Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (00:01.205)
Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin and I'm sitting in a studio today that is about 80 degrees, unfortunately, as our heating system in our building this morning went kaput. So it is a little warm in here, but they're working on it from what I understand. For those who don't know, I write a weekly sub stack. You can go to drmcphilan .substack .com or you can go to drmcphilan .com. You can sign up for free weekly posts.

I recently posted an article titled, I refuse to mourn the death of our attention spans. I spoke about the growing dependence on social media, technology, addiction to the phone, and really how it is shaping our limitations of our focus and attention. And I received a response from our guest today. She stated, I usually agree with you.

The small divergence today comes from a place of seeing ADHD symptoms fall away in kids at the family hope center where I serve as a medical director and nutrition expert. And yes, they all have prescriptions for limited or no screens, beautiful diets, time outdoors, exercise, reading, and all the other good stuff. But they also have an extensive brain stimulating program that

invokes neurons to grow, heal, rewire and organize leading to changes in the brainstem that reduce and ultimately eliminate the symptoms we call ADHD for good without drugs, without band -aids.

The guest today said she'd love to chat about this because it's true that as they say ADHD is incredibly overdiagnosed. It's also true in her opinion that some kids and adults, their pons and medulla never developed properly. And we know how to help them develop it and it changes lives. In my humble opinion, the notion that certain brains don't develop properly, quote unquote, is a problematic oversimplification.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (02:02.229)
that fails to address the rich tapestry of human neurodiversity. Our understanding of the brain is still evolving and ever -growing notions of abnormal development may actually represent natural variations in neurological functioning. These differences often come with unique strengths and abilities that have been crucial to human innovation and progress throughout history.

This perspective recognizes that neurological differences are simply part of the normal spectrum of human variation, much like biodiversity in ecosystems. Biological reductionism has turned ADHD into a profitable medical fiction, reducing the complexity of human behavior to a simplistic brain disorder. This myopic view has led to the mass drugging of millions, particularly children creating a generation dependent on stimulants.

By ignoring crucial environmental and social factors, we've pathologized normal variations in attention and activity levels, transforming vibrant energetic kids into lifelong patients. The result? A society where pill popping is preferable to addressing root causes like educational reform, nutrition, poverty, or even family dynamics.

This reductionist approach hasn't just failed to solve the problem of ADHD, it's created a new one. A population convinced they're broken and need chemical fixes to function. The ADHD paradigm fundamentally misunderstands human attention, reducing a complex adaptive system to a supposed deficit. In reality, our attention naturally gravitates towards what's novel, stimulating, and critical in the moment.

A trait that's been crucial for human survival and innovation. Labeling someone as disordered simply because they don't attend to what others deem important is a dangerous oversimplification. However, this doesn't mean we're powerless to shape our focus. Thanks to neuroplasticity, we can indeed train our brains to better attend to less stimulating but still important tasks.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (04:17.973)
The key is recognizing this is a skill to be developed, not a disorder to be medicated. By understanding and working with our brain's natural tendencies rather than against them, we can enhance our focus and even transform mundane tasks into more engaging experiences. This approach acknowledges both the validity of diverse attention patterns and our capacity for growth, offering a more nuanced and empowering perspective than the reductionist ADHD model.

We are here to discuss this and more today with our return guest, Dr. Kristin Reiman. She's a graduate of Stanford School of Medicine, board certified family physician. She's renowned as an expert in Lyme disease treatment. She's also the author of Life After Lyme. Life After Lyme, revive your inner rock star and achieve a full recovery. She is also a founding board member of the newly developed Conscious Clinician Collective.

Dr. Kristen Rieman, welcome back to the radically genuine podcast.

Kristin Reihman, MD (05:19.608)
It's fun to be here as always. Thanks for having me back. And I, as I was listening to that prelude, I agree with every single thing you said and want to add that I feel like there's another path. You know, this idea that ADHD needs a diagnosis so it can be medicated, so it can be managed. I totally agree with you that that's not the way we want to go. But the idea that if we

don't label it or don't acknowledge that something is going on here that isn't working well for people. To me, like we have to start somewhere. And what I love about the approach taken at the Family Hope Center is that we help people understand where the glitches are so they can actually rewire them and get to the place where they don't need medication. They don't have to work 10 times as hard as everyone else just to keep on track. And they maintain all of their brilliance. Like that's the part I want people to walk away with. Like you don't lose your

neurodiversity and your own special brilliance just because suddenly it's easier to function in the world. And that's what I want people to leave understanding.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (06:26.229)
Okay, so let me get a sense of how you categorize ADHD. What makes somebody ADHD?

Kristin Reihman, MD (06:33.816)
So the first thing I want to say is we don't even use that label. At the Family Hope Center, we do not focus on sort of diagnostic criteria because those are not useful to us. Those are things that were developed, as you know, so that people could bill insurance properly and match things up to a drug that was indicated and tested for those problems. So we really try to stay away from those labels. And instead, what we do at the Family Hope Center is we look at the people's

abilities and what they're actually able to do. And we chart them in seven different areas of the brain to determine at what level the brain seems to be struggling. And then we plug in a program. We send people home with a program that they can do on their own to stimulate growth in that particular area of the brain so that they don't just have to, they're no longer working around and navigating the kind of bumps in the road. They're actually smoothing out the road from the ground up.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (07:27.701)
Okay, so how do you identify that it's a part of the brain that isn't working properly?

Kristin Reihman, MD (07:33.368)
So we have what's called an integrated neurological chart and that chart allows us to measure a variety of things over again, seven brain domains over potential seven years of early life. And we match up what a well newborn should be doing on day one of life based on their reflexes. If their reflexes are intact, they should have a light reflex when you shine a light in their eyes. Some kids don't have that. If they don't have that, that tells us, wow, there's a problem in the medulla oblongata.

which is where that reflex comes out of. We want a kid to be able to have a palm or grass. When you put something in their hand, they should go like this. They should bring their hand around that object. That's a reflex that's innate and present at birth for neurologically well children. We want to know if this child is well in that area of their brain. We also want to know what happens when they make their own fist. Like make a fist right now. Show me your fist, Roger. Turn it towards me so I can see your thumb. That is a well -integrated reflex.

