Trudy Scott Anxiety Nutrition Solutions & Every Woman Over 29

Lithium, bipolar and heavy metal detox on the Mental Wellness Summit

August 9, 2015 By Trudy Scott 17 Comments

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Ross McKenzie, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized : Journey Beyond Meds, is interviewed by Dr. John Dempster on The Mental Wellness Summit. Here are a few snippets from the compelling interview “Journey Beyond Meds”:

I was playing soccer. Our soccer team in college, we were number one in the country. And then 6 months later, I’m at this seminar. I’m having this huge euphoric bliss. And then I’m in a straightjacket in a white-padded room. I’m like okay, what on Earth just happened to my life?
I’m just watching my life pass me by. And the expression I think of how it felt for so many years is I felt like the walking dead without the actual benefits of being dead. It was a nightmare. It was like being trapped in my body. And it was brutal.
So I had this big wake up call. One of the things with lithium is that you have to get your kidneys tested. It’s very hard on your organs. And you have to get blood work done just to make sure that you’re not in toxic levels. My first year of taking it, I actually almost died of lithium toxicity. It was so bad. I actually felt my body shutting down from that, which was terrifying.

Ross also talks about detoxing from prescription lithium and how he was then able to start filming his story and making the movie Bipolarized; and how there is this grassroots awakening happening right now [in integrative mental health]. His message is very clear and inspiring:

become your own best doctor. Become an informed consumer, do your research
we can actually address root cause symptoms, heal these symptoms. These diseases are not for life.
So there’s a place for all of it… an integrated mental health holistic model. And to have that be the norm on the planet. What an incredible thing that would be

Ross also says:

I know I can speak from experience now, too, having gone through the [heavy metal] chelation process. There are studies now saying it’s affecting the central nervous system. It can cause anxiety. It can actually lead to psychosis.

During the summit, Ross McKenzie also interviews Dr. John Dempster, who is his doctor and helped him address his high levels of heavy metals – both mercury and lead. Here are some snippets from this interview: “Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine”:

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Heavy metals are a neurotoxin. And they’re an endocrine disruptor. And in English, that means that they are going to break a lot of the chemicals, such as your neurotransmitters, which make you feel great. They make you sad. They make you sleep. They make you feel energized. They make you focused. This is your dopamine, your serotonin, your GABAs.
there’s a difference between what we call a toxic metal burden, which means much in your body’s tissues, versus a heavy metal toxicity, which is a bit more in the acute state of where it circulating your blood.
And if we aren’t being careful and we’re mobilizing these toxic agents and they get stuck in these organs, we’re going to have some kidney function issues that can affect all sorts of other aspects of our health. So this is where it does have to be done with somebody who is been trained properly in the proper detoxification programs and processes.

Dr. Dempster goes on to talk about functional testing, food, and the importance of healing the gut, sleep, nature and much more – for anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and ADHD.

On The Mental Wellness Summit you will also hear both these interviews:

Ross McKenzie Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized: Journey Beyond Meds
John Dempster, ND, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit: Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine

And you can listen to all the other amazing interviews that address functional and integrative approaches to root cause resolution of anxiety and depression.

Please leave your comments, questions and feedback below.

Kindness and oxytocin: a mystery memory box of treasured memories

August 7, 2015 By Trudy Scott 14 Comments

This is a story of kindness and warm and fuzzy feelings all around. There is plenty of oxytocin-boosting happening here!

On Tuesday around 6:30pm I received excited emails from Anxiety Summit fans in San Diego about a story that had just aired on the CBS8 show: Return to Sender The Mystery Memory Box.

Here is one of them:

I just watched my local San Diego Ch. 8 KFMB news and saw old pics of you from the 80’s. A lady in this area has evidently kept a couple of “mystery boxes” that appear to be yours for 17 yrs. She moved from South Africa years ago and mistakenly received these boxes. She’s wanted to return them, the name she found among the items… Trudy Hatfield!

Contact Jeff Zevely, reporter at the KFMB station, cbs8.com. I’m sure you’ve received lots of emails and calls about this. YIPPEE!

one of your many Anxiety Summit fans

You’ll see the video she’s referring to at the link below – enjoy the mystery, and a glimpse of my laughing, smiling adventurous youth!
Part 1: Return to Sender The Mystery Memory Box

Ninety minutes hours after the story is aired the mystery is solved – the box DOES belong to me! I find out via the emails from my fans (like the one above) and Barbara (the anchor) connects with Crombie (my brother).

What a trip down memory lane to see all those photos! There are many from my trip to Europe when I was in my 20s, plus postcards I sent to my family. There are also special family photos, the the last one of me hugging my baby sister Wendy. How very special!

