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

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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.

I suffer from severe anxiety, have social anxiety and am afraid of everything

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For the first time I have come across your blogs about amino acids and anxiety. I’ve suffered from severe anxiety since 2011, and have tried the SSRIs and hate them. I refused to take them, as they caused me to gain so much weight and [have] withdrawals. I’ve also read how bad they are for you.

In order to work, I am relying heavily on 0.5mg of Clonazepam up to 3-4 times a day. It makes me so drowsy in the mornings. I try for the most part to make sure to get 7-8 hours of sleep because I can tell how when not having enough rest can trigger my anxiety. But I’m in desperate need of a solution. Not sure if the clonazepam is something I can continue to take long term, as I also know it’s bad for you.

I suffer from social anxiety (on a level 1-10, I would be 20!) and also some agoraphobia symptoms [an abnormal fear of being in crowds, public places, or open areas, sometimes accompanied by anxiety attacks.]. I am not able to go to stores alone, and I am afraid of everything.

I suffer at work the most, because I’m constantly busy and stressed and dealing with customers all day. Please help

The above question was recently posted on my blog and I’m sharing my response to her in case you are new to using the amino acids for neurotransmitter imbalances and may be able to relate to any of the above. This is my response to her:

Welcome to the community! I use the amino acids with clients and do a trial to find out if they are needed and how much to use. This blog post Anxiety and the amino acids: an overview has links to the amino acid questionnaire, the precautions and how to do a trial. When someone has fear and phobias I immediately think we need to be looking at low serotonin and a trial of tryptophan. It’s not uncommon to also see low GABA and blood sugar imbalances being an issue too.

Once you address low GABA, low serotonin and low blood sugar I would expect the work stresses to feel less overwhelming. In an ideal world it would be wonderful to be able to remove this stress so I encourage you to consider this too.

For social anxiety I start with the pyroluria questionnaire. The great aspect of this is the nutrients for pyroluria – zinc, vitamin B6 and evening primrose oil – help the social anxiety and help to make the neurotransmitters. They also happen to help with PMS and other hormonal imbalances too.

Keep in mind it’s a comprehensive nutritional approach that I use with clients so we are also looking at diet, blood sugar control, the gut, adrenals and thyroid health, quitting sugar and caffeine and so much more. My book The Antianxiety Food Solution (on Amazon here) covers everything in detail, including the amino acids and pyroluria.

I’m sure you’re aware that Clonazepam (or Klonopin) is a benzodiazepine and should be prescribed a maximum of 2 weeks and even then they can be problematic. It may likely be contributing to your anxiety. Here is one blog post to get you started with some information about benzodiazepines: World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day – say NO to Benzodiazepines for anxiety! It covers tolerance issues and resources for tapering. I encourage you to search the blog to find plenty of additional information about the benzodiazepines.

Be very careful with the morning drowsiness as there is an increased risk of being involved in a road accident as driver when on a benzodiazepine prescription.

I speak on selected online summits that I know will be of value to my community so do keep reading the newsletter. The summits are a great way to start learning about my work and other nutritional and functional medicine approaches for anxiety and other chronic health conditions so be sure to sign up and tune in. There is also a wealth of information on this blog.

New testing approach for Lyme disease: ultrasound and PCR urine testing

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Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt’s interview with Dr Jay Davidson, host The Chronic Lyme Disease Summit 2 is one of the most interesting and encouraging Lyme disease interviews I’ve heard for a long time! He covers the Latest on Lyme Testing and Treatments. The reason it’s so encouraging is that chronic Lyme disease is notoriously difficult to test for.

Dr. Klinghardt starts by sharing why Lyme disease goes undiagnosed in many instances:

Lyme is highly compartmentalized. That means it sets up sanctuaries in different body compartments, and chronic Lyme is not living in the blood. Lyme may be in the blood in acute Lyme but not in chronic Lyme.

In chronic Lyme it may be in the right hippocampus but not in the entire brain, maybe in the brain stem but not the liver. It may be in your disk of L4-L5 but not in other disks and so on and so forth.

It lives in biofilm. We know that. It lives in the cell, but it doesn’t stray.

