OTC Supplements in Preventing and Treating Mental Illness

today we're looking at the over-the-counter supplements in preventing and treating mental illness so the most common treatment for depression and mental illness is what it's medications yeah and so medications are number one and um and so supplements are not near up there on the list comparatively although as you'll find out today they really should be but before we go to this the learning objectives and i'm sorry that got carried over from anxiety disorders this this is about supplements understand the role of nutrition and supplements in treating mental illness learn how to be more precise in choosing which nutritional supplements will help which mental health symptoms and understand how to follow up and adjust the nutritional supplemental approach based on follow-up symptoms and labs and of course this is one of the characteristics of our residential program as well where we look at all of these things so this is the synapse there's over you know about 10 trillion of these in your two and a half pound brain and in fact it's it's pretty amazing you know last night when we were being asked what is the brain i kept wanting to say 100 billion neurons 10 trillion synapses glia structural support cells divided up into lobes the function and those type of things that's what i was thinking about uh but uh i knew that's what what he wasn't looking for uh but he actually gave us a nice biblical answer that was well appreciated of course that's his uh the background that he's coming from but in regards to these uh synapses uh the electric of course our brain is an electrical organ and it communicates through brain chemistry and so once that electrical signal comes you see the serotonin vesicle in response being released into that synapse and then you seeing it being picked up by a receptor that is designed to pick up that receptor and then the electrical communication continues on down the line and so we also see on the side there those serotonin reuptake inhibitors so after the synapse occurs synaptic activity occurs that receptor releases that serotonin molecule you can see the arrows going back to the neuron up at the top and that serotonin molecule is to be vacuumed back into the original neuron that released it why is the brain designed to do that what's it trying to accomplish it's trying to accomplish saving that serotonin why is it so important to save serotonin can't we just get it directly from our bloodstream and we can eat serotonin maybe we can get iv serotonin and it can fix all of this by the way if iv serotonin could fix depression it would be the most popular treatment for depression but you can give all the iv serotonin you want and it's not going into the brain it's not going into the brain due to what we call the blood brain barrier it's too large to get into the brain by the way the same thing is true with dopamine i know in the icu it's not used so much anymore but in the icu of course i've been doing icu work for many years when people had low blood pressure we actually used to put them on dopamine drips and the nurses were familiar with dopamine and depression and they would say why aren't these people's depression getting better look at all the iv dopamine we're giving them well the iv dopamine that dopamine isn't going across the blood-brain barrier and so you have to make the dopamine the dopamine in the brain is very important the serotonin in the brain is very important but we have manufacturing plants in our brain to make that but we need the substrates to get there so if we have a shortage of serotonin you'll find out that shortage of serotonin might be due to lack of light is was just discussed it might be due to a genetic issue which we're going to discuss it may be a combination of different factors but if we have that neuron short and serotonin do these medications that the doctor gives you to say this will help your serotonin levels does that medication help you produce more serotonin in the brain uh does it actually help you build up more receptors for serotonin in the brain so that we can get more synaptic activity it doesn't do that either so how is it working is the doctor inaccurate saying that this will help your serotonin well you know in a loose way the doctor is accurate it's helping the cir the synaptic activity of serotonin because it actually is designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and get into those little side channels and plug them up they're actually vacuum cleaner pluggers and the vacuum cleaner pluggers allow more of that serotonin to be in the synapse so if we have a shortage it will bind onto the receptor have a longer period of time to bind on because it's not going to be vacuumed back up now it takes it a while to plug those channels that's why these medicines don't work right away it's going to take at least a week before we start plugging those channels at least a month before enough of it gets into the system to start plugging those channels and then the individual starts experiencing symptoms of improved serotonin activity what do you think is going to happen over the course of months taking something that plugs the reuptake of serotonin in the releasing neuron it's going to short the neuron of the substance it's already short of that we're trying to treat because we have a problem producing the serotonin and so now we don't have enough serotonin going back up to have that reuptake aspect of things and so about a year later is when we anticipate a relapse back in to the same symptoms they had before but now they're taking medicine and so this is why these individuals have to continue to go back and see doctors because they have to have their medications increased they have to have additional medicines utilized and by the time this patient ends up in our program normally they're on four different medicines and they're still severely depressed and at that point there is even a greater depletion of these um of the the storage of these important neurotransmitters and by the way this has been described a lot of times i get even from medical people i don't see where that's talked