GABA

Sage, gluten, CBD and gut-brain axis: highlights from The Anxiety Summit 5

November 8, 2019 By Trudy Scott 1 Comment

Today I’m sharing a few highlights from The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis which airs November 11-17. We cover all new material, it’s research-based and we talk about practical solutions.

The highlights cover sage and other herbs that can impact GABA and anxiety; new testing for gluten issues; CBD and the role in gut health, anxiety and PTSD; and the microbiome and gut-brain axis and neurotransmitters.

#1 Herbs to Improve Digestion and Support GABA ~ Magdalena Wszelaki, author of Cooking for Hormone Balance, shares this in our interview

Astringents like sage, rose and red raspberry tighten loose junctions in IBS, support female hormonal health and ease anxiety.

We discuss sage and make reference to this study called Flavonoids: some of the wisdom of sage? which concludes that the “actions of molecules such as hispidulin [a flavonoid found in sage] might be able to target GABA_A receptors for the management of anxiety and epilepsy.”

What I really love about this interview is that Magdalena brings it all back to practical steps and shares how to make a healing medicinal tea.

#2 Latest Gluten Research and Testing (Part 2) ~ Dr. Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN. We discuss the Neural and Wheat Zoomer tests and Dr. Tom shares this:

Let’s do a different test that’s more accurate and more sensitive. That’s why the Wheat Zoomer looks at 26 different peptides of poorly digested wheat. And it’s the most comprehensive test on the market today …. on the Anxiety Summit, the ones that you’d be most concerned about is the gluteomorphins and the prodynorphins because those antibodies attack the opiate receptors, and that is critically important with brain dysfunction.

#3 Gut-Brain Axis and Mental Health ~ Peter Bongiornio, ND, LAc, author of Put Anxiety Behind You, talks about the microbiome and bidirectional aspects:

so we have this microbiota, all these germs and bacteria that are in our digestive tract as an example. What we’re seeing now is that the health and the diversity of those create either a healthy brain or an unhealthy brain; that the microbiota that are in our gut actually play a very, very strong role and how neurotransmitters are made both in the gut and in the brain. As well as they also create inflammatory molecules and peptides and things that also travel to the brain and will affect brain inflammation, and affect brain neurotransmitters and affect the receptors of these neurotransmitters as well.

#4 Endocannabinoid System and Your Gut ~ Hyla Cass, MD, talks about CBD and anandamide in the endocannabinoid system:

CBD influences the breakdown of anandamide , extending it’s use. Anandamide is found in both the brain and the gut and the name comes from the Sanskrit word ananda, which means bliss.

So what CBD is doing is extending the life of the anandamides, so they can act longer. Dr. Cass also shares the connection between the endocannabinoid system, stress, the HPA axis, the gut and PTSD:

we react to stress and trauma through the hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal axis/ the HPA Axis. And the endocannabinoid system tends to tone down or modulate the HPA axis to protect us from stress. And when it’s protecting us from stress in that way, it’s also signaling to the GI system to calm down. People that don’t have enough endocannabinoid activity are more likely to have posttraumatic stress disorder.

The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis airs online Monday Nov 11 to Sunday Nov 17, with replays the following weekend. I do hope you’ll be joining us.

If you’re having any doubts, read this delightful message I received this week and be inspired and motivated to tune in and learn:

Trudy … thanks so very much for the 3 transcripts featuring Ann Louise Gittleman, Carolyn Ledowsky and Dr. Datis Kharrazian … they were ALL fantastic and unlike many of the health related docu-series, I felt that I obtained some great insights and key take-aways that will help me on my road to good health journey! You asked some GREAT questions and I appreciate you digging further for names of supplements and more specificity to ensure clarity. You are a PRO and I am so glad I found you ❤️

Please join us and listen to this interview and all the others on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis.

When you register now you’ll get access to there 3 interviews right away:

Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS
MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND
Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

If you have already signed up for the summit, I hope you enjoy these interview highlights.