Fist is closed and the thumb is in front like that. That's a window into the medulla ombligata and the pons, the midbrain, that tells us, okay, check that area of the brain is intact. Some kids are doing this. Some kids are doing this. Some kids have their thumb tucked right into their fist. Some kids can't make a full fist. Those are all indications of something amiss at the brainstem level. And by working through a whole progressive chart in this way, you can map out where any individual brain is kind of

check where all systems go and where they're struggling. And then you can plug in a program that helps stimulate development at that level of the brain.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (09:09.973)
Okay, so this sounds different though than how we think about ADHD. So, studies, when researchers talk about ADHD as the psychiatric condition, they believe it's associated with weaker function and structure of prefrontal cortex circuits, especially in the right hemisphere, which plays that role in regulating attention behavior and emotion.

Kristin Reihman, MD (09:37.752)
Right.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (09:38.421)
You're talking about neurocognitive conditions that can exist across the lifespan, even first day of birth and measuring that range and seeing where somebody might have profound deficits and what can be done through therapies in order to improve it.

Kristin Reihman, MD (09:59.064)
Exactly. So I diverged from that belief about ADHD. And yes, the prefrontal cortex is also responsible for those rule sets and memory and focus and attention as is the left cerebellum. But deeper than that, deeper than that, if there are issues in the midbrain, this is where we want to focus. Because if the brain gets the signal to grow and heal and organize at the midbrain, it'll continue that process on the way up as soon as the tracks are laid down from below. So it's really a bottoms up approach.

that focuses less on figuring out a band -aid for the memory, which is the prefrontal cortex issue, and more for how do we reset the stage for the brain to work properly and to grow and heal and organize, which is its natural tendency if there's no obstacles in the way.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (10:42.581)
Okay. I know that you don't like diagnoses, but you work in a system that requires them. So how would we label a infant, for example, who is unable to make their fist? Like, what would you diagnose that condition as?

Kristin Reihman, MD (11:00.856)
So at this stage, there's not, in terms of the medical terminology, there's not a diagnosis for that. And therefore a lot of these kids get missed. A lot of kids show up to their well child checks at two months, at four months, at eight months, and they're told, well, they don't have a social smile yet at six weeks, but we're gonna watch and wait. And they're maybe just a little bit slow to develop that. Whereas if we could really understand as a community that this indicates that the limbic brain is not happy.

How do we stimulate the limbic brain to grow, heal, and organize? How do we build in beneath that on the midbrain to help the whole thing take off? Let me tell you, let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Because this paradigm is really different, even though as soon as people learn it, they're like, my gosh, that's so basic and natural. So when I was delivering babies, which I did a lot before I got Lyme disease, I trained with a bunch of midwives. And one of the things I used to do was watch videos of natural home births and unassisted births.

because I wanted to see what normal looked like. I wanted to see what natural was like. And that's sort of my inclination all the time. What are our bodies kind of designed to do? And one of the videos that really stayed with me was this video of a woman whose baby was delivered onto her belly and then everyone's hands were off that baby. And the baby was naked and mom's belly was bare. And the baby got to use all of its primitive reflexes, which come from the medulla oblongata, the pons, the midbrain, but mostly the medulla.

to root around, to move its arms, to start crawling, to dig in its toe with the Babinski reflex, which should be present at birth if the child is neurologically intact. And all of these movements, which are natural and reflex -based, generated the baby's ability to crawl on its belly from lower belly of mom up to her breast using new reflexes to root around and to find the nipple and latch and suckle. That took about two minutes and 39 seconds.

If they touch the baby, all that would stop because you're now going into the baby's cortex and saying, something else is happening here. But if you let the baby live in its midbrain where it wants to live as a newborn, it will run those pathways again and again. And every time it does, those 10 or 12 different reflexes that are getting used when the baby is crawling like that on its belly are sending a message through those nerves back to the midbrain that say grow, heal, organize. It's tonifying or creating the stimulation

Kristin Reihman, MD (13:25.016)
neuroplasticity in that area. And that's the baseline. That's the place everybody starts. So we have people who come to the Family Hope Center who are little children, who are babies even, and who normally might be crawling for their chronological age on their belly. And by the way, I should say we use the word crawling in the way the old neurology textbooks use them, which is on your belly. What you and I might call crawling we call creeping at the Family Hope Center just to keep everyone on their toes. So a newborn baby, if you put them flat on their belly,

on a surface that doesn't have a lot of obstacles, they will use their reflexes to crawl across the room. And if the baby can't, because one of those reflexes or more are not functioning properly, the answer isn't to watch and wait and see. The answer is more crawling on the belly with assistance until that brain gets the message to grow and heal and organize. And so even adults can do this because every brain is wired the same way and that's the message of neuroplasticity that works to heal the brain.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (14:24.693)
So this speaks to the complex interplay between environment and biological development, right? So for example, if a child wasn't provided those opportunities, was neglected, potentially wasn't held enough, wasn't given enough opportunity to move their body, we would see delays in brain development, correct?

Kristin Reihman, MD (14:44.216)
Correct. Or conversely, if a child is held too much, if his child is only carried around and not given the opportunity to crawl for transportation and then eventually push up to hands and knees and creep for transportation, it's missing these important windows of time and growth for the brain.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (15:00.213)
Okay. So let's say that the child was provided these opportunities, you know, a loving, attentive parent wasn't over accommodating under accommodating was, you know, trying to really work with a young child, infant toddler to meet these developmental milestones, but the kid still wasn't right. And from your perspective, you're seeing it there there's delays in brain development and that there's

through specific therapy. This kind of reminds me of occupational therapy in some sense, or certain types of like neurological training that can be done to be able to stimulate areas of the brain that were kind of inactive. Okay, so if a child is provided all these opportunities and you still see delays, how's it conceptualized?

Kristin Reihman, MD (15:52.984)
Well, you at the beginning of this conversation listed a lot of things that you think are really important in the kind of supporting of people who don't function well without them, aside from drugs, like things like a diet that is whole real foods and keto forward and anti -inflammatory, plenty of time outdoors and nature and sunshine, opportunities for socialization and enrichment, and these things are all also really important.

I think of brain issues in two ways. And at the Family Hope Center, we call them injuries. We call the brain that is not functioning at its chronological age to be a hurt brain or an injured brain, because we also believe there's a remedy for that injury. You can actually heal from an injury in the brain. It takes longer than healing, say, if you break your leg, but it's still something that can be managed and actually overcome through therapies that stimulate brain neuroplasticity.

