Shawn Stevenson:  Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, here with my co-host and producer of The Model Health Show, the one and only Jade Harrell. What's up, Jade? 
 
Jade Harrell:  What's up, Shawn? 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  How are you today? 
 
Jade Harrell:  Today I am amazerific.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Amazerific, huh? 
 
Jade Harrell:  Amazerific.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Alright tell me about it, break it down for me. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Well you know it's pretty simple, amazing and terrific, and that came from one of your Instagram followers who shouted me out on your page.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Oh would you look at that! 
 
Jade Harrell:  Would you just look at it?  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  I like that. It's trickling down. 
 
Jade Harrell:  It is. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  The words that you make up. I like that. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Well I made up a word to explain the words. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Love it. 
 
Jade Harrell:  It's called 'word smurping.' 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Word smurping. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Yes. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Okay. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Mashing, matching, merging words together. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Got it. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Word smurping. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  I like that. It reminds me of the Smurfs.  
 
Jade Harrell:  I thought that, too. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Three apples high.  
 
Jade Harrell:  That was good. That was good. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Papa- but why was there only one girl? You know? Have you ever thought about that Smurfette? Yeah. 
 
Jade Harrell:  We were able to multi-task I'll say. Our guest today could probably speak on that. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Oh my goodness, for sure. Right I'm pretty sure he has a theory why there's only one female Smurf in the Smurfs.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Necessary or desired.   
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Shout-out to Gargamel. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Oh man, he's a survivor. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  The worst villain name ever, and all his little schemes. 
Anyways, but everybody thank you so much for tuning into the show today.  
 
We've got an incredible, incredible guest, and an incredible show topic. Very, very important and timely today. 
 
We're going to be talking about attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity disorder, and this is something that I would see clinically over the years and I've seen a lot of great stories, and I've seen some stories that really broke my heart. 
 
And it's something we need to get educated about, and plus what about the adult implications? 
 
Jade Harrell:  Exactly. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You know what happens when a child grows up with this condition, and becomes an adult? Then what? Does it suddenly- does it just go away? Or can this be something that develops later in life?  
 
And so we're going to talk about all that good stuff, and of course focus on solutions. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Actions. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Real, tangible, actionable things that you can utilize and utilize for the people that you care about.  
 
But before we do, I want to give a quick shout-out to our show sponsor, Organifi.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Yummy, yummy. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Head over to www.Organifi.com/model for 20% off their incredible green juice supplement which I have right here in my hand. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Yes! 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  This is something I use every day, and I'll of course travel with this. When I went to the Philippines, I was just talking to our guest about that, of course I brought along their go-packs as well.  
 
Oh I have them right here too.  
 
Jade Harrell:  What a coincidence.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Product placement. But the reason that I love it is that it's whole food based, and it's cold processed to retain the actual nutrients that they say you're going to get in it, it keeps it in the food.  
 
One of the highlight compounds in the product is going to be spirulina, which we have 70% protein by weight. The highest protein food gram for gram in the world. Complete program. 
 
And also there's a study that was done recently that found that spirulina aids in something called stem cell genesis.  
 
So this literally helps to create more stem cells. And what do stem cells do? They basically become every cell that you need.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Everything else, yeah.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And specifically it's a compound called phycocyanin that's found exclusively- it's one of the exclusive things you're going to find this in, in spirulina, right? And then we've of course got a great source of magnesium which we talk about how important that is all the time.  
 
That's just one of the goodies that's in there. It also has moringa, chlorella, ashwagandha. Head over there, check them out. This is super easy, something you could add into your smoothies, give to your kids. My sons have it all the time. 
 
So www.Organifi.com/model for 20% off, and now let's get to the iTunes review of the week. 
 
Jade Harrell:  This one is great. Says, 'I thought I knew it all.' Five stars, Mr. TA Unorganized. 'I grew up around medical professionals and was a college athlete. I thought I knew it all when it came to health and nutrition. 
 
In the last five years I've watched myself get incredibly out of shape despite trying my best with traditional diet and weight loss programs.  
 
I started listening to this podcast and have implemented what I've learned one step at a time. I started with sleeping smarter, then I focused on nutrition rather than calories. I started spending more time with family and lowering stress.  
 
Finally I stopped running and started doing high intensity interval training four days a week, even just for five minutes.  
 
My energy is better than ever, I am more focused at work, less stressed, and I am seeing better results than any diet or workout program I have ever done.  
 
It has truly changed my life, and I couldn't be more thankful.' 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  I love that so much. There are so many layers of goodness in that. Thank you so much for leaving that review for us, and everybody thank you so much for leaving those reviews for us over in iTunes.  
 
It truly means the world to us, we appreciate it, keep them coming, and make sure you're subscribed to this show if you're listening on iTunes. Hit the subscribe button.  
 
Or whether you're listening on SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, big shout-out to everybody in the different platforms. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a thing.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Absolutely.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Now let's get to our special guest. John Gray is the author of the most well-known and trusted relationship book of all time, 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.'  
In hard cover it was the number one bestselling book of the nineties. Alright, the entire nineties.  
 
Jade Harrell:  He's got a whole decade. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You remember the nineties? 
 
Jade Harrell:  Yes I do. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Remember- what was it? Death Row Records.  
 
Jade Harrell:  I did all of that.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  The Chronic. Shout-out to Dr. Dre, and shout-out to his book dominating that decade. 
 
Dr. Gray's books are translated into approximately 45 languages in more than 100 countries, and continues to be a bestseller.  
 
And Dr. Gray has written over twenty books and his many books, blogs, and free online workshops at www.MarsVenus.com provide practical insights to improve relationships at all stages of life and love.  
 
And he's an advocate of health and optimal brain function, and he also provides natural solutions for overcoming depression, anxiety, and stress to support increased energy, libido, hormone balance, and he also talks about very important subjects like ADHD and also sleep quality, which we're mutually big fans of.  
 
He's appeared on Oprah many times as well as the Dr. Oz Show, Today, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, and many others, and he's been profiled in Time, Forbes, US Today, and People Magazine.  
 
And John Gray lives in northern California with his wife, Bonnie, and they have been married happily for thirty years.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Love that! 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Have three grown daughters and four grandchildren. And I'd like to welcome back to The Model Health Show, one of our all-time favorite guests, the one and only John Gray. 
 
How are you doing today, John? 
 
John Gray:  Shawn, doing great, thanks so much for having me back on the show. I enjoy it so much. 
Shawn Stevenson:  Oh it is so my pleasure. We were just talking before the show, you just got back from a much deserved vacation, you've got the glow going on right now. 
 
John Gray:  I do, I do. Costa Rica. It was really fun. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Costa Rica, yes. So, so awesome, I love that. And so make sure guys, if you are listening to the show, you can head over to YouTube and check out the video of the podcast as well. 
 
Jade Harrell:  See how great he's looking. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  So John, your last episode went bananas, right? So we've had around 200,000 people listened to that episode already and it just really shifted paradigm for a lot of people.  
 
But another subject that you're passionate about is the subject of ADHD. So can you share what inspired you to get focused on ADHD yourself, and how it impacted you personally? 
 
John Gray:  Well about sixteen years ago- I'm 65, so when I turned 50, around that time I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, and basically once you start taking the medication for Parkinson's Disease it's a downhill slope; you have to keep taking more and more. 
 
And so I studied it and found the natural solutions for it. More and more doctors are using these natural solutions, and they've actually done studies on it on PubMed. So it's real documented, you don't have to do the drugs, there's natural solutions.  
 
But in terms of that, before figuring out the natural solution, I did a lot of research into how the brain works, and how we interact and so forth, and then once I cured my Parkinson's, what it did is it created optimal brain function, providing the extra nutrition my brain was missing, something else happened.  
 
