Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Mastering Anxiety: From Understanding Its Roots to Holistic Treatment Approaches
Dr. Gabe Ariciu - Phone Consult Book Online
Dr. Gabe Email - doc@drariciu.com
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Ever wondered what's the secret behind mastering your anxiety and revolutionizing your mental health? Prepare to unlock the gateways to understanding and treating anxiety from its root cause. This episode tackles the varying manifestations of anxiety, from feelings of being overwhelmed to the inability to shut your mind down, and the often confusing task of differentiating between health anxiety and other forms. We also debunk common misconceptions about hormone imbalances and anxiety, shedding light on the importance of seeking help from medical practitioners.
Allow us to guide you on an exploration of the gut-brain axis and neurotransmitter imbalances as a holistic approach to managing anxiety. You'll appreciate our focus on GABA - a key neurotransmitter in reducing anxiety symptoms, the potential of an autoimmune disorder called GABA 65, and the role of traditional treatments such as medications and lifestyle changes. You can't afford to miss our insights on the powerful force of dopamine and diet in managing anxiety and depression, and the eye-opening personal stories on dopamine deficiencies and the impact of medications.
We conclude this invaluable journey by highlighting the importance of gut health in maintaining neurotransmitter balance, and the role diet plays in this process. From the use of levodopa supplements to examining the correlation between poor gut health and mental health, you'll gain actionable tips and strategies. We also discuss the use of herbs and supplements for managing anxiety - all tailored to help you transform your mental health journey. Be ready to look anxiety in the eye, armed with knowledge and solutions, after tuning into this episode.
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Welcome to the Functional Medicine and Natural Healing Podcast, where we share the secrets to upgrade your digestion, improve your hormones, restore your immune system and detoxify your body. I'm your host, Dr Houston Anderson. Now let's get started. The following discussion is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or disease process. Always discuss any medical treatments or medical interventions with your personal physician.
Speaker 1:All right guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr Anderson and we got Dr Gabe today. How are you, Doc, Doing? Well, man, how are you? I'm doing okay. Busy morning so far, but just enough time before we see the patients to get in a little podcast on a very popular topic called anxiety. So let me ask you that what percentage of your patients have, I'll say, in addition to their primary complaint, have some form of anxiety with it?
Speaker 2:It's got to be high 60, 70, maybe even 80 percent. It's common.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we have to differentiate a little bit, because I think today's podcast is going to be primarily about true anxiety. I like to help my patients differentiate a little bit about it. So you come in and your stomach hurts all the time and maybe a bloody stool or maybe your heart's racing. You're going to have some health anxiety and that's kind of concern about your condition. And I like to tell them like it's pretty normal to feel like your condition is kind of you're worried about your health, but then there's different types of anxiety. So that's kind of more of the severe anxiety. So why don't you describe a more typical kind of primary concern anxiety patient for you Sure?
Speaker 2:So when this is more on the extreme level, we're going to see, like, obviously, the anxiousness, the restlessness, the nervousness, and then it kind of differentiates and we're going to get to that in a little bit of how different anxieties can present themselves. But in general you're going to have like this inability to shut off your mind. You're going to have to be overwhelmed easily, maybe prone to a panic attack, but it's going to be much more severe than somebody who's, like, worrying over their health issues. Like there are worry words out there, we know them Like we know what they're like.
Speaker 2:They're worrying about every little thing, but that's not necessarily anxiety. This is almost not necessarily debilitating, though it can be, but it does get in the way of normal activities to a large degree. And you can have minor and then you can have some major ones where they're not even going outside, they're not going to the store, they're not doing anything of that sort, because it just overwhelms them easily. But the more minor one, yeah, they're heart races, they're nervous to come into the office to meet us and they're just constantly talking, constantly worried, maybe even sweating to a degree, and then they're just kind of a wreck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that you mentioned overwhelm, because I feel like some of my patients confuse actually their hormone imbalance with this, almost like a neurotransmitter or a chemical overwhelm, which is slightly different. But differentiating is going to definitely give you a result where if you confuse, say, an overwhelm feeling with a hormone imbalance now they could be both at the same time but if you confuse them, then you're going to go treat hormones all day long and you're still going to have some anxiety or mental health issues that you can't resolve, and vice versa, I guess right. So if you have hormone issues and you think you have depression or anxiety, you may not be able to fix them naturally, but you won't be able to if you go the wrong route.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about some stats Real quick before we move on. I actually love that you brought that up because I mean, how often do you get some of the in their main complain is hormone imbalance and it's like, yeah, there could be some estrogen dominance there, but oftentimes they're still thinking it's deeper than just plain estrogen dominance, dealing with liver, gallbladder detoxification and other things they think like their ovaries or something like that is crazy out of whack. But in reality we have all this gut stuff and thyroid affected and other things that are causing these symptoms and instead of what they're thinking it is, yeah, and once again, that's the big benefit of the doctor.
Speaker 1:You know, once again, both of us are offering phone consoles right now. Mine are a little bit slower to get to. I don't know where. Dr Gabe, how far out are you right now?
Speaker 1:Thank you, december maybe, yeah, and you know, when I hired my associate Dr Donahoe here, I gave people the warning. I was like, hey, look, you've got about six months to get in with him, but he's going to be slammed too, like there's no lack of sick people out there or people that need help. So I always tell people and it's funny because I still have posts on Facebook back when I used to do that a little bit more from years ago when I told people now's the cheapest time to get help. It's still expensive, but it's the cheapest time because next year everyone's prices go up. That's how it works every time, just like your home price.
Speaker 1:And then now's the easiest time to get in with a practitioner. That's good because, much like myself, the busier we get, the less time we have to take on new patients. And we already have patients and they have kids and they have cousins, and that's kind of how I do. Mine is we build out through families and referrals only right now. So just something to note give one of us a call, get on our online schedule, go on our websites, find us, and that's going to be a probably. What we talked about today is just you're going to be able to get to some of the routes better with a decent practitioner than chasing these on your own, because it can be a little bit confusing. So, all right, stats wise, about 20% of adults are affected by anxiety.
