Is it Brain Fog or ADHD? with Roseann Capanna-Hodge

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 00:07

Hey everybody, welcome back to the energy MD podcast, where we are on a mission to help a million people increase their energy naturally by addressing all their root root causes so that they can have more fun and success in every aspect of their life. So I'm really excited today, because we're going to be talking about, is it brain fog, or is it adhd with the expert, it's herself, my friend, Roseanne, capenna Hodge, and so let's learn a little bit about her. Let me grab her bio. So a mental health Trailblazer, founder of The global institute of children's mental health and Dr Roseanne LLC. Roseanne is on a mission. Dr Roseanne is on a mission to change the way we view and treat mental health, showing people it's gonna be okay with science back tools that improve well being. That's also the name of her podcast, right? That's the podcast, it is gonna be okay. I love it, and I got a book. And the book, she is known for teaching how to calm the brain in order to have a happy family and give the keys to unlock the brain's potential. With her trademark method, brain behavior reset, she has helped 1000s address the most challenging conditions, such as ADHD, executive functioning, anxiety, OCD, mood, lime and pans pandas using science backed holistic therapies. She is an author of three books, including Her most recent book, it's going to be okay. And as a media personality who's featured on dozens of media outlets. Dr Roseanne, thanks so much for joining me today.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 01:34

Well, I love your your mission. I love that you're helping people who are impacted with things that affect their energy. And, you know, we share so many of the same clients. I work with a lot of younger clients, but, but also adults. And many times, people's brains are affected by infections and toxins. And in their health journey, they find us, you know, and they get better,

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 02:01

absolutely, yeah. And it's, you know, I talk a lot about the causes, and so I definitely want to get into those with you. But let's first define some of these terms. We're talking about brain fog versus ADHD. How do they differ? How are they similar?

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 02:13

Yeah, so let's, let's talk about brain fog, right? So brain fog is something we you might you. Everybody knows exactly what it is, right? They know how it feels, right. So when you think about brain fog, we're not going to talk about the root causes right now, but we'll save that. It's when your brain is having a hard time doing things easily right, where it feels like, oh, maybe I felt like I didn't sleep, or it feels a little muddled, and you're struggling, right? But your normal brain state is pretty much a healthy brain state, or maybe you already have something else, and you feel like it's even harder to focus, right? I always kind of explain it to like, when I work with parents, I'm like, it's like, when you just didn't sleep, that's kind of that feeling of brain fog, like everything feels like a little out there, right, like you're underwater, almost right where ADHD is a clinical condition. The symptoms must show up before age 12. And what are those symptoms? So struggling with impulse control or hyperactivity, attention and really self regulation of your thinking and intention systems and potentially your behavior if you have issues with self regulating and being impulsive and impulsive doesn't have to be as explaining to mom, a mom today, it doesn't mean when you think of an impulsive person that this is somebody Who's like obnoxious or pushing things over, verbally impulsive. It also can mean that you're just having trouble self regulating cognitively, like switching gears. But ADHD is the clinical condition. We know what it looks like when it comes to brainwave activity, and I have to say, because I do Q, E, G, brain maps, which is a way to look at the health of the brain, tells you what's overworking and under working. And when you look at the brain, somebody with ADHD looks different than brain fog. So ADHD shows way too many unfocused brain waves and not enough focus, typically, a straight brain fog will talk about some of the sources. What you're going to see is just a lot of unfocused activity, and you can see normal focused brain waves, so different patterning when we dig in

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 04:35

interesting and so you said that it's got to happen before the age of 12, right? Yes. So then there's kind of, there's a lot of people talking about it as adults now, adult onset. ADHD, how does that come into play?

