Natural Solutions For ADHD: Managing Without Medication

Introduction and ADHD management basics 0:00

Welcome back to ADHD, Autism and Chronic Disease Parenting Summit, and I am here with the fabulous doctor Robert Love, who is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur and art collector. And we're going to talk all about ADHD today. Thank you so much for being here and being a part of this event. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be helpful. I myself have lived with ADHD and I understand this pretty well and I'm so excited. I can be helpful to parents with ADHD children because it's both a blessing and a curse, and it can be really difficult to manage.

And, ADHD people, we can be really fun and, we can do good things with our lives. Given given the right space, given the right guidance. And so I'm really happy to help for sure. And maybe we can just start there. So for you, what what have you found to be helpful over the years or most helpful in terms of managing any, any symptoms or like what what have been the big things that have been really helpful? Cause obviously you have a very big social media following. You help a lot of people. So how did you how did you get here?

What did you do that really helped? So, it's the it's the big three. It's diet, exercise and sleep. If I choose one, I would say exercise. I remember when I was in fourth grade and there is an art project we had to do, and frankly, I'm not much of an artist. I like looking at art. I don't like doing it. And so I was putting it off and I came home from soccer practice and I was able to sit down and just do it. I had so much attention and focus after exercise, and it didn't occur to me, until until later.

I played sports throughout high school and college. I played three sports in high school. I played varsity lacrosse in college. I was a crazy person who was a goalie for a season, and that regular exercise every day is what allowed me to, succeed in school. I did very well. I graduated top 5% of my high school class, and I went to very prestigious, college, Swarthmore College. And so I was really good at school. Exercise was essential for that. And so both boys and girls, men and women on the gender spectrum, exercise is essential for our health, and it's essential for our brain health.

And it's really missing today. So if there's only one thing I would say, your child needs to be ideally outside exercising minimum one hour, ideally two hours a day. I know that sounds like a lot, but but goodness, I mean, I don't know about you.

Exercise, sleep, and diet as the foundation 2:25

I'm 42. When I grew up, I'd play outside when I came home from school. That's just what we did. And so giving children time outside and physical exercise is so, so important, especially, middle school, high school, when they're spending all this time on the computer. It's terrible. I mean, I'm exercising right now. I got a little slow walk on my treadmill here. Exercise is so important for the ADHD mind. So if I had one, I'd do that. Number two, I struggle with sleep for a lot of my life until, I've really figured it out.

So getting their sleep dialed in, I remember I'd go to bed, doing my math homework with a flashlight because I was way behind in my math homework. So I think one, we want to tell children homework is not the most important thing. Your health is actually the most important thing. And so if you don't do your homework, that's okay. Just tell the teacher I tried, I wasn't able to do it, and I went to bed at a reasonable hour. So that way I'm not cranky. And, you know, lack of sleep exacerbates ADHD symptoms.

As we know it reduces, emotional intelligence. It reduces our ability to think through things and reduces self-control. So you want your children sleeping. So have them prioritize sleep over, over staying up late, doing their homework, and then. And then food. Our our food system is toxic. I don't know if you know this. In 1986, Big Tobacco bought some huge food companies, including Nabisco, including Oreo. And what did big was Big Tobacco. Do. Well, they're very smart. And so they maximize profits.

And they're not they're okay killing their customers. Big tobacco is perfectly fine and killing their customers. So they bought these big food companies, and they basically made food highly addictive and sucked out any nutrition. And then they passed legislation to make it really inexpensive to grow wheat in this country and to have lots of pesticides. So from this, since the 80s, our food has gotten more toxic with pesticides. And it's gotten really, really bad and all the nutrition has been sucked out of it.

So our food is hyper palatable, super addictive. And so getting your children off of processed food is so important. Diabetes is skyrocketing. Goodness was it half of kids are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Some really scary numbers, some number with their go ahead. A third. I think the third is. Some number that it had so different than 20 years ago. We have to say, look, something's really, really wrong with our food. If a third of children are diabetic or pre-diabetic, that just doesn't come out of nowhere.

So the processed food, just to have your children eat organic fruits and vegetables and healthy protein, they're going to whine and complain for about a week. They might have to go to bed hungry, but just tell them no. Just say, look, that food is actually harming you. You're going to be unhappy for a week. That's fine. You might go hungry because you don't like it. That's fine. Children will eat when they're hungry. We're humans. Children don't starve themselves. Death. You know, some parents say I can't send my kid hungry.

