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Depression

GABA, toxins, hormones, autoimmunity – encore of The Diabetes Summit

March 28, 2017 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

Brain Mowll is host of the 4th season of the Diabetes Summit and here are all the speakers and topics in the encore replay line-up (including yours truly).

TRUDY SCOTT, CN: Understanding Anxiety: The Connection to Diabetes

  • Learn about the link between diabetes, anxiety, and depression
  • Understanding the root imbalances underlying anxiety
  • Natural solutions and supplemental support for anxiety 

We may need to look at low serotonin as well because we’ve got two kinds of anxiety when it comes to neurotransmitters, the low GABA, which is the physical anxiety, and the low serotonin, which is more the ruminating thoughts, the worry in the head, the reprocessing, the negative self-talk. So we often have low GABA, and we often have low serotonin as well. And both of those have a corresponding amino acid that helps to raise it. With low GABA we use GABA. With low serotonin we use tryptophan or 5-HTP. And we’re going talk about that one in a second. But the interesting thing is I was really excited to see that there’s some really new research on how GABA has some pretty promising benefits in terms of diabetes support as well.

Read some additional snippets from my interview: Diabetes, anxiety and GABA

 

RAZI BERRY: Using Naturopathic Principles to Prevent Diabetes

  • Learning from Razi’s health experience and journey
  • How toxins in our environment can disrupt metabolism
  • Natural solutions to improve blood sugar and overall health

Read some snippets from her interview here: Anxiety, phenibut, toxins and cold showers for detoxification

 

ANNA CABECA, DO: Creating Hormone Balance to Optimize Metabolic Health

  • The keys to balancing hormones to burn fat and control sugar
  • Understanding the connection between menopause and metabolism
  • How to optimize hormone levels

Dr Cabeca shares this about the ketogenic diet (for women), going keto-crazy and being like a witch when eating too low-carb:

…if you’re working on a ketogenic diet and lifestyle, check to see your urine. And you’re most likely acidic. But now, get that pH up into an alkaline range, and you’ll see your neurotransmitters will balance. You’ll feel calmer. You’ll sleep better. You’ll start to melt fat away which is huge. And that made all the difference in the world, combing those two.

Read some additional snippets from her interview: Menopause: insulin, cortisol, and oxytocin (an interview with Dr. Anna Cabeca)

 

TOM O’BRYAN: Autoimmune Disease and the Connection To Diabetes

  • Understanding what drives autoimmune disease
  • Exploring various toxins that inundate our lives
  • How to balance the immune response to allow proper healing

 

SAYER JI: What the Evidence Reveals About Reversing Diabetes

  • What the peer reviewed, medical literature shows
  • The best natural strategies to reverse diabetes
  • The role of supplements and helpful nutrients

 

BJ HARDICK: Sugar, Detox, and The Brain: Natural Strategies For Healing

  • Understanding damaging foods and how to remove them
  • How to properly structure a detoxification program
  • Type 3 diabetes and how dysglycemia effects the brain

 

SACHIN PATEL: A New Model for Medicine, Diabetes, and Blood Sugar Health

  • Re-evaluating the healthcare model and redefining our roles
  • How to be empowered to control your health as a patient
  • A new model for caring for the body and optimizing health

This aspect of why we eat is seldom addressed and it’s profound:

When you are living a life that is on purpose – that requires you to be eating healthy because you’re going to do whatever it takes to eliminate things that are going to impact that purpose.

I also love the analogy of the right fuel in the car but driving in the wrong direction (like hating your job or not having a purpose):

When you are living a life that is on purpose – that requires you to be eating healthy because you’re going to do whatever it takes to eliminate things that are going to impact that purpose

 

NIKI GRATRIX: The Mind-Body Connection to Metabolic Health

  • How to tap into your internal abundance of energy
  • Understand ACE (adverse childhood events) score and how childhood events impact health
  • Natural techniques and strategies to let go of limits

 

PETER OSBORNE: The Autoimmune Connection to Blood Sugar and Diabetes

  • The connection between autoimmune and blood sugar
  • How to test and treat autoimmune disease effectively
  • Natural solutions to reduce inflammation and heal the body

 

