What parents should know about the MAHA report

ADHD gets mentioned a lot in the new report from the Make America Healthy Again commission. It’s pitched as part of the “childhood chronic disease crisis,” and the authors make a lot of big claims:

• Food additives cause behavioral disorders

• Time outside can help treat ADHD

• ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated

But are any of these claims legit? We asked a licensed psychologist who specializes in learning and thinking differences like ADHD. Dr. Andy Kahn also happens to be Understood’s Associate Director, Behavior Change and Expertise.

He’s spent decades working with kids and families with ADHD, and he joins this episode of Hyperfocus to talk us through more of the MAHA report and what it has to say about kids with ADHD.

(PS…if you didn’t listen to our last episode breaking down the science in the report, definitely  go check it out.)

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.

• The MAHA report on ADHD is misleading — a researcher explains why

• ADHD meds at risk? Unpacking the new executive order, DEA proposal 

• ADHD alternative treatment  

(02:00) How do food additives interact with ADHD?

(04:58) Can exposure to environmental toxins cause ADHD?

(10:07) Does lack of exposure to nature lead to ADHD?

(16:55) All about ADHD diagnosis and treatment levels

(28:55) Recap of takeaways from the report 

Rae: Do food dyes really cause ADHD, and is it actually overdiagnosed? The new MAHA report makes a lot of claims, but experts say it's not that simple. As you might've heard, the "Make America Healthy Again" commission has released a big new report on the quote, "childhood chronic disease crisis," unquote. In it, ADHD gets mentioned a lot, and in ways that are pretty striking and pretty confusing. Like, do food additives cause behavioral disorders? Is more time outside a way to treat ADHD? And what do we really know about overdiagnosis?

It's a lot to get through. And people, especially parents, are wondering what it all means for kids with ADHD. On our last episode, we talked to Dr. KJ Wynne, a researcher who helped us understand the methods that were used to create the report, and she broke down the reasons why many of the conclusions the MAHA commission drew were flawed. If you didn't watch or listen to that episode, I highly recommend going back and checking it out.

And on this episode, I'm talking to Dr. Andy Kahn. Andy is a licensed psychologist who specializes in learning and thinking differences. He's also Understood's associate director of behavior change and expertise. Andy has spent decades working with kids and families with ADHD, and he's here today to talk us through more of the MAHA report and what it has to say about kids with ADHD. I'm Rae Jacobson, and on this bonus episode of "Hyperfocus," we separate fact from speculation on the MAHA report and ADHD.

Thank you so much for coming to talk to me today. This report is long and, for me, very confusing, but I get the sense that you can help me make sense of some of what I've read. So, are you OK to dive in?

Andy: Oh yeah, let's go for it.

Rae: My favorite answer. So, one of the things that gets a lot of ink in the report are food additives, in particular, food dyes, like Red Dye 40, which I've heard of. And it says they increase the risk of a number of things, including ADHD. Could you help me understand a little bit about what we know about how food additives interact with ADHD?

Andy: Sure. So, the challenge with a lot of this information is that there is some research that shows that food dyes, particularly red 40, has been associated with short-term exhibiting of things like hyperactivity or challenges with attention or even worsening of behaviors. And the core here is that the research talks about it as being a momentary experience. You ingest the substance for a period of time. The body reacts, and this is in some kids, this is not every kid, and in turn, because you have this momentary sort of symptom, it can make things difficult for kids who react to those different additives in the dyes.

The reality here is that talking about causation is really a key. There's no evidence that it is causing ADHD, and I want to emphasize this. We're talking about red dyes showing symptomatology in some kids, in some situations that make their functioning a little more challenged. But it is not, there's no evidence that is a causative factor in ADHD. In fact, if you're not ingesting the substance a little later, then those reactions go away. So, the causation has not been proven.

And I think the challenge here for so many folks is that the common sense is that if we can avoid certain additives and dyes and things that aren't naturally in our food. OK, that makes sense. That doesn't sound like a bad thing. Talking about causation, talking about one thing leading to another requires a pretty high level of scientific proof, and it just doesn't exist.

Rae: OK, so, sure, if you ate something that had red dye 40 in it, a kid might be more hyperactive or have more intense ADHD symptoms for a little while. Is that right?