about that these things actually cause more depression down the road yes it is it's well documented in the scientific literature and if you want to learn more about it look up dr whitaker at temple university whitaker has documented that whenever antidepressants are released into society the rates of depression and anxiety start to go up considerably one year after the release of those medicines and so that doesn't mean that we don't prescribe these you might think well you know this is a physician that's just anti-medicine no there are times in fact there are times sometimes even in our program we have some people that come with no medication at all and they're they're not wanting to use medicine they realize some of those effects and we actually will utilize a lot of lifestyle effects but they may need these medications short term until we're able to correct the underlying defects and so when i'm utilizing these medicines i'm using them for usually less than six months because within 20 weeks we can make a dramatic difference in people's ability to produce this and often far less time than that and so the the actual solution is to find where the defect is in being able to produce these neurotransmitters appropriately and then sometimes we're actually producing too much of one and not enough of another and we'll go into that as well that can create a significant imbalance that the drug companies really don't know how to deal with it all uh when it gets to that type of of imbalance and so um let's take a look lack of serotonin and dopamine production in genetics when we get into the symptoms of lack of both of these there's there can be a genetic reason for it and it can bring about depression and anxiety and when we look for the genetic reason we actually look at the methylation pathway and what builds up when we're under methylating and it turns out it's whole blood histamine that builds up this is not the histamine that your allergist orders that's a serum histamine we used allergists actually thought whole blood histamines would be useful and so when you see this on a report you're actually looking at the allergist's normal values but it turns out since they have been doing this we've recognized that when the whole blood histamine goes up the individual is under methylating normal whole blood histamines are between 40 and 70 but they have to be drawn very carefully you have to it's whole blood you have to freeze it on contact it's a lot of different handling aspects that are not just done in a normal doctor's office and then we can also actually look at a methylation profile where we can actually look at esodential methionine levels and escidential homocysteine levels acidentacyl methionine actually assists in methylation as we'll talk about you'll see that that little aspect coming up and escidenseal homocysteine actually prevents methylation it's a it's a a methylation um down a regulator and of course we don't want to have too much methylation but it because if we have too much methylation there are side effects like increased risk of cancer and there's increased risks of even mental health issues when we get into too much methylation and some people genetically actually are over methylators and not near as common so this is one of the the aspects that we look at in methylation methylation is actually adding a carbon and three hydrogens to a molecule which can significantly transform it and as you can see the methyl donation if we look at the end of that the methyl donation provided by sami that's esodential methionine that we just talked about actually adds that final methyl group to produce the final step in the brain of making dopamine 5-hydroxytryptamine which is serotonin and norepinephrine and so this is something that's going to have a significant impact in boosting our ability to produce three of those neurotransmitters and essentially the vast majority of psychiatric drugs are dealing with one or more of these molecules that are released and so this is where the main pharmaceutical profits are made from is in trying to boost the synaptic activity or maybe blocking in some cases these from binding on to the receptor and so let's back up a little bit you can see folate is very important in this we're going to be talking about folate you can see the mth fr aspect of things is also important homocysteine when the homocysteine builds up there's usually a methylation problem and then methylcobalamin vitamin b12 is very much related to this this is why some people are short in b12 we give them a b12 shot and almost right away maybe two days they'll feel like we i have energy i feel so much better i'm not as depressed in those sorts of things because that b12 has actually helped them to produce more sami to start producing more of these neurotransmitters so our treatment for undermethylation once we find an undermethylator and of course as you'll find out there are what should we say there are personalities that go with undermethylation i thought i was going to show that there but i actually don't have it let me back up again just make sure we might have actually hid that slide or maybe it's coming up later if it's not coming up later well even if it is let me just talk about some of the aspects of undermethylation in regards to personality one of the most classic aspects is an individual that on the outside looks like they have it all together they've got a calm exterior but inside they are tense on top of that when things happen they tend to ruminate they'll go over things in their mind over and over again as a result there's a tendency for them to have obsessions they'll obsess over things of lesser importance and then neglect things of greater importance these are individuals that also tend to have more controlling aspects if you're in a relationship with an undermethylator they're going to have a tendency to be a little controlling and they will also have tendencies to go into addictions more in fact the addictive aspect of genetics is often related under methylation and so these individuals will be more likely if they're exposed to become alcoholics they're more likely to become pornography