Speaker 2:That's huge, yeah, it's crazy and most of them are under treated, not even aware that they have this, but 20% of them are clinically would be clinically identified or diagnosed with this issue. It's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I could go off on this topic a lot. I do think that all of us need to differentiate between anxiety and fear and worry, right, I think, especially since we're going to get to the kids stats. Age 13 to 18 is 32% of kids, but that's up like in the total amount of people that are affected by it. Of those 32%, the prescription dosage is up like 40% in that group in the last five years.
Speaker 2:I can't even believe the amount of kids in that range age range that are on SSRIs. I mean, obviously we've seen for a number of years Adderall and other things for that age group, but I just can't believe the amount that are on some antidepressant. It's insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot and it's concerning and it changes the population, especially for the teenagers. It's hard. We don't all have the skills, we're not as tough as we used to be, and I'll just say that from the perspective of like my grandpa was way tougher than I ever was. I'm sure my life is just a little cushy now, but just something to know and then once again learning those skills. By no means I would say I'm not a trained psychotherapist, I have no skills in that at all. But what I can tell you is that the more skills you have, the better you do in life. I can just tell you that as an adult, the more emotional skills you can develop. And obviously this podcast is not about when someone needs medication and the diagnosis. It's about what causes these kind of feelings and imbalances at the root level, rather than are you really anxious? That's not my point. My point is not to diagnose people today. My point is to tell people if you feel these things, what can we look at? Right, yeah?
Speaker 2:And then when to seek help? Essentially is like how severe is this and if it's really debilitating, probably time to seek help. So you're not trying to do it on your own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's one of the beautiful things about natural medicine is like you should always seek help with natural medicine, like almost immediately, right, that's the best way to do it. And then there's no real danger to trying something natural first, right, and then obviously you're going to probably need professional help if it's more severe, but there's no danger to starting out right away with something natural. You take a 13 year old kid that you know, I don't know just doesn't want to go to school as much anymore, it doesn't want to hang out with friends as much. Okay, low level kind of anxiety, depression, whatever's going on, social phobia is like. You can then address that immediately with natural medicine. And then, if it progresses, yeah, then you have professionals that specialize in these things, right. So, anyway, you know, and with adolescents, you know, suicides, a huge thing that we have to be aware of, connected with anxiety, depression, a lot of different things, but these are some of the things we'll talk about. We'll overlap with that. What else, doc, and some stats.
Speaker 2:Well, the one that's kind of Always on the upfront, like on the front of my mind, for the adolescents, especially as social media Right, we're all on it to a certain degree. That's kind of a little bit for like business and other things in addition to maybe just personal use. But the stats for adolescents are absolutely frightening. Yeah, they're getting on it, especially before the age of 16. They're seeing it's not just a tiny spike as a huge spike in self-harm, suicide, anxiety, depression, etc.
Speaker 1:It's really really scary how much I wish I would have pulled up some of those stats, but yeah, I think that that's uh, you know it's gonna hit a lot of parents and I don't know I'm gonna say in the wrong place. They're not gonna be happy that we said that because honestly, I mean a girl or boy that doesn't have Social media before the age of 16 in my state, where I'm at, is like hard to find right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we got a couple, but they're like our nieces and nephews. A couple of them don't. But if if somebody wants to look up the stats on this, look up Jonathan height, h-a-i-d-t and then type in social media. He has several articles on it. He's a psychologist out of NYU.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, once again, I don't know why I'm giving parenting tips here, but like we'll say, we'll say, like you know, if your kids already has a cell phone, already has social media, you know, I'm sure he has some stat on there on like how to just cut back that time limit, the hours you know, can you, can you keep it in a reasonable range, because we know that kids don't know how to manage their time too well. We have these silly parents, even us as adults. You know, go ahead and tell me if you manage your time perfectly. But I don't Definitely getting a rabbit hole. It could be research rabbit hole. I could spend hours studying herbs and I'm like I got yard work to do but I'm just gonna study all day long and so wait there.
Speaker 1:Jordan work to do in Arizona weeds so, and you either got to spray them and kill yourself or, you know, pick a few yourself.
Speaker 2:So Right now, because I grew up not allergic to poison IV and well, now I am so and you got a lot in your area. Yeah, but I got a little bit of my backyard and I wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 1:Ah, so I didn't see you as an anxiety. Let's talk about them. Ah, restless, nervous, racing heart, right. So I always say like is it there, what else? What else do you see? Most common, I guess those are my, my two sleep issues like insomnia.
Speaker 2:That's a pretty big one. Or they wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, have a hard time getting to sleep. Sometimes they may Need like a noise machine or the TV or something like that on Before they go to sleep. Before they go to sleep, one of the big, on big ones is like a sense of impending doom, something bad is coming, and no matter you know how good things are, they're just like oh no, something's around the corner. Or intrusive thoughts I think that's a big one that might get unnoticed where people Aren't Sharing what's coming into their minds because they are like I don't want to share. That's embarrassing. But in reality it's not your thoughts, it's just intrusive thoughts, meaning there are thoughts that you're not Wanting to come in and then you're trying to push them out, but yet they keep coming in. So there's something behind that and people will feel guilt about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, those are, those are both. Like I mean, the things you said were just kind of you see them all the time, like I just going back to misdiagnosis. How many people come in and say I can't sleep but really have like an overadrenaline story, like you know that, like it's not really a sleep issue, it's a it's it will call out closer to an anxiety that's going on all day long. Um, I had a lady yesterday that mentioned the word doom. Little clinical pearl I always throw out is actually I never hear my patients say doom unless they have a heavy metal issue, right, a weird one, like like the word doesn't come out. They may say fear, they may say Depression, anxiety, whatever word they use. But as soon as I hear the word doom I'm like, oh man, there's metals and I don't know why that is.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, I haven't really, to my knowledge, heard anyone say doom, so it's not a common word, right?