Andy: Correct. Exactly.

Rae: But like having red dye when you're a kid doesn't suddenly make you have ADHD, it doesn't cause ADHD.

Andy: No, and very clearly that's not what the data says. The data says that it's, you know, we're seeing an association of people reacting to the dyes, but there's no evidence of any causation with this. ADHD is a disorder that occurs from a wide combination of factors, be it genetics and other factors within the brain and development. So, it's not something that's been proven to be caused by something like a short-term ingestion of a dye or some sort of food.

Rae: Got it. It's not something you're getting just because you decided to eat a fruit roll-up.

Andy: You're not acquiring ADHD, you're not catching ADHD. This isn't the common cold. This isn't something that you're going to get from exposure to something in the short term.

Rae: Well, I'm glad you said the word "exposure," because that takes me to my next question, which is that the reports just said exposure to environmental toxins, and I think in this they're including like a pretty wide range of things, while kids' brains are developing, including during the teen years — which I was surprised to read — is a major cause of ADHD.

Andy: Yeah. So, again, when we talk about something causing an illness, a disease process, a disorder, there's a very high standard scientifically to talking about how one thing might lead to another. And again, there is very little evidence to support that specific exposures cause ADHD. There has been a body of literature that talked about early exposure to lead paint, ingestion of lead paint in high amounts had been associated with increased ADHD in certain populations of children. And we're thinking about, remember, we're talking about lead paint is something that you see in older homes. You see it in places where people may not have access to update their decor, or they live in an older apartment.

Rae: Right. I've had my pipes tested for it.

Andy: Exactly. And I think in those situations, sure, there has been some evidence that there's an association between lead paint exposure and ADHD. Keep in mind, this doesn't take into account. A thousand other factors: genetics, other situations that could result in people being predisposed to having ADHD. So, again, the causation word here is something we need to be really careful about, and the sad truth is this report uses causation in a, in a very non-scientific way, peer reviewed articles are always going to talk about causation, in super careful way, because being able to say something A causes something B requires controlled studies. It requires exposing people to certain things and other people not to them in a controlled fashion.

Rae: It sounds like it would be unethical then to expose a group of kids to lead just to see if it causes ADHD.

Andy: Yeah, this is not something we're gonna do. Obviously, most of these studies are based on correlation. So, if you talk about causation in studies, usually what you're gonna see is there's a study with rats where they're actually exposing an organism that has some similarities to humans, to some substance. You know, some artificial sugar or a food dye. And then they're going to make an assumption when exposed to 36 cans of saccharin a day, or the equivalent to a rat, that it causes some illness in that rat.

Now again, causation in humans is something that requires a very high standard of scientific proof. So, that's one of the things that's really challenging in this report, is that we want to be cautious. There, it makes a lot of sense to think about how do we protect ourselves and our families from things that are potentially dangerous or could cause ill health to us. And I think that's something that the report talks about, in some ways it's really helpful. But when we talk about causation for ADHD and specific childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, the evidence isn't there in this report. And that's the thing that I find most concerning.

Rae: So, if I'm understanding you right, of course, we should not be exposing kids to environmental toxins. Of course, it is safer for children not to have, say, lead in their pipes or lead paint on their walls or any of the other myriad toxins mentioned in the report. But, to say that these cause ADHD, you would have to do far more research than we're seeing here or that has been done. And so, as it is, what the report's really saying is "We think," not "We know."

Andy: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And to be concerned with this, I think, is valid. Obviously being concerned with what we're exposing our kids and ourselves to is really important, and I'm glad there's a conversation about it. I think the conversations can become destructive when people are trying to draw conclusions or to take information out of context and I think that was my prior, that's my primary concern with a lot of the research that's referenced is that if you take a line out of context, you can draw conclusions and make people concerned about things that aren't proven in the actual studies that they're referring to.

And unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of that in terms of the ongoing conversation about the studies being used, how they're talking about causation, and the conclusions that are being drawn. And I think that's the area where, you know, our parents, our audience really needs to be mindful and look for good sources of information, like what we offer at Understood.

