Natural Treatment For ADHD In Children

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show — I am Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to talk about a very important topic around ADHD, specifically non-medication treatment options for ADHD. In my 21-year career, I have watched the rates of ADD and ADHD skyrocket in children and teens and even in adults, and the numbers of prescriptions that are written for these issues have skyrocketed as well. While medication may be an appropriate treatment intervention for some kids, I feel like we need to really looks deeper at what it is that’s going on that so many children and teenagers are being diagnosed and medicated for this condition. And to help us understand this better, I am thrilled to have as my guest today Dr. Sandy Newmark.

Dr. Newmark is a physician and a clinical professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of California, and the director of clinical services at the Osher Center for integrative medicine. He is also the head of the pediatric integrative neurodevelopmental program at the Osher Center, specializing in the treatment of Autism, ADHD and other developmental or chronic childhood conditions. He has a long standing interest and expertise in nutrition and its impact on childhood development and general health. He combines conventional medicine with nutrition, behavior management and various complementary modalities.

Dr. Newmark has lectured widely on both autism and ADHD and has authored 3 chapters in integrative medicine textbooks. He has written a book entitled “ADHD Without Drugs: A Guide to the Natural Care of Children with ADHD” And his UCTV talk on ADHD has had over 4.6 million views. And I first read Dr. Newmark’s “ADHD Without Drugs” book many years ago now and have referred back to it often at my work in the clinic with families and kids, so it’s such a pleasure to have him on the show. Welcome to the show, Dr. Newmark.

Dr. Sanford Newmark:

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So I’m curious — I want to dive into questions around why so many kids are being diagnosed with ADHD and non-medication treatments but I’m just curious, in reading your bio, your expertise and your experience read similar to mine and I’m curious how you first got interested in or involved in working with kids who have things like autism, ADHD, neurodevelopmental kinds of issues.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Yeah, so I was doing general pediatrics and I became interested in ADHD first because this was before the big autism explosion happened. But there are still a lot of kids with ADHD and I found as a pediatrician who was interested in development, I just found it kind of fascinating seeing the increased number of children and trying to figure out what to do about them. And then when I opened a general pediatric integrative medicine practice after my integrative medicine fellowship, where I saw just about everything that would come through, but more and more kids came in with autism and ADHD, autism and ADHD and it just kind of became my speciality that way. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s great. And I think over the course of the last 10-20 years, we have just seen an explosion in the number of kids diagnosed with these — or even if they are not diagnosed with autism or ADHD, having symptoms of things that are sort of on that neurodevelopmental kind of continuum. I know I have seen that in my practice as well. So I guess that begs the question to start out with: Why do you think so many kids are being diagnosed with ADHD these days? 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

So to answer this question, you have to distinguish between kids who have ADHD and kids who are being diagnosed with ADHD because those are two tremendously different questions. And to back up and be even a little more — you have to understand what ADHD really is. I mean ADHD, the clinical definition is some combination of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity that has an impact on your life at home, and for kids at school. And so each one of those things is on a continuum. Some people are very careful and some people are very impulsive and that’s just normal. Some people are very active and some people are quiet. And some people are really good at focusing and some people are not so good, and that’s all normal.

Where ADHD is, is this kind of one end of the continuum where it gets to the point where it’s past normal. It causes impact. But where that point is is something that’s very subjective. It depends on where you live and what school you go to and what your parents are expecting. And because of our society and the demands on kids, a lot of kids who just would have been kind of the normal one end of the spectrum now suddenly have ADHD — or the continuum, because I don’t want to confuse people that it’s autistic spectrum. So for instance, in kindergarten now, children are expected to learn to read and write. This never happened when I was in kindergarten and probably when you were in kindergarten.

And so yes, most kids can do it but some kids aren’t developmentally ready. And so now those kids instead of just being normal kids, suddenly they can’t learn to read and write, they’re not that great at playing attention at 5 years old and they get diagnosed with ADHD. One really interesting study shows that if you were born in August rather than September, you were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and treated with medication for ADHD. Why? Because you’re the youngest kid in the class. And this has been shown in several studies. One study even showed all the way through high school, the youngest kids were 50% more likely to be diagnosed. So you have that.