Yes. You can't. They'll be fine. They'll be just fine. Insist. Your children eat lots of organic fruits and vegetables and healthy forms of protein. Think grass fed beef could be wild caught? Salmon could be sardines. I got my sardines right here. So, one of my favorite foods. But health. And far as a protein. And there there are behavioral change dramatically high sugar food. The high processed food is destroying our brains, destroying our behavior. It's making children addicted. When you get them on healthy foods, they function so much better.

Now I love that and I mean, I couldn't agree more and I call it the seeds of health for me Foundation. So stress, environment and toxins, exercise, diet and sleep. So basically the same things I mean I think, you know, most of the natural or integrative practitioners, we're all on the same page at this point. Like these foundations are so key. It's not rocket science, but it's super important. But I'd like to go back to exercise for a minute since you mentioned that for you, what's the what's really the biggest turning point?

So when you really started exercising, was it something that somebody external did, like they push you to exercise more or you internally decided that you would you would do it? And how did that change for you? How did you what were the big differences when you were starting to move a little bit more? And how did that like just talk about that transition a little bit more for maybe, you know, for teens listening or maybe a parent who wants to talk to their teen about it, like, what was it for you that really happened that kind of at that shift?

That's a great question. So it wasn't conscious. It happened when I was in fourth grade. I didn't really understand how important exercise was at the time, but I played a team sport and, you know, I noticed that after that, after that particular day of practice. And then my mother reported that after karate, I would do karate when I was in middle school. She said I was I was not a behavioral problem after that. So she dropped me off. Pick me up. Not not no behavior problems that evening after after, physical exercise.

So she noticed that, like most humans, I like being physically active. If someone says I don't like exercise, they haven't tried the right kind of exercise. We are human beings. We are here because our ancestors were able to run from lions and tigers. They're able to hunt, men. We were able to kill other tribes who attacked us. And women. You were able to effectively watch your children, manage the fire while gathering berries, while also being able to run and hide. And you women could certainly fight very well.

As well. They could defend themselves and their family if they were attacked by another tribe or animals as well. We are physical creatures. We need physical movement, our DNA, it's in our DNA. And so when someone says, I don't like to exercise, I'll say, yes, you do. You just don't know it yet. So it might be dancing. Most people like dancing, if they can let go of their self-consciousness, or sports or games.

Modeling healthy habits and finding enjoyable movement 8:14

People like these things. We like to move our bodies. And so the problem is we've gotten away from it and we've got we've screwed up our dopamine, our reward systems with, with filler, with things that are fake, with video games that are designed to stimulate us with social media where we're scrolling social media is like the is the new slot machine if you watch what they've done. Very smart people have designed this. They'll show you something happy and then they'll show you a kiddy thing, and then they'll show you a political video that's going to upset you, and then they'll show you something you can buy so you can feel better.

And then it's, it's a it's this roulette wheel of what's the slot machine, what's going to happen. And it takes you on this emotional roller coaster and it spikes your dopamine, it spikes your reward systems. It also tires you out, right. You feel tired after scrolling social media, but it keeps you addicted to it. It's got this addictive energy to it. And so instead of being a natural human where we like being outside, we like other interaction with humans. We like playing outside. We like learning things instead, where people have lost their children to their phones. And and so the reward systems are messed up.

And so I would say we as humans naturally like to move our bodies. If not, I don't think you'd be alive because your genes would have been weeded out. We had to move. We had to be online. We had to selves. We had to be able to, to run from predators. And so we all like to move. The key is finding what it is and then starting off slowly in a way that works. It might be a sport, it might be a game. Little kids love to play it. Most of the play is physical, so I have little nephews. I love playing with them, but with ADHD, adults.

We're great uncles and aunts because we love play with kids because we're great, we're great at playing and just any physical and physical game. Let's take the ball. Let's just throw the ball together. It's just fun. And so I would say, just get moving and find out what you like. There's exercise you like if you or your child likes and you want to make sure that they enjoy it because otherwise it's not sustainable. We've all tried New Year's Day or next day going for a run at 6 a.m.. Few of us stick with it, because most of us don't enjoy waking up at 6 a.m.

and most of us don't enjoy running. Instead, find something you enjoy doing and make that a regular habit in your life and your children's life. And then mothers in particular. Please model this for your children. I learned so much about health from my mother and just watching her behavior. Children are watching you in particular. The mothers, both boys and girls are watching the mother. When you exercise, when you eat healthy, when you manage your emotions, when they see you taking self-care time to relax, to meditate, to read, to just unplug, to not to not scroll your phone when they see you just sitting and enjoying your cup of coffee, looking outside rather than scrolling your phone.

