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The Anxiety Summit – Is My Anxiety and Depression from a Methylation, Pyrrole, or Copper-Zinc Imbalance?

By Trudy Scott 142 Comments

William J. Walsh_Anxiety4

William J. Walsh, PhD, FACN, author of Nutrient Power, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Is My Anxiety and Depression from a Methylation, Pyrrole, or Copper-Zinc Imbalance?

  • Neurotransmitters: how they are synthesized, transported and broken down.
  • Biochemical individuality and incidences of imbalances of copper, B6 and zinc.
  • Biotypes of depression, methylation disorders and whole blood histamine, and pyrrole disorder (pyroluria)
  • Copper-zinc imbalance and post-partum depression
  • Testing in blood and urine

Here are some gems from our interview:

Copper and estrogen are related and I’ve seen probably 400 cases of postpartum depression.  Virtually all of them have a copper overload.  These are people who might have been on SSRI antidepressants and with nothing really happening not making them better or worse.  But if we are able to simply normalize their copper most of them become completely okay and you can throw away their medications. They’re the easiest people to help. 

Well with respect to the females if a person has an anxiety disorder or a depression disorder and we find out that the onset was at puberty we kind of expect that the lab results are going to show this is a copper problem because at hormonal events copper levels tend to go awry if you’re not able to regulate your copper.  So it can happen at puberty. It can happen at childbirth.  And it can happen at menopause.  During the nine months of a pregnancy a women’s copper level more than doubles.  And this is necessary for that growing fetus.  It’s necessary for something called angiogenesis to promote the rapid development of blood vessels that that little growing baby needs.  And at the end of a pregnancy a woman’s copper level is usually more than double what it normally is.  A woman normally would be around 100 micrograms per deciliter in her blood.  Maybe it would be 220 at the end of a pregnancy. 

Well right after the baby’s born that copper level is supposed to start heading right back down to normal.  Well people with postpartum depression don’t have that ability and this can completely disrupt two of the major neurotransmitters and misery sometimes for the rest of their lives.  But the way we would bring it down, you have to do it carefully because they’re already suffering from too much copper levels in their brain and in their bloodstream so we have to remove the copper gently and gradually.  And one way to do that is to give them small doses of zinc initially and then just gradually build up the doses to the full dose it takes to normalize their zinc which will then automatically get the natural metallothionein system working.  And it takes about six to eight weeks usually.  But it can be done and it can be done without any discomfort for the patient if it’s done slowly.

I enjoyed hearing how Dr. Walsh got to work with one of the great pioneers in orthomolecular mental health, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, author of Nutrition and Mental Illness:  An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry, and creator of the first pyroluria questionnaire.  I based my pyroluria questionnaire off this one.  Dr. Walsh has done the same thing.

Towards the end of the interview we discussed undermethylation and overmethylation and the confusion about MTHFR and terminology. I made reference to this blog post from a prior summit – Methylation and anxiety: histadelia and histapenia  and the interview with Dr. Ben Lynch – How Methylfolate can make you Feel Worse and even Cause Anxiety, and What to do about it

The takeaway from this discussion is this:

If a person had undermethylated depression they have low serotonin activity.  If you gave these people methylfolate their methylation would improve and the patient would get worse.

So basically I agree completely with Dr. Lynch on the best way to improve methylation and all I’m saying is that for some people, people who have problems of neurotransmission of serotonin you can’t give them folates because they’ll get worse.  So that’s an exception to the general rule. 

So it is these people who are the undermethylators (and using the original terminology, those with high histamine or histadelia) that do worse on folate.

Dr. Walsh agreed that the terminology undermethylation and overmethyation is confusing.