I connect with Jeff at CBS8 and they arrange the follow-up video/story the next day. Here is the Wednesday video where I “meet” Jeanette via skype and get to give her a virtual hug and thank her for her kindness!

You can read the full story of part 2 here: Return to Sender: Mystery Memory Box Owner Found

It’s such fun to see pictures of my bother Crombie and hear how it all came together – his tennis connection to Barbara and my fans reaching out to me.

If you’ve been reading some of my recent blogs you’ll see I’m fascinated by oxytocin and it’s connection to social anxiety, postpartum depression, and autism.

I feel so good right now and am on such an oxytocin-high that I’d like to share how this act of giving and kindness is connected to oxytocin.

Paul J. Zak is the author of a book called “The Moral Molecule.” It’s all about oxytocin and here is what he says about this molecule:

It is a “feel good” hormone that increases when we do simple, feel good things like giving or receiving a hug, or when we give generously

The act of giving stimulates this hormone resulting in the recipient desiring to trust the giver
[It] accounts for why some people give freely of themselves

The above snippets come from a Wall Street Journal article: The Trust Molecule. It is a fascinating read.

Wow wow wow! So we all win, we all get to feel good, and we all get all get an oxytocin boost!

Jeanette Smith for keeping that box safe for 17 years and trying to locate me over the years! How do you repay kindness like this? I just hope she finds her missing box too
CBS8 reporter Jeff Zevely for running with the story, CBS8 anchor Barbara Lee-Edwards for immediately thinking of her tennis coach Crombie Hatfield (my brother!), and the power of TV and the internet
My Anxiety Summit fans who recognized me in the video and emailed right away. How thoughtful and kind!
Me for being at the center of this AND getting my box of precious memories back! You hear of this type of thing happening to others and never imagine it could happen to you!!
Everyone who watches the videos and loves the heart-warming story. My Facebook friends are blown away and are saying how this restores their faith in humanity. I could not agree more!

A BIG thank you to everyone involved!

We need more feel-good stories like this don’t we?Have you had a complete stranger be kind to you? Or shown kindness to a stranger. Please share in the comments.

For now, smile and enjoy the feel-good oxytocin boost! And then go and spread the kindness!

And please share the story so we can help Jeanette find her missing box too!

Customizing special diets with Julie Matthews and Dr. Kurt Woeller

August 5, 2015 By Trudy Scott 9 Comments

We can all agree how the food we eat has such an impact on how we feel and that “food is medicine.”

We know we all have specific needs, unique biochemistry and very different genes so that is there NO “one-size-fits-all diet. We need to eat according to our own unique biochemistry and this is where BioIndividual Nutrition comes in to the picture.

Customizing your diet and nutrition strategy is essential to an integrative approach.

Julie has spent the past 14 years researching and applying specialized diets and is now teaching this BioIndividual Nutrition approach to advanced clinicians.

I know Julie personally, have read her book, have heard her present at many conferences (and even supported her at a few!) and have done her training. I can assure you that her knowledge in this area takes things to the next level! She is an expert on special diets, teaching about oxalates, salicylates, amines, glutamates, FODMAPs, gluten-free, GFCF (gluten-free-casein-free), GAPS and much more!

I’m sure you remember her from our prior interviews. Here are a few reminders:

She shared this during season 1 of the Anxiety Summit: BioIndividual Nutrition and Special Diets

My book is called Nourishing Hope for Autism, but a lot of people that have other conditions get my book, particularly because I call kids with autism the canaries in the coalmine. They’re the ones that are telling us that our world is too toxic, there’s too many stressors, it’s too deficient in nutrients, and we need to change our ways by adding more nutrition, more absorbable forms of supplements, getting supplements in general, eating good foods that are nutrient dense. These principles are principles that apply, in my experience, to almost all healing. So we learn a lot from the kids with autism on how it might apply to anxiety and other conditions.

And this during season 2 of the Anxiety Summit: Fermented foods and probiotics for anxiety and depression

There was a study done by a researcher named Tillisch and published in 2013 in Gastroenterology. We know a lot about how the brain sends signals to the gut, but she explained that in the study they learned that the gut also sends signals to the brain. The researchers found that with yogurt, they found positive effects on the brain, including sensory processing and those areas associated with emotion and mood.

And earlier this year I interviewed Julie on: Customizing a Low FODMAPS Diet for a Client with Anxiety and/or Depression and we covered

The scientific rationale for recommending a Low FODMAPS (an acronym, deriving from “Fermentable, Oligo-, Di-, Mono-saccharides And Polyols) Diet for someone with anxiety/depression
Defining oligosaccharides (fructans and galacto-oligosaccharides); disaccharides (lactose); monosaccharides (fructose) and polyols (sugar alcohols and more)
What are high free fructose foods and the fructose malabsorption/anxiety and depression connection

As you can see, Julie is up-to-date on the latest research and is very hands-on and super detailed when it comes to teaching and implementing special diets.