They see that and they will model that behavior. So mothers, it really starts with you to model these healthy behaviors. And then your children will pick these up. Agreed. And I know I've heard you talk about Lion's Mane before. Maybe you can add a little bit about that and why you feel like that's such a helpful medicinal mushroom and something that that's really helpful for ADHD. Absolutely. So, full disclosure, I own a supplement company that sells a lion's Mane supplement, so I'm very biased in this way, but this is one of my I think this is one of the most powerful supplements for ADHD, as well as for, helping reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

So line smoothies with just some mushroom, use an ancient Chinese and Japanese medicine. And we're just now learning in Western medicine how powerful Lion's Mane is here to some of the benefits. Number one improves memory, improves memory both human and animal studies. So memory that'd be great for people with ADHD. Number two it reduces stress. It also reduces depression and anxiety. A lot of kids today, especially those with ADHD, have some depression or some anxiety I had. I, I used to get some anxiety.

I don't really anymore, but I had a lot of anxiety kind of during the day because I know it's pent up stress and energy, and if I didn't exercise or move my body or let it go, I'd feel bad. So anxiety very common with ADHD and then a huge benefit of lion's mane. It improves sleep. So many children and adults with ADHD have trouble sleeping. So lion's mane is so good for so many things. It's good for memory. It's good for so performance in school or performance at work. It's good for, reducing depression and anxiety, which are challenges for those with ADHD and improve sleep, which is another challenge for ADHD.

So it's wonderful and it's extremely safe. Lion's mane is a medicinal mushroom. It's very natural. It works in a variety of different ways, lowers inflammation so it protects the brain, but also increases brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is a growth factor that facilitates the growth of new brain cells and new neural connections. Excuse me. Exercise also increases Bdnf. So exercise and lion's mane share that in common. And so lion's mane is a great thing for if you give it to a child, have to be over seven I would say jokes.

We can do supplements under the age seven. I think it's crazy that doctors and psychiatrist are prescribing Adderall Vyvanse Ritalin. Concerta pick the ADHD drug to children two, three, four. Someone said their two two year old was prescribed a stimulant drug. I said they're two. They're not supposed to be well-behaved. It's a two year old. Have you heard of the terrible twos? So we're meditating now. Regular behavior or teachers say your child's disruptive. Yeah, they're four and they want to be outside play.

They want to be in a classroom. Of course they're disruptive. If you put me in a classroom, I'd be disruptive because I don't want to be there. I'm 42. Yeah. So, I really highly recommend not medicating children too young. And, supplements over the age of seven, generally speaking, are safe. Of course. Check with your pediatrician. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a neuroscientist. Check with your medical doctor first. And so make can be very, very safe.

Lion's Mane for ADHD and brain health 13:57

Lion's mane is very safe, but it's very, very effective. Make sure you get the right dose if you're gonna give it to a child. Because most lion's mane supplements are dosed out for an adult, a good size for an adult is probably 250 to 500mg of lion's mane per day. So maybe for a child, maybe cut that in half. So you might want to break open a capsule. Try it out first to see if that if it works with their stomach and if they have any negative side effects. And then if it's good, you can keep them there.

Or you might scale up to a full capsule. Teenagers, probably a half dose and then move up to a full dose if that feels good for them. But that's why I really like linesmen, because it works on these many different things that we have with ADHD, which is cognition, memory, stress and anxiety. And then sleep. A little it and then maybe we can finish off by talking a little bit more. There are other supplements, you know, besides Lion's Mane. What are your top five things that you have found really helpful for you or our clients in the past?

Can I share a controversial one? This one's got me in trouble. Because we're not on social media. I can share this one. Yeah, that's a tab. And I'll show you the brand that I take interest to have this by Smart Nutrition. So it looks like this. If you search antiracism smart nutrition, you can find it on Lion's Mouth. And I asked them, I just published an article about and asked him in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Basically, antiracism improves memory also, improves mood. It actually and also makes music more enjoyable to listen to, which is interesting.

