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Nicole Beurkens

ADHD and psychiatric meds in children/teens on the rise, and benzodiazepine use increases mortality in adults (including suicide)

October 7, 2020 By Trudy Scott Leave a Comment

meds teens children

Registration for my Anxiety Summit 6: Toxins/Meds/Infections is now open and in the spirit of continuing to share valuable snippets leading up to the summit, here goes for today.

(If you’ve already registered I do hope you find these snippets of value and they help you figure out more about which interviews to tune into first. If you’re only hearing about the summit for the first time, you can register here)

Today I want to highlight some aspects from two of the interviews on psychiatric medications.

In the interview Psychiatric Medications in Children and Teens with Dr. Nicole Beurkens, we discuss these results from a 2019 paper:

  • Our study indicates that the rate of presentation to child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinics is increasing, and rates of diagnosis and initiation of psychiatry drugs are high among the presented children.
  • The prevalence of ADHD shows an increase in males and females in our country, and psychiatric polypharmacy has reached significant rates.

Polypharmacy means concurrent use of multiple medications by a patient. The fact that psychiatric polypharmacy is increasing in children and adolescents is most concerning. There are safer solutions that address the root causes of ADHD, anxiety and depression.

Here is what we cover in this interview:

  • Increasing ADHD, anti-anxiety, SSRI and antipsychotic meds and discontinuation syndrome
  • Disparities in BIPOC communities;
  • Psychiatric side effects of acne, constipation and asthma medications
  • Nutritional psychiatry/targeted nutrients/gut, sleep, movement, screen time and play

nicole beurkens interview

In the interview SSRIs, Benzodiazepines, Alcohol and Amino acids with Dr. Hyla Cass, she shares how benzodiazepines (a class of antianxiety medications that include Xanax, Ativan, Valium and others) are:

  • strongly associated with all cause mortality, including suicide (even when used for short durations of treatment
  • the cause of many accidents even if taken the previous day

Here is what we cover in this interview:

  • SSRI and benzodiazepine side-effects
  • Discontinuation syndrome, pre-taper protocols and tapering
  • The harmful effects of alcohol and the impacts on sleep
  • The dangers of combining alcohol with benzodiazepines, and the risks of antabuse (commonly used in alcohol addiction treatment plans)
  • GABA, tryptophan, 5-HTP, glutamine, DPA, CBD and key nutrient co-factors for medication taper, alcohol addiction, carb cravings and anxiety

hyla cass interview

Dr. Nicole Beurkens’ interview is focused on children and adolescents, and Dr. Hyla Cass’ interview is focused on adults but both are invaluable resources if you want to learn more about psychiatric medications, discontinuation syndrome, tapering and addressing the root-causes with nutritional other non-medication solutions.

Other related medication interviews of interest would be:

  • GABA and Tryptophan vs Meds for Hormone Balance – one of my 3 interviews (I also cover the birth control pill and more about using the amino acids)
  • Benzodiazepines: Short-Term Benefits, Long-Term Harms – Catherine M. Pittman, PhD, HSPP
  • 5-HTP: Anxiety, Depression, Insomnia and Liver Protection – Michael Murray, ND (he shares studies comparing 5-HTP to SSRIs)
  • Neuropsychiatric Toxicity from Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics – Lisa Bloomquist
  • Your Brain on Food: Anxiety, OCD and PTSD – Uma Naidoo, MD, PCP (she also shares studies comparing psychiatric meds to NAC and inositol)

In case you missed the first few emails about the summit … as you know, anxiety can be related to your daily life experiences BUT it can also be triggered by:

  • foods you eat and what you drink (like wheat, oxalates, alcohol and more)
  • environmental toxins (like lead, plastics, fragrances, insecticides, fluoride and more)
  • many types of medications (like the benzos/SSRIs, birth control pill, acne medication, fluoroquinolone antibiotics and more) and/or
  • chronic infections (like Lyme disease, PANDAS, parasites, candida and more).

Once you identify the root causes and understand anxiety’s mechanisms you can support the liver/gallbladder, detox, address infections, implement targeted and supportive solutions, and get relief!

This is my 6th Anxiety Summit, featuring all new topics and the latest research related to anxiety and toxins, medications and infections.

anxiety summit 6

Over the course of the next 6 weeks you’ll be seeing frequent emails from me with snippets and highlights from various interviews – like this one. I do hope you continue to enjoy them and get excited about the summit! Please do share if you know someone who has anxiety!

