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From ADHD to Autism: Brain Health Revealed
Have you ever wondered what’s really happening inside the brains of those with ADHD or autism?
Unlock the mysteries of ADHD and autism with Dr. Robert Melillo, a pioneer in brain health and neurological disorders. In this episode, Dr. Melillo dives into the science behind ADHD, revealing the brain's imbalances and how environmental factors like diet, technology, and stress can shape neurological development. Discover the role of epigenetics in brain function and learn about Dr. Melillo's innovative methods for restoring balance through targeted therapies. From understanding brain asymmetry to the impact of sleep and physical activity, this episode offers invaluable insights for parents, educators, and anyone interested in brain health.
About Dr. Robert Melillo
Dr. Robert Melillo is a highly respected specialist in childhood neurological disorders, with over 30 years of experience addressing conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. His expertise extends to diet, nutrition, and neuroimmune disorders. A renowned clinician, university professor, and bestselling author, Dr. Melillo's pioneering research on functional disconnection has significantly advanced our understanding of these disorders. His work led to the creation of the Brain Balance Achievement Centers, and he continues to impact his private practice, helping children and adults improve their neurological health.
Connect with Dr. Robert Melillo
Website: https://www.drrobertmelillo.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertMelillo/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DrRobertMelillo
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-melillo-a287b618b/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/DrRobMelillo
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@drrobertmelillo
About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher
me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.
Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more
Welcome back to another insightful episode of me&myhealth up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher, a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. Today, we have a very special guest with us. It's Dr. Robert Melillo. Dr. Melillo is a world renowned expert in brain health, specialising in adult and childhood neurological disorders. With over 30 years of experience as a clinician, professor and brain researcher, he has dedicated his career to bridging brain function, behaviour, and physical health. He is the best-selling author of Disconnected Kids, a cornerstone in its genre, translated into 16 languages. Dr. Melillo is also the co-founder of Brain Balance Achievement Centres and the developer of the Melillo Method, a non-invasive, multi-modal method that has significantly improved and corrected many neurological disorders. Today, we'll be exploring his groundbreaking work and his unique insights into the brain. So sit back and relax, and let's dive into the world of brain health with Dr. Robert Melillo. Welcome onto the me&my health up podcast. How are you, Dr. Melillo?
Dr. Robert Melillo:I'm great, Anthony. Thank you so much for having me.
Anthony Hartcher:So great to have you on the show. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise and very excited to be talking about neurological developmental disorders and how, I guess, teaching the listeners more about these disorders and what they can do if they know of someone with the disorder or how they can support them. And yeah, so just really appreciate you having, you know, you coming on the show and putting aside the time.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Sure, my pleasure.
Anthony Hartcher:And just to start out, to bring the listeners up to speed, how you, how have you arrived at what you're doing today?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Sure. Well, first of all, when we talk about developmental neurological or mental health issues, just to put in context that we now kind of believe that virtually any adult or childhood mental health illness of any kind is ultimately developmental, meaning it starts in childhood. So really relates to almost anything that somebody might be struggling with, whether they've struggled with their whole life or really just showed up in adulthood. But for me, you know, I'm a clinician and I've been a clinician for, uh, well, over 30 years and really started out with me. I always fell in love with neurology and rehabilitation. That was kind of the area that I was going into. And so I was going down that road. I get board diplomated in in neurology and then I started actually getting involved academically and teaching clinical neurology and rehabilitation. And I always was into also diet and nutrition and more holistic approaches. And I had a successful practise. 