6-ADD and Nutrition - READ "The Ultra Mind Solution" by Dr. Mark Hyman

I've gotten to know my mind and body over my (now) long life. My mind, for the most part, has driven me nuts, and some of the things I've learned I wish I had known when I was a child, a young adult, and an older adult. I've healed a lot along the way, but I've worked at it almost incessantly, trying to be a better person.

First, we are all different. So what works for me may not work for you. That's one of the fallacies of the ADHD treatment protocols - some people need stimulant medicines, some need calming medicines - but they all start the same way: with stimulant medicines. 

I was lucky in this regard. My first psychiatrist, who really understood ADD/ADHD in the 80's, wouldn't prescribe stimulant medicine for me. He had identified that I had substance issues, and stimulant medicines are highly addictive. (In fact, I had taken stimulant medicine (ritalin) in the early 70's. If it worked, I didn't recognize it.) What he said is that I should quit drinking - I was an alcoholic. I said I'm not an alcoholic, I just drink like one. So I waited another 7 years to consider quitting drinking. 

But aside from the ignored diagnosis, he also did something very unusual for the time; he suggested that I take certain amino acids. Specifically, he said I should take L-Tyrosine. L-Tyrosine is a dopamine precursor. In other words, it does the opposite of what stimulant medicines do; instead of forcing your brain into a state of panic or euphoria to release (and deplete) dopamine, it makes dopamine easier for your brain to manufacture, thereby increasing the availability of the reward component. 

The logic of this treatment is that dopamine rewards can be subtle in real life, particularly in executive function. Small incremental rewards, like the satisfaction of completing a task, don't generate enough of a brain reward for ADD/ADHDs to change behaviors like avoiding tasks that require a great deal of brain energy and focus. Potentially, having a surfeit of dopamine makes it more likely that you will rewire yourself to overcome the fear of an involved task because your brain now wants the dopamine reward you get when completing a task. 

Because adjusting your body's chemistry instead of taking stimulant medicine is like the difference between draining the swamp vs spraying for mosquitoes, many people quickly abandon this approach. Its effects are not immediately noticeable, or they are too subtle. This is compounded by the fact that we're all wired and balanced differently, so one person with ADHD may have a dopamine deficiency, and another may suffer from anxiety as a result of ADHD. In other words, sometimes you need to juice yourself up, and sometimes you need to settle down. How do you prescribe something for THAT?

That's when understanding what's happening in your brain and marking what helps and what hurts can result in some great hacks. This means focusing not just on nutrients that help, but also removing things that hurt. That seems so simple, but there are so many factors affecting your brain: the parasympathetic nervous system, the gut, and your body's overall condition, all of which influence how much energy your body can devote to the brain. 

As it is, the brain takes 20% of the body's total energy. If you're tired, your brain suffers. Combine this with the extra mental energy executive tasks require, means I need much more energy to be productive at work. COVID was a blessing for me in this regard, because I had long COVID. Months later, I still couldn't do 3 pushups. My niece, studying to be a doctor of physiology, happened to be writing a paper on Creatine and energy transport. I gave it a try, and like a miracle, within days I was back to doing 30 pushups. My brain fog was gone. Now, whenever I'm even a little fatigued, I supplement with Creatine and have higher energy levels.

 As it applies to things that hurt you, I learned the hard way that simple things make a huge difference. I grew up in Eastern Europe with no fluoride in the water, and lived on my own as a very young adult in Maine. My dental hygiene, beyond brushing my teeth, was pretty poor. Then I played contact sports without a mouthguard. Broken and cracked soft teeth left me with cavities in nearly all of my molars, which dentists were happy to fill with mercury-laden amalgam. I also had gingivitis. I noticed that when I paid close attention to my dental hygiene - flossing, rinsing and massaging my gums, in addition to brushing with an electric toothbrush - I was sharper. It turns out that the inflammation from your mouth and its proximity to your brain causes your brain to divert a lot of energy towards defense. Removing that gave me energy. As I got older, a lot of my broken fillings were replaced with crowns, so the mercury load diminished as well.

Exercise helps your brain, too. By increasing circulation, the brain gets more fresh blood and nutrients. It's a dopamine reward bonanza. 

Today, I take supplements every day to help balance and feed my brain:

• Fish Oil - 3,000 mg - your brain craves fat, and is basically made of Omega-3 fatty acids, so starting with this made a noticeable difference
• Theanine - offsets the jolt of caffeine, and smooths out my tendency to be distracted
• Turmeric - anti-inflammatory
• D3 - anti-inflammatory and cell division repair for neurogenesis.
• Creatine - energy - more on days I don't sleep well
• HTP-5 - IF I'm anxious or have a pit in my stomach, I take a little HTP-5. This actually works better for me than stimulants for concentration because I can settle down
• GABA - a new addition to the stack I am trying out because it's supposed to settle your jumpy brain
• Probiotic - I take a broad-spectrum probiotic because if my gut's happy, my brain is happy