As many as 7% or more of school-aged children — mostly boys — have a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, and are taking some form of medication to treat it.
Kansas City-area pediatrician Dr. Christine White, in a recent interview on the Pete Mundo Show, said the problem with ADHD is that it is overdiagnosed and overmedicated.
In interviewing White, Mundo referenced a recent New York Times Magazine piece discussing how ADHD has been thought about and discussed.
“I think it is always good to question whether or not we are diagnosing things correctly, and then if we’re overdiagnosing, are we overtreating?” White said. “I think in this case, I think we are overdiagnosing and we are overtreating.”
White said the school environment is often not geared toward the needs of boys, who are often unable to sit still for hours at a time.
“In some cases, you’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole,” she said. “Especially boys, but some girls….they are different. They need to move. They do not keep their butt in a seat for eight hours.”
White said that while many schools will have a couple of short recesses from kindergarten through third grade, it simply isn’t enough.
“Kids are expected to do work that may or may not hold any interest for them,” she said. “Schools are often teaching to a test.”
White said that while it is possible to make education fun, she is “not sure that the way we teach now makes learning fun.”
White said many of her patients’ parents will take their children out of the school system to alternative education systems more tailored to their needs.
“They’ll homeschool, or they’ll find a Montessori school, or they’ll find sort of a co-op where the kid can go and be maybe in the outdoors for a number of days a week,” White said. “The kids that do homeschooling, also, they can get the work done in about an hour and a half to two hours that would take eight hours to get done at school, and then they have the rest of the day to play outside, to explore their world, to learn more about something that they would like to learn about, to take a field trip somewhere fun.”
White said the environment in traditional schools is not conducive for children with ADHD.
“It’s an artificial environment that we’re putting these kids into,” she said. “It started way back, like at the start of (the) last century, when the large industrial magnates wanted workers, and they wanted people who could be forced to do something for eight to 10 hours a day, and then they would be good workers later. That is not a way to teach or raise children.”
White said part of the problem with diagnosing ADHD is the way doctor visits work and the current environment in health care.
“Most doctor visits are scheduled for 15 minutes. The first four minutes are sucked up with checking in and the nurse coming in and getting your vitals,” White said. “So you might get eight to 11 minutes with that physician if you are trying to see if a child has ADHD, you need time. You need to go through and check on, what are they eating?
“Diet is so important to how that brain works. You need to have a discussion about sleep, both quantity and quality. You need to have a discussion about how much time do these kids spend outside, in the sun, in nature, how much time do these kids spend on screens?”
White said there are additional factors that need to be considered before diagnosing ADHD, such as whether or how well the child able to read, auditory processing issues, visual space orders, and others that may mimic ADHD.
White said in her current practice, Freedom Pediatrics, she’s able to take significantly more time — as much as two hours over two visits — to unravel if ADHD is the actual issue or if there’s something else.
“If you have 15 minutes or legitimately eight to 11 with the physician, you can write a prescription in eight minutes. You can say, ‘yep, you filled out these two forms. Looks like he’s got ADHD, here’s your methylphenidate. Come back in a month. Let me know how it’s going,'” White said. “You did not address any of the underlying reasons that might be causing this, and if you find those reasons, you can often, and I’d say in over 50 or 60% of the cases, you can, quote, cure their ADHD, because it wasn’t ADHD, it was lifestyle habits that were leading to brain inflammation.”
White said diet, especially eating whole, unprocessed foods is critical.
“You stop eating things that come in bags, boxes, or packages,” she said. “You stop eating things with refined sugar and flour. You stop eating things with seed oils.
“If you can 90% of the time eat real, whole, and as much as possible organic foods … you can see a big improvement with that.”
White also said parents should not just limit screen time, but cut it out entirely for kids under 16.”
“First of all, you do not give your child an iPad ever, and you try to prevent the school from giving your child an iPad,” White said. “You do not give your child a cell phone, a smartphone, until they are 16. If you need a cell phone in middle school, you give them a flip phone. You do not introduce it to your child. If your grandma gives you one for Christmas, you give it back. It does nothing.
“I’m a little less worried about TV, especially if it’s used as kind of like a social event, like you’re going to watch the Chiefs tonight — but you just don’t introduce it. It is like cocaine for the brain, and those kids will clamor for it, and it definitely increases attention and focus issues and behavioral issues.”