Childhood Mental Health & Behavioural Disorders - 044

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Illnesses accompanied by behavioural problems are stressful for all concerned. My guest today has been trained to use targeted nutrient therapy to correct biochemical imbalances associated with mental illness and behavioral disorders. SPEAKER B Healthily Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person body, mind and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER A Our topic today is childhood mental health and behavioral disorders. And with me in the studio is Dr. Andrew Pennington, an integrative general practitioner who is committed to holistic lifestyle medicine. Welcome, Andrew. Lovely to have you with us. Would you like to explain what all of that meant? What is integrative medicine and holistic health? How would you pronounce? Sure. SPEAKER B Firstly, thank you so much for having me on the program. It's a pleasure to be with you. I think the easiest way to understand integrative medicine is it's a combination of using orthodox traditional techniques that we get trained in medicine, along with understanding some complementary and alternative therapies that have evidence and blending them together and using both of those to enhance patient outcomes. SPEAKER A So people are getting the best of both worlds. SPEAKER B I guess that's how you could describe it. Yes, I find it since I've entered into these areas. I mean, I'm very traditionally trained as a medical doctor and then went on to do general practice as a specialty. But I've probably only in the last four to five years been involved in learning more about the complementary side of medicine. And I found it to be enormously beneficial to add to the skills that I already had in traditional general practice. SPEAKER A And what about holistic medicine? Is that similar? SPEAKER B I guess it's a very similar term. It probably means slightly different things to slightly different people. But integrative and holistic are probably synonymous. SPEAKER A Yes. You've got a lovely mural in your waiting room. Tell us about that. SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. So to really help people understand the philosophy I bring to medicine, it's really around an acronym called New Start and that's prominently displayed in my waiting room. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B So you can actually see the new start. Muriel has a stands for various different things. Nutrition, exercise, water, sunshine, temperance, fresh air, rest and trust. And that's an acronym that I use to guide how I holistically look at a patient's care. And that goes from cradle to grave. SPEAKER A That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. So this topic today is quite an interesting one with behavioral problems and mental health in children. It's a sad thing, actually, isn't it, when you think about it, that children have mental health problems? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. So I think for most of us, we've probably had fond memories in childhood. And childhood is usually a time that should be nurturing. It's a time for us to grow, to mature, to learn about life, and that environment should happen in a safe place. That's a premise for most of us to nurture, both at a physical, mental, spiritual, emotional level. Now, of course, that's not everyone's experience and we might talk a little bit about that in another program. But in particular, there's no doubt that there is a proportion of children who have behavioral issues and some people think it might be becoming more common. I actually looked into the data in this and it doesn't actually look like childhood behavioral issues are more common over the last 20 years when they've looked at the data. But certainly conditions such as ADHD or conduct disorders or mental health disorders are certainly prevalent in our community. And I think it's particularly distressing for parents when they may be a good parent. There's not necessarily a great amount wrong with what they're doing parenting, but their child is suffering in some way, be it from behavioral issues, or it might be that that child actually has a mental illness. And I think that's a particularly difficult time for parents and obviously very difficult for the child who is still making sense of the world and doesn't always know how to express things verbally. So yeah, it's an issue which I have a strong interest in and trying to find some solutions as to what we can do to help these children. SPEAKER A And I'm sure there's a lot of parents who are really pleased that you have that strong interest and that you've done some extra study to know how to help them through the stressful situations that arise on a daily basis. SPEAKER B Absolutely. So I thought maybe just to when I looked up some data on this, just to have a better idea for myself, it's actually quite interesting how prevalent they are. So between the ages of four and 17, almost one in seven children will experience a mental health or behavioral disorder. So it's not uncommon at all. And that is equivalent to about over half a million Australian adolescents and children. Males were a bit more likely than females to have one of these issues. And in terms of mental health