He goes on to share that the common immune system-based Lyme disease tests that use blood testing are misleading because with chronic Lyme

the blood or the white blood cells are not in contact with the actual microbes and you do not get the immune activation…So many cases go undiagnosed.

Dr. Klinghardt shares a wonderful technique that he and one of the world’s most renowned ultrasound radiologists, Dr. Marco Ruggiero, have developed for both testing and to improve treatment:

We know that when you put ultrasound …on a group of cells, it squeezes and relaxes the cells at a very high speed and squeezes out things from the cell that shouldn’t be in there. And so, we had the theory if you apply ultrasound to an area where we suspect Lyme spirochetes or Bartonella or Babesia or Ehrlichia, then those microbes are forced into the connective tissue. And some of them will stray from there into the blood, and some of them will be excreted through the kidneys into the urine.

With that principle, we found an incredible increase in our findings that most of the people that were suspected of having chronic Lyme disease didn’t just have Borrelia burgdorferi, but they had also Borrelia miyamotoi. They had Babesia duncani, Babesia microti. They had Bartonella henselae.

So what we do, we have set up a certain sequence of using ultrasound on the brain, on the thymus, on the spleen, on the vagus nerve, and on the brain stem. We drive out the microbes, and then we collect the urine and find the microbes. This is by far the best test we use – the PCR testing – looking for whole strands of DNA of the bugs in the urine.

That testing has been the most rewarding test in my whole lifetime. We are publishing a paper that comes out later this month in the American Journal of Immunology where we lay out the details of this technique. That’s what we do at the Sophia Health Institute.

The whole treatment takes less than 10 minutes, and then it’s the first urine that naturally occurs after that that’s collected. And then we send it to the lab for PCR testing, and insurance pays if you do it with Lab Corp. There’s other labs that offer this test now. And it can cost up to $500 to test for 14 of the coinfections.

Here is the title of that paper: The Ruggiero-Klinghardt (RK) Protocol for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Conditions with Particular Focus on Lyme Disease and the lab DNA Connexions is mentioned in this paper. 

He goes on to explain how they also use the therapeutic ultrasound as an instrument to optimize drug uptake and utilization in specific areas of the body order to eliminate the bacteria.

Later on in the interview Dr. Klinghardt makes this bold and rather concerning statement:

Most of my patients with severe, persistent Lyme disease have never had a tick bite. They had a spider bite or a flea bite or a bite from a stinging fly. So these are insect-borne diseases but not tick-borne diseases.

Dr. Klinghardt has been at the forefront of Lyme disease treatment for years and now bringing even further wisdom to this very challenging condition. I really look forward to learning more about all this from this amazing practitioner.

The Chronic Lyme Disease Summit 2 runs June 19-26, 2017 and Dr. Klinghardt’s interview airs on day 2 of the summit.

Be sure to also listen to:

  • Leslie Douglas: DNA Connexions PCR Assay (the testing Dr. Klinghardt uses) and
  • Jonathan Streit: Testing for Functional Neurological Issues

This summit will help you understand symptoms (common and rare), diagnosis and testing, practical at-home health tips, healing protocol explanations and more!

And it will hopefully give you some insights to any ongoing health issues you may have that may actually be due to Lyme disease (even if you have not yet been diagnosed). It’s something I consider with all my clients that are not seeing symptom resolution.

Register here for The Chronic Lyme Disease Summit 2

Last year I was interviewed on Lyme anxiety and how to use GABA and other amino acids to ease the anxiety while you are working on addressing the Lyme disease. I’m not speaking this year but that interview and some of my other Lyme anxiety resources are available to summit purchasers. I actually mention Dr Klinghardt in that interview because he finds that his Lyme patients don’t get well until they have addressed pyroluria.

If you live in Sydney, Australia, you can hear Dr. Kinghardt present live this weekend during his 1 day event: Core Protocols for Chronic Illness. If you’re not a practitioner be sure to let your healthcare provider know about this event.

Feel free to post questions or feedback below.

Anxiety in autism, ADHD and sensory processing disorders

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I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Tara Hunkin on the upcoming Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit and share my expertise on anxiety since we so often see anxiety in this population. My topic is: Anxiety’s Role in ASD, ADHD and SPD and how nutrient therapy can help.

I start out sharing some of the research on the incidence and connections.