MICHAEL MURRAY, ND: The Four Types of Blood Sugar Problems in Diabetes

  • Understanding a natural medicine approach to diabetes
  • Dr. Murray’s four types of blood sugar problems
  • Natural strategies to address the specific blood sugar issues

 

JOEL KAHN, MD: A Plant-Based Approach to Heart Health and Blood Sugar Health 

  • Sorting through the confusion about dietary strategies
  • Understanding the importance of plant-based foods
  • Key nutrients and supplements for heart health

I’d like to add that while I respect Dr. Kahn’s cardiology diet expertise, I am an advocate of quality animal protein and have found that many people with anxiety and depression typically don’t do very well on a vegan diet. His discussion was professional and very respectful and I do wholeheartedly agree with this:

I think whether grass fed beef, free range, omega 3 rich eggs are healthy or not, and that’s probably not possible to solve that question completely, the data’s here, there, or frankly there’s not enough data, just always add these organic brightly colored fruits and vegetables to whatever you’re eating

He also acknowledged Dr. Hyman’s coining of the term, the Pegan diet, which combines the best of a Paleo and vegan diet saying

It’s a useful term. It’s another way to say eat a very clean, very vegetable rich diet with a little wiggle room [i.e. the addition of quality animal protein]

We really do need a study comparing a real foods diet with feedlot meat and farmed fish – with a real foods diet with grass-fed meat and wild fish!

Here is the link to register for the Diabetes Summit if this is the first you’re hearing about it. You can still sign up to listen!

Enjoy these encore day replays!

Filed Under: Antianxiety, Depression, Diabetes, Events Tagged With: ana cabeca, bj hardick, Diabetes Summit, joel kahn, michael murray, niki gratrix, peter osborne, Razi Berry, sachin patel, Sayer Ji, tom o’bryan

SMILES diet depression trial: reduced depression and anxiety

March 24, 2017 By Trudy Scott 16 Comments

The SMILES trial, A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression was recently published BMC Medicine. It is the first randomized controlled trial to test whether dietary improvement can actually treat depression. Yes, we’re using dietary improvement and treat in the same sentence!

The objective was to determine if “structured dietary support, focusing on improving diet quality using a modified Mediterranean diet model” would have an impact on mood. The outcome is very exciting:

‘SMILES’ was a 12-week, parallel-group, single blind, randomised controlled trial of an adjunctive dietary intervention in the treatment of moderate to severe depression. The intervention consisted of seven individual nutritional consulting sessions delivered by a clinical dietician. The control condition comprised a social support protocol to the same visit schedule and length.

The results indicate that dietary improvement may provide an efficacious and accessible treatment strategy for the management of this highly prevalent mental disorder, the benefits of which could extend to the management of common co-morbidities.

These encouraging results were seen in participants who switched from a junk food diet to a real foods diet. Of the 67 who were enrolled in the study, the majority were using some form of therapy: psychotherapy and medications combined or psychotherapy only or medication only. There were 31 in the diet support group and 25 in the social support control group. Participants had to have been eating this diet in order to be accepted into the study:

a poor (low) intake of dietary fibre, lean proteins and fruit and vegetables, and a high intake of sweets, processed meats and salty snacks.

The dietary approach followed by participants in the study intervention group was the ‘ModiMedDiet’ which is based on the Australian Dietary guidelines and the Dietary Guidelines for Adults in Greece.

The primary focus was on increasing diet quality by supporting the consumption of the following 12 key food groups (recommended servings in brackets): whole grains (5–8 servings per day); vegetables (6 per day); fruit (3 per day), legumes (3–4 per week); low-fat and unsweetened dairy foods (2–3 per day); raw and unsalted nuts (1 per day); fish (at least 2 per week); lean red meats (3–4 per week), chicken (2–3 per week); eggs (up to 6 per week); and olive oil (3 tablespoons per day), whilst reducing intake of ‘extras’ foods, such as sweets, refined cereals, fried food, fast-food, processed meats and sugary drinks (no more than 3 per week). Red or white wine consumption beyond 2 standard drinks per day and all other alcohol (e.g. spirits, beer) were included within the ‘extras’ food group. Individuals were advised to select red wine preferably and only drink with meals.

The dietary composition of the ModiMedDiet was as follows: protein 18% of total energy; fat 40%; carbohydrates 37%; alcohol 2%; fibre/other 3%.