Speaker 1:So that's why whatever hits, I'm like, oh, what is that like? And so over time I've had a couple just crazy cases with actual, like obvious metal toxicity before, um, you know blue water coming out the spout and you know things like that where it's just copper toxic, and and that's where I kind of picked up on the hints and then I just followed up on them over time. So that's a terrific yeah. So, um, excessive sweating it obviously an excessive nervous system issue, um, concentration issues, um, waking up in the middle of the night, um, is going to be similar to these anxieties, meaning like you go to sleep just fine, but you wake up over and over and over, um, and then, yeah, I mean, you're just watching how much I think panic attacks are pretty common. Those can be really problematic, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can and and people are scared to death. How many times do we hear somebody who has a panic attack and they call 911, which is it feels like they're having a heart attack, but that's not what's going on. They're just having a panic attack, which people grate gratefully. Our emergency personnel are trained for that. They know rather well for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually funny enough. Ribs are the more confusing one for the professionals, right? Like so mean you have a rib out, it's causing heart pain and that. That. That kind of throws them off for a few hours at the er and then they send you home and you're okay, but uh, that one will throw you off, okay, uh, conventional approach to anxiety. What are you seeing there?
Speaker 2:SSRIs are probably the most common. That's your selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. So what that does is like, most of the time we're going to think serotonin in the medical field, the conventional approach and so with serotonin it's being released in the neuron and then it's going to hang out in the synapse. So that's just the space between the neuron and the next one and In that area serotonin is hanging out. But we're going to try to Stop it from being taken back into the neuron itself. So that's actually what that medication does keep serotonin there a little longer. So you feel better because we're going to get into it a little bit. Serotonin has a big role to play in certain depression and anxiety, uh related ones. But outside of that there's like tricyclic Antidepressants. There's benzodiazepines, which are pretty big that's probably the next most common Xanax that sort and then of course those ones are like heavily, heavily Addiction related, like you can get addicted to those pretty quick. Then of course, therapy. Therapy is a big one. They're going to recommend you go into therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, yeah, people.
Speaker 1:I mean I hear that all the time I'm a lot of patients that don't want to go back to therapy because maybe they didn't have a good experience.
Speaker 1:I would say therapists are much like chiropractors you got to find the one that you like. You got to find the one that works for you, that resonates with you, that that strategizes with you. Um, you know, because honestly, in my practice I always, if I were to ask my patient population I take a hundred of them and I said, hey, go lift heavy weights I would guess that 80% of them would say I'm not interested in lifting heavy weights, but that 80% of them would be willing to cut out gluten, dairy corn, soy and nightshades. It's like a weird population, right? They're willing to do all the diet work but not really weren't willing to do the exercise work, which is fine. I'm just saying we all kind of resonate on different levels. So I don't sit there and teach my patients how to lift weights though they probably should, but because it doesn't resonate with them. So it just depends on who you are.
Speaker 2:And then there's a crazy amount of good research of exercise and anxiety and depression right.
Speaker 1:Right, it's the most research, right. Getting outside and exercising seems to be the most effective for all mental health disorders combined, right? So that's pretty crazy, just cause we have a note here, kind of in our show notes, of they just keep trying to mix things up to change the medications to get the adequate result. I see that a lot. It's sad, because what happens is you think you're addressing it and it's not working adequately, and then you often end up in an urgent state and it's just not fun to be there. And so these are reasons why at a minimum you should use holistic medicine. So let's say you're on a medication that's fine, but you should use holistic medicine to try and get that symptom as minimal as possible. Right, we wanna get to where you're like almost close to. Okay, all the time, a little bit of medication. There's a book called Nutrient Power. I don't know if you've ever read a doc.
Speaker 2:I've seen it. I haven't had the opportunity to read that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so nutrient power is really cool. But I can't remember his profession, but he has a lot of research in there.
Speaker 2:But the point is I'm just gonna go with what you're talking about. Let me just pull it up real quick, walsh, I think yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah, well, no, I have read that one. I was mixing it up with another one. No, excellent book, excellent book.
Speaker 1:And one of my favorite conclusions he comes to is that once you get someone balanced, the lowest dose of medication, even in the most severe cases, keeps them the most stable for the longest period of time. So while traditional thought process is like, oh, I need more right, Like up the dose, what he found is if you could balance out some of your things and obviously he's big into pyrolysis disorder or B6 zinc ratios and things like that but if you can get everything kind of calmed down a little bit, you find that you don't need seven medications. They do better on one and a low dose than the seven. That was one of the coolest takeaways I took. I also really loved it because he had a lot of information on schizophrenia, which I just think is a fascinating condition.
Speaker 2:Right, right. Yeah, it's fascinating. I don't ever have any patients that have schizophrenia, but it's fascinating to read about and learn what you could do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had one or two and the unfortunate part is like you can't really get them off the medication, but you can get them stable to where they're like, hey, I haven't had any episodes, I haven't had anything happen, whereas previously they were on the medications and still kind of like on edge, if that makes sense. So I've had good success with it, combining it with the medications, but it's too risky for most severe cases to just say like, oh, let's try to get them all off. It's not always my goal, you know, really, and I haven't had a patient that had that goal of like absolutely I just they just wanted to live some type of a normal life. Right, yeah, that makes sense. All right, natural. What are we gonna do? What's a little bit different about our approach? So they're doing mostly drugs. You know rarely anything else, to be honest. You know a little bit of lifestyle, definitely some talk therapy, which is great. What else are we doing a little bit different in our offices?
Speaker 2:For us. We're going to, of course, look at gut and several other things. That's actually one of the symptoms we didn't mention. It's really common for them to have GI issues. But there's a real big reason we're gonna look at gut, similar to how we look at gut for many other things. But there's a strong, strong connection between your gut and your brain, called the gut brain axis, and so even our gut, which is like the second brain. So it's where a good portion of your nervous system tissue is that we use serotonin, we use dopamine there. So what we want to do as natural healthcare practitioners is tease out are we dealing with a GABA issue? Are we dealing with a dopamine issue or serotonin issue? That's probably the big things that we're gonna be looking at when somebody comes in with real anxiety. We want to know which one of these are we dealing with.