This 2009 paper Sensory Overresponsivity and Anxiety in Children With ADHD in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, reports that:

Approximately 25% of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a comorbid anxiety disorder.

The purpose of this particular study was to determine whether sensory overresponsivity (SOR) or sensory processing disorders are related to increased anxiety in children with ADHD. There were twenty-four children between the age of 6 to 10 with ADHD and 24 children without ADHD.

The study concluded that:

Children in the ADHD + SOR [sensory over responsivity] group were significantly more anxious than both the ADHD-only and non-ADHD (control) groups.

Occupational therapists treating children with ADHD and SOR should be aware that these children may also have anxiety and discuss options with families for prevention or treatment.

I would add that anyone working with these children should be aware of the connections: doctors, nutritionists, psychologists and anyone else on the health team.

We also discuss this 2012 paper, also from the American Journal of Occupational Therapy – Sensory Overresponsivity and Anxiety in Typically Developing Children and Children With Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Cause or Coexistence?

Reviews of the coexistence of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] and anxiety disorders have concluded that among children and youth with ASD, anxiety disorders are highly prevalent, clinically significant, and varied as to specific type of anxiety disorder

Approximately 25% of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also have anxiety disorder, a rate that is elevated when ADHD is seen in conjunction with conduct or oppositional defiant disorders

The paper mentions these 3 factors as models worthy of further study in order to understand the relationship between anxiety, sensory overresponsivity, autism and ADHD:

(1) anxiety caused by, or a symptom of, SOR (primary anxiety model);
(2) SOR caused by, or a symptom of, anxiety (primary SOR model); and
(3) the presence of both anxiety and SOR, linked by way of another factor

Based on what I know about anxiety I feel it could be a combination of all of the above.

My interview also covers the following around how to address the anxiety in these children and their moms (who also often have anxiety):

  • Low serotonin anxiety, symptoms, using tryptophan and 5-HTP and precautions with using them with an SSRI
  • A young girl with RAD (reactive attachment disorder) with rage/anger, anxiety, insomnia, and sugar cravings and the successful use of chewable tryptophan, addressing low iron and a gluten-free diet
  • A young boy with OCD and the successful use of both tryptophan and inositol
  • Low GABA anxiety, the use of GABA and not phenibut, and cautions about using too much
  • A young girl with ADHD and irritability and the successful use of GABA
  • Pyroluria incidence and symptoms and how it ties back to neurotransmitter imbalances

Sensory processing disorders, ADHD and autism are not my expertise and I don’t work much with children so I’m really pleased to be bringing you this information via the other amazing speakers AND listening and learning myself!

Here are some speakers and topics I’m particularly interested in

  • Brandon Brock, RN, DC: Understanding PANS and PANDAS role in ASD, ADHD and SPD.
  • Elizabeth Mumper, MD: Mitochondrial Dysfunction: What it is and how to address the underlying causes.
  • Richard Frye, MD, Ph.D.: Cerebral Folate Deficiency: and how it impairs neurological health.
  • Nancy O’Hara, MD: What you need to know about cell danger response in ASD & other neurodevelopmental disorders.
  • John Tjenos, NTP: The importance of the vagus nerve and how to build vagal tone with essential oils.

We have so much to learn from practitioners and researchers working in this area. And children affected by these conditions do recover!

The Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit, hosted by Tara Hunkin, NTP, runs from June 19-28, 2017.

It will be 10 days of eye opening information into the root causes of your child’s neurological dysfunction. Imagine learning about what may have caused their symptoms and how to address them with nutrition and biomedical approaches and leverage the power of positive neuroplasticity to improve function, health and their lives.

Do also keep in mind that these topics may have relevance for you even if you don’t have a child with a sensory processing disorder, ADHD and/or autism. These children are the canaries in the coal mine and many of my clients with anxiety can benefit from the biomedical support that many of these speakers are addressing. Simply replace sensory processing disorder, ADHD and/or autism with anxiety and listen and learn.

You can register for The Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit here

Feel free to ask questions or provide feedback and your experiences in the comment section below.