Here are the reasons I’m excited about this research:

  • It’s the first randomized controlled diet depression study and ONE THIRD of the dietary intervention group saw improvements in their depression symptoms.  This was just diet alone and switching from processed/junk food to real food with no specific dietary restrictions!
  • Participants also reported improvements in anxiety symptoms.
  • The authors even addressed the cost factor, stating it was more affordable to eat this way ($112 per week vs $138 per week).
  • The authors address the fact that the dietary intervention group was able to make these dietary changes “despite the fatigue and lack of motivation” that we so commonly see with depression.
  • I’m optimistic about it paving the way for making dietary approaches part of the standard of treatment for mental health conditions. The paper suggests the addition of “clinical dieticians to multidisciplinary mental health teams.”  I’d like to add that these dieticians, together with nutritionists and health coaches would need to be well versed in functional medicine approaches.
  • According to an article on ABC, one participant continued the Mediterranean diet after finishing the study and is now doing a diploma in health science. How inspiring is this? When we get results like this we want to share them with everyone!  

These are very encouraging results and we applaud the positive results of this SMILES study which are truly groundbreaking.

Let’s also be aware of where we are headed with future research and how we can improve on the trial diet.  The researchers conclude with this comment about future research:

The scaling up of interventions and identification of the pathways that mediate the impact of dietary improvement on depressive illness are also key imperatives

Professor Jacka recently shared this paper on how personalized dietary interventions successfully lower post-meal glucose i.e. how certain foods can affect two people quite differently because of our unique gut bacteria. She said that she wants to do a similar personalized nutrition study for depression if they are successful in obtaining NHMRC funding.

Here are some questions I’ve been asked about this SMILES trial (and I’m sharing here in case you have similar questions):

  • why did only one-third of the study intervention group see improvements?
  • why was wheat and other grains included?
  • why was low fat dairy and lean meats emphasized?
  • why was there no mention of grass-fed meat, wild fish, healthy fats like butter and coconut oil, pastured eggs or chickens or quality organic fruits and vegetables?

The ideal dietary approach for anxiety, depression and any health condition is always one that high quality, is personalized and takes into account biochemical individuality. With the removal of gluten, grains and the inclusion of the other dietary changes mentioned above, plus addressing all nutritional imbalances I expect we will see more than one-third of the dietary group experiencing improvements in depression in future trials.  

I truly appreciate the work of Professor Felice Jacka and her team and look forward to seeing more studies like the SMILES trial, using a personalized approach and quality foods that include grass-fed red meat and wild fish, plus pastured eggs or chickens, and healthy fats; and organic produce as a baseline. 

And then future trials that also look at the impacts of these dietary changes on anxiety and depression: gluten and/or grain removal;  removal of high histamine foods and high oxalate foods;  a low FODMAPs diet; the specific carbohydrate diet/SCD; a Paleo diet and so on – all based on biochemical individuality. We know these diets works in clinical practice and now we just need the research to back this up.  In part 2 of the blog, I share some incredibly inspiring diet-depression and diet-anxiety Paleo success stories.

In summary:

  • a simple change like switching from junk to real food can have a major impact on your depression and anxiety – ONE THIRD of the dietary intervention group saw improvements in their depression symptoms and many also saw reduced anxiety. This is profound! 
  • you may need to make additional dietary changes (gluten-free, grain-free, low FODMAPs i.e. avoiding or adding certain foods based on your biochemical individuality) and always add healthy fats and focus on quality
  • you may also need to address brain chemical imbalances with amino acids supplements, address gut health, adrenal issues, low zinc, low vitamin B6, low vitamin D etc. too

Are you encouraged by this research?

And have you made similar dietary changes to those done in the SMILES trial and seen a reduction in your anxiety and depression?

Have you removed gluten or grains and made additional dietary changes, and added supplements and seen even more benefits?

Note: to avoid confusion I’ve used the Australia spelling of “randomised” and “fibre” in the quoted sections and the US spelling “randomized” elsewhere in the blog.