It's like I came back and my brain was even better than before I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and the difference is we can say now in common terms, I had ADHD my whole life and it went away. That was the dramatic thing.  
 
And so the same remedy, and in an easier form that heals Parkinson's actually corrects Attention Deficit Disorder and its many variations. So that's how I got into it. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Got it, yeah. And you highlighted in the book that the fact that this is something that's not just in somebody's head as far as like just a thought process. This is actually physically difference in the brain when we're talking about 
ADHD. 
John Gray:  Yeah it's a biological change that occurs for a variety of reasons. In my own life, in second grade I had a major concussion where I fell out of a tree.  
 
I'm kind of a daredevil, fell out of a two story tree head first with my arms above me, and actually the bones broke, they were sticking out of my arms. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Holy smokes.  
 
John Gray:  And they buffered my fall head first. Doctors said if my head had been angled in the slightest way I would have snapped my neck and died.  
 
So it's a bit of a miracle, but it did leave a concussion, and so the symptoms of that are now- one of the classical symptoms of ADHD is that my mother would have to like pour water on me to get out of bed in the morning.  
 
It's a sense of waiting until the last minute until you have to do something. See ADHD is kind of a condition of dopamine function and has a lot of variations, but for me it showed up as kind of having to have the emergency happen before I was motivated to do something, because dopamine is the motivating brain chemical, and we'll see that a lot as one of the symptoms. 
 
And it also inhibited my ability to comprehend- to like read something and just have it stick. I could be reading a few pages and you'd say, "What are you reading?" and I'd forget right away.  
 
Or ask me what TV show I'm watching at a commercial break, and I might even forget. It's that ability to hold onto information unless that information is completely absorbing and interesting, kind of like a video game.  
 
You can go deep into a video game, but if somebody's talking to you, you get bored really easily.  
 
So that was kind of some of the symptoms for me, and all of that went away, and of course I as a teacher of relationships said, "This is something everybody needs to know," because in my marriage with my wife, she'd be talking and I'd be thinking about emergency things like problems at work, and she's just talking about her life, and that was boring to me.  
 
Now it's completely different. Things that were typically boring or not that interesting are interesting and grabs my attention, and so I don't have to like focus on just the most interesting stimulating or emergency type things, but I can relax and I started to enjoy reading books, I started to enjoy talking with my wife and my children.  
 
These things didn't make me tired or bored. And reading, I used to just fall asleep reading. It was just that I didn't have enough dopamine in my brain to keep absorbing the information.  
 
So those were some of the changes for me. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Wow. So this already answers the question, can ADHD be something that adults experience? And it's pretty clear right there. 
 
John Gray:  Oh yeah. So you'll have people compensate. See what happens is once you have ADD, I mean the great thing is it can be healed, it's a condition in the brain. But when people don't heal it, as you mature you compensate.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Yes. 
 
John Gray:  So basically a child will be restless in their seat, that's one form of ADHD is that you're hyper in the seat. Well later in life you can sit down in a seat but your brain is going to stay really, really busy and you can't relax. You can't just sort of be easy, you find yourself busy, busy, busy all the time.  
 
Which really what's happening is you're missing out on peacefulness, and relaxation, and just a simple happiness of life. A lot of that is lost.  
 
You know one of the most dramatic aspects of seeing how people's brains have changed, is if you watch a movie from the 1930's, these big black and white movies, they're so slow. And they're just the most boring movies ever for us today.  
 
We're like the MTV generation. I remember when that came in fast, fast stimulation. We need that newness, the newness which stimulates dopamine, and this has a devastating effect on our relationships because we get bored with our partners too quickly. 
 
So we're seeing in the younger generation, they're losing that passion and interest with each other, and that's a symptom of this ADD condition.  
 
It shows up a lot for women as a sense of overwhelm which is they go from one thing, to another thing, to another thing, their brain can't settle down so they're overwhelmed.  
 
"I still have to do this, oh I have to do that, and I have to do that." And that raises their stress levels, whereas for men it causes them kind of to lose their motivation and interest, and then they're more vulnerable to addiction, or to playing video games for example, or online porn.  
 
These are high dopamine stimulators that give you pleasure, but the problem with it is when you experience these high dopamine stimulators, like cocaine for example, it changes the brain- this is all measurable, and it desensitizes the dopamine neurons in the brain.  
 
That means that you need higher stimulation to feel pleasure, and motivation, and interest as opposed to normal stimulation. And normal stimulation is just being with people, talking with them, going for a walk in nature, reading a nice book, doing your work. All that stuff becomes kind of boring.  
 
Now for children, the way it shows up is it used to be that the most motivating factor for a child was to please the parent. Now parents have lost their power over their children. They have to bribe their kids with sugar which stimulates dopamine, or with time on the video games, or time on the computer.  
 
They say, "Okay if you do your homework, then you get to play on the computer." Or "If you eat your vegetables, then you get a dessert."  
 
That's what motivates the kids rather than just parental approval. Because we all deep inside want our parents to love us and approve of us, it's evolutionary-wise, that's why children could survive. Is their parents love the child, wanted to take care of the child, and the child could grow up in that safety net. 
 
Well what's happening is that instinct gets overshadowed, rewired to instead of wanting to please my parents, I want the pleasure from playing a video game, or porn, or it used to be like make good grades, and work hard and so forth.  
 
Those things produce lower levels of dopamine than these stimulants like sugar, and dessert, et cetera. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You know what? That is highlighting what you talk about in the book. You talk about ADHD and there's four temperaments behind that. And the different character traits that can follow this.  
 
And I want to point something out. We talked earlier about this being something that's actually a physical change in the brain, and one of our other favorite guests is Dr. Daniel Amen whose done all these wonderful brain imaging scans.  
 
And looking at- we have to understand that this blanket statement or blanket term that we use, ADHD, there are different forms of that and it depends on which part of the brain is being affected.  
 
It can be from trauma like he talked about, this can be from deficiencies, it can be from environmental toxin exposure which you talk about so beautifully in the book, which we've got to talk about today. 
 
But I want to circle back to in our adult lives, and we see- like when you mention some of this stuff it's like, "Whoa that makes sense." When you talked about how people lose interest so much faster today in their partners, and we see the rates of divorce, and we see this increase- and you put some of the statistics in the book with more people being single later on in life just because of partially not being able to focus on one person and being able to grow and develop in that relationship because that drive to do so because of dopamine isn't even there. Right?  
 
So it's so fascinating that you talked about that. 
 
John Gray:  I think it's- just as an introduction to ADD for people, you said it so beautifully by the way, just so concisely Shawn, good job. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Thank you. 
 
John Gray:  The first step would be understanding that ADHD is kind of a malfunction of dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is a brain chemical that's always when you're feeling pleasure, dopamine is experienced, it's being produced. When you're focused, when you're interested, or when you're motivated. 
 
And so if you have low dopamine function for example, it shows up differently for four different temperaments. And Daniel Amen talks about how those are seen in the brain.  
 
What I talk about is psychologically you'll see in children there's always a blend of these four temperaments; one being dominant, another being secondary, and so forth. And that shows up in adults as well.  
 
And so the temperaments are the active temperaments. So when they're experiencing this inhibited dopamine function, they become hyperactive, restless, restless, restless.  
 
They can't just sort of relax. That's one temperament, is they're more goal driven, they're more active people anyway, but you add ADHD to it, they become hyperactive.  
 
So that's the idea here is imbalance. It's just a hyper state of activity which can lead to high blood pressure, and heart disease, and all those kinds of problems.  
 
Also later in life, it leads to lack of interest in sex actually, which is why so many men are taking Viagra. That's another function of literally ADHD, is for the hyperactive types, they tend to be a bit more goal oriented and emergency oriented so to speak. 
 
