Kat Timpf reveals personal health concern as Joe Rogan questions ADHD meds

Popular podcaster Joe Rogan has gone viral for raising concerns about kids and adults alike taking medication for ADHD.

He was recently speaking with Fox News contributor Kat Timpf, who herself has been on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications for decades when the topic came up.

“I don’t know what this is, because every time someone talks about ADHD and people want to insist that it’s an actual pathology, that it’s an actual issue, I’m always like, boy, I don’t know, because I think it’s a superpower,” he said.

“There is no biological free lunch, and there is probably going to be some sort of long-term damage to a lifetime of stimulating your system… I just wonder the difference between doing coke five nights a week for a few hours versus a pill that you’re taking every f***ing day that jacks your system up,” he added.

During the podcast, Timpf, 35, revealed that she was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of five and soon after prescribed amphetamines. However, she said she recently stopped taking her meds because she’s pregnant.

Rogan replied by saying she seemed “like a wonderful person” off the meds.

“I don’t think you need it,” he added.

“I feel like I am getting to meet myself, but also not really myself because of the pregnancy,” Timpf responded. “I am curious to stay off it a little longer after the pregnancy just to see. I am going to go back to some extent.”

She warned that when she previously quit taking her meds, she felt as if she was “wading through mud.”

(Video Credit: Joe Rogan)

This isn’t Rogan’s first time addressing ADHD. Two years ago, Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Mate claimed ADHD isn’t even a real condition.

“A lot of so-called experts say [ADHD] is the most heritable illness there is, and I say it is neither an illness nor is it heritable,” he said. “Poor impulse control, and sometimes the hyperactivity — difficulties sitting still and tendency to fidget, and all that, this is not a disease, this is not heritable.”

“He suggested that normally when someone is stressed their fight or flight response is activated,” according to the Daily Mail. “But in cases where someone cannot do this, the brain may instead simply tune out and not concentrate — in what has been termed ADHD.”

All of this comes days after the BBC ran a report revealing that the number of Brits taking ADHD medication has hit a record high.

“Nobody predicted that the demand would go up so massively over the last 15 years, and especially the last three years,” Dr. Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick, who’s been running ADHD clinics since 2007, said.

That said, he warned that there’s a difference between more diagnoses being made and more people having ADHD.

“What has changed is the number of patients we are diagnosing,” he explained. “It’s almost like the more we diagnose, the more word spreads.”

Professor Emily Simonoff of the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People agreed, saying that only about five to seven percent of British children have ADHD.

“It’s pretty similar across the world,” she said. “That’s been consistent and it hasn’t actually risen.”

As for the “steep incline” in people reporting ADHD symptoms, she said this comes after years of “long-term under-recognition” of ADHD.

“She points to statistics on ADHD drugs,” the BBC notes. “She would expect about 3 to 4% of children in the UK to need ADHD medication, but in reality, only 1 to 2% are actually using it. She thinks this shows that we are still underestimating the scale of the issue.”

“I think that’s an important starting point for when we say, ‘My goodness, why are we seeing all these children now – are we over-identifying ADHD?’” she said. “We have under-diagnosed or under-recognized ADHD in the UK for many, many years.”

Vivek Saxena

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