problems, anxiety disorders were actually the most common with about 7% of children experiencing an anxiety disorder. And I think when you look at this, I guess I come from the perspective that it's not normal for a child to be overly anxious all the time. And I mean, I guess we all know if we look at friends, family, et cetera, we know someone who was a worrier or may have even been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression. And it is fair to say there are a lot of genetic components here where certain families, these things run in. So where I see a family. And a family history is very important. When I take a history of patients, obviously it's usually the parent I'm talking to and not infrequently. You can trace back down the lines grandparents, aunties, uncles who had anxiety or who were worriers and you not infrequently. See that that comes down into the generations, further down. So it certainly has genetic components. But I'm also interested in how that interplays with the environmental factors. And we talked earlier just about the need for an environment to be nurturing and of course that plays a significant role. But there certainly are some children who do grow up in a nurtured environment yet still struggle with some form of behavioral or anxiety problem. And that's what I'm particularly interested in because that's not a normal scenario. It's not normal for children to feel overly anxious. It's not normal for children to not be able to concentrate at all age specific. Of course your concentration span, of course, increases over time. And it's not normal for a child to have thoughts of self harm or depression or that the world's not worth living in those things. Children are designed to be happy and healthy. That's the way that God made us to be. And that's how I believe we should be able to thrive. SPEAKER A So what might be some of the other factors that come into play? You've talked about genetic factors. What else might be underlying this problem? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. So the interest I guess I primarily have is in brain biochemistry and how different factors affect that. And probably one of the biggest factors involved there is nutrition, good quality sleep nutrition. SPEAKER A Now, that was the very first on your mural and it plays a huge role, doesn't it? SPEAKER B It really does. And I think it's largely been underestimated how important that role is by orthodox medicine. There are obviously a lot of complex factors because food is full of different beneficial and non beneficial nutrients and chemicals. And so the interaction between food, the gut, the environment is quite complex. But I think we certainly understand, and I'll give you an example here. When we come to the diagnosis of attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, or ADHD, which is not uncommon in our community, I guess it is a little controversial. Some people don't believe it really exists, but I'm sure it does. But I think there's a spectrum. Some children perhaps actually have it and are never diagnosed, but kind of just get on, but they won't perform very well at school. They'll be hindered in their development and often it will hinder them in their progress into adulthood and career. But getting back to my point on nutrition, so this has been looked at in a number of studies and over the years there's been associations with poor diet and increased prevalence of ADHD. SPEAKER A Just on that, if I can say this, I did a program a few times ago and 60% 58% of the food intake and drinks intake in Australia are really not healthy and only 21% are really you're talking about poor quality food. And that's just it's a wonder we're not all diagnosed with something like that ADHD or something, because really we're well fed, but not well. Nourished. SPEAKER B Look, you're absolutely right, unfortunately, and I think this is a question that health professionals and public health officials have been struggling with for a long time. We well know the obesity rates are increasing. And it's not just about bad food, it's actually the choices previous generations made. Because it's so interesting when we look at the epigenetics, that's how genes get switched on and off by environmental measures. What's going on at conception actually plays quite a significant role as to what predispositions that child will then have with time. And that may be a topic to discuss another time. But yeah, coming back to nutrition, when it comes to ADHD, there's a number of studies that have looked at quality of diet and tended to show some associations with increased diagnosis and prevalence. I think probably the most recent one that I looked at was a study in Spain done in 2017, which looked at the quality of diets that children who were diagnosed with ADHD and who didn't have that had. And there's no doubt there was an increased prevalence towards high fatty, high sugary, junk food style diets and increased ADHD diagnosis compared to those who followed more of a Mediterranean style dietary approach, which obviously had more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, things like that. So that style of diet definitely makes. SPEAKER A A difference, not just to our physical health, but absolutely not emotional and behavior. SPEAKER