I’ll be talking about ADHD, the microbiome, and Chinese medicine.
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Hello and welcome to the– My name is Moshe Heller, and I am, I wanted to thank the American Acupuncture Council for letting me present today. And today, I’ll be talking about ADHD, the microbiome, and Chinese medicine. Can move this… Let’s move to the slides All right. I wanted to discuss this topic because I just actually returned from a conference in in Germany, in Rottenberg where I was I heard a lot of very interesting lectures.
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One of them was how we can view the microbiome in Chinese medicine, and the other one was about ADHD, and I wanted to combine and give some ideas about this concept. And that’s what I’m going to be talking about today. Oh, sorry. The first thing I wanted to discuss is the microbiome and and how we can view that in Chinese medicine.
And I think we can think of the microbiome as this balance of our earth element and the relationship to all the other elements, meaning that the earth is placed in the center and is the axis between water and fire, and also between wood and earth. So it provides this balance of between the different elements and provides this kind of basis for this transformation that needs to happen at, in the earth element.
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The– I also– This also correlates to the idea that there is a relationship between our neurological system, our gastrointestinal system, and our immune system. We call it in our course, in the Jing Shen Pediatric course, the neuro-gastro-immune triad. So it’s related to the triple burner, and it is the relationship between our ner- nervous system, our gastrointestinal system, and our immune system.
Meaning that especially as relating to the microbiome, that there’s a strong relationship between our gastrointestinal or our gut and our nervous system, our brain. The term that’s coined a lot in Western alternative thinking or complementary thinking is the gut-brain axis, and we know a lot about that.
And we’ll s-… What I will s- show is that there’s a relationship between that and the Earth, strengthening the Earth in Chinese medicine. What we… This sort of conclusion that kind of brings us to think that this, that our gut health equals a strong earth element, equan- equals a balanced brain.
Meaning that when we have dysbiosis or issues with our gut, then our el- earth element is imbalanced and our brain can be also have dysfunction. That could cause brain fog, as a very, a good example, but also just difficulty in concentrating and keeping o- on track. And that’s where ADHD might manifest.
I thought it was very interesting in the lecture that there is a PubMed research that was done on the 12 most common u- single herbs prescribed for childhood ADHD. So we have 12 of them. And look at them, and when we look at them, there’s quite a few that relate to the earth or harmonizing the hear- earth Shengdi Huanggui that is a herb that really strengthens the spleen, but also helps resolving phlegm and dampness.
And Shan Yao, we all know as well as Fu Ling that are very important for strengthening the earth and resolving dampness and phlegm. We also see some other herbs that connect to the whether it is the the fire or earth and and heart relationship, or spleen and heart relationship, as well as ones for just calming the shen and spirit and strengthening the kidney energy.
So as it relates to the to the brain when we look at treating ADHD with herbology in particular there are there– I wanted to bring the patterns that are associated with the spleen and stomach and, or with the earth. And so the first one we– I wanted to bring up is spleen vacuity with dampness.
So that’s, that in these cases, we’ll see poor concentration. There could be excess movement or fidgeting, a lot of fidgeting, difficulty in focusing and keeping your mind focused in one thing. And there’s a tendency if there’s this kind of lassitude of spirit or what I sometimes asso-associated with b-b– what we might call brain fog and just, and then some digestive issues, loose stools, etc. And the main formula that we might use for that is Shen Ling Bai Zhu San. And we know that Shen Ling Bai Zhu San is a great formula to use when there’s dampness in the spleen, and it’s also really an important ba– formula for balancing your microbiome.
And there’s a strong relationship between using the, this formula and balancing your the your gut microbiome. The-there’s other possibilities of using herbs like Ban Xia Hou Po Tang if there’s more dampness and liver involvement, or Xiao Jian Zhong Tang for more of a pure deficiency of spleen qi.
So this is an example of one pattern that’s associated with the spleen. The other one that I wanted to bring up is actually heart and spleen qi vacuity, which we might call the heart, the the Gui Pi Tang syndrome. So in this case, we’ll have a lot of paleness, pale face, pale nails, pale lips, and a lot of fatigue and, but on the other hand, insomnia.
So these children are tired all the time on one hand, but they cannot sleep and have a lot of dreams and issues with that. They can become very anxious quickly and short of breath from being anxious and have a very poor appetite and a tendency for loose stools. And we can see so these are the symptoms, and we will be using a variation of Gui Pi Tang, which is the classical formula for harmonizing or strengthening spleen qi and heart qi and supporting heart blood.
I as you can see you can read that the ingredients that I created a v- a slight variation of Gui Pi Tang if you are trying to address ADHD in particular then I wanted to show the third pattern which is the last one we’ll discuss where we get phlegm heat. Phlegm heat pattern, phlegm, and of course, spleen vacuity is very much connected and associated with one another.
These– This is more of an excess type of pattern. There’ll be a lot of excessive movement in speech, differently– different– difficulty controlling oneself, meaning that just very reactive and you act first, think later. Lack of concentration, easily angered. Sometimes they b- have these outbursts of violence a lot of agitation, and sometimes you’ll see the phlegm actually present, whether it’s coming through their nose or having coughs.
And and also if there is some heat, there could be also some bad breath when you you can notice that. So when we see these– all these patterns, we can use the formula Huanglian Wenden Tang with different variations. So Wenden Tang is a very important formula, I think, when there’s phlegm that’s misting the heart orifices or or causing different types of emotional behaviors especially this obsess- obsessive compulsive tendency.
And the Huanglian we add because of the heat and trying to cool and dry, dry the phlegm you– this is the main formula for this kind of pattern showing the… There’s three different patterns that I’ve discussed here associated with this spleen imbalance that creates pa- symptoms of ADHD.
And so the, If you would like to hear more information about this type of diagnosis and in generally treating ADHD we have a course that will happen in the fall of 2026. Please log into our website at jingxing… jingxianpediatrics.com to hear more information about this course.
Again, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for letting me give you this information, and I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much.