This was one of the hot topics raised by a number of speakers at the recent MINDD Forum held at the ICC in Sydney, including Dr James Neuenschwander MD, Director of the Bio Energy Medical Center in Michigan, USA. Dr Neuenschwander says he sees examples in his medical practice most days where a parent comes in with their child who has ADHD and during the consultation, it becomes obvious that the parent has some ADHD symptoms as well.
As Dr Neuenschwander (aka Dr Neu) says: “It sometimes happens when you are seeing a kid with autism, and frequently you’ll have the parent there and you know where the autism may have come from, because you can see it in the personality of both of them. And this is hard for everyone – the divorce rate in the States with parents with autism is 80%, right? It’s really high – parents divorcing because they have a child on the spectrum.”
“Frequently, this is because one parent can’t handle dealing with the kid. And frequently, it’s because that parent – not that they’re autistic – but they have some of those characteristics. To handle this, when I had kids – and that’s a while ago because my kids are in their 30s and 40s now – that’s when we started seeing this rise of medication use in the States for ADHD.”
“Australia has seen a major surge in the use of ADHD medication and diagnosis surging by 300% in the last decade. Have you seen the same sort of rise in America?”
Dr Neu: “Yes, but I think we’re probably at least half a generation ahead of you. Because what we’ve seen is that if you have quirky grandparents, ADHD parents, and then either ADHD children or children on the spectrum, then it’s all part of the same continuum. It’s just the level of severity that’s different. And I talked a lot this morning – about the importance of gut health and the function of the brain – and a lot of that stuff is inherited. But it’s also influenced by environmental toxicity, and I think that’s where we’re really having problems.”
“It does raise a few challenges though, when a parent with ADHD is raising a child with ADHD. This can be particularly difficult as ADHD can show up differently in adults than in children. Do you notice this?”
Dr Neu: “I’m certainly not a parenting expert, but definitely, if the parent themselves has the ADHD, it makes it more difficult for them to maintain an environment that’s going to allow the child to flourish. There are always a lot of people who have ADHD who do very well in life and this can be because they have somebody in their life that helps keep them on centre and keeps them on task, right?”
“But it does make it more difficult if the parent themselves is struggling. Because, you know, with ADHD there’s not just the focus attention element of it – or the hyperkinetic element of it. It’s also about this thermostat that goes from zero to 60 very quickly, right? They may fly off the handle right away. With ADHD, you don’t control that emotional part of your brain the way you’re supposed to. And if you’re a two-year-old, we expect this. If you’re an adult with children, we don’t. We expect you to be able to control yourself.
“And that’s one of the biggest things about ADHD. So while there are many factors – the genetics, the environment, how you’re raised, who you’re raised by – all those things. But when the parent is struggling and the kid has those genetics and they’re in the same environment, that’s kind of scary sometimes.”
What are the new ways to deal with ADHD and autism?
Dr Neu: “Well, now we know we’re often dealing with gut problems or we’re dealing with toxicity issues as well. Because when you’re born, you have the toxicity of your mother and the egg you came from, but you also have the toxicity of grandmother, right?
“Because your mother’s basically born with all the ovocytes she’s going to have. And so that’s influenced by the toxicity of where she came from, which is grandma. And so, that trans-generational toxicity is one of the things that’s scary here, because we know a lot of ADHD is brain inflammation. Before we knew this, we’ve often thought, the only thing we have is behavioral therapy drugs.
“But these drugs don’t really look at what causes the problem, what is the underlying mechanism for the ADHD? And that’s when we start looking at the inflammation of the brain and the gut – and how this is a big component with a lot of psychiatric disorders. It certainly is with autism and schizophrenia, but also with ADHD. So again, if you have a predisposition because of your genetics and you’re raised in an environment that’s feeding into that because you have toxins which are feeding into that inflammation, then these are not good combinations. We’re just seeing it all accelerate.”
“You were talking earlier today about the link between all types of ADHD and gut health? And now more and more people are talking about this. Is this one of the ways you treat ADHD?”