B You only have to ask teachers. I'm sure that teachers will know what sort of goes on. For a lot of these children, just eating sometimes is important because some of these kids don't actually eat properly, and sometimes that's a reason where they may not have the means because the parents are poor. I recently remember watching a program, maybe it was even a little YouTube clip on Facebook or something, where they compared some of the lower socioeconomic schools and looked at the lunch boxes of the children compared to some of the higher socioeconomic schools in New Zealand. It was devastating. It was sad. Margot to just look at the quality of these kids in the lower socioeconomic environment often had packs of chips, know lollies and sweet sugary drinks. And the kids in the higher socioeconomic class normally had sandwiches, fruit, nuts, maybe occasional chips, but it was a far healthier diet on average. And some of the children in the low section had no lunch at all. SPEAKER A And they probably didn't have breakfast. Very likely breakfast is the most frequently skipped meal and absolutely most important. SPEAKER B Absolutely right. SPEAKER A And it's tragic, really. SPEAKER B Absolutely right. SPEAKER A I have to say this too, because this was also in this program on Food Sense, the kinds of food that you said were in the lunchbox of the low socioeconomic group are way more expensive than fruit and veggies. And we showed that in the Food Sense program. So it's just really that they don't probably understand that health, education, health. SPEAKER B That's exactly right. The parents may not understand how important it is and how cost effective it can be. SPEAKER A Yes, exactly right. SPEAKER B I think that's absolutely true. Sometimes parents ask me a little bit about, look, are there any food additives or artificial colors or something that can be associated with this? The literature on that is a bit mixed. But I think it is clear that certain individuals do react to certain artificial colors and flavors. So if you feel that's happening to your child, you may be well to avoid them, but it's not everybody that's a problem for all right, but I guess one of the things I'd love to really just discuss with your audience today is a bit more of the nitty gritty of the role of certain nutrients. And we may also talk about this in another program and how it relates to adults. Because nutrients clearly a child has a developing brain and an adult has an adult brain, but a lot of their needs are similar. And in fact, many cases the child really has quite an increasing need in many cases to form the right neural connections and to have the right milieu of different nutrients to form the neurotransmitters in their right ratio. And the other thing we're discovering here is the significant connection between the gut and the brain. SPEAKER A There's a lot about that now it's. SPEAKER B Really becoming more well known. SPEAKER A And this is something you've looked into quite certainly. SPEAKER B I mean, I can't claim to be an expert, but I think we understand about that much. And it's a massive area of research. But we certainly know many of the neurotransmitters are produced in the gut by our bacteria and the interplay between the nutrients we provide through food and what the bacteria give us back when they digest fibers and good quality foods. Some of those neurotransmitters probably cross into the brain, but many of them stay in the gut and help the gut work properly. So there's certainly happy gut often equals happy mind. So there's a very complex way as how these things go. But in particular, individual nutrients, I find there's a couple of them that keep coming back that are important in childhood mental illness and behavioral, and I think I'll list a few of them. Iron is certainly important for growth, for blood cell production and for immunity and gut health. And I do find that not infrequently children can be low in iron. Now, you can get plenty of iron through lots of different sources. I mean, classically traditional medicine says red meat. You don't need red meat to get iron, although clearly you do. But I would prefer to get iron sources through vegetable based products, which you certainly can do and legumes. But there are some other nutrients that are very important as well. Zinc would be one of my number one there. It's important for growth too. It's important for taste sensation. So you often find these children are fussy eaters. They don't like to eat very well because they don't taste very well. So if they do like food, it's often very sweet or very salty or very strong. And it's because they don't actually taste that food very well. So they're looking for a sensation that gives them some level of stimulation and pleasure. But it's a very critical nutrient in brain health. And there are some other vitamins. B vitamins are very important in brain health. In particular, vitamin B six, vitamin B twelve, vitamin B three, but also vitamin B one and two. And there are various sources. We get them in the diet. But occasionally you'll find that dietary sources are not going to be enough to actually change an inherent genetic based biochemistry that predisposes to a mental health problem or behavioral problem. Now, I should say some of this