Trudy Scott Anxiety Nutrition Solutions & Every Woman Over 29

TouchPoints™ neuroscience device for stress relief, improved sleep and focus and reduced cravings

June 30, 2017 By Trudy Scott 20 Comments

TouchPoints™ basic are non-invasive neuroscientific lifestyle wearables that use patent pending neuroscience to relieve stress, improve sleep, performance, and focus, and can reduce cravings and anger.

I shared some information about these TouchPoints™ neuroscience devices a short time ago and it created some interest. This week I was just on a private call with one of the founders, Dr. Amy Serin and I’m so impressed with what I learned about these EMDR-type devices that I’m sharing their indiegogo campaign (happening right now) for the new lower price point device (the basic). The Basic device doesn’t use an iphone or ipad. I am somewhat concerned about EMFs with their other device and I’m still looking into this to determine if it is an issue.

This Basic device can be worn on a wrist-band or can be worn on a belt, socks, shirt etc.

I have NOT yet used one of these devices myself or with clients but I have purchased one to test and will share more as I learn more. Please do share your experiences too!

As with addressing any imbalance too much of something can be problematic. I received this feedback from a colleague who is a psychotherapist:

We use bilateral stimulation in our work with various gadgets – bilateral music with headphones, bilateral tappers etc. It’s been used with EMDR for 20 years. I haven’t seen this gadget before but the idea is not new. It can also be TOO activating and increase sympathetic arousal for some people.

If they work you I do see these as a great add-on to the nutrition work I do for anxiety (diet, adrenals, amino acids like GABA etc.) and could be especially helpful if you can’t tolerate supplements right now (like during a benzodiazepine taper or being highly sensitive).

You can find all the details here

Migraines, anxiety, depression and gluten: on the Chronic Headache & Migraine Summit

June 26, 2017 By Trudy Scott 5 Comments

The goal of a 2015 Russian study titled Gluten Migraine, was to study the prevalence of migraine among patients with celiac disease and to assess the efficacy of a gluten-free diet in its treatment. There were 200 celiac disease (CD) patients and the

CD group had migraine syndrome four times more often than the control group. The attacks were more frequent in CD patients who were older than 50 years old.

The migraines disappeared in 25% of patients with migraines who were on the gluten free diet and the reduction in the intensity and/or frequency of attacks was observed in 38% of patients.

This is the study conclusion:

We revealed the clear association between migraine syndrome and CD and the high efficacy of gluten FREE diet in the treatment of migraine symptoms.”

I would suspect similar results if you have gluten sensitivity. And here is some gluten-migraine feedback from 4 different women in my community:

HUGE decrease in my migraines now that I eat more cleanly. I used to start to get headaches immediately upon eating gluten-y meals
I had them frequently from teenage years right up until my Celiac diagnosis in my thirties. Once gluten was gone so were the migraines
Stopping gluten stopped my migraines
My migraines always came from gluten and dairy

Of course there is also an anxiety-gluten and the depression-gluten connection so getting the gluten out of your diet will help with both anxiety and depression most of the time too.

I talked about all this on The Chronic Headache & Migraine Summit.

The other topic I covered is the autoimmune condition called Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) which is one of many possible contributing factors for both migraines and anxiety. Of course, with any autoimmune condition gluten removal is key.

I also cover low serotonin as one possible cause of migraines (and anxiety) and the use of tryptophan (instead of SSRIs). An amino acid like tryptophan or GABA also helps you break the gluten addiction so you don’t have to rely only on willpower!

Have you got questions or comments? Please post in the comment box below.

Dr. Allison Siebecker’s treatment approach: SIBO SOS Summit

June 24, 2017 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

The SIBO SOS Summit starts today June 24th and runs to June 28th.

SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth) is the #1 leading cause of IBS and other digestive problems and can cause bloating, chronic constipation or diarrhea (or both!!), anxiety, depression, pain and a host of other symptoms.

Shivan Sarna and co-host Dr. Allison Siebecker (a SIBO expert and hero of mine), are bringing some of the foremost experts in the country together to discuss this potentially life altering disease. Over 5 full days of expert interviews Shivan will take a deep dive into the causes, treatment options and expert opinions on everything from diet, to medication you need to know about to regain your optimal health and how to beat SIBO (even if you didn’t know you had it!)

You’ll also meet a host of patients who have lived with SIBO and have learned how to heal themselves… their passionate stories will give you the hope you need.