Filed Under: Antianxiety, Depression Tagged With: anxiety, depression, diet, felice jacka, SMILES, treatment, trial

The Evolution of Psychiatry: integrative psychiatry, anxiety and the thyroid

February 18, 2017 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

James Maskell is the founder of The Functional Forum and this month the theme was The Evolution of Psychiatry. It was such a great episode so I’m sharing it with you here today.

The first presentation was by Janet Settle, MD and Will Van Derveer, MD. They took the stage and presented on the fundamentals of integrative psychiatry, covering root cause-based psychiatry. Together with Scott Shannon, MD, they are also now offering their “Psychiatry Masterclass” training program to other doctors.

This presentation included:

  • The foundations of truly effective, root-cause focused mental health system
  • Typical unresolved physiological dysfunctions that manifest as mental illness
  • Concrete steps for creating the mental health centers of the future

Here is a sampling of what they covered. Isn’t it wonderful to see a slide titled “Integrative Psychiatry Model” and with physiologic root causes listed?

The section on child abuse, trauma and psychospiritual root causes was enlightening:

They cover MDMA- and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and I look forward to learning more from them about these approaches. However, until I learn more I’m wary of these approaches because of the side-effects. Based on the work I do with targeted individual amino acids I would use them before even considering MDMA or ketamine.

You can watch the entire video presentation here:

 

Next up was Thyroid Pharmacist, Dr. Izabella Wentz, returning to the Functional Forum stage for her first keynote. Dr. Izabella is a dear friend and one of my favorite thyroid experts and she covered the connections between thyroid health and depression and anxiety, looking at proven protocols to address the underlying causes.   Her presentation is titled “The Misdiagnosis Machine: How Thyroid Problems Mimic the Symptoms of Mental Illness.”

Dr. Izabella shares the symptoms of the autoimmune attack on the thyroid gland. As well as fatigue, weight gain, gut issues and apathy, you can experience mood symptoms such as anxiety, OCD-like symptoms and mood swings.

You can watch the entire video presentation here (and listen for a mention of my name and how commonly I see anxiety with clients with thyroid symptoms):

 

If you enjoyed Dr. Izabella’s presentation you don’t want to miss her upcoming documentary called The Thyroid Secret. I’m thrilled to have been invited to contribute on my expertise on anxiety and how this ties back to thyroid health. You can read more about it and find a few snippets from my interview here.

 

Dr. Izabella also has a new book that will be released next month: Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back. I have a review copy and it’s brilliant! I’ll be sharing more via a book review and interview with Dr. Izabella, taking a deep dive into infections and Hashimoto’s, so stay tuned for that.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these two presentations! For me, hearing presentations like these gives me so much optimism for the future of mental health!

I’d love to hear what has inspired you?

If you’re a practitioner and would like to attend a live Functional Forum meeting in the future or tune in online, you can register here to be notified. James and his team also offer excellent practice resources for functional medicine practitioners. We appreciate him for what he is doing for functional medicine via the Functional Forum!

 

 

Filed Under: Anxiety and panic, Depression, Events, People, Thyroid, Thyroid health Tagged With: anxiety, depression, functional forum, integrative psychiatry, izabella wentz, james maskell, Janet Settle, mental health, thyroid, Will Van Derveer

Share your diet-depression success story: SMILES study looking for your input

January 19, 2017 By Trudy Scott 18 Comments

Professor Felice Jacka, nutritional psychiatry researcher and founder of ISNPR/International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research posted this exciting news and important request on the ISNPR facebook page:

The SMILES RCT, which is the first randomised controlled trial to test whether dietary improvement can actually treat depression, has now been accepted for publication in BMC Medicine (publication date 31st January).

As part of the media campaign, we will be needing to identify people who are willing to be interviewed. If there is anyone who has personally experienced a benefit from improving their diet, would you please volunteer for this purpose?

It’s a very important role, as the media coverage for SMILES will be limited if we can’t provide personal, first-person experiences to journalists. Clearly – for the sake of the field – it will be important to generate extensive media in order for clinicians and the general public to understand the implications and possibilities that arise from the RCT. Your help is enormously appreciated!

You can read more about this SMILES RCT here and the Anxiety Summit interview with Felice Jacka here: The Research – Food to prevent and treat anxiety and depression?.