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 04:47

Well, you know, Evan, I talked about this with you before. I am seeing this is a conversation that everybody is talking about, because during the pandemic, I got so many. Adults who are like, I think I have ADHD, and when you sit down with them, you know, sometimes we may not be diagnosed until we're an adult, but the symptoms were already there and we were compensating, right? So the difference is that when it is ADHD, and it's a true condition, a clinical condition, there would have been some symptoms, like, when I sit down with somebody and I say, you know, do you remember having a hard time in school? Like, do you remember getting in trouble? Do you remember turning in your homework last minute? Have you had difficulties because your partner tells you never listen? You know, like, there's some kind of effect academically at work or in relationships and all three, right? So when it comes to having a difficulty focus, right, I see it as way more of brain fog and even the next level of that, like, why is this brain fog happening, right? So could it be that you already had ADHD, the social isolation infections like covid, we have a huge rise in strep right now, just everyone being bombarded with different things. Of course, all our tick borne infection peeps, there's so many reasons you could be having a hard time being focused, and it's not always ADHD. And I always say that anybody who comes to me who says these says they have ADHD at every single age level, at a minimum, 50% of the time, it's something else. And you have to look at what else are some of those things and some of them I already mentioned. But we can, we can dive into that a little bit,

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 06:41

yeah. And my question is always, is the treatment going to be different? You know, if you're looking at the causes, and you're looking at a lot of different root causes for brain fog and for ADHD, do they have similar causes? And then, consequently, is the treatment going to be the same or similar? Yeah,

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 06:56

no. In fact, causes can be vastly different, a focus, and the treatment can be very different. I mean, the base of my work is to calm and regulate the brain with brain based tools as well as lifestyle, right? You know, diet and looking at nutrients and all these other things moderating stress. And I think that's the same no matter what, but then, if it's Lyme, it can't be the same thing as OCD or an anxiety disorder, right? So the getting to the root causes is really critical, and it's often why so many people feel that. Well, you know, Dr Roseanne, I've tried a lot, and I'm just not sure I want to come to you, you know, because I get it. You've tried a lot, but if you're not addressing the right issue with the right treatment in the right order, you're not going to get better. And in fact, some of the things you may have tried might be appropriate, but something else needed to happen first, right? So like, a perfect example of that is, I work with a lot of people with obsessive compulsive disorder, and I mean a lot of kids and teenagers and young adults, right? Though, that's really our kind of one of our specialties, because we work with people with pans and pandas, and it's just a very high CO occurring condition. So we had to get awesome at OCD, right? So somebody who comes to me with OCD and their source is covid, right? True story happens all the time. How can I treat that the same as if somebody has OCD, because it's genetic OCD, it's not the same treatment you have to go through. Why is this person having an autoimmune response to covid? Like, what is missing? Is it the nutrient levels that are affected always, always going to be that they're not detoxifying like 100% of the time, maybe their sleep is impacted. So we have to, I always say, take a 360 aerial view, we have to look at the ecosystem and find out, what are all those pieces. Because as much as everybody thinks they're going to come to you and I, and there's going to be one miracle, it's not the way it works,

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 09:13

right? Yeah, and you have

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 09:17

to look at all of it, and instead of feeling upset by that I say flip that script, be empowered by it. There's lots of ways to skin that cat like there's a lot of ways to get amplification to get improvement. So yes, you treat things differently. That's why identifying root causes and really being really checking under the hood and doing those diagnostics are really important, and that's why expert care is very different. When you go to somebody who isn't an expert, they're like, they don't know what they're doing, you know? And and so it's just so different, you know? I say you wouldn't get your heart checked by a foot doctor, right? Right? Just wouldn't, of course, but you know, why is it these other things when you're in a chronic, you know, state?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 10:08

I couldn't agree more, you know, oftentimes I'm using the piano example, like, if you want to learn how to how to play piano, you ask a piano teacher, right? You're not going to go and ask, you know, somebody who works on your car, right? You're going to ask them to fix your car. And so it's, it's the same exact thing. If you want to fix, like, fatigue with me, ADHD, OCD, all the stuff you do with you, right? You want somebody who's in it all the time, because then they've seen all the nuances. Because a lot of it is the bumps along the way that you don't know are going to happen. You need somebody who's seen them before and can tell you what's going to work,