Rae: Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up parents because one of the things that I keep coming back to in reading a lot of this is that these are a lot of things that, I know that you have talked to me about this, that you've often said parents end up blaming themselves for. Like, "My kid ate something that I shouldn't have been eating, and now I think they have ADHD because of it." Or like "Our house wasn't as clearly monitored as I would have liked it to have been." And of course, a lot that has to do with privilege and with the ability to make those changes or just previous knowledge.

But there's another piece of the report that feels like it also falls within that, but it's interesting, which is that they talk about nature and ADHD, exposure to nature as a sort of protective or curative factor for kids with ADHD. Specifically, they say that time spent in nature can help reduce ADHD symptoms, like something as simple as taking a walk in the park, and that lack of exposure to the nature has a detrimental effect on kids' ability to focus, ability to stay calm. That all feels pretty reasonable to me, but the way they're framing it felt a little confusing. Could you talk me through that?

Andy: Sure, sure. Yeah. So again, when we intersperse common sense into this information, it would make sense for many of us to say, "It's ideal for kids to be active, engaged with their environments, and out in nature when they have opportunity. And these things are good for all humans. So, when we look at research on the impact of movement, activity level, getting out and about, and doing things that are physically helpful for kids and for us as adults, it makes sense that that would be something we would aspire to. The fact that the absence of this or the reduction in this is causative of some neurodevelopmental condition, again, isn't supported in the literature.

Rae: That "cause" word again.

Andy: Yeah. And I think, I think that's really, it's consistently talking about what is the standard that we use to describe what is leading directly to something else? I think a lot of the idea that if you said to me, "Would you recommend as a psychologist that kids have more time outside and more physical activity and are doing active things more so than being sitting in a chair playing a video game?" I would say unequivocally, "Sure. That makes so much sense." And kids have momentary benefits to their attention and focus, and overall energy and sleep, because they do these things.

I wouldn't say to you that only if they do them at the park or only if they do them out in the forest or that by doing it they're going to no longer have ADHD. I would say that those things are just not true. The general core of this message is that kids who engage in reasonably moderate to intense physical activity experience reductions in and improvements in ADHD symptoms for a period of time following that activity. That's something the research says. So, to extrapolate, to build that out, to say that kids need to be in the woods or they need to get out and do these things as a treatment and as a cure is an overstatement of this fact. And I think that that's the concern here.

If you're a parent of a child who lives in the inner city and it's not practical to get to a wooded park, should you consider yourself a failed parent who's not treating your child's differences? Unequivocally, no.

Rae: So, it sounds like in all of these that we've talked about so far, there are nuggets of truth, there are pieces of common sense, there are things that are reasonable to be aware of. But the conclusions that the report puts forward don't necessarily drop in literature. They're not based in what the studies they're citing says. And it, it all seems to sort of swirl around what you just said, that parents are being sort of told that like, if you just don't do these things, or if you just do these things. Then your child either will or won't have ADHD.

Andy: Yeah, I think that's characterized correctly. And I think the other part of this is that I think it's really short on what we can physically and actually do for our kids and the honest assessment of how it helps us and how it helps our children. The reality is foods that are accessible, for example, to us for the lowest cost per dollar are foods that ultra-processed, the foods that aren't really great quality foods. So, sometimes that's a challenge in terms of when a parent says, "Oh, you know, my kid had a Ring Ding after school today. I'm causing their ADHD."

This is not what we're talking about here. It's about using practical, common-sense approaches to having a sweet and process treat isn't the end of the world. Let's just avoid making your everyday diet. And I think those are the kinds of things that can help people live a realistic life where they're not beating up on themselves all the time. And being blamed for causing something that their children are neurologically predisposed to or genetically predisposed to.

So, my takeaway from a report like this is I take the realistic and the common sense parts and I try to think about "How can I make this practical in my life or in my clients' lives in a way that doesn't make them feel like crap all the time?"

Rae: Yeah.

Andy: And I think it's too easy to do that. And the average American isn't solving a lot of these problems.

Rae: So, when you say "the average American can't necessarily affect these," I guess then when I read this with hope, the hope that I feel is that these may affect policy. It would be wonderful if we had clearer regulations around food additives that were dangerous, or we had better access to healthy food for everyone, regardless of where they live, or what type of grocery stores they have access to, or if they're on assistance. It'd be really great if we could have better monitoring for lead paint in schools and in homes where children are growing up, and other environmental toxins. That's something we could affect via policy.

