functional medicine

Dr. Mark Hyman’s Broken Brain 2: mold toxicity, the heart-brain connection, genetics, inspiration and more

April 1, 2019 By Trudy Scott 6 Comments

Dr. Mark Hyman has done it again with a powerful all-new online docuseries called Broken Brain 2: The Body-Mind Connection as a follow-up to his very popular earlier online docuseries. Some of the big topics that are covered mycotoxins and mold toxicity, the heart-brain connection, the role of genetics and your environment and of course diet and lifestyle.

In the first episode, Dr. Hyman shares his own and very recent personal story with mold toxicity, how it damaged his brain and how he recovered:

My mold toxicity started off as a cough I just couldn’t kick. After seeing several doctors (something even a doctor has to do sometimes!) I was advised that it could be mold. My house was the prime suspect and my hunch was right, and so began the process of healing my body and gutting my home. I was at one point so sick I couldn’t get out of bed; my mind and body felt like they were failing me and I was desperate to feel like myself again.

In a later episode, Dr. Hyman also shares how the connection between the heart and brain is a great example of the body’s interconnectedness at work:

People often think the brain is the one sending signals to the heart, instructing it to pump blood throughout the body. But there is much more to the story. The heart actually sends MORE signals to the brain than the other way around. The rhythm of the heart is extremely influential—it can signal a state of calm or one of stress, which the nervous system and brain register and share with the rest of the body.

That means your emotional and physical experiences all tie back to the rhythm of the heart. When we’re in a chronic state of stress, that disordered heart rate becomes our norm, and the amygdala gets familiar with it; the brain actually gets comfortable with it and sees it as our baseline.

For this reason, heart rate variability, or HRV, can be used as a dynamic tool to reset our heart-brain connection. We want to strive for a state of coherence—a smooth wave pattern in heart rate variability over time. This coherence is a reflection of a balance between the parasympathetic or relaxation nervous system and our sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight system.

Coherence is the natural state of feeling good and it sends the most beneficial signals to the brain; it actually means we are able to send more information through the vagus nerve to the brain and when we’re in this state frequently it sets a new baseline, one that keeps the body relaxed, enhances cognition, and keeps our physiology balanced.

The powerful evidence behind the heart-brain connection has given birth to a concept called HeartMath, a methodology that assesses HRV and encourages self-regulation practices to promote heart-brain coherence for optimal health.

Dr Hyman and the experts will be doing a deep dive into HeartMath and the importance of the heart-brain connection in Broken Brain 2: The Body-Mind Connection.

Here are some gems and inspiration from a few of the 70 health experts you can expect to learn from in the docuseries.

Dr. Chris Kresser on mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic disease….

Dr. Ben Lynch on our genes and the environment …

And some inspiration from Dr. Ann Shippy during her discussion on mold toxicity and brain health …

I am privileged and honored to have a very small cameo section in the docuseries!

Here is some of my advice to find something you love to do and have fun…

And my closing words of wisdom about hope and finding your unique root cause …

» Click here to Reserve your SPOT to see Broken Brain 2

In Broken Brain 2, you’ll hear from me and leading health experts AND hear inspiring stories from recovering patients. You’ll discover:

Unique ways to protect your brain from the multitude of toxins inside your home…
The odd way in which your heart rhythm can shape your brain function…
Easy methods to heal yourself from destructive beliefs and traumas that impact your mind and body…
How to use your personal genetics to improve your brain and overall health…
The little-known link between your brain health and your eyes, teeth, and gums…
A simple morning routine for more success and better brain health…
And much, much more…

In Broken Brain 2, you’ll learn all about the functional medicine approaches available for overcoming a variety of toxic environmental exposures, including mold, as well as how to heal from toxic beliefs, support the heart-brain connection, understand immunity in the brain, and so much more.

