John Dempster

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety and heavy metals: chelation of mercury and lead

June 12, 2016 By Trudy Scott 45 Comments

John Dempster, ND, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety and heavy metals: chelation of mercury and lead

The connection between toxic metals (mercury and lead) and anxiety
How to effectively measure toxic metals with a provoked urine challenge
The do’s and don’ts of chelation and watching for mineral depletion
A bipolar/anxiety case study

Here are some gems from our interview:

So I kind of want to shed some light on some of these areas and how it can affect anxiety directly. One of the big areas is mercury itself is a neurotoxin. So how does that impact our biochemistry and our physiology? Well what it’s going to do it’s going to start to disrupt on an endocrine and a neurotransmitter level some of our pathways. And one of the big pathways is actually the glutamate connection and the glutamate pathway. And glutamate is something that’s known as an excitatory neurotransmitter and this is something that if we have too much of it or it’s not being reuptake properly in our synapses we start to exhibit different types of symptoms of anxiety. And of course that’s just one possible trigger for anxiety.

….to speak of mercury specifically amalgams are a source. Silver amalgam fillings are a source of metal, metal mercury. But we are also seeing that there are trace amounts in certain vaccinations. There are trace amounts in certain food groups such as fish. And this may not come as a surprise to many of you listeners but it is still a problem and we’re still seeing people – high amounts of mercury come into my clinic pretty much every day that are continuing to be exposed to these levels. And there are a number of other different possible source that are on a smaller scale. We might actually be breathing it in which is scary but depending on where you live in the world we may be exposed to some industrial sources of mercury as well. But the biggest ones that we can take charge of immediately are what’s in our mouth, what’s in our food and what goes in or on our body.

Blood lead levels and major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder in U.S. young adults

In this sample of young adults with low levels of lead exposure, higher blood lead was associated with increased odds of major depression and panic disorder. Exposure to lead at levels generally considered safe could result in adverse mental health outcomes.

Dr. Dempster describes the chelator DMSA as a magnet:

DMSA is a very safe but effective way of dragging metals out of the body. And what we want to do is when we provoke that we actually drag this compound through our tissues. Not just our bloodstream. It goes through – it kind of rinses through our tissues and acts as a magnet and it draws these metals out at the other end that we can collect.

Here are some studies on heavy metals and chelation with DMSA:

Here is information on the Mental Wellness Summit that Dr. Dempster and Ross McKenzie co-hosted

And Ross McKenzie’s incredible movie Bipolarized

Here is the Wellness Without Limits ebook

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit: wise words on MS, oxytocin, red meat, marijuana, mercury

June 10, 2016 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

We’re in the midst of season 4 of The Anxiety Summit www.theanxietysummit.com and here are wise words of wisdom from some of our amazing speakers on MS, oxytocin, red meat, marijuana, mercury and more.

If you have joined the summit and are loving it, this serves as a nice recap, a reminder if you missed a talk and inspiration to stay tuned in for some of the later interviews. And making sure you know that each speaker has a blog with snippets and many additional resources.

And if you’ve recently joined my community for the summit a VERY big welcome!

If you have not yet signed up I hope these wise words inspire you to join us!

Here are some snippets from some of the interviews.

Multiple sclerosis and anxiety: The Wahls Protocol

Dr. Terry Wahls shares how her MS was a gift:

And it all needs to happen this way Trudy. I had to get that disabled. I had to be on the verge of utter catastrophe to begin to feel the effects of cognitive decline to do all this work and then feel the effects of all this healing that happens when you provide a healthy habitat for the human ecosystem and all this repair happens. If this hadn’t of have happened I’d still be a conventional medicine doc thinking the latest drugs out of the New England Journal of Medicine were the way to go as opposed to seeing the gospel of food and sleep and movement and stress reduction.

The Link Between Low Cholesterol and Low Oxytocin

The Pitocin/synthetic discussion oxytocin with Dr. Kurt Woeller was fascinating:

And there’s a theory … that the Pitocin, which is synthetic oxytocin, which is given to women who are not naturally going into labor, it’s meant to action speed labor up. Pitocin being synthetic oxytocin may short circuit in some susceptible kids the natural production of oxytocin, therefore slowing down or turning off those areas in the brain that are normally being developed at that time, with regards to socialization.

Gluten and anxiety: the testing conundrum solution

Dr. Tom O’Bryan’s explanation of the limited gluten sensitivity testing that most people have done:

what happens when people have one of those peptides that the immune system is fighting that’s not the 33 [alpha-gliadin] and you do a blood test for gluten sensitivity. If your doctor orders the common blood test for gluten sensitivity and it looks for alpha-gliadin and it comes back negative and your doctors says you’re fine eating wheat. See, here’s the blood test. Well you can get a false negative meaning it says there’s no problem when there really is because your body’s fighting other peptides of wheat.

