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Food, Mood and Women's Health – Be your healthiest, look and feel great!

Archives for July 2016

Sleep improvement: Oral intake of GABA and Apocynum venetum leaf extract

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sleep-improvement

I’ve blogged about the Sleep promoting effects of combined GABA and 5-HTP. There is another combination of nutrients that has been shown to help with sleep: GABA and the herb Apocynum venetum leaf extract.

In this 2015 paper: The Improvement of Sleep by Oral Intake of GABA and Apocynum venetum Leaf Extract

The electroencephalogram (EEG) test revealed that oral administration of GABA (100 mg) and [Apocynum venetum Leaf Extract] AVLE (50 mg) had beneficial effects on sleep.

In this study they found that GABA helps people to fall asleep quickly and Apocynum venetum Leaf Extract induces deep sleep, and that they work well when taken together.

The authors conclude that both GABA and Apocynum venetum leaf extract:

can be regarded as safe and appropriate for daily intake in order to improve the quality of sleep.

Earlier this year I heard Dr. Peter Bongiorno present at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium and one of the herbs he covered was Apocynum venetum leaf extract for depression. Since this was new to me, I invited him to share about this herb on the recent Anxiety Summit: Serotonin and anxiety: tryptophan, 5-HTP, serotonin syndrome and medication tapers

I also briefly mentioned the above GABA/Apocynum venetum leaf extract study in my talk on the recent Anxiety Summit – GABA: Blood brain barrier controversy, concerns, best forms and how to do a trial for eliminating anxiety

I find that many of my clients with anxiety also have sleep problems and GABA is often helpful if their sleep issues are related to low GABA levels, often manifesting as physical tension.

One of the signs of low serotonin, in addition to anxiety and worry, is insomnia and I find tryptophan (and sometimes 5-HTP) to be very helpful for many clients too. I’ll often have someone use both GABA and tryptophan (or GABA and 5-HTP) and the combination seems to be a good one.

I have not yet used Apocynum venetum leaf extract alone with clients or in combination with GABA and look forward to learning more. Have you have tried it alone or in combination with GABA? Have you used it with clients?

Reminder – therapeutic/special diets webinar

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[SEE BELOW FOR REPLAY INFORMATION + MOM’S GROUP]

Here is a quick reminder about the webinar tomorrow July 6th at 1pm PDT: Customizing Therapeutic Diets to Improve Clinical Success with Anxiety, Autism and Beyond.

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We all agree that Food is Medicine, however, there is no one dietary strategy that is right for everyone. Diet recommendations must consider varied biochemical and physiological factors, so they are personalized to suite the individual needs of your client – can they tolerate phenols, salicylates, high histamine foods, amines, oxalates, and FODMAPS? Knowing about these special diets and customizing dietary recommendations can increase your success with complex cases, especially your clients with anxiety and those that seem to have food reactions to “everything.” Understanding these advanced diets and principles have been critical to furthering my success in working with clients with anxiety.

Tomorrow I will be conducting a webinar with Julie Matthews on this topic. She is a good friend and nutrition colleague and we’ll be sharing valuable tips and clinical advice from our combined 25 years in practice. Julie is the founder of the Bioindividual Nutrition Institute and will cover:

  • How personalizing food and nutrition strategy helps improve patient/client outcomes
  • Which foods may negatively affect mood and anxiety, as well as co-morbid conditions
  • How to make your preferred diet strategy even more effective by individualizing over a dozen additional dietary factors
  • The most advantageous special diets for healing: including: GFCF, SCD, GAPS Diet, Paleo diet, low phenol diets, low oxalate, and low FODMAPs

We’ll discuss some clinical case studies from both of our practices and Julie will share more about the study group forming for the BioIndividual Nutrition Institute practitioner training program.

If diet and nutrition is a strong part of your practice, be sure to join us.

Here is a sampling of what we’ll cover:

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Hope you can join us!

