ADHD’s Neuro-divergent need for options
An ad for an ADHD medication is playing on the current airwaves: a boy has it explains that having ADHD is feeling like you have a whole list of tasks to do before you can focus on the one that you need to do. So, he takes a, b, or c. medication to help with that. In holistic medicine we would see his ‘list’ as probably valid. The other question holistic medicine and even ADHD specialists seek to answer is, is it truly a developmental disorder? Could it be a tendency or personality type? If you ask a holistic practitioner, it could be both especially if we think of development as dynamic cycle rather than a linear line with a fixed point.
Feeling the need to clean your room before you have space to stretch out some to get the blood flowing before studying (ideal in a clean space), that’s not weird really, is it? Starting a bunch of hobbies to find one you enjoy or getting discouraged and switching often, is that really a brain chemical issue? In Chinese Medicine there is so much more to look at and the obstacles not are seen as something to bypass with a stimulant medication, they’re seen as valid and addressable.
It's not that there is something ‘broken’ or ‘wrong’ with the kids or teens attention, it’s likely that they have developmental needs that must be addressed before they can focus. Like cleaning your room when it’s messy to have some functional space. There are factors affecting school kids and teens that ought to be obvious but sadly may not go unnoticed – such as lack of sleep, proper nutrition, relationships being stressful vs. supportive. In natural and eastern medicine, we have a pyramid if you will for development, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The book Fire Child, Water Child breaks it down into 3 sections, stacked on top of each other like the Indian system of the Chakra’s (which contains 7 subdivisions). There are 3 sections, the Frog heart, the Puppy heart and the Big heart.
The Big heart is what we want everyone to be, it’s what we as parents or teachers feel will be the ideal environment for ours and everyone in the community’s flow and functioning. That is that everyone is well rested and fed at the base (in a better mood as a result aka not hangry), feeling socially secure at home and school (not excessively ‘needy’ as we tend to say), and has the over wisdom to manage excessive emotional responses (often referred to as impulse control in ADHD) and any tendency to daydream is eradicated by the understanding that FOCUS on what’s being presented by teacher/parent is what really matters. Not very many teachers or parents may understand or be aware of the preference for well-balanced kids and may be conversely lacking the compassion or tools to help them. Our society is in a bind where we mostly have to fit into some kind of mold to survive, so I get that there are many limitations on parents and schools. We all want everyone to be kind, well-balanced and productive, yet what we see is so many struggling. So, what is there to do?
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it the holistic approach is the best option. The most powerful changes that can be made will be at home first concerning sleep, food, and relationships – which contribute largely to mental and physical health. Yet, to someone suffering with the effects of imbalances that go on for years, there are areas where a holistic health care provider can and will do their best to assist in what I’d like to call here the ‘recovery process.’
One place that the mainstream medical community is doing a great job is in diagnosing that ADHD is real and its effects can be insidious - leading to more very real struggles and suffering. The medications may work on some level but there are problems such as it being used as a long-term crutch rather than a short term tool to turn around a crises. The way an Acupuncturist looks at it is similar in that it is indeed a crisis yet the difference is the solutions are less likely to become ‘crutches.’
There is no addictive potential to acupuncture or Chinese herbs as there are to the stimulant medications that treat ADHD, and efficacy rates are known to be slightly better. One study analysis found that acupuncture combined with psychotherapy works better than medication and psychotherapy in children, and that medication with acupuncture works better than medication alone for adults. I’m not sure why they did the study this way, but I’d assume adult issues may be more persistent may have been unable to stop medication or not have access to therapy.
Parents are less likely to want to medicate children and are understandably uncomfortable with risk side-effects of stimulants. Not everyone may have thought of Acupuncture and Chinese medicine as having the potential to help with the neurodivergent spectrum but hopefully there is some clarity here of how it can help empower parents and help children, as well as adults who are experiencing what I call square peg syndrome, you just seem to function at a different pace or level than the majority and feel frustrated as a result. There are different patterns that your Acupuncturist will diagnose based on the ancients view of the 5-elements of nature. There is nothing unnatural about ADHD, some suggest that it’s a ‘superpower’ in some contexts yet obviously not the world most of us are living of work-school-work cycle at a sometimes-blinding pace.