addicts they're more likely to have that particular challenge and then there's other aspects of the personality that go into this as well so when we see the blood tests i'll often go through the personality with the individual afterwards and i'll say okay do you have this do you have that and you know it's bingo almost all the way down and they'll say you can tell what i'm like just from a blood test uh you know it's it's amazing how we can actually tell personalities in regards to some of these mutations so the treatment for it obviously is esodential methionine this is something that has been studied extensively we'll tell you more about it saffron also helps this uh randomized controlled trials on all of these calcium and magnesium if we're short in that it'll help it for short in b12 as i mentioned methylcobalamin will help it for short in folate it's methyl folate that will help it and for the anxiety component which is pretty significant among these under methylators i didn't go into this yesterday because i knew i was going to be talking about it today with the genetics of anxiety the inositol is pretty amazing in helping to calm and under methylate her and help them to be able to not have so much of this rumination and obsession in things it can even help with sleep 5 hydroxy tryptophan can be helpful uh in at certain times 5-hydroxytryptophan is not serotonin but it can turn into serotonin and also melatonin normally under methylators are not only going to be short in serotonin activity they're also going to be short in melatonin activity and so they can have problems getting rejuvenating sleep i mentioned 115 clinical trials have now been done on sami many of them randomized controlled trials and um the vast majority of them show to be sammy to be significantly helpful in treating depression it's also been used in randomized controlled trials using it in addition to antidepressants and it actually augments the effects of antidepressants because we're ability we have the ability to make more of the serotonin people with under methylation tend to do well at first with ssris when they're given ssris within a month they say i guess my problem all along was i had a prozac deficiency and so they they really like the ssris but once again it's it's kind of a slippery pathway that's coming up on them but also like ssris they can induce mania in bipolar patients so if you have a bipolar patient that's had mania before you have to be cautionary a lot of psychiatrists actually prescribe ssris for bipolars and manics but they have to watch them because they recognize where this can go and the same can be true for sami interestingly unlike ssri sami improves sexual function ssris actually cause all sorts of sexual side effects but not sami in fact it's been shown if you have sexual issues to actually help them and unlike the ssris no weight gain associated with sami whatsoever there's no tolerance that develops and it's also been shown to help in randomized controlled trials a number of other factors and this is when you know this is what i like about natural agents often we're using them for a specific purpose but we'll notice that they help with so many other conditions as well and sami is one of those that helps with memory it's been shown to help with osteoarthritis in fact there's even studies showing it can regenerate cartilage in certain cases it's helped with fibromyalgia and it also helps with parkinson's disease why do you think it helps with parkinson's because increased dopamine we're able to make more dopamine for the cells in the substantia that can't make it uh i should mention a lot of people are concerned about sami causing serotonin syndrome serotonin syndrome is something that's caused by medications which is we all want to stay away from it it's confusion and headaches and palpitations and and it's pretty dramatic when people experience this and often i'm hearing okay sammy is it going to be serotonin syndrome there has never been a case of sami inducing serotonin syndrome in anybody no matter what the dose when it's used by itself there's only been one instance when serotonin syndrome was described with sami on board but it was using a high-dose ssri where the ssri was increased and it was probably due to the medicine and so you don't have to worry about serotonin syndrome when it comes to sami unlike when you're utilizing these other medications folate and b12 deficiency the common mediator of these is reduced sami and correction of folate and b12 deficiencies may alleviate depressive symptoms and augment the response to antidepressant therapy and of course once we are able to methylate we can make more melatonin to fix and rejuvenate nighttime hormone and it can increase our ability to experience pleasure we're better able to manage our stress and it um lack of melatonin of course can result in insomnia and early morning awakening and when we boost that it can be of help as well now what about boosting methionine levels adenosine methionine actually takes on methionine and is one of the ways in which we can actually help ourselves methylate is by getting methionine now methionine is one of these things that we can get too much of as well most of the essential amino acids you can get too much and not enough the non-essential not as important if we get too much in fact it can also often augment things but notice that star at the top methionine is present a lot in meat and there's a few individuals that are plant-based eaters that are very restrictive on a lot of their foods i can't have this i can't have that and whatever and someone will tell them a doctor you need to eat meat and when they eat meat they'll actually start feeling better the issue is not that the meat is helping but that they were methionine deficient and they could have gotten some other foods to be on methionine or they could have taken a methionine supplement and it would have helped but we don't want methionine levels in too high an amount because of the increased risk of cancer as i mentioned too much methylation methylation when it's in excess is going to increase your risk of cancer and a number of other health