In her SIBO treatment interview Dr. Siebecker shares the following:

There’s several layers that we can aim our treatments at. I would say the top layer is the symptoms. And of course we want to get somebody feeling symptomatically better as soon as we can. And this is in regards to SIBO, it could apply to other diseases but specifically SIBO. The next layer down would be the bacteria. That’s the actual SIBO, the accumulation of bacteria in the small intestine aiming at eliminating those bacteria. And then the bottom layer would be the underlying cause of the SIBO. And that’s really where most of us probably want to focus our treatment because if we can get rid of the underlying cause well then we can get rid of SIBO and we can cure it, but that isn’t so easy.

I love these 2 tips she shares for the painful bloating:

something that helps a lot is charcoal, activated charcoal because it actually absorbs… gas into its little pockets and chambers inside the charcoal. That can really help people, especially if you’re having pain from the bloating that can really help.

Another thing is you can lie face down on your stomach and it puts the anatomy in a position where it can allow gas to be burped out and you can get some relief that way.

I’ve used the latter face down position but didn’t know about the charcoal tip, which is why I love these summits – I always learn something new!

Dr. Siebecker goes on to share in detail about

pharmaceutical antibiotics
herbal antibiotics (you would need to add in the allicin/Alimed if you had constipation type of SIBO or high methane)
prokinetics like triphala, MotilPro and Iberogast (and some pharmaceutical prokinetics) to assist motility
the elemental diet
visceral manipulation, massage and acupuncture

She ends with how important stress reduction is and that’s where my work comes in!

I hope you can join us. You can register for SIBO SOS here

Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax in New York Times Magazine: my response

June 23, 2017 By Trudy Scott 11 Comments

This is the title of a new article recently published in the New York Times Magazine: Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax. In other words, depression has been surpassed by anxiety and the antidepressant Prozac has been replaced by Xanax (and other benzodiazepines /anti-anxiety medications) by the US population!

It’s an excellent read for creating awareness about anxiety and benzodiazepines but also sad because there is so much we can do and no solutions are offered. Here are some startling stats shared in the article:

According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, some 38 percent of girls ages 13 through 17, and 26 percent of boys, have an anxiety disorder. [Note: this was quoted in the article. I’m trying to track down the source because an article in Time Magazine last year says this: ‘About 30% of girls and 20% of boys–totaling 6.3 million teens–have had an anxiety disorder, according to data from the National Institute of Mental Health’ as of 2015.]
On college campuses, anxiety is running well ahead of depression as the most common mental health concern, according to a 2016 national study of more than 150,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University. [Both anxiety and depression have shown slight but persistent increases each year for the past six years]
Meanwhile, the number of web searches involving the term [anxiety] has nearly doubled over the last five years, according to Google Trends. (The trendline for “depression” was relatively flat.)

I’m the optimistic type, I’m proactive and I like to give hope as well as solutions – and I have quite a bit to say about this article so here goes.

#1 Too many people are prescribed benzodiazepines without knowing what they are getting into

The article does not address the issues with benzodiazepines: how too many people are prescribed benzodiazepines without knowing what they are getting into, with many suffering dreadfully and never offered nutritional solutions. When I shared the article on my facebook page, someone in my community shared this (and gave me permission to share it further in the hope someone else will be spared her suffering)

Been totally disabled by benzo for 3.5 years. I have been off meds for 17.5 months and the impact of these meds makes any anxiety I ever felt a cake walk. Please run from the poison. Find healthy foods, nutrition and take the break your body is begging you for. We need to listen to our bodies! If it is screaming with anxiety maybe you need to make some life changes. I wish I did instead of taking a med that has almost destroyed me.

I asked her what symptoms she was experiencing, and as well as suffering from severe motion sickness (so badly she can’t even leave her home) she also shared this:

I have locked shoulder muscles, neck, jaw; I have internal vibrations, I get bad headaches, jelly legs, distorted vision like floaters and squiggles and fireworks, my teeth all feel like they will fall out but they are not lose, it feels like adrenaline or cortisol rushes through the body. Sometimes arms go numb. I am pretty tortured every day. These meds are truly causing chemical warfare on some of us.

I believe this will be the next big epidemic and I hope I heal somehow to help others

She had been on a variety of benzodiazepines, SSRIs and other medications for over 17 years and you may think this is an isolated incidence. I assure you it is not – just read the list of the most common psychological and physical symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal.

Here is some useful information about the risks and dangers of benzodiazepines:

#2 Let’s help anxious individuals like you find solutions

Scott Stossel, journalist and author of My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind was quoted as saying this in the article:

The silver lining for those with nervous disorders is that we can welcome our previously non-neurotic fellow citizens into the anxious fold.

My first response to the article is this: I say NO to Scott Stossel and instead I say let’s think bigger and instead let’s invite the anxious citizens into the calm and no-more-anxiety fold!