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 10:41

right? I mean, and really, you know what they're bringing to the table. I mean, this is my 31st year in mental health. So, you know, everyone always comes to me and I to the brain map, and then we sit down, and they go, Is this the worst brain map you ever saw? And I'm like, No, but you get the benefit of all the other ones, right? And it's just there's, I only use science like I dissect everything by science, and that is why you have to get to the root cause. And I think, you know, certainly in mental health and certainly in medical health and medical support as well, we're not thinking like that. We're not thinking like, how is everything connected? And so people in this world, in this pandemic, when we bring it back to ADHD, they're like, I must have ADHD, and you can have adult onset. Well, you can't have adult onset. You can get adult diagnosis. And so we got to look at the history. And then, if you are struggling with focus, what else could it be? Right? Do you have long haulers? What is, was it a tick borne out? So I like to start with illness. If something went down, of course, I want to find out if there's a situational stressor, like, you know, I recently had a client who's doing really well, uh, trauma background, doing neurofeedback. And he was like, you know, Doctor Rowe, I'm feeling sad and I don't know what's going on. And I was like, gonna be Mother's day next week. They're like, and I was like, all your traumas around your mother? Mother, honey. No offense. I don't mean to sound like a psychologist, but the brain picks up on stuff. And I was like, what gotta work at it, you know? So sometimes we have to look at like, is there really some kind of stressor? Because stress can make you feel like you're ADHD who hasn't experienced that in their life, you know, whether you're a college student, and all of a sudden, you know, you have a million exams, and you're like, I can't focus on anything but studying, you know, like, right? Or you just had a baby, you know, whether you're the dad or the mom, and like, you have a bit, you know, baby brain. My My best friend, Shelly, is pregnant, and I was telling the the office right today, she's in the first trimester, and we're super sarcastic and crazy silly with each other and and I was like, Shelly, I wasn't going to tell you, but you have the worst pregnancy brain. You can't remember anything you know. And she was and in the office, they were like, you're so terrible to tell her that. I was like, that's our relationship. But she was like, I totally do, bro. Thanks for being the only person that would tell me that so she doesn't have ADHD. Like, you know, she just her hormones are off. So, you know, hormone changes. I mean, talk about that. So hormone shifting, men and women, we never talk about male hormones, but I get a lot of males in their 50s coming to me thinking they have ADHD and they were never diagnosed with it. I get a lot of concussion, birth, trauma history, and sometimes when the hormones shift in their 40s and 50s, then the way the ring was compensating was no longer can compensate. We need hormones for memory. And when your memory goes down, you can confuse it as an attention problem. But I think the biggest thing that I see, besides infections affecting causing brain fog, causing attention problems, is probably straight old clinical mental health issues, you know, depression, anxiety, stress, we we want to think you can function because you have been and we want to think you can keep going at a high level, sort of like alcoholism at a certain point. You know, your body can't handle it. It's the same thing with those clinical issues. Most people with clinical mental health issues function and they're working and they're in relationships. It may not be going great, or you might be a hot mess on the inside, but you can't just push and push and push. When I see a brain map, I see hyper connectivity, lots of anxiety, a lot of over processing. Dying, and, you know, you have to be kind to your mind. And if you're not, it's going to start, you know, not working as well, and attention brain fog are some of the biggest issues that I see. Yeah,

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 15:13

I want to get more into that being kind to your mind. But before we do, one of the things that I see is with with chronic fatigue syndrome, with long covid Is that we're looking at over 30 causes, but there's always, like a combination of about 20 of those causes. But if we find those causes and we fix them, then the symptoms go away. I wonder how much of that happens with mental health? How much is genetic? How much do you see as environmental, whether it's the hormones or deficiencies in nutrients or the the infections, molds, whatever. What are you seeing with those Can you, can you really get rid of of those causes and fix somebody's depression or anxiety or OCD, so 100%