Speaker 1:Or is it a?
Speaker 2:combo or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I think you just like. You just said something that no one knows out there. I just want to bring attention to it that we just talked about three different types of anxiety and everyone thinks it's maybe just a serotonin issue, right, or they don't even get into these, they're just like, okay, what can I take that's a downer from anxiety? What can I take to help me sleep? Not getting to the root cause? Okay, yeah, so these are little brain chemicals that work, and addressing brain chemicals alone with medication doesn't actually work.
Speaker 1:So the research says that just balancing neurotransmitters as a chemical imbalance, like we were told for many, many years, is not something that works. What you have to do is balance the neurotransmitters by addressing a root cause, by getting a little bit deeper. And by getting deeper now you can micromanage your neurotransmitters just a little bit versus before. Like, say, your gut's horrible. You're never gonna be able to micromanage your neurotransmitters, but fix the gut, fix your liver, fix the adrenal system. Now you can start to play with these and really dial in what you need as a human. So and we're- all slightly different.
Speaker 1:What do? You think about what's first neurotransmitter you want to talk about, Doc?
Speaker 2:So GABA? Gaba is your main inhibitory neurotransmitter. It's probably the strongest one linked to panic attacks. So when we create GABA, we're creating it from the opposite, which is the excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate. Now with glutamate, if you have too much of that you're gonna be over excited, which can in some instances cause headaches. It can cause epilepsy, like seizures and stuff like that. It's gonna be related to a lot of those things. So with glutamate toxicity, sometimes you gotta think about what you're eating. So like monosodium glutamate, msg and some of those things. But really the issue is we're having a hard time creating GABA. For some reason we're not converting there. We're not converting glutamate to GABA. Now there is an autoimmune. I don't know if you've seen any of these people. I have not seen a GABA 65 autoimmune where they're having an issue there creating GABA from glutamate. But that is one of the autoimmunes that are out there. Right, it seems like it's very not common.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen autoimmune. I had someone yesterday that had the GABA 65, a genetically tested, but I haven't actually seen them go out of autoimmunity yet.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, me either. So, but the classic thing here, like it's the thing that's shutting down your brain, helping you to be calm, helping you to go to sleep, that sort of thing. But you're gonna see overwhelmed which overwhelm kind of overlaps with all of them, right, but panic attacks, feelings of dread, the epilepsy, seizures for those who have that Guilt, for no reason at all disorganize attention. And this is the person that's sleeping with the TV on this is the person that's having a hard time getting asleep.
Speaker 1:I think yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Now go ahead and get it doc, the only other thing I was gonna say they can't quiet their mind. Their minds is constantly racing, and so they just cannot quiet their mind.
Speaker 1:Let's go a little bit out of order and let's talk about why they may not be able to convert into GABA. We're going to do this at the end, but what are some of those deficiencies that you see?
Speaker 2:The big thing, probably the most common when you're trying to create glutamate to GABA, you need essentially a few different cofactors. This is where we talk about vitamins, we talk about minerals, we talk about the micronutrients, but we just throw out vitamin C or vitamin D or maybe B1, but we never really talk about why does your body need those? The majority of the time there are cofactors in creating different things within the body. To do that pathway glutamate to GABA you're going to need things like zinc, magnesium, b6. I end on B6 because that's probably by far the most common. When I see there Specifically for me, I will test the active form. Sometimes you just have an issue making the active form but periodoxyl 5-phosphates the active form. Sometimes you need some other, like zinc or something like that, to help create it. Generally that's the most common one. I do see magnesium and maybe even zinc from time to time, but that is probably the most common thing that I'm going to see if they need assistance creating GABA.
Speaker 1:I love that B6 by far for all neurotransmitters, by far my favorite one. Something to mention for those that don't know a cofactor is just something that's required to make the reaction happen. I always say you don't have chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips, that B6 is the chocolate chips. You got to have B6 in order to make the cookie. You're not making GABA. I don't mind talking about cookies on here, it's okay.
Speaker 2:They're gluten-free. We use the natural.
Speaker 1:The other thing to know there that you said is these cofactors or these vitamins that are required to make things happen. This is the most common reason for neurotransmitter imbalances. It's a missing cofactor and what you find, and then detoxification, elimination. Gaba is all about production. I don't know if I've ever seen someone too much GABA. It's all about not having enough GABA, not being able to calm down. I think signs and symptoms in my office, lack of GABA is usually what I find is even if they can get overstimulated, but they're the type of person that stays overstimulated for too long. Someone makes you mad and they're like okay, five minutes later you cool down, you're all right, no big deal. Someone gets mad and then cannot calm down and this is most either liver or GABA issues. They're there for two or three hours. The other thing just keeps going on them and, assuming that they don't have a deep, severe anxiety or depression or anything like that, it's making that happen. The GABA people get stimulated and have a hard time calming down.
Speaker 1:Let's move to dopamine. I love dopamine because I think it's a huge issue in today's society. We talked about social media and that's one of the real issues of why dopamine is such a big issue because it gives us that hit. We all in today's day and age, at least in America I don't know about other countries, but we are taking hits of dopamine 24-7. We all essentially have some kind of dopamine receptor dysfunction, meaning we get too much dopamine, we get too much stimulation. I would say try to drive in your car for an hour in silence, see how you feel. Who can do it, who can turn off the radio and not listen to a podcast, not think about something, not pull up their phone at a stoplight or whatever. All of us have this dopamine issue. How does it show up in the practice, doc?
Speaker 2:Dopamine, I think, is the most commonly missed one. I've at least been in my opinion and I might be biased towards that because I had a dopamine problem. I still see it as the one that's missed. Commonly, gaba shows up, but dopamine, I think, is the one I see most common and that might be just my practice. But dopamine itself, or motivation, especially in the morning, that's going to be a big one. Sometimes they're using caffeine because caffeine helps with dopamine. Sometimes you'll be seeing them. Well, I can't do anything until I have my cup of coffee in the morning.