So an injury can come from a static event, like a cord around the neck at birth or a motor vehicle accident or a stroke. A brain injury can also be the cumulative impact of all the inflammatory choices and lifestyle things that happen to a person, right? So we're doing both things. We're covering our bases for all the anti -inflammatory things, putting people on a perfect diet, making sure they're not sitting in front of their screen 24 hours a day, giving them all these other opportunities to kind of remove the fog.

that gets in the way of a brain trying to do its job, which is to grow and heal and organize. And then we're adding this other piece, which stimulates growth.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (17:28.693)
then is it of your opinion that many kids and even adults are mislabeled as ADHD when there's legitimate medical interventions that can be implemented to be able to improve those? I don't want to call them symptoms or the criteria that meets ADHD. Like you can actually improve your ability to focus. You can improve your, your sustainability to like tolerate

you know, distress and other things that are like part of that brain development perspective. Like, do you believe it's just like a mislabel and we need to be able to identify what are the true causes and if we were able to intervene effectively, we could see those symptoms decrease.

Kristin Reihman, MD (18:18.072)
So the label thing always gets me, so the label thing is really about what's your purpose in a label? I'm not sure we need to have labels if we believe the brain can heal and grow and organize and we know what to do. To me, the labels are something to discard once we've healed the brain. I do think the vast majority of people are living in this paradigm that says the brain doesn't heal. You know, when I was in medical school and residency, I was trained to believe the brain had 60 days after an injury to heal, which conveniently is the amount of time insurance pays for

brain rehab. But it's not true that the brain stops healing if you don't stop giving it reason to heal and opportunities to do so. So I think that part of the whole focus on labels comes from the idea that the system is set up such that we need a label to get some opportunities and doors to open, right? Either to get a prescription from a doctor that'll band -aid a symptom or to get reimbursed for that visit by my insurance company. But I encourage people to

to really think about there's a whole other path here, which is actually about cleaning up the mess and getting rid of the underlying reason that those symptoms exist. And I know that's hard for people to hear because they're like, well, my brain's not a mess. I'm like, well, listen, how hard is it for you to focus in school? How hard is it for you to see the board? You know, people, a lot of kids have this lazy eye. Lazy eye is not a nothing. It's a brain injury that needs to heal.

for that kid to be able to track well and read well and hold two or three commands in their brain at one time. So if we focus on the things that we can actually do something about, a lot of those labels go away.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (19:58.581)
Yeah, I pose this question because I know where how you're going to answer it. But you understand the world that I live in. The world in which I live and work is where clients come in to see me. And they've been identified as having ADHD through a quick meeting with their psychiatrist or sometimes their primary care doctor. And they're identifying almost like a personality around this. Like, my condition of ADHD is the reason for

and then you name the struggles. The reasons why I struggle in relationships, the reasons why I don't get the grades that other people get, the reasons why I'm so bored and can't read, you know, there's, it becomes this, this discrete medical condition that now represents most struggles that exist in your life. It's way outside any bounds of any type of scientific inquiry at all. It's just, it's taken on a life of its own. And then the only solution is, is a stimulant, right?

And so you take a stimulant and of course that stimulant can have a powerful effect and often does. I mean, if you and I took a Adderall, you know, we would see the effects on our brain too. So I want to make sure that the audience is understanding from my perspective is that the label and the way that it's being assigned actually in clinical practice is stopping further investigation to looking into all the legitimate causes.

that might affect somebody's ability to function under multiple domains, right? Especially in school and with managing impulsivity and being able to focus on things for extended period of time, even if they're not really that stimulating or interesting to the person, we all have to develop this kind of discipline around being able to focus things on we're not interested in. Like I'm not interested in math, but I had to get good grades in math.

Right? Like, so those things we have to, we have to build that. And I think that skill is generalizable to, or at least transferable to many other aspects in our lives. Like being able to sustain the tension, even in a relationship and talking with someone, even if we're not interested in them or we're bored by the type of conversation, our ability to just kind of just sustain in that, to maintain relationships and to cooperate with people. There's so many universal aspects to it, but you understand that the world that I'm living in right now and what it's become.

Kristin Reihman, MD (22:20.984)
Well, yes, and we're all living in that world, right? I mean, that's the dominant paradigm that I keep harping on. So I think what comes down to it comes down to a question for the individual. Do you want to live in the paradigm that says you have this label, you're always going to have this label, you need a medication, you always are going to need that medication, it's going to limit you in these five ways that you're already experiencing, plus it's going to make you anxious and stressed because you can't function in the world the way everyone else does with the ease that everyone else does. And do you just want to like...

Be like, that's good enough for me. Or do you want to jump off that train and be like, actually there are things I can do that will help my brain grow and heal and organize from the ground up so that those glitches that we call ADHD that make it really hard for me to function and to focus will actually go away and I can just live my life. Like it's a question for the individual.

I wish that we had a paradigm and a culture in which we all recognized it's really important for babies to crawl on their bellies on day one of life. It's really important for us not to put them in Johnny jump ups and carry them around everywhere so that they can do the brain. It's really important that we don't put them on their backs to sleep, which by the way is currently the dogma, even though it bounces back and forth, right? And that paralyzes all their reflexes. They have no opportunity to stimulate their reflexes on their back.

So I wish we lived in a world where everybody knew this and it was just kitchen table wisdom because the stuff to do is all stuff babies know. Like it's just basic stuff that we're not doing as a culture. So yeah, I mean, I hear you. It's very frustrating to see that, especially when a lot of people don't know there's another option.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (24:00.501)
know how much you know about this, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because it popped in my head. How about the change in vaccine schedule and what we're doing with, you know, young kids now?