1995, I came home and there was woman sitting at my kitchen table with my wife and she was crying. And it was late at night. My three kids were sleeping in bed and my wife introduced me to the woman and said, you know, she has a, I met her at a fundraiser last night for an organisation that she started with families, with kids, with different types of disabilities. And her son has severe ADHD and, you know, she's tried everything and nothing really has worked. And I told her, you know a lot about neurology, you know a lot about nutrition, you know a lot about the brain, and that maybe she should come and talk to you. So I, you know, introduced myself and I took my wife aside and I said, you know, I, I, this is very nice. I guess you're trying to help this person, but I don't really know what ADHD is. And, and I, I'm already coming home at nine o'clock at night and I'm lecturing on weekends. And, you know, do you really want me to take this on? And she looked at me and said, I just had this feeling that you're supposed to do something with this. Like, I just feel like this is something you're supposed to do. I get emotional every time I think about that. And so I said, all right, all right, don't get mad at me when I'm, when I'm, you know, spending a lot of time on this. And then a couple of days later, I went to my son's, my older son's first parent-teacher meeting and we walk in and the first thing the teacher says is, you know, I don't know how to say this, but I think your son might have ADHD or something like that. So now this is a double whammy. And, you know, at first, I feel like embarrassed because here's, I'm supposed to be an expert on the brain and neurology and I don't really know what ADHD is. And, um, and then I also feel like most parents, I feel like I'm to blame somehow because I'm not around enough or I'm working a lot or whatever. And, but I also, you know, look at my wife and I remember her saying to me, you're supposed to do something with this. So the first question that popped into my head, being someone who knew a lot about the brain and neurology was like, what is ADHD? What is actually happening in the brain? Uh, because my first instinct was, I want to help my son. I want to change it somehow. And, you know, uh, that's what I did. I mean, I rehabbed neurological issues. And so, you know, I went out and first thing I did was I went to colleagues of mine, friends, paediatricians, paediatric neurologists, psychologists, neuropsychologists. And I asked them a question, what's happening in the brain of a kid with ADHD? And they all looked at me and said, I don't really know. And I said, well, somebody has got to know. And they said, yeah, you know, there's research out there, but as maybe something to do with dopamine and a frontal lobe, but, and then they also said, well, but you can't really do anything about it anyway. And I said, wait a second, you just told me you don't know what it is, but you're absolutely sure that there's nothing you can do about it. How do you know that? And they said, well, I don't know. That's just, you know, I mean, that's just what we, what we know. So after a while, I decided I really needed to do this myself. So I just kind of became obsessed with finding the answers. And I dove into the research and I was spending every waking hour that was, I wasn't treating patients, was really in a library and studying and compiled over 10 years, a lot of papers and eventually put it into a textbook called Neurobehavioral Disorders of Childhood: An Evolutionary Perspective, which was published in 2004. And along the way, I also developed a program, not only to help my child but to help, you know, many, many other people. And, and that's really my story of the beginning.
Anthony Hartcher:Wow. Inspirational story in terms of how it found you and it was your calling as your wife said so. And I think, you know, hence why you have that emotional response to it is that it really resonates with your inner soul or your inner being, and is very aligned with where you are today. So I thank you for sharing that really insightful, just in terms of, let's start with what is ADHD?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah, essentially, it's a neurological developmental issue where there are basically imbalances in different networks in the brain. So it's a developmental maturational delay and imbalance. And in my research, what we've been able to show is that primarily there's a delay in the right hemisphere and certain networks in the right hemisphere. We have an attention network in the right hemisphere called the ventral attention network, and this is connected to something called the salience network. And so the salience network is something that says, hey, this is, this is really important. Pay attention. And depending on what that is, it may involve the left brain or the right brain, but for most attention, it's really that right brain. And, and then the attention network comes on and we pay attention. And, and there's basically five different types of human attention. Four of them are regulated more by the right brain, but the one that is impacted most in ADHD is really what we call sustained attention. The ability to really have focused attention for a while, even in things that are boring with you and, you know, things like in a classroom. Along with that may come hyperactivity or impulsivity. So there's three different subtypes. Type one is only inattentive. These are people that aren't hyperactive or impulsive but have trouble paying attention. Others is type two and type three, which is where there's hyperactivity, and three is combined type. So, you know, it involves usually overactivity of certain networks on the left side. That, you know, we have an area of the brain called Brodmann Area 6 on the left, which is what generates motor activity and people that are hyperactive or people that have tics or what we call stimming behaviour, like in autism, that is an overactivity of the left. And then the attention network and the salience network is the right. And so the combination of overactivity of the left and underdevelopment of networks in the right is what generally makes ADHD. Now there is a, you know, the subtype of type one can be related more to a left hemisphere delay, but that's usually more associated with things like a really highly focused, detailed attention. That's more short term. And really that it's usually more associated with dyslexia or learning disabilities or processing issues. And it's really very different from the more, you know, traditional type of ADHD.