And then you get the more- the type that I am, what would typically be called ADHD distracted type, and that was the original ADD. These are kids sitting in classrooms or falling asleep with boredom daydreaming, and just whatever they were hearing just wasn't interesting enough.  
That was pretty much me. I'd fall asleep in every class, unless it was mathematics, and that was something where I could really feel challenged.  
 
When you're challenged and you feel you have an ability, that dopamine comes forth to give you interest and motivation. 
 
So the distracted type, that's going to be more your entertainers, your creative ones, it's the writers, it's the artist. And you know, we can be a little crazy in our lives too because we want new, we want everything to be new and different and exciting, and if we have ADD we become hyper distracted, and so what that means is- or hyper creative, but we have to depend on new things, new things, and we get bored very easily.  
 
We're also very vulnerable to drug addiction because we just love to have fun, and to party, and to enjoy ourselves. But if we can- that's that hyper state as opposed to doing it in a more balanced way where we're making choices that are good for our body, good for our relationships, good for our life.  
 
But boredom is the big, big problem for that type, is when they have ADHD distracted type, they get bored too easily and they can't finish things.  
 
So you'll see the stories of great artists and so forth often had ADHD. It doesn't mean you can't be a high performer in life, but your life is rather chaotic, disorganized, you lose stuff.  
 
This is all the distracted type. "Where are my keys? Where are my glasses? Where did I put those papers? I can't find them." 
 
Your great artists would wait until the last minute, and they go through an emotional turmoil, and then finally they finish. But it's really some people- they like to start things, but they don't finish things, okay? And so that's another ADHD, that's the distracted type. 
 
Then you get this- 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Jade's covering her face. 
 
John Gray:  Are you covering your face over there? We love to say, "I'm going to take home all these new things," and whoa, wait a second.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You don't say.  
 
John Gray:  That's two types, and those are the most commonly known types. But actually the same condition in the brain of ADHD of these inhibited dopamine function, for some people is hypersensitive.  
The hypersensitive types, okay they give, and they give, and they often feel so hurt that people don't give back to them.  
 
They don't understand other people are not as giving, and loving, and nurturing, and they easily get hurt, their feelings are on their sleeves, but for them they're hypersensitive to the environment.  
 
They literally have thinner cells and they're affected by toxicity more. They have more vulnerability to digestive issues, which today is becoming a big deal for all of us, these are going to be more affected by it. They're going to be affected more by WiFi even and EMFs.  
 
You know one of my nieces was an artist and hypersensitive, and she was on her phone all the time, and she got a brain tumor in there and died. And this is happening more and more, everybody's got to be careful.  
 
The hyper-sensitives, the smell of detergents, the chemicals, they're just way more affected by it all. They're more vulnerable to allergies as well, sensitivities.  
 
And then you shift to the fourth one which is these are the perfectionists, okay? They're hyper-perfectionists, nothing is ever good enough for them. They are really compromised in marriage because nothing satisfies them.  
 
They are high achievers, everything has to be perfect and organized, they want order, they want structure, everything has to be clean and nice, and we call that compulsive, OCD.  
 
Actually OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is simply another form of the same condition but with a different temperament of they're more controlling.  
 
They're great managers, they're great controllers, but often nothing is ever good enough, and that's really tough in a marriage when you're giving your partner the message nothing is good enough.  
 
We have to remember love is saying you're good enough the way you are, and I appreciate you, and love you, and I don't have to change you. They always want to improve everything, fix everything, nothing's enough. 
 
So again there's nothing wrong with that temperament, it's just when it becomes hyper, that's when the big problems come in. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Oh my goodness, this is so powerful, and you detailed these different four temperaments in the book so I highly encourage people to check out that section, because I'm sure some people are hearing their qualities. Jade even covered her face at one point.  
But also I want to take a step back and look at what's going on for kids. Because you said something that was really powerful, and I'm very passionate about this subject.  
 
That in school when you got into the particular class, when you were talking about math for example, that's when you got focused. It was a trigger for you. And so many- and I love this quote, and here's a quote, this is from Albert Einstein and talking about our education system.  
 
And the quote says, "Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." 
 
John Gray:  Love that quote! Wow! 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Yeah, and so our system is structured in such a way that we are not paying attention or highlighting or cultivating the talents, the gifts, the capacities of the individual person.  
 
You know it's so cookie cutter, it's so- and we've talked about this before, and there are changes that are in flux right now, that are happening. But as we know in the education system, it takes years for things to actually change.  
 
And so today more than ever we need to be more empowered in how we're caring for our children, and being aware of these things because it's not just on their own responsibility of them going to school and focusing on a class.  
 
We can drug them to do that, or we can force them, or they could just be somebody who's naturally acclimated to that. But is that really highlighting their own gifts and talents? Right?  
 
And so with that said, I want to talk about some of the potential issues here when we have a child who's not focusing, even though again, if he had something that was more up his alley, this would be effective.  
 
But there are changes in the brain that need to happen which we'll come back to.  
 
But I want to share this from your book. It says, "Medicating this condition with drugs is not the answer. Researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory published a study showing that the use of stimulant drugs to treat ADHD changes the brain, making the disorder even worse.  
 
Dopamine-" which we've been talking about, "Dopamine function in the brain is inhibited by 24%. That's why we have to continue taking more drugs, stronger doses, and once the child is no longer able to take those drugs, you see this radical increase in incidents in using things like cocaine and other stronger forms of medication to try to basically medicate themselves." 
John Gray:  You know you're doing such a brilliant job helping people understand this. If you'll excuse me for a moment, I have to go back. I just got chills through my body as you're talking about the quote from Einstein, okay?  
 
Just it's such a passion inside of my life for people to understand that quote in such great, great detail.  
 
It's such a horrible thing that a child goes through school and he's having to measure himself based upon being good at everything.  
 
You know I wanted so much as a little boy growing up to make straight A's, and never made straight A's because I wasn't good at everything. And you know, I'm now seen as kind of like a huge bestselling author, or very, very successful. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Guru, celebrity, superstar, yes.  
 
John Gray:  And I'm only good at a few things, and I got to be- my self-esteem is so great, but never got to be good at everything, and nobody's good at everything, and so we always feel like, "Oh I'm not good enough about that, I should be better at that, and that," and there's not that awareness that you pointed out that we all have our strengths, and to be measured by one particular thing that some children are good at, then you're always feeling less than them.  
 
And I was never good at those kinds of things. I found my thing I'm good at, and that's what education should do, is to nurture that and it doesn't. We shouldn't be graded on everything.  
 
My practical solution, because you have to have some practical things along with this besides the philosophy of loving a child, of bringing forth their gifts, and finding the challenges that can bring forth who they are.  
 
But we do need some kind of measurements and so forth, so I'm not against grades once kids get to like thirteen years old. And then they should be like in college where you pick three subjects out of six or seven that you get graded on, and those are the ones that you love, and the other ones is just so you can get exposure and maybe discover that you're good at something you're interested in because you don't know. 
 
But we should only be graded on a few things, and we shouldn't be graded until we're thirteen. There's a hormonal change that occurs at thirteen, puberty, where we're able to begin self-reflection, and recognize that we aren't exactly the same as what we do. 
 
If I as a child gets a C, then I'm a C as opposed to what I did is a C, and it's average. But what I did over here is exceptional. Every child needs that boost, and that's the natural boost that occurs with- that stimulates dopamine is when you feel you're good at something, you're confident in something, and you have support to achieve that goal.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You know today, really quickly, we're seeing that it's not just the children that are causing this epidemic of- and you shared some of the statistics in the book, looking at this epidemic increase in ADHD, but it's also us. It's us as parents and being distracted ourselves. 
 