Then I also think there’s tremendous pressure in our society because of both parents working and so little time and kids going to school, going to after school programs, getting home at 6 o’clock, everybody’s tired, everybody’s irritable and now they’re supposed to sit down and do homework. And for a lot of kids that’s really difficult. So what happens? They don’t do their homework, their teacher starts complaining, they’re tired and again, the easiest thing is to diagnose ADHD.

So there’s also interesting data that shows in counties or places where teaching for the test is required, in other words, teachers jobs are dependent on their kids’ production and their people’s production, those places have significantly higher ADHD rates. So there’s pressure on teachers to teach to the test, to have kids do well on standardized testing, and if a kid is doing badly, well you can make them do better by giving them Ritalin or something like that, so that is another issue.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s so true, just the change in expectations for kids even over the last 20 years. My first degree and profession was actually in teaching. And you’re absolutely right. How I was taught to teach kindergarten, first grade, second grade — now 25 years later it’s a totally different ballgame. I mean we were having kindergarteners come to school for half days and they were getting downtime and playground time and the focus was around pretend play and developing communication skills. And now, they’re in school for a full day, everyday. They have very little time to play, to have recess, to spend time outdoors and most of their time now is spent sitting at desks doing more of the academic subjects, as you mentioned. Reading, writing, even social studies, science, those kinds of things at that really early age. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Yeah, I usually say the requirements when I was in kindergarten were eat, sleep, play. That’s what you had to be able to do. That’s a far cry from having to be able to sit there for hours doing academics. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Right. And so what you’re saying is that it’s not so much that things have changed in terms of so many more kids with true intrinsic brain-based problems, but it’s more that the expectations, the way that the environment and our culture has shifted has become such a mismatch with where kids are developmentally at that age that it can make many kids look like they have more significant problems, when actually it’s not a good match for what’s happening in the environment. Is that right?

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

That’s part of the problem, yes. I do think it is an interesting about whether more kids have ADHD. I think that’s possible that more kids do and it’s hard to know exactly. Because there are some kids who really do have a brain-based disorder where they have tremendous difficulties in attention and focus and impulsiveness. That might have to do with toxins in our environments. And it might also have to do with the terrible diet that some kids have these days. But there is one study that showed that they took cord blood form a lot of babies around the country and they found that there is an average of over 200 organic chemicals that were known to cause brain issues.

And that’s the blood that’s been circulating in this baby’s brain their whole gestation, it’s what they’re bathing in, essentially, their brain is bathing in. And there are all these neurotoxins. Just none of these have been tested for — hardly any of them have been tested for what they could do to our brain. And then you have all the other toxins in the environment. We know that high pesticide levels are associated with higher levels of ADHD. In a big study of 8 year olds, those with higher than average pesticide levels had higher than average — twice the amount actually of ADHD than those under the median. So I think there are a lot of reasons that maybe more kids also do have ADHD. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah. Good point about not only the things in the environment but even prenatal exposure and the diet piece is big. What constitutes food now compared to 20, 50 a 100 years ago is really very different, isn’t it?

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

It is, and there is a thing we are learning called ‘epigenetics’ which a lot of people don’t know about. We think of our DNA code, our genetics as something that’s sort of passed along from generation to generation and once you have it, it doesn’t change but it’s actually the way our genetics express change. And not only that, but some thing that happens to a mom can pass — can not only change her expression of her genetics but that can be passed to her child. So an interesting idea is — lead, we know causes increased ADHD, but it is actually way lower now in our environment than it used to be because you know leaded gas is out. But there might have been changes that happened in the people exposed to high levels of lead like my generation that have been passed on. So it’s just a whole other area.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Interesting, so many facets to look at in terms of why so many kids are being diagnosed with these issues. So I guess that leads to the question then: Then simple solution, just well — we have medications for these things. You and I have a bit of a different perspective on this, so I’d like to hear from you: Why not just use medication for all these kids who are having these issues?

Dr. Sanford Newmark:

Well that’s really a good question. The first answer is that for many of these kids, the medications don’t work very well. But about 70% of them in the short term, they seem to work but they do have a lot of side effects. But about 30% of kids, they just don’t work. I mean the side effects are too bad for them to even take it or they don’t have the expected effect. There are really significant side effects for some kids. Some kids don’t have them but some kids do, and they include simple things like not being able to eat, not sleeping well, but also some subtle stuff like personality changes. I’ve had so many kids that come see me and say, “Yeah — the medication is working.” But he’s just not himself — she’s lost her joy, you know? Those kids are sort of damped. Not zombies in that way that a lot of people are worried about, that’s usually an exaggeration unless somebody’s not paying attention to proper dosing at all but you know, they can have side effects.

