Tim Ferris, James Nestor, ADHD and Breathing. By: Dr. Nishita Ondhia

Tim Ferris is an American entrepreneur, investor, author and lifestyle guru. He is known for his 4-Hour self-help book series — including The 4-Hour Work Week, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef that focus on lifestyle optimizations.

The Tim Ferris show, podcast #829 with Guest James Nestor, author of best-selling book “Breath” supports the idea that ADHD is a breathing problem and not a neurological problem.  It emphasized the need to screen for sleep issues when screening for ADHD.

This is word for word from the podcast discussing SDB and ADHD.

James Nestor is talking ….

“And one of the biggest things that I found, and I don’t know how interesting this is going to be to talk about, but I’ll throw it out there and then you can edit it out if you want, is the amount of kids that have sleep disordered breathing.”

“This can be snoring or sleep apnea or some sort of dysfunction in their breathing at night.  And then if you take that population of kids who have these breathing problems at night, and if you take the population of kids who have ADHD, those two diagrams almost completely intersect.”

“And what so many researchers are saying is that ADHD does not exist.  What you’re looking at are sleep deprived kids.”

“And the most shocking thing to me is that a kid that presents with ADHD, they’re never assessed for their breathing, they’re never assessed for their sleep, they’re given drugs and put on their way.   And I think it’s criminal.”

“And so this is something that really sort of ruffled my feathers.  And its’s something that I try to talk about whenever I am discussing this stuff, because it’s vitally important.  I think that we’ve been approaching ADHD, its a neurological condition.  I think its mostly a breathing problem”

By: Dr. Nishita Ondhia