And this is so important because as kids are growing and evolving, and we are not paying attention to their individual needs, one of the first things that we're going to is there's something wrong with my kid. And following the advice of well-meaning physicians, to help them so that they can succeed by giving them a medication. 
 
And this can set us on the wrong track, and we have to take a more global perspective here, and I've got to share this. 
 
One of the most unnatural things for a six year old kid to do is to sit down all day, alright? So we're taking somebody whose life has been built on play and freedom, and now it's time to get serious. You need to color inside the lines, right?  
 
And so now we're putting into hours and hours a day of you sitting down and trying to do this rote memorization process, and not really even learning and activating the full capacity of like whole brain learning. So really focusing on just one side of the brain, analytical, following the rules type things. 
 
And again if you look at the results though, we're falling behind. If you look at the results as compared to some other nations.  
 
So what I want to just encourage us to do before- again medication, everything is still an option, but we have to be more vigilant as parents to pay attention to our kids and understand their needs. This is very unnatural for us to just be told go against our inclination, our normal wishes.  
 
Like John, he was up in a tree, right? He was getting his- I don't know, Monkey King on. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Tarzan. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  His Tarzan on, and it's just a natural inclination for kids to want to do that and we want to encourage that and support that. So our system needs to change because what it's leading to is a lot more kids getting medicated. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Absolutely. And so I want us to dig a little deeper in that. Before thirteen or getting them to thirteen, John help us to identify within our children what their specific need would be and how we can nurture that.  
 
John Gray:  Okay well that would be more of a psychological thing, and then with ADD, actually we'll get to the more biological physical thing. Because it's like a broken bone.  
 
Something happened, we need to know what caused that broken bone, we need to know how to reset that broken bone, and we need to give it a chance to heal. That's one aspect.  
 
Now there's the other aspect- so let's just take all of the broken bone off the table. Let's imagine there's no broken bone, there's no ADHD condition in the brain, we still have a failed education system that's not supporting our children, and we also as parents don't understand how to take care of our children due to our own ADD lives which we're so busy. And I love that you were talking about that.  
 
And that basically- and I did write a book on this, it's called 'Children Are from 
Heaven.' It's kind of a takeoff on 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,' and 'Children Are from Heaven.' 
 
As long as we know how to give them what they need, and again we come back to those basic temperaments, and I do talk about it in staying focused. This book, the basic temperaments, children need different things. 
 
You get the child who tends to be hyperactive, they need to feel that they are being appreciated and acknowledged for what they can do. So you give them jobs to do.  
 
They're the little ones that want to be policemen, and they want to be firemen, and they want to be astronauts, and they need projects where they're good at it.  
 
You know one of the world famous bowlers was asked, "How do you throw a strike every time?" And he said, "When I was a kid my dad owned the bowling alley, and we didn't have the gutters at that time, or the machine, so he would set up the pins, I would roll the ball down at six years old, and it would go off to the side, and my dad would move two of the pins so I always hit something, I always got a chance of being successful." 
 
Now take that as being a metaphor of our job as parents is to create situations that challenge our children, but also create an opportunity for them to feel successful. You know the way children were managed in the past is, 'You shouldn't do that, you're bad, you're not good.' 
 
We need to shift that and create opportunities for children to feel pride and successful in what they do, and what they can accomplish, and what they can achieve as opposed to being focused on what they're not doing, keep giving them things they can do, and let the challenge increase as they can do more and more.  
 
And that's a challenging task for a parent as well, so that's for the hyperactive types.  
 
The hypersensitive types, achievement and accomplishment is not as important. What's important is their internal world. They know themselves by how you know them. It's like they need to be felt, they need to be understood, they need to talk more, they need to communicate more, they need a parent that goes, "Oh you're happy about that, aren't you? Oh that makes you sad, doesn't it? Oh that's so disappointing for you. Oh you love to go and do this."  
 
The need someone to see into them, and then they can see into themselves.  
 
So growing up is a process for a child as learning who they are. What am I good at for the active temperament? For the sensitive temperament? What do I feel? What do I like? What do I enjoy? What do I not like? What hurts inside?  
 
So they need more attention to what they're feeling inside, then you need the creative types, okay? What we need is lots of stimulation of new and different things.  
 
Okay so you take this child here, you have an opportunity here, you give them a lot of things to start because if they can- because they love to start new things, and they don't get shamed for not finishing things.  
 
They really need to learn about who they are by what they're interested in, what they're good at, and if they get the forgiveness for being little disorganized, a little messy whatever. 
 
You're not expecting them to be like The Finisher, you're expecting them to enjoy themselves, to have fun, and that's how they learn who they are, is by what they're interested in, what motivates them. 
 
Things will become boring but other things will become more interesting and they'll stick with it, but they need- they don't need a parent who says, "Go clean your room up all by yourself," and they're just going to look at it, and they don't know how to do it.  
This is the child that gets punished for being messy or disorganized. They need you to do it with them, they need help in doing those things, and realize that they're not like this fourth child who finishes everything.  
 
They're the little organized child, they like security, they like routine, and that fourth child, they really need lots of sleep, even more sleep. 
 
The other one can stay up late, and got to be excited, but there's another child who needs everything routine, regularity.  
 
You can't say to them, "We're going to go have dinner early tonight." If you do, you have to give it lots of- say, "Tonight's going to be a little different, we're going to do it differently because that's how we do it. We don't do it the same every time."  
 
They need preparation for change, they're not good at change. They need regular food, they need regular sleep, they need routine, and of course always they need warnings for things so that they're not pushed beyond their limit.  
 
So children have different needs, and if we can learn to embrace those needs. And one of the challenges of parenting is that if your child is a different temperament from you, you don't instinctively understand what nurturing that child needs, and that's often considered to be the problem child. Okay?  
 
Whereas the other children, they're just shining because those children happen to be the same temperament as the parent, and so the parent instinctively responds to those children the way they need. 
 
But children need these different types of love to give them the permission to be themselves. So ultimately it comes to unconditional love, and it comes to being fully accountable as a parent.  
 
Okay now if I'm driving a car, and I let go of the steering wheel, and now the car goes and crashes into the wall, is it the car's fault? Or is it because I let go of the steering wheel? 
 
What I feel for parents is all the way up to basically around twelve years old, thirteen years old, you're the parent, you're in control, you're holding the steering wheel and when that car hits the wall, whose fault is it?  
 
It's not the child's, the child is still developing the brain power to learn things. They can mimic things, they can copy things, but they can't begin to originate things, and that fully doesn't develop until they're 28 years old. So the brain is still developing all this time.  
 
So one of the hardest things for children is shaming them, disapproving of them, being disappointed with them, that something's wrong with them, that they should be better. 
 
All that does is just dampen the sunshine of their soul. It just gets knocked down, happens to all of us to different degrees because our parents never learned to unconditionally love themselves so that when you put your best foot forward it's always good enough, and that's trying.  
 
Trying is good enough and I'm with you every step of the way. 
 
So that's a little pep talk for parents.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Oh man, this is a mic drop moment right there. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Oh man, it was good for me. Because you described my entire house. I have one of each of those. So I don't know how we're going to steer four different wheels, but we're going to use this as a guide.  
 
And that key thing you said about forgiveness was so powerful to include that in, well if that's not where they are, then forgive them and they can go on through that. If that's the perspective you have to get. 
 
Maybe it's messy, maybe it's bumpy, maybe it even has an impact, but that forgiveness and that grace that Shawn always talks about is so key. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  You know you did mention that these different temperaments, these are actually good. It's when it becomes the hyperactive component of it. Because we need this variety in humanity to keep us going and growing. 
 