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 15:55

you can fix them, right? Um, again, it is a multi pronged process. There is no magic wand, um, and you have to use science. We have to use what we know about the brain, what we know about the by body. And guess what, the person I'm working with, the child, the family, they gotta work like this. Ain't this? Ain't like, you know, so, um, you know, every week somebody flies into me, you know? And sometimes it I treat all kinds of people, right? Um, but there is no magic wand, but let's back that up, right? So you have to identify the right things. And I, I know that the majority of people I work with have infections, have toxins impacting their brain. So I start with a Q, E, G, and when I see because I now, you know, I can interpret these at a very high level. I've done well over 10,000 of these. So you when I see it, and I see Lyme, right? And I have 100% accuracy in Lyme, I send them to a physician. So I'm not a medical doctor, and then I'm like, you've got to treat the infection, right? But then what happens in 100% of the time, no matter what the source is genetics or whatever, I have a dysregulated nervous system. And so if the nervous system is dysregulated, what we know from science, the study of stress is called psycho immunology. And psycho immunology tells us that when the body is in a stress state, it's almost impossible to the body for it to heal itself. If it does try to heal itself, it's not going to do it in optimal way, right? So I calm the brain, right? Calm brain, happy family, so I calm the brain. You work with a medical provider to treat the infections, but then, when it comes to toxins and infections, what happens? You know the answer to this, Evan, it wakes up. All the genetic snippets, like our epigenetics are things that are potentials that may or may never happen, but sadly, things like, you know Epstein Barr covid, you know herpes six, Coxsackie mold. You know all your your Bartonella and Babesia might the two double B's of trouble in the world of mental health, they really can wreak havoc and and then on top of it, if almost everybody's got MTHFR, you're not detoxifying, right? So you have this cascade of stuff, again, that feels very overwhelming. But when you work with people like us, we know how to unravel it. And then, in my situation, when there's a mental health problem, first you have to regulate the nervous system, and then you have to do coaching or therapy like you can't ignore the behaviors like my OCD people that have pans or pandas, right? So strep or variety of infections, so strep is pandas, pans is any infection or toxin. A lot of times they're like, Well, I'm going to the best doctor in the world, Doctor Rowe, and then I'm going to go do Neurofeedback or PEMF with you. And I don't really want to do therapy for OCD. And I'm like, listen, it's the way the brain is the brain. It's, it's a habit in the brain. You could want all you want, your brain's gonna keep doing the OCD looping. So let's do it. Let's, let's get it done. You know. So I had a mom this week. She was in this situation, and she's so lovely. And she, she, she, they're a Jewish family. And what did Jewish families do in the summer, send their kids to camp or the whole summer? And she was like, I want to do this, but I want to go to summer camp. I want them to go to summer camp. And I'm like, Listen, you. Sorry, like, this is, you know, it's like, if he had cancer, you wouldn't think about it. You'd have to do the chemo. Like, like, we got to do it. And I was like, I hear you. Let's have a short term pain for a long term success. So she heard me, and she's doing it, you know. So nobody likes to be derailed. And please, know everybody I I'm a Special Needs mom times two. I have a child with remediated dyslexia, and I have a child with pans with tick borne infection. So, hey, do I like that? You know, I had to homeschool my kid with pants. I had to do all that. No, but this is what, what we did, and we made the best of it, and we move forward and and whatever you can do to really get to those root causes, lower stress, regulate the brain. That is how you lick these things. This is how you not just like, be okay, and manage it. This is how you thrive and get on the other side of it, you know? Amen, that's important. Yeah, amen. The

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 21:04

other thing I want to talk about that you touched on is the difference between diagnosis and causes. You know, because a lot of people, they kind of latch on to diagnosis and they're like, Okay, I've got this ADHD diagnoses. I've got this OCD diagnosis. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between a diagnosis and a cause? Yeah.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 21:25

