genes

Candida: anxiety and low serotonin, testing and parasites, sugar cravings, EMFs and your genes

July 8, 2018 By Trudy Scott 9 Comments

My interview on anxiety on The Candida Summit with host Evan Brand, addresses anxiety, the tie in to low serotonin and the sugar cravings aspect. I was so excited to find a connection between serotonin and candida and share this in our interview.

with low serotonin you’ve got the mental anxiety – the worry, the ruminating thoughts, the obsessive thinking, the reprocessing, insomnia, lying awake in bed, trying to shut down the busy mind. And the two amino acids I use for this is tryptophan; that’s my first choice. And my second choice is 5-HTP. That being said, some people do better on one versus the other.

The reason I like tryptophan is 5-HTP can raise cortisol and make people who are wired/tired feel a little bit more wired/tired. So until I’ve seen cortisol results in saliva, I like to use tryptophan first.

But let me share some of this interesting research that I’ve found. And why I’m so excited about it is because as I said earlier, I will use the amino acids first before I’m specifically addressing the candida. But it seems like using tryptophan first, as well as helping with the low serotonin, it’s starting to have an impact on the candida, which I didn’t know about, until I did the research for this. So thank you for inviting me to speak. It just reinforces what I know about the amino acids – that they are pretty powerful.

There was a study done in 2003, and the title is Antifungal Properties of Serotonin Against Candida species. And they looked at various different candida strains: albicans, glabrata, tropicalis, and a few others. And they exposed these candida strains to serotonin. The study concludes: “Serotonin showed antifungal activity towards all isolates of candida.”

What they didn’t know is what the mechanism of action was. They stated: “Identifying the mode of action would be of great help in developing and research new antifungal drugs.” I don’t agree with that. I’m just excited to see that there is this connection with serotonin, which reinforces how beneficial tryptophan is.

Of course, my solution is to provide serotonin support via diet, exercise and the use of the targeted individual amino acid tryptophan or 5-HTP.

You can read more about this serotonin-candida connection in my blog post: Symptoms, nutrient malabsorption, worsening psychiatric symptoms and the serotonin connection

In our interview I also discuss how I use the amino acids and how tryptophan/5-HTP as well as GABA, DPA, tyrosine and glutamine, can actually help with so much of the sugar craving we see in candida, PLUS how I use this approach to gauge when candida is really serious.

EMFs and the dangers of 5G – and candida

Dr. Schaffner talks about EMFs and the dangers of 5G and shares how they are protecting the Sophia Institute Clinic (which she shares with Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt):

What we have done at the clinic—and again, this is an evolving art—the two things that I think are going to make the most difference in what we can do right now is, first, of course we always say avoid exposure, try to distance yourself. Distance is your friend with any technology, when we’re looking at EMF.

But we actually shielded the clinic. We have a cell phone tower within a mile of the clinic. And so, we wanted to be mindful of that exposure. We ask everybody to turn off their cell phones when they come in to the clinic. And we don’t have Wi-Fi. So everything is ethernet corded. And then, we don’t have cell phone exposure while we’re practicing.

But we do two things that I think people should be aware of. And one is we use a type of graphite paint. It’s called YSHIELD. And that actually comes from Germany. And it has properties to, essentially, try to create a Faraday cage environment and block the incoming microwave radiation. And so, that has to be grounded, of course. And you want to always work with somebody who knows what they’re doing with this technology. Because if you don’t do it right, you can actually increase your exposures or create an unhealthy environment.

And then, Dr. Klinghardt works with the woman who creates these silver-lined curtains that actually help to block the microwave radiation coming in through the windows.

There’s a really great website—LessEMF has a lot of this technology. And then, YSHIELD, you can Google, I think it’s yshield.com. And then, the silver-lined curtains, I believe, is a fabric called, Swiss Shield. And so, you can either make them yourself or hire somebody to do that.

Learn more about candida, low serotonin, low melatonin, and your glymphatic system in the second half of Dr. Schaffner’s interview.

Candida, sugar cravings and COMT and MAOA genes

Evan Brand brings up the topic of sugar and carbs in the diet with Dr. Ben Lynch in the Candida, sugar cravings and COMT and MAOA genes interview: No one is discussing the influence of the whole epigenetic piece, and how people and their decision making with foods could be influenced by their genes?

