Wondering about Non-Medication ADHD Treatment? Here’s a Holistic Psychiatrists’s Approach
As a psychiatrist, I wholeheartedly advocate for the treatment of mental health conditions and prescribe psychiatric medications. However, as a holistic psychiatrist, I believe psychiatric medications should be prescribed judiciously, as one treatment tool, instead of as the only tool.
Why not use just medication to treat mental health conditions? Because it doesn’t address the well-established potential causes and contributors to the condition. Giving Tylenol to bring a fever down works, but what we really need to do is find out if the fever is due to the flu or pneumonia. This lets us treat it as best as we possibly can. If it’s bacterial-caused pneumonia, we can continue giving Tylenol but also need to add an antibiotic to stop the fever at its source. The same concept goes for ADHD.
A lot of research has been done on the various neurotransmitters and areas of the brain that are under functioning in ADHD. This has led to the ubiquitous prescription of medications like Adderall, Ritalin, and their derivatives like Concerta and Vyvanse. Treating ADHD with stimulant medications seems like a simple, efficient solution. This route to addressing a short attention span, impulsive behavior, and hyperactivity appears seemingly straightforward and most desirable, but only at first glance. Let’s take another look.
Although stimulant medications decrease ADHD symptoms in many people who take them, they’re not the fix-all that they’re marketed to be.
They carry a very real set of problems that include:
Even the longest-acting stimulant medications only work for about 8 hours and then wear off. Many people feel a significant “crash” in energy and mood when the medication leaves their system, leaving them fatigued, listless, irritable, anxious, and/or sad.
They often lead to insomnia, high blood pressure, high heart rate, tics, and growth suppression.
They commonly result in anxiety, irritability, and personality changes such as “feeling like a zombie.”
They have serious side effects including psychosis and mania.
There is a high potential to develop tolerance to them, meaning that your body gets used to the dose and needs a continuously higher dose to achieve the same effect. Eventually, you will get to the maximum dose that can be legally prescribed. This puts you in a tight spot where you have to either stop the stimulant entirely for at least a month before restarting to reset your body’s tolerance or switch to a different type of stimulant to see if maybe that one will have some effect.
Because of the potential for tolerance, there are physical withdrawal symptoms (headache, trembling, fatigue, irritability) when they’re stopped.
They have the potential to be addictive.
Their prescription is closely monitored by the government, meaning you can’t get more than a one-month supply at a time, often resulting in the inability to get the medication for trips or replace it if it gets lost.
Most doctors blame ADHD symptoms on a chemical imbalance of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. They attempt to fix that imbalance with medication. If this were serving people well, we would not be seeing continuously rising rates of ADHD diagnoses. This means something is missing.
Research has shown multiple contributors to ADHD symptoms outside of just dopamine and norepinephrine imbalances. They include:
Blood sugar swings from high to low
Low Vitamin D
Low Magnesium
Low Iron
High Copper
Low Zinc
Low Omega 3’s
Celiac disease or Non-celiac gluten sensitivity
Lactose intolerance
IgG-mediated food allergies
IgE-mediated food allergy
Low DPP IV enzymes & harmful neuropeptides
Environmental allergies, including dust, pollen, dander, chemicals, and mold
Gastrointestinal dysbiosis (overgrowth of harmful bacteria in the gut)
Subclinical hypothyroidism
Methylation imbalances
Toxic metals, including lead and mercury
Toxic substances including red dyes, MSG, BPA, pesticides, sodium benzoate, and artificial colors
So what do we do with all of these possible contributors to ADHD?
We screen for them.
We need to know which ones are part of your ADHD picture, and just as importantly, which are not.
The results guide the creation of a personalized, comprehensive treatment plan.
Since everyone’s combination of contributors is unique, and since there’s usually more than one contributor to ADHD symptoms, this leaves the door open for multiple treatment starting points.
That is ridiculously exciting. It means there are options other than just a pill that may or may not work and that will likely cause side effects.
In addition, there are other well-researched treatment options for ADHD including:
Nutritional interventions such as increasing protein and fat and limiting sugar
DHA, EPA, and GLA fatty acids
Free-form amino acids
Low-dose lithium
Supplements including Rhodiola, Quercetin, Phosphatidylserine, and Broad Spectrum Micronutrients
Neurofeedback
Sleep optimization
OPC’s (oligomeric proanthocyanidins)
ADHD-specific executive skills training
This is a glimpse into a holistic psychiatrist’s treatment approach.
This holistic treatment approach has been helpful to many, especially to those who:
Want to avoid psychiatric medication
Have experienced little to no benefit from psychiatric medication
Have medication side effects
Want to come off psychiatric medication
Want more options for mental health treatment aside from medication
I created Brain-Body Psychiatry to bring you better mental health treatment through holistic psychiatry.
We all need support, guidance, and accountability in making and sustaining positive changes.
Brain-Body Psychiatry provides the tools and takes the time to guide you to your full potential.
If you’re interested in this approach, I am very excited to work on this together.
With care,
Dr. Luisa Cacciaguida
Disclaimer:
This blog post is intended to be informative and does not replace individual medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider or a professional for any personal medical decisions or concerns you may have. Everyone's health situation is unique and should be evaluated by a healthcare professional.
This blog post is designed as a general guide. This is not a substitute for personalized medical advice, nor is a patient-physician relationship established in this blog post.