Over the course of 8 full-length episodes, you’ll learn cutting-edge strategies to help you heal your own mind, brain, and body. Here are all 8 episodes and when they will air:

April 3: Dr. Hyman’s Story: The Power of the Body-Mind Connection
April 4: Protecting Your Brain from a Toxic World
April 5: Rising Above and Healing from Toxic Beliefs and Trauma
April 6: The Secrets Behind the Heart-Brain Connection
April 7: Cooling the Fire Within: The Immune-Brain Connection
April 8: How to Personalize Your Diet and Understand Your Genetics
April 9: Optimizing Your Brain Health and Innovative Therapies
April 10: The Step-by-Step Brain Reset

» Click here to register for Broken Brain 2

This was truly a “labor of love” for Dr. Hyman and all of us participants and we hope you’ll join.

Please help us spread the word by sharing this with your friends and loved ones who may benefit from this information.

Let us know if you can relate to any of this and feel free to post your questions here.

The Broken Brain highlights: Trudy Scott interviews Dr. Mark Hyman

January 3, 2018 By Trudy Scott 6 Comments

I’m really excited to share my in-person video interview with Dr. Mark Hyman, MD. It’s an interview I arranged because I’m so excited about his Broken Brain docu-series which will start airing on January 17^th. You may have seen it when they recently did a test launch but if you haven’t yet seen the series it is well-worth watching and is highly recommended! (Registration link here)

In this interview with Dr. Hyman we talk about root causes of anxiety, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and ADHD: medication side-effects, diet, the microbiome, nutritional deficiencies, brain chemical imbalances, heavy metal toxicities and more; he shares his personal mercury toxicity story and the why behind the Broken Brain series; we cover off-label medications, trauma, labels and functional medicine.

I love the term he uses to describe body-mind medicine (which is different from mind-body medicine): somatopsychic = mental symptoms caused by bodily illness i.e. all of the above root causes.

One of the big reasons I’m supporting The Broken Brain docu-sersies is that it offers solutions and plenty of hope!

Here is the interview and transcript.

(there are captions on the video – if you don’t see them be sure to click the CC on the bottom right)

Trudy: – Welcome, it’s Trudy Scott here, food mood expert, certified nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution, host of The Anxiety Summit, and today I’ve got the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Mark Hyman, who is the creator and host of the new Broken Brain series, and I’m just really excited to be here. I’ve been such a fan of yours for so many years. I know my community knows who you are, and they’re really excited about the Broken Brain series. I wanted to get together with you, and give some highlights, and talk about firstly why you created the Broken Brain series, and you’ve got a story behind your passion about it.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – I do. I do. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so about 20 years ago, I went from being a very healthy young doctor to having a broken brain, and a broken body, and it turned out it was from mercury poisoning that I got when I was in China, and I just developed severe chronic fatigue, where I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t pay attention, I was depressed, I couldn’t sleep, I felt just completely not myself, and through that journey, was able to discover this world of functional medicine, which I thought was fairly developed at the time, but was really just in its infancy, and through discovering functional medicine, I was able to repair my own system, and fix my broken brain. I began to apply this with patients, seeing all kinds of things, without really knowing what I was doing, I was just treating people’s physical systems, fixing their gut, helping their immune system, cleaning up their diet, optimizing their nutritional status, balancing their hormones, and all their mental problems would get better. Their anxiety would get better, their depression would get better, and I wasn’t actually treating the depression or anxiety. Autism, ADD, memory issues, dementia, all these things would start to get better, and I began to realize that the body was driving a lot of this brain dysfunction, and that if you fix the body, a lot of the brain disorders would get better, that it wasn’t a primarily a mental problem, but it was a physical problem. Just as there’s a mind body effect, which is real, there’s also a body mind effect and that hadn’t been really talked about, so I wrote a book called The UltraMind Solution 10 years ago, which outlined this model, and then really this has been an incredible 10 years of brain research that I felt needed updating, and so we created a documentary series online looking at the new research, and how this applies, and the things that I noticed 10, 15, 20 years ago are now becoming more and more accepted and understood as real, and so we’re able to actually work with people in a very specific and direct way to help heal their broken brains, and to help people recover from things that we thought were really irreversible, not just anxiety, depression, but ADD, autism, dementia, Parkinson’s, all sort of issues that affect the brain that have a very different approach that can be used to repair and heal.