Anthony Hartcher:So you mentioned that salient part of the brain, which is linked to, you know, bringing us to attention to what's important, in terms of, like, when I look at kids and certainly I had teachers telling my parents that I had ADHD, so I can relate to this. And I was constantly disruptive and sent out the classroom and locked in storerooms and things like this because I was uncontrollable. However, I'm very attentive now to things that I find important to me. So such as this podcast, you know, I've got unbelievable presence. I wouldn't have a clue what's going on around me. So I just want to just talk a bit more about, because there'll definitely be parents listening to this. And I consider, as a child, or any child that is growing up, they've all got different things that are important to them, right? That there's not one set, like, okay, school is generally important to every kid. Like, so, I'd love you to talk to this point.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah, well, we have different personality types, right? And, and there's different styles, what we call cognitive styles, the way that we, you know, like to learn or things that we're interested in. And there is a bias. You know, this is my area of research is really looking at brain asymmetry, meaning that the way the right and the left brain develop, how they function, what they do, how they integrate, and then sometimes how they don't integrate. And to me, really, you know, when you look at personality and behaviour and you look at also different issues and disorders and symptoms, it really comes down to how those networks or how the hemispheres are developing or integrating or where, you know, some people may be more of a right hemisphere style. Other people are more left hemisphere style. So for instance, left hemisphere, and there's different subsets of that, right? So some people are going to be very academic, and the left brain tends to be more academic. Some people in that are going to be really good in math, but they may not be so good in reading or don't like reading. Other people might be incredibly good at reading and not so good at math. Other people might be, you know, more, you know, the left brain generates some level of motivation. It's also a lot of fine motor skill. And so, you know, the left brain tends to be, you know, people that are academic, that might find school important at a young age. They have a really good memory for details. They can hyper focus on details. They tend to be pretty motivated, but, you know, they're also personality style. They might be a little bit of a loner. They're not always the most social people. You know, they get a lot, you know, they may be good at seeking goals. And in the right hemisphere is more about interpersonal relationships. It's really more about attachment. It's forming relationships to other people, feeling our body, being able to read other people's, you know, feelings, emotions, and using that because the right brain develops first in the womb and for the first two to three years, and it's really about helping us to survive. And for humans, our number one strategy, strategy for survival is that we must be part of a group. So the right brain from a very small child, they're wired that we must connect with people. We need to attach to our parents and then to other people. And we see in some forms of ADHD and in autism that there isn't that drive. You know, they often prefer to be by themselves. They're not really seeking out other people. They're not looking at other people in the eye. They don't recognise facial expression and they don't develop those social networks on the right side of the brain as much. So, you know, really, that's the way I look at it. And, and the right brain has different subsets too. Some people might be more athletic or dance. Some people may be really good in music and writing music or playing music. Other people might be more visual arts. Other people might be more designers or inventors. Thomas Edison, for instance, was terribly dyslexic. And anybody that I work with and anybody that has any sort of, you know, label diagnosis or is struggling, it usually starts with the fact that they're very gifted in one side of the brain. So one side or certain areas, like the person may be a great athlete, but they've been dyslexic their whole life. Or they may be, you know, really academic and have an incredible memory, but they can't read social cues and people and they can't pay attention as well as they should.
Anthony Hartcher:It's really interesting what you share, how, you know, it comes down to the personality and then the environment. So like, if, if someone's academic and that predominantly left brain, then school, that, you know, they're going to be super focused, and ADHD won't be picked up, right? It's going to be, that they fit in, they fit in, that they fit the social norm. However, if those people that were very academic were in a sporting setting or say, a social setting, then they would stand out and they'd be different and they couldn't interact or whatever. And they couldn't showcase their sporting abilities. And so it really depends like, so this diagnosis of ADHD really depends on the environment at which we're judging that kid to be in or that adult to be in. Because if I look back at my years at school, I was very sporting and I certainly wasn't academic, but I became an academic later on in life when I knew what I liked studying. So, but, so in the school sense, I didn't fit in. I stood out and hence labelled. And, but from an adult sense, I'm very focused on, you know, I fit in because I'm very, you know, engaged with my work. And, and so can you talk to this as well?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah. And so, you know, there's, again, I, that's why labels are, to me, I don't like labels generally because they kind of brush a broad stroke. And I look to really like to look at really what's happening in the brain, right? That, what areas of the brain do this? And typically, different imbalances is what produces any type of symptom. There was a famous neuroscientist named Tim Brown. He was quoted in a psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist's book, where he said nothing in human psychology or psychiatry makes sense except in light of brain symmetry. When you want to look at anything, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, you know, why do they have these particular things? And one of the first things I learned when I really, when I started looking and doing research into this was one of the first concepts was a concept I came across called unevenness of skills. And basically it said that, you know, people with ADHD aren't actually, you know, bad at everything. In fact, they're usually exceptional at certain things, but they struggle with others. And then that was true with dyslexia. And that's really true with autism. And it's true with schizophrenia and it's true with bipolar disorder. And so there is a left brain and right brain version of ADHD as we talked about it. And that's why from a neurological perspective, you know, I really look at it as more of a right hemisphere type of delay with kids that may be very good academically, but, you know, they also can't pay attention. So it does show up in school and it may impact their academics, but then there's the left brain type, which people where, what you sound like, you're describing that you're a sporty person that you maybe were social and had a lot of friends and you didn't really enjoy school a lot when you were, and you didn't like doing the rope memorisation, and you got bored easily, and you were more into social and sports, which was what I was like as a kid as well, too. And that may come up and be labelled as type one ADHD, just the inattentive type, but it's, it's not the traditional model that usually, again, what those people may end up really struggling more with reading and they may have more of a dyslexia or they may struggle with math and have what we call dyscalculia, but it's a little different because the right brain sees everything. The right brain is the big picture. The left brain are details, and the right brain looks at everything at once. So what can happen is people with right brain, like yourself, if you are that, then you may actually really be paying attention to everything at the same time. It's not a deficit, but your salience network, and there's studies on kids with dyslexia that show that this salience network is is overactive on, especially on the right side. And that, especially for facial expressions or emotions, and this actually can cause them to have a lot of social anxiety or, you know, feel like they're being judged, or they get too much. They're overwhelmed. My daughter, you know, is a singer-songwriter and she's in Nashville and I come into a lot of her friends and they all struggle with this. They're all these big right brain songwriters, singers, and they all struggle with social anxiety and the inner critic and feel like they're being judged by people. And, you know, and that again is just an over-exaggeration of that network. And I don't know if you've ever felt like that when you were younger, or even now a little bit.