Dr Neu: “Well, we do a lot of that. I mean, it’s almost impossible to be an integrative physician and not specialise in the gut because otherwise, you’re missing so much. It’s like being a cardiologist but not looking at blood pressure or something like that, right? You kind of have to be an expert.”
“Is that because there are as many cells in the gut as there are in the brain?”
Dr Neu: “Yes, you really, you have to take care of the gut. Most of the neurotransmitters produced in the body – the serotonin and the dopamine – they’re produced in the gut. I mean, 90% of all the serotonin comes from the gut. So it’s very, very important that this environment is maintained for health. And we know that specific probiotics – when you add in a healthy bacteria – you can change depression, you can change ADHD, you can change some of these things.
“Now, the problem is, it doesn’t happen overnight, right? And so if I’ve got a kid that’s bouncing off the walls with ADHD and I put them on a stimulant, they’ll have an improvement in their symptoms in an hour, right? As opposed to using an integrative natural method where it may take a month or two months or three months, to see a difference. So the parents have to have the patience. And again, if the parents are on the same spectrum as the kid, they might not have that patience.”
“Are you finding, though, that if you’re able to treat both the parent and the child, you can then produce a much better outcome?”
Dr Neu: “Yes. Usually it’s sort of paradoxical because it starts with the parent bringing in the child, right? And they want us to treat the child. So we work with the child and we see all those anomalies. And particularly if we ever go to genetics just to look at where the glitches are – then all of a sudden, the parents will perk up. It’s like, oh, where did they get that from? I don’t know, right? Could be you. And then they get interested, particularly when they see their kid change.
“Because, I mean, ADHD is not good for relationships. I always say you know somebody with ADHD when you walk into their garage, workshop, whatever, and they have 50 things they’ve started and none that they’ve finished, right? That person is ADHD, right? And they may be full of great ideas, but they can’t accomplish it, they can’t finish the job.”
“So, what you’re saying is that when parents come to you, bringing their child, after a while they sometimes hear what you’re saying and realise they’re handling some of the same symptoms?”
Dr Neu: “Yes, and also, if I’m going to tell them their child needs to eat a certain diet – for example, they need to get rid of food dyes, get rid of sugars, get rid of processed foods – any of the inflammatory garbage that’s in our diet – the only way they’re really going to be able to do that is to get it out of the house, right?
“And so this means if a parent wants to eat that food, they have to leave the house, go buy it, eat it, and come home. So they’re not going to do that, so they usually start eating better as well – and then they feel better too. So then they start seeing, oh, there may be something in this that I can do for myself.”
“That’s right – and going back to the early part of ADHD, we’re seeing more evidence now that the child’s microbiome does relate to the parents because it’s so much affected by the mother’s microbiome and what’s in her uterus etc?”
Dr Neu: “That’s right – you’re going to establish your microbiome in the first year or two of your life, right? So that’s going to be heavily influenced by the microbiome of the uterus when you were developing, whether you had a vaginal birth or a C-section birth. It’s also affected by whether you were breastfed, and if you were breastfed, whether that was actual feeding at the breast or pumping and then bottle feeding with breast milk.”
“Even that makes a difference? Why does that make a difference?”
Dr Neu: “Oh, yes. Well, this is the coolest thing ever. Number one, breast milk has a microbiome, so there’s bacteria in breast milk – it’s not sterile. So, particularly things like Human Milk Oligosaccharides or HMO – these are starches we can’t digest. So they’re not for the baby, they’re for the baby’s microbiome. So if the baby is sick, the HMO content in the milk changes, but only if the baby’s at the breast. So, if you’re pumping and giving the baby breast milk, that changes the chemistry of the breast milk.”
“That’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve heard that we don’t tend to breastfeed for long enough sometimes but that other cultures, like the Nepalese, breastfeed for two years at a minimum.”