issues but you can see tahini and chia have some pumpkin seeds butternuts hemp seeds are quite high in it brazil nuts are the highest nut in methionine and then the legumes and grains you can see the ones at the near the top notice wheat is near the top there's a lot of plant-based eaters that are wheat-free and they're also restrictive in other areas and wheat is actually a very healthy food if you're not gluten intolerant and so it's less than four percent of the population that need to worry about wheat wheat also has a lot of tryptophan in it and so it can help us make more serotonin in the brain and fortunately you can still be wheat free and get your methionine you can see there's one food that's actually higher than that but it's a concentrated source and of course edamame is pretty high in it and some of the other beans as well so a lot of people also think well to make more serotonin we need more tryptophan and tryptophan is present a lot of people recognize it's present in turkey and so shouldn't turkey be an antidepressant notice this this uh study tryptophan is transformed transported into the brain by a transport system that is active toward all the large neutral amino acids and tryptophan is the least abundant amino acid in the diet if we eat tryptophan it also doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier we have to have a carrier to bring it across and that carrier produces brings across all of the other large neutral amino acids there's competition between the various amino acids for the transport system so after the ingestion of a meal containing protein the rise in the plasma level of the other large neutral amino acids will prevent the rise in plasma tryptophan from increasing what brain tryptophan the idea common in popular culture that a high protein food such as turkey will raise brain tryptophan and serotonin is what unfortunately falls and so we really need to have tryptophan in the appropriate um ratio of the other large neutral amino acids to get it across and it turns out the plant-based foods are the way of getting that done another advantage of the plant-based foods it's an insulin-mediated mechanism we have to have insulin receptors and carbs on board to get the tryptophan across so these people that are on these ketotic diets where they're deficient in carbohydrates they're going to have significant challenges eventually in getting that tryptophan across and that's why these diets are unsustainable really for the long term and so magnesium also very important in this pathway magnesium has been shown to increase brain serotonin levels there's been studies showing that it will improve depression and anxiety in two weeks and those that take magnesium particularly if they're short in it 500 milligrams of magnesium four times daily for a total of 248 milligrams of elemental magnesium a day showed in a randomized controlled trial to significantly improve depression and one of the reasons is it helps with methylation and it can also augment other neurotransmitters including gaba aminobutyric acid which is your calming agent this is why in many natural sleep aids they give you magnesium at night magnesium fortunately can be absorbed well on an empty stomach it doesn't really cause problems on an empty stomach so you can use it at night and the individual will sleep a lot better because of augmenting the gaba magnesium of course is present in foods and you can see the vegetables that are high in it spinach is number one swiss chard number two the seeds and nuts that are high in it hemp seeds are number one pumpkin seeds number two but flax seed number three and then the legumes that are high in it uh you can see edamame up there again but cat junk beans are at the top and the grains that are high in it are particularly oats and buckwheat is number one in magnesium we measure everyone's magnesium when they come to the program we're measuring all of these things we're measuring b12 we're measuring folate we're measuring magnesium and we're doing this so that we can see where particularly our designer aspects of supplementation or designer aspects of foods if they're low in magnesium we're going to say have you tried buckwheat before maybe you ought to get on this on a regular breakfast time period i show you this picture because what are we getting from this yes we mentioned it earlier it says red stems that are saffron and 30 milligrams daily of saffron has actually been shown to be equivalent to prozac in six weeks in improving depression scales but once again no sexual side effects with a saffron it's not a vacuum cleaner plugger by the way the reason uh you know you can imagine why drug companies don't call their drugs vacuum cleaner pluggers uh but uh but they have much more sophisticated names selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor but notice the saffron improves also premenstrual dysphoric disorder even smelling it helps and of course this is a whole nother area of aromatherapy we know with the ophthalmic nerve it can work and it's also been tried against the leading drug in treating alzheimer's and it was shown to be just as effective for memory and the leading drug but without the side effects of the aricept it also seems to inhibit the amyloid beta protein development and that's just part of it if we take a look at these randomized trials it's pretty amazing and meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials saffron was comparable efficacy traditional anti-depressants without any reports of what serious adverse events reported you know drug companies would love to be able to patent something like this if they could patent it i mean they would be on top of the world as far as profits are concerned but why can't they patent it it's already in nature the government will send them back prior art and so normally when that happens they try to find the active ingredient and then they'll try to add a methyl group onto it so it can change a little bit and it's not in nature and then they'll study that and then they'll do a randomized controlled trial and sometimes it works actually fairly well but once you start changing nature you