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

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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!

The Evolution of Psychiatry: integrative psychiatry, anxiety and the thyroid

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James Maskell is the founder of The Functional Forum and this month the theme was The Evolution of Psychiatry. It was such a great episode so I’m sharing it with you here today.

The first presentation was by Janet Settle, MD and Will Van Derveer, MD. They took the stage and presented on the fundamentals of integrative psychiatry, covering root cause-based psychiatry. Together with Scott Shannon, MD, they are also now offering their “Psychiatry Masterclass” training program to other doctors.

This presentation included:

  • The foundations of truly effective, root-cause focused mental health system
  • Typical unresolved physiological dysfunctions that manifest as mental illness
  • Concrete steps for creating the mental health centers of the future

Here is a sampling of what they covered. Isn’t it wonderful to see a slide titled “Integrative Psychiatry Model” and with physiologic root causes listed?

The section on child abuse, trauma and psychospiritual root causes was enlightening:

They cover MDMA- and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and I look forward to learning more from them about these approaches. However, until I learn more I’m wary of these approaches because of the side-effects. Based on the work I do with targeted individual amino acids I would use them before even considering MDMA or ketamine.

You can watch the entire video presentation here:

 

Next up was Thyroid Pharmacist, Dr. Izabella Wentz, returning to the Functional Forum stage for her first keynote. Dr. Izabella is a dear friend and one of my favorite thyroid experts and she covered the connections between thyroid health and depression and anxiety, looking at proven protocols to address the underlying causes.   Her presentation is titled “The Misdiagnosis Machine: How Thyroid Problems Mimic the Symptoms of Mental Illness.”

Dr. Izabella shares the symptoms of the autoimmune attack on the thyroid gland. As well as fatigue, weight gain, gut issues and apathy, you can experience mood symptoms such as anxiety, OCD-like symptoms and mood swings.

You can watch the entire video presentation here (and listen for a mention of my name and how commonly I see anxiety with clients with thyroid symptoms):

 

If you enjoyed Dr. Izabella’s presentation you don’t want to miss her upcoming documentary called The Thyroid Secret. I’m thrilled to have been invited to contribute on my expertise on anxiety and how this ties back to thyroid health. You can read more about it and find a few snippets from my interview here.

 

Dr. Izabella also has a new book that will be released next month: Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back. I have a review copy and it’s brilliant! I’ll be sharing more via a book review and interview with Dr. Izabella, taking a deep dive into infections and Hashimoto’s, so stay tuned for that.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these two presentations! For me, hearing presentations like these gives me so much optimism for the future of mental health!

I’d love to hear what has inspired you?

If you’re a practitioner and would like to attend a live Functional Forum meeting in the future or tune in online, you can register here to be notified. James and his team also offer excellent practice resources for functional medicine practitioners. We appreciate him for what he is doing for functional medicine via the Functional Forum!

 

 

The Evolution of Medicine – Book Giveaway TODAY!

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Through the Functional Forum, founder James Maskell, has consistently built communities of functional practitioners, all over the world, and made it much easier for doctors and other health practitioners to move into Functional Medicine.  

I am sharing this with you because I truly feel that the world of nutrition and functional medicine is taking a huge step forward.

Community is so important and I’m sure you remember James from our wonderful interview about community on the last Anxiety Summit.

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The two elephants in the room for Functional Medicine are that

  • there aren’t enough doctors and other health practitioners who practice it AND
  • it can be expensive for patients seeking integrative care

I see this all the time and I’ve heard your concerns about this during the Anxiety Summits. The great thing is that James is on a mission to solve both of these problems!

If you are a doctor or a health coach or any type of health professional – or just someone passionate about how functional medicine will reach the masses – James is making his digital book available at NO cost (just for the next few days).

Click here to download a digital version of the book: “The Evolution of Medicine: Join the Movement to Solve Chronic Disease and Fall Back in Love with Medicine.”  

And stay tuned for more information about the upcoming webinars and training he’ll be offering.

If you’re not a health professional, and you are just trying to keep you and your loved ones healthy, James has put together six of his favorite interviews from his recent two summits that talk about the key topics within the Evolution of Medicine:

Click here for this gift of 6 audio interviews with experts that include Dr. David Perlmutter, Dr. Tom O’Bryan, Dr. Kelly Brogan, Donna Gates and Dr. Izabella Wentz and others.

You’re welcome to grab a copy of the digital book for yourself and feel free to share with your health practitioner/s

Here is a wonderful endorsement of James’ book by Dr. Mark Hyman:

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A big congratulations to James on a wonderful book!

The face of nutrition and functional medicine is changing and it’s so exciting for us all to be part of it!

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety and the Importance of Community

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James Maskell, creator of Functional Forum,  was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety and the Importance of Community

  • The definition of community and examples
  • The Functional Forum and a medication talk by Dr. Hyla Cass
  • The effect of social support on HPA axis function during pregnancy.
  • Social support for parents of autistic children
  • An interview with Kelly Brogan: the role of community in mental health
  • Community and social anxiety/introversion

Here are some gems from our interview:

…the solution to chronic disease is integrative or functional medicine because it’s preventive, it’s proactive, it’s participatory on behalf of the patient.  And so our goal and our vision is big Trudy.  The first thing has been to increase the supply of these functional medicine doctors because you need them and they can’t be replaced by technology.  The human element is a really big part.  But the first step is to get enough of those doctors and then the next step is to galvanize those practitioners into a really efficient system that takes the best use of technology.  It takes the best use of human interaction and uses practitioners in the most efficient way to be able to keep and get people well as effectively as possible.