Anthony Hartcher:It's a really good point that you raised there. And so for me, it's this imbalance in the brain. But what I'm hearing is that we all have some degree of this, right? We, none of us have this symmetrical brain. It does like, it's like a symmetrical body doesn't exist, right? We, we're all created differently and unique and we have all different special superpowers. So this is, for me, something a parent shouldn't over, get overly concerned about a label on their kid.
Dr. Robert Melillo:No, no, it's just, again, just like we're all either right-handed or left-handed to one degree or another, right? Nobody is, nobody should be ambidextrous. If you are, that's actually an abnormal developmental delay. But, you know, we all favour one side of our brain or the other and different parts of that in the way that we see the world, the way we view the world and people that are unusually gifted have, you know, more of that trait. So we know that, like, for instance, the example is if you wanted to breed for a fast racehorse, you would breed for longer, thinner legs. And longer, thinner legs the the animal gets faster and faster and faster. And that's an advantage, right? That's an advantage. They get better and better and better until the legs become too long and thin. And as soon as they run, they break. And so there's a cliff edge called an evolutionary cliff edge that you go over with a trait. So, but as a trait comes up and as you get better and better and better, and as you're at an elite level of something, you also have more vulnerabilities on the opposite side. And so for most people, the advanced trait, the advanced skill outweighs any weaknesses until it doesn't. And then there's a point where now the weakness outweighs the strength. So, you know, in any child that is gifted or shows skills or it's not anything to be concerned with, that's great. But there may come a point where they had, they may have some vulnerabilities and those vulnerabilities may outweigh their strengths. And then if that's the case and it interferes with them, then the good news is you can change it. You can bring up the weaknesses. You can, you can take away a lot of the vulnerabilities without taking away the gifts and create more balance. And in the brain, ideally, if the more we can get some symmetry, the more we can integrate and get the brain to work together, the better the brain functions, the better the human functions.
Anthony Hartcher:So perfect segue into the next discussion point. And that's, how do we do this? How do we create this better better balanced brain?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah. So, you know, there are, there are different aspects of our brain, right? So our brain is driven by the sensory systems that we're born into and movement. So primarily the reason why my first book on was about the evolution of of the brain and relating that developmentally, that's why it was called From An Evolutionary Perspective. And the first question is, why do we have brains? I mean, why did brains even evolve on this planet? And it turns out, it's because some living thing moved and needed to move in a purposeful way. So movement is what drove the evolution of brains and it's what drives brain development. So a baby needs to move when they get out of the womb and humans are the most vulnerable babies and we have the least control over our movement. So we're born with these things called primitive reflexes, like rooting and sucking reflexes and grasping responses that come from our lower brainstem that allow us to move and roll over and get ourselves out of the womb and then crawl in our belly and crawl on all fours and pull up and then eventually walk. And at one year, we should walk and we should talk. And those reflexes need to go away so that we can move in a more sophisticated way and then build our brain literally from the bottom up. And then the brain comes from the top down to regulate everything. And that's all driven by movement and movement activating our senses. So smell, taste, temperature, gravity, inner ear movement, all of that is what drives brain development. It turns on genes that are called experience-dependent genes and it starts to build our brain and build connections and build networks in the brain from the bottom up. And so, you know, our brain isn't a bag of chemicals. It's literally, you know, physical and it's related to that. So the way that we change it is by using different and harnessing sensory and motor activities to be able to target specific areas of the brain to activate one side and inhibit the other and speed up and slow down essentially is what we're trying to do. And we can do that, really, by doing different types of physical exercises. But we also have to look at, you know, why isn't it developing? And what my research shows, and what we published about seven or eight papers last year out of my lab, is that something called retained primitive reflexes. That these reflexes don't go away in some people. And when they don't go away, they hold back brain development. And like in autism and ADHD, because the left brain on those people is so strong and so good that it comes online too early. And then it inhibits that development of the right brain and they don't develop that social nonverbal development. They don't get a connection to their body. They may not feel their body too well. And then the left brain kicks in and they might get things like tics or OCD behaviour or hyperactivity, or they might have an overactive immune system or inflammation or the fight or flight system. And so what we do is we'll do exercises. We use things like light and sound and music and different frequencies, vibration, different electrical types of stimulation and brain stimulation that can activate networks on one side and inhibit the other, like transcranial direct current or alternating current. We use things like TENS stimulation. We use specialised glasses that will flash light with different frequencies, different frequencies of music. We use vibration. We use different video games, virtual reality games. We do vestibular types of things, balance, spinning. But then we also look at nutrition and we also do cognitive skills. And we may do academic training, like for instance, kids who have left brain delays may struggle with basic word reading, that's dyslexia. But other kids with right brain type of ADHD or autism, they may struggle with reading comprehension, which is right brain. And then we may do even something like neurofeedback, which is a way of trying to get the brainwaves to synchronise with one another. So it's a lot of different tools that we use and it's individualised to the person.