Kristin Reihman, MD (24:09.688)
Yeah, well, I mean, there are a lot of, you know, I talked earlier about the discrete brain injury, like a quarter on the neck and the static brain injury, sorry, the static brain injury versus the kind of, you know, foggy nebulous coming and going inflammation based injury. I think vaccines can do either of those things. I mean, there are kids who are different after their vaccine, including the owner and one of the co -founders of the Family Hope Centers. Second child was paralyzed at four months from on one side of her body, completely paralyzed from a vaccine.

came home from the vaccine, cried and cried for a day and then couldn't move her right side for the next several, several months to years. Luckily they knew this was an option, right? They knew this was a way to heal her brain and they were able to do it. And she didn't read until she was 12 because she was very hurt in the pons and midbrain from that inflammation and that injection, but she did recover and did.

ended up graduating, I think, summa cum laude from her university and playing violin, and now she's a pediatric OT. So it's quite possible to recover from these things. And a lot of people aren't, they're not quite as drastic or dramatic. So you might have a kid who comes home and they don't look you in the eye anymore, and they're told to watch and wait, but there are subtle, even more subtle changes that can happen with the accumulated vaccine schedule that I think needs to be looked at and more honestly assessed.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (25:34.389)
I think some of the challenges I have is where we are right now is that ADHD is generally being

identified as a condition through our school system. And I'm more protective of boys because I think in a lot of ways, boys are like naturally inclined to be a lot more active, to be outside, to be connected to nature. And not that, you know, girls themselves aren't in the same way, but they, when you do study differences in biological sex, you know, girls tend to be a little bit more relational, social, and have a...

a greater ability to sustain focus and attention on one single task for greater periods of time than boys in general. And there's, I'm sure there's a lot of biological evolutionary aspects for that and why that's important. But the boy who is wants to be active, wants to work with his hands, wants to be outside, and then you put them in the school environment and they have a hard time focusing on the way that we educate that becomes labeled as ADHD.

And that is what we send into our medical systems for intervention. Are those the type of kids that you'd also see at the Hope Center, Family Hope Center, and how might you approach that differently?

Kristin Reihman, MD (26:51.128)
So we approach every child or adult who comes to the Family Hope Center using our chart. We spend four to six hours with them. The team is working through all those reflexes, all those different ways to trigger a response, to invoke the brain, to show us what it can and can't do. And we map people out on the chart. And yes, there are themes. You know, kids on the spectrum are often hurt in the limbic brain. That's sort of where those symptoms come from. They're not hurt in the parts of the motor cortex or sensory cortex as much. They're hurt in the limbic brain.

Kids with cerebral palsy have a midbrain issue. But there are flavors that are different for everybody. And we focus most on what the chart tells us because that's what the human told us. That's what their brain told us it could do and it also told us where it was stuck. Now, it doesn't hurt anybody to do this program. This is a program that often the parents of hurt kids in our program are doing it with their children because they find it makes their brain work even better.

helps them focus up in the mornings, get organized for the day, they find their clear. And so it's not something that people should eschew just because they think, well, I don't have a classic brain injury or my kid's just naturally energetic. Great, let's see if there's any glitches in there that we can smooth out because at the end of the day, I think as parents, we all want our children to have the most sort of, to reach their potential in the way that's most natural and optimal for them, right? We want them to have

door's open to them, we want them to have a lifetime that isn't free of struggle, obviously, but that is free of some of the low -hanging fruit struggle like a brain not working optimally if we have the chance to help them with that. And so I encourage everyone to do the chart and do it for their kid and see where they're, do it for their own brain and see where they're at. And then bonus, you know, we teach you how to plug in things that'll help stimulate the brain to organize and heal and grow and optimize at whatever level you're at.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (28:43.349)
Okay, so let's get into it. Let's really interested in how you actually do this work. What does it entail? How do you measure progress? And so forth.

Kristin Reihman, MD (28:52.632)
Perfect, so we measure progress with the chart. So people come back to us every six months and we redo their chart every single time. And often kids, what we'll see, because the chart's actually really designed to compare brain age, to give them a brain age, right? And then we can compare it to their chronological age. And some kids who come in are functioning at 50 % of their chronological age. I know even in the ADHD community, sort of if you go on Facebook groups and talk to people, communities of ADHD people, they'll say, you know, we don't expect our executive function to be, you know,

caught up with our peers. We're like three years behind or we're four years behind. There's different places they say different things. Well, that's because there's a brain injury at play. And if you catch your brain up, that difference all goes away. And so we want to compare people to their brain age and their chronological age at every visit. And what we see for people doing the program is that some kids will have six months of growth neurologically in six months, which is what their peers are experiencing, right?

But most kids will have eight months or nine months, sometimes 12. I've seen a kid with 22 months of neurological improvements in just six months because that's how powerful these methods are.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (29:58.325)
Yeah, I was gonna ask you, don't we see just variation in development for kids that, you know, are different at different stages? But what you're seeing is you're seeing this like rapid improvement on these cognitive tasks that would not be accounted for just by maturation.

Kristin Reihman, MD (30:14.648)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. And it's not just cognitive tasks, you know, it's visual tasks, it's motor skills, it's tonic and rigidity. We see kids who just are stuck at certain levels who when they get this program in place and when they get the diet in place and the whole program is pretty holistic and comprehensive, they just take off. I mean, we have kids, my husband always tells me not to say this because he's like, that's just too provocative, but I'm gonna say it, because this is a radically genuine podcast. We literally have kids, Roger, who used to be blind.

whose parents were told your child will never see, your child will never walk, who are walking and seeing. Because it turns out, if the nerves are intact, you haven't severed the optic nerve, and the brain's alive, and the brain can heal if you know what to do, and then you do it, the brain can heal.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (31:00.341)
Fascinating. Okay, let's just, can you just spill out the program for us and then I'll follow up with questions. What does the program look like?

Kristin Reihman, MD (31:07.608)
Okay, so it's a three day conference to learn the whole program, but I will give you the basics. So the basics are, in addition to all the sort of obvious things like whole real foods, you know, anti -inflammatory, keto -leaning diet, and adequate sleep, and no toxins in your products, removing all the obstacles, right? People are also doing things to invoke those reflexes in the brain stem and the midbrain.

grow and heal and organize. So send the message to the lower brainstem that we're growing now, we're healing, we're organizing, we're getting things moving. And what that looks like is often crawling on your belly for many meters a day, creeping on your hands and knees, which sends a message that's a little bit higher. Think about like who's crawling on their belly. Babies zero to two months or zero to two weeks are crawling on their belly. And then they start using the pons a little bit more and then they're doing their

eventually get to push up at five five months or six months to creep on hands and knees. So we're actually doing both medulla and pond stimulation through crawling and then creeping. But you know that's meters

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (32:10.229)
And that's regardless of age. Like if a 12 year old pumps in.

Kristin Reihman, MD (32:13.56)
Because we're not talking about chronological age, we're looking at your brain age. If your brain shows any evidence of dysregulation at the lower levels, which pretty much all of these things do, you're creeping and crawling.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (32:28.536)
So getting my kid into wrestling at a very young age was really good for his pons and medulla because they were always on their on their bellies and they were doing what's called like crab walks and you know different things to strengthen that skill to be a wrestler so you're gonna say that was good for the pons and the medulla.

