Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is real. People suffer painfully from an inability to focus, organize, follow through, listen, retain information. They lose things, get distracted, forget. They are frustrated with themselves, and others are often frustrated with them. Out of that can come anxiety and depression.
Listen to mainstream information, and you will find readily available solutions to this ADD problem: multi-colored solutions in various shapes available in screw-top bottles prescribed by doctors. This is not the article that’s going to state “In certain circumstances, these drugs have been incredibly helpful, and are sometimes warranted. Ask your doctor.” You can find that statement in plenty of other publications, but not here. That’s the answer for people standing in the long line. If you have read this far, you are standing in the short line, and we are talking to you. Psychotropic pharmaceutical drugs are addictive, dangerous, and harmful to your long term health. IB Solutions is not interested in justification of pharmaceutically treating ADD; we are interested in showing why fixing your colon can fix your brain.
Your colon is a powerhouse. It is the amazing internal interface between the external world (food, water, toxins, bacteria, viruses) and your body. It translates crude ingredients (food) into usable energy (ATP). Much as an oil refinery takes unusable crude oil and refines it into gasoline that a car can use for fuel, your colon takes food and digests it into ATP, the fuel your body runs on. And you are not just any motor vehicle: on the car lot of life forms, you are a Ferrari, my friend.
Your colon protects you. If you have ever had food poisoning, you understand how powerfully the colon expels what it perceives as harmful. It also mobilizes your body’s fighter cells to do battle with viruses, parasites and pathogenic bacteria. 70% of our disease fighting immunity is produced in our colon. In response to danger, via the remarkable two-way super highway of communication called the vagus nerve, the colon interacts with the brain in mounting a “fight-or-flight” response. And afterwards, it helps restore the body to “breed-and-feed, rest-and-digest” calmness.
The colon’s own diverse and plentiful bacteria produce nutrients: thiamin, riboflavin and vitamin B12 among them. Scientists have identified upwards of 5,000 different kinds of bacteria present in the normal colon. In fact, for every human cell, you have roughly ten single-celled microbes, many of which live in your colon. This is the microbiome. Truly, we are one-tenth human and nine-tenths bacteria.
The body prioritizes the colon. Did you know that more of the body’s energy goes to the colon than to any other place besides the brain? 40% of the body’s energy is used in the colon. If there is a problem in your body, you can bet that the colon will be part of either its cause or solution. Likely both. Conversely, if there is a problem in your colon (IBS), it reflects bigger problems going on system-wide in your body.
Your colon thinks, and the colon feels. Yes, you read that right. It is “the pit of (my) stomach” that told you not to board the elevator with that shady character. “Butterflies” of nervousness and excitement live there. The “gut feeling” you should have followed in dating/investing/hiring/firing but didn’t, and lived to regret? Hello, colon.
And, in a highly sophisticated systematic way, the colon produces the chemical neurotransmitters you need for calmness, focus, tranquility and emotional equilibrium. In fact, 90% of your serotonin is both produced and used in your colon. Dopamine and GABA are also produced by the colon’s bacteria. Gut bacteria also generate other neuroactive chemicals, including one called butyrate, that have been linked to reduced anxiety and depression.
“Calmness, focus, tranquility and emotional equilibrium…reduced anxiety and depression.” Hmmm…aren’t these exactly what the ADD sufferer lacks? If the colon produces 70% of our immunity, if it produces 90% of our calming neurotransmitters, both conveying them to the brain, and using them there in the colon…if the body thinks highly enough of the colon to send 40% of our total operating energy its way, and continues to draw upon it via the vagus nerve to alert and calm itself, then doesn’t it make sense to begin our exploration of a brain on fire right there in the colon? If your “top brain” behind your eyes has ADD, then your “lower brain” behind your belly button does, too. It is both foolish and short-sighted to ignore the colon, and all its miraculous, sophisticated, interrelated functions and microbes in trying to heal the brain, or any other system in your body. Furthermore, ADD drugs and other psychotropic drugs do actual harm to the colon in many ways, one of which is the suppression of producing the very neuroactive chemicals your brain needs to heal itself!
The IB Solutions Method respects your body’s natural drive to heal itself and reestablish equilibrium and health. Before recommending any course of treatment, we begin with finding out what has gone off the rails, so to speak: where is function not optimal? You are suffering, but why? We are not chasing a symptom, but rather pursuing a solution. We really don’t treat ADD, any more than we treat any other disease: we treat you. This is Functional Medicine. We view ADD as a flashing warning light on the dashboard of your body: it makes as much sense to temporarily squash its symptoms with a pharmaceutical drug as it does to unscrew a warning light in your car alerting us to greater underlying problems that must be addressed. Your emotions and brain are not disconnected from the rest of your upset body: the turmoil that seems to be happening just in your brain is happening everywhere in your body, especially your colon. Heal the colon, and the brain is healed, too.
Can we be of service to you in generating your own personal blueprint of health? Through specialized testing, we look for infection, parasites, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, food allergies and sensitivities, toxic environmental exposure, genetic variations, hormone and neurochemical disfunction. We test to see if your microbiome thrives with the right beneficial bacteria, and enough of them. If you are geographically able to be examined by Dr. Binley, he will physically assess you in our clinic, especially for lingering effects of head trauma, which greatly impacts your vagus nerve and neurotransmitter production and utilization. You are unique: if you suffer from ADD you may have arrived there for a completely different reason than someone else suffering the same symptoms, which is why we test to discern why your health is off track. Doesn’t it make sense to find out the why before deciding the what? Only when the complete picture of health that is yours is established do we recommend a course of treatment. Via an 8-point system of healing, with careful prioritization of each and every disfunction revealed by your test results, a plan is formulated just for you. You will be taught specific lifestyle choices to improve your health. The powerful ability of your body to heal itself will be reestablished. Your beautiful colon can be restored to optimal functionality.
The suffering of ADD is real; its solution can be, too. IB Solutions can help.
http://www.livescience.com/3092-human-gut-loaded-bacteria-thought.html
http://www.caltech.edu/news/microbes-help-produce-serotonin-gut-46495
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/05/01/antidepressants-adhd-drugs.aspx
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