The Anxiety Summit: Misunderstood and Mistreated – Reinventing Psychiatry

[REPLAY on Saturday 6/21 – ENJOY!]

This is day 1 of the Anxiety Summit. Dr. Kelly Brogan, M.D., Holistic women’s health psychiatry, is interviewed by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Misunderstood and Mistreated: Reinventing Psychiatry

• misconceptions around causes of mental illness
• the danger of psychiatry and a better model of mental illness
• bodily problems that masquerade as psychiatric
• top lifestyle interventions and powerful natural treatments

Here are great gems from my interview with Kelly:

there is never a realm in health where you have more opportunity to turn things around through these lifestyle changes than in mental health

we can use inflammatory markers like c-reactive protein to actually tell us which patients are going to develop depression

I have been most compelled by the fact that there is absolutely no mortality benefit for prescribing statins to women. Period

Lifestyle, diet, gut and inflammation

Kelly has a huge focus on lifestyle changes and a healthy Weston A. Price type of diet. She advocates for animal protein and teaches her patients about eating healthy fats. Isn’t that so wonderful? Here is one of her blogs on the topic: Western Diet Causes Cognitive Impairment, Anxiety, and Depression

I just love that she no longer writes prescriptions for SSRIs. She only writes benzodiazepine prescriptions when it’s acute post-partum or psychosis.

We talked about the role of the gut and inflammation in depression and anxiety. Here is a great article by Kelly on her website: Inflammation in Depression

We also talked about the role of the gut and microbiome. Here is a very interesting and recent article that Kelly wrote for GreenMedInfo – Primal Bugs: The Amazing Hunter Gatherer Microbiome.

GreenMedInfo

Kelly is an advisory board member for GreenMedInfo.com. It was at the recent NANP (National Association of Nutrition Professionals)  conference that I met Kelly and Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo, for the first time.

GreenMedInfo.com is a cool resource I’d like to share with you. They are “The World’s Most Widely-Cited, Open-Access, Evidence-Based Natural Health Resource With 20,000+ Articles!” and are “dedicated to bringing the public information on the science behind natural healing methods, as well as to make available research on the inherent dangers associated with the use of chemicals in our food, drugs, water and environment.”

Here is a great GreenMedInfo infographic on what anxiety does to your body.

If you are like me and get all geeky about the science and research, the GreenMedInfo Professional Membership comes highly recommended. I wish I had been a member when I was writing my book! Here is an example of how they have gathered the research related to stress and anxiety

Kelly is not a fan of the low serotonin theory of depression and anxiety

The interesting thing is that Kelly is not a fan of the low serotonin theory of depression and anxiety. We had a rather interesting discussion around the topic, and we respectfully disagree with each other. Surprisingly enough, this is the only real difference of opinion in the whole summit. I had decided that I wanted to air Kelly’s interview on Day 1, and I could have moved it to a later date because of the difference of opinion that we had, but I think healthy debate is a good thing. Hopefully, we can convince Kelly that serotonin is a factor when it comes to anxiety and depression, but also I would like to learn more about why she feels low serotonin doesn’t play a role.

Julia Ross interview on low serotonin and the amino acids

Please do check out my interview with Julia Ross – Eliminating Anxiety: Amino Acid Therapy and Adrenal Balancing. We spend a big part of the interview discussing the role of low serotonin in anxiety and depression and how effective tryptophan and 5-HTP are for alleviating symptoms.  

Meme Grant: Client success story with tryptophan

I use tryptophan and 5-HTP with great success with my clients.  Be sure to listen to Meme Grant’s success story on Sunday June 22.  She shares how she used amino acids to end her anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and emotional eating. Tryptophan and GABA made a world of difference for her.

Get your free gift from Dr Kelly Brogan

Top 7 Therapeutic Foods

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com

UPDATE: the summit concluded on Tues 6/24 – season 2 of The Anxiety Summit will be in November 2014. If you’d like to be on the notification list just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

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