Anthony Hartcher:Fantastic. It's really insightful in terms of how you go about helping a person get that symmetry or create more, better symmetry. In terms of that approach, what is it that, you know, why do we see more increases to that? Like we see fast growing rates today. It's being diagnosed, you know, way, way more than what it was back in my time. It was sort of like back in back in my day, there was a few kids that stood out and was disruptors in the classroom and and were labelled. Now, now you're just constantly getting people diagnosed. Is it something in the environment or something we're doing that is, you know, in terms of the environmental changes that is increasing this or is it the fact that we're having children later? Have you come down to what's driving this growth?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah. Yes, actually, I wrote a book on it.
My third book is called Autism:The Scientific Truth. And it's important because these are real questions because we are facing this epidemic rise and it's real. We know that like, for instance, autism is now one in 36. It's about one in 24 boys, whereas 30 years ago it was one in 10,000. And we do know that it's not just an increase in prevalence. I mean, it's not just that we're recognising it earlier, but there's an actual increase in incidence, which means there are more kids that literally have it. Same thing with ADHD, same thing with OCD, same thing with every mental health issue right now. And anxiety is like through the roof. And so they're all increasing. So what we do know is that it's not genetic, right? They're, none of them have genetic mutations. They have different genes or different traits, but there's nothing wrong with the genes per se. But we do have something called epigenetics, which means that the way genes become expressed can be altered by environmental influences. And so there are a lot of changes in our environment and our lifestyle mostly that are altering gene expression in the womb or even before pregnancy, where we get where we can get what's called epigenetic, you know, DNA methylation and things like that. And again, not damaging the genes, but maybe quieting certain genes and not allowing others to be expressed. And, and because of that, we see that, you know, these are changing. So in, in the, when we talk about environmental changes, there's a number of them. Obviously, there are things like pesticides and BPA and phthalates and chemicals. Many of them are estrogen disruptors or testosterone disruptors. And what we do see is in most of these issues, they affect boys much more than girls. And, you know, there's another factor is that, as we said, the right brain is developing first in the womb and boys naturally develop slower. So boys naturally have a delayed development relative to girls and boys tend to be a little bit more right brain dependent. So if there is any sort of disruption in the father or the mother, in the genes or in the womb, then it tends to have much more of an impact on boys. And what it does is it just, again, stunts or delays development of that right brain in particular, or may cause the right brain to stay on longer. And so there are a number of environmental issues, but also what we see is that Iain McGilchrist, I don't know if you know who he is, he's a pretty famous psychiatrist out of the UK. He wrote a number of books on on brain asymmetry and psychiatry. And he has been saying that, and I've also wrote about this as well, is that we're moving more and more towards a left brain society. So, you know, as we progress, everything is driving our left brain, technology, you know, everything we do, we have less gross motor activity. We have less direct interpersonal relationships. We're more doing technical based stuff. We're more sedentary, and it's driving the left brain, and it's driving the left brain in children as well. And so what's happening is that it's favouring that side, and it's building it up more. And so there's a lot of different factors that come into play. Most of them are preventable or reversible. Most of them are related to our lifestyle in one way or the other. Some of them have to do with older parents. So that one aspect of it, that is a fact. But again, even that, you know, you can do things like get your body in really healthy shape or something, and you can reverse a lot of those effects. So it doesn't have to be there. But the good news is that none of this results in brain damage. There's no injury. And again, there's no direct gene mutation. And we can turn good genes back on, and we can balance the brain out. And we can usually reverse or correct most of these issues.