might have some side effects as well one a study showed that saffron was as effective as fluoxetine in the treatment of major depressive disorder upon review of how many randomized controlled trials this isn't just one eight randomized controlled trials we can have confidence in this it also has been shown to improve memory premenstrual syndrome but once again it takes about four to six weeks for maximum benefit i can tell you in our program when we have under methylators and those sorts of things it's normally a combination and they're wanting as quick a result as possible but unfortunately two of the most expensive supplements on the market because there have been so many randomized controlled trials are sami and saffron and it was kind of disconcerting to put people on expensive supplements like this so we actually put these two together uh and once we were able to do it we're able to get the cost down so now it's less than either of them combined in a in a supplement that that is available for under methylators folate deficiency linked to depression and it's been linked to depression in so many studies and now a recent study showed it's linked to what if you have a low folate level you have a 27-fold increase risk of suicide so even looking at blood tests we can start seeing where suicidal thoughts come from we need a thousand micrograms of folate a day for the optimal mental health and you can see that if you try to get your thousand micrograms from steak that's a double serving of steak you might have to eat so much steak you might die that day getting your thousand micrograms and so your plant-based sources are much higher and you can see at the top we have okra lentils and you can get all of your source from one food black eyed peas fortunately here at weimar we get our black eyed peas from an organic farmer in sacramento and we have this readily available for our depressed patients so once we get that serotonin level up we'll see actually some positive changes in personality by the way one of the things i didn't go into in under methylators under methylators tend to be pretty competitive in fact your baseball pitchers who are your young award people these are under methylators these students that are straight a students and they have to get the top score these are often under methylators so we see under methylators among professionals competitors those sorts of things and many times people don't want to be treated for their undermethylation for fear that they'll become less competitive and actually they don't become less competitive as far as their production and ability is concerned but they become much more friendly in their competition and so uh once you have more serotonin it's easier to empathize with others less self-centered not as easily irritated if there's an irritation problem and anxiety a panic problem that's often serotonin they're better at managing their emotions and self-control and they become more creative and artistic and more musical so if you have a high performance individual that gets more serotonin it's actually going to add a lot to their life and it improves their impulsivity in other words less impulsivity and improved executive function and most under methylators they can be very kind and things to their family but they're not individuals who would go out of their way for strangers at all and uh once adequate serotonin is there they actually are it's easier for them to be able to empathize with others makes a a great neighbor great work mate great family member as well over methylation that's less than eight percent of people that come to our program these individuals because they have so much serotonin activity they're already naturally empathetic toward strangers and so you would want to move next to a to an overmethylator if you could because when they're uh when they cut their lawn uh they'll just cut your lawn because they're uh they want to be kind to you and they're sympathetic and compassionate the fact that you're so busy and they'll be checking in on you and all of those things it's just more naturally these individuals are more naturally artistic as well and creative and when we see these this whole blood histamine less than 40 i'll be asking people particularly it's way under 40 and you'll see very creative artistic individuals but because of their overmethylation they'll have high labial anxiety they'll be very great people but then if something ticks them off or irritates them boom it can go the other direction pretty quick and they also tend to have a tendency to be hyperactive and histrionic and they these are the individuals that are sensitive this whole list of food and chemicals they'll come into our program with 25 different foods or 40 different foods that they can't eat because they're sensitive to this and sensitive to that they've been having all these allergy tests which are not very helpful and really the problem is just over methylation insomnia is common in these individuals but you give them an ssri and they get worse within three days this is making me more anxious this is terrible i need to stop this or they'll just stop it without telling you and so this is why it's important before i prescribe these medicines of course they're coming to me and they've come to a lot of others but even in my native patients which i have few of that come to us first but even in my native patients i don't like to prescribe indiscriminately and say try this and try that when i can find out exactly what the issue is and to be able to go for that uh these individuals however like the benzos and so the over methylators tend to think that they've had a xanax deficiency when they get on xanax because it seems to calm them down a lot and even interestingly something like low-dose lithium can help like lithium-orientate and so interestingly folic acid folic acid is different than methylfolate it also is a supplement it's a natural supplement but folic acid in higher doses acts as a serotonin reuptake promoter and so it'll make those vacuum cleaners work very well it kind of increases the power of the vacuum cleaners and so for over methylators i'll actually give