In double blind, placebo controlled trials, it actually improves memory and those with Alzheimer's disease. In a trial in, in Italy, Dave Asprey, who's a very big biohacker he mentioned this in one of his books. I've tried this, I love it. It's great if you're low on sleep. I don't take this every day, but it's a really it's this. This is a drug. This is a pharmaceutical. But you can get it in the U.S without a prescription. Of course. Check with your doctor first. For adults, a good dose is 500mg.

The maximum daily dose is 1500 milligrams for children. I don't know what that would be. I if I had a child with ADHD, I would give them this so much. I would much rather give them this than, stimulant drugs. Stimulant drugs. Parents, if you have to like. You're probably going. What? Why is that? What's the controversy around this? I'm not familiar with it. So what's the controversy? Because it's a pharmaceutical, but it's, But it's legal, so it's legal to buy. It's legal to sell. It's legal to possess.

It's illegal to make claims about it because there's no clinical trials on it. And then, medical doctors and, and university professors like to get upset about it because they don't know about it. And so when you say, hey, this this drug reverses, improves memory and double blind spot controlled trials, people get really upset. They're like, well, I didn't know about it. This can't be real. It's real. Take this. I mean, I bring this to Burning Man. I love Burning Man, by the way. Great. Event for creativity in arts.

I give this to friends, when they're when they're tired, just to improve their mood. It's great. It's very, very safe. Maximum dose 59mg for adults. I would start much lower for kids, but I would much rather give them this than Adderall. I take Adderall, I've been prescribed Adderall, taking it for years. That's a drug. That's a hardcore drug. It's highly addictive. It's really powerful. It disrupts sleep. This is much more gentle and very effective. So that's a controversial one. Well, I love it.

I mean, I think it's good, you know, especially in these kind of scenarios. It no one's telling anybody what to do. It's just more like here's some options. Here's some things to think about. Here's something you maybe never heard of before. Talk to your doctor. Do some research. Look into it. You know, because, like, the whole thing with supplements and herbs, all this hype, it's all ridiculous because you're talking about something that's controversial because it doesn't have, you know, tons of research, but then you take a medication which does have tons of research, that we know all the negative side effects, and that's not controversial.

So it's backwards, but, you know, I get it. Or we prescribe a vaccine and guilt parents into giving it to their children, even though it's untested. And then we find out, oh, it actually creates heart problems in children. Sorry about that. Yeah. Oops. Indeed. So your doctor probably won't know about interest stamps. You have to do your own Google searching and read about it. I wrote a paper in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. You can read a lot of research on it about that. Another one, this is good for children and adults is really good because we have such poor diet is fish oil. This is my favorite.

I'm not sponsored by them. This natural force, pure omegas. It tastes like vanilla cake. Vanilla lemon cake. It tastes really good. And it's a lot less expensive than other fish sauce because it's a liquid. So I really like that one.

Other supplements and natural ADHD support 18:18

Fish oil is great for the brain. Our brain outside of water is made primarily of fat. And so by eating healthy fats, this gives our brain the raw materials to repair itself. As well as to make new brain cells. Children make your brain cells, and actually adults make the brain cells. Research from Doctor Elizabeth Gould at Princeton University showed that all mammals outside of bats. I don't know why bats, but all mammals outside of bats grow new brain cells in adulthood. In our hippocampus, the memory center of our brain.

So that's a great supplement. But Copa, research shows it was an open label trial of children with ADHD. Those the children took ADHD showed improved, behavior at school, less impulsivity, and I think they had better sleep. So but Copa is a is an herb a verb Copa ammonium and that so that is shown in clinical trials to be helpful for ADHD. And impulsiveness is a real big problem if we think about one of the challenges of ADHD is impulsivity, which can lead to poor decisions like unprotected sex or drugs, or driving too fast to impress your friends or, you know, making friends with the wrong person or who knows what.

And so by reducing impulsivity that can really improve the not only our safety but also our quality of life, because Tony Robbins likes to say, you know, our quality of life is based upon the quality of our decisions, impulsive decisions, generally speaking, aren't that good for us long term. And so the Copa can reduce impulsivity and that can improve the quality of our decisions and the quality of our life. So those are a couple of ones. Oh, and then a b-complex vitamin, B-Complex vitamins are necessary for making neurotransmitters, certain neurotransmitters.