Connect with Dr. Walsh and save on his book Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry, Heal Your Brain (use discount code: ANXIETY)

Nutrient Power

 

You can find information about the Walsh practitioner training here 

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – Tryptophan for anxiety, depression and insomnia: why quality is key and the critical co-factors

By Trudy Scott 64 Comments

Ron Sturtz_Anxiety4

Ron Sturtz, Owner/President, Lidtke Technologies, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Tryptophan for anxiety, depression and insomnia: why quality is key and the critical co-factors

  • The benefits of tryptophan for anxiety/mood/insomnia and why Trudy only recommends Lidtke
  • Tryptophan history and why safety and quality is key
  • Concerns about neurotoxic quinolinic acid
  • Tryptophan 500mg, kids chewable, Tryptophan Complete, and tryptophan for pets
  • Why use lysine, vitamin B3, B6/P5P, folate and curcumin with tryptophan
  • Other serotonin co-factors and 5-HTP
  • Client feedback and how to use these amino acids

In part 1 we start by discussing the history, the controversy in 1990 over contaminated L-tryptophan,  the impurities that lead to the EMS outbreak and why Lidtke has “been fanatical about purity and safety” since then:

the main [impurity] was EBT  [1,1′-ethylidene-bis-L-tryptophan] and that was the one that they suspected was the most heavily implicated.  They never could identify exactly which ones were toxic or in combination.  It could be like numbers one, two and five in combination were deadly or two and six in combination more deadly or maybe just six alone was deadly.  They never were able to determine that because they never found an animal model to use in research because when they would feed the rats or any other kind of animal, lab animal they had samples of this known toxic tryptophan, none of them responded the way humans do.  They have a very different gut flora and metabolism and they never responded the same so they weren’t about to use humans in any of these clinical trials so they never really could tell which of those six were the worst, but they strongly suspected that EBT was the worst

Ron covers how glyphosate/Roundup is contributing to low serotonin levels:

…the food crops  absorb the chemical, they still soak it up and then they’re sent to market and you buy them and you cook them and you eat then and then you soak it up.  Well, you don’t produce tryptophan or phenylalanine, but your gut bacteria to do.  And preferentially the beneficial gut bacteria tend to be killed by the glyphosates.  So when that happens the pathogenic bacteria tend to dominate.  And then when that happens when they grow kind of out of control then even more tryptophan is used up by the macrophages, which then attack the pathogens.

If you’d like to read more about this we covered this is much more detail in these interviews:

In part 2 Ron reviews the serotonin biochemistry:

lidtke image serotonin biochemistry
Serotonin Biochemistry – Ron Sturtz from Lidtke Technologies

And we discuss the Tryptophan Complete product, the ingredients and rationale for including P5P, lysine, curcumin, folic acid and niacinamide. This is my feedback on the product:

the Tryptophan Complete is one that I’m not as familiar with as the 500 milligram Tryptophan.  I’ve been using the 500 milligram with my clients for over ten years.  The Tryptophan Complete is just a new one that’s sort of come on my radar and I started looking into it and I actually posted something on Facebook a few months ago and then did a blog post to get feedback from people [see below]. And I’ve had some promising feedback.  I’ve had one person say “I’ve used the Tryptophan Complete and liked it a lot better than the 500 milligrams.  It gave me a much deeper state of relaxation and a way more solid sleep.”  She used that, got benefits then tried the 500 and now has decided to go back to the Complete.  So she feels that the addition of the other ingredients really helped for her body chemistry.  I did have someone else say that she can’t do P5P at all.  It makes her agitated.  So for people who have individual reactions to any of the ingredients then you would go with the 500 milligrams.

Here is my blog: Tryptophan 500mg or Tryptophan Complete (by Lidtke)?

And my supplements blog that lists Lidtke tryptophan products (500mg tryptophan, Tryptophan Complete and Tryptophan 100mg chewable), other amino acid products and pyroluria products I recommend: The Antianxiety Food Solution Amino Acid and Pyroluria Supplements

You can also find the amino acid questionnaire (which lists the low serotonin symptoms) and amino acid precautions on the above blog.