If you have yet to sign up, please do come and join us and learn.

If you’re considering purchasing the summit to keep for your learning library, you have a number of options that include:

Online only or flash drive or both
A PDF or printed transcripts of all the interviews
The Best of Anxiety-Gut interviews from previous Anxiety Summits
GABA Quickstart Program (a group program with me on how to actually use GABA for your physical anxiety, with a private Facebook group and live Q & A call)

Purchase options

If you have already purchased, I know you’re going to find immense value from this material to be able to refer back to again and again.

What gems stand out for you today and do you have questions?

If you’d like to ask a question, please post in the comments below.

I’d also love to hear from you once you’ve listened in to these interviews and the others.

Vagus Nerve Activation to Reduce Anxiety with Dr. Navaz Habib: The Anxiety Summit 5

November 1, 2019 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

Navaz Habib, DC, is one my guest experts on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis and our topic is: Vagus Nerve Activation to Reduce Anxiety. What You’ll Learn –

Using bowel transit time and heart rate variability to measure how your vagus nerve is working
How the vagus nerve becomes dysfunctional
Vagus nerve activation tools: gargling, auricular acupuncture, social interaction
and more

Dr. Navaz shares this about the vagus nerve and why good vagus nerve function is so important for both good digestion and for easing anxiety (and preventing it too):

the vagus nerve is one of many cranial nerves. So we have 12 pairs of cranial nerves, or nerves that begin within the head cavity, and they exit to the brainstem at that point.

The vagus nerve is the 10th pair of cranial nerves. So it’s called the 10th cranial nerve, as well. And there’s one on each side. There’s actually one on the left and one on the right. So it is a pair and is the vagus nerves in reality. But the vagus nerve is the only cranial nerve of those 12 pairs that will exit the cranium. Okay. So it does have some function in and around the face and the throat, but it does exit and go into other areas of the body.

And that’s what makes the vagus nerve so important. It is the only one that does so. And it goes to innervate so many different organs inside our body. This includes the heart, the lungs, stomach, gallbladder, liver, kidneys, every single part of our digestive tract, as well as our spleen. So all of these organs need to have a certain level of information that’s passed from the brain to those organs, but we also need all of those organs, especially the gut, to send that information back up to the brain. And the vagus nerve is very, very important in that specific function.

He shares the two tests he uses to ensure his clients have strong vagus nerve function:

the bowel transit time test: “how much time is it is actually going to take for the food that we ingest from our mouth to exit through the opposite end, to go through the entire digestive tract and leave”
heart rate variability test which measures vagus nerve function directly: “heart rate variability is actually the measurement of the amount of time in milliseconds between beats of the heart.”

We go into great detail on each of the above tools and how to use them and we also discuss some of the research. This paper is fascinating: Vagus Nerve as Modulator of the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychiatric and Inflammatory Disorders. Here are some highlights from our discussion:

how inflammatory disorders and psychiatric disorders are so interconnected through the vagus nerve function
gut-brain axis sends information/chemicals from gut bacteria, parasites, viruses, yeast etc. up through the vagus nerve to the brain.
it involves the inflammatory system or the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system and acetylcholine
if we have gut dysfunction that can lead to dysfunctional inflammatory control, immune dysfunction and autoimmune diseases
it’s going to lead to inflammation in the brain, and in the entire nervous system and that’s where a lot of mood disorders like anxiety and depression really start to come from because we now know that serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine levels are highest in the gut.
this can lead to depressive type symptoms, mood type symptoms, and significant fear and worry that we find in anxiety.

When I found out that Dr. Navaz had written a book called “Activate Your Vagus Nerve: Unleash Your Body’s Natural Ability to Heal” (my Amazon link), I reached out to him to speak on the summit, and I’m so glad I did. I know you’ll love this interview as much as I do and will get tons out of it!