Speaker 2:The other thing that happens with dopamine that's different is you have feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. It's not just like guilt for no reason. You just feel hopeless, you feel worthless, you hate yourself. In some instances, if it's really bad, you can have some self-destructive thoughts and that leads into that. But like the other ones, you can't handle stress super well. This is a little bit more pointed towards dopamine, though. Irritable, this is irritable depression, when we're talking about different forms of depression and if we're having that overlap with anxiety, there's a difference between it and serotonin, which we'll talk about in a minute. The other dopamine is that irritable on edge, can easily lose your temper depression. They also will have an inability to finish tasks. You'll want to get things done but you just don't. Then low libido is actually a big one. We wouldn't think about it. But yeah, we know as natural doctors how it ties over.
Speaker 2:The last thing and this one I find it's hard for people to admit, and that's apathy. You actually have a lack of concern for others. I think that's hard for people to commit to actually admit to, because we don't want to say that that I don't have a lack of concern for somebody else. When you actually are true to yourself and you look at the past when you were doing good, compared to when you're not doing so good, you don't have that much of a concern, partially because you're isolating yourself from others. You're just like I don't really want to go out, I don't want to go to that church event, I don't want to go to that friend's house, that sort of thing. You're isolating yourself. If you don't mind, I'm actually going to talk about my personal story with dopamine. Yeah, I'd love to hear it On my mission.
Speaker 2:So I was a missionary for two years in Africa. I had some instances beforehand. I remember having a panic attack, so I wouldn't doubt if I had an overlap a little bit with GABA. Yeah, just because, like you were saying, with B6, it's needed for every single one of them. I wouldn't doubt that's probably what I had. It was a B6 deficiency when I was a missionary there.
Speaker 2:As a missionary, you're not allowed to do anything other than certain things within it. You're not allowed to watch TV, you're not allowed to listen to popular music. Your sole purpose is to focus on what you're doing. I was in an area that we were done by five o'clock because it got dark. There was nothing else to do. You had a good five hours to yourself with nothing to do.
Speaker 2:I started getting this feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. All these things started really coming in. I wouldn't get to sleep because my mind would be racing through that stuff and feeling guilty. I wouldn't get to sleep until six in the morning. As missionaries, you're supposed to get up at 6.30. That went on and on. I felt like I was going crazy. I would try to sleep during the day, take a nap. I might get like 10 weeks and then be able to go on.
Speaker 2:The thing that was difficult was when I went to the medical doctor and described what was going on. There was like, yeah, it sounds like serotonin here, take this. They gave me Paxil and Xanax. That's the first time I've ever taken Xanax. Of course, I took it while driving. Don't recommend, don't do that.
Speaker 2:Nevertheless, what it ended up doing to me I felt emotionally dead, that's all. Nothing really changed. I felt emotionally dead. I was able to sleep again, but that's what it felt like, and it wasn't until I was in chiropractic school. Of course, when I got home and I was doing normal stuff, I found coping measures and I didn't need the medications anymore. It was always there in the back of my mind and there are instances where I would get really bad. It wasn't until I was in chiropractic school in a functional medicine course studying neuro-biochemistry. Lo and behold, here's all the symptoms listed for dopamine. I'm like I have every single one of those. That's when I was able to turn it around and fix it. But that's how important this stuff is, teasing it out, because you can chase serotonin all day long and it's a dopamine problem.
Speaker 1:Why do you? I mean just because we're on your personal. Well, first I have one question just out of curiosity what part of Africa were you in? South Africa? South Africa, it was probably dangerous at night too, so you can go out. Certain regions are.
Speaker 2:That area wasn't as bad. You just didn't want to knock doors because people didn't want you knocking doors at night, especially because of the danger. That area was actually a little safer of an area, but there definitely were times where you're dumb if you're going walking around.
Speaker 1:I've had a couple of patients from South Africa. So curious. What were some of the things you said? You were able to figure it out once you saw that dopamine list. Let's just go over the Dr Gabe story and what his protocol was that worked for him, because I know a lot of people want to know.
Speaker 2:Let me actually describe a little further. At its worst, other than one or two panic attacks I had previous to my mission, I didn't really have too many afterwards or during, but at its worst I remember being in front of somebody trying to teach them, just talk to them about things. I just mid-sentence stared off into the distance and I just started trembling, started doing this. That was crazy. That was at the worst time. What ended up fixing it? As I was studying, of course, we started learning about B6. We started learning some of these things. I didn't know hardly anything at the time.
Speaker 2:In the functional medicine course they tell you to take certain supplements. I took one that had tyrosine, which is the precursor, had mucuna purines, which I don't really use, but it had that in there. Mucuna purines has natural current L-dopa and that's why Then B6, all the cofactors were in it. I took that and that helped. It helped to a point. What I really needed to do was fix my gut. That was the biggest thing. I had to get my health completely in order and stop just essentially masking it by supplementing it. I love it. There was a reason behind it and that's the big thing. It helped for sure while I was in chiropractic school, but it wasn't until some steps later that I realized no, I got to get all this stuff in order because, as healthy as we were trying to be in chiropractic school, there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 1:It's tough, money's tough in chiropractic, school Time is tough and you're stressed out and you're trying to learn all this new stuff and how to incorporate it. Yeah, there's a lot to it. Yeah, a couple of things on that that. You said the gut, so just a note. The gut can make up to 50% of your dopamine right. Yep, somewhere between the stat changes every day. Somewhere between 75% and 95% of your serotonin is going to be made in there. I see different numbers thrown out all the time.
Speaker 2:One thing to note there, that every single neuro guy will tell you they do not cross the blood-brain barrier. There is some theory that they might through the vagus nerve. We have not proven that, but the one thing is for sure if you're not creating it in your gut, you're probably not creating it in your brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I guess that's a great way to think of it. Yeah, so while they discuss that there may be no connection, yet there are correlations.