Dr. Ben Lynch shares how he has a unique angle on this fascinating topic of our genes and sugar/carb cravings:

It’s one that always ties back to what came first—the chicken or the egg, right? So what came first, the genetic propensity towards carbohydrate binging or addictive personalities for high-caloric dense foods like ice cream and cakes, doughnuts, pastries, which then leads us to candida?

And then, they go on all these candida treatments. And they beat it. And they’re all happy again. But then their genetic propensity drives them yet again for the yeast overgrowth and the food binging.

He gives an example of how some people, when they’re down and out, may be drawn to sugar and carbs to self-medicate (this is something I see with my anxious clients all the time):

They’ll hit the chocolate. They’ll hit the doughnuts, the ice cream to make them feel good. And what these do is they spike your dopamine.

You’re not really aware of it, but you just do it. And you know you shouldn’t do it. But what happens here is, is some individuals, they have genes, which eliminate their dopamine out of their body pretty quickly. This gene is called COMT. And one of its jobs is to move dopamine out. You don’t want to always have neurotransmitters in your brain. That’s not good.

So some of these folks are born with a COMT gene that actually works faster, which is really good because they can calm down really quick in stressful environments. They can perform at a high level in stressful situations like surgeons, or EMT, or firefighters, or policemen, policewomen. They strive in these high-risk, highly-attentive situations.

But when they come home, everything’s a low normal. And they need that hit of dopamine. So they might come home and binge on sugars and carbs to drive their dopamine back up. And that’s a significant one.

Dr Lynch also shares about another gene, MAOA, which deals with our serotonin:

If you have a faster MAOA gene, which moves through your serotonin, then you are craving carbohydrates, and you’re craving pastas, and breads, and all the things that candida love, and beer. These things which increase your tryptophan levels, support your MAOA, and thus your serotonin. These are two major foods that our candida love. And these are two very, very common genes in the population which predispose us to having these issues

Candida testing, parasites and intractable yeast overgrowth

Evan Brand asks this question about candida testing in the Candida, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, and Meditation interview with Dr. Dan Kalish: I’m guessing your statistics are similar to mine, 9 out of every 10 organic acids I find Candida overgrowth. Stool test, the GI map is missing a lot of Candida. Maybe you could help me understand why that’s happening.

Dr. Dan Kalish shares why candida testing can be challenging:

Because Candida can be commensal where it’s growing within the digestive tract itself, or it can be invasive where it penetrates into the tissue of the gut. And then it’s not going to be found in any of the stool tests. So stool tests can miss it easily. And in fact, the more severe it gets, the harder it is to find on a test.

That’s what happens with the yeast when it gets bad. It gets invasive. It goes up into the actual lining of the gut. So if it penetrates there, it causes leaky gut. But then it’s invasive, so it’s penetrating into the tissues. And you’re not going to see it in the stool. And that’s when it gets worse. In fact, it’s going to cause more symptoms. But then it’s almost impossible to find on the stool test.

He also shares this gem about intractable yeast overgrowth that just won’t go away:

You can have a Candida overgrowth, treat it and feel better, but have there be another underlying cause for the Candida. So there’s a lot of patients that will come to me and be like, “I had this Candida overgrowth. As long as I eat this radical and extreme and ridiculous diet, and take all these herbs, I’m fine. But every time I stop, it just comes back.”

Then, that leads the person to assume that it’s this horrific Candida overgrowth that’s never going to go away. And in those patients, there’s almost always Giardia, or Crypto [Cryptosporidium], or E. histo [Entamoeba histolytica], or some other bug that’s screwing up the ecology of the gut that’s allowing the Candida to keep coming back. So that’s just something to be on the lookout for.

If you feel like you have this intractable yeast overgrowth that just won’t go away, you should find a functional medicine doctor and do all the stool testing. Because you’re almost guaranteed there will be some other infection.

Click here to register for The Candida Summit which runs online from July 9-15, 2018!

Do share if you’ve successfully addressed candida overgrowth and how your symptoms improved and how bad your sugar cravings were.

Let us know if you’re EMF-aware and how addressing low serotonin has helped you.

If you have questions post them below in the blog comments.

Happiness is driven by biological factors like diet, the microbiome and serotonin, plus epigenetics

March 9, 2018 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

As a food mood expert and nutritionist, I believe one very overlooked way we can address the lack of happiness or joy is the biochemical aspect.

One classic root cause of depression or unhappiness is low serotonin and this low serotonin can also lead to fear, worry, anxiety, self-doubt, lack of confidence, ruminations, insomnia and imposter syndrome, all of which are classic signs of low serotonin.