And you can hear that. Like some of those things sound really good, but then when it becomes the hyperactive facet of that. 
 
And so one of the underlying components of this, which you highlight in the book, is oxidative stress. So we're going to talk about that right after this quick break, so hold on and we'll be right back. 
 
Alright we're back. Let's get into more of what we were talking about before the break. Oxidative stress, so can we talk a little bit about that? 
 
John Gray:  Okay now it's going to be a little scientific for a moment but I'm going to simplify it. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Bring it on. 
 
John Gray:  These are terms that people are familiar with. Oxidative stress, most people have never heard. But any disease or any injury to the body basically when I'm talking about inhibited dopamine function, the cause of it is oxidative stress.  
 
There's 150,000 studies on PubMed talking about oxidative stress causing almost every disease condition in the brain, in the body, in the heart, in the muscles, in the blood sugar, all of that. 
 
But it's so universal that people kind of go, 'Okay well oxidative stress is always there.' So let's understand what oxidative stress is, because it's not something people commonly know at all. Maybe 3% of the population has even heard the term oxidative stress.  
 
So here's what oxidative stress does, or what creates it. It causes degeneration of brain cells, okay? So you actually get less brain cells, you get less brain function due to oxidative stress. So it's just a word right now, but let's make sense of it.  
 
We've all heard the idea of free radicals. Free radicals basically get produced from making energy. Whenever you're making energy or if you have heavy metals or toxicity in your body, even more free radicals get produced.  
 
And these free radicals have a function in the body, and it's beneficial function. It causes inflammation. If you get hurt, then free radicals will produce this pain basically, this expansion to bring more blood flow to that area to heal the condition.  
 
So free radicals have a role. Every time your body makes energy, it makes free radicals. And then it also makes something called antioxidants.  
 
Now antioxidants we all hear in vegetables, and blueberries, in our foods. Antioxidants in your vegetables and the natural foods that you can eat. And berries are really good at antioxidants. 
 
These things have been proven for example to prevent cancer, just blueberries every day. Or at least reduce your risk of it. So we have antioxidants and we have free radicals. These are the scientific terms, and both of them are really good.  
 
When you have free radicals, antioxidant comes in and neutralizes that free radical, and now you have a healthy cell.  
 
But if you have a free radical without an antioxidant, then that free radical goes to a cell and damages it, and that damaged cell then goes to another cell and damages that, and that damaged cell goes to another cell and damages that, and it goes on forever.  
 
And that's a cascading effect of too many free radicals and not enough antioxidants. And that cascading effect, that's oxidative stress.  
 
Literally it's like a fire that's destroying parts of your body, and that's why we have chronic pain, that's why we have chronic conditions. The body can't heal itself if it doesn't have enough antioxidants to neutralize or marry those free radicals. 
 
So that's the idea of oxidative stress, and that's what toxicity does in our lives, that's what having too much sugar in our lives does. When you eat sugar you're producing a lot of free radicals, but not enough antioxidants.  
 
And the problem with drugs is that- particularly Tylenol or the ingredient in Tylenol is called acetaminophen. Acetaminophen suppresses your body's ability to make antioxidants.  
 
I'll just say that again. 
 
These pain killers and fever suppressors go to the liver and suppress the production of a very important molecule called glutathione which is your body's super antioxidant.  
 
A super antioxidant to neutralize those free radicals to keep your skin looking beautiful, for anti-aging to keep youthfulness, but more importantly to put out the fires of oxidative stress.  
 
And so glutathione, just this molecule glutathione, many drugs will suppress. Lipitor, the one that they give for cholesterol, suppresses glutathione.  
 
Tylenol, the ingredient acetaminophen, it's in most of your pain killers unfortunately. It's in 500 products now over the market, it's the second biggest drug in the world, and it inhibits your body's ability to put out oxidative stress in the brain. 
 
And people have to understand this now, because they think they're helping their children when the child has a fever, they think, 'Oh I have to suppress the fever.'  
 
And most doctors don't know, although finally it is now the first line of defense, doctors are being told, the research is there that a child can have a fever up to 105 degrees without ever any injury.  
 
Never has injury occurred to the brain when a fever was running. What a fever is, is your body's- it goes into a secondary state of increasing glutathione production in the body.  
 
It's a special state of healing, and children who have fevers afterwards, if you don't suppress it, will actually have mental advancement, they'll have improved social skills, they'll have better intelligence skills, academic skills.  
 
They go through a leap in growth when they have a fever, and this is proven. There are studies to show this and there are studies that show that never has a fever caused damage.  
 
It's uncomfortable for a child, but we need to like be with the child at those times, comfort the child but not try to suppress the fever, and they're going through a healing crisis of increasing the glutathione to help neutralize the free radicals, to stop the oxidative stress so the brain doesn't degenerate. 
 
And you know this oxidative stress, it continues your whole life, it doesn't get put out until you get more glutathione. That's why one out of six women over sixty years old now has dementia.  
 
Basically one out of two people over eighty have Alzheimer's which is just a curse, it's a horrible situation. This is all due to- and nobody questions this, oxidative stress in the brain.  
 
But because everything has to do with oxidative stress, it's not really discussed as the cause because then they look at, 'Okay what caused the oxidative stress?' and that's a legitimate concern.  
 
And that's part of this book, is what are all the different causes of oxidative stress? And another way of putting that is what are all the different causes that inhibit your body's ability to make antioxidants in order to put out the oxidative stress?  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Wow this should be really eye-opening on multiple levels, and even something as tied into our culture as Tylenol, and understanding that there are some serious ramifications with something that we take for granted, right? 
 
And also when we talk about the fevers, and even using- and you highlight this in the book which I had never seen before. I know a lot about cold thermogenesis, and the benefits of infrared saunas, heat shock proteins, but using it as therapy for conditions like ADHD and even autism, and seeing improvements by exposing kids to hot water treatments.  
 
Like I couldn't believe it. And all this research is here in the book as well. So understanding the bigger picture, again that when we're talking about an issue like a fever, what is the body's innate ability? And what is it doing when we do have a fever induced? Why just jump to giving our child a drug?  
 
This is part of parenting and it's part of our design and our need today to be a little bit more patient and attentive.  
 
Even though again, like we're in the busiest times ever, it's the time of greatest distraction, but this is something that we need to start paying more attention to.  
 
And I want to share this with you as well, and this is highlighted in the book. We talk about all the great stuff he mentioned with antioxidants and how important this is, there was a study that was done- this is in his book. 
 
One group of children with ADHD were given stimulant drugs like Ritalin or Adderall, and another group was given a combination of vitamin C, and something called OPCs.  
 
And the short-term benefit in both groups were exactly the same, alright? Exactly the same except the group that was treated with the natural supplement had no side effects. And the OPCs help to activate the antioxidant benefit of vitamin C and vitamin E by fifty times. Right?  
 
And so these are things that are here staying focused in a hyper world inside the book. 
 
John Gray:  Everybody's going to go, "What's an OPC?" They're wonderful. The most common one that's easily available and rather inexpensive is something called grapeseed extract. It's the extract of grape seeds.  
 
And what's interesting in my younger years when I was teaching in Europe, I was having dinner with a German princess, and so you're kind of like wanting to be very formal at everything in a castle and all that.  
 
And she was eating grapes and she was chewing the grape seeds, it was so noisy. But they do that in Germany, they actually chew the grape seeds and it makes your brain smarter because it's a super, super antioxidant is the grapeseed. 
 
So they have supplements that you can buy which are grapeseed extracts. Also all of your berries do have these OCPs in them. 
 
There's various supplements, one is my favorite called Potential, and it has a multivitamin which I think everybody needs a good multi-vitamin, but half of the capsules are also these OCPs from various berries, proanthenols is another name for them, and they're amazing. 
 