And finally, even green space, you know, building more green space in urban communities would be amazing. It would be great if there was easier access via public transportation to places where kids could get out and go run. These all seem like hopeful ideas, if not things that we can use to talk about ADHD and the way the report is talking about ADHD.

Andy: I would absolutely echo that. I think that, you know, the natural fallout here is that we want Americans and particularly our kids to be healthier and to have access to things. Listen, kids don't have a choice, don't make these choices in and of themselves. You know, we have, this is about access and opportunity. So, my hope is that some of the takeaway here is we're going to be more mindful of these things, perhaps without having to be so fatalistic about "Oh gosh, we're causing these things." And I think that's, that's a realistic concern, is that some people aren't going to be able to see the common sense messaging mixed into all the things that maybe aren't completely accurate.

Rae: One of the big things in the report that sort of veers away from environmental stuff and more into the way that we think about ADHD, the way maybe the people who are writing the report think about ADHD, is that ADHD is vastly over and misdiagnosed. So, I'm just going to give you this quote from the report because it really stood out to me. Well, it's actually more than one quote. So, in their report, they say, quote, "Research shows that ADHD has the strongest evidence of overdiagnosis, with studies noting that for youth with milder symptoms, the harms associated with ADHD may outweigh the benefits."

It goes on to say that "Misdiagnoses —of ADHD, I'm assuming — leads to unnecessary drugs," I'm assuming they mean treatment, like people being prescribed drugs unnecessarily, unnecessary treatment, and social stigma. So, can getting an ADHD diagnosis actually harm kids? What are the consequences for kids who are misdiagnosed with ADHD?

Andy: Yeah, it's a great question because I think that it stands as a bit of mischaracterization of the data. I have not seen data that supports that being diagnosed with ADHD or, in this case, diagnosing someone who maybe as a subtle case who's not, shouldn't be diagnosed with ADHD has led to significant harm. The thing we have to keep in mind in terms of harm is that what is the agent of harm? If the agent harm is getting access to support, is getting involved in a treatment protocol, qualified providers are going to be experienced enough to know, "OK, this isn't working. Let's try something else or let's reassess."

So, at the core, the evidence just doesn't support that this form of misdiagnosis is causing specific harm. If people aren't getting appropriate care or are getting poorly qualified care, sure that there's a risk, but that risk would also apply to people who are appropriately diagnosed. So, I think that's an overcharacterization.

Rae: So, one of the things in the report that I really wanted to ask you about, because you have so much experience working with educators, working with families who have school-aged children, is a part where, and I'll just read you the quote if that's OK, where they say, "Schools eager to," quote unquote, "fix kids by addressing behavioral challenges may inadvertently contribute to this trend," the trend of overdiagnosis, "by encouraging diagnoses to access support, potentially mislabeling typical developmental behaviors as disorders." What is your reaction to that?

Andy: I think the hardest thing for me, having spent so many years in schools, is that a school's job is to support kids. So, this indication that somehow the goal to fix kids by putting them on some sort of arbitrary path is a mischaracterization. Schools have, by design, screening methodologies to find out where are these children relative to their development? What skills should they have at each age? So, the schools are designed to look at all children and to find out what they need to succeed and to navigate their educational experience.

Schools aren't resourced in such a way that somehow they're gonna invest all this time and energy to put kids into services that they don't even have the funds for. So, I think that's a gross mischaracterization here. We want schools to be eager to support their learners, to help them get access to what they need. The idea that we're using this identification process to somehow mislabel kids or to put them on a certain path isn't entirely accurate.

So, an additional thing here, right, one of the things that happens very frequently is that there is a tendency for certain children to be overidentified as having behavioral challenges or to be misidentified based on behavior as opposed to what might actually be underlying their learning differences. And unfortunately, we see this in populations who are economically disadvantaged, children of color. And we've seen this in the research. The reality here is schools are underfunded and undersupported. So, they're not gonna be eager to just thrust kids into evaluation processes.