A poor diet or a diet that is not right for you is a big factor in serotonin production and therefore happiness and a sense of calm.

The biological or biochemical connections to lack of happiness

This paper, Happiness & Health: The Biological Factors – Systematic Review Article, supports the biological or biochemical connections to lack of happiness (and the other signs of low serotonin), listing endogenic (or internal) as well as exogenic (or external) factors :

Happiness underlying factors are considerable from two dimensions:

endogenic factors (biological, cognitive, personality and ethical sub-factors) and

exogenic factors (behavioral, social/cultural, economical, geographical, life events and aesthetics sub-factors).

Among all endogenic [or internal] factors, biological sub-factors are the significant predictors of happiness.

The external factors are the ones we’re most familiar with i.e. things that are going on in our lives like relationships, income, where we live and life events. It’s the internal factors that we don’t discuss.

This study looked at biological factors (one of the internal factors) that underlie happiness and optimism. Five sub-groups of biological factors were found:

brain and neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin and endorphins playing a role in happiness)
endocrinology and hormones (cortisol and oxytocin playing a role in happiness)
physical health
physical attractiveness
genetic (this accounted for 35-50% of happiness)

Nutritional psychiatry and the first 4 sub-groups

The work of nutritional psychiatry, a new and growing field, shows that food and nutrients have a direct impact on the first 4 groups: brain and neurotransmitters, on endocrinology and hormones and on physical health (and thereby physical attractiveness too):

The International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research hosted their first international conference in August last year in Bethesda, MD, and I had the pleasure of attending.

The new SMILES trial was presented at the conference: the first randomized controlled diet depression study where ONE THIRD of the dietary intervention group saw improvements in their depression and anxiety symptoms by switching from processed/junk food to real food with no specific dietary restrictions.

Here I am with world-renowned nutritional psychiatry researcher, Professor Felice Jacka

I participated in the rapid fire presentation session at the conference. In my talk, Applications of the Paleo diet and Gluten-free diet for Anxiety, I shared how Paleo and grain-free diets can increase happiness and reduce anxiety.

This November 2017 review, Nutritional psychiatry: the present state of the evidence, mentions the SMILES trial and provides the latest overview of the evidence in nutritional psychiatry:

Potential biological pathways related to mental disorders include inflammation, oxidative stress, the gut microbiome, epigenetic modifications and neuroplasticity. Consistent epidemiological evidence, particularly for depression, suggests an association between measures of diet quality and mental health, across multiple populations and age groups; these do not appear to be explained by other demographic, lifestyle factors or reverse causality.

Genetics (the last sub-group), epigenetics, diet and the microbiome

It saddens me when I hear someone say: “depression runs in my family – my grandmother suffered, I suffer with depression and I don’t know what kind of life my daughter is going to have.”

Even though genetics (the last sub-group) is reported to accounted for 35-50% of happiness, we now know that “our genes are not our destiny” and we can actually switch on good genes and switch off bad genes when we change our diet and environment.

This paper, Microbiome, inflammation, epigenetic alterations, and mental diseases, sums it up perfectly, reporting that recent findings show that the onset and development of mental diseases such as autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression cannot be well described by the one-gene/one-disease approach:

Even though the involvement of many genes are likely, up regulating and activation or down regulation and silencing of these genes by the environmental factors play a crucial role in contributing to their pathogenesis. Much of this interplay may be moderated by epigenetic changes.

Environmental factors such as diet, gut microbiota, and infections have significant role in these epigenetic modifications.

The authors conclude that the potential interactions of diet, gastrointestinal microbiome, and inflammation can all contribute to epigenetic alterations in psychiatric disorders.

If the term epigenetic is new to you, here is a helpful explanation:

The word “epigenetic” literally means “in addition to changes in genetic sequence.” The term has evolved to include any process that alters gene activity without changing the DNA sequence, and leads to modifications that can be transmitted to daughter cells.

What this means is that you can change your destiny in a positive way – by changing your diet – even if you have bad genes passed on from your grandmother and mother or other family members.

And don’t forget the environmental factors (as stated in the above paper) that can change your genes in a negative way: heavy metals, pesticides, diesel exhaust, tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (environmental pollutants from coal, oil, petrol, and wood), radioactivity, viruses and bacteria.