them folic acid often they're short in it but even if they're not short and i'll augment it sometimes even up to 2400 micrograms a day no problem using that type of folic acid there's no known side effects and it can really help their symptoms of overmethylation as can the hydroxy cobalamin aspect which is a form of b12 that's a detoxifying b12 it binds onto cyanide but it can also help with the overmethylation choline also helps these people in regards to their focus a better or acidic choline chromium is a trace mineral that can help in niacinamide and as i mentioned lithium oreotate lack of dopamine is also uh an issue and the symptoms of lack of dopamine motivation for worthy goals is down they're not interested in the new day one of the signs that you're having lack of dopamine activity is that you wake up and you're not interested in the day you get up out of a sense of duty and responsibility and not interest and unfortunately the people that need to hear what i'm about ready to hear are the ones who thought it would be good to come to this program but they didn't have the motivation and so their dopamine levels were down i think all of you at least have some level of dopamine the fact that you came and enrolled and actually showed up uh but uh not to mention that maybe some of you could have an increase in dopamine activity and so things that used to be pleasurable for people that are having a decrease in dopamine is that they're no longer pleasurable and if they have low dopamine weight gain can occur but with low appetite but it uh particularly if it's combined with high norepinephrine but if they have low norepinephrine they might have the weight gain and these individuals seek for false ways to get their dopamine activity up like seeking for super stimuli these are people that are youtube addicts and those sorts of things that try to get their dopamine levels up but they become easily discouraged one of the signs that we see in our program that is associated with low dopamine levels is looking at their free copper levels it turns out when free copper goes up your tyrosine goes into norepinephrine but away from dopamine and so you'll make too much norepinephrine and not enough dopamine and of course we'll talk about that here in a little bit so if you don't have enough norepinephrine in addition you'll have fatigue norepinephrine is a cousin of adrenaline so that's your energy producing aspect of things lack of focus is going to be a major problem your memory is going to be a problem uh working memory and you'll tend to sleep too much these are individuals who are wanting to sleep for 20 hours a day and still don't feel rested and this can be a lack of norepinephrine but we also see problems of too much norepinephrine and with that we'll see excessive worry they're easily distracted meaning adhd symptoms racing thoughts can occur premenstrual dysphoric disorder is very common hormonal depression with this and a weight loss can also occur so if they're low in both and by the way we we get that that based on symptoms and also based on blood work but once again we don't measure the dopamine in the bloodstream you can we can measure dopamine in the bloodstream serotonin in the bloodstream the norepinephrine we can measure all of these in the bloodstream and some doctors do because they're not really educated but what's in the bloodstream has very little to do with what's in your brain here and so this is why we're looking at other ways to look at the synaptic activity but if they have low synaptic activity in both l-tyrosine is a way to help boost that l-tyrosine is a an amino acid it's in proteins of all life forms and is a precursor for the synthesis of thyroxine if you have a minor thyroid problem often l-tyrosine will correct it your tsh will go down melanin and keflans and the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine it's also a potent antioxidant stimulates growth hormone production it's been shown to be helpful in improving depression hypertension stress cognitive function memory parkinson's disease pku and narcolepsy looking around the room to see if we have anyone with narcolepsy here but these are individuals that would like to stay awake for a lecture like this but can't uh they're they're going to sleep but l-tyrosine is one of the natural ways of actually helping this condition tyrosine supplementation in response to stress those given tyrosine had significantly reduced headaches stress fatigue muscle aches and sleepiness compared to controls and it also helps in focus and concentration and all of these memory things l-tyrosine is something we'll use in a natural state for adhd instead of adderall or these types of things the l-tyrosine can have the benefits without the risks of these drugs and it can be very important in fact we utilize l-tyrosine we're taking people off of adderall and those sorts of things to help them transition in the right direction metal metabolism disorder is another genetic issue where you're not able to make enough ceruloplasmin and as a result even though you're not eating a lot of copper you have excess free copper in excess of 30 and high copper zinc ratios and the metal metabolism disorder you'll have a tendency with this too much norepinephrine of anxiety worry and panic decreased joy of life in simple pleasures and there's also an association between headaches and migraines and certainly an association between hormonal depression these are women that are when they have very high excess copper levels you will know almost the moment they ovulate because they'll be happy individuals and then all of a sudden they'll be mad at the world and stay out of their way and this can actually be corrected actually through supplementation insomnia also is important because of that excess norepinephrine but let me back up here how do we control it zinc gets rid of copper and zinc is not toxic as long as it doesn't lower the free copper level a lot of people are afraid of zinc toxicity this is the one metal that's not toxic in and of itself all the symptoms of zinc toxicity are copper deficiency and so this is why we want to monitor them but we have to