Nutrients that Fuel Brain Power and Reduce Anxiety

Dr. Drew Ramsey talks about zinc and animal protein:

Zinc is a mineral and minerals tend to be more absorbable in animal forms. I think a lot of people are very confused about meat and seafood and often intimidated and scared. And then we’ve had this message to go plant based and even vegan which is not a diet that is healthy for the brain.

Dr. Hyla Cass, integrative psychiatrist covers marijuana and anxiety later in the summit:

very often people who have been smoking marijuana for a while – when they go off it they go through serious withdrawal – anxiety, insomnia, feeling really very bad. Very much like we see in movies – we understand what it’s like getting off heroin when people go through withdrawal. Very similar, it really looks similar in appearance. Not everyone does that but common enough.

Dr. John Dempster, co-host of the Mental Wellness Summit discusses mercury as a neurotoxin in his interview later in the summit

So I kind of want to shed some light on some of these areas and how it can affect anxiety directly. One of the big areas is mercury itself is a neurotoxin. So how does that impact our biochemistry and our physiology? Well what it’s going to do it’s going to start to disrupt on an endocrine and a neurotransmitter level some of our pathways. And one of the big pathways is actually the glutamate connection and the glutamate pathway. And glutamate is something that’s known as an excitatory neurotransmitter and this is something that if we have too much of it or it’s not being reuptake properly in our synapses we start to exhibit different types of symptoms of anxiety. And of course that’s just one possible trigger for anxiety.

You can see a list of all the speakers and topics here on the master speaker blog.

You can sign up here: season 4 of The Anxiety Summit www.theanxietysummit.com

If you missed any, not to worry, we’ve decided to do an encore day with ALL the speakers. We don’t want you feeling stressed or anxious about missing out – not on a summit on anxiety!

Lithium, bipolar and heavy metal detox on the Mental Wellness Summit

August 9, 2015 By Trudy Scott 17 Comments

mental-wellness-summit-3

Ross McKenzie, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized : Journey Beyond Meds, is interviewed by Dr. John Dempster on The Mental Wellness Summit. Here are a few snippets from the compelling interview “Journey Beyond Meds”:

I was playing soccer. Our soccer team in college, we were number one in the country. And then 6 months later, I’m at this seminar. I’m having this huge euphoric bliss. And then I’m in a straightjacket in a white-padded room. I’m like okay, what on Earth just happened to my life?
I’m just watching my life pass me by. And the expression I think of how it felt for so many years is I felt like the walking dead without the actual benefits of being dead. It was a nightmare. It was like being trapped in my body. And it was brutal.
So I had this big wake up call. One of the things with lithium is that you have to get your kidneys tested. It’s very hard on your organs. And you have to get blood work done just to make sure that you’re not in toxic levels. My first year of taking it, I actually almost died of lithium toxicity. It was so bad. I actually felt my body shutting down from that, which was terrifying.

Ross also talks about detoxing from prescription lithium and how he was then able to start filming his story and making the movie Bipolarized; and how there is this grassroots awakening happening right now [in integrative mental health]. His message is very clear and inspiring:

become your own best doctor. Become an informed consumer, do your research
we can actually address root cause symptoms, heal these symptoms. These diseases are not for life.
So there’s a place for all of it… an integrated mental health holistic model. And to have that be the norm on the planet. What an incredible thing that would be

Ross also says:

I know I can speak from experience now, too, having gone through the [heavy metal] chelation process. There are studies now saying it’s affecting the central nervous system. It can cause anxiety. It can actually lead to psychosis.

During the summit, Ross McKenzie also interviews Dr. John Dempster, who is his doctor and helped him address his high levels of heavy metals – both mercury and lead. Here are some snippets from this interview: “Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine”:

mental-wellness-summit-4

Heavy metals are a neurotoxin. And they’re an endocrine disruptor. And in English, that means that they are going to break a lot of the chemicals, such as your neurotransmitters, which make you feel great. They make you sad. They make you sleep. They make you feel energized. They make you focused. This is your dopamine, your serotonin, your GABAs.
there’s a difference between what we call a toxic metal burden, which means much in your body’s tissues, versus a heavy metal toxicity, which is a bit more in the acute state of where it circulating your blood.
And if we aren’t being careful and we’re mobilizing these toxic agents and they get stuck in these organs, we’re going to have some kidney function issues that can affect all sorts of other aspects of our health. So this is where it does have to be done with somebody who is been trained properly in the proper detoxification programs and processes.

Dr. Dempster goes on to talk about functional testing, food, and the importance of healing the gut, sleep, nature and much more – for anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and ADHD.

On The Mental Wellness Summit you will also hear both these interviews:

Ross McKenzie Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit, Filmmaker of Bipolarized: Journey Beyond Meds
John Dempster, ND, Co-founder of Mental Wellness Summit: Heavy Metal Detoxification and Functional Medicine

And you can listen to all the other amazing interviews that address functional and integrative approaches to root cause resolution of anxiety and depression.

Please leave your comments, questions and feedback below.