The take-aways are to eat quality real whole food, avoid sugar, caffeine and gluten, address the microbiome and nutritional deficiencies, avoid toxins/chemicals, detox if needed, address infections and the adrenals. This is exactly what my book The Antianxiety Food Solution covers so if you don’t yet have a copy, grab one from your nearest bookstore or from Amazon here (my affiliate link).

For a deeper dive into the epigenetics aspect and detoxification, I recommend Dr. Ben Lynch’s new book called Dirty Genes (my Amazon link).

Are you ready to find the biological root causes of your lack of happiness and anxiety?

Or are you already there and have seen the benefits already?

Triggers and tests from Dr. Tom O’Bryan on Interpreting Your Genetics Summit

July 17, 2017 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

I’m really excited about the upcoming Interpreting Your Genetics Summit which runs August 21-28, 2017.

Summit host, James Maskell of Evolution of Medicine, has gathered world-renowned leaders from genetics, genomics and functional medicine. These pioneering experts are on the front lines interpreting data to create improved health in patients around the globe. Learn how to translate your health data to better understand:

Your predisposition for diseases and how to minimize manifestation.
Genetic health traits your children are likely to inherit.
Whether your medications and supplements are right for you.
How to unlock previously unsolved health challenges.
And more!

Tom O’Bryan, author of The Autoimmune Fix and creator of the docuseries Betrayal: The Autoimmune Secret They’re Not Telling You sets the stage for the summit in his brilliant interview by explaining that simply because you have a genetic defect or polymorphism doesn’t mean you’re going to get that disease:

It means that you’re vulnerable to a particular disease. “Mrs. Patient, if you pull at a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link. Always. It’s going to be at one end, the middle, the other end. It’s your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys. Wherever your genetic weak link is. And where’s your weak link? Whatever your genes are. Whatever the deck of cards you’ve been dealt in life, that’s the weak link in your chain.”

So when you have that basic understanding, the first thing that comes up is stop pulling on the chain so much, right. And then, the link won’t break. And how do you stop pulling on the chain? Reduce the inflammation, reduce the activation of your immune system, which is what turns on the genes.

James summarizes this concept perfectly:

So what I hear you saying is that whatever your genetic test comes back, you want to be minimizing the pull on the chain. And you want to be minimizing and repairing the holes in your gut to make sure that you don’t end up with a broken-chain situation, which would be an autoimmune disease, which could manifest anywhere depending on your genetic makeup.

Tom O’Bryan discusses some common environmental triggers that will “pull on the chain” in great detail, and how they lead to genes being turned on and hence causing disease: food quality, wheat, dairy sugar, glyphosate, plastic and air quality. He also covers the APOE4 genes that increase your risk for Alzheimer’s disease and shares this scary fact about kids in Mexico City:

what they have found is that every child that they checked in Mexico City has evidence of early Alzheimer’s. Every child! Let me say that again. Every child that they check has evidence of early Alzheimer’s.

Why? Because the air pollution is so bad. And you breathe that stuff in. It goes into your lungs. And just like leaky gut, you get leaky lungs. And this particulate matter goes right through the lungs, into the bloodstream, straight up to the brain, activating your immune system to fight this stuff. Tears the lining of the blood-brain barrier.

And he shares one of his favorite tests for determining if damage is being done to the brain:

8-hydroxy-2′- Deoxyguanosine… a measure of the DNA residue from damaged brain cells or damaged nerve cells, mostly in the brain. So you just do a simple urine test. And if your 8-hydroxy is up, you’re killing off brain cells. And that makes you say, “Well, why?” [this is the DNA Oxidative Damage Assay from Doctor’s Data]

And this one to look at antibodies to the blood-brain barrier:

You have a simple type of lining on your brain that stops molecules from getting in the brain that shouldn’t be here. So you want to look for antibodies… to S100B. There’s a panel of antibodies that you could look for to see, “Is my brain on fire right now,” because if you have elevated antibodies, your brain is on fire. You’re killing off brain cells.

This interview sets the stage for the rest of the summit! I can’t wait to learn from these amazing speakers on this very relevant and cutting-edge topic.

I hope you can join us on Interpreting Your Genetics Summit, August 21-28, 2017. You can register here

Once you register you’ll have access to this interview and 2 others (Epigenetic Mastery for Everyone from Andrea Nakayama, CNC, CNE and The Current State of Genetics from Jeffrey Bland, PhD) right away.

Hope to “see you” on the summit!