increase the zinc slowly if you give them 100 milligrams of zinc which might correct it the copper comes down too quickly and they get a little bit of tremors and so we have to gradually build up i used to actually have to use four of those b6 p5p biotin and be adjusting them it was very difficult for these patients to be adjusting four supplements and finally we put them together in one where it's very easy and it's only one that takes care of it and it's amazing what can happen when we give these supplements again you won't see the side effects but you'll see the positive effects and then another genetic issue is pyrrole disorder this is where we have the irrational fears these are individuals that might be thinking that if they go over that bridge it's going to collapse or they'll have fear of flying or they'll have some other irrational fear these are individuals that sensitivities they'll startle easily these are individuals that have to cut off the tags on their clothes because of the sensitivity to textures they can have anger issues and if they're not kept to a schedule they're going to slip into being a nighttime person and skip breakfast and they have a high tendency for adhd we have a lot of our adhd patients in this category and fortunately the same supplement that helps the excess free copper also helps the pyrrole but we also add nac to that and acetyl cysteine is an antioxidant that will uh consistently bring down the elevated urinary cryptopyral levels and we'll see improvement in symptoms this is the genetic disorder that starts to improve one week after supplementation and it'll be a major improvement within four weeks and so an acetyl cysteine speaking of that has been shown to also benefit bipolar depression schizophrenia trichotillomania compulsive and addictive behaviors nac augments the production of glutathione which is a potent antioxidant and it could have a potent anti-inflammatory effect nac by the way was the government recommended that it potentially be taken off the market because it was being used for covet actually there was a nice controlled trial showing it helps with the flu 75 percent of individuals exposed to the flu don't even have flu symptoms and they develop antibodies to the flu not through vaccine but just because they're getting the flu with no symptoms so a lot of people started utilizing this for covid and unfortunately when the government started talking about removing it from the market you know amazon and the ones connected with the government immediately removed it it's very hard to find now but i was wondering was there a problem usually there has to be a problem and the only problem identified was they thought some people were not getting the vaccine and taking nac instead and so it was an encouragement for them to do that but it's been shown to help in a lot of other conditions zinc is also has antidepressant effect alone or in addition to ssri and tca medication how does zinc work it increases the receptors so once again when we treat the natural aspect it increases h1 and h2 receptors and can improve adhd symptoms because zinc is a neuronal protective factor zinc deficiency also has been shown to be a partially causative of dementia and alzheimer's disease six-month double-blind study of zinc supplementation found in patients age 70 and over protected against cognition loss also it reduces serum copper and excess copper can also be one of the issues producing an accelerated dementia or alzheimer's disease you can find zinc and food and the foods that are mentioned we're going to go through some of this fast i see my countdown clock going uh but the good news is you can get these slides they're up there uh for you uh and then in every individual we check for metabolic syndrome the a1c really should be less than 5.3 if it's 5.4 or 5.6 it's pre-metabolic syndrome and studies show it does have a central nervous system effect because of that lack of insulin sensitivity we get less tryptophan into the brain this is why diabetes is sometimes called dipression because we're not able to make as many of those neurotransmitters and so with a diabetic of course we're going to be recommending exercise these are individuals if you have pre-metabolic syndrome you need to be doing 60 minutes of aerobic exercise minimum per day you need to be having low sugar low fat we also look at gfr there's a blood pressure association with anxiety but also the things causing high blood pressure can be associated hypertension has been shown to be associated with anxiety more so than depression and even in adolescence the results suggest that consumption of foods high in sodium and low in potassium contributes to the development of depressive symptoms in early adolescence and that diet is a modifiable risk factor for adolescent depression how is it modifiable lowering the salt intake increasing the potassium intake which is fruits and vegetables we also look at everyone's alt liver inflammation can have an adverse effect on the brain a lot of studies showing a link between hepatitis and depression hepatitis c and depression as you can see one of the references down there is a study that dr ramirez and i did on our hepatitis c patients that had depression non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a cause of it of course alcohol is also a cause but as we bring that alt down particularly non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or even hepatitis c through healthy lifestyle measures or get rid of the alcohol the depression can clear up one of the there's been a number of diets look for depression only one diet has shown improvement in depression in a randomized controlled trial and that benefit started within two weeks and it was a plant-based diet some people get concerned why are you using a plant-based diet for everyone well and you know aren't you cherry-picking what about the mediterranean diet what about this diet you can't cherry pick when there's only one cherry and and so i'm not cherry picking the advantage is no arachidonic acid no cholesterol high in antioxidants and of course you get better tryptophan and tyrosine brain uptake selexon also