Trudy: – That’s so powerful, and I love that you talk about this effect that the body has on the brain, because we know about mind body medicine, you talk about that in the series, about how we can use our mind to affect our health, but you use this term. Tell me what the term is that you use that talks about how physical issues in our body, nutritional deficiencies, imbalances, can actually affect the brain.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – You mean the body mind effect?

Trudy: – Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman – Yeah.

Trudy: – You’ve give it a term, and it was called?

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Oh, somatopsychic.

Trudy: – Somatopsychic, yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – We think of psychosomatic, but there’s also a somatopsychic phenomena. I would say if you have mercury poisoning, or you have a thyroid problem, or you have abnormal gut flora, or you’re vitamin D deficient, or B12 deficient, it’s very hard to have a proper functioning brain. You can’t just say someone’s got depression, that’s what’s causing their hopelessness, and helplessness, and sadness, and maybe many other things, it could be psychological, it could be a trauma, but it also could be so many other factors, and they often are overlooked and ignored, and when I start peeling back the layers of what’s happening with these people, and looking underneath the hood, and looking through the functional medicine lens at the body as a system, and correcting the imbalances, it’s shocking to me what happens. I always remember when I start applying this, I was like, wow, you got better? I can’t believe it. You shouldn’t really get better, according to Western medicine.

Trudy: – Amazing, and you mention trauma. Even if someone has experienced trauma, if their nutritional status is good, they’re able to deal with it better.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Right.

Trudy: – And maybe have less symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – That’s right.

Trudy: – If they have a good nutritional status, and there’s a lot of good research supporting that.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Absolutely.

Trudy: – You talk about that in the series as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah, absolutely. Your brain has the ability to be resilient, but if you’re nutritionally depleted, and if you’re having all sorts of inflammatory problems, if you’re eating foods you’re reacting to, or allergic to, your brain can’t work properly, so your baseline is going be much lower, but if you fix all those things, then your capacity to deal with your psychological issues, it’s not that they don’t exist, it’s that your ability to cope with them, to work through them, to heal and repair the more difficult things, which are early life traumas, or abuse, or addiction, these are much easier to deal with once you fix the basic constitution of the person.

Trudy: – Right. Now one thing that you talk about a lot in the Broken Brain series, which I really appreciate, is the fact that there’s so much over-medication.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah.

Trudy: – Can you talk a little about it today? And I know with your story, you also had anxiety, depression, and you were prescribed medications as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah.

Trudy: – So this is common.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah.

Trudy: – You talk about antipsychotics. You shared some pretty scary stats on the increase that we see.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – When you look at it, it kind of goes up and down, but psychiatric medication as a whole, is the number two or three most prescribed category of drugs in America, and increasing across the globe, and it’s being used instead of dealing with the real issues, and they don’t really even work that well. I mean, anxiety medications can work, but antidepressants have been shown really not to work that well for mild to moderate depression. For severe depression, they can be helpful, and they can be life saving for some people, but they’re not a panacea, and when I was a kid, there was that one kid in the class, Patty Ainsworth, who was a troublemaker. Now it’s like 10% of the class is on ADD medication. That’s a problem.

Trudy: – It is.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – And when we see one in four people have depression in their lifetime, and if the knee jerk reaction is medication, it just sort of gives people a sense of numbness, but it doesn’t really deal with the issue. So I think we are way over-medicated, and on top of that, there’s pushing of medications for off-label use, which means that they’re not approved for those indications. So they’re doing this for kids with antipsychotics, and they’re actually been sued. So the pharma companies have been held liable for promoting these drugs for off-label uses, which they’re not allowed to do, for kids. They get fined billions of dollars, but they don’t care because they’ve made umpteen more billions, and they just see it as a marketing expense. So it’s really discouraging to see what happens to the pharmaceutical use in this space, because even for example, ADD is so fixable by dealing with the root causes, and most of us not are not even trained how to think that way.