The other part of it is we don’t really know what the long term effect of these ADHD medications, the psychostimulants are. The studies we have so far are not very positive about their long term efficacy, how good they are on the long term. That maybe partly because it’s really hard to do these studies. You can’t take 200 kids and say okay, you give Ritalin to a hundred, and this other hundred you don’t give any Ritalin and we’ll see when you’re 18, you know? You can’t ethically do that study, so it’s a little bit tricky. But we don’t know that it’s actually effective in the long run and there’s something called the Cochrane Databases, which is sort of the most respected evaluator of whether things work in medicine. They just do research and all the analysis.

And they just came out and said, “We’re not really sure that Ritalin works.” The other thing we don’t know is: Even if it works, in what way does it change the brain? When you take a medicine that affects your neuro-transmitters for years and years in a developing child and adolescent, it is going to change the way your brain works. That may be for the positive and may be for the negative. So the question is: If you’re 7 and you take ADHD medications until you’re 18 — do you have more of an ADHD-like brain or do you have less of an ADHD-like brain? We just don’t know the answer to that question. So for all those reasons, I think we should, number one, be really careful about diagnosis. Only use medications in kids who really need it, and use effective non-pharmaceutical treatments first or along with medications.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, I think it’s so common, when I see parents at my clinic, their experience has been well, we’ve had a concern or our teachers had a concern about what was going on with our child, went to the pediatrician or whoever the primary care provider was, had kind of a brief office appointment and left with a prescription.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Right. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And you know that unfortunately has become sort of standard practice around dealing with these things. And what you’re talking about is a different process of really gathering more information, I think — instead of just having a 10 minute office visit and saying well, let’s see if a prescription helps. What you’re talking about is really needing to delve into more of the issues surrounding why the kids are having problems in the first place. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark:

Absolutely, I agree and I’m glad you brought that up because that’s another reason for the overdiagnosis of ADHD, is misdiagnosis. Because kids who are diagnosed with ADHD can have a lot of problems that will look like ADHD but are not. Like learning disabilities, like sleep apnea, like anxiety. Anxiety can easily be diagnosed. But you can’t really tell that in a 10 or 15-minute visit. Really, it takes a couple of hours but the absolute optimal would be a multi-disciplinary evaluation where there is a doctor and a psychologist and maybe somebody that visited the school. I mean that’s hard and even I can’t have that arranged here, but at least you can take the time to find out and get feedback from teachers. A lot of times, pediatricians or family medicine doctors will get feedback but it’s just in the form of this standardized questionnaire which is really not enough. It’s just not enough. So that’s really important. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And I think that’s important for parents to understand that there can be so many issues that can present like inattention or impulsivity or the kinds of symptoms that we see with ADD or ADHD, but really the underlying issues are different. Maybe it’s anxiety or trauma or learning disabilities or whatever. And in those cases, when we just rush to medication for what we’re calling ADHD — sometimes we can actually make the problem worse, but typically then kids are still struggling, but because we’re not really targeting what the real issues are for them.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

That’s exactly right. You really have to make sure you’ve got the right diagnosis, which takes time. And it’s really hard to blame the pediatricians because you know they’re working in these environments where they don’t have the extra time to spend and there’s not enough developmental pediatricians and child psychiatrists to even go around. Although even some of those child psychiatrists don’t take the time either. I had a mom come into my office and said that she went to her child psychiatrist and he asked the kid to wait outside, which is normal while he talked to the mom. And she started talking, and in 10 minutes he said, “Well, your child has ADHD.” and got out his prescription pad. And she was stunned! She said, “Well, no thanks.” He did not actually ever even speak to the child. So this is — you just can’t do medicine like that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Right, so let’s get into then what are some of the non-pharmaceutical alternatives because I really want parents to get some ideas around what else could I look at? What else could be helpful for my child who is having some of these issues. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