Anthony Hartcher:Amazing. I'm just really keen to explore these lifestyle ones that the parents could help raise children that are going to have less of these, you know, asymmetries and, you know, really help that right-hand side of the brain to develop along with the left.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Sure, it's really going back to kind of old-school stuff, right? Anything new that's really developed more over the past 20, 30 years, we probably should stay away from, but, you know, like getting kids outside, you don't see them outside riding bikes or climbing trees or playing football or baseball outside anymore. They're inside playing video games. And, you know, part of that is we're afraid to let them out, because the perception, at least, is that it's more dangerous. I don't know if it actually is, but we are more aware of that. So, you know, and kids are getting technology at a younger age. We see kids, you know, two years, one year of age, having phones and iPads shoved in their faces, which is a big mistake, because especially in the first three years, when we're developing that right brain and those emotional and social networks, if we expose them to technology, it turns their left brain on too early, and can really cause some delays in that right brain development, and may be a major contributing factor to ADHD and autism and other things like that. So getting them outside, doing more creative things, interpersonal things. The right brain likes reality. It likes grass. It likes trees. It likes to, you know, go outside. The right brain is more imagination. The right brain, you know, so let your kids be bored. Don't always try to entertain them 24 hours a day. I mean, the modern parent, it's amazing. They feel like this unbelievable, believable levels of shame. If their kid says to them, hey mom, I'm bored, or dad, I'm bored. I mean, if I said that to my parent, I wouldn't have because they would have had me cleaning a toilet or something, right? So, but now parents feel like they're bad parents because their child isn't entertained 24 hours a day. Let them do things. Let them problem solve. Let them figure out. Let them, that's how they build resilience. The biggest fear I have right now is I think, you know, these generations I see coming up now, they're not going to have any resilience because everything is done for them. You know, we have, you know, they can't, if they're offended in the slightest bit, you know, it really has this major impact on them, and we're doing everything we can to make, you know, everything so easy and it, and it's good in many ways, you know, but in other ways, I worry if they're going to have the resilience to really, you know, make it in adulthood and to make it out in the job world. And so, you know, it's really about doing that, letting your kids go out there, figure their own problems out. Let them resolve interpersonal relationships. Don't try to fix everything for them, you know, and get them outside. Don't let them use technology, and certainly don't let them use a lot of technology early in life, especially in the first three to six years.
Anthony Hartcher:Fantastic. Amazing, but as you said, so simple to apply, and really just, you know, getting back outside and living life, really, you know, playing around with nature and spending time in the sun, and just enjoying interacting with others, playing, essentially, rather than that.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Right. It sounds so simple, but it's, it, no one's doing it anymore. It's amazing, really.
Anthony Hartcher:Very true. Just, in terms of diet, obviously, over the years, you know, you've probably seen over this period that we've seen this rise in ADHD and autism and these developmental issues. Have you seen any link to diet? Because we talk a lot about sugar.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah, because, you know, the brain ultimately regulates the immune system and the autonomic system. So, you know, we hear things like, you know, these problems start in the gut, and that's not true. It starts in the brain and the brainstem, but the brain and the brainstem is what regulates gut development. It regulates the production of acid and digestive enzymes and absorption and movement, balance of what we call the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are very involved. And the brain itself is more and more, we're realising that the brain is really the master of the immune system, and that if there's a problem in the brain, that what we typically see is there may be, you know, increases in inflammation. The left brain, especially, and the sympathetic nervous system drive inflammation, and the right brain really has a way of trying to reduce inflammation and the parasympathetic nervous system. But we also know that the expression of genes in the mom and the dad is also related to the health of their genes. And so, you know, what we learned about epigenetics is that the first real major study on epigenetics was really from the 2000s, a guy named Jirtle and Waterland. And what they found was that there were these mice called agouti mice. And these are kind of mice that are big and fat and have more yellow fur, and they almost always die of cancer and diabetes, and they die young. And so, what they did was they just manipulated the diets of the pregnant mothers, and they gave them what was called methyl donors. So, they gave them things that gave them a lot of methyl molecules like garlic and onions, and and just changed their diet that way. And what happens is their offspring were not fat yellow mice, they were thin brown mice, and they didn't die of cancer and diabetes. And what happened was the methyl molecules turned off the agouti gene, It inhibited it, and that was an advantage. So, we know that diet has a direct effect on how our genes are expressed. And so, you know, for a parent, if you're eating a really unhealthy diet, or you're living a real unhealthy lifestyle, you produce more methyl molecules that can block your genes and can interfere. And we, you know, we now know, we used to think that, you know, when baby was born that they had a completely clean genetic slate, but we now know that these epigenetic marks can be passed on for at least 11 generations. So, that if you're like, you know, tremendously stressed out or really unhealthy, you can methylate your genes and inhibit them, and you can create different a change in the phenotype of your child, and that that can be passed on for multiple generations. The good news is that we can wipe out a lot of those methyl molecules by a proper lifestyle, and by a proper diet, and by doing things that can clean us out or detox, and by, you know, doing healthier things.