And so there's a school on the east coast, and I mention the name of school and everything in the book, and the study, and now for eleven years every day they give children two of these chewables, and what they've found from year one is that this was one of the least performing schools, and they became now in some categories the highest performing public school on the east coast. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Yeah. 
 
John Gray:  And basically they continue to give these children just two chewables, and that's called Potential which has vitamin C and all the other vitamins, which are good but it needs to be combined with these proanthenols and people don't realize that.  
 
So you can do a study on vitamin C alone, you wouldn't see that result. You need to get the proanthenols because in nature where you have a berry or an orange or whatever, where it has the vitamin C, there'd also be the proanthenols which help to work together just as in nature.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Right. 
 
John Gray:  But you're getting much more than you would get from a bowl of berries when you get these concentrated extracts of proanthenols, and that's grapeseed extract is a simple one along with vitamin C, is for many children it will immediately improve their focus. 
 
And even today sometimes when I notice I'm not really comprehending as much, and I'm kind of spacing out more, I'll just go take some vitamin C- about 500 milligrams of vitamin C and 250 milligrams of grapeseed extract, and I noticed a difference. I mean it's amazing. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Yeah, so powerful. And you know what's so different today that- again we need to bring our attention back to that our world is very different. When's the last time you've even seen a grapeseed?  
 
Jade Harrell:  Right. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Right? We've got all of these seedless grapes, and we don't want the trouble, right? 
 
Jade Harrell:  Right. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  We want seedless watermelon, seedless grapes, and these things have been hybridized and changed, genetic manipulation so that they're not carrying seeds.  
 
And by the way, seeds are the reproductive parts of the plant, so literally we're eating infertile food, and you are what you eat, right? 
 
So we want to be more mindful of that, and basically without the seeds it gives us more of an easy access to get us a sugar bomb, right? There's no work involved. 
 
And also when he's talking about eating grapes with a princess, that again shows how big time John Gray is. I've never eaten grapes with a princess.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Right. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  That sounds like a scene from Aladdin or something.  
 
Jade Harrell:  I haven't eaten grapes with anybody.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Right, right.  
 
Jade Harrell:  It's a solo sport. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And so another thing that you highlighted in the book was the necessity for exercise. And this goes back to taking a child who's inherently excited about life and movement and play, it's such a big part of that. And then we say sit down all day, and we're taking gym away as well, but you talk about how exercise is important for reversing these symptoms of ADHD.  
 
John Gray:  Yeah so typically depending upon how much your muscle mass to fat ratio, and that's a genetic thing, we all have a natural- we're unique. My nose is so long, my hair- everybody has their own unique genetic type, and you can look at the ratio of your muscle mass to your fat.  
 
And nobody's overweight to begin with, but some people just have more fat cells, some people have more muscle cells.  
 
And that was really important just that, knowing that, because as a kid growing up, my older brother Tommy, he had a different body type. And we would go to the gym and work out, and he would get all these big muscles and I'm like, "What about me?" It's like it didn't work as much for me.  
 
So it wasn't- literally I wasn't born with the genes to have those muscle types, and so typically it has to do with the wideness of your shoulders particularly, has a lot to do- and the thinness of your waist. So the mesomorph body type is the term for it.  
 
So to Superman, bit shoulders and thin little waist. And for women more the hourglass shape. That body typically needs more exercise, but all body types need exercise, but some need more than others.  
 
And the ones that need more than others are the children who are sitting in a classroom are just going to become hyperactive. They really need that physical movement.  
 
Every hour or so they need to get out five minutes of walking, and running, and playing would be great for kids, and some schools they're doing that now, recognizing the value of that. All children could benefit from it, but some really, really need it.  
 
And what I've explained is what nobody else has explained this clearly that I've seen, is we see that in the body there's two stress reactions. There's moderate stress reaction which is adrenaline. That means that you're challenged, there's a bit of an emergency, you need to do something.  
 
And if you don't use your muscles at that time, then your adrenaline will turn into cortisol, and cortisol is a stress hormone that then takes the blood flow away from the front part of the brain and we can't think, we can't comprehend, and in relationships we can't communicate.  
 
Sometimes for women and men I tell them, "Look if you start to argue, you've got to stop because you're already in adrenaline and it's going to turn into cortisol. Once cortisol gets produced, blood flow stops to the front part of the brain and you have no capacity to experience empathy or another point of view, or to learn something new. You cannot learn something new when you're in a cortisol state." 
 
And these boys, particularly boys but also it could be girls too, who are not physically moving enough, what happens is they can't comprehend anything new. They can't learn because they're in a stress state, and they need to get out and throw a ball.  
 
You can take a child who's anxious and upset, and just have them throw a ball back and forth, and that will calm them down.  
 
That's what parents need to realize, and school teachers of course, we need to get our children active. Sitting in front of a video game and sitting in front of an iPad, sitting in front of a computer screen is really just sort of symptomatically relieving the tension that's being caused in the body by elevated cortisol levels. They really can't learn anything new, all they can do is be conditioned by whatever they're doing.  
 
So you can get better and better at a game, a conditioned response, but you don't get better at anything else in your life. You don't actually open your mind to new ideas, to think on your own; none of that can develop when you're passively experiencing activity. You actually have to go out and physically move your body.  
 
And there's research I talked about in the book which showed that even if you were to play piano, a new song, and learn some just simple thing on a piano for I think a few hours, you can measure the brain growth.  
 
There's nothing more powerful for brain growth than physical movement, actually grows parts of the brain, and without that physical movement the brain doesn't fully develop.  
 
So you've got brain development, but even worse than that, is being challenged by some problem on, 'How do I solve this? Or I didn't do my homework. Or I'm not good at this. Or teacher's expecting something of me.'  
 
And so you're feeling a little anxious in the classroom, that is- 'a little anxious' is adrenaline, and if you don't now use up that adrenaline through physical activity, using your muscles will actually use up the adrenaline.  
 
If the adrenaline stays in your body long, then you get the bad guys, the cortisol, and the cortisol is basically- it inhibits digestion, it inhibits blood flow, it creates this high blood sugar.  
 
But most importantly, cortisol prevents blood flow from going to the front part of the brain where as children can learn something new, and as adults where we actually hear another point of view, which is why communication breaks down in relationship.  
 
Because we don't have- our cortisol levels are elevated, and that's a whole other subject of my most recent book, 'Beyond Mars and Venus,' is how our lifestyle is throwing our hormones out of balance, which then also that can cause cortisol being produced in the brain.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Amazing.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  This is so important, and I really hope that everybody's taking this in because things that we- exercise is a great example of this. We see it as this one thing culturally, which is 'I need to exercise so I don't get fat' basically.  
 
Or 'I need to exercise so that I can maybe get a flat belly, six pack.' It's very physical related, and not understanding exercise creates some dramatic and powerful changes in your brain.  
 
And we did an entire episode on the many benefits of exercise outside of that physical component of you looking sexier, which we'll put in the show notes.  
 
But this is one of the most important things, and being able to fuel your brain and all the different neurochemicals that are produced, the different hormonal cascade.  
 
Like he talked about a negative potential hormone cascade, there are positive potential hormone cascades as well that can be utilized by simply getting in some smart exercise.  
 
But I want to shift gears here and the last thing I want to talk about, because there's so much here with you period, but also in the book, is how diet is connected with this.  
 
We talk about this term elimination diets, which you highlight in the book, and how pulling out certain culprits can be transformative for a child who's struggling with- or an adult by the way, with ADHD. So let's talk about that.  
 
John Gray:  Well yeah I mean it's becoming rather common knowledge today, but how it applies to ADD is the gluten in bread is very, very hard to digest. And when you get an indigestible substance it interferes with brain function. More and more we're learning that gut health is the precursor to brain health.  
 