So the first one is nutrition. And nutrition in two ways. One is just having a healthy diet without food additives. We know artificial colors and flavors make kids more hyperactive. Even normal kids. In europe, if you put certain artificial colors in the food, they actually put a warning label on it that says “This may make your kid more hyperactive.” For instance, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, the yellow here is artificial. In Europe, they changed it to a natural flavor because nobody would buy it. So that’s one thing. Simple thing: Avoiding too much sugar, avoiding artificial sweeteners, which we know have neurological consequences and then not having too many processed carbs, especially at breakfast. And one of my slides says “When did Pop-Tarts become breakfast?” Right? So what happens with really highly processed carbohydrates is when you eat them, they turn into sugar in your body very quickly, and then your blood sugar level goes high, and then your body doesn’t like that so your blood sugar level drops too low and then you can be irritable and not paying attention and look like you have ADHD, or it can make your ADHD symptoms worse. 

One of the worst breakfasts you can give, which is really common is waffles with syrup. I mean waffles are just highly-beaten white flour, which turns into sugar, and then you add sugar — you might as well pour a whole funnel full of sugar down your child’s throat and let them go off to school, right? So you want to have a good amount of protein, some fat which slows sugar digestion, maybe a carb — you know, there’s lots of good stuff out there. Oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter on a good wholewheat toast with a glass of milk, if you’re not sensitive to milk — all that kind of stuff. So really watching the diet is the one thing. And then there’s a proportion of kids with ADHD who actually have a sensitivity to some food that makes them hyper. Gluten and dairy are the most common ones. I don’t want to try and make the point that this is all kids with ADHD. In my practice, it’s probably less than half. But the ones that are sensitive, it can really be dramatic how much better they get when they take these foods out of their diet. And so often, with hyperactive kids, we’ll ask them to do an elimination diet and try to figure out if any particular foods are interfering with their behavior.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, I see that same thing. It certainly isn’t the majority of kids with these issues, but you know there is a substantial minority when we remove one or more types of foods, it makes a big difference. And typically, what I find with the kids with more of the hyperactive impulsive, more outward behavioral types of things, you can notice a difference pretty quickly if there is a food that’s bothering them. And sometimes parents will say, “Oh, it’s so hard to do that!” And it can be challenging, and as a parent who has had to do that myself, I certainly get that, but I help people think about how much time and energy and emotion are you investing in dealing with, the things that you are dealing with with your child, but might it be easier if there is a food that’s creating a problem to be able to address that? Because it just makes everybody’s life easier.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

I totally agree. It can be difficult. I think it depends on where you live. Here in San Francisco, it’s not that hard! You get gluten-free anything! Imagine if you lived in Oklahoma or Mississippi or somewhere where it might be a little more difficult. I don’t know about Michigan. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, we’re getting there. The Midwest always is the last the get everything, so certainly you have a lot more options there on the West Coast, but we’re starting to become — you know unfortunately, we’re talking about skyrocketing rates of ADHD and those kinds of things — just the rates of chronic illness in general have gone up and there are so many more people now who are requiring gluten-free diets, those types of things that I think it is starting to become more the norm that those things are more widely-available. Certainly more widely available than they were 5 or 10 years ago, that’s for sure.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Right, right. I agree with you that it’s the hyperactive, impulsive kids who seem to respond best. The kids who have that kind of purely inattention type of ADHD, I don’t find respond as often to some kind of elimination diet. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I would agree.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Going on with nutrition, there are nutritional supplements which can be really helpful. So fish oil has been highly studied in ADHD and I recommend that every child in my practice get fish oil. Usually, you have to look very carefully at which one you buy though. I talk about it in my book and give details, but basically you want to check how much EPA and DHA the product has. And it should be about 1000 for smaller kids, 2000 for adolescents and 1500 in between with more EPA than DHA. So that’s a really solid, easy thing to do. And then we know that lower levels of iron or zinc can affect ADHD. So I always check a blood test. And even vitamin D, although there is less information about that. So I always check these kids for iron, zinc and vitamin D. And by iron, I mean I measure something called Ferritin and not just the blood count, because that’s the one that’s associated with ADHD. A real lot of kids are either deficient or just really on the very lower end. And if you give them iron, it can really be helpful. Same thing with zinc, same thing with vitamin D. So those are some really simple things you can do in the nutrition world. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Just for parents listening, are those reasonable things for them to ask their child’s pediatrician or primary care physician if they’ve discussed with them concerns about these symptoms? I know sometimes parents feel a little bit uneasy or unsure about talking about some of these things with their child’s healthcare providers. Would you encourage parents that that’s a reasonable thing to ask for, to discuss with some of those specific nutrient labs?

