Description

In this health video you will learn whether we are giving our kids too many drugs.

Transcript

Raena Morgan: As a physician, you have a holistic, preventive approach to mental health. There was a study, recently in September 2008, in the Science Daily that said that American children were three times more likely to be medicated than children anywhere else in the world. Could you comment on that? Dr. Gary Kohls: Yeah. I believe it. I haven’t seen that article. I need to look at that, but totally believable. It’s probably even worse than that. I know that 90% of the Ritalin in the world is prescribed for American children. Raena Morgan: 90%. Dr. Gary Kohls: 90% of the world’s Ritalin use is Americans, which only represent 4 or 5% of the world’s population. Now that’s good marketing. That’s cunning. That’s not brilliant, that’s cunning. Raena Morgan: It’s unscrupulous? Dr. Gary Kohls: It’s unscrupulous. I would say unscrupulous, right. So, you know, we’re all brain washable, you know, we can be told something over and over and over again in a plausible fashion and we’ll believe it. So, we believe—we tend to believe what’s on television and what the advertising is and what the doctors tell us to do, etcetera. And we get this message that if you are a fidgety child, or a little inattentive, or you’re a daydreamer or bored with boring stuff in school, and you act out a little bit, then all of a sudden you get a label of ADHD. People should read The ADHD Fraud or Talking Back to Ritalin or Ritalin is not the Answer. That’s on my bibliography. Those books are on my bibliography and elsewhere. And find out that it’s a myth. It’s not really true. And so, not only are kids being misdiagnosed, they are also therefore being treated for something that— Raena Morgan: They really don’t have. Dr. Gary Kohls: That they don’t have. And the treatment of choice, quote unquote, is psychostimulants. It’s the drugs that are based on the amphetamine molecule Dexedrine. So, Adderall is four different kinds of kinds of Dexedrine. It’s amphetamine, you know. It’s an illegal drug, unless it’s written by a prescription by a physician and then it’s legal. But Adderall is amphetamine. Ritalin is an amphetamine-like drug that has a molecular structure very similar to cocaine. Raena Morgan: What I don’t understand is, these children are antsy and have too much energy and then you give them an amphetamine-type? Dr. Gary Kohls: Isn’t that interesting. Raena Morgan: How does that calm them down? Dr. Gary Kohls: Well, it doesn’t calm them all down, but it does focus. It causes focus. Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Gary Kohls: If you’ve ever taken amphetamine—I’ve never taken any or cocaine—but it focuses you. You are concentrating. You are less easily distractible. Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Gary Kohls: But it does have agitation effects and it causes them to lose their appetite. So, therefore the body shrinks, or actually stops growing—including the brain. It doesn’t stop growing and long term, there’s evidence kids, people on these drugs, actually have their brains shrink. So, they’re losing brain cells probably. So, it causes growth retardation when people are on amphetamine type drugs of any type—whether it’s methamphetamine, cocaine, Ritalin or Adderall. And then, of course, Concerta is just the same as Ritalin, except a different brand name. So, these are psychostimulants on the basis of the amphetamine molecule, which is—and they’re all schedule two drugs, which are the highest of most dangerous, most addicting drugs— Raena Morgan: Schedule two? Dr. Gary Kohls: Schedule two is the most addicting and most dangerous drugs that can be prescribed. So that morphine is in that and hydrocodone—OxyContin—is in the same category as Ritalin and Adderall. Raena Morgan: Why are we medicating our children like that? Because they can’t sit still? Dr. Gary Kohls: Simple. That’s a simplistic approach to something. And, of course, there’s reasons for kids being disruptive in a classroom, other than the mythical ADHD, they may be sleepless at home; they might be malnourished at home; they might be abused at home; they might be watching too much television and video games—maybe violent video games, lots of flashing lights—using up brain chemicals. That would make algebra boring or English boring because they’re watching all these R-rated movies and violent video games and wasting all their brain energy on gaming. And so, they may have exposure to being bullying and any number of a thousand things you can think of where they have dysfunctional, they’re malnourished, their homes are toxic. And how can we expect kids to sit nice and quiet and learn in a boring classroom. So, The ADHD Fraud, I think, by Fred Baughman, a neurologist, outlines it quite well. There’s definitely no blood test, no biopsy, no lab test, no X-Ray that can diagnose ADHD. Raena Morgan: There isn’t? Dr. Gary Kohls: Its guess work. So if you had a child that fidgets, the first thing teachers think of is, “oh, I bet he’s got ADHD.” They send her to a physician, physician in a five or ten minute assessment says, “oh, I guess we have trust the teacher on this one,” and writes a prescription. That’s kind of another on the road—on a gateway drug to cocaine and nicotine. Kids who have been on Ritalin are much more likely to eventually use cocaine or be smokers. They’ve got that psychostimulant stuff, brain depletions of dopamine—that’s where Ritalin and Aderall and Concerta work on the dopamine neuroepinephrine system, which are the psychostimulating, but they deplete the very brain chemicals that they’re stimulating. And so now, their brain, they’re sort of in withdrawals and they feel dead and they need another stimulant, so they start using caffeine or nicotine or street drugs to take the place of the legal prescription drug, Ritalin. Raena Morgan: What can we do to help these children? Dr. Gary Kohls: There are lots of alternatives. The book called the Ritalin is not the Answer has a lot of advice on parenting. And nutrients are the key, again, here. Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Gary Kohls: Since ADHD was never really ever described, at least in any significant numbers before 30 or 40 years ago, there’s no such thing. When I was a kid, nobody had ADHD. Nobody even fidgeted. Once in awhile, if there was abused kids who acted out, but they never got labeled. So, they never got on drugs. Raena Morgan: Nothing more harmful than the class clown, perhaps. Dr. Gary Kohls: Yeah. The class clown or the daydreamer, yeah; the kid who’s too smart, he’s just bored and stuff and it’s boring to him and he just fidgets or looks out the window or something like that. Now, these kids are getting labeled with mental illnesses. But they’re also, kids are now malnourished and eating toxic foods. They’re on Diet Mountain Dew when they’re three. What do you expect? What do we expect for a brain that’s getting poisonous, poorly nourishing substances? Then, they’re getting injections of vaccines that have mercury in them—live viruses and formaldehyde and aluminum in the vaccination substance. Those are all brain toxic substances. So, that’s a factor as well. And kids these days—the average kid eats at a McDonald’s type fast food restaurant two or three times a week. And some kids have a meal there every day. So, what do we expect? We’re going to have brain damaged, brain malnourished kids who are going to be inattentive, hyperactive, rebellious. And if you put any three of those factors together, you’re going to have someone who qualifies for ADHD diagnosis, instead of abuse, being bullied at home, being malnourished, too much, you know, 8 hours of video games, watching four R-rated violence movies on the weekends. What do we expect? We’re going to have some dysfunctional kids out there that don’t deserve to be on an addicting substance. Raena Morgan: Thank you. Dr. Gary Kohls: You’re welcome.