Here is some of the research:

Lidtke is kindly offering 15% off all Lidtke products through the end of June  – use coupon code anxietysummit

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – A functional medicine approach to eliminate Lyme disease and the anxiety it often causes

By Trudy Scott 13 Comments

Jay Davidson_Anxiety4

Dr. Jay Davidson D.C., PSc.D., host of the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

A functional medicine approach to eliminate Lyme disease and the anxiety it often causes

  • The incidence of anxiety in Lyme disease
  • Lyme bacteria and methyl group depletion
  • A functional medicine approach to eliminate the Lyme disease infection
  • Balancing minerals and methyl donors
  • Healing the gut and detoxing heavy metals

Here is the initial study I shared: Panic Attacks May Reveal Previously Unsuspected Chronic Disseminated Lyme Disease

The author describes the histories of three patients with panic-like episodes that turned out to be related to underlying, previously unsuspected tick-borne diseases. Each woman experienced symptoms that are not usual in panic disorder but are typical of neurological Lyme disease, including exquisite sensitivity to light, touch, and sounds, joint pain often in combination with cognitive changes including mental fogginess and loss of recent memory, and some degree of bizarre, shifting, and often excruciating neurological pain. Because these symptoms are atypical of primary panic disorder, they were very helpful in alerting the clinician to suspect an underlying physical illness.

Here are some gems from our interview:

So when you look at anxiety I look at it from an integrative standpoint – like the brain, nervous system has a huge piece in that, the neurotransmitters, and obviously the gut.  So there’s multiple pieces of the body that seem to have a link with it.  But if you have something that’s actually affecting the brain, which is the organ that’s running everything in the body, which Lyme disease or the bacteria borellia is one of those factors I really think that that in itself can cause anxiety – just due to the bacteria.  And what’s interesting about the bacteria of Lyme is it’s not uniform – it can change forms and the main form that it’s known for is called the spirochete where it basically looks like a corkscrew, a spiraling shape.  And so Lyme doesn’t like to just really float around in the bloodstream.  It loves tissues.  It loves joints and that’s where some of the symptoms are, like joint pain, and especially moves around the body. But it loves the brain too and it loves to be in those tissues. 

Dr. Jay shares that chronic Lyme disease does exist and discusses testing issues:

…the standard testing that’s still done today, the ELISA and Western blot, they call it the two tier method.  So if one shows up positive then they’ll run the other one.  That methodology was actually designed and recommended as an observational population method for Lyme.  It was never intended for a clinical diagnosis.  And somehow it became the clinical diagnosis tool that if you run the test and if you come up negative there’s no way you could have Lyme.

Rresearch has shown that 40 to 60 percent of those tests are wrong which means you could almost flip a coin and get a better result.  So you definitely want to find a practitioner that knows Lyme disease, that understands it. 

My favorite test right now is from a lab called Pharmasan Labs … a test called iSpot. So instead of B cell antibodies which traditional tests uses it’s using T cells and it’s a lot more accurate.  And studies basically show that this test is not 100 percent by any means either.  But it’s 86 percent sensitive and 94 percent specific. And basically all that means is if you get a positive result on an iSpot Lyme test there’s a six percent chance that it’s wrong.  If you get a negative on the iSpot Lyme test there’s a 16 percent chance that it is  wrong.

Here information on the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit  he hosted earlier this year. It was excellent!

Here is Dr. Jay’s book: 5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol: Helping those who haven’t been helped with Lyme Disease, Thyroid Problems, Adrenal Fatigue, Heavy Metal Toxicity, Digestive Issues, and More!

jay davidson book

Here are the gifts from Dr. Jay:

  • 5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol” audio book
  • Lyme Disease: Why an Antibiotic Bug Bomb is Not the Answer eBook
  • Heavy Metal Toxicity: A Modern Day Epidemic Not Being Addressed eBook 

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – Serotonin and anxiety: tryptophan, 5-HTP, serotonin syndrome and medication tapers

By Trudy Scott 64 Comments

Peter Bongiorno_Anxiety4

Dr. Peter Bongiorno, ND, author of Holistic Therapies for Anxiety and Depression, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Serotonin and anxiety: tryptophan, 5-HTP, serotonin syndrome and medication tapers

  • What is the serotonin hypothesis and serotonin syndrome
  • Concerns about tryptophan and kynurenine and neurotoxic quinolinic acid
  • When to use tryptophan and when to use 5-HTP
  • Working with a prescribing doctor to do a SSRI (and benzo) taper
  • John’s Wort, saffron and venetron for anxiety and depression
  • Hydrotherapy and hugs

Here are some snippets from our interview:

Here are some gems from our interview:

As far as St. John’s Wort I would honestly put that in a different category because St. John’s Wort is not just another type of serotonin enhancer or SSRI.  It has many, many other activities.  It supports the thyroid.  It really helps digestion.  It’s a good anti-inflammatory.  It calms the nervous system.  And it also supports other neurotransmitters too.  So to me St. John’s Wort is more like a beautiful food that has these very pleiotropic effects and really helps the whole body kind of cope and gain resilience.  Years ago St. John’s Wort was originally used to ward off evil spirits in olden times.  And so it has a tremendous history of supporting people with mood and especially people who are very fatigued in the process and they can’t cope and they have no resilience.  So I think St. John’s Wort is definitely more than just a serotonin enhancer.