Although anxiety was looked at in the study, Felice shared this regarding the type of interviewees they are looking for:

  • We really need to keep a focus on the topic of the RCT, which is depression
  • And to also keep it to those who improved the quality of their diet i.e. moving from a processed food diet, to one high in plant foods and healthy fats and healthy proteins
  • Not a particular type of diet (e.g. not paleo, not gluten free).

If you’ve personally benefited from changing your diet in this way and you’d like to help by sharing your story with the media please comment on the blog (or send an email to support [at] everywomanover29.com) with details of your story and willingness to be interviewed, plus your location. Be sure to let us know how best to contact you.

Right now we’ll just be calling on those who meet the above criteria for the media interviews.

BUT if you’ve benefited from any other changes to your diet – for either anxiety or depression – feel free to share anyway, so we can inspire others to do the same.

Here is my story:

For me it was anxiety and panic attacks that resolved when I made dietary and other nutritional and lifestyle changes.   I had been eating a vegetarian diet for a few years and I suspect the non-organic/GMO processed soy products (soy milk, soy yogurt, soy “butter” etc) were a big issue for me and damaged my gut.  When I added back quality animal protein (grass-fed red meat, wild fish, pastured eggs and chicken), switched to organic produce, added healthy fats and removed gluten my mood improved dramatically.  Now I eat a combination of a Paleo/SCD /low FODMAPS/low oxalate diet. 

During the severe anxiety and panic attacks I also needed additional support in the way of the targeted amino acids GABA (this was a life-saver and stopped the panic attacks in a few days) and tryptophan, plus zinc, vitamin B6, evening primrose oil, a good multi and B complex and adrenal support.  I still continue with some of these basic nutrients today.

My health issues have been complex as I’ve also had to deal with heavy metals, poor gut health and much more so I had what I call “a perfect storm” and yet diet has had such a huge impact for me!

Thanks for sharing your story! I’ll be sharing more as soon as the paper is actually published. Stay tuned for an interview with Felice too! 

And  big congrats to Felice and her team on this ground-breaking research!

UPDATE January 30, 2017: Here is the link to the research – A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial)

 

Filed Under: Depression, Food and mood, Research Tagged With: anxiety, depression, diet, felice jacka, food, smiles study

The pill and other hormonal contraception: depression, anxiety and FAM

October 21, 2016 By Trudy Scott 9 Comments

homonal-contraception

Women taking the contraceptive pill and other hormonal contraception are more likely to be depressed. These are the findings from a Danish study published in JAMA Psychiatry and reported in an article on PubMed Health.

This was a large prospective cohort study which aimed to investigate whether using hormonal contraception is associated with the future use of antidepressants and a diagnosis of depression.

More than 1 million women aged 15 to 34, with no prior history of depression, were included in the study [and followed for 13 years].

The researchers compared users of hormonal contraception with non-users and found users were more likely to be prescribed antidepressants and diagnosed with depression.

This study found that those women who used the pill were 23% more likely to use antidepressants.

And here are the connections between antidepressant use and these other birth control methods (categorized by estrogen type and dose, progesterone type and the method of contraception):

  • progestogen-only pill – 34% more likely to use antidepressants
  • levonorgestrel intrauterine system (IUS) – 40% more likely to use antidepressants
  • vaginal ring (etonogestrel) – 60% more likely to use antidepressants
  • contraceptive patch (norgestrolmin) – 100% more likely to use antidepressants

The study authors state this:

it’s important to note this study is not able to prove that the contraceptive methods are responsible for the depression, only to find possible links to investigate further.

The researchers don’t advise that women should stop using their contraception, just that further studies are needed. If this association is found to be true, depression may have to be added as a possible side effect of hormonal contraception. 

My fellow nutritionist Karla Maree says this: ‘we’re going to need black box warnings on these medications” and I agree. It’s disappointing that the researchers say further studies are needed.

Dr. Daniel Amen sees the association in his practice and shared this about birth control pills when I interviewed him during season 3 of the Anxiety Summit.

Unfortunately, they drop serotonin levels. You’ve got to ask yourself why are 23 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 60 taking antidepressants. In large part, it’s the birth-control pills that are changing the hormones in their brain, the neurotransmitters in their brain. All of a sudden, they’re more anxious and they’re more depressed.