Trudy: – That’s why I love the Broken Brian series, because it offers a message of hope, offers some practical solutions, and it empowers the person who’s suffering from the brain disorder, whatever it is, anxiety, depression, dementia, you name it, empowers them with solutions, and I think the other thing is it’s going to give curious practitioners who are not on board with this functional medicine approach some insights into what the future may hold, which I think is very promising.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah. It’s very powerful. I remember this guy who read my book, The UltraMind Solution, which is really what the Broken Brain series is based on, and he was a doctor, and he had a kid with autism, and he said, “We’re so desperate. Our kids was five, he wasn’t talking. We just started with the diet. We just got him off gluten, casein, and a few days later, all of a sudden, he started talking in full sentences,” and this is a skeptical physician who witnessed this, and I see this all the time. Patients, for example, have Alzheimer’s, or dementia, or diagnosed with dementia, and it turns out they have other issues. They have heavy metal poisoning, or they might have Lyme disease in the brain, or they might have severe nutritional deficiencies, or they might be insulin resistant with high levels of sugar in their diet that are affecting their brain, and you can fix those things. There may still be issues left over, but it’s going to be much easier to deal with those after.

Trudy: – Get to the root cause, and address those root causes.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – That’s right. That’s the purpose of functional medicine, which is a medicine of why, not what, and we have all these labels, but you know, if someone comes into my office, and they’re hopeless, and helpless, have no interest in life, can’t focus, can’t sleep, don’t want to have sex, I know what’s wrong with you. Depression, but depression isn’t the cause of those symptoms, it’s the name of the symptoms. It doesn’t tell you what’s really wrong with that person. It’s could be a host of things, from low thyroid, to gluten, to mercury poisoning, to vitamin D deficiency, to B12 deficiency, to insulin resistance. All these factors can lead to depression. Same syndrome, but different causes. So I’m much more interested in addressing the causes, then you don’t have to use the medication.

Trudy: – And some people have an issue with gluten, and have autism symptoms, and someone else can have depression or anxiety or dementia.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – That’s right.

Trudy: – So it can affect different people in a different way.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – That’s a very good point. So in functional medicine, we see that one disease can have many causes, but on the other hand, one causative factor can create many diseases. For example, heavy metals may cause dementia, or autism, or depression, or anxiety, or insomnia, or gut issues can cause all these various things that are not one disease, or for example gluten, like you mentioned, can cause autoimmune disease, can cause cancer, can cause diabetes, can cause osteoporosis, can cause anemia, can cause depression, can cause even dementia. So how do you begin to think about it? Our current naming of diseases doesn’t make any sense. So all the labeling, if you look at the diagnostic criteria, we have something called the DSM-5, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual that categorizes and catalogs all the psychiatric disorders, and they’re all categorized by symptoms. So it’s all descriptive. It’s says if you have these five symptoms, you have this, but it doesn’t tell you why, and it doesn’t really help you, other than giving you a label, which doesn’t mean anything about helping you understand what’s really going on.

Trudy: – And then you’re on a medication that’s going to give you side effects, and not actually get to the root cause of the problem.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Right.

Trudy: – And yeah, just make some nutritional changes, addressing the thyroid, getting off gluten, addressing the gut – big session in the Broken Brain series.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah, it’s huge.

Trudy: – The gut brain connection.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – I mean, we’re just learning about this. For example, for years one of the main ways I treated the brain was fixing the gut, and that means optimizing the flora, getting rid of bad bugs, helping heal leaky gut, and we just did it, we didn’t really have a deep understanding other than we knew the microbiome was important, but now we know, for example, that there are more bacterial molecules in your blood than your own molecules, that you have 10 times as many bacterial cells in you as your own cells, 100 times as much bacterial DNA, and that DNA is all producing proteins, and all those proteins, you have 20,000 genes, there’s two million genes of bacteria in you, and they’re all producing molecules that are entering your blood stream, and driving all sorts of biological reactions, that aren’t even human molecules. So we have to begin to sort of how do those affect the brain and what’s going on? And it’s very powerful.

Trudy: – And so much research in this area, it’s just growing and growing.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah.

Trudy: – So you mentioned earlier that you wanted to do this because of all the new research. There is so much research on the gut brain connection, nutritional psychiatry. Dr. Drew Ramsey talks about this recent study on depression, and just getting people onto a real whole foods diet, and how 30% saw remission of symptoms, just changing their diet.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Of course.