Dr Neu: “Yes, if that luxury is available, that’s the recommendation – two years of breastfeeding. I mean, the minimum is a year, and most of the professional societies in the US, say six months, but that’s not really long enough. I mean, the older we get, the more resilient our microbiome is. So, if I don’t nurture your microbiome at two months old versus at two years old, there’s a big difference in the outcome, right? And that’s why breastfeeding is so critical. You can make up for a C-section by breastfeeding. You can actually get just as good outcomes as a vaginal birth, if you breastfeed after a C-section.
“So that’s kind of amazing. But again, it’s the actual baby at the breast kind of breastfeeding that allows for the interplay between the mother and the baby – and this allows mom to change the chemistry of the milk, which I think is really cool.”
“And this would happen naturally but we’re in a different way of life these days and women often don’t get the time they’d like so they can breastfeed.”
Dr Neu: “Absolutely, because in the States, you get a few months off as personal time after the birth, depending on who you work for. But let’s say it’s four months or six months. After that, if you’re going to continue breastfeeding, you’re pumping, right? You’re not doing a lot of actual breastfeeding. So it’s not ideal for the baby. Now, it’s much better than formula, but still, it’s not ideal.”
“Yes and moving on to when young people get to their teenage years, there’s often a bit more stress on them at this time in their life?”
Dr Neu: “Yes, well, because their ecosystem is changing, and you have the onset of hormones, which are a new influence. You know that a baby is going to have hormones, but by the time they’re a few years old, those hormones disappear. By the time they’re five, they really don’t have hormones until puberty. And then when puberty shows up, the hormones show up, and that will alter the gut ecosystem, right?
“So again, estrogen has a very different impact on the ecosystem than testosterone does. One of the functions of estrogen is to create immunotolerance, right? So, if you have a bacteria that normally would be more irritating to the gut, the gut’s going to get rid of it. But if you have estrogen in the picture, then the gut’s going to be more likely to tolerate that bacteria, and that changes the gut ecosystem. So there is that window when kids are going through puberty, the first couple of years where the hormones go haywire.”
“What about testosterone? What does that do?”
Dr Neu: “Well, testosterone doesn’t have the same impact on the immune system that estrogen does. And I mean, men make estrogen and particularly at my age, most men will have more estrogen than most women. But yes, it has different impacts on the immune system. So testosterone is more of an anabolic kind of hormone, so it’s more about growth and building and that sort of thing. I really don’t know if it has the same impact as estrogen does but I don’t think so. But, testosterone’s going to change the terrain in some way, shape, or form.”
“So, are you finding that people are more open to looking at gut health in treatment of ADHD?“
Dr Neu: “Yes, because I’ve been looking at gut health since the late ’90s, and at that time it was hard to find anything. You could go to PubMed, you could go to any of these research sites and there just wasn’t a lot there. But now, thousands of articles a week are published on this. And there’s entire microbiome societies, gastroenterologists are much more interested in it, and you have the whole field of integrative psychiatry which is heavily into the microbiome as well, which is interesting because it’s like, they’re psychiatrists – why are they worried about the gut?
“Well, we know why – because this gives them a tool. Because the reality is that all of these psychiatric disorders are difficult to treat. They’re not a piece of cake so you have to use every tool you have available – especially if you don’t want to use medications. And major tool in your toolbox is the microbiome. So yes, integrative psychiatry is very big on the microbiome.”
“The fact is, the more they investigate this, the more they find out how much inflammation is a problem. In 2018, there was an article published looking at a study – it was an autopsy study – on autistic brains. So they evaluated the brains of those studies and what they found was, not only did they have evidence of inflammation of the brain, but it appeared to be autoimmune. So we have hundreds of articles now that report a big chunk of autism, is inflammation, right? And inflammation of the brain. And there’s an equal number of articles connecting that to imbalances in the gut. It’s not, you have autism, which is inflammation of the brain, and you have gut imbalances. No, these gut imbalances are at the very least connected, and most probably causing the brain inflammation.”