stuff is certainly not extensively in the literature yet in the scientific literature I'm hoping that we do get some more studies because my anecdotal experience when I treat people for these or children for these behavioral and mental health problems is that they often do very, very well when we understand what's going on with the brain and how to correct it. And often it's a case of getting up some of those levels of zinc, of B vitamins, of omega three. And sometimes it's a case of reducing certain things. SPEAKER A I think that's what people have been waiting to hear because people who are familiar with the problems and who live with them on a daily basis are thinking, can they be helped? Is there a solution? Or will this go on for the rest of the child's life? How incredibly reassuring it is to know that there are solutions, if not completely, to a large extent. Just talk about that, would you? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. Look, the solutions, of course, are the most important thing, really because the profoundness here, Margot, to be able to change the course potentially of a child's development. It's really, really profound. And I've had parents nearly want to hug me that their child has changed so much. SPEAKER A Oh, isn't that beautiful? Say that again. Well, really, I mean, I can just imagine feeling like that because it must be very difficult. SPEAKER B It's very difficult. And the irony here, actually is that the worse behave the child, often the easier they are to treat. SPEAKER A Is that right? SPEAKER B And there is a subset of children, and I won't harp on this too long who have significant conduct disorders. One of them we call Oppositional Defiance Disorder where the child is a very nasty critter. And it's not because the parents have parented them badly, although clearly good parenting has a massive role. But I'm not here to be trying to talk so much about parenting, even though that's very important. I'm here to talk particularly about those children who may come from a reasonable background. The parents are doing their best, they're providing for them, but that child is just a rat bag. They're very difficult to deal with. They lock heads with children. They can even be to the point where they despise authority. They burn things, they torture things. And there's a subset of these children fortunately, it's not very common, but those children have been found to have very abnormal bank chemistry. And when we correct that, there's a huge change. And if we can get to that kind of child under the age of about 1415, there's a very good chance that I can have a massive impact on their behavior to the point where they are a lot better. SPEAKER A That's fantastic. Andrew, if someone wanted to contact you, and I'd imagine there are people who face this problem who probably would, how would they do? SPEAKER B Well, I think I work in a medical clinic in Sydney. It's called Sanctuary Lifestyle Clinic. The details there are on the screen, and obviously I'm happy to assist. There are other doctors around who are also trained in these techniques. Not many, I must say. And I must also say that there are some very good naturopaths who understand some of this stuff, too, but this. SPEAKER A Is a special interest area that you have. SPEAKER B It is, yeah. SPEAKER A That's beautiful. SPEAKER B So, I mean, if people want to look a little bit more into this. It comes largely out of the work of one medical psychiatrist in the United States called Carl Pfeiffer, and he had a colleague who was a PhD biochemical engineer named Dr. Bill Walsh, and they were actually interested in what's going on in a person's brain who has a mental illness. And they initially started looking at prisoners who were in jail for obviously very criminal behavior. And particularly they found some interest in sociopaths who were basically people thought were horrible individuals who'd gone out and committed horrendous crimes and had very little remorse about it. And they found that these people had very abnormal brain chemistry through different chemicals, abnormalities, and they tried to treat them. They found some level of difficulty treating adults, but when they could identify children who had these kind of traits, they had far greater success. And there's one or two studies published in the literature showing probably an 80 or 90% success rate in reducing these kind of violent and aggressive behaviors. SPEAKER A That's significant. 80% to 90%. Massive, huge, very good news. SPEAKER B Absolutely. SPEAKER A And it must be very rewarding for you, too, to be able to see that happen for the child and to see it happen for his parents and his teachers absolutely. Friends and all of that, because it's a very beautiful thing to be able to do. SPEAKER B It certainly is. Now, obviously, it's not 100% of children. I do still find there's occasionally some children we struggle to treat by this sort of level of paradigm. But that just means we probably don't understand fully what's going on in the brain. There might be some other process going on and we need to look further. But I don't generally give up. I usually just try to keep harping on it. SPEAKER A I like that. SPEAKER B What's going on with this? SPEAKER A You're obviously very dedicated to your work