Birth control pills also can drop magnesium. Magnesium is a natural calmer to nerve cells. They literally can change things. 

We know the pill can also deplete vitamin B6 and folate, and can raise copper levels so these are likely some of the additional reasons we see mood changes in women taking them.

You may have noticed that Dr. Amen mentions 23 percent in our interview – which was actually done in May 2015. He is referring to a 2011 report released by the National Center for Health Statistics:

  • the rate of antidepressant use in this country among teens and adults (people ages 12 and older) increased by almost 400% between 1988–1994 and 2005–2008.
  • 23% of women in their 40s and 50s take antidepressants, a higher percentage than any other group (by age or sex)
  • women are 2½ times more likely to be taking an antidepressant than men

Is this related to hormonal birth control? Very likely! I’m not in favor of any of these hormonal birth control methods and know from experience that they often cause both depression and anxiety in my clients but seeing these percentages is still shocking!

It’s quite strange how many of my clients don’t think of birth control as having side-effects or being as “bad” as other medications. This was certainly the case for me. I’ve very seldom taken medications in my life but I did use the pill and then an IUD for a short while, and initially I didn’t give either a second thought. But I’m sure they were part of the perfect storm that contributed to my anxiety and panic attacks in my late 30s. I was prescribed an antidepressant at this time but chose not to take it, instead searching for nutritional solutions.

During my search for answers, I read tons of books and one book has had a huge impact on me: Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. It offered a powerful non-hormonal option for birth control: the Fertility Awareness Method or FAM and gave me so much insight about my body and hormones. It’s also something I now share with my clients. It deserves an entire review so stay tuned. For now, you can check out an overview on her website.

My version of the book was published in 1995 and Toni now has a new revised 2015 edition: Taking Charge of Your Fertility, 20th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health.

taking-charge-of-your-fertility

What about you? Do you consider birth control more acceptable than other medications? Are you or were you on birth control and an antidepressant? And do you/did you feel that the birth control affected your mood and contributed to your depression or anxiety?

Or did it improve your symptoms (some women do report a better mood)?

Have you considered or used FAM as an alternative method of birth control? (or pregnancy achievement?)

Have you been offered birth control because of heavy periods or PMS? There are better ways to deal with this and one approach would be to address low serotonin levels with tryptophan.

If you’re in menopause and have no need for this information, please pass it on to your daughters and grand-daughters, nieces, sisters and girlfriends.

Filed Under: Depression Tagged With: anxiety, birth control, contraceptive pill, depression, FAM, pill, taking charge of your fertility, women

Erin Matlock: talk about suicide, don’t gloss over it and don’t flinch!

September 9, 2016 By Trudy Scott 29 Comments

erin-matlock-talk-suicide

Earlier this week when Erin Matlock shared her “Changing Fate” video from the Superhero You live event she said this:

This is hands down the most personal and most difficult talk I’ve ever given. In it I read from my own suicide note.

Please help us send this video out into the world so that people who are suffering alone can see that they are so very not alone.

I was very moved to share this video and since it’s National Suicide Prevention Week and World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10th, I’ve added to her wonderful message by sharing some powerful nutritional resources too.

You can WATCH the entire 16 minute video from the SuperheroYou live event VIA THIS LINK on the SuperheroYou facebook page. This is what Superhero You founder Jim Kwik shared when posting the video:

If you feel broken, alone, or unhappy, this might be the most important video you watch today.

Most of us think suicide is something that happens to strangers – not to people we know. But someone dies by suicide every 40 seconds. That’s 15,385 people this week and 800,000 people this year. If you have 1,000 Facebook friends, 60 of them have thought about suicide in the past year.

Erin Matlock knows this struggle well. She battled major depression for 15 years and had 4 escalating attempts on her own life. Today, Erin is a mental health advocate and founder of the Brain Summit, an online platform where experts present the latest tools and techniques to upgrade your brain. In the video, Erin shares how neuroscience helped her during this time, the challenges that even the happiest-seeming people might face, and what you can do if you (or someone you love) might be struggling.

