Dr. Jay Davidson is one my guest experts on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis and our topic is: Parasites, Anxiety and TUDCA for Your Liver. What you’ll learn
- Parasite facts and myths
- New dosing options for mimosa pudica seed
- TUDCA for liver, neuroinflammation and depression
and much more. It’s an excellent interview and was voted as one of the top 5 interviews of the summit in 2019.
After hearing Dr. Jay’s explanation of what a parasite is, I couldn’t resist using the above image of a happy worm. This is what he shares:
the Greek meaning of parasite is one that sits at another’s table. So essentially think of a parasite as it’s taking things from you. It’s taking nutrients, it’s taking key things that your body needs and literally off of you, not to the point that it’s killing you because then you’re not a good host to give a good environment. So it’s basically just kind of sucking you dry.
Unfortunately you have this very “happy” and satisfied parasite sitting at your “table” and causing all kinds of symptoms:
Mood stuff for sure, which obviously this is The Anxiety Summit. So we want to highlight that one, absolutely. Sleep issues though. In the big sleep one that I see is restless sleep where you toss, you turn, you wake often. You can’t just be relaxed when you sleep. Parasites get active when you go to bed.
So the more active they are within your body and the more you’re trying to calm down, the more your body is getting stressed out. This is where teeth grinding happens when you sleep. This is, again, where the restless legs. You can also say the calf cramping, restless leg type symptoms would come in as well being associated. It’s classic, though, for parasites to affect the gut. So obviously diarrhea, is clearly a classic sign of acute parasitic type infection.
Other symptoms we discuss at length: bowel urgency, SIBO, vertical wrinkles above your mouth, nail-biting, food sensitivities, bed-wetting, insomnia (especially around full moon), grinding teeth, night sweats and anxiety.
And Dr. Jay shares how parasites contribute to neurotransmitter imbalances:
Parasites will eat the protein you eat and not allow your body to break down that protein into amino acids. That’s why amino acid therapy can be so beneficial symptomatically and change people’s lives, because they’re getting these amino acids that they’re not getting when they have parasites. But you always want to make sure to go to the underlying cause to remove the parasitic infection.
He also shares that parasites will “literally manipulate your thoughts and your personality” and I share the example of toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia, and rats losing their fear of cats so the parasite can be transferred. It’s fascinating.
We cover why and how do do the parasite protocol before, during and after the full moon, his parasite story and the latest information on mimosa pudica seed:
So mimosa pudica seed is an amazing, just overall gut support. So even if your goal isn’t the parasite cleanse, mimosa pudica seed is awesome to help support the digestive tract. It can help break up biofilm. It’s really good against Candida and just helping to normalize microbial levels within the GI besides the fact that it can help with parasites.
Dr. Jay shares what he’s seeing clinically in terms of dosing mimosa pudica seed and when exactly to use it.
I share that I found an animal study where they were looking at the whole plant extract and found that it helped with modulating GABA receptors. And they said it had very similar effects to diazepam, which is a benzodiazepine that a lot of people with anxiety are prescribed. Fascinating!
The latter half of the interview focuses on drainage and supporting bile production with TUDCA, which also happens to support the mitochondria and help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
I encourage you to also listen to Pyroluria, Oxidative Stress and Parasites with Todd Watts, DC, PScD. We discuss some of these same protocols in the context of pyroluria/social anxiety and oxidative stress.
You’re going to be hearing a lot more from me about these products and protocols as I learn more and trial them personally.
You may notice this image doesn’t look like the video on the summit. This was one of 4 interviews we had to repeat due to technical issues!
Be sure to listen to Dr. Jay’s wonderful interview on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis.
As I mentioned, his interview was voted as one of the top 5 interviews of the summit in 2019. The other 4 top voted interviews are:
- Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS (more here)
- Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS (more here)
- Vagus Nerve Activation to Reduce Anxiety – Dr. Navaz Habib, DC (more here)
and my interview GABA & Tryptophan: The Gut-Anxiety Connections (more here)
If you’re already familiar with Dr. Jay’s parasite protocols and TUDCA please share how they have helped you. That way we can all learn.
I’d also love to hear from you once you’ve listened in to Dr. Jay’s interview and the others.
If you’d like to ask a question, please post in the comments below.