and you obviously have a lot of compassion and care for the people who come, all of them, the whole family. And I think you usually look at that too, don't you? SPEAKER B Sure. Well, I think that's part of being a good doctor. One needs those. We're all human beings, and I think you've got to treat people with respect and kindness and empathy. And I think if somebody feels that you're getting where they're at, you're understanding. And I'm a parent, I have two boys under the age of ten, and I understand the difficulties that can be faced by parents in bringing up children. And my children are quite strong willed, they're wonderful kids, but you understand some of them. SPEAKER A Dare I ask if that might be genetic? SPEAKER B Yes, I think that's fair to say. But I think obviously, some of the things that I've learned in general, I can apply generally with my children too, around good nutrition and et cetera, and parenting, et cetera. But I guess I'm more focusing on children who really are struggling in class at school. They're either poor concentrating kind of individual and the teachers are thinking, this kid's got ADHD, or they're a defiant individual who's really mucking up in class and they're going to get themselves expelled. And I've got children who've been suspended from school for these reasons. And often I can assist them with the understanding of the school to hopefully get back to school when their behavior is improved. Now, of course, it's not wholly about nutrition. The role of a psychologist and counsel is very important. The role of exercise, the role of adequate sleep, the role of good parenting we discussed briefly those things all have a play, and there's a number of other things that are important too. But this is a big piece of the puzzle for many of these children. SPEAKER A And what you just said really describes the holistic lifestyle that you're talking about. That all of those factors, all of which you have a fairly good grip on and that you employ as you feel that they're needed or not being addressed. So I find it incredibly refreshing, and I think we're a privilege to have you here on the program to be able to talk about hope for people who have problems that are really causing a lot of distress for everyone concerned around the individual who's having those difficulties. And especially the individual, especially the child or the young adult, they can't be having a very happy, fulfilling life, because if they cause problems for other people, they're not well liked. And so it's just a beautiful thing to think that they can be released from all of that. So we probably should show your contact details again at this point. SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. SPEAKER A So that if people felt that you could help them in some way, they can contact you. SPEAKER B Yeah, certainly. So, sanctuary lifestyleclinic, as you can see, there, sanctuaryclinic.com au and I work five days a week. We also have a psychologist in the practice and a nutritionist and naturopath, and those practitioners can assist people with various different changes required that may assist them. And look, it's really interesting because when you deal with the children here and you really start to delve into what's going on, you see the light bulbs going on, the parents, and the parents start to go, oh, yeah, some of those character traits, I think I've probably got those too. So they may realize that and not infrequently parents will almost say, look, my child is going through what I went through, and I don't want them to go through what I went through because I was a socially isolated, anxious kid. Or I really struggled to concentrate in class for so long, and I had to study really hard to even just get an average mark. So that style of stuff, they obviously weren't identified at that stage 2030 years ago when they were going through school, whereas we've got a little bit more knowledge now to help. And it really is an absolute joy to see these children thrive. And that's really what I think God intends for these children to have. They need to have the best start in life, and if I can be a part of that journey to help them get that brain chemistry right, it has wide ranging ramifications for the rest of their life. SPEAKER A Yes, what a difference it would make just to come from that position to being able to be hopeful and have a fulfilling life like all of those around you. SPEAKER B So I really want to provide hope to parents, and again, I'm not the only doctor trained in these techniques. There are definitely other doctors around, but if you are struggling with your child's behavior, and I'm not just talking that they're a little bit naughty every now and then, children have a wide range of normal behavior, but I'd love to be able to help you in the knowledge of these kind of techniques that can assist. SPEAKER A Well, thank you for that. That's been an incredibly good program, and I just really hope that a lot of people can benefit from what you've shared. We wish that you and your family may enjoy the best that life has to offer. And remember, you can watch our programs on demand. Just visit 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the watch button. God bless you. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.