Alabama's Morning News with JT
Dr. Francis Murphy covers the Adderall shortage
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We're joined now by a healthy living expert who's been treating patients for more than three decades and has worked in countless patients with ADHD, Dr. Francis Murphy. Dr. Murphy, welcome to the show. Thank you. So, Dr. Murphy, what is causing this shortage? Well, it's being prescribed for a lot of off-market reasons, and people are taking it as a stimulant so that they can focus on their studies, right? That's why most Adderall, Ritalin, is for kids who are having a hard time in school. But there's a lot of off-label uses alertness to enhance cognitive abilities, to stay awake, weight loss, recreational reasons, and then to give kids a competitive edge. These are all off-label reasons why somebody might take it, and then show the people that really need it are now competing with people that are using it for a reason other than. Dr. Murphy, is there a problem with other than the shortages, but are there negative consequences for being on this drug, especially being on it long-term? Oh, yeah. It has a big time effect on your nervous system over time, and we're not, you know, we're not driven, our bodies aren't driven to be stimulated all the time, and we're driven to rest 80% of the time and only have high levels of energy under stressful situations which shouldn't comprise more than 20% of your life. Another thing I always worry about when taking a medication, especially a medication like this that can affect your nervous system, is your body already has mechanisms in place to cope with things, and if you are supplementing that with an external drug, if you take that drug away, your body might have lost the ability to create its own wakefulness in its own state of alertness. Absolutely. Do your body down-regulates the production of important products when you hand the products to your body without having to make them yourself? So Dr. Murphy, for those people who are dependent and do have a legitimate reason to be on drugs like Adderall, who are not able to get them, are there some other natural pathic remedies that people could turn to to possibly, I guess, you know, fill the gap? Yeah, I mean, if you look at all the tiny little reasons why people have ADD and ADHD, each one of them can be attacked, like kids need to stay away from these monster drinks and these heavily caffeinated drinks, these drinks with artificial sweeteners, and they're really, really bad for the nervous system, and the parents need to stay away from it too, 'cause pregnant women have been associated with kids that have ADD and ADHD. Cell phone usage is a huge contributor to ADHD because the kids are being inundated with lots and lots of 15-second stimulants, right? So they get 15 seconds worth of something, then they go to the next one, the next one, before you know it, they can't stay focused on anything for more than 15, 20 seconds. I gotta tell you, you are actually behind the times, Dr. Murphy. It's not 15 seconds. If you've watched TikTok, it's three seconds, one second. You basically, the way it works in TikTok is the video runs, and if you're not interested in less than a second, you just keep scrolling up, keep scrolling up until you have five when you're interested. And it's created, remember back in the '80s when they were concerned about MTV because of the nature of the music videos, the quick clips? Now, it's these things that are like a fraction of a second, and kids are bored in a fraction of a second. In 2004, the attention span was two and a half minutes for your average teenager. In 2012, 75 seconds, in 2022, 47 seconds. This is a dramatic drop in a short period of time. It seems as though in five years, we won't be able to pay attention to anything for any length of time at all. We have the attention span of a goldfish. It seems these days, Dr. Francis Murphy, thank you so much for joining us. 5280 Exterior's James Hardy sighting is a low maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels woodborne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280exteriors.com, 5280exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor 5280 Exteriors, the Altitude of Quality.