Food Based Behavior
Did you know a food can actually cause you to act as if you have ADHD?
Many kids and even adults who have been labeled ADHD are actually hypoglycemic.
This is how hypoglycemia works: Your brain needs three things: It needs oxygen It needs stimulation It needs glucose Glucose is your fuel and it comes from the foods you eat.
In the beginning of life, this is where newborns are affected by the moro reflex. Even though we use the word “affected”, it is still a very normal part of development. The moro reflex will actually fire about every 2 1/2 to 3 hours to create a rhythmic sleep/wake cycle. It is triggered by the depletion of glucose in the brain, the location in the body where glucose is used up the fastest, and this depletion will cause the baby to startle and wake up.
You’ve actually been counting on this mechanism your entire life. So what you eat truly does play a huge part in how you feel, how much energy you have, and how you are going to be able to concentrate. When a person is hypoglycemic, that person will have a tendency to really crave carbohydrates and many times children come into our practice with ravenous appetites.
They want to eat all the time; they never appear satisfied. So that child has a constant need to put calories inside their body, but when you overload the system, you change what’s going to happen to those carbohydrates and you create a need to produce more insulin to regulate the excess blood sugar. So now there will be an imbalance between the glucose and the insulin and the next thing you see is that child running around and somebody saying, “That child is really hyperactive.”
What’s really happening is the child needs to use up what has been put into his system as fast as possible. So it’s really important to understand how food affects us. And the only way we can really know what’s going on inside of us is to do a functional lab.
There is a difference between traditional labs and functional labs. Traditional labs are the ones performed by the medical provider you choose because your insurance card allows you to see this particular individual. You will go in and give a certain amount of complaints. You will hope that they will investigate your complaints. If they perform a lab, it will be a lab for which standards have been changed every single year.
Normal levels are being recalculated based on the number of people taking the labs and the average numbers of their tested numbers. That is not the function of the human body. There are functional levels that our body really needs to perform.
So if you come to someone like me, we perform functional labs. And I want to dispel the idea that insurance doesn’t cover these kind of labs. Everything depends on the policy that you have purchased. If your policy accepts certain codes, then yes—you will get coverage.
The first thing we like to do is help bring down the stress, so we will provide the codes we use in this office. This will enable you to check with your insurance carrier and learn if those services are actually covered and assist you making an educated decision on your healthcare. I’m part of a wonderful group called the Institute of Functional Medicine. This is a group of medical doctors who embrace all kinds of practitioners, including chiropractors like myself, who truly focus on the biochemistry of the body.
In our labs, we look at the functional levels of glucose, the functional levels of vitamins and minerals in your body, and also what foods are causing your body to have a high inflammatory response. A lot of these areas happen to be what’s going on with that little kid who is eating the wrong things, not getting the right sources into their body, and causing their body to crave more. They have to eat, they have to eat all the time, and then they’re right back into that cycle. There is too much glucose, they have to raise the insulin, and now that child is out of control. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.