Let's add on to this for a second. The idea of mislabeling or overidentifying as being some sort of cause of harm. What we see most often in schools is that if we're providing attention to a child for a specific concern or need, we're looking to increase access to learning, supports for social emotional development, and to guide what is naturally occurring developmentally for them. So, schools don't have the funds the staffing, or the energy to try to over-identify a five-year-old with something we wouldn't expect to see in a kid who's 12 or 13. So, again, it's a mischaracterization of this. Schools don't benefit from this kind of mindset, and it's not been what I've seen in my daily work, and it is not what we see in the research.

Rae: Got it. And it doesn't sound like this is something that they're doing to fix kids either. It sounds like when kids are identified as having a need or they are trying to find maybe an IEP plan or a 504 plan with working with the families, they're trying to support kids, not fix them.

Andy: I'll be honest, that terminology offends me because I think that there's, we are looking to support kids. We're looking to the health, welfare, learning, and development of kids and Americans as a rule. So, the idea that there is something there to be fixed, it really just doesn't show appropriate sensitivity to something's hard, a child reacts, shows behavior, and in turn needs to learn new things. That's not fixing the child. That's navigating and training, and supporting them.

And I think, unfortunately, that's a tone here that I think does a disservice to educators and to teachers in general, is that they're being asked to do a lot with very little money and very little support. So, they're looking to provide the best support for all kids, not just kids with differences.

Rae: You just said that in such a lovely way. I hope no good sum up for it, because it's exactly so rational. And it kind of leads me into a lot of the major discussion of ADHD in the report, which is this idea that kids are being deliberately or frequently overdiagnosed or misdiagnosed with ADHD. I'm still not 100% clear on the difference between overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis. I would assume one leads to the other. You misdiagnose, and that's overdiagnosed.

I want to understand a little bit more about what the report has to say about that and what you see in your work, and what we see in the research. Because it says that kids with ADHD or many children with ADHD are being misdiagnosed. They don't actually have ADHD. They have either a different condition or are simply kids being kids. I'd like to understand more about that, in no small part because it suggests that a misdiagnosis of ADHD could cause harm to a child, that getting an ADHD diagnosis can cause harm. Can you help me understand what they mean?

Andy: Well, I can try to tell you what I think they mean. I think in the grand scheme of things, the idea of overdiagnosis is something that leads to misdiagnoses, meaning that somehow the process of how we assess children is too broad and is capturing too many kids who don't have the diagnosis. The reality through the research is that as we've developed better tools, more knowledge of the criteria of diagnosis, and created greater access to evaluations for kids who may have ADHD, that we've seen a significant jump in the number of people diagnosed. And I think that just makes great sense.

If we think about the impact of misdiagnosis, assuming that what we're doing is not correctly diagnosing someone who either doesn't have the condition or something else, how that essentially leads to harm isn't established. The idea here that...if you're engaged in the appropriate care for ADHD, seeing a provider who is knowledgeable, engaging in sort of the gold standard approaches to treating ADHD, a provider who is monitoring a child's functioning would see fairly rapidly that what they're doing isn't working.

The other thing to keep in mind is that so much of what we do in therapy and in the skill-building aspects of treating ADHD universally helps kids and people across the board. So, to characterize that those treatments are causing harm just doesn't connect with what the literature says.

That being said, we wanna be mindful of continuously improving how we provide training to individuals who are evaluating for ADHD and making sure that providers who are providing the care are continuously up to date on what does the research say, what to do if your child or your client is not having success, and what are the reasonable steps potentially to reevaluate that child if we find something like anxiety or exposure to trauma is manifesting or showing in a way that looks like ADHD, which is something that we do see from time to time.

But the addition of support and care to that child has not, in my experience or in the research, been shown to be essentially damaging or harmful to those children.

Rae: It sounds like what we're saying is, if a child is struggling, being identified, even if it's maybe being misidentified because the screening process wasn't as thorough as we might hope or things can look like other things — you mentioned that trauma and anxiety can masquerade as ADHD — there are reasons why someone might get an ADHD diagnosis that was inaccurate, but the likelihood that the treatment for that would cause harm to the kid is not what we see in the literature.

Andy: And I think that the implication from the report is that this is rampant and that this is something that is happening and affecting large numbers of people. And I think that's just essentially not true. The other thing to consider is that parents who are looking to have their children evaluated are already showing their engagement and their interest in what their children are going through.