We cover how vagus nerve function can be impacted – lack of sleep and hormonal imbalances can be factors. A big trigger is trauma and I share my traumatic plane ride and how it affected my vagus nerve, voice and throat. I blogged about this and if you missed all that be sure to check the blog and videos in advance of our interview: Vagus nerve rehab with GABA, breathing, humming, gargling and key nutrients. The amino acid GABA was central in relaxing the throat spasms I experienced.

And we end with very practical ways to activate your vagus nerve

Deep breathing exercises and cold showers (“cold showers are a really great way to make our breathing a little bit more difficult. It’s like adding a weight onto the breath/onto the chest so that we’re forcing ourselves to breathe as well as we possibly can even under stressful circumstances”)
Gargling and using the gag reflex
Humming, chanting and singing (I used these approaches for my vagus nerve issue)
Auricular acupuncture (which is also very effective for addictions)
And finally, social interaction (I love this one and we talk about pyroluria and why addressing this social anxiety condition with nutrients is also so important for vagus nerve

Be sure to listen to Dr Navaz’s wonderful interview to get a complete picture of the importance of the vagus nerve, how it can start to function poorly and how to reactivate it to improve gut health and help with anxiety and mood issues.

It will lay a great foundation for the mentions of vagus nerve in many of the other interviews.

Please join us and listen to this interview and all the others on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis.

When you register now you’ll get access to there 3 interviews right away:

Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS
MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND
Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

If you have already signed up for the summit, I hope you enjoy these interview highlights.

If you have yet to sign up, please do come and join us and learn.

If you’re considering purchasing the summit to keep for your learning library, you have a number of options that include:

Online only or flash drive or both
A PDF or printed transcripts of all the interviews
The Best of Anxiety-Gut interviews from previous Anxiety Summits
GABA Quickstart Program (a group program with me on how to actually use GABA for your physical anxiety, with a private Facebook group and live Q & A call)

Purchase options

If you’re already familiar with the importance of the vagus nerve and already do work on activation (to improve gut health and help with anxiety) please share what you find works for you. That way we can all learn.

If you’d like to ask a question, please post in the comments below.

I’d also love to hear from you once you’ve listened in to Dr. Navaz’s interview and the others.

GABA & Tryptophan: The Gut-Anxiety Connections with Trudy Scott on The Anxiety Summit 5

October 14, 2019 By Trudy Scott 8 Comments

One of my three interviews on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis airs on day 1 of the summit. The topic is: GABA & Tryptophan: The Gut-Anxiety Connections. In this interview, I’m interviewed by my colleague and friend Dr. Nicole Beurkens, PhD, and you’ll learn about:

Low serotonin: fear, overwhelm, gut motility & anorexia
Low GABA: physical tension, gut & rectal pain, burning mouth
Blood brain barrier, phenibut, candida & CBD

I start with some background on why a summit on the gut-brain axis, what we don’t know about the incidence of anxiety and the huge increase we are seeing. The big message is that we have growing awareness but no real solutions. This goal of this summit is to create awareness around gut issues as a possible root cause and the growing research in nutritional psychiatry – AND to provide solutions!

We cover some of the basics in case you don’t know anything about GABA and tryptophan. If you’ve been following my work you’re likely going to be familiar with this section.

I cover plenty of new research throughout the interview and we start with 5-HTP as it relates to both gut health and anxiety. We discuss this 2019 paper: Effects of Serotonin and Slow-Release 5-Hydroxytryptophan on Gastrointestinal Motility in a Mouse Model of Depression:

Administration of 5-HTP SR [slow release] to mice restored [serotonin] to the ENS [enteric nervous system] and normalized GI motility and growth of the enteric epithelium.
5-HTP SR [slow release] might be used to treat patients with intestinal dysfunction associated with low levels of 5-HT [serotonin].

This paper doesn’t mention anxiety or depression but we know that serotonin support with 5-HTP or tryptophan addressed this aspect too. And given this, it’s very possible that we could extrapolate some of this research to tryptophan.