In the last year even, it's not even in this book, some new research shows that for every neuron in your brain, there's nine different microbes that develop in your gut.  
 
That's why fermented foods are so important, because fermented foods have these microbes- probiotics is what they're called and you can take probiotics, you can make fermented drinks, they're becoming more popular today.  
 
They're very, very good for the gut, and then it crosses the blood brain barrier from the gut, and they actually help the brain to heal itself, they protect the brain from oxidative stress, and so forth.  
 
And so what we want to look at is foods that are indigestible and foods that are toxic actually interfere with our digestive process so that if you can't digest your food, you can't get what's called amino acid peptides which are precursors to making brain chemicals, and that again causes the ADHD is not being able to digest your food. 
 
And let me say again, for that child in a classroom who's feeling falling behind, or feeling really tired and sleepy because they're not fully awake, cortisol is being produced in that child, and cortisol, one of its functions because it's a stress reaction, it basically shuts down digestion.  
 
It says, 'There's a bear chasing me, I've got to use all my energy to get out of here, shut down digestion, I'm about to be digested.' That becomes the priority to fight or flight.   
And so digestion shuts down when you're under stress. So this is once again one of the big challenges. If you can't digest your proteins, you can't make the brain chemicals that your brain requires.  
 
Gluten will interfere with that process, and so that's- and bread. And where did that come from? Just so people can know, because bread used to be the staple of life. I mean this is a great thing. All the B vitamins, and fiber, it's just a great food. Eat good, wholesome bread with a meal. 
 
But it turns out that in 1992, secretly the farmers in the big scale farming, what they did is they started putting GMOs into the soil to kill the bugs in the soil, and grew the plants in this soil.  
 
The plant itself, the wheat wasn't GMO but what they did is used GMO to clean the wheat, and then to put it into the soil so there weren't any bugs, so they would just kill all the bugs.  
 
But that GMO gets into the plant- the GMO gets into the plant, and the plant then brings that GMO into our body and starts killing the good bacteria in the gut causing inflammation in our gut.  
 
And why are GMOs legal even? It's because the research showed that GMOs genetically alter plants, it doesn't actually kill human cells, but it does kill non-human cells. It kills the bacteria, the probiotics in the body, and for every cell there's at least nine probiotics for it to function.  
 
We work in synergy with these probiotics throughout our body.  
 
So the wheat is highly indigestible, and so just that, taking wheat out of the body of some children can cause dramatic brain improvements. Another is dairy. Dairy, when it's pasteurized, is also indigestible and doesn't have the benefits of raw milk. 
 
Now raw milk is not legal, so I'm not recommending raw milk anymore. In some states it is, but for most people you can't get it. So you basically want to go- if you like the dairy products, because they're really good for the brain, you go for the nonpasteurized yogurts.  
 
So you can make your own yogurt at home, you can learn how to do that. So you get the pasteurized dairy and then you make the yogurt because the bacteria go and they eat the milk, and they produce something which is a fermented product.  
 
So fermented foods are really, really good. You bring back life to it, so to speak.  
 
So that's another one, is once you pasteurize dairy it becomes indigestible to the body.  
 
Now they did a study with cats, people need to know this, now we're not cats so you can't say this is happening in humans, but it did happen to cats so I want to tell this story.  
 
One group of cats, you feed them pasteurized milk, and the other cats you feed raw milk. And cats can live on just milk, right? And they lap it up and that's their food.  
 
Then the next generation of cats who drank the pasteurized milk were more sickly, and the third generation were even more sickly. The raw milk cats were just doing fine, but there wasn't a fourth generation of sickly cats. Literally they became infertile.  
 
Now we're seeing infertility all over the place now, it's very common, over 30% to 40% of women now are not able to give birth without the help of some kind of drug injection, manipulation of the doctor helping them have a baby.  
 
So infertility is massively on the rise today, and one of the contributing factors to that would be pasteurized milk. So that's an aspect of what we need to look at.  
 
Another major aspect is our high sugar content in the foods we eat.  
 
Now Coca Cola, most people don't know, it's the same amount of sugar as a glass of orange juice. It's the standard; 8 ounces, 28 grams of sugar. Most people don't look at that and they don't know what 28 grams of sugar means. 
 
What that means is you just had seven teaspoons of sugar. Seven teaspoons of sugar. You divide it by four, and you get one of these Frappuccino’s, you're taking like thirty teaspoons of sugar.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Right.  
 
John Gray:  Now what that does, that creates the diabetes that we're experiencing today. And Diabetes Association says sugar does not cause diabetes, because it doesn't. It's seven teaspoons every time you drink something that causes it. It's how much you take.  
 
But more importantly when we look at diet, we're looking at the high carbohydrate content of processed foods, the junk foods, the easy- the things you go to when you're feeling stressed, you're wanting to bump your blood sugar up.  
 
At those times when you take the carbohydrates, the processed sugars, the chips and various junk food, comfort food type stuff, ice cream particularly. When you go for that stuff, moderation- I'm not against any of that stuff, but moderation, moderation.  
 
When you have the high blood sugar spike, that inhibits something we talked about earlier in the show, which is your body's ability to make antioxidants.  
 
So that's one of the major causes of brain disease today, is this high blood sugar problem that we're having.  
 
We're craving sweets, we're craving sweets because when the blood sugar goes up, the glutathione production in the body goes down, the oxidative stress increases.  
 
So this is something- if we just get used to going for a week without any junk food, you'll find you don't crave it so much, you won't want it, but you've got to use some discipline there to back off from it.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  John, thank you. This is phenomenal. And these are just a few of the things that he covers in the book and of course on his website as well. Because if we're moving towards helping our children and helping ourselves to get past this condition which is becoming- again, an epidemic.  
 
He highlights one of the statistics in the book, we're talking about one in ten, one in nine kids right now. These are the ones that are diagnosed.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Exactly.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Alright? We're not even talking about the ones who are not diagnosed, who are experiencing a lot of struggle in school, and these are the solutions here. It's not giving a band aid treatment. "Take this drug and see what happens." Right?  
 
And to the degree again, we have to see more and more drugs, stronger doses, and that generally does not turn out well. But because we care as parents, we want the kid to be able to just show up and get through school. But we're not thinking about what can happen long-term, and that's what we need to start doing.  
 
So this is phenomenal. John, can you let everybody know where they can find the book and where they can get connected with you online as well? 
 
John Gray:  Okay well you can go to Amazon, it's only a few dollars for this book. It's 'Staying Focused in a Hyper World.' You can also order the download of it, it's pretty easy to get, 'Staying Focused in a Hyper World.' 
 
You can go to www.MarsVenus.com. Some of these things we talked about, the grapeseed extract I do have there, but more importantly it's like a little health food store. I have a ten minute video on everything you'd find in a health food store that's good for you, explaining why that might be helpful for you.  
 
I really like that, but if you can give me two more minutes I want to mention two practical things. Would that be okay? 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Absolutely, please do, let's go. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Welcome it! Thank you! 
 
John Gray:  Okay I just want everybody to know the cheapest and simplest way to create some dramatic improvement, and that is the hot bath. And I actually show the research behind this, and you briefly mentioned it with the heat shock proteins that get produced.  
 
But it's your body's protection mechanism to stop- put out oxidative stress is to induce fever, and that would be the infrared saunas, it's any kind of cold therapy, but also the easiest is hot water therapy with your child.  
 
Read to your child in a hot water bathtub, and basically you start out at the most comfortable hot level and then keep adding hot water. Their body will adjust to it. You get up to 103 degrees.  
 
And ideally if you could do it for a whole hour, you'll change that child's life. Even thirty minutes has shown to take away autistic symptoms to a great degree.  
 