Anthony Hartcher:In terms of a proper diet for parents that are, you know, have kids with ADHD or autism, what is that? What does that look like?
Dr. Robert Melillo:You know, it really depends on the person, because different people will benefit from some different diets. Some people may do well with a keto diet or a low-carbohydrate diet. Some people might need more of a Mediterranean-type diet. Some people may need an anti-inflammatory diet or an antihistamine diet. So, it really kind of depends on the person and really should be driven more by, you know, looking at their blood and looking at their immune system, looking at their brain. So, but, you know, what we do want to do is obviously most people, most problems that are passed on epigenetically, a lot of it is related to inflammation. And so, you know, you need to look at what may trigger that. No one should have food sensitivities, but if our brain is imbalanced and if our gut isn't working and our immune system may be imbalanced and overactive, we can develop things like gluten sensitivity or dairy casein sensitivity or or many different food sensitivities. And so, therefore, you know, where one person can eat dairy and it's good for them, another person may eat it and it may trigger an immune response. So, you know, really the biggest issues are, are certain foods triggering an immune response in you? And so, doing a food sensitivity panel to identify that in you and maybe modifying your immune system because there are also different parts of our immune system, just like different parts of our brain. And so, you know, in the old days, again, people would talk about, well, we need to stimulate the brain or we need to inhibit the brain. Now it's like we need to target the brain. Same thing in the immune system. It was like, well, we need to boost immunity or we need to suppress immunity. Now we know that we really need to target things like the Th1 or the Th2 system or, you know, with different supplements. And we got to look at certain foods might affect one person and not the other. So really should be targeted to the person and they really should get a proper evaluation between looking at that because anything that activates the immune system generally is going to activate inflammation, and inflammation is, is really not good. It's not good for your genes and it's not going to be good for your offspring.
Anthony Hartcher:And in terms of sleep, like you mentioned electrical devices or technology at an early age, and, you know, they pretty much run kids' lives in terms of entertainment and provide the parents some peace or, you know, some time to themselves. Like technology in rooms is creeping in, particularly with teenagers and sleep deprivation, certainly on the rise. I just wanted to either talk about sleep deprivation or lack of sleep or poor sleep and the impacts on that left, left, right brain and ADHD, autism.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Sure. Yeah. You know technology, I mean, we all heard that, you know, produces blue light, but most people don't know what blue light does. What blue light does is it stimulates the part of our brain that causes us to activate what's called our HPA axis, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and it causes a release of, of cortisol. What cortisol should do is that normally when we get hit with sunlight in our eye in the morning, it should trigger the release of cortisol and cortisol should make us take sugar out of our muscles and put it into our bloodstream, and then get insulin so we can put it into the cell. So the cell has energy for the day as we're waking up and as we're going. And then, you know, at the peak of when the sun is at its peak is usually when blue light is the highest. And usually when our cortisol levels are highest and our blood sugar is highest, which is a good thing. And then as the sun goes down and as the blue, blue light lowers, that should come down and then melatonin should come up. And that way that rhythm is really important. And we know that, you know, if you're getting a lot of blue light through technology, that it can alter that or completely skew that, or it never shuts down the cortisol. So now you're constantly releasing blood sugar and, you know, and especially then if you eat a lot of carbs at night and then you can't, you know, melatonin doesn't kick in, you can't get into that sleep mode and then you're very sleep deprived. And, and we know that sleep deprivation itself can be a major factor in ADHD or in anything really. So, you know, that is a, that's a big deal right there. So technology for kids, keeping it out of their room, they shouldn't have it in their room really. And they shouldn't be, you know, looking at these screens or they need blue light filters and you can change it on the screen or you can get them glasses or something like that because it, it can really impact, impact that. And, and that can have a big impact on their body. They can, it can delay puberty onset. It can do many, many things.