Kristin Reihman, MD (32:45.176)
I'm gonna say good job. He picked the right dad and the right sport.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (32:47.957)
Okay, what's next?

Kristin Reihman, MD (32:51.384)
Well, then it really comes down to where does this kid hurt? So kids on the spectrum, like I said earlier, often hurt in the limbic brain and those kids need a lot of smells. So it depends on what the kid's chart said, but if it showed any kind of aversion to smells or difficulty discerning good smells from bad smells, meaning like fish food, which smells kind of like poop from a flower, then we say, okay, they need a smells program.

And then it's just about running those pathways again and again. So kids will go home with often four smells, usually organic, essential organic oils in the morning, four different smells in the afternoon, four smells in the evening. And you're smelling each smell for like 20 seconds, running pathways to the limbic brain saying, hello, wake up, hello, I'm here. And that happens also during the program as part of the limbic brain retraining. Then we have a lot of different, very specific reflexes for kids who have trouble

let's say with boundaries. So people who have trouble with boundaries often are not integrated in the part of the brain that deals with their hand supporting reflex, meaning they don't know how to put their hand out if they're falling towards a wall to stop themselves. And we actually test that. We stand kids near a wall and we give them a little bit of a push. And if we have to catch them before they hit the wall, we know they don't have that reflex to stop themselves, which can be very dangerous. Obviously if someone falls on the soccer field or on the basketball court, they knock their teeth out because they didn't stop themselves.

So those kids are going home with a program that also includes hand supporting reflex work, which is where a parent or guardian will take their arm and gently give them support with a straight arm to basically run the pathway to the brain that says, this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing. And that tells that part of the brain to grow and heal and organize. And it goes on from there. It really becomes very specific to the child and the brain injury that we're dealing with.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (34:41.461)
So there's a lot of exercises that they're to do at home on a daily basis. Are they returning to the clinic to continue to get measured and provide new exercises? Is there like a step process that's included here?

Kristin Reihman, MD (34:57.272)
Yeah, we recommend people come back every six months to be reevaluated. And the first day of their visit, it's usually a two day visit, the first day of their visit, they're getting the whole chart redone. Because we want to know where the chart changes have been. We want to know what all this work has yielded in terms of actual neurological growth. And we want to know if they're achieving those milestones at the different levels of the brain that they were trying to catch up to. And then sometimes we tweak it, often we tweak it, right? Depending on what the issues are that the child is having or depending on any kind of physiological

problems that are going on, you know, as the medical director, that's my job. I'm there to make sure there isn't some major physical, physiological obstacle to them doing all aspects of the program. And if there is an issue like Lyme disease, for example, is a frequent thing I see. And so if someone's living in mold and we identify that as an obstacle, or if they've got Lyme disease and that's an obstacle, then we have to work on those things as well. Because again, we want to clean up all the smoke from the fire.

so that all this great input people are putting into their brains who invoke neuroplasticity has a clear path forward and can actually make change in the brain.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (36:01.557)
What are some potential attentional deficits that could exist with Lyme disease or some other neurocognitive condition?

Kristin Reihman, MD (36:10.04)
Gosh, well, I mean, all of them. A lot of people with Lyme brain are super foggy or can present like ADHD or even Alzheimer's, which again, these are just labels that don't mean a lot to me anymore because there's always a root cause beneath any of these things, right? But that's sort of what, that's the diagnosis they might've been given. Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia often come with this thing. You know, people talk about brain fog and that is, that's a neurological issue.

and it could just be inflammation. It could also be inflammation on top of some deeper injury that was there and wasn't ever really a problem until it was unmasked by the additional inflammation from the lime or the mold or what have you.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (36:49.109)
which is my greatest concern with how we are now treating people medically. It's you get these symptom constellations and they're given the label and they're treated like it's a discrete illness and you're not really going further to investigate the wide extent of causes. You know, this, this reminds me even how I think, you know, clinical psychology can be, you know, best utilized to help people who are experiencing a number of problems, especially like with anxiety. There's a, there's a statement that's in used in DBT called move a mess.

move a muscle, train your brain, right? So, you know, through action, you are actually changing your brain instead of to think about it that we are somehow like slaves to our, you know, genetic, you know, limitations or brain injuries that exist. It's utilizing that the power of neuroplasticity and what happens when we interact with an environment. So within exposure therapies, for example, we utilize the inhibitory learning model.

of fear extinction. So this understanding that the more you're exposed to a stimuli that previously provoked a high level of anxiety because it was associated with something dangerous, and it's kind of a false alarm because it's not dangerous, repeated exposures to that allow the person to learn and that new learning is applied to each repeated exposure, which decreases activity in, I guess, it's the amygdala, the fear aspects of the brain and that's measured. I mean, that can be measured.

And that's like the importance of having these very active interventions that can alter our emotional experiences and alter our thoughts and our attentional and different cognitive processes. These active treatments actually are very powerful. Nutrition as well from a mental health perspective.

Kristin Reihman, MD (38:36.6)
Yeah, yeah. Now, as you're talking, I'm just thinking about the stigma related to talking, even talking about brain issues and brain injuries. And I don't really understand where it comes from. I suspect it comes from the fact that we've all been trained to believe that, you know, we are our brains or our mind is our brain. Our mind is not our brain, right? Our brain is the technology through which the mind manifests in the world. But I think people can inflate the two and

Couple that with this idea that most people have that the brain doesn't heal or grow. I had this epiphany in medical school. I was about to go on to my first rotation, or my second rotation, which was neurology. And right before my rotation, Cell and Nature both came out with, these are the big medical journal papers, or journals, they both came out with papers demonstrating that rat brains could regenerate. Rat brains, we want to cover. And it was a big deal.

because up until that point, there was this fixed belief that neurons don't repair themselves, brains don't heal. And yet here were rat brains in these studies actually, you know, they were invoking neurogenesis and I'm not sure how they did it, but it was a big deal. And I remember taking that paper to my first day of neurology rotation and being like, what are you thinking about this, you guys? Like, this is gonna change everything, isn't it? Like, how's this gonna be for your field? Are you super pumped? And they were like, pipe down medical student. Nothing will come of that for the next 25 years. And I was like,

How can we not act on information that's this important to people? Turns out it took longer than 25 years, right? That was more than 25 years ago. And still we have this notion that if there's something wrong with the brain, number one, it's not fixable. Number two, therefore we're not gonna talk about it. A lot of people don't wanna acknowledge it because it's like a death sentence, right? And so I think that we need to get over that. We need to find our way to this acceptance that the brain is like any other part of our body. It can get hurt.