Speaker 1:There's a correlation there maybe not a direct connection, and we see that a lot in health issues. Right, there's a correlation with poor gut health and poor mental health. Though if you were to actually say, can I draw a line directly to each other, no, there's probably like seven stops in between. That's interesting there.
Speaker 1:I thought when you were describing dopamine earlier just to go back, because I was actually listening to Dr Charlie's podcast on this it made a good point. He was saying we put all of these people on their SSRIs or their antidepressants or their anti-anxiety meds, and then, of course, the side effect is that low libido, which is that dopamine issue that you mentioned. I would say, well, how does I mean and once again, I love Dr Charlie because he gets a little bit controversial what I liked in that was simply that I thought, well, what if you put a 14-year-old boy on a SSRI and now he has low 14-year-old boy libido, right, not a real thing, but he's learning how to have interest in the opposite gender and he loses that right. And so that's one of the biggest things I like to talk about, not just in teenagers, but adult males. Right Now, half of our motivation is to take care of our family, take care of our wife. Conquer the world essentially is where you see these issues.
Speaker 1:And what you've said is like with that dopamine issue inability to start or finish a task right, inability to have the desire they just don't feel like. Okay, well, I'll just work my corporate job for the rest of my life. I don't need to go and be a boss. I get to tell you how many of my patients in that state have said well, I don't want to promotion, it's just too much work. Right, and that was never a thing before, right.
Speaker 2:And then you're seeing that strong connection between dopamine and testosterone.
Speaker 1:For sure A major driver.
Speaker 2:That's the thing that drives you and there is a strong connection. That's why there's low libido.
Speaker 1:there is a strong connection between the two of them and everyone chases the testosterone, but no one wants to talk about the dopamine issue. Every male is like, oh, I think I need more testosterone, because they're not motivated. But really it's the dopamine issue. And then, even going back to kind of what you said, isolation, irritability, don't want to go out, don't want to have fun, don't see the reward and activities you're doing. So then what do you do? You stay home. You watch more TV. Nowadays, you watch, play more on social media, you eat a few foods that are stimulating for the dopamine. And here you are you're reinforcing down, regulating those receptors. So now you're less sensitive to dopamine. So now you need more. That's why, honestly, that the levodopa supplement, even if you get isolated mukuna I don't see it at work home runs very often. It's a rare case where I see home runs, so that's an interesting one. Okay, let's skip on to serotonin, because this is probably what everyone wants to talk about all the time. So let's go over it. What do you see?
Speaker 2:So it is the lack of joy. So it's not just joy in just random things, it's the things you enjoy the most. So let's say you're a baseball fanatic. You no longer have joy in that. You end up losing joy in all your hobbies, your interests and then even your life. This is the person who doesn't want to get out of bed.
Speaker 2:It is your classic depression. So they're overwhelmed, as well as the other ones. But they're overwhelmed with all the stuff that they have to do, like the ideas that they have to manage and that sort of thing. They do get like an inner rage or an unprovoked anger. So you get some overlap here with dopamine, where you can kind of have a hard time differentiating. But one of the things they have is they have a sadness for no reason at all. They're just in the dumps. That's kind of it. So dopamine is your irritable depression. These guys are the down in the dumps depression.
Speaker 2:So insomnia is big here. Paranoia at times. They may like anything with creativity, because joy is gone. They're going to lack that. They do end up becoming a bit dependent on others. And then susceptibility to pain that's another big one. So they may be a little bit more hypersensitive. The last one and I think this one's important is abdominal migraines. Not all of them have it, but abdominal migraines is like having migraines in your gut. So you get these random pain and other gut symptoms that will come from maybe a short period of time to like 72 hours, something like that, and then it comes in random times reoccurring. So that's a big thing that you will see, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think when I think about serotonin, I do like the loss of joy as the statement there. Funny enough, like you said, if we go through these loss of joy or say serotonin versus dopamine, you do find that people present more dopamine based At least how they describe how they feel. Definitely more of that. I've seen quite a few cases of paranoia people describing things to me that are just 100% illogical. Maybe the government has a drone that flies in their house at night and stuff like that. Weird things, right, you're like huh, that'd be hard. Do you lock your doors? Yeah, I lock the doors, but they got a special tool that unlocks the doors and it's like huh, this is interesting.
Speaker 2:I see that you can start thinking mania or something with that, some sort of mania, yeah.
Speaker 1:So slightly different there. But that's where I was saying the difference between dopamine and serotonin. It's important that you find something that can differentiate that for you We'll kind of make sure it's important that you know the difference. But yet at the same time, so clinically, dr Gabe and I can kind of tease that out in the office, but individually you may not be able to do it as much.
Speaker 1:But I kind of want to bring it back to where the one thing that everyone can do for all neurotransmitter conditions goes back to the gut. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. Fix the gut, yeah. So I think you know people think, oh, I have anxiety, I have depression. And I say you know, okay, have you, have you managed that gut? Like you said, have you taken care of your parasites, viruses, bacteria, fungi, irritants, cofactors in there? All of those are going to allow you to make more of these neurotransmitters that you know. Yeah, I'm just going to say contribute to your total supply in your body. You want them in every tissue. You don't want them ingesting your brain, you want them in every tissue so that the body can function like it should. So, just going back to the gut, you know infections are the most common. Anything else you think of specifically with mental health?
Speaker 2:Food sensitivities, for sure. I mean anything that's going to cause you from not like being able to absorb foods proper, or absorb things properly, anything that's going to create inflammation, damage the gut, then make you impaired to any of these sort of things.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think I'm just going to jump into that diet story here and talk about that a little bit. So you know, we know that inflammation is the most I'll say, the most researched model of anxiety and depression in the world, right? So we know that inflammation causes a lot of these imbalances. So let's go back to where I said you have to balance a root cause before you balance your neurotransmitters. Oftentimes, every once in a while, you can just do neurotransmitters, but the root causes of inflammation that you're going to see that affect the brain more so.