PS. This is webinar is for practitioners but anyone can tune in and listen and learn. Register at:
https://az184.isrefer.com/go/ctdaa/TrudyScott/

PPS. I’m actually camping at Tahoe this week so we recorded this before I left! But Julie will be live on the call after the recording so if you have questions join live to get them answered. If you can’t make it live sign up and you’ll get the recording + the questions she addressed

UPDATE July 8, 2016 – REPLAY INFORMATION + MOM’S GROUP

In order to listen to the replay of the webinar simply register at the same link and you’ll receive an email with the replay
https://az184.isrefer.com/go/ctdaa/TrudyScott/

Also, because many of you that are not clinicians expressed interest in the BioIndividual Nutrition training, Julie has re-opened the Nourishing Hope Moms program and scholarship to TEN new individuals. Inquire and apply here https://az184.isrefer.com/go/nhmoms/TrudyScott/

 

 

Tryptophan for PMS: premenstrual dysphoria, mood swings, tension, and irritability

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tryptophan for pms

In a study published in 1999, A placebo-controlled clinical trial of L-tryptophan in premenstrual dysphoria, tryptophan was found to reduce symptoms of PMS when used in the luteal phase or second half of the cycle (i.e. after ovulation):

37 patients with premenstrual dysphoric disorder were treated with L-tryptophan 6 g per day, and 34 were given placebo. The treatments were administered under double-blind conditions for 17 days, from the time of ovulation to the third day of menstruation, during three consecutive menstrual cycles.

They looked at dysphoria, which is defined as a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life, plus mood swings, tension (and anxiety), and irritability and they found a 34.5% reduction of symptoms with tryptophan compared to 10.4% with placebo.

The paper concludes:

that these results suggest that increasing serotonin synthesis during the late luteal phase of the menstrual cycle has a beneficial effect in patients with premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

Let me share what I see with the women with PMS that I work with:

  • This is very typical when I’m working with someone with PMS and anxiety and other mood symptoms. It typically takes 2 to 3 cycles for an amino acid like tryptophan to have an impact on PMS itself. But it does typically start to work right away on the less severe anxiety and mood symptoms that may also be a factor during the rest of the month.
  • I don’t start with 6g per day of the tryptophan but rather have each person do the amino acid questionnaire, review the precautions and do a trial of tryptophan, increasing as needed to find the optimal amount for their needs (you can read more about this here on anxiety and the amino acid overview
  • We often find that adding GABA helps too, as this supports progesterone production
  • Many anxious women I work with also have pyroluria or signs of low zinc and low vitamin B6 and adding these nutrients, together with evening primrose oil, provide additional hormonal support (and help with the social anxiety).
  • Other factors to consider with PMS: low total cholesterol (as cholesterol is needed to make hormones), gluten issues, adrenal function and blood sugar control, gut health and the microbiome, and liver support
  • And finally, we can’t forget diet and need to switch to eating a real whole foods diet free from sugar, gluten and caffeine. Coffee and chocolate in the second half of the cycle can be especially problematic for many women

Together with the tryptophan and the above approaches (if needed as we are all so different), it’s not unreasonable to get the reduction of symptoms from 34.5% (as seen with the tryptophan) down to 100%. It breaks my heart when I hear women think they have to live with PMS symptoms when they don’t have to!

Have you used tryptophan for PMS? Do you take it all month or just in the 2nd half of your cycle? What about other changes that have helped: GABA or liver support or quitting caffeine? Or something else?  Please share.

Anxiety and the amino acids: an overview

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Here is the Amino Acids Mood Questionnaire from The Antianxiety Food Solution and additional information on Anxiety and targeted individual amino acid supplements: a summary

Please read and follow these Amino Acid Precautions before using any of the amino acids.

The best way to figure out if you have a particular brain chemical imbalance and if you’ll benefit from a certain amino acid, is to do a trial.   This is something I do with all my clients with anxiety, when we’re working one-one-one and with those in group programs, and it works really well.

Because the effects of amino acids can be felt within a few minutes to a few days, it’s easy to confirm whether you do in fact have a deficiency in a certain area and whether you’ll benefit from supplementing with the associated amino acid.

Here is information on how to do a trial.

Here are the supplements I use with my clients.

If you do not have my book I highly recommend getting it and reading it before jumping in to taking amino acids: The Antianxiety Food Solution – How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings

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There is a complete chapter on the amino acids and one for pyroluria, plus information on real whole food, sugar and blood sugar, gluten, digestion and much more.

Once you have read it you can use these above blogs, and others on my site, as summaries. They do contain some additional information that is not in my book.

If all this sounds too overwhelming, check out the The Amazing Aminos for Anxiety homestudy program. This homestudy group program provides guidance with using each of the targeted individual amino acids and how to do a trial.