And just like any other part of our body, it can also heal if you know what to do. It doesn't easily heal, it takes a while, but it absolutely can heal if you know what to do and you actually execute and do it.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (40:45.013)
Just curious, I've been reading a lot about grounding recently, grounding in nature, barefoot for example. Are you aware of the effects that that could have on the brain and is that implemented in your program at all?

Kristin Reihman, MD (40:58.552)
You know, we don't focus on it hugely as a program. I talk to everyone about it because I think it's important to get your feet on the ground every single day. It's tricky with people who have sort of Lyme fear and they're, you know, you talked about the amygdala and fear response. A lot of people are sort of fearful of nature at this point, which is the opposite of, I think, what we need to be. We need to be aware, but, you know, embrace the healing powers of nature and that grounding is one of those ways we can do that. So yeah, I'm a huge fan and I tell all my patients to get out for at least 20 minutes a day with their feet on the ground.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (41:29.749)
Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many of these interventions that can yield really profound positive consequences and they're really easily implemented for short periods of time. Like I'm really interested in that. Like what can we do? What are these small changes in behavior that can yield real positive results? And I think that's one of them, right? Other things is meditation for me is another one. Even if you don't have a whole lot of time, just your willingness to practice that.

and to enter into that process has these profound effects. And I think it gets into like greater conversations about human consciousness, which is always kind of the debate. There's always like this medical side of things and this philosophical and spiritual side of things where, you know, our current allopathic medical model, you know, thinks about almost everything as it derives from the brain.

But yet it seems like human consciousness is a lot more complex. Like we can actually shut down aspects of our brain and retreat inward into this experience that creates a knowledge base or a wisdom that is difficult for us to even measure medically.

Kristin Reihman, MD (42:41.08)
Yeah, no, it's beautiful and I wish everyone had a practice like that or some kind of practice that took them to that place. Because I think, not just from perspective of what a great place to be in that place where you retreat inward and you're sort of suddenly part of the all, right? But because every time you try something new, you're challenging your brain. So I recommend whatever people are doing to mix it up. Add something different, different or more difficult. Find your edge.

A lot of people don't like to do brain training activities, which isn't really what we're doing at the Family Hope Center. We're actually rewiring the brain. But a lot of people have like caught on to this idea that, if I do the Wordle every day and I do the connections every day and I do, you know, or the New York Times crossword puzzle, that's really good for my brain. Well, yes, if it's hard and you're pushing through it, if it's not hard, you're probably not getting the neuroplasticity benefits that you think you are. You have to change it up to the point where you're at your learning edge or your comfort edge.

in order to get the benefits of those things.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (43:38.549)
I wrote an article that was titled, Everybody Has ADHD. And it was more to kind of the cultural understanding of ADHD and how our brain is naturally designed to hook onto the most relevant stimuli. So great examples like working with a combat veteran. You know, I'll work with a combat veteran who was in Iraq, he's in Fallujah, there's insurgents and he has to be hyper vigilant and attentive to these minor shifts in his environment because it could be life or death.

And his brain sharpens and adapts to that experience, right? And it is necessary to be alive. And then you come back home and you're no longer in that war torn experience. You're no longer in combat and it's taking a while for the brain to be able to re acclimate because it's still in this survival mode. And I think that speaks to this interaction with environment and brain.

And I think we're too often, we're labeling our brain to be defective when indeed it's working exactly how it's supposed to. And so when you expose kids to video games and iPads at a very young age and their brain is adapting to that level of stimulation, it's exciting, it's engaging the brain, then other aspects of life become quite boring and they have a difficult time tolerating that discomfort that comes up.

when the brain isn't activated. Same thing with our smartphones. So I was measuring my time, my screen time on my smartphone. It was routinely at like two and a half hours a day. And I just took off every single notification that existed on my phone and it dropped to like 20 minutes a day. So like little things like that that are used to engage our attention.

And then people kind of misrepresent that as I have ADHD when they don't truly understand that their brain is working exactly as it's supposed to.

Kristin Reihman, MD (45:39.8)
Totally agree. I totally agree with that. I think that there are so many little micro tweaks we could all make in our day to make functioning in our day much, much less distracting and ineffective. Totally, completely agree. I want you to show me how to turn off all my notifications because I've never done that. And I would like to, I mean, I usually just put it in airplane mode. That's sort of my quick fix, but yeah, that'll do it. But it would be nice to be able to, you know, I,

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (46:03.989)
That'll do it.

Kristin Reihman, MD (46:07.8)
When cell phones first came out, I remember my mom said something like, overhearing a conversation in a grocery store between a child on the phone, or I guess on the other end of the line and a woman in line at the grocery store. And the woman was saying, wait, what do you mean I wasn't here? I've been here all day. You just didn't reach me because I didn't pick up my phone. And they said whatever they said. And she said, I think you must understand. My cell phone is for my convenience, not your convenience. And I love that because everyone sort of assumes that they can reach you at all hours of all.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (46:31.221)
Yeah.

Kristin Reihman, MD (46:37.624)
the day and that you should pick up if you're there if you've responded to a group text and you're also available to answer a phone call in that moment and it's it makes it very hard to to shut down the distractions and the the non -essential things. And for somebody with I'm not gonna say ADHD but for someone who has an injury in in the medulla oblongata for example that part of the brain is what helps us separate and discriminate between irrelevant and relevant stimuli.

So for some people, that's sort of a, you know, casual interference in their day. But for others, it's literally, they can't figure out, should I listen to the fact that the air condition just went on? Should I listen to the dog barking? Should I listen to Roger talking? Like where should my brain be? Because that part of the brain is not hardwired yet.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (47:28.54)
Well, that brings up like actual brain injuries, like traumatic brain injuries that can occur from concussions that exist on the sports field or, you know, any other reason why someone might get a potential brain injury and experience like post concussion symptoms. So if we're speaking from the perspective of the brain's natural ability, it's kind of designed to heal when the right mechanisms are in place. And that one can have

ADHD like symptoms who experienced a head injury. What are in your opinion, like the most effective steps to take in order to recover from a concussion, for example?