Speaker 1:Dietary fat intake, right, so you're taking in junky fats. If you're someone that's pretty bad into anxiety or depression, you need to make sure that you're only eating grass-fed type fats. You're eating animal fats all of the time. So I will say that, like you're going to be hard pressed to find someone that eats regular red meat because that's all the cofactors the brain needs, that has a lot of anxiety or depression, that doesn't have the junk food in there, and I would say I mean I'll probably get a message or an email that says, oh well, I eat perfectly clean and I still have it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that exists, right, but I would say probably 80% of the people if they cut out the junk and convince themselves that it's not just about vegetables and they get some of those red meat that has your B6, some of your zinc, some of your magnesium, but your other cofactors, your folic acid, in there too. You're going to see a lot of that lifts how much, we don't know always, but definitely those inflammatory chemicals, the seed oils, are a huge problem when it comes to this and that gut health story. So eating is the first thing, obviously, to get to that gut. I would say what other factors in the gut would you think of, doc? Do you think there's any other ones?
Speaker 2:I mean, you brought up the eating I said it earlier, avoiding any excitonurotoxin. So any food dies MSG, aspartame, any sort of processed eat, whole foods. So you mentioned meat, and I love that you mentioned red meat 100%. But we need to avoid any processed junk in addition to your junk fats too, otherwise you're just adding fuel to the fire and then you might need to tease out the food sensitivities, whether it's like gluten, soy or something like that. In fact we probably should, because on average, most patients have at least one kind of a thing. And then the infections, which we've gone into detail before, on those ones for sure. I think that's pretty much the level that I would go at first. That's my first thing that I'm going to hit on every single patient, a patient, along with supporting those specific nutrients or neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to have a counselor that would send me a lot of their children with some of these brain health kind of disorders, so they'd be working with a family and they'd send me a kid. You know, because the parents were looking for help and while I appreciated the referral, the concept was wrong because oftentimes these parents would be going through divorces or separations and so they weren't really able to implement the most important thing of the dietary changes in the kids. I know of one patient right now where she just wants to drink Red Bulls for breakfast and eat a Twinkie for lunch and then wants to find out why she's depressed, not to mention she has additional health problems. I'll just say other life circumstances that make life hard. So it's interesting to see and obviously we're educating and it's coming along. But if that's what you're doing to get your dopamine hits and then you're hopping on social media, the diet's going to play a huge role.
Speaker 1:So anyway, my point was I had to send a lot of these kids away. I wouldn't even accept them as patients because I realized that you know for sure they couldn't go gluten free if it was required let alone. I mean they weren't even going to be able to cut out junk food. They still had to eat out of a vending machine when they were between houses. Mom and dad, they're at high school or whatever, so it ends up being really hard. So, yeah, I think when a lot of people say, well, I tried everything for my health, I don't always see that they really did. I see that they may have missed a few things and diet's going to be the first thing to go. We talked infections. Do you have a most common food for some of the anxiety disorders you see?
Speaker 2:I don't know if there is a most common one for mine. I usually just think about like general overview of my practice. Gluten is probably the most common. Then there's like nightshades or soy or something like that. Usually I don't think I've ever paid attention enough to see if there was one with the anxiety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would say eggs dairy are pretty common in general, my office Definitely. If your kid is struggling with something, I'm thinking eggs dairy first and then kind of it develops over time. Gluten probably has the most research for actually affecting the nervous system and throwing it off. But yeah, I mean, there's never a one size fits all for anything. No, you're not All right. I think we talked a little bit about GABA conversion, some P5P, so that's B6P5P. You have zinc, you have magnesium, you have making sure that you're not getting too much glutamate or even glutamine. So a glutamine supplement with no B6 turns into anxiety. So everyone wants to fix their gut. But if they're consuming a glutamine daily to fix their gut and they don't have cofactors, it gets stuck in that in-between state or actually turns excitotoxic. Let's talk dopamine and serotonin. What are your biggest ones there?
Speaker 2:So I mean we're going to ride back to B6, right. So B6 is kind of a big one. Methylation comes into play here. So, early on as you're converting tyrosine into adopa or even tryptophan into serotonin, you're going to have methylation factors there. Same with as you're trying to get rid of dopamine too, like in the norepinephrine, or serotonin, the melatonin, that sort of thing, you're going to see some methylation coming in. So what we talked about with methylation, we're talking about the methylated B vitamins mainly, though there are some other methylation related things like Choline. So methyl B9, methyl B12, some of those things will come into play. Irons there too, I rarely ever I don't even know if I've seen iron show up, but methylation is a big one Magnesium, zinc, that sort of thing. Serotonin specifically, though there is a great herb that I've seen help, and that's St John's. I don't know if you use that one, but St John's wort can be rather helpful. You just got to get a clean one, it's not just any day one from your natural food store.
Speaker 1:Right, I was thinking about the tyrosine and tryptophan. First of what you said. I was like, okay, well, where do you get those from? Right, that's protein. Right, that's meat right.
Speaker 2:So how many times do you see that show up because they're not eating meat? I see it quite often.
Speaker 1:Tyrosine all the time, less tryptophan, but I see tyrosine all day long and in fact I know a lot of doctors holistic doctors, functional medicine doctors that use tyrosine all the time as just kind of like a thyroid booster. Right, but you get two things you get a thyroid boost and you get a brain boost. So a lot of women specifically will feel pretty good on tyrosine in the morning. That's a good little clinical one there. St John's makes people feel more emotion, so I like to say that. So that's a good one.
Speaker 1:The only caveat I'll say to St John's and sometimes it makes people feel too much emotion. So dosage on St John's is start low and then make your way up and then it does have drug interactions, right, so it does have like. So if you're already on an SSRI or something like that, I don't use a ton of St John's for that. What else and once again, I guess with diet I was going to just inflammation I can't tell you. I've heard this multiple times and it will have you can actually take now I'm not suggesting this, but you'll find that people will take ibuprofen and get out of anxiety tax because it decreases that inflammatory response temporarily. Now, of course, we got to figure out why.