Scott’s book is well-written book, offers an excellent understanding of what it feels like to experience anxiety and panic attacks, and has many compelling stories. But as a number of his Amazon reviewer’s say the big question is this: what is the answer or solution? Unfortunately it’s not provided in his book (or the New York Times Magazine article).

The New York Times Magazine article provides another anxiety resource that has helped “bring anxiety into the open, and allowed its clinical sufferers to band together in a virtual group-therapy setting”: The Sarah Fader on twitter, creator of the hashtag #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike and a mental-health advocacy organization called Stigma Fighters.

Again, these are wonderful resources for support, awareness and advocacy but they don’t offer solutions if you suffer from anxiety. With nutritional solutions we can change this to #ThisIsWhatCalmFeelsLike.

#3 Too few people know about nutritional solutions

Too few people know about nutritional solutions and that has to change. Clinically we know it works and there is now SO much research supporting this approach.

Here are a few of many blog posts on my site that share powerful anxiety nutrition solutions:

Here is one of the latest food and mental health studies – A modified Mediterranean dietary intervention for adults with major depression: Dietary protocol and feasibility data from the SMILES trial

This and other dietary and nutritional approaches for both depression and anxiety will be presented at the upcoming International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry Research conference in Bethesda, MD next month)

Here are two book resources too: my book The Antianxiety Food Solution and integrative psychiatrist Kelly Brogan’s book A Mind of Your Own.

I’d love your feedback

Which nutritional solutions topics do you have questions about and in what areas do you still need help?
What ideas do you have for getting this nutritional solution message out in a bigger way?
What do you wish you’d known when you were first diagnosed with anxiety and prescribed medication (such as a benzodiazepine or SSRI)?
How do we convince the naysayers that this does work and is worth implementing?
How do we get the mainstream mental health community on board?
What anxiety resources do you have to share

GABA is calming for me, doesn’t work for my daughter’s anxiety and makes my son sleepy

June 23, 2017 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

I’m sharing this question I received on my GABA Calm blog to illustrate how different people respond to GABA and how some people may not even have the low GABA type of anxiety. Here is the question this mom posted:

I have used GABA (several brands, just open capsule and sprinkle small amount under tongue) for years now, with calming results within minutes. It was recommended to me by 2 family members, both bi-polar, who were tested by Dr. Amen. I have also used it with my children (now adults); my daughter says it doesn’t work for her. (She has anxiety issues and occasional panic attacks, and Rescue Remedy helps her.) It does work to calm my 3 sons, but one says it makes him sleepy, and lasts into the next day, so he won’t take it. Trudy, have you heard of this reaction? It seems extreme for such a small amount used. He is a college student and ‘medicates’ with caffeine, if that makes a difference.

She shared that she uses 500mg or 750mg capsules of GABA, and get several doses from a single cap (so maybe 100mg per dose).

This is what I shared with her: we are all biochemically different and one form of GABA (or GABA combined with other amino acids/nutrients such as GABA Calm) may work for one person and not another. Also one person may need more and another may do fine with much much less. Also anxiety has many underlying causes, with low GABA only being one of them.

If I was working with your daughter I’d have her trial higher amounts of GABA for the anxiety and panic attacks. I’d also look into low serotonin and a trial of tryptophan too especially if her anxiety is the worry, ruminating anxiety with insomnia and the blues, with increased afternoon and evening cravings for carbs and chocolates.

If I was working with your son, because it does work to calm him, I’d start by having him trial just 25mg of GABA and increase slowly from there, monitoring how he feels. His anxiety may also be related to his caffeine consumption – which can also affect sleep and the fatigue he feels in the morning could be related to that.

Note: She did ask this question on the GABA Calm blog and was planning to have them trial this form of GABA. I typically don’t have clients use GABA Calm at night (because of the tyrosine) but it’s certainly worth a trial especially with her son.

If you’re completely new to the amino acids for anxiety here is an overview with questionnaire, precautions and how to do a trial.

Fire Tonic and Fire Sauce from Hilbilby Cultured Food

June 23, 2017 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

This is a recommendation for you for Fire Tonic and Fire Sauce from Hilbilby Cultured Food if you’re in Australia (or if you’re not do check them out on your next trip here!)

Hilbilby Fire Tonic [colloquially known as Fire Cider or Master Tonic] is a next level RAW unfiltered, unpasteurized Apple Cider Vinegar [ACV] Tincture, adapted from a traditional Gypsy recipe and handmade in small batches in Torquay on the Surf Coast of Victoria, Australia … Fire Tonic is a LIVE Herbal Infusion with the Mother of Vinegar [MOV].

I’ve loved the Fire Tonic since I first tried it in January at Pete Evan’s event and have now just sampled the Fire Sauce too. It’s quite amazing! I can’t handle really spicy foods but this has a very different “bite” and is quite addicting!