Anthony Hartcher:Incredible just how much technologies, you know, as much as it's an asset and it's, you know, certainly helping aspects of our lives. It's, it's providing a hindrance in terms of health, certainly. And my, my final questions around stress, because if I think about what you've just shared in terms of that left brain and that left brain becoming dominant and not allowing the maturation of the right brain. And if I think about stress and the drivers of stress, it's busy nurse, it's chasing pursuits and always doing and thinking you need to do more and achieve more. And, and so it's that very much that left-hand side, really in hyper overdrive and not allowing that the right brain, how you said is more associated with parasympathetic rest and digest functions. And so I just want you to talk about this aspect of stress and this business in our lives, and how that is probably driving partly these developmental disorders in children and in adults.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Yeah. So the left brain is goal-directed and it's motivated, right? So motivational network, something called the anterior cingulate, primarily drives a lot of our motivation on the left. And so, you know, it's got a goal and we're going after it. And so setting goals, pursuing goals, being persistent, uh, believing we can hit goals, forming habits around goals. These are all left brain driven things. And again, dopamine systems play more of a role on left brain. And so dopamine, the reward centre, their reward reinforced. And so, you know, a lot of people struggle where they can't set goals and they can't stick with goals and they can't persist with them, and they procrastinate. Other people, it's, again, they're just so driven. So type A that like you said, they're just driving themselves too much. And either one of those things can create a lot of anxiety and create a lot of stress. Now, feeling stress or putting stress on yourself is one thing, but really what's more important is what we call stress physiology. And that really is a by-product of the way your brain is developing and functioning. And it really comes down to the balance of that sympathetic and parasympathetic. So, you know, there was a study, there's studies that I commented on in one of my books about, you know, they had people who felt like they were really stressed and, you know, people that would say, well, I feel like my my blood pressure is high. And, and when they checked them, they really didn't have high blood pressure and they really didn't have a lot of stress chemistry going on in their body, even though they felt stressed, right? Because they were so busy and they were so active. So being really busy, being really driven, being really active, isn't always a bad thing. But if you have imbalances in your nervous system, then, you know the sympathetic nervous system is what drives that fight or flight. And that's what really drives inflammation. And then that drives the anti-inflammatory system, which is that HPA axis, that cortisol, that corticosterone, and that chronically drives inflammation. And that's what kills us, right? Ultimately, unregulated inflammation is really what kills people. And that's really what killed people in COVID. And there's a lot of research now and some really good researchers in neuroimmunology saying that, you know, the people that died of COVID, they already had a set point for their sympathetic nervous system that was way too high. And so when they got sick and when they triggered that inflammatory cascade more, they couldn't rally their parasympathetic, they couldn't rally the anti-inflammatory system. And then it was like a fire that just can't be stopped. And that's where people died from. So, you know, that can be measured. Like if you do have high blood pressure, if you have a really high pulse rate, or if you have high cortisol levels, or you're have a lot of inflammatory markers, that is really what should be checked. Just being stressed or working hard isn't necessarily unhealthy. In fact, people that are, people that work hard and are and are stressing themselves, but are healthy, actually end up being healthier than other people.
Anthony Hartcher:And is that what they refer to as eustress, the good stress, in the sense that they're they're busy doing something that's really meaningful and purposeful to them. So they, yeah, okay.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Right. Yeah. They they're passionate about what they do. They love what they do, or it's feel like it's making a difference. And they may work really hard and people may call them an alcohol, you know, workaholics. But the fact is, they're, they're actually probably healthier than most people because they're so purpose driven. And even though they're working really hard, but, you know, they usually also take care of themselves pretty well.
Anthony Hartcher:And that's exactly what I figure. You, you're on this mission and drive and purpose and very inspired by the work you do based on, you know, what you shared today around your expertise and your level of understanding is unbelievable. And I really appreciate you coming on. For the listeners, can you please share how they can best connect with you or some resources that will further aid them in terms of supporting themselves or supporting a loved one?
Dr. Robert Melillo:Sure. My website, drrobertmelillo.com. I'm also really active on social media for an old guy. I have a pretty good Instagram following and we do a lot of things on Instagram, drrobertelillo. Also, there's a streaming network called Your Home TV. And my wife and I did a web series called Disconnected Kids, Reconnected Families. And it's been number one on that network since it came out about a year ago. And it has about three and a half million views at this point. And, you know, there's two seasons of a web series. I also have a podcast that we put out called the Melillo Method Podcast, Everything Brain. And that's available on Spotify and Apple. We're coming out with our second, a second episode shortly. We just recorded it this week. And then, you know, my book Disconnected Kids has been the bestseller. I have eight bestselling books, but that book has been a worldwide bestseller. It's translated in about 17 languages. And we have the third edition coming out this August. And that's available on Amazon or anywhere you get books. And yeah, that's about it. I have my private practise where I still see patients pretty much every day is on is in New York on Long Island. And we're opening up a new one in New York City by the end of the summer as well.
Anthony Hartcher:Amazing. I'll include all those links that you mentioned in the show notes. So the listeners and viewers can go straight to the show notes and get directed via the link that's most important to them. I really appreciate you coming on. It's been a very insightful discussion. I've personally learned a lot and I'm sure the listeners and viewers have. So thank you so much.
Dr. Robert Melillo:Anthony, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Anthony Hartcher:You're very welcome.
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