Speaker 1:Fatty acid problem, right, right. So you got a fatty acid imbalance once again junky fats, not good fats, or just inadequate fats. So that's a good one there. How about just like kind of some downers that you might use or some things that calm people down?
Speaker 2:So I like passion flower. I see that one, probably the most common, and that's not like your tropical passion flower, that's kind of the more United States continental United States, not Hawaii. So I is it in carnita or in carnada, I can't remember the actual scientific name but I use passion flower quite a bit. You can actually grow them. Where I'm at in Missouri, like we're planning on growing some next year some May pops, that's what they go by. So that's a really good one. You can make a tea out of their leaves. Of course they got really pretty flowers. Valerian's another big one. I always warn people with Valerian, depending on how you're getting it, don't get it on your hands because it stinks really bad. And I've had it on my hands and then I go to eat my lunch and then I'm like, oh my gosh, what is that? But Valerian's like you're really helpful. So those are the two probably big ones that I will use in addition to, like, p5p or zinc, any of the cofactors. I'm sure there's other ones, but those are the ones I use.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we didn't cover it much here and we'll have to do another adrenal podcast maybe. Maybe even you know we need to dial back some of these into more specific, smaller concerns. But I think adrenal herbs, so you have to be careful. When you have anxiety, depression, you don't actually usually want a stimulator. You want either a neutral or a downer is what I call it or a relaxer. So in that I would do like a Rishi mushroom. For sure, ashwagandha can be good or bad for many patients. So it's on the list, but sometimes it'll get my patients insomnia, even though it puts other patients directly to bed.
Speaker 1:So that's one lithium I consider as an adrenal supplement. So I find that lithium takes the edges off. So less highs, less lows, kind of how you described, you know, when you were on your medication, of like having lack of feeling. Well, sometimes I'll use lithium to give people a little less feeling, help them get out of some of the sometimes it's even habits of anxiety, if that makes sense. They were raised a certain way. They were in an unsafe environment. They can't, you know, they can't think that life could be safe and okay. And I think if we turn on the TV these days, I mean we run into that problem. We have a lot of things going on in the world right now.
Speaker 1:What else would I use as an adrenal herb? I do like the Chaga mushroom, usually in the morning, just to support the adrenals, once again not going up or down, just kind of a neutral there. Um, rhodiola I like another, another, you know, I do have that one. I yeah, I don't use it a ton, but I I once again, I classify my adrenal tonics and like a uppers, downers and neutrals and I call rhodiola a neutral. I don't find that people get over stemmed on it. Um, and then the biggest thing I guess, kavya, that you probably would agree with as far as like adrenal supplements, is you don't want to get too much adrenal cortex in you, uh, because it'll just kind of make you fly off your handle. It's too much. You'll feel stressed all the time if this is already your predisposition.
Speaker 2:Um, so we use a lot of like just straight desiccated adrenals because of that stuff. Like you gotta be careful with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, yeah, I don't use desiccated adrenal in a stressed person. I don't use DHEA in a stressed person. I'll use it occasionally in a super worn down person that doesn't show signs of any stress. Right, those are where we'll use them. That, um and then. So for the super stressed person I use a lot for POTS or dysautonomia, is I use Drenetrophin PMG.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:I'll use that one high, high doses more as like the salts for the adrenal glands, so that I'm not stimulating them, um, but I can use that in almost any dose I want and they can tolerate it in most cases. Uh, because, yeah, definitely in the in the dysautonomia cases you find that any extra stem just sets them off and they're back in bed for the day, or something like that.
Speaker 2:That's why those PMGs are so good across the board.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's been standard process makes those um. You know we can put the link in the full script in the bio Um. Any other thoughts on anxiety that we didn't cover today, doc?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think we did a pretty good job, covering pretty much all of it. It is as hard as it is to be anxious and as hard as it is to not feel hopeless. There is a great deal of hope. It's not as complicated as you think, even though it sounds incredibly complicated. It's not as bad as you think it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. On that note, I would say you know, the earlier the better to like. Don't, don't, let it keep persisting.
Speaker 2:And then, if you're on, a med like the longer you are on a med, the harder it is to get off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're on a medication, definitely plan on. I mean, even if you have to stay on one and you can't get off of it, then make sure that you're planning to see your holistic doctor every once in a while for a checkup. Make sure these B6s, these zincs, these magnesiums aren't getting depleted right, because you want to make sure that you have those so that the medication actually works. And I didn't talk about that, but it is one of my pet peeves that I see, and it actually drives me nuts, is that you find that all of the psychiatric meds deplete B6 specifically at a super high rate, which was originally half of the problems in the first place Maybe not half, but a percentage of the problems in the first place and now you take a drug that makes it even lower and you never find that happy balance. So definitely get ahead of it early. Get ahead of it while it's still called dysthymia or just low mood, before it turns into a severe anxiety, a severe depression, panic attacks I didn't cover panic attacks Most often like a blood sugar drop.
Speaker 1:That's definitely something that we should talk about there, and I've had them with dental stuff also. So, hidden dental stuff, you'll find that people are getting unexplained panic attacks and maybe we have a hard time treating it in the office and I was like what was that? And it turns out, you know, they've got an infected crown or something like that, that they, you know just an old thing that needs to be taken care of. And then a lot of the panic because just that nerve goes directly up to that brainstem and it's just too much. Yep, yep. So that's great. All right, guys, we don't have any Q&A on this podcast this week. We'll think about doing it maybe next week or we'll switch to another topic. I've been getting DMs with requests on Instagram, so if you have a topic you want us to cover, you know we're always looking for ideas, fun, new things. We'll run out of ideas on our own, so we need your help. You can find us on Instagram or, like I said, reach out to Dr Gabe. What's your website address, doc?
Speaker 2:Dr Reach UDRARICIUcom.
Speaker 1:All right, and so reach out to him. On his website. You can email him or try to schedule a phone consult with him. Obviously, he's the expert on this topic, but we've both seen a lot of these cases because all of our patients come in with it. And thank you guys for listening and we'll catch you on the next podcast. Thanks, doc.
Speaker 2:Yep.