So, I mean, we, we have, our system is set up in a medical model, right? And it's very much ruled by pharma, right? So every diagnosis leads to a pill. Okay, that's the way it is. It is in mental health. It is a way in physical health and and, and what we have to do is say, why, right? So when we talk about symptoms and please, know you don't have to have a diagnosis to get treated. You, if you have a symptom, don't ignore it, right? But just because you were diagnosed, most people come to me with shopping cart diagnostics so their mental health. They're like, I have a history of social anxiety. I have now I have disruptive mood disorder. Now they told me I have OCD and oppositional defiant and add and I'm like, okay, that's called a dysregulated brain, right? So you have internalizer and externalizer symptoms, right? Then, I, what I do, because I'm so like, Evan, heard me give my data speech before here. Like, I, what is the greatest pain point? Like, where do I gotta hit first that's gonna have the best? Like, like, relief. You need relief, right? And you know that's so important. But we, we can't get hung up on that diagnosis, because the person that you probably got your diagnosis, what from you're here with Evan and I, because you didn't get better, and so the diagnosis is just what their training is. So I and Evan, we've been trained traditionally, and we chose to do functional training, and functional training is all about connecting the dots, right? I I always think of my I know I'm a mental health detective, so I had to get involved in medical you know, I I've only been integrative because I only had complex cases right out of the gate. And so when you work with the most complex cases, kids in psychiatric facilities, you quickly realize that psych meds and talk therapy doesn't work, right? I should use a bunch of words that are four letter words right now, but I'm not, but it doesn't work. So you and I, I don't believe that. I believe that everybody can get better. I don't believe that you can't the degree of getting better that's just unique to what's in that person's body, what their spirituality is, what their mindset is. The more spiritual my clients are, the better their outcomes, independent of the condition. Like the worst cases I have, the more spiritual they are, the progress is immeasurable. Please know that it's pretty incredible, actually, and so we have to start really thinking differently. And we can't just say, well, this is my diagnosis, and people are here, like, I recently did a like, a live because somebody who provides a service to me, I came in and I was like, telling them, like, oh my gosh, this Hollywood producer called me and they want me in this major Docu. Phil. And it's going to be on, you know, HBO max on natural solutions for ADHD and and I said to him, he said, Can you talk about that? And I was like, 1000 times, yes, I can talk about it. I was like, have you seen my work so? And he knew, but it was, it was pretty amazing. So we talk about and the next thing I know, they tell me that they put their kid on medication, and so this is something I've known a long time, and the first words out of my mouth were, you're gonna damage your child's brain. And they got very upset with me, and I said, Listen to me. You asked me my opinion, and I'm gonna give you my opinion. So they then said, Well, how do you know this? And I was like, Do you not follow me? Do not read my stuff. So I literally sent him quick, quick. Here's the blog on this, here's this, here's that. And his, his, his response was, I did it because I had no choice, because the teacher was putting so much pressure, I get it. So then I said, listen to this episode Gail, because she was in the same situation. And, you know. But he said, Why doesn't the neurologist tell me about like, diet in this and root causes? And I said, Honey, they just don't. They've chosen not to get the training. So, you know, you you're so I encourage them to go to an integrative person. I'd said, here's what you want to do. We want to check we didn't even talk about nutrient levels and, you know, things like that. Sometimes you could be obscenely low in in one or two nutrient levels, and it could cause massive cognitive issues. Um, right. So there's just a lot of things that could be done before we get to psychiatric medication. I also want to be really, really, really clear that the research and in my book, it's going to be okay. There's a 2020 January, 2021 study that people that have infectious disease have very poor responses to psychiatric medication and have a very high rate of side effects. So so we want to be mindful about, you know, treatment does not have to be psychiatric medication. Treatment should always start with, why is this happening? Right? So that we can get to the right treatment, and a pill does not most people realize, Evan, when they get to me, the pill doesn't fix it. You gotta, you gotta work on the behavior, you gotta work on the mindset. You gotta have lifestyle. You're not gonna eat Cheetos and not have brain fog, right? You

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 27:37

can get away with that for so long, and then I don't want

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 27:39

anybody who gets away with it. No

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 27:43

teenagers. Good thing about me,

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 27:44

if I anything disgusting, like, I feel it immediately, you know, like, I'm like, Oh, God, why did I do that? You know? But at the Cheetos people, when, when somebody finds me dead by my car, it's the it's whoever owns it's free to let

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 28:01

so let's talk about therapy. You kind of alluded to treatments and therapy a little bit. I know you got a lot of different tools in your tool but tool bag, what are your favorite tools that you use for these mental health conditions? Yeah.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 28:13