So, giving parents some credit for how they're going through the process of getting their kids treated and educating parents, like we do at Understood, in the treatment methodologies, the standards of care, how to help your child at home, whether with or without medication, are all things that are there to support families.

So, I think that, again, it is a mischaracterization. It is taking something that may happen in a very small scale and making it appear like it's happening to thousands and thousands of people on a regular basis, which there just isn't evidence of this.

Rae: So, what you're saying is this is something that happens, but not on a vast scale, that would imply that this is a serious public health concern.

Andy: Absolutely not. I think what we're seeing is that as we're getting better at identifying what's affecting our youth and affecting folks in terms of neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, that we have to spend and invest our energies and time in continuing to do more research on improving the care, improving the assessments they receive and looking at what kind of supports we can provide that would be supportive to all kids so that when the interventions are put into play, they're not a stigmatizing event for kids.

The fact that we can provide organizational supports for a kid with ADHD. Well, of course, that's gonna help all kids. So, why don't we just try to embed more of these structures into our day-to-day supports for kids in general? Because those skills that develop mentally occur could be supported for all kids.

Rae: So, Andy, we talked about a lot today, so I just kind of want to recap really quick because I think it can be hard to keep all of these things in our minds. It sounds like we're dealing with things that make sense in a common-sense way, but the way they're represented in the report doesn't really feel true to the research and to the literature. Is that right?

Andy: Absolutely. So, for something like food dyes, I give you the example. You know, if your kids are going to have an occasional really sweet treat and a really junky treat, there's nothing wrong with this. It's not going to damage it and give your child ADHD. But as a general common sense rule, having more balanced diet, getting more fresh fruits and vegetables, in-season foods, this is always going to be advantageous. But these things aren't proven to cause a specific illness, but common sense should rule out.

And certainly, environmental toxins, we know that they are damaging to us in some capacity. They may not cause ADHD per se, but it would be important for us to avoid them and take them out of environments where we can. Finally, access to green space, or more importantly, being physically active. There's some common sense to this. None of these things are curing ADHD. What they're doing is giving you access to places to move, to be out in your environment. And these are good, natural, positive things for the human body with or without ADHD. But it's not gonna cure any condition.

Rae: Got you. So, all these things have validity when it comes to improving life, maybe avoiding other diseases like cancer when I'm thinking of environmental toxins, reducing hyperactivity in the moment when we're talking about food dyes, and just generally having a higher quality of life when we talk about access to green space. But the way that the report represents them as either curative or causative of ADHD is inaccurate.

Andy: Yeah, I think overly, they're grossly overstated. And I think the idea here is let's stay with the most reasonable common sense messaging and figure out how to make this applicable to our own homes and our own families without making claims that are really too, just too over the top for what the research really supports.

Rae: Got it. So, to the second piece that we talked about, schools wanting to fix kids by overdiagnosing ADHD or the fact that ADHD is overdiagnosed in general, what is the takeaway there? What's the top line that we should be sort of going away with when we put down the MAHA report?

Andy: Yeah, certainly, at the core here, schools are trying to help kids. We're not talking about fixing anybody. Schools are consistently screening and checking how kids are functioning in the day-to-day. And the fact that schools are looking to provide support where necessary and improve what they do makes tons of sense. Schools are not looking to fix anybody. This is not how they approach kids.

As it relates to that, when we think about overdiagnosis, overdiagnosis is something that is, in many cases, really overstated. We have better tools, we have better knowledge, and we have better access to treatments today for ADHD. So, the fact that more people are learning about ADHD and interested in it would lead to lots and lots of increases. The idea that misdiagnosis is rampant is widely overstated, and that certainly being involved in the right treatments with the right supporters, even if misdiagnosed, can give you the opportunity to shift the focus of treatment or to move children to different forms of support if they don't actually have ADHD.

Rae: Andy, thank you so much for coming on today. This really helped me understand what was a very long, quite confusing report. And I'm just very, very grateful to have access to someone who understands this from the perspective that you do as somebody who works with families, who's a psychologist, and who specializes in and has ADHD.

Andy: Thanks, Rae, I appreciate being here. It's a lot of information to process for folks. So, I'm glad we can at least get something out that can hopefully help people.

Rae: "Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Christophe Manuel. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, you can donate at Understood.org/give.