Depression as a black dog that comes in and lays down beside you at night

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Trevor King’s interview about his journey with depression – on That Vitamin Summit – is not to be missed if you are depressed, have ever suffered with depression or if you have a loved one or friend with depression. He shares how he feels a sense of complete hopelessness at times:

It descends like a black cloud that makes me almost sort of retreat into myself. And my eyes will know and I don’t want to take the world in. I don’t want to get out of bed at times. Actually, that’s one of the things that … one of the only things that actually helps me, is going to bed and lying down.

Winston Churchill famously described it as this black dog who’d come in and lay beside him at night.

“From the moment my eyes opened in the morning, I am engaged in a battle. I must protect myself with armor against ongoing, negative, intrusive thoughts that flood into my brain, while sending my prefrontal cortex, which is the home of logical thought, the green light to make decisions and take charge of my brain’s limbic system. That is, before the fear center completely spazzes out. I spend more time and energy chasing and maintaining good health than I do in any other aspect of my life. My marriage, family or work. Because I know that everything meaningful and good around me depends on a stable base. And I hope and pray that one day, I don’t have to fight so hard for my sanity.”

He talks about how he is affected by sugar and low blood sugar, and how he’s found some benefits with niacin, chromium, magnesium and tryptophan (when he’s consistent with taking them!).

Trevor actually talks about the GABA interview I did with him a few days earlier and how he’s very interested in what he learned. He is planning to do a trial of GABA to see if it can help him further.

Here is a snippet from my interview on GABA (so do tune in to this interview if you’re new to my work and the targeted amino acids):

GABA is really quite profound. When I had my anxiety, GABA was my lifesaver. It completely turned my life around. Within three days of using GABA, the panic attacks stopped and the anxiety started to go down, and then I had to look for all the other root causes. It worked immediately so I’m a complete believer, just because I’ve experienced it myself. You’ll hear a lot of people say GABA won’t work. It doesn’t cross the blood/brain barrier so it’s not going to have an impact.

We’ve now got research showing that there may be ways that it crosses the blood/brain barrier. We’ve also got research showing that we have GABA receptors in various parts of our body. We’ve got a lot in our muscles, and with low GABA symptoms you’ll have physical tension.

The beautiful thing is it works. It works quickly, and if you have these low GABA symptoms, which is the physical anxiety, which could be panic attacks. It could be stress eating, it could be drinking to calm down. If you are the kind of person who needs wine to wind down at the end of the day, that’s a big sign that you may need GABA. You take the GABA and you just feel this physical tension release from you, you know you’re onto something good.

I just wish I’d known about his struggles with depression at the time of our interview – I would have talked more about tyrosine for dopamine support (for curl up in bed depression) and DPA for endorphin boosting (for low endorphins weepy depression). 

I did discuss gluten and would consider this especially since his daughter has issues with it. I talked about low serotonin and mentioned Lidtke tryptophan.  If someone doesn’t do well on another brand I’d have them trial the Lidtke brand.  I’d also look into SIBO – I have SIBO and rice and grains make me feel flat and low and I see this often with clients.  Finally I’d look into lithium orotate for keeping an even mood. 

Trevor shares these wise words at the end of his interview:

You do find that when you actually bite the bullet and share it with people,

people are very, very understanding. And actually, you’re amazed that many people have been there themselves.

I could not agree more which is why I’ve always shared my journey with anxiety. I appreciate him for being willing to share his story with depression!

If you’re not already registered here is the registration link for That Vitamin Summit

Feel free to post questions or feedback below – and share your story with anxiety or depression if you feel drawn to do so

GABA protects against hypothyroidism caused by fluoride and reduces anxiety

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GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is a calming amino acid that when taken as a supplement (ideally sublingually) works to relax, calm, ease anxiety and social anxiety, quiet the mind, help with sleeping challenges, reduce neck and other body tension, remove uneasiness and worry, and give hope.

It’s one of the main amino acids I use with my anxious clients and they see great results. We are seeing more and more research that this amino acid does work and yet I still get weekly questions about GABA: “I’ve been told it won’t work unless I have a leaky blood brain barrier.” This is a myth I’m trying to dispel and cover this topic in great detail in my GABA talk on the last Anxiety Summit.

GABA also protects against hypothyroidism caused by fluoride

Because of all this I’m always excited to see new research on the benefits of GABA and this recent study is no exception. It was an animal study and the authors report that GABA also protects against hypothyroidism caused by fluoride: γ-Aminobutyric acid ameliorates fluoride-induced hypothyroidism in male Kunming mice.