But you do it every other day at a minimum. It produces these heat shock proteins that put out the fires of oxidative stress, and you do that every other day for any kind of ADD type symptom, autistic symptom, there's nothing better.  
 
This is one of the oldest remedies on the planet is you go to these spas. Now the spas either have what's called sulfur springs or lithium springs.  
 
Sulfur and lithium are the two most powerful minerals necessary for brain health and for body health. Sulfur more for the body health, and lithium more for the brain health.  
 
These are springs that are thousands of years old, people have gone to them for healing over and over. So the main thing with ADHD, and with sulfur, sulfur will detoxify the body.  
 
Now we didn't mention all the toxicity but even living near a freeway, basically cadmium comes off of the tires as they're going on the highway.  
 
This heavy metal goes into the brain, and you can put that metal in a petri dish and you can watch the oxidative stress over 24 hours you lose all the connective tissues and the neurons finally die.  
 
So this is heavy metal toxicity, it's happening in the world today, you can't avoid it but you can help your body get rid of those heavy metals in taking what's a very cheap supplement and it's called MSM. It's a sulfur.  
 
Now it used to be the sulfur was in our food, but with farming practices we don't have sulfur in the food that our body needs to detoxify.  
 
Now it's very powerful and it's very inexpensive, MSM, and you don't take the capsules, you take the powder. You get a bag of it, and you take a little bit, and gradually you can build up to like a teaspoon twice a day, but you start with just the tiniest little bit, an eighth of a teaspoon twice a day in glass- and it's bitter. It's the opposite of our sweet addiction, it's bitter.  
 
And you put it in some warm water, it will dissolve, it will detoxify your body. I'm giving you the cheapest most powerful solutions is hot water bath, you can put Epsom salt in it for your magnesium.  
 
Everybody needs more magnesium. Put a whole cup of magnesium or two cups of Epsom salt, it's very cheap and you get your magnesium in your body that calms the body.  
 
These children need calming, they need relaxation, and they need the heat. The heat shock proteins will generate the neural protection and heal the brain, regenerate the brain. A hot bath, two, MSM. Very cheap if you buy it in the bag like bulk. 
 
And then the third is lithium. Now lithium is the cheapest supplement online, and it is the most powerful of any of them for your brain.  
 
You will notice benefits in days for a child, they'll calm down if they're hyperactive, they become more relaxed, more focused, more agreeable. It allows the brain to regulate itself properly.  
 
When you eat sugar, the reason we need lithium supplementation, it's called low dose lithium. Lithium orotate. So what psychiatrists prescribe, lithium carbonate. It's a whole different substance.  
 
They give you 50 to 100 times the dose of lithium carbonate for people who have psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, and it helps them. But nobody should take it because it has side effects because you're giving 50 to 100 times the dose.  
 
This is low dose lithium. I explain the instructions of how to use it at my website, at the store or if you go under lithium.  
 
There's many, many naturopathic doctors who discovered this. You'll never hear about it in the media, you'll never hear about it publicized because it's the cheapest substance you can buy. A three month supply for $11 or $10.  
 
Basically it's no profit, no marketing, no advertising, no research to show how great it is. New York Times articles have said everybody needs to be taking one or two milligrams of low dose lithium every day.  
 
Buck Foundation says it will stop Alzheimer's disease, it's a major foundation that studies Alzheimer's disease. 
 
This is like such a simple solution and my friends who raise money for these big drugs, I say, "Why don't you just teach this?" And they go, "Well we can't patent it, we can't make money on it, so you can't pay for it." 
 
So people need to know, every mother needs to know, and your psychiatrist and your doctor does not know about this. That's what you have to do, you have to find your own research. It's over the counter, you can buy it for $10, you take this little tiny capsule, it's just what should be in your food and it's not there. 
 
And when we're under stress, when we're having ADHD type symptoms, when our blood sugar is high, we use up the lithium faster and that's why we run out of it. So two and a half milligrams bonded to a lot of orotic acid, which is a substance in mother's milk, delivered that lithium into the brain. So you don't need much of it.  
 
And it's not toxic in no way, and that's why it's over the counter. So I just want people to know the word lithium orotate, do a little research on Google, and also MSM, do a little research on Google and you'll find amazing remedies for your children's condition to help them improve optimal brain function. 
 
Jade Harrell:  So grateful. Oh my gosh. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  John Gray, Dr. John Gray, you are a gift on the planet. Thank you so much for sharing this incredible information today, and for putting so much time, energy and effort into just creating all the great works that you have. I mean you've got twenty books, probably you've got some more sneaking up on us soon here as well, but we just truly, truly do appreciate your gifts, so thank you so much. 
 
John Gray:  Love you! 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  Love you as well, John. Thank you. Everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the show today, I hope you got a lot of value out of this. This is something that you definitely need to share with friends and family so that they have access to more options.  
 
And that's what it's really about is having more options because our conventional treatment for chronic illnesses is failing, and we know this if you just look at the numbers.  
 
And what John has compiled here are things that are backed up by clinical data, that you might not have heard of before, and even looking at how combining a couple of vital nutrients together along with vitamin C can equal the same effectiveness as Adderall. Right? Who knew?  
 
Well John, John knew. 
 
Jade Harrell:  John knew, and now we do. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And so these kinds of things are what's available for us. It's just again, having more options to add to your superhero utility belt. There is definitely a place for drugs, but we don't want to jump there first because these are created in a laboratory.  
 
You can't patent nature, that's what he talked about earlier, but you can make a drug. But these are new inventions. Humans have not been consuming these things for very long so we still don't know the long-term ramifications.  
 
So please understand, I want to highlight something really quickly. He talked about MSM, Methylsulfonylmethane, one of my favorite things in the world.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Yeah. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And we'll put a link to it- I did an article on all the different benefits because he mentioned some of the physical aspects as well, so that's important. There's a lithium spring here in Missouri, it's called- literally the city is Lithium, Missouri.  
 
People used to come here- and this was documented like 150 years ago, and then up until the turn of the century to heal mental disorders. People from all over the world would come to Lithium, Missouri. Now it's just the spring is under this little beaten up gazebo, nobody even looks at it anymore. And of course I've been there many times and gathered some water.  
 
So just keep in mind like some of this stuff has been around a long time, but now today our modern science is just using our scientific method to prove it.  
 
And lastly I want to share this. In his book he mentions the FDA lists over 33 double blind clinical trials demonstrating that artificial food colors are related to ADHD and other childhood related behavior problems. And a specific elimination diet has been found to be effective 50% of the time for children who are struggling with ADHD.  
 
So the food that we're giving our kids matters. We need to cut it out with the fake food. Period, end of story.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Yeah, absolutely.  
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And again, blaming the child for the behavior. Like this is literally hopping our kids up on drugs when we're giving them these crazy sugar loaded products, and artificial foods, artificial flavors. We've got to just cut that out. 
 
And we did a great show with Vani Hari, the Food Babe, who's like the assassin out there going after food companies, so we'll put that in the show notes as well.  
 
But make sure to pick up a copy of John's book. And of course, 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,' that's a must have classic to add to your repertoire as well. 
 
So thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I appreciate you immensely. Much, much, more great stuff to come. Have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. 
 
And make sure for more after the show, you head over to 
www.TheModelHealthShow.com, that's where you can find the show notes, and if you've got any questions or comments, make sure to let me know. And please head over to iTunes and give us a five star rating, and let everybody know that our show is awesome.  
 
Jade Harrell:  Yeah. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And you're loving it. 
 
Jade Harrell:  Yeah. 
 
Shawn Stevenson:  And I read all the comments, so please leave me a comment there, and take care everybody. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.