We cover motility issues at length in the SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) interviews with Dr. Alison Siebecker and Shivan Sarna – SIBO: Anxiety, Testing, Probiotics and Fecal Transplants (Part 1 and 2). We also talk about the fear and overwhelm factor when starting a new protocol in that interview and in this interview of mine – and how addressing low serotonin helps so much.

We also talk about one of my favorite topics: GABA and the controversial blood-brain-barrier question and point you back to the discussion I have with Dr. Datis Kharrazian in his interview: Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut. Be sure to tune in to that one.

I also share some research on low serotonin and gut health in anorexia; interesting anti-candida properties of serotonin; how CBD can make tryptophan more effective (be sure to tune in to Dr. Hyla Cass’ interview for more on this: Endocannabinoid System and Your Gut); new GABA studies; the phenibut FDA ban; and updates on some possible reasons why one or more of the amino acids don’t work as well as expected when you do the questionnaire, you have all the symptoms, you review the precautions and a do a trial.

I mentioned this is one of 3 interviews I do on the summit. My other 2 interviews cover:

How Collagen Can Cause Anxiety and Insomnia
Simple Solutions for Anxiety and Gut Health

I’ll share highlights from these ones in another email/blog.

Please join us and listen to my interviews and all the others on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis.

When you register now you’ll get access to there 3 interviews right away:

Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS
MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND
Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

If you have already signed up for the summit, I hope you enjoy these interview highlights.

If you have yet to sign up, please do come and join us and learn.

If you’re considering purchasing the summit to keep for your learning library, you have a number of options that include:

Online only or flash drive or both
A PDF or printed transcripts of all the interviews
The Best of Anxiety-Gut interviews from previous Anxiety Summits
GABA Quickstart Program (a group program with me on how to actually use GABA for your physical anxiety, with a private Facebook group and live Q & A call)

Purchase options

If you’d like to give feedback or ask a question, please post in the comments section at the bottom.

I’d love to hear from you once you’ve listened in to this interview and the others.

The Anxiety Summit 5: all the speakers and topics

October 11, 2019 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis, Nov 11-17, 2019
Hosted by Trudy Scott,
Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution
Founder of Anxiety Nutrition Institute

ANXIETY has become the defining mental health issue of our decade – women are affected at twice the rate of men, and now children and young adults are also more stressed and anxious than ever before. Join us to learn nutritional and gut solutions for your anxiety!

Here are all the speakers/topics and blog posts with additional information, interview snippets, links to studies and more. Each speaker title below links to the respective speaker blog.

*** Blog posts are being written and added leading up and during the summit so be sure to check back for the newest blogs ***

“Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc” – Ann Louise Gittleman

“Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut” – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS

“Parasites, Anxiety and TUDCA for Liver drainage” – Jay Davidson, DC, PScD

“The Gut-Brain Axis and Mental Health” – Peter Bongiornio, ND, LAc

“GABA & Tryptophan: The Gut-Anxiety Connections” – Trudy Scott, CN

“The Endocannabinoid System and the Gut” – Hyla Cass, MD

“Herbs to Improve Digestion & Support GABA” – Magdalena Wszelaki

“4 Lifesaving Tips to Reduce Anxiety” – Jonathan Landsman

“Anxiety & the Gut-Brain Axis in Autism” – Julie Matthews, NC

“Hidden Jewels in your Stools & Castor Oil Packs” – Marisol Teijeiro, ND

“Floatation Therapy for Anxiety and PTSD” – Evan Brand, BCHN, CFMP, NTP

“Self-Advocating and the Power of Community” – Misty Williams

“Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Anxiety” – Tara Hunkin, NTP, CGP, RWP

“Anxiety: The Latest Gluten Research and Testing Part 1” – Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DACBN

“Anxiety: The Latest Gluten Research and Testing Part 2” – Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DACBN

“MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety” – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND

“GI MAP Stool Test for Anxiety/Fibromyalgia” – David Brady, ND, DC, CCN, DACBN

“Fasting for Anxiety and Gut Health” – David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