Trudy: – Not even going gluten free. So it’s powerful. These small changes can have powerful effects.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Profound, profound effects

Trudy: – Well, thank you so much.

Dr. Mark Hyman – Thank you.

Trudy: – For your wonderful work that you do. And for making time today. I highly recommend the Broken Brain series with Dr. Mark Hyman, all the wonderful experts.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Oh, so many. We’ve got 57 experts.

Trudy: – Amazing, some of our favorite functional medicine practitioners.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Yeah.

Trudy: – Thank you.

Dr. Mark Hyman: – Thank you.

(I’m a tad disappointed that there is the background noise of people talking – and apologize – but I am hoping the great content overrides this and it’s not too distracting.)

Save the date for the 8 -part Broken Brain docusersies, hosted by Dr. Mark Hyman – and register here. It airs January 17-25^th

Here’s a list of ALL the episodes, to showcase just some of what you will have access to. Each episode will be available for 24 hours, at no-cost!

The Broken Brain Epidemic / My Story (January 17)
Gut Brain Connection: Getting to The Root of a Broken Brain (January 18)
Losing Your Mind (Alzheimer’s, Dementia, MS, and More) (January 19)
ADHD and Autism (January 20)
Depression & Anxiety (January 21)
Traumatic Brain Injury: Accidents, Sports, and More (January 22)
7 Steps to An UltraMind (Part 1) (January 23)
7 Steps to An UltraMind (Part 2) (January 24)

I hope you enjoy it and get as much out of it as I did!

I actually flew from Sydney to LA for this opportunity to meet and interview him, and share more about the Broken Brain series, and I’m so glad I did! It was the first time I’d met Dr. Hyman in person and it truly was an honor to be in the company of this great man who is doing so much in the functional medicine world! Again, here is that link to register

Please share if any of this resonates with you – what solutions you have found have helped you and/or what you are working on addressing now?

AN UPDATE: there has been some feedback on the term “broken brain” being too negative and even scary so I gathered some feedback and share it in this blog: Is the term ‘broken brain’ hopeful and real or too negative and scary? I really want to hear your thoughts if you are offended by the term broken brain. I also want to share Dr. Hyman’s apology.

Trudy’s favorites: new books and golden oldies for your reading pleasure and as gift ideas

December 15, 2017 By Trudy Scott 6 Comments

With the holiday’s almost upon us and an opportunity to curl up with a cup of herbal tea and a good book, and also as gifts ideas, here are some of my favorite new books and a few older ones too – mostly related to anxiety, mood and emotional eating/cravings and functional medicine and biochemical imbalances.

The Craving Cure: Identify Your Craving Type to Activate Your Natural Appetite Control by Julia Ross (Author)

Julia Ross, best-selling author and expert in nutrition and overeating, exposes the real reason so many of us can’t stick to a healthy diet: our favorite foods are engineered to be addictive. At her clinic in California, Julia Ross and her colleagues treat food addiction where it starts – in the brain – by triggering our natural appetite-regulating neurotransmitters with nutrients called amino acids. It turns out that these protein concentrates boost our neurotransmitters, which broadcast sensations of satisfaction that no food, including chocolate, can override. Thousands of Julia Ross’ clients have abolished their cravings for high-calorie confections using this simple nutritional strategy.

With The Craving Cure, Julia Ross grants all of us access to this revolutionary approach. The process begins with a five-part questionnaire that helps you identify your unique craving profile and specifies the amino acid supplements you need to curb your specific cravings. Julia Ross’ clear explanations of why and how to use the aminos empower you to reclaim your natural appetite control, and her anti-craving eating guidelines will permanently strengthen your dietary defenses. A well-researched and clinically-tested rejection of low-calorie, low-saturated fat, and low-protein diets, The Craving Cure reveals how we can effortlessly and permanently eradicate our cravings to lose weight, rediscover our nutritional heritage, and regain optimal mood, energy, and health.

Drop Addictive Sweets and Starches – and Stop Weight Gain – in 24 Hours

Julia is a pioneer in the use of amino acids for cravings and mood and I had the wonderful opportunity of learning from her while working in her clinic for 2 years. It’s thanks to her that I developed my foundational knowledge of amino acids – which I have now expanded on for their powerful effects for anxiety. With this new book, Julia takes a deep dive into using amino acids for the cravings aspect that goes hand-in-hand with anxiety and depression i.e. the emotional eating component.