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

I think it is and my experience is that most people’s pediatricians will do that for them whether they believe in this kind of approach or not because it’s a simple blood test, it’s not particularly expensive, it’s one blood drop. And what I tell them is if their pediatrician won’t even do that, it might be time to find somebody who is a little more negotiable and admittable to where they’re coming from. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. That’s the same recommendation that I give to people as well because it should be a collaboration. And if parents are feeling like their healthcare provider is not open to collaborating or talking about options, then yeah — there are other providers. And my experience is that the vast majority of physicians or healthcare providers who are seeing the kids that we treat here at my clinic are very open to looking at — they may not initiate it, they may not have the same knowledge level that you do about the types of nutrients that they should test for, but once that’s brought up to them, they’re very open to looking at that and actually interested in learning more about how those can be factors. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

I agree, and actually, most of the pediatricians I talk to, I give lectures on this a lot around and around, and they’re very interested. Most pediatricians aren’t that happy about all the psychostimulants like Ritalin they’re having to give out. They’re not comfortable with it. They don’t think that it’s a great thing that 15% of the kids in some of the places are taking these medications, but they’re kind of caught in a bind. So they like to be able to do this, most of them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, awesome. So we’ve got nutrition, you’ve talked about food and ways that we can look at that. We’ve talked about some specific nutrients and supplements, what else? What are some other things that parents can be thinking about?

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Well here are some really simple stuff that is just simple lifestyle things like: Are they getting enough sleep? Most, many kids are not getting enough sleep, especially as you get into the older years. I mean we have these enormous homework loads and kids are expected to do all this extracurricular activities, so I don’t know, they’re simply tired. And just getting — many people in my practice who say when their kids get enough sleep it just makes a big difference. And also making sure they don’t have sleep apnea. If they’re snoring, that can make a big difference, so they’re not getting quality sleep? And downtime.

Some of these kids are just so stressed, there is never a second when they’re not doing something. Like I said before, it’s like school, and then after-school activities and then a quick supper and then having to do their homework and then you start throwing in violin lessons, and some of them are getting tutoring — it can just stress them out. And then a big one is exercise. We know now that exercise is really beneficial for the brain and especially for ADHD kids. And so many schools have cut PE to once or twice a week. And these kids should be out getting exercise everyday. And that can make a really big difference. And even there is some research indicating being in nature — not just exercise, but actually being in nature is beneficial for kids with ADHD. So just a lot of these kind of lifestyle changes can be very helpful.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, I agree — I’ve seen the same and I think another component to this, when we talk about things like having downtime, getting good sleep, getting exercise or movement and is looking at the role that electronic devices and digital media — because I think that’s a huge thing that we’re dealing with with kids now that wasn’t a factor 20, 40, 50 years ago.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Oh yeah, maybe even 10 years ago. Yeah, electronics is a major issue. It doesn’t seem reasonable now for most kids to just totally ban electronics, but I always talk to parents about having some kind of limit on electronics, especially during the week. Maybe 30 minutes or something like that, maybe an hour — it just depends on the family. And not only does it keep them from doing some other thing they could be doing, but there’s a kind of quality to it that for some kids with ADHD makes them worse. I do have parents who tell me if their kid gets on electronics for 5 minutes in the morning, they’re shot.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Done, yeah. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Most kids aren’t like that, but it can be really a problem and we have to look at it individually, but as a general rule, parents have to be on top of it. Sometimes that means they actually literally have to take the phones away, take the stuff away when they go to sleep. You know? Unplug the computer, take the plug into their room because kids will literally get up at the age of 9 or 10 in the middle of the night and sneak down to play video games. And parents realize that they have been doing this, of course their performance is not as good. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, and I think it’s one of the things I see clinically that’s then a driving force behind why so many preteens and teenagers now who really, when you do a thorough analysis of their developmental history didn’t have problems with ADD or ADHD symptoms, or at least not severe ones when they were younger but now as they have gotten into adolescence, they’re having way more problems and what I see is lack of sleep due to having smartphones and other devices in their bedroom at night. So some of these kids are admitting to me when they’re out of the room that I maybe sleep 3, 4, 5 hours a night because I’m texting with friends, I’m on social media, the notifications are going off all night long, you know just the impact that that has on the brain and a kid who maybe didn’t have those issues before, their brain starts to function less optimally. Or kids who maybe were prone to some of those challenges, they can look way worse when a 12-year-old or a 16-year-old isn’t getting a decent amount of sleep at night. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Absolutely. It’s a really, really big problem. You know that you bring up a really good point. It used to be that you shouldn’t diagnose ADHD if symptoms didn’t occur before 7. And then they changed to 12, which is probably reasonable. So you’re seeing a lot of these kids now, they come in at 13 o 14 or 12 or something, and all of a sudden they can’t pay attention in class and they’re note getting good grades. You should be very suspicious that something is going on besides ADHD. You know, occasionally it’s because the challenges just got high enough to be cause and effect but a lot of times, there’s something else going on, whether it be the pressure of the school they’re In — you know in San Francisco you have to start doing interviews to even get into kindergarten and getting into high school is like trying to get into Harvard around here. It’s just insane. So those kind of pressures build up.