In this FREE BioIndividual Nutrition webinar on August 10, Julie Matthews and Dr. Kurt Woeller are teaming up to share what every integrative practitioner or nutrition professional would love to know and should know about customizing special diets to individual needs:

How personalizing food and nutrition strategies help improve patient/client outcomes
Which foods may negatively affect mood, learning, and behavior (Kurt and Julie will share wisdom from their experiences with autism)
The most advantageous special diets for healing: including: GFCF, SCD, GAPS Diet, Paleo diet, low phenol diets, low oxalate, and low FODMAPs
How to AVOID the 3 most common mistakes when making dietary recommendations
How to join the upcoming September “Study Group” at the BioIndividual Nutriton Institute, with Julie Matthews and Dr. Kurt Woeller

If you’re an integrative practitioner or nutrition professional and if you’re making diet and nutrition recommendations to your patients or clients, I highly recommend this upcoming webinar on customizing special diets.

You can register here for this educational webinar on August 10^th at 1pm PST:
https://az184.isrefer.com/go/imweb/TrudyScott

If you can’t make it live, register anyway to get a copy of the recording.

Have you benefited from being on a special diet? Do you currently use special diets with your clients/patients and see symptom reduction/resolution? Please do share in the comments.

Microbiome: A New Frontier in Mental Health with Dr. David Perlmutter

August 3, 2015 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

Dr. David Perlmutter, MD, is author of the cutting-edge new book Brain Maker and one of the many excellent speakers on the upcoming Mental Wellness Summit

Here are some snippets from Dr. John Dempster’s excellent interview with Dr. David Perlmutter, MD – Microbiome: A New Frontier in Mental Health

with respect to brain health there’s not a heck of a lot that mainstream medicine can offer you once you’ve been given one of these diagnoses, whether it’s Alzheimer’s or even a child with autism [my addition: or anxiety or depression]. There’s no treatment. And I think we’re just beginning to gain some real understanding that the answers to these questions may not be in the brain. It may very well be in the gut.
this is very exciting and very cutting edge information that this microbiome, this collection of living organisms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, that live on us and within us are playing such a huge role in terms of our day-today health, our long-term risk for disease, and even functionality moment to moment, and especially incredibly as it deals with the brain
99% of the DNA in your body is bacteria. We have to pay attention to that big time because …we also fully understand now that the bacteria living within this are also changing the expression of our DNA of the DNA that we inherit from our mom and dad
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, which is the generic name for many of the products on the market, also found in many cold preparations, for example, are specifically quite toxic to the microbiome and set the stage for troubles in the body with things like inflammation

Dr. Perlmutter also shares fascinating information about C-sections, leaky gut and LPS/lipopolysaccharides, autism and fecal microbial transplants (and a heart-warming success story!), autoimmunity, clostridium difficile/ C-diff and diarrhea, fermented foods and prebiotic foods, and much more

And he has great advice for classically trained doctor/practitioners:

Don’t be down on what you’re not up on. And what I mean by that is these concepts that we’re talking about today are very, very new. And we didn’t learn about this stuff in medical school. We were taught to fear bacteria

Join The Mental Wellness Summit, online, August 10-17, 2015, to hear the full interview and other functional and integrative approaches to root cause resolution of anxiety and depression.

This online event is educational and empowering, covering today’s powerful treatment options, including: specialized diet and improved nutrition, targeted supplementation, integrative medicine, naturopathy and functional medicine, somatic therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, yoga and meditation, to name a few, are available but rarely considered for treating mental health.

Let’s go beyond just psychiatry and drugs, and explore the best options for wellness in this evolving and very exciting field.

Here are a few of the many other interesting topics that will be covered at The Mental Wellness Summit:

Kelly Brogan, MD: Holistic Medicine and Root-Cause Resolution
Robert Whitaker, PhD: The Perils of Big Pharma
Chris Kresser, MS, LAC: About the Brain-Gut Connection
Ross McKenzie Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized : Journey Beyond Meds
John Dempster, ND, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit: Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine
Trudy Scott, CN: Anxiety, Pyroluria and Amino Acid Therapy (my interview airs on August 15^th if you haven’t yet heard me speak on this topic)
Mansoor Mohammed, MD: Methylation, Genomics and Mood Disorders (you can read snippets from his interview here)

Oxytocin and variations in the OXTR gene: postpartum depression and anxiety

July 31, 2015 By Trudy Scott 22 Comments

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Research published in 2014 shows that:

genetic variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) has been implicated in anxiety, depression and related stress phenotypes

You can read more about this and other research on oxytocin, social anxiety and depression in this blog post: Oxytocin and social anxiety, pyroluria and depression?

