Herbs for ADHD: Alexander’s Story
Lydi and I have a lot of experience working with people to switch from pharmaceuticals like Adderall, Xanax, antidepressants, and topical steroids, and even methamphetamines to herbal treatments for psychological issues of various kinds. I’ve worked with a lot of adults, but until recently, I had never had the opportunity to work with a family to help them learn how to treat severe ADHD naturally in a younger child with ADHD.
Below is a basic overview of Alexander’s story and where he started his journey toward healing from ADHD. This story should give readers an idea of what to expect when they implement the ADHD protocol for themselves or their child at home. Alexander was 7 years old when he began this treatment. Today, he is 12 years old and doing well.
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Alexander’s ADHD Situation: A Brief Summary
Alexander’s parents came to us to work intensively to overcome Alexander’s ADHD naturally. They would spend only two weeks in Mexico. At the time of the treatment, Alexander was 7 years old. He had been on various ADHD medications for 4 years and by the time I met him, he had almost no ability to focus on anything for more than 30 seconds to one minute at a time. At that time, he was on two drugs: Focalin (Dexmethylphenidate) twice a day and Strattera (Atomoxetine). He had numerous repetitive behaviors, most notable was the behavior of whining to play video games or to watch movies. He would also hide sugary treats like candy in various places around the house to take “as needed” for self-medicating his apparent dopamine deficiency and insulin resistance. His parents experienced his repetitive behaviors as “nagging” because Alexander would often whine and beg for specific things for hours at a time. The things he whined for were all quick “dopamine fixes”.Alexander would flit from one thing to another throughout the day until late afternoon when his behavior would deteriorate into a “fit” which was, in fact, a seizure / convulsion. Alexander had no control over himself at all during these convulsions. He would kick and flail and scream and stop responding to any kind of guidance from his parents or other adults. His parents told me that he had recently had a fit in the car and kicked his father in the head while his father was driving. I was able to see this behavior myself the day after he arrived when he had a “fit” while we were on the street and 3 of us had to hold him to prevent injury to himself and others.
Alexander craved meat and the first evening of his visit with us, he ordered a giant rib-eye steak and ate all of it. We talk about iron deficiency as a major underlying cause of ADHD, but you can’t treat this problem with iron supplementation. Red meat, however, is a basic part of the ADHD protocol that we outline here because it helps tremendously. Alexander, like many ADHD kids, was very thin, pale, and small for his age. I’ll talk more about diet later in this chapter.
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For many children with ADHD, the symptoms begin with nutrient deficiencies and a lack of the appropriate amino acids that their brains need in order to produce dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Indeed, iron deficiency anemia and iron deficiency without anemia causes digestive system inflammation and a corresponding in ability to absorb nutrients from food or from supplements. For this reason, we suggest that parents give children a thimble-sized amount of red wine with meals for kids with ADHD. Ages 7 and up might respond better to 2 thimble-sized doses of red wine with meals and snacks (water it down and add stevia or monk fruit for picky kids who don’t like the taste). The alcohol in small doses like this helps the body absorb nutrients from food such that the cells can take in the nutrients and actually use them. Over the course of time, red wine in small doses like this can reduce digestive system inflammation considerably along with getting rid of the iron deficiency.NOTE: Never give iron supplements as iron is recycled in the body. Copper is the nutrient that needs to be supplemented in order to rebuild iron and red blood cells in the body. Note that red wine and red meat contains trace amounts of both copper and iron in forms that are non-toxic and useful to the body when it is deficient in copper and iron. When you give a child red wine or red meat, the body doesn’t absorb too much of the iron, but at the same time, the alcohol content makes the copper more bioavailable than when you give a patient a copper supplement. As such, red wine and red meat can help a child or an adult overcome chronic gastrointestinal inflammation and ADHD symptoms that are caused by poor nutrient absorption.
Alexander’s mother complained that her son would behave okay in school most of the time, but as soon as he arrived home, his behaviors would quickly become intolerable by the whole familiy. This is a common problem that occurs because of the way dopamine functions in the brain. Dopamine always plays a role in the following activities of daily life:
- Learning
- Decision-making
- Attention
- Parental feelings (feelings of warmth/affection toward living things)
- Pain processing
- Mood
- Sleep
- Circulatory system function
- Heart rate
- Kidney function
- Movement
- Self-control
- Social behaviors
- Lactation
If a child is given a prescription medication for ADHD such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) or any of its derivatives, this drug will cause an unnatural release of dopamine from the neurons during the first part of the day while the brain still has some dopamine that has been manufactured and stored from the previous day’s meals and several hours or rest. Children will expend more dopamine trying to please adults who are not their parents out of a desire to survive in situations involving people who do not love them unconditionally. By the time they arrive home from school, they have literally expended all of their dopamine trying to learn, pay attention, and please their teachers.
Many children who are taking these ADHD medications experience diminished appetite because ADHD drugs are amphetamines. They lower the appetite. So, when a child starts taking these prescription ADHD medications, they develop nutritional deficiencies that cause their ADHD symptoms to worsen over time. But again, most children develop ADHD in the first place due to low-level gastrointestinal inflammation that causes them to have a poor appetite and an inability to absorb nutrients easily from the foods they’re eating. By correcting the iron deficiency by administering copper in red wine and red meat, the gastrointestinal inflammation, poor appetite, and inability to absorb nutrients slowly goes away.
Children who get caught in this vicious cycle of expending all of their dopamine with teachers and then getting in trouble with parents once they arrive home, literally bring their parents along for the ADHD experience. Parents who are dealing with a child who has been labeled as having ADHD, whether the child is taking prescription medications or not, may begin to feel anger toward their child, which is a sign of low dopamine levels in the parents, too. Dopamine, after all, is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in social behaviors, particularly “parental behaviors” and decision-making as well as feelings of warmth toward humans and animals (otherwise known as “parental feelings”). As such, when an adult spends a lot of time with another person who has low dopamine levels, such as a child or another adult with ADHD, that adult will eventually develop low dopamine levels too.
For this reason, we recommend that parents of ADHD children also take Mucuna pruriens in high doses along with their child. Siblings may also benefit from taking ADHD as well because dopamine is a part of our “social” nervous system machinery. To improve the overall family dynamic, Mucuna pruriens can be given to everyone in the home through the diet or in supplement-form.