We also cover carnitine:

One of the things I like to check is something called carnitine which is an amino acid which plays a role in how energy is carried in the body.  And many women get much depleted in carnitine as they move through pregnancy through the trimesters.  And that’s actually quite safe to take during pregnancy and I’ve seen that be very, very helpful in women with mood issues either during pregnancy or postpartum.  And there are plenty of studies that show the safety of carnitine.  So that’s one of the things I definitely like to look at along with taking some magnesium which is also safe during pregnancy.

We discuss medication tapers of SSRIs:

And the weaning process would have to be different for everyone.  Some patients who have been on some of these mood altering medications for many years you can’t just wean off quickly.  You have to go exceedingly slow.  And depending on how they do then we can support their brain and their body with more nutrients to help that process go as easily as possible and minimize any kind of withdrawal effect.  The body will tell us what to do as we go along.  But again the most important thing is that we really establish all the basics and that they’re in the healthiest place possible.  Because if those aren’t there, if a patient just gets off the medication and we haven’t really done anything to change the underlying reasons why they got to the place where they had the mood issue.  In most cases they’re going to go back there again.

Here are two of Dr. Bongiorno’s books:

How Come They’re Happy and I’m Not – The Complete Natural Program for Healing Depression for Good

peter bongiorno how come they're happy and I'm not

Holistic Solutions for Anxiety & Depression in Therapy: Combining Natural Remedies with Conventional Care

peter bongiorno holistic solutions for anxiety and depression

And his most recent book: Put Anxiety Behind You

put-anxiety-behind-you

Here is his digital gift: 10 Ways to Balance Serotonin Naturally http://www.drpeterbongiorno.com/serotonin/

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety and heavy metals: chelation of mercury and lead

By Trudy Scott 45 Comments

John Dempster_Anxiety4

John Dempster, ND, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety and heavy metals: chelation of mercury and lead

  • The connection between toxic metals (mercury and lead) and anxiety
  • How to effectively measure toxic metals with a provoked urine challenge
  • The do’s and don’ts of chelation and watching for mineral depletion
  • A bipolar/anxiety case study

Here are some gems from our interview:

So I kind of want to shed some light on some of these areas and how it can affect anxiety directly.  One of the big areas is mercury itself is a neurotoxin.  So how does that impact our biochemistry and our physiology?  Well what it’s going to do it’s going to start to disrupt on an endocrine and a neurotransmitter level some of our pathways.  And one of the big pathways is actually the glutamate connection and the glutamate pathway.  And glutamate is something that’s known as an excitatory neurotransmitter and this is something that if we have too much of it or it’s not being reuptake properly in our synapses we start to exhibit different types of symptoms of anxiety.  And of course that’s just one possible trigger for anxiety. 

….to speak of mercury specifically amalgams are a source.  Silver amalgam fillings are a source of metal, metal mercury.  But we are also seeing that there are trace amounts in certain vaccinations.  There are trace amounts in certain food groups such as fish.  And this may not come as a surprise to many of you listeners but it is still a problem and we’re still seeing people – high amounts of mercury come into my clinic pretty much every day that are continuing to be exposed to these levels.  And there are a number of other different possible source that are on a smaller scale.  We might actually be breathing it in which is scary but depending on where you live in the world we may be exposed to some industrial sources of mercury as well. But the biggest ones that we can take charge of immediately are what’s in our mouth, what’s in our food and what goes in or on our body.

Blood lead levels and major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder in U.S. young adults

In this sample of young adults with low levels of lead exposure, higher blood lead was associated with increased odds of major depression and panic disorder. Exposure to lead at levels generally considered safe could result in adverse mental health outcomes.