Erin also talks about Cynthia Pasquella’s struggles with depression and saying “my brain is trying to murder me.” Here is her powerful blog where she bravely and openly shares: Let’s Talk About Depression – Because Most People Won’t And It’s Killing Us

Here is the resource list Erin shares:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (United States 24 hour hotline)
1-800-273-TALK

Samaritans  (United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland 24 hour hotline)
116 123 (UK) and 116 123 (ROI)

Beyond Blue (Australia 24 hour hotline and resources)
1300 22 4636

To Write Love On Her Arms
A nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.

Mind
A UK charity with an extensive collection of information about mental health.

HeadsTogether
A UK Mental Health Awareness Campaign spearheaded by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

PsychologyToday Therapist Directory
Find Help From A licensed Therapist In Your Area

EEG Info Neurofeedback Provider Directory
Find a qualified clinician in your area

Advanced Brain Technologies Provider Directory
Music Listening Therapy

Fisher Wallace Stimulator
FDA approved device for the treatment of depression and anxiety. Stimulates the brain to produce serotonin while lowering cortisol.

You can find more wonderful resources from Erin on the Brain Pages and her website

erin-matlock-search-for-better-brain

In addition to the above resources Erin has so kindly shared I’d like to share some powerful and effective nutritional resources too. Just like anxiety, depression often has a biochemical and nutritional component and getting to the root cause of these imbalances and deficiencies can often completely eliminate the depression and suicidal thinking.

I hear this from Anxiety Summit attendees all the time:

Why has no-one told me that food and nutrients could have such an impact on my anxiety and panic attacks?

The same could be said for depression and suicidal thinking.

I also hear this from many in my community:

My anxiety (or depression) is SO severe there is no way that diet and nutrients could make a difference!

This is not true and I encourage you to have an open mind about this. We now have much research and so many integrative practitioners and nutritionists doing this work and seeing incredible results.  My colleague (and prior Anxiety Summit guest expert) Dr. Josh Friedman is one such practitioner and he has a wealth of information on his facebook page Integrative Depression Solutions. Here is just one example of a post:

nutrienta-and-mental-illness

The article was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry: What if nutrients could treat mental illness? and it starts with this sentence:

We are at a tipping point in psychiatry. With few psychiatric drugs on the horizon and long-term studies suggesting medication may do more harm than good, it is time to revisit the very old idea that nutrition can have a positive effect on mental health.

You can hear more about this topic in Julia Rucklidge’s TEDX talk: The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health and read more about nutritional medicine in modern psychiatry from the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research/ISNPR, and it’s founder Felice Jacka.

Here are some other nutritional resources for depression. Don’t let the word anxiety deter you – for some people anxiety is their biggest issue, for other it’s depression and the same underlying causes can be factors in both conditions.

60+ Nutritional & Biochemical Causes of Anxiety, a check-list to rule out possible underlying causes

The Anxiety Summit, an online event I host, now in its 4th season and called “a bouquet of hope”

The Depression Sessions, an online event hosted by Sean Croxton

The Mental Wellness Summit, an online event hosted by Dr. John Dempster and Ross McKenzie

The Medicinal Supplements Summit, co-hosted by Wendy Myers, airs next week (I cover both anxiety and depression in my interview)

The Brain Summit, hosted by Erin earlier this year.  I was fortunate enough to get to know Erin earlier this year, both as a speaker (I talked about grass-fed red meat and tryptophan) and by listening to her interview many wonderful brain experts like Alex Doman (who talked about music therapy for vagus nerve rehab).

A Mind of Your Own: The Truth about Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, the wonderful best-selling book by Dr. Kelly Brogan

The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions–Today, the excellent book my mentor, Julia Ross

The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings, my book on anxiety

There is hope and just know there is an answer for you! Start by talking about how you feel, ask for help and work with someone to help you find your underlying cause and solution.

I know Erin’s courage and wisdom will get more people starting the conversation about suicide. And as she so wisely says:

talk about suicide, don’t gloss over it and don’t flinch!

I’d like to challenge you to be a superhero and talk to at least three people about suicide in the next week, whether you’re the one having suicidal thoughts or whether you’re the one concerned about a loved one or friend who may be having suicidal thoughts. Don’t gloss over it and don’t flinch!

 

Filed Under: Depression, Food and mood Tagged With: anxiety, Cynthia Pasquella, depression, Erin Matlock, integrative, nutritional psychiatry, suicide, SuperHero

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