Get your copy of The Craving Cure on Amazon here (this one just released this week)

The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix Our Stupid Use of Technology by Nicolas Pineault

Can you really feel years younger & make unexplained symptoms vanish with the click of a button — the “Airplane Mode” on your cell phone?

Investigative Health Journalist Nicolas Pineault used to think this all sounded like something only crazy people wearing tinfoil hats would say.

But the overwhelming amount of independent scientific evidence linking electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from wireless technologies with increased risks of cancer, infertility, insomnia, and depression sure has the uncanny ability to change a man’s mind.

The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs is a simple and unconventional book that will teach you exactly how to reduce your exposure to this brand new 21st-century pollution without going back to the Stone Age.

You will learn:

What your smartphone, your wifi router and your microwave oven have in common (page 9)

Why policy makers and scientists all worldwide don’t agree about whether EMFs are dangerous or not (page 21)

Is Electro-Hypersensitivity as popularized in the TV show “Better Call Saul” real? Or is it all psychological? (page 62)

Why carrying a cell phone in your pocket can harm your fertility (201 studies prove it) (page 72)

The 1-click fix to reduce cellphone EMFs by 84% (page 142)

What is safer? Speakerphone, earbuds or a Bluetooth ear piece? (page 155)

The #1 worst source of EMF radiation at home (page 160)

Why baby monitors are worse than smartphones, and better alternatives (page 208)

It’s true. The jury is still out about whether cellphone radiation is the new smoking or just a temporary scare. But why take chances?

Instead, read The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs — the technological seat belt you might just need to use your new gadgets safely.

This is the most comprehensive and balanced book I have read on the topic of EMFs. It covers the risks (supported by research) and also offers a myriad of practical solutions. I had the wonderful opportunity to see Nicolas present on this topic earlier this year and he is clearly passionate about getting this message out. I am thrilled he’s now published a book on the subject because I believe EMFs are one of the most under-reported factors when it comes to anxiety and many other chronic health conditions.

Get your copy of The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs on Amazon here (this is a new book that published in November).

The End of Alzheimer’s – The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline by Dale Bredesen, MD

A groundbreaking plan to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s Disease that fundamentally changes how we understand cognitive decline.

Everyone knows someone who has survived cancer, but until now no one knows anyone who has survived Alzheimer’s Disease.

In this paradigm shifting book, Dale Bredesen, MD, offers real hope to anyone looking to prevent and even reverse Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive decline. Revealing that AD is not one condition, as it is currently treated, but three, The End of Alzheimer’s outlines 36 metabolic factors (micronutrients, hormone levels, sleep) that can trigger “downsizing” in the brain. The protocol shows us how to rebalance these factors using lifestyle modifications like taking B12, eliminating gluten, or improving oral hygiene.

The results are impressive. Of the first ten patients on the protocol, nine displayed significant improvement with 3-6 months; since then the protocol has yielded similar results with hundreds more. Now, The End of Alzheimer’s brings new hope to a broad audience of patients, caregivers, physicians, and treatment centers with a fascinating look inside the science and a complete step-by-step plan that fundamentally changes how we treat and even think about AD.

I am familiar with the powerful results of his research and had been waiting in anticipation for the launch of this groundbreaking book.

Here is the Amazon link to the book: The End of Alzheimer’s (this book released in August)

Unconventional Medicine: Join the Revolution to Reinvent Healthcare, Reverse Chronic Disease, and Create a Practice You Love by Chris Kresser

The world is facing the greatest healthcare crisis it has ever seen. Chronic disease is shortening our lifespan, destroying our quality of life, bankrupting governments, and threatening the health of future generations. Sadly, conventional medicine, with its focus on managing symptoms, has failed to address this challenge. The result is burned-out physicians, a sicker population, and a broken healthcare system.

