This special bonus episode features Dr. George Papanicolaou from the UltraWellness Center, diving into how functional medicine approaches ADHD — and why the root cause is rarely just in the brain. In this conversation, Dr. Papanicolaou shares the story of a young woman struggling with ADHD symptoms that conventional medicine failed to resolve. Through a deeper investigation into gut health, nutrient deficiencies, mitochondrial dysfunction, and even genetics, Dr. Papanicolaou explains how addressing the body’s imbalances can dramatically improve focus, energy, and emotional regulation. You’ll learn: • Why ADHD is being diagnosed more than ever—and what you might be missing • How your gut health affects your brain, inflammation, and attention • Why nutrients like omega-3s, vitamin D, and magnesium are essential for cognitive health • How your genes and lifestyle work together to shape your brain health • What you can do—without medication—to support mental clarity and better focusThis is part of a limited bonus series spotlighting the work of the UltraWellness Center team, with new episodes dropping monthly on select Fridays. To learn more about the UltraWellness Center or inquire about becoming a patient, visit: https://ultrawellnesscenter.com
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. Your brain's not working the way you want. It's hard to have a life you want because your brain drives everything and how it functions drives everything in your life. So whether you can work or function or be in relationships or feel good, depends on how your brain's working.
Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights.
And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman here.
Today's episode is something a little different from our usual programming. As a special bonus, we're highlighting one of the incredible doctors from my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center. And over the next few weeks, we're going to be sharing a short Friday episode each month featuring an Ultra Wellness Center practitioner diving into how functional medicine tackles real world health issues.
from fatigue to brain fog to mold toxicity, cancer metabolism, and lots more. Now, this is a limited series for now, but if you find it helpful, we might offer more like it down the road. If you're interested in learning more or working with the Ultra Wellness Center team and one of our docs, visit ultrawellnesscenter.com. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy this bonus conversation.
Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. I'm excited to present to you a new way of thinking about chronic disease and all sorts of diagnoses that we get labeled with. that are just labels. And what functional medicine does is talk about the root cause. And every day I get emails, texts, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?
And people are really unhappy with the conventional medicine approach to their issues. What I'm really excited to talk to you about today with my colleague, George Papanikolaou, who's one of the physicians at the Ultra Wellness Center, is a very common problem, which is attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, whatever you want to call it.
And this is a problem. Now, when I was a kid, there was that one kid in my class, I think his name was Patty Ainsworth, I still remember his name, who was that troublemaker who had, I'm sure had ADHD and that was it. Now it's increased from 1% of the population when I was born to 11.4% of kids. That's a big problem. 8% of them are on medication. So why are we having this problem?
Why is it so prevalent? And rather than just saying, let's medicate it and diagnose it, let's talk about why we've seen this increase and then how do we approach it with a new way of thinking, which is really the root cause approach of functional medicine. So I want to introduce you, George Papanikolaou is one of the physicians at the Altruist Wellness Center.
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Chapter 2: Why is ADHD being diagnosed more than ever?
And people are, you know, they're always intrigued by this particular test because we do another test to look for the immune response to gluten when we do the gut testing, and that's negative. But when I tell them they have to be gluten and dairy-free, they say, why? I say, because of this test. And sometimes it doesn't make a difference.
There are some people where even if we make them dairy-free and gluten-free, they're not noticing any difference when they add those foods back in in regards to, oh, now they've been off them for six weeks. I'm adding them back in. I don't notice any difference. Or they'll say, I added them back in, and boy, I had a really bad afternoon.
That's how you can tell if that's a problem. So this is incredible, George. This is such a perfect functional medicine case because we look at things that no one else is looking at, and we find things that no one else is finding, and then we're able to modify that person's lifestyle,
treat the fundamental underlying factors, whether it's gut dysfunction or mitochondrial dysfunction or basically neuroinflammation that's caused by foods we're eating and get rid of those foods. And you're able to actually get these people to normal. So tell us what happened with Claire, what you did, what the plan was, and what happened to her.
One thing with Claire, she had a lot of bullying when she was in middle school, elementary school and middle school. And she also had parents, lovely parents, But their parenting style was to use a lot of negative reinforcement. If you don't do this, then that's going to happen. If you do this, then that will happen. They were constantly telling her, if you don't, you won't.
And that's really, it's really terrible for a person with ADHD. She said to me at one point when I was talking to her alone that she was generally one or two negative comments away from tears. So she had a real trauma. She was bullied. It was really hard to get through school. There were times she didn't want to ever go back to school because it was just so hard socially and academically.
So there is a diagnosis patients or I tell them your anxiety and depression are actually sort of separate from your ADHD. They're really symptoms. And there's symptoms of your ADHD, but not directly. They're really symptoms of the trauma you experience from your ADHD.
And so Claire would tell me if certain things happened in her life, if she didn't get invited to a party, if she didn't get a good grade, if somebody said something negative to her, she just starts spiraling her default web network. She'd start ruminating over all these negative things. And then when that happens, she has all this negative self-talk.
And when you start to go down that negative self-talk, ruminant pathway that's triggered from trauma, what happens? You go into fight or flight. And when you go into fight or flight, what gets turned off? Your prefrontal cortex.
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