Kristin Reihman, MD (48:13.368)
I think the first step is always the same, which is decide which train you want to be on. Decide whether you want to actually address this and look for the root causes and then deal with the root causes or decide whether you just want to sort of watch and wait and let it simmer out until you no longer seem like you're concussed, even though you've had a brain injury that the inflammation might have healed, but you may actually still have an injury there. I fell and hit my head when I was 22 on black ice. I had a concussion. I was out for several, who knows out for

few minutes, maybe an hour, I have no idea because I was found by a passerby on her way to work in kind of an alley, like it wasn't even in the main area. So it could have been a while. And CAT scan was negative, everything looked fine. My husband kept me up all night dilating my pupils with a flashlight to make sure I was not having a brain bleed. And for a few days I was a little foggy and off and then I recovered, right? Seemed fine.

and was fine enough to do all the tasks of, well, I was pre -med then working in a lab, then went to medical school. I was fine enough, right? Didn't notice any obvious glitches. Two years ago, I had a brain injury, which eventually led me to go to the Amen clinics and do a spec scan on my brain, where they found a hole in the left frontal lobe, which is exactly opposite to where my brain hit when I had a coup contra coup injury on that fall.

There's no other head injury I've ever had except that one that happened when I was 22. There was an area that does not light up when it's supposed to light up when I'm thinking and at rest in that area of my brain. So there was a brain injury there that wasn't bad enough to rise to the level of my awareness and do anything about, but it was still there. You get enough little ditties like that over your life or in utero or in your childhood that suddenly you can't function and people notice.

I said I had a brain injury two years ago and it wasn't actually immediately obvious to me either that I'd had one. I had surgery on my neck for a herniated disc. I woke up and couldn't speak for two months, which was actually a known side effect of the surgery. So I kind of blew that off. But I also felt a little off, a little wobbly, and I just assumed, okay, that's the anesthesia getting out of my system. When I went back to work a few months later, my boss at the Family Hope Center looked at me from across the room and said, how are you doing? I said, okay.

Kristin Reihman, MD (50:30.296)
I mean my math isn't as fast as the Amish dad who just bested me in some calculations 10 minutes ago, but I'm a little tired and kind of feel overwhelmed actually. And he goes, yeah, I was thinking that you might not be having a great day. Your right eye is turning out. And I said, what, excuse me? And he goes, yeah, you had a little stroke there, probably during the surgery. And I, in retrospect, had not only had blurry vision that I thought was just time for new glasses, but I also was having a

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (50:50.773)
Hmm.

Kristin Reihman, MD (50:58.392)
really hard time multitasking to the point where simple math, figuring out someone's calculating someone's weight by subtracting the dad's weight holding him, I couldn't do that on my own. I needed to write it down. That was not normal for me. And I also had that sort of a balance issue. I did a full neurological workup, which showed, well, you don't have Alzheimer's, you don't have MS, but yeah, your right eye is turning out and you do have a positive Romberg, which is...

a provocative measure, a tool that they use to determine if your cerebellum is happy or not, where you stand with your arms in front of you, arms straight out, close your eyes, and you're supposed to be able to stand straight. I fell back into the right, and luckily my husband was there to catch me at that doctor's appointment. So I had some pretty mild but discrete and reproducible brain deficits. And the other big thing that was there was I wasn't motivated to do anything about it, which turns out...

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (51:51.541)
Mm.

Kristin Reihman, MD (51:55.384)
to live in the ponds. So when I finally got my stuff together and got convinced by the people who love me to go do something about it, I knew what to do, right? I went to the Family Hope Center director. I said, Matthew, give me a program. He gave me a program. Surprise, surprise, it involved creepy and crawling and smells and a few other things. And within a couple months, I was no longer forgetting that I had just asked that question. I was no longer having trouble with math.

my eye was no longer turning out. So it didn't take a lot, but it took consistent effort and it took me knowing that there was an option, right? A lot of people would have just been like, yeah, I guess I don't have to work anymore. Can't really think, can't hold complex thoughts and ideas, right? Prefrontal cortex, right? Rule sets was where I really had taken a ding. And I got it all back. So yeah, I'm a huge fan.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (52:36.149)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (52:51.509)
Do you believe we have enough specialists in this area to, you know, accurately understand and identify the complex problems that could lead to these types of symptoms?

Kristin Reihman, MD (53:02.52)
I think that number is growing. It's still way too small. And it's going to take, you know, for most average, I mean, the trick is it's not like rocket science to do these maneuvers, right? You don't have to really go to fancy, expensive places. You don't have to have a lot of equipment in your home. You need like a nice stretch of ground. I use the 10 meters of my hallway and you need a couple of other things. And, but really what really is missing is the awareness. And I think

Having people, even if they're not gonna specialize in this, having doctors and PTs and OTs and neurologists who understand that the brain can heal and that there are ways to invoke that is the first place, because most people are still going to those folks to get answers.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (53:42.933)
Yeah, part of my problem with neuropsych and clinical psych is that they'll provide the diagnosis of ADHD. It stops there. Really, their next step is to really just take a stimulant, you know, go to the psychiatrist and take a stimulant. And there was a new article, a recent article that was published in Frontiers and Psychiatry, I'll include it in the show notes, that critiqued how ADHD is like mistakenly treated as a medical.

disease than a descriptive label for certain behaviors. And I think this is critically important because the researchers identified four strategies used to erroneously conflate ADHD with a medical condition. One was language choice. So using medical terms like symptoms instead of criteria, logical fallacies like misinterpreting statistical data like brain size differences to mean that someone then has this condition called ADHD that's like a mutable and it's

and it has genetic origins and there's really nothing that can be done about it. This genetic reductionism, which is like overemphasizing these small genetic correlations. Textual silence, which is omitting important environmental factors that influence ADHD diagnoses, which is exactly what we spoke about today. You know, in my fields, somebody who's also in a traumatic environment and experiences post -traumatic stress symptoms are going to...

present to a doctor is having ADHD, as are a number of like behavioral problems that, you know, that exist. You know, talking about, you know, developmental needs for a child learning to self -regulate is really critical, especially during, you know, some of those, you know, toddler years, ages two, three, four, and we try to implement behavioral interventions. Like even something like time out is a very important emotion regulation strategy, you know, to be able to

recognize, respond and identify to cues in your environment, even when your emotion is driving you to do something that you want right now. And then knowing that you have to respond to an authority, like a parent, for example, put your toys away or it's time to go to bed. And if the parent then responds to a tantrum and in that tantrum, the kid is able to continue doing the exact things that the parent didn't want them to do.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (56:00.309)
Well, that kid is learning that's affecting their brain development. That's affecting certain cognitive and emotional aspects of observable behaviors that will be demonstrated in school systems. You know, you go and you're not going to listen to a teacher. You're not going to sit still in a chair. You're not going to put your toys away when you're told to put your toys away because they never had to and they didn't learn to regulate those emotions. So then that gets identified as a brain disorder or some genetic condition.