In Unconventional Medicine, Chris Kresser presents a plan to reverse this dangerous trend. He shows how the combination of a genetically aligned diet and lifestyle, functional medicine, and a lean, collaborative practice model can create a system that better serves the needs of both patients and practitioners.

The epidemic of chronic illness can be stopped, if patients and practitioners can adapt.

This is a book that has been written primarily for practitioners but if you are a health enthusiast/health advocate who want to understand functional medicine you will enjoy it too.

I really enjoy the discussion about a collaborative practice model where there is a place for doctors, nutritionists, health coaches, and other allied health practitioners.

The only section in book I don’t agree with is where Chris states that: “Research suggests that depression is not actually caused by low serotonin.” Based on my experience, depression/anxiety is not always caused by low serotonin – it can be one of many causes. I am so vocal about this that I know you would will call me out on it if I don’t mention it!

Get your copy of Unconventional Medicine here on Amazon (newly published last month)

Nutrition and Mental Illness: An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry by Carl C. Pfeiffer Ph.D. M.D.

This book is a quick read and is one of my favorite older books on the subject of mental health and biochemical imbalances.

Believing that drugs and psychoanalysis were not always the best course of treatment for a variety of mental illnesses, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer began an extensive program of research into the causes and treatment of mental illness, and in 1973 opened the Brain Bio Center in Princeton, New Jersey. Here, with a team of scientists, he found that many psychological problems can be traced to biochemical imbalances in the body. With these patients, he achieved unprecedented success in treating a wide range of mental problems by adjusting diet and providing specific nutritional supplements for those conditions where deficiences exist. This book documents his approach.

Each year, thousands of people are diagnosed as schizophrenic; many more suffer from depression, anxiety, and phobias.

Dr. Pfeiffer’s methods of treatment presented in Nutrition and Mental Illness are a valuable adjunct to traditional therapies, and can bring hope of real wellness to many of those who suffer.

Get your copy of Nutrition and Mental Illness on Amazon here (this book was published in 1988)

The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings by Trudy Scott

I’m sharing my book in case you don’t yet have a copy or as a reminder to share it with a loved one or friend if it helped you!

It’s remarkable how much the foods we eat can impact our brain chemistry and emotions. What and when we eat can make the difference between feeling anxious and staying calm and in control. But most of us don’t realize how much our diets influence our moods, thoughts, and feelings until we make a change.

In The Antianxiety Food Solution, you’ll find four unique antianxiety diets designed to help you address nutritional deficiencies that may be at the root of your anxiety and enjoy the many foods that foster increased emotional balance. This helpful guide allows you to choose the best plan for you and incorporates effective anxiety-busting foods and nutrients. You’ll soon be on the path to freeing yourself from anxiety—and enjoying an improved overall mood, better sleep, fewer cravings, and optimal health—the natural way! The book also includes an easy-to-use index.

In The Antianxiety Food Solution, you’ll discover:

How to assess your diet for anxiety-causing and anxiety-calming foods and nutrients

Foods and nutrients that balance your brain chemistry

Which anxiety-triggering foods and drinks you may need to avoid

Easy lifestyle changes that reduce anxiety and increase happiness

There are also complete chapters on the amino acids (with questionnaires and protocols for low serotonin/tryptophan, low GABA/GABA, low endorphins/DPA, low blood sugar/glutamine and low catecholamines/tyrosine) and the social anxiety condition called pyroluria (with the questionnaire and protocols for zinc, vitamin B6, GLA and other factors to consider).

Grab your copy of The Antianxiety Food Solution from Amazon here (published in 2011 but still very relevant)

Feel free to share some of the favorite nutritional books you are reading now or are planning to read….

Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach program

December 6, 2017 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

Are you interested in learning more about being a health coach? Do you have a passion for helping others and a love of learning about health and wellness and are looking for formal training?

Do you want to integrate your previous healthcare training with functional medicine and positive psychology so that you can enter this exciting field of health coaching?

Do you want to learn more about health coaching in order to bring a health coach onto your growing team to better support your clients/patients?