“Bacteriophage Therapy instead of Antibiotics” – Donna Gates, MEd, ABAAHP

“Food Sensitivities & Anxiety” – Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

“Anxiety: Gut-Brain Communication & Diet” – David Perlmutter, M.D., F.A.C.N

“B12: Anxiety, OCD, Constipation & the Microbiome” – Edward F. Group III, DC, NP, DACBN, DCBCN, DABFM

“Essential Oils for Anxiety & Digestion” – Eric Zielinski, DC, MPH(c)

“Lori’s Anxiety-Gut Story & Solution” – Jonathan & Lori Otto

“Homeopathy for Dysbiosis, Anxiety & Angst” – Joette Calabrese, HMC, CCH, RSHom

“Gut Health & Anxiety in Chinese Medicine” – Pedram Shojai, OMD

“Vagus Nerve Activation to Reduce Anxiety” – Navaz Habib, DC, AFMCP

“Spore-based Probiotics to Boost Serotonin & GABA” – Kiran Krishnan

“Eat, Play, Connect” – Chef Pete Evans

“Pyroluria, Oxidative Stress and Parasites” – Todd Watts, DC, PScD

“Collagen Can Cause Anxiety & Insomnia” – Trudy Scott, CN

“PQQ for Stress, Sleep, Mitochondria & Gut Health” – Michael Murray, ND

“SIBO: Anxiety, Testing, Probiotics & Fecal Transplants Part 1” – Allison Siebecker, ND, MSOM, LAc

“SIBO: Anxiety, Testing, Probiotics & Fecal Transplants Part 2” – Shivan Sarna

“Bitters: Calming and Digestive Support” – Summer Bock

“Really Simple Solutions for Anxiety & Gut Health” – Trudy Scott, CN

Please join us and listen to all the interviews on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis. When you register you’ll get access to 3 interviews right away:

MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND
Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS
Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS

If you have already signed up for the summit, I hope you enjoy these interview highlights in each of these blog posts.

If you have yet to sign up, please do come and join us and learn.

If you’re considering purchasing the summit to keep for your learning library, you have a number of options that include:

Online only or flash drive or both
A PDF or printed transcripts of all the interviews
The Best of Anxiety-Gut interviews from previous Anxiety Summits
GABA Quickstart Program (a group program with me on how to actually use GABA for your physical anxiety, with a private Facebook group and live Q & A call)

Purchase options

If you’d like to give feedback or ask a question, please post in the comments section below or in the click above on the respective speaker/topic blog and comment there.

What stood out for you? Gems you want to share with your friends and family? Changes you’re going to make? What you want to dig deeper into? What has already helped you? Light-bulbs? Do you want more information like this?

I’d love to hear from you!

Even if you already receive my newsletters and signed up some time ago to be notified of the upcoming Anxiety Summit, you will still need to register at the new link here because Health Talks Online is doing the backend work for me on this one.If you don’t register you won’t get access to the daily summit emails with all the interviews. You will however, continue to get these emails from me.

This is my 5th Anxiety Summit and it is all new content.

The content is geared to anxious individuals who are health-savvy and to practitioners who work with anxious individuals.

If you are totally new to functional medicine and nutritional solutions for anxiety, just take in what you can and know you’ll get all this eventually.

Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut with Dr. Datis Kharrazian on The Anxiety Summit 5

October 11, 2019 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS is one my guest experts on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis and our topic is: Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut. In this interview you’ll learn:

Impact of brain injury and impaired vagal activity (as well as motility and breakdown of the blood brain barrier)
Activate your neurons
Polyphenols (for neuroinflammation) and butyrate for leaky gut/brain

We’re taught that “healing begins in the gut” and it’s a huge factor but in certain instances we need to do more before the gut can truly be healed. When you have had a traumatic brain injury/TBI, integrative functional neurology teaches that the brain has to be fixed for the gut to gut to work well. Dr. Kharrazian why this is important:

Someone can have a TBI and 10 or 15 years later they can experience brain and neurological symptoms – like depression and anxiety. These patients can end up with chronic GI issues as a consequence of the TBI because there is this intimate relationship between the brain and how it controls gut function.