“Was this how you became interested in gut health back in the 1990s? Did this spark your interest in the link between gut health and autism?”
Dr Neu: “Well, I started in integrative medicine practice in the late ’80s, right? And mainly it was to deal with chronically ill adults. I was dealing with hormone replacement therapy, I was dealing with people who had chronic Lyme, because I live in Michigan – it’s a heavily wooded state and we have ticks so we have Lyme Disease.”
“So, I would be treating these patients and and then I would realise that one of their symptoms was they couldn’t calm their brain down. I realised there’s something going on with their brain and then they all had digestive problems – so that’s what got me into the gut. And then, you know, in the integrative medicine circles you could see it, because we knew the digestive tract played a huge role in how the immune system worked.
“So, I’d be treating these adult’s guts and they were getting better. Then they would say, oh, by the way, my son is on Ritalin or whatever the latest ADHD drug is. Is there something you can do for them? And then when you start treating autism, from the get-go, gut issues and autism show themselves to be one thing. They’re linked together.”
“But we don’t hear it reported that way in conventional medicine do we?”
“No we don’t. But it’s been like that for many years. Often, the autism is used as an excuse for the gut. Rather than understanding the gut problem is part of the autism, right? It’s just, oh, that’s just another symptom of autism. What the heck’s autism? I mean, come on. You know, I always say, does the autism fairy sprinkle autism dust on your child, and all of a sudden, they’re autistic?
“Again, there’s this whole realm of innovative psychiatry now in the States because, I mean, the psychiatrists know. I mean, what happens when you put a six-year-old on an anti-psychotic drug? They’re going to be diabetic and obese by the time they’re seven, right? You can’t put a developing child on those kinds of drugs. I mean, it’s bad enough to put an adult on those kinds of drugs.
“So, if we’re giving somebody a drug that makes them feel terrible but keeps them out of the hospital – a thinking doctor is going to say, what else can I do for this patient? And that gets them into integrative medicine because there are no other options.”
“Well, thank you for all of that information Dr Neuenschwander. My last question would be the fact that you’re seeing a big increase in autism and ADHD in the USA and we’re seeing that as well. Where do you think this is heading?”
Dr Neu: “Well, again, I think we’re at least half a generation ahead of you in the USA. Give it another half a generation and all of those kids with ADHD will be autistic. That’s where we’re going. I try to get a detailed history from all the kids that come in to my clinic with autism, because they’re all different in terms of how they got there. But you look at the family history and you often see where it comes from. Sometimes, there’s a parent that’s ADD, right? They could either be OCD or they’re ADD. That’s a risk factor. Again, that’s not normal. And then with the grandparents, you have crazy Uncle Charlie or somebody else who’s a little bit off the spectrum, but not diagnosed with anything.
“Anyway, it’s sad because I think most of this is really the toxicity that we’re all handling in the environment. Modern living is great. Mobile phones are great. Electricity is lovely – but we pay a price for it. And we should be looking at what can we do to improve our resilience to deal with this stuff. We have not had modern life for that long. I mean, life’s been around for about 4 billion years, but modern life, only 500 million.
“We’ve never had to deal with plastic, never had to deal with EMF, other than the natural EMF from the Earth and the sun. We’ve never had to deal with all these chemical compounds that we have now. Lead, mercury, we can deal with that because they’ve been around naturally in the environment forever. We have enzymes to deal with lead and mercury. Aluminum, even though it’s one of those common elements on the planet – it was never in a free form. We’ve never had to deal with aluminum. Gadolinium from MRI scans, that is called a rare earth metal for a good reason. We’ve never dealt with that. So what happens when we get an MRI and six months later we get another one? It’s all scary stuff.”
Thank you to Dr James Neuenschwander MD for this interview. Dr Neuenschwander founded the Bio Energy Medical Center, a multidisciplinary, integrative medical practice located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1988. At this clinic, he treats children and adults with complex, chronic health problems who have not responded to conventional therapies and strives to promote wellness through prevention.
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