The other thing I wanted to mention though is parenting. I think a lot of kids with ADHD are really difficult to parent What happens is they’re told ‘no’ all of time they’re criticized all the time — in school, they’re like, why didn’t you do this, sit still, be quiet, why didn’t you finish your homework? — and a lot of them are oppositional anyway, so there starts to be this really negative kind of feedback cycle where they just start — because the only attention they’re getting is negative, they just start seeking negative attention and acting out. And parents can be really flummoxed, you know? The same parenting that worked very well for their other child or for their neighbor’s child isn’t working and often you’ll see them either getting super angry at the kids or letting them get away with murder, either one. This is a really difficult cycle, so I’m sure you do Ibis in your practice, but you really need to help people with their parenting. There are a lot of approaches. I like something called the ‘Nurtured Heart Approach’, I gave it to hundreds of families and I find it very, very effective. But there are others and I think you really have to look into it, see how it’s going and often giving parents an approach: This the way you do it, this is what you can do, along with often some help with somebody in the mental health field can make a dramatic difference. They should be a part of it, for everybody. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. And the research is bearing that out more and more. The huge impact that parent-child interaction has on symptom development and progression over time, and also the benefits of using parent-focused treatments as a first line intervention for these things. And I think it’s important for parents to hear clearly that what we’re saying here is not that parents or the way that they are parenting is causing their kids to have problems — that’s not what we’re saying. What we are saying is that when kids have these struggles, the strategies that we use as parents, the way that we approach our relationship and parenting them can make a big difference in supporting their symptoms. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Absolutely, I totally agree. This is not because people are bad parents, it’s because these are hard kids to parent. One thing about all these non-pharmaceutical approaches I want to emphasize is I do use medication in my practice, some kids need medication, but you should still do these things anyway. I mean just because you’re giving medication doesn’t mean you can suddenly start feeding your child poor food or stop worrying about parenting things because that’s — it’s all helpful, it’s all part of integrative, holistic treatment. It’s to look at all aspects, whether they’re taking medication or not. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s a great point because there have been some studies too showing that when we implement some of these other approaches and strategies that you and I are talking about, even for kids who are on medication, it can help the medications work better, it helps them make more progress than they would if they were just taking medications by themselves. 

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Oh yeah, there’s actually one really interesting study about an herb called Ginkgo which has been used for centuries for cognitive effects. And they gave kids who were already taking Ritalin either Ginkgo or a placebo, and after a certain amount of time, the kids who were getting the Ginkgo had improvements in attention that didn’t happen in the kids who were getting a placebo. So it added to the efficacy of the Ritalin.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, fascinating. There are so many more things we could talk about with this, it’s such an interesting and such an important topic. We are running low on time, and so I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you, where they can get your awesome book, ‘ADHD Without Drugs’. If we can share that with our listeners, that would be great.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

Oh yeah, so they can get that book on Amazon, it’s really easy. Also, if they google it, my videos are online and they can look at that. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, some wonderful videos, I encourage everybody to check those out and definitely get the book ‘ADHD Without Drugs’. Like I said, a book that I have referred to back often and that so many families in my practice have found beneficial. Dr. Newmark, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your expertise and experience with us.

Dr. Sanford Newmark: 

That’s my pleasure, it was really fun talking to you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Okay everybody, that’s it for this episode. We will see you next time on The Better Behavior Show.