In this interview you’ll hear how, after a TBI, the bidirectional gut-brain-microbiotia axis leads to structural and functional damage to the gut, increased intestinal permeability and an altered microbiome, an immune response and inflammation. There is also often impaired motility, breakdown of the blood brain barrier and impaired vagal activity (and much more).

Dr Kharrazian discusses aspects of this paper: The bidirectional gut-brain-microbiota axis as a potential nexus between traumatic brain injury, inflammation, and disease

we will examine the extent to which the bidirectional influence of the gut-brain axis modulates the complex biological processes occurring at the time of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and over the days, months, and years that follow.
In addition to local enteric signals originating in the gut, it is well accepted that gastrointestinal (GI) physiology is highly regulated by innervation from the CNS.
Conversely, emerging data suggests that the function and health of the CNS is modulated by the interaction between 1) neurotransmitters, immune signaling, hormones, and neuropeptides produced in the gut, 2) the composition of the gut microbiota, and 3) integrity of the intestinal wall serving as a barrier to the external environment.
Specific to TBI, existing pre-clinical data indicates that head injuries can cause structural and functional damage to the GI tract, but research directly investigating the neuronal consequences of this intestinal damage is lacking.

Dr. Datis Kharrazian is a clinical research scientist, academic professor, and a functional medicine health care provider. You likely are familiar with his work as the author of Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms? and Why Isn’t My Brain Working?

He is also the creator of several functional medicine and neurology online courses, and the founder of the Kharrazian institute, a post-graduate institute for functional medicine and restorative neurology. Earlier this year I attended his excellent Neuroinflammation training and decided I really wanted him on the summit to share an important an often overlooked aspect – integrative functional neurology.

What I found most surprising is that you don’t even have to have been concussed for a head injury to have an impact on your gut! The serious consequences of a head injury (and subsequent damage to the gut) is very much related to your blood sugar, nutritional status and stress levels at the time of the fall or head bang.

After learning all this it really got me thinking about the many falls I have had. I have never been concussed but I’ve been in a roll-over car accident, fallen hard snow-boarding, fallen sideways off my mountain bike onto rocks at Moab, and taken a really big pendulum fall when rock-climbing in Cape Town. Based on all this and my many chronic gut issues, I am going to have a full functional neurology assessment done and will report back as I learn more. I’ve completed Dr. Kharrazian’s questionnaire and it seems like I would really benefit from some neuro-rehab. I hope our interview gives you some insights too.

We also talk about one of my favorite topics: GABA and the controversial blood-brain-barrier question. I think you’ll really enjoy this discussion. Do let me know what you think!

We go on to talk about resveratrol, curcumin and butyrate, as well as some very practical neuro-rehab exercises he uses with his patients.

Please join us and listen to the entire interview on The Anxiety Summit 5: Gut-Brain Axis. When you register you’ll get access to 3 interviews right away, including Dr. Kharrazian’s interview:

Fix the Brain to Fix the Gut – Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, FACN, CNS
MTHFR, B12 Genes and Anxiety – Carolyn Ledowsky, ND
Why Bile is the Key to Anxiety & Hormone Havoc – Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

If you have already signed up for the summit, I hope you enjoy these interview highlights.

If you have yet to sign up, please do come and join us and learn.

If you’re considering purchasing the summit to keep for your learning library, you have a number of options that include:

Online only or flash drive or both
A PDF or printed transcripts of all the interviews
The Best of Anxiety-Gut interviews from previous Anxiety Summits
GABA Quickstart Program (a group program with me on how to actually use GABA for your physical anxiety, with a private Facebook group and live Q & A call)

Purchase options

If you’d like to give feedback or ask a question, please post in the comments section at the bottom.

I’d love to hear from you once you’ve listened in to Dr. Kharrazian’s interview and the others.