What we need is people to work together.  We need collaboration, not competition.  We need people to really see the gifts of everyone.  And really we need it to be a meritocracy [definition: a social system in which people’s success in life depends primarily on their talents, abilities, and effort]. 

Here is the big take-away from James – when it comes to community:

…the real results that we see that are most powerful Trudy is where people have been able to pair getting together into a community with other healthy behaviors.  So getting a group of people together to go on a run or to go on a walk together.  You get the power of the community plus you get the power of everyone getting the exercise together

Just going back to your idea of supporting each other, doing something together with a common goal.  Going back to the Benzo Buddies story.  Imagine if that group had local groups getting together.  So they’ve got this online forum supporting each other but if they got together and cooked a meal together and also meditated together and then supported each other getting off the benzodiazepine.  So that would be what you’re talking about the getting together and also supporting each other online.

Here are some of the studies we discussed in the interview:

The aim of this study, Effect of social support on HPA axis function during pregnancy,  was to assess whether individual differences in social support alter psychological distress and cortisol during pregnancy. There were 82 pregnant women in the study. Psychological distress and cortisol were assessed in all three trimesters. It was found that:

Pregnant women receiving inadequate social support secrete higher levels of cortisol in response to psychological distress as compared with women receiving effective social support. Social support during pregnancy may be beneficial because it decreases biological sensitivity to psychological distress, potentially shielding the fetus from the harmful effects of stress-related increases in cortisol.

New research also shows that for parents of autistic children, more social support means better health, protection against stress-induced immune problems and reduced inflammation

Dr. Hyla Cass, MD, integrative psychiatrist shares how to safely get of SSRIs and antianxiety medications and how to maintain good mental health once you are off them. She is addressing physicians but the information is valuable for anyone.  This was filmed at the Functional Neuropsychiatry meeting of the Functional Forum in January 2016.

Dr Kelly Brogan, integrative psychiatrist, another past speaker on the Anxiety Summit and author of the brilliant new book “A Mind of Your Own” discusses the role community can play in mental health.

I tied community and social anxiety/introversion together with the discussion about pyroluria.

Here is the link to the next Functional Forum , a wonderful resource for integrative practitioners in the world of functional medicine (doctors, therapists, nutritionists etc).

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.

Evolution of Medicine – Heathcare from Scratch

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Today, our healthcare system works well when you have an emergency, but to treat chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, anxiety and depression we need to reinvent healthcare to help you live a longer, happier, calmer, stress-free and healthier life. The Evolution of Medicine Summit can help you avoid chronic diseases, keep your family healthy and learn about healthcare that actually works!

Plus, the summit will introduce the very first affordable, ACA-compliant alternative to health insurance, Liberty Direct!

I know the host, James Maskell and love that he is tackling this topic and that they are introducing this new health insurance! Exciting!

30+ great speakers will discuss:

  • Our current health system and its limitations (plus, alternatives you can access!)
  • How to take advantage of health technology
  • A vision for an empowered, proactive and participatory healthcare system
  • Preventing chronic disease and taking control of your health today

It will take all of us, patients and practitioners, to create a medical system that truly combats chronic disease. I invite you to join me in learning at The Evolution of Medicine Summit!

I’m not a speaker on this one – just interested in learning and sharing this information with you!

Here are a few snippets from three of the interviews:

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Eric Zielinski, DC, MPH (C)

2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics every year. And 23,000 people die as a direct result. We’re dealing with an epidemic here, unbelievable epidemic where these super bugs, we’re calling them, are just becoming resistant to every medical approach. As far as we could tell, there is no resistance to essential oils, because that is the natural way that God created the planet which has a natural resistance. Once man gets involved, we see things becoming tainted.

When it comes to rebuilding healthcare from scratch, it has to start with you. It has to start with me. It has to start with every mom and dad to take accountability for their own health. Stop giving their accountability to doctors in the medical system and saying, “I’m really responsible for my own healthcare.” That means do your own research. That means go to trusted websites. And that means you go to seminars as they’re available to you. Get plugged in. There’s a lot of good networks locally. There’s networks globally through the internet. There are a lot of tools. You just need to find them.

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Suzanne Somers – What is making you TOX-SICK

Remove all the chemical elements that you can whether it’d be what you put on your skin, what you put on your hair, what you put on your face, what you put on your lips, what you clean your house with, and what you put in your stomach really matters in today’s world, because it’s not the same world of our parents or grandparents. We’re under the greatest environmental assault in the history of humanity.

Doctors who have stepped out of the safety of the standard of care box should be called heroic because here is an example where in almost all cases, it’s not about making money. It’s about doing the right thing.

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Marc David, MA – The Psychology of Eating

Good nutrition is important. And oftentimes it’s only half the story of nutrition, meaning what we eat oftentimes is only half the story of good nutrition. And the other half is who we are as eaters, meaning what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling, what we’re believing, our level of stress or relaxation, our level of pleasure, how much awareness we’re getting from a meal, the story that we’re living out in life, the timing of our meals. All of these are dramatically impacting our nutritional metabolism.

Stress will powerfully deregulate appetite. Many people think that they can’t control or manage their appetite because they’re willpower weaklings. I want to say 8 out of 10 times it has to do with stress. It has to do with anxiety and fear, which will deregulate appetite from a number of mechanisms.

You can register here https://ji177.isrefer.com/go/summitreg/trudyscottcn/