Dr. Dempster describes the chelator DMSA as a magnet:

DMSA is a very safe but effective way of dragging metals out of the body.  And what we want to do is when we provoke that we actually drag this compound through our tissues.  Not just our bloodstream.  It goes through – it kind of rinses through our tissues and acts as a magnet and it draws these metals out at the other end that we can collect.

Here are some studies on heavy metals and chelation with DMSA:

Here is information on the Mental Wellness Summit that Dr. Dempster and Ross McKenzie co-hosted

And Ross McKenzie’s incredible movie Bipolarized

Here is the Wellness Without Limits ebook 

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – Addressing Anxiety in Individuals with Autism

By Trudy Scott 15 Comments

Julie Mathews_Anxiety4

Julie Matthews, CNC, author of Nourishing Hope for Autism, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Addressing Anxiety in Individuals with Autism

  • How common is anxiety in autism and medications commonly prescribed
  • Autism prevalence and the exponential growth and why this is important beyond those with autism
  • Underlying biochemical factors that contribute to anxiety in autism
  • The microbiome and gut involvement
  • Sensory sensitivity, light and sound sensitivity, weighted blankets and more
  • Foods, food compounds and nutrients like GABA and zinc
  • The far-reaching benefits of a BioInidividual Nutrition approach for autism, anxiety, ADHD and many chronic diseases

This is the first paper we discussed: Treatment of comorbid anxiety and autism spectrum disorders

Clinically significant anxiety occurs frequently among individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and is linked to increased psychosocial, familial, behavioral and academic impairment beyond the core autism symptoms when present.

Up to 80% of children with ASDs experience clinically significant anxiety, with high comorbidity rates for social phobia (30%), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) (35%), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) 37%  and separation anxiety disorder (SAD) 38% having been observed (30, 35, 37 and 38%, respectively).

Patients with ASDs and anxiety are at increased risk for social avoidance, difficulties establishing and maintaining peer relationships, sleep problems, disruptions in family functioning and at school.

SSRIs have NOT been consistently linked to improvements in core ASD symptoms (e.g., communication and social skills deficits, repetitive behaviors and stereotypies) or anxiety and repetitive behaviors in youths

High rates of behavioral activation (e.g., agitation, irritability, aggression and disinhibition) and diminished tolerability have been reported across trials, which may suggest that youths with ASDs are more vulnerable to side effects compared with their typically developing peers.

Here is the initial multisystem study Julie covered at the start – Pathway Network Analyses for Autism Reveal Multisystem Involvement:  Major Overlaps with Other Diseases and Convergence Upon MAPK and Calcium Signaling

Julie covered folate receptor autoantibodies and cerebral folate deficiency (common in autism and now found in anxiety too):

It was a concept that in the autism community was brought forward by Dr. Fry and Dr. Rosignol and Dr. Quadros looking at this particular condition.  And so there’s a condition called cerebral folate deficiency.  And it’s a neurodevelopmental disorder where the baby doesn’t get enough folate to their cerebral spinal fluid in their brain.  And so they don’t get the proper development that they need.  And the reason for that is they looked into what could be causing that and they found that children with autism have a high rate of folate receptor autoantibodies.  And so what happens is the folate receptor is basically taking folate from the bloodstream and puts it into the cerebral spinal fluid.  It gets it to the brain basically.

And these folate receptors are basically what take it across the membrane.  But in children with autism they have these autoantibodies and that blocks their ability to get the folate into the brain.  So they have neurodevelopmental issues and then during their lifetime as well they still don’t have enough folate they need on a daily basis to do the things that they need to do.  So it’s an ongoing challenge for them as well.

Here are the folate receptor autoantibody studies:

Most of the research regarding these folate receptor autoantibodies are around autism.  But now it seems like we’ve seen this new animal study that actually mentions anxiety as well – Exposure to Folate Receptor Alpha Antibodies during Gestation and Weaning Leads to Severe Behavioral Deficits in Rats: A Pilot Study 

Here is Julie’s wonderful book – Nourishing Hope for Autism: Nutrition and Diet Guide for Healing Our Children  

nourishing hope for autism

Here are the digital gifts from Julie

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

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.