GABA, Rescue Remedy & essential oils for eliminating dental anxiety

September 20, 2019 By Trudy Scott 6 Comments

Have you used GABA to help with the anxiety you experience when going to the dentist or with one of your children who are fearful during a dental visit? I recently shared a comment on Facebook about how delighted I was with some of the feedback from Integrative Medicine for Mental Health attendees for my recent GABA presentation. I had a mom, Katie, respond and share how happy she was that GABA helped her 8 year old son on a trip to the dentist. She shared this:

My 8 year old has some anxiety, OCD-like tendencies, and sensory processing issues. Going to the dentist is extremely difficult. They recommended full sedation, which I refused. Instead, I brought his GABA, Rescue Remedy, and essential oils. He got 2 cavities filled like a champ!

I had forgotten the GABA at first and he was struggling. I stopped the dentist, gave my son a GABA lozenge to dissolve in his mouth, and within 30 seconds he was calm. The dentist was SO impressed. It really does work! I’m so grateful I learned about it from you!

GABA really does work this quickly – 30 seconds is not unusual – and this effectively and I was thrilled for this mom and her son.

A few other moms asked about which GABA product Katie used for her son, which one I recommend, and can GABA be used with children.

I like GABA Calm for kids and adults for the physical type of tension anxiety. When using with a child we want to start low and slowly increase. I’ll have the mom start them on one quarter (or sometimes less) of the GABA Calm product (which contains 125mg of GABA) and increase based on the trial and how their symptoms improve.

Katie used a 25mg GABA product by Kal, pictured here. I really like that it’s a nice low amount and that it uses what they call ActivMelt™ technology, so it melts in the mouth. Using GABA this way or sublingually or opening a capsule of a GABA-only product and holding it in the mouth is the most effective way to use GABA.

Depending on sensitivity issues you may need to test it out and consider some of the other ingredients if you notice tummy upset or something else.

Rescue Remedy and an essential oil blend

Katie also shared this about the Rescue Remedy and essential oil blend she used when they arrived (before giving him GABA):

The Rescue Remedy was very helpful. We use it on the whole family. For oils, I used a blend called Tranquility from Butterfly Express.

I had him inhale the oil plus applied it behind his ears and on the carotid artery on his neck. The dental assistant commented on how good that oil works because she felt really relaxed and calm.

I find GABA to be more effective so start there but many moms like Katie, find Rescue Remedy, a Bach Flower remedy, to help. I remember using Rescue myself, many years ago before I had discovered GABA.

The Tranquility blend contains: Blue Tansy, Geranium, Chamomile German, Lavender Officinalis, Palmarosa, Patchouli, Orange Sweet, Tangerine, and Ylang Complete. I’m not familiar with this company but the essential oils in this blend are wonderful.

Both of these – the oils and Rescue remedy – helped initially but it seems it was the GABA that gave him the most effective calming relief.

Thank you Katie for sharing on Facebook and giving me permission to share your son’s GABA dentist story here. Well done for getting your dentist on board with both the essential oils and GABA.

Anxiety nutritional solutions resources for dentists

Going to the dentist can be stressful at the best of times and downright terrifying in some instances and I want kids and adults alike to know they have options like this.

Now, let’s get my book, The Antianxiety Food Solution, into the hands of all dentists so they can help their anxious and fearful patients with GABA and other nutritional approaches!

And let’s also talk to the dentist about diffusing calming essential oils in the treatment and/or waiting rooms or at least encouraging their patients to bring their own blends.

Keep in mind that serotonin support with tryptophan or 5-HTP should also be considered if there is a phobia and fear that is so intense, the child won’t even go to the dentist. Katie mentions her son has OCD-like tendencies too and serotonin support helps with these symptoms as does a gluten-free diet in many children (as illustrated by this case study).

Have any of the above helped your dental anxiety? Or helped with anxiety your children have experienced going to the dentist?

GABA

Rescue Remedy and an essential oil blend

Anxiety nutritional solutions resources for dentists

More about my IMMH GABA presentation