So I work on calming the brain and then resetting behaviors. When it comes to calming the brain. I love neurofeedback. I love PE, MF. We've even developed our own P, E, M, F device specific to infections and toxins. Pretty cool. I actually have her here because I do on my podcast. It's a little device, and it's I custom design all the protocols it goes through. There's a brain fog one on there. There's things that are very specific, but these things are designed to support the nervous system in regulating and Neurofeedback directly trains brain waves. And we work with people remotely all over the world. Also love biofeedback. You know, things like heart, math, they're just unbelievable. I mean, they really help people so much. And again, you're you're putting your body, unless it's getting into a parasympathetic state, all of the body's resources are going to try to find out why it's so activated, particularly for people that go into a very hyper activation, or a fight, flight or free state, which can happen to very young children. It can happen to anybody. Compounded stressors, infections. Can move the body so we get it into a parasympathetic state. Doesn't even have to be perfect, but we create wiggle room so you're not in this complete activation, because if you're in there, you don't have control over your brain, like you're not going to be able to think. You know, talk therapy is almost a waste of time. So then, I believe in very specific types of psychotherapy, once you're regulated so you have OCD, what's the. Treatment for that. That's ERP, you have trauma you're not only going to do trauma therapy, you're not going to do talk therapy. You're going to go to a trauma therapist. So that and you got to change behaviors. You can't say I'm anxious and I do X, Y and Z. I'm going to take Zoloft, but I'm not going to change X, Y and Z behaviors. What are the healthy behaviors that are going to come in? I mean, it's got to be diet, it's got to be lifestyle. It's got to be, you know, learning how to set boundaries with healthy, you know, with with toxic people, you know, being kind to your mind, so you're not so negative. You have to make changes, you know, and they start out small, so they don't feel so heavy. And once your your brain knows it's making these changes, it becomes easier, you know, becomes lighter. So, you know, mental health can change. I have the privilege of helping people every day completely change that, you know, script that it's, Oh, you gotta have OCD for the rest of your life. Oh, you gotta have anxiety for the rest of your life. No, so. But if somebody comes in here and thinks, Hey, doctor, bro, I'm only doing this, I'm not doing any of the other things, well, first of all, we don't accept you, but it's not the way, you know, and stress is always there you gotta, you gotta find a way to counter it. That's for you, you know. Like, I just did two endings in our six month program, and I was like, here's what I want you to do forever, you know. And I laid it out for them. And one was some, one was Heart Math. Like, I was like, I want you to do Heart Math. And then I was like, you've benefited so much in your brain from doing the probiotics. Let's make sure you continue it, you know, switch between these two. You know, it can be those kind of levels of things and and this was a family that also really worked on trying to control their stress. So we laid out some of the things that they behaviorally as a family, needed to continue doing. And I was like, How do you feel about that? Do you feel like you can manage that? And they're like, Yeah, because it's been helping, like, good, you know,

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 32:12

brilliant. So you have a free gift for our audience. It's the quiz, right? ADHD quiz? Yes, yes.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 32:19

So you can go if you want to know if it's ADHD or something else. You can go to WW Doctor roseanne.com forward slash, is it ADH ADHD quiz?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 32:31

We'll drop it. We'll drop the link below. Yeah, yes, please do. And then best place for people to find you learn more about this amazing work that you're doing, well, you can just go to www.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 32:41

Dr roseanne.com, and my podcast is there. My book is there. It just has all the resources and lots of blogs I love to write. So it's I make it a resource hub for people

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 32:58

brilliant. Dr Roseanne, thank you so much for joining me today.

Roseann Capanna-Hodge 33:02

Well, thank you for this conversation. And you know, if people are struggling with ADHD or brain fog, you know, take a step towards changing that.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD 33:11

Amen, reach out to Dr Rowe, I hope you learned something on today's podcast. If you did, please share it with your friends and family and leave us a five star review on iTunes. It's really helpful for getting this information out to more people who desperately need it. Sharing all the experts I know and love and the powerful tips I have is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Thanks for being part of my community. Just a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. It is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Thanks for listening and have an amazing day. You.