The mice that were injected with sodium fluoride were found to have decreased blood levels of T4, T3 and thyroid hormone-binding globulin (TBG) and damage to the thyroid:

fluoride intoxication induced structural abnormalities in thyroid follicles.

The fluoride-exposed mice that were subsequently treated with GABA were found to have improved results for T4, T3 and thyroid hormone-binding globulin (TBG levels) and healing of the structural abnormalities in thyroid follicles that were observed after fluoride exposure.

The authors conclude with this statement, reporting that GABA acted as a natural antioxidant:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to establish the therapeutic efficacy of GABA as a natural antioxidant in inducing thyroprotection against fluoride-induced toxicity.

If you can’t get access to GABA, a paper published earlier this year reports similar results with taurine, an amino acid that promotes GABA production: Taurine Ameliorates Renal Oxidative Damage and Thyroid Dysfunction in Rats Chronically Exposed to Fluoride.

Added to our water supplies, fluoride affects the thyroid

Although this post is about GABA I recognize that I also have to address the fluoride aspect which I know is a controversial topic! We all know that fluoride has been added to our water supplies in an attempt to try and prevent tooth decay. Izabella Wentz, author of the new book Hashimoto’s Protocol, writes about what she calls the Fluoride Conspiracy:

However, most people don’t know that fluoride was used as an antithyroid drug that suppressed thyroid activity in people with overactive thyroids before the invention of antithyroid drugs.

A dose of 2 to 5 mg per day was typically found to be effective for suppressing an overactive thyroid. If you’re following directions and drinking your eight cups of water each day, chances are, you are taking in enough fluoride to suppress your thyroid if you live in the typical fluoridated community!

While most Westernized countries have rightfully rejected fluoridation without any apparent consequences on tooth decay, the United States, Canada, and parts of the UK continue to fluoridate their water.

In research that was way overdue, a 2015 British study reported that medical practices in a fluoridated area of the UK (West Midlands vs. those in a nonfluoridated area, Greater Manchester) were twice as likely to report a high prevalence of hypothyroidism in their patients! Furthermore, analysis of different parts of the UK found that the rates of hypothyroidism were statistically matched to the rates of fluoride in the local water supply!

Medications and other sources of fluoride

Izabella also lists some of the most commonly used medications that contain fluoride in this blog post: Fluoride And Your Thyroid

  • Prozac®, Lexapro®, Celexa®, Paxil®: used for depression, anxiety, or OCD
  • Prevacid®: used for acid reflux
  • Diflucan®: an antifungal used for yeast infections.
  • Fluoroquinolone antibiotics (Cipro®, Levaquin®, Avelox®): used for UTIs and other infections
  • Celebrex®: used for pain
  • Lipitor®, Zetia®: used to lower cholesterol

Other common sources of fluoride are fluoridated toothpastes and dental preparations, processed beverages and foods, pesticides, tea, mechanically deboned meat, Teflon pans and exposure in the workplace. You can read more about these sources from The Fluoride Action Network (FAN), an organization that seeks to broaden awareness about the toxicity of fluoride compounds among citizens, scientists, and policymakers alike.

The GABA and taurine hypothyroid-fluoride research is too new to have made it into Izabella’s book but since anxiety is a common symptom in hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and based on this research, using either GABA or taurine shows promise for helping both the thyroid to heal after fluoride exposure (via water, medications, diet or workplace exposure) AND to help reduce the physical anxiety symptoms.

It seems to be a two-way street because we’ve always known that the amino acids will be effective for addressing low GABA and low serotonin levels ONLY when thyroid health is optimal (and not many people are aware of this).

I also can’t help but wonder if a small amount of GABA (or taurine) wouldn’t be helpful after known exposure to fluoride sources and certainly while you are working to reduce fluoride exposure – even if hypothyroidism is not a problem. I look forward to future research in this area.

If you’d like an overview of how I use GABA and the other amino acids with my clients you can read all about it here.

I’d love to hear if you have observed an improvement in thyroid health since using GABA for your anxiety? And how dedicated you are to avoid fluoride?