And so you can get B, B vitamins through food, for example, healthy fatty fish. You can also take, a b-complex about and make sure it's methylated. That way it'll be better absorbed even for those who have the MT, MFR mutation. And I like to take it with fish oil. Research from Doctor David Smith at Oxford found that those who take fish oil and a b-complex supplement. So both, have a 30% reduction in the risk of Alzheimer's disease because that combination is so good for the brain. So there's some, those are some great places to start.

So we had, fish oil b-complex the copper money. Eric talked about lion's mane and prasadam and then one that goes really well with, ADHD medications or can replace them is called l tyrosine. L tyrosine. This is an amino acid. There's a precursor to dopamine. Most ADHD drugs increase dopamine. This increases dopamine much more naturally. So L tyrosine is an amino acid that you'll find in, meat, in fish, in eggs. So it's it's from food. But when you take it as a supplement, it gives you a lot of it to help make a lot of dopamine.

And so it allows your body to make more dopamine from raw materials compared to drugs that either stimulate the release or mimic the action of dopamine in the synapse. And prescription drugs have many more side effects and a lot more dangerous, addictive, hard on the liver, hard on the kidneys than l tyrosine, which is much more natural. So, I wish medical doctors to psychiatry just simply give l tyrosine first before prescribing drugs or give them in combination because they work so well. It also will, just replenish the brain.

So you take l tyrosine either with your prescription drugs and you might notice you can dial them back a little bit, or you can even try in place of of course, check with your psychiatrist or doctor before changing prescription. So it's really important. But that can really help because it increases dopamine in a much more natural, safe and gentle way. My favorite combination is lion's mane and L tyrosine. Those go really well together because L is a stimulant because it increases dopamine. But that can get a little jittery for some that aren't used to it.

For those on ADHD medication, you know, it's gonna be really, really gentle. Compared to the drugs they give children, and adults. So lion's mane plus l tyrosine, the lion's mane helps increase, helps improve mood and relaxation. So you feel really good and your brain is very alert and nourished, but you're not kind of hyper caffeine jittery. You know, when you have too much coffee, it's not super pleasant. That combination lion's mane and sing really, really wonderful. And I mean, that's very, very helpful.

I learn something new. And most of those supplements that you mentioned, there are things I mentioned to my patients as well. But the, and that's a, that's a new one. So that's good. I'm going to go research that and learn about that, which is very which is awesome. It's always good to learn new things. And I and I appreciate you, you know, being here and being a part of this, maybe you can tell everybody, where to find you. So if they want to learn more, that'd be great. Absolutely. So my name is Robert Love.

Have about. As of today, I have 4.9 million followers across social media platforms. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. So if you search my name, Robert Love or my handle is at Robert W.B. love, my middle initials are W and B, so if you just search Robert Love on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, I pop up on the I'm the first one and my content is primarily it's health and wellness in particular how to prevent Alzheimer's disease with science. And because of my history with ADHD, I make a fair amount of ADHD content

Where to find Robert Love and closing remarks 23:28

for both, basically for parents and adults with ADHD. But you can also this is also helpful for children as well. And so if you follow me on the social media channels, you'll get some content about ADHD as well as just healthy living, healthy aging, healthy foods, healthy supplements, things to avoid, fun exercise. I share recipes every once in a while. And so that's a great place to follow me. And, if you're interested in lion's mane, my lion's mane supplement is at roar lion's mane.com. And it's. You can try it risk free there.

And then if you haven't, try it, please just try it. I'm totally happy to refund your money if you don't love it, but if you haven't tried Lion's Mane Supplement yet, it's so great for the brain. It's so good for the body. It's good for children and adults, amazing for ADHD. And it's been a real game changer for so many people, for me, especially for my sleep. And so, that that's the one thing I wanna make available to people and, Yeah. So that's, that's the easiest place to find me. Oh, and then if you go to Robert Love dot net, I also have a bunch of free information at Robert Love Net where there's free ebooks, and free ebooks you can download and videos you can watch.

Awesome. Well, well thank you. Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for all the help that you give to so many families. And I think it's amazing your content and just fantastic. So thanks again everyone for being here, listening, and we'll see you in the next episode of The Raising Healthier Kids Summit. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much.