD, learning disabilities, dyslexia, all the way to Asperger's and autism, the whole phenomena of neurodevelopmental disorders, which is really affecting one in six kids, now it's a staggering amount of kids, and it's getting worse. And what she said was that these are not brain disorders. They're systemic disorders that affect the brain.
And so everything is going to affect how that brain functions, what that child eats, or the person with ADHD because grownups have it too, their exercise, level of stress, sleep, their nutrient status, the balance of hormones, their gut microbiome, toxic load, food sensitivities, gluten, the whole spectrum of things will affect the brain. And so trying to treat the brain by just giving Ritalin or a stimulant, and not really dealing with the root causes is a problem. And I think what we're now understanding is that gut plays a huge role in overall health, and particularly in neurologic diseases, psychiatric diseases, and really the whole spectrum of anything that drives inflammation. And by the way, everything that's going on in the brain, in someone with ADHD or autism, it's inflammation. When they've taken children who had died, who had autism, and they did autopsies on their brain, they found that they had inflamed brains. Literally they had elevated levels of activation of what we'll call microglial cells, which is the brain's immune system. On MRIs, Martha Herbert documented this, their brains are larger, meaning they're swollen, literally swollen. So I think we have to look at what is driving the inflammation. And the gut is a huge, huge factor in that. This episode was brought to you by Function. Get access to over 160 lab tests annually at functionhealth.com/mark.

**Emma** (3:07)
So I want to know specifically, what does the gut actually have to do with our ability to focus?

**Dr. Mark Hyman** (3:13)
Well, your microbiome is information. You've got three pounds of bacteria in there. You've got probably 40 trillion bacterial cells. You've got probably 100 to 150 times as much DNA as your own DNA. It's making proteins, metabolites, probably a third. And this has been estimated up to a third of everything in your bloodstream, of the metabolites in your bloodstream, come from the microbiome. And so if your bugs are making bad molecules that are inflammatory or just regulate your neurotransmitters or brain inflammation, it's going to have an effect on you.
And if there's a leaky gut for various reasons, because of dysbiosis, people have, you know, born by C-sections, lots of antibiotics or lack of breastfeeding and breastfeeding is so important to develop the gut microbiome because 25% of the calories in breast milk is not absorbed by the baby. It's meant to feed the microbiome. You know, we see that, we see lots of antibiotic use. And so there's this whole setup that these kids get of dysregulated gut microbiomes that generates inflammation and that generates leaky gut, food sensitivities, and systemic inflammation that's causing their brains to malfunction.