New research published in the current issue of the journal Frontiers in Genetics now shows that a marker in the blood can identify women who might be at particular risk for postpartum depression (and presumably postpartum anxiety too). This is a genetic variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR).

Here are some excerpts from the study:

Postpartum depression (PPD) affects up to 19% of women, negatively impacting maternal and infant health.

Reductions in plasma oxytocin levels have been associated with [postpartum depression] /PPD and heritability studies have established a genetic contribution. Epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) has been demonstrated and we hypothesized that individual epigenetic variability at OXTR may impact the development of [postpartum depression] /PPD and that such variability may be central to predicting risk.

These data indicate that epigenetic variation that decreases expression of OXTR in a susceptible genotype may play a contributory role in the etiology of PPD.

You can read the complete study abstract here: Interaction between oxytocin receptor DNA methylation and genotype is associated with risk of postpartum depression in women without depression in pregnancy and the full paper here

Here is an extract from the press release:

We can greatly improve the outcome of this disorder with the identification of markers, biological or otherwise, that can identify women who may be at risk for its development,” said Jessica Connelly, an assistant professor of psychology at University of Virginia, who is the senior author of the study. “We know that women who have experienced depression before pregnancy are at higher risk of developing depression in the postpartum period. However, women who have never experienced depression also develop postpartum depression. These markers we identified may help to identify them, in advance.

You can read the full press release from the University of Virginia here: Researchers uncover blood markers to identify women at risk for postpartum depression

The oxytocinergic system is important for both the mother and her child. From a research paper published last month in Anxiety and Depression:

Maternal postpartum depression carries long-term detrimental effects on children’s well-being

when maternal [oxytocin] / OT was medium or low, child [oxytocin] / OT response was negatively impacted by maternal depression

when maternal [oxytocin] / OT was high, child [oxytocin] / OT was unaffected, suggesting that maternal [oxytocin] / OT functionality buffers the effects of depression on the child

You can read the abstract here: Maternal Depression and Child Oxytocin Response; Moderation by Maternal Oxytocin and Relational Behavior

It would be wonderful to see oxytocin levels and OXTR gene testing being done in women planning to have children, especially if they have a history of depression and anxiety, or if there is a family history of depression and anxiety (postpartum or otherwise).

If you’ve had either tested please share in the comments.

The Mental Wellness Summit starts soon!

July 27, 2015 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

The Mental Wellness Summit, online, August 10-17, 2015.

An online educational and empowering experience that explores better ways to approach and treat mental health from a root cause perspective.

Today’s powerful treatment options, including specialized diet and improved nutrition, targeted supplementation, integrative medicine, naturopathy and functional medicine, somatic therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, yoga and meditation, to name a few, are available but rarely considered for treating mental health. Let’s go beyond just psychiatry and drugs, and explore the best options for wellness in this evolving field.

Here are a few of the many interesting topics that will be covered at The Mental Wellness Summit:

Kelly Brogan, MD: Holistic Medicine and Root-Cause Resolution
Robert Whitaker, PhD: The Perils of Big Pharma
David Perlmutter, MD: Microbiome: A New Frontier in Mental Health
Chris Kresser, MS, LAC: About the Brain-Gut Connection
Ross McKenzie Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized : Journey Beyond Meds
John Dempster, ND, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit: Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine
Trudy Scott, CN: Anxiety, Pyroluria and Amino Acid Therapy (my interview airs on August 15^th if you haven’t yet heard me speak on this topic)
Mansoor Mohammed, MD: Methylation, Genomics and Mood Disorders

Here are some snippets from the interview with Mansoor Mohammed, MD: Methylation, Genomics and Mood Disorders

getting our genetic results “moves from being generic knowledge to knowledge that is personalized. And I think that’s where the power is at.”
CNV: copy number variation i.e. we thought we had two copies of everything but some of us have no copies of some genes
were we to know our individual [detox] capacity and capability, we can far better act upon it, far better adjust our diet accordingly, improve our environment
the body uses methylation to reduce a very pro-inflammatory marker, something called homocysteine
in the last several years, there’s been a far better appreciation of the intimate link between [cardio] vascular health and mental health
if you have the version of COMT that is the overly fast version, when you produce dopamine, your dopamine is here one moment and gone the next
the 5-HTTLPR variation…. affects how well serotonin is taken back up into the cells
one of the most exciting genes and variations recently discovered is a gene called ADRA2b – a variation of this gene is intimately linked to how sensitive we stay to emotionally traumatic arousing events – so there are individuals that are way more likely to have that fearful personality, and that anxiety because of the strong mental links they have to certain traumatic events in their lives