important we mentioned that yesterday it's anxiety relieving without sedation addiction or frontal lobe suppression also antidepressant and this increases serotonin release and extracellular brain serotonin levels and it's been shown to be very helpful for anxiety you can concentrate and put it from pills it actually comes from lavender oil 76 percent improvement in generalized anxiety disorder compared to placebo or double the improvement compared to placebo and improve sleep quality even though it's not sedating why is that because it's helping with the anxiety and often the insomnia is due to the anxiety as we mentioned yesterday it's even compared against lorazepam six week trial showed improvement in anxiolytic effect comparable to the improvement uh with lorazepam and since lavender oil shows no sedative effects in our study and has no potential for drug abuse selexon appears to be an effective and well tolerated alternative to benzos for amelioration of generalized anxiety disorder and so one other aspect that i would have gone into given enough time is omega-3 and how this actually works in the brain its anti-inflammatory effect as well as some of the effects in the brain itself we're trying to bring down the crp level and we can also do that with boswellia and it's one of the things that can help with chronic inflammation as well as taking away from the meat randomized controlled trial on brain aging shows when we get the long-chain omega-3s in our brain ages less it helps with age related cognitive decline even a study in vegans showed it to be significant in helping your brain to maintain over the course of time and so i'm going to just close if i can with the last slide maybe i won't close with the last slide but you'll see it on there the last slide is actually a quote from psychiatry lancet which is a prestigious psychiatric journal in europe and it says now is the time for the role of nutrition and nutrient supplementation in psychiatry it even goes on to say nutritional and nutrient supplementation and psychiatry should now be considered mainstream medicine and so if you're not hearing about these things in other places or at your doctor's office it's because they're behind the times they're not mainstream the evidence is overwhelming that when we take care of the underlying defects it can help sometimes far superior and have much more long long lasting effects so i hope this is helpful but we have some time for some questions so cami go ahead with the microphone you mentioned that saffron can be helpful for alzheimer's disease i was just curious if there's an optimal dose is it the same dose as for depression or yeah it was 30 milligrams twice a day yeah 30 milligrams twice a day for the alzheimer's yes yeah your magnesium measurements are using intracellular serum magnesium uh we use we use serum magnesium but intracellular is also helpful and sometimes we will use rbc magnesium you know that's the way we would do that we like to see serum magnesium levels in excess of two and so if it's in the normal range that's not normal one of the things we have to treat our patients is the normal range is the apparent 95 normal healthy population the ideal range is different and the ideal range for magnesium is in excess of two and that's where we're going with that serum wise yes um three i think real short questions um it seems like most if not all of this is in the depression the way out is that the best book to get this information or is there another one that you recommend yeah we have a lot of this and depression the way out also some updates and lost art of thinking which is our largest chapter on nutrition but some of this is also new some of this is is not included in there so if you want the latest information on some of this today's lecture would be more up to date and then a couple months ago when the nac and the amazon was doing away with that uh we corresponded and you told me you still had a good supply here at wemar is that still accurate uh there is nac available yes the fda actually has not taken it off the market you know it is a natural thing that's present naturally and i i think they realize they probably would have some uh judicial challenges if they did that and maybe exposure of why they were doing it and then you mentioned wheat and the gluten intolerance and wheat goes you know it's biblical goes all the way back but it does seem that there's been an uptick in this gluten intolerance do you think there's a reason for that is it something that's being done to the wheat or the gmos or something that's the glyce the glyphosates are one of the main aspects of it and that of course is the the pesticides that are being utilized so a lot of people that are sensitive to wheat are actually sensitive to the pesticides that come with wheat if they go organic wheat it gets down to about less than one percent you know truly sensitive all right last question a question people can self-medicate with many of these supplements you haven't mentioned any downsides will they be able to overdose all right well i it's not quite accurate i didn't mention downsides because i did mention that zinc if it lowers copper too much can be significantly problematic and so there are downsides if we if we use high-dose zinc and we're not measuring where we're at and this is why i recommend for everybody if we're treating particularly a genetic condition we want to make sure we're having the precise methylation even sami we could get too much sami and it couldn't theoretically at least increase our risk of cancer so after we put these agents on we then recommend repeat blood work in about six weeks to see where we're at and see where it can be tweaked particularly for some of the genetic things so yes this is um we shouldn't be using high doses of these indiscriminately for anybody because of of what could happen in regards to that so that's why we want to re-measure and retweak and do those sorts of things thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Nedley Health

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Length: 54min 7sec (3247 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022