The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy (FMCA) is hosting a webinar on Thu Dec 7 at 7pm CT/8pm ET that will help you figure out if this is right for you. You can register for the webinar here

Here is some information about functional medicine from FMCA and what it means to be a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach:

The Functional Medicine movement is gaining momentum because it applies a holistic approach to health, finds the root causes of disease, and uses diet and lifestyle change to create wellness.
The Functional Medicine model is an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness.
FMCA built their curriculum to cover everything a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach needs to know to effectively support both the clients with whom they work and the doctors [or nutritionists or other practitioners] with whom they partner.

The 12-month online program grounds coaches in the principles of Functional Medicine and functional nutrition, mind/body medicine, positive psychology, and the art of coaching. Here is an overview of the curriculum

MONTH 1: Coaching Fundamentals and Creating Positive Coaching Relationships: Build a strong foundation with the basics of Positive Psychology techniques and Coaching skills you’ll use to connect with clients and inspire them to make lasting lifestyle changes.

MONTH 2: The Power of the Personal Narrative: Learn about character strengths—both how to work with clients to incorporate their character strengths into the goals they set and the changes they make, as well as how to identify and leverage your own character strengths to strengthen your coaching skills.

MONTH 3: Facilitating Values-Based Lifestyle Change: Help clients through their digestive issues with learning digestion basics and how to balance the microbiome to achieve better health.

MONTH 4: Supporting Digestion and Reducing Inflammation: Understand emotional eating and how stress can cause inflammation; learn how to use the Functional Medicine elimination diet to identify foods that heal and foods that inflame on a case by case basis.

MONTH 5: Improving Communication and Hormone Balance: Recognize and interpret the types of nonverbal communication clients may display, and discover the impact of hormone fluctuations on emotional eating, stress, and blood sugar regulation, so you can help your clients work through these challenges.

MONTH 6: Creating Energy and Resiliency: Learn how implementing specific food and exercise plans with clients can address their unique needs, and learn about energy—from cellular energy production to how the foods we choose affect our energy to using mindfulness meditation to develop resiliency.

MONTH 7: Integrating Detoxification into Your Practice: Learn how toxins relate to illness to ensure safe and appropriate food choices during detox; we cover how to shed toxic thoughts, so you can support clients through safe whole-body detoxification.

MONTH 8: Coaching Strategies for Challenging Gastrointestinal and Immune Compromised Conditions: Understand the science of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, and learn about gut-related challenges—specifically, the gut-brain-obesity link and choosing gut-healing foods.

MONTH 9: Coaching Strategies for Working Through Emotional Content: Learn about cooking for a healthy mind, and how emotions can influence the way we feel and act; help clients manage the cravings that sometimes accompany their emotions.

MONTH 10: Running Group Wellness and Body Composition Programs: Learn the basic metabolic and hormonal aspects of resistant weight loss, discover how to incorporate food plans and your clients’ character strengths to help them manage their weight, and get the blueprint for both virtual and clinic-based group detox programs.

MONTH 11: Overcoming Challenges with Chronically Ill Clients and Families: Learn about the role of the Health Coach as part of a Functional Medicine collaborative care team, understand how to apply the Positive Psychology model to address complicated client challenges, and keep coaching simple to avoid overwhelming clients.

MONTH 12: Consolidating Learning, Tracking Progress, Preparing to Move On: Become familiar with the ethical guidelines and core competencies you’ll need to know in order to earn your Health Coaching certification, and discuss the business side of coaching as you prepare to move into your next phase.

If you’re ready to deepen your career helping others through your passion for health, or make a career transition (or bring a health coach onto your team), now is the time. You can learn more about this unique program by joining the webinar here. The webinar will be recorded so if you can’t make it live, register anyway and you’ll get the recording sent to you.

Here is the link to the application if you already know this is for you.

I know FMCA’s founders, Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum and Elyse Wagner, and I love that they are on this mission to transform healthcare by making Health Coaches the new face of wellness medicine.

Here is a picture of me with Sandra at a recent event in Los Angeles. It was great to catch up and we were both thrilled to meet “Food Babe” activist Vani Hari.

If you are already a health coach or have teamed up with a health coach I’d love to hear your feedback on how this is working for you.

If you have any comments or questions please post them in the comments below.

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

June 13, 2016 By Trudy Scott 13 Comments

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!

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.