when it's just poor parenting and the kid is not provided, the child is not provided age appropriate reactions to these situations, which is absolutely necessary. And then we talk about parenting through screens as you're, you know, parents, two parents who are working, they come home late at night, they got to get dinner. You know, sometimes the last thing they want to do is really interact with their child. And instead they're putting them in front of a screen to kind of wind down and settle down. And all these things are impacting

behavior and what we're calling ADHD. So the researchers argue that identifying ADHD as a disease rather than a descriptive label leads to harmful interventions and then overlook other explanations for children's behavior, which is exactly my point. So when I'm on other podcasts and I talk about this and then the click bait is there's no such thing as ADHD.

Remember what I'm saying is that as a label, it's not its own disease entity. It's just a descriptive label that doesn't allow us to understand what the causes are.

Kristin Reihman, MD (57:39.544)
Well, and that I think probably describes pretty much 99 % of all neurological and neuropsychiatric diagnoses. They're descriptive labels and they tell you nothing about what's actually going on in the brain, which is why we don't use them. We talk about what's actually going on in the brain. Now, as usual, 99 .8 % of what you just said I totally am on board with. I want to take issue with the bad parenting moment that happened because we see probably what society would call the worst parents in the world.

right, because they're coming in with the kids and the kids are bouncing off the walls and throwing balls at people's faces. And, you know, there was a dog in the clinic last week, we had a new family come in and the kid who was about seven picked up the dog and threw it. And those obviously are bad behaviors. They're ineffective and they're not helpful and they're dangerous in many cases. This was actually the best mother I've ever seen in that.

she was making the hard decision to spend money, to spend time, to use resources and effort to get her kid the help that is actually gonna rewire his brain so that he can regulate. He literally can't regulate. He doesn't remember those moments. He's offline in those moments. And so I think telling the story that this is all bad parenting, or in many cases, bad parenting, is a problem because in many cases, the parents are actually doing everything right.

They might have a moment of weakness where they're putting their kid in front of screens for two hours so they can have respite, but the kid's brain, the kid is not a bad kid, they're not bad parents. It's a brain that needs help. Needs help rewiring so that it can actually regulate itself.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (59:12.981)
Well, respond to that. I think when, when we say words like all of course, I, you know, I agree with you, but, poor parenting exists and it's, it's much more prevalent than maybe what we can imagine. I mean, that's kind of the work that I did. And for a lot of years before I became a clinical psychologist, going into, going into homes. And then when I became a psychologist or when I went to graduate school walk, going into these clinics and doing a lot of parent education and so forth, I think,

There's a lot of factors that are leading to challenges in parenting. One of them is our economic. So, you know, there's changes in our society where two parents aren't in the home. They're working, they're overstressed, you know, kids are in daycare centers. And there's a number of factors that are leading to parents struggling in how to respond consistently and effectively. I don't want to say that they're bad parents or bad people. I think that's a

the wrong word to use, but there's challenges in consistently responding to their kids in a way that's going to be best for their development moving forward. I also think there's a lot of cultural messages that are sent out there and books from quote unquote experts around gentle parenting and a number of things that I don't think are necessarily developmentally important or misrepresent what a kid needs at certain stages in their development. So

I try to talk to parents, I say it is loving to be responsive to a kid's behavior problems and to set up consistent ways of responding to them that provides them the opportunity to learn. Just because a kid gets upset or throws a tantrum, it doesn't necessarily mean you as a parent are doing something wrong. It could be mean that you're doing something right and they have to be able to respond in a consistent way.

even with their child in distress. And so I get this from parents a lot of the time. I mean, they're talking to me about the confusion. They're afraid to parent. They're giving their kids cell phones at age six. You know, there's a number of things that are happening in our culture that are really problematic and influencing this. Doesn't mean they're not loving. It doesn't mean they're not good people, but it's just where we are culturally now.

Kristin Reihman, MD (01:01:31.352)
Yeah, okay. Granted, agreed.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (01:01:35.925)
All right, so I've kept you for an hour. Are there any final comments or anything that you want to let our listeners know from today's episode?

Kristin Reihman, MD (01:01:44.504)
I think I just want to put the power back in people and say, look, you have choices. If you feel like it's hard to function because your brain's not working for you, right? Or for your child, if your kid's not showing up in the way that they need to to get their needs met socially, emotionally, cognitively, academically, there could be something going on in the brain that you can actually do something about.

And at the other side of that, like you haven't lost your kid. Your whole kid gets to shine through, right? It's like you get the full blossom of that mind and that body and that person and that personality without all the distracting pieces that we might have called it ADHD or autism or some other label that really is just a collection of symptoms. So have hope, take hope, go to the Family Hope Center if you feel like...

that is a place where you could get this information and you need the information. And yeah, don't be told that a drug is your final answer because it's actually not getting at the root.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (01:02:45.397)
Yeah, some of my important takeaways from today's session. It's like, if I don't use my right arm, sufficiently enough, it's going to atrophy. And, you know, we don't talk enough about brain health from so many various perspectives, like feeding the brain through adequate nutrition, the role of our experiences and our inner relationship with our environment, including nature, exercise, and how our parents respond. you know, the use of technology.

There's so many things around brain health that are not part of our lexicon right now. And I think that term ADHD overrides it because, you know, unfortunately we're just in this quick fix culture and it's just not, you know, these things are not necessarily a quick fix. And if we can have a more supportive and educational environment where people can learn these things and know that there's, you know, developmental needs at various stages and we can move outside the

the bounds of what like kind of corporatism kind of provides for us in the United States. You know, so much of what we do is in response to corporate influence. You know, even when you start looking at like the formula, some of the formulas that are created for babies and what's inside them, you know, and we're just told that that's healthy and that's brain nourishing and they mimic a mother's milk. And that's just part of the marketing and propaganda. And there's so many things I think we got to take back our health.

And having conversations like this allows us to do that. So Dr. Kristin Reiman, I'm so appreciative of the time today and I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation.

Kristin Reihman, MD (01:04:26.863)
Thank you, Roger.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP (01:04:37.717)
Hey.