You’ve heard me say the Anxiety Summit has been called “a bouquet of hope!”  My wish for you is that this summit is your bouquet of hope!

I hope you’ll join me and these incredible speakers, be enlightened and find YOUR solutions!

Here’s to no more anxiety and you feeling on top of the world again!

Register here

 

If you’re already familiar with some of this information and practice some of this already please share how it’s helped 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 to this interview. Please do come back and comment about some of the highlights of this interview and what changes you plan to make.

Even if you already receive my newsletters and signed up some time ago to be notified about the upcoming Anxiety Summit 6, you will still need to register at the new link here, because Health Talks Online is doing the production and backend work for me.

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 6th Anxiety Summit and it is all new content!

The content is research-based and practical, and 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, you will still learn so much so just take in what you can and know you’ll get all this eventually.

Filed Under: Anxiety Summit 6 Tagged With: ADHD, amino acids, anxiety, benzodiazepine, cbd, children, depression, GABA, Hyla Cass, medications, mortality, Nicole Beurkens, psychiatric meds, SSRI, suicide, teens, The Anxiety Summit 6, tryptophan

Low zinc and low GABA contributing to anxiety in children and women

October 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 18 Comments

low-zinc-gaba-video

Dr. Nicole Beurkens and I sit down together at the end of the recent Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference to talk about anxiety and the impact of both low zinc and low GABA. Nicole shares her perspectives on working with children and I share what I see with the adult women I work with. We don’t specifically talk about older adults or men but it’s applicable to everyone.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens PhD, a special educator, clinical psychologist and nutritionist, is author of the new book Life Will Get Better: Simple Solutions for Parents of Children with Attention, Anxiety, Mood and Behavior Challenges

In case you’re new to my community, this is my book: The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings

Here are some of the highlights from our conversation about zinc:

  • Zinc is a very common deficiency and can be a contributing factor in both anxiety and ADHD
  • Zinc is depleted by sugar consumption, stress and exercise
  • Zinc sulfate used as a zinc challenge is one way to determine your zinc status
  • Nicole’s response to the zinc challenge: fuzzy, strong yukky taste – which means good zinc levels
  • Most people coming to the booth had very little reaction to the zinc challenge – which means low zinc levels
  • Level 1, 2, 3 and 4 are used to figure out your zinc status (you can read about the zinc taste test here)
  • My response to the zinc challenge: metallic, gross, horrible and I got goosebumps – – which means good zinc levels
  • Nicole shares that most of kids and young adults at her clinic have level 1 or level 2 zinc status, and it’s an easy test to do with kids
  • Many people at the conference were on zinc and were surprised they were not tasting the zinc sulfate. Other than sugar consumption, stress and exercise, low HCl (stomach acid) can affect your absorption. I also found that many of these folks were on a gluten-free or Paleo or GAPs diet and eating a lot of nuts or using nut flours. Nuts are high in copper and this can counteract the zinc.
  • We talk about the importance of good quality zinc supplements and finding a zinc product and multi that is copper-free. Here are the products I recommend.

Then we talk about GABA Calm, a calming amino acid that we both love! Here are some of the highlights from this section:

  • It’s a lozenge/sublingual, is easy to take and helps in situations where the anxiety can quickly escalate into panic attacks. Nicole likes the peppermint flavor and finds many of the children and young adults she works with prefer the orange flavor. Personally I also prefer the orange flavor.
  • For adults, if you use wine at the end of the day to de-stress, you may be low in GABA and self-medicating, and using something like GABA-Calm often helps.
  • Moms will take their GABA Calm with them and use as needed and give to their kids if needed too.  
  • I share how effective it is for Lyme anxiety and how it can be used instead of benzodiazepines (I interviewed Trish about this on the recent Anxiety Summit)
  • GABA Calm can help when you’re on a benzodiazepine and even very severe anxiety or depression can be alleviated with diet and nutrients.
  • Nicole shares how common benzodiazepine prescriptions are in teens and young adults; and the issues with dependence and wanting to quit but not being able to. It can sometimes take years to reduce the medications.
  • I share about the first World Benzo Awareness Day on July 11 – so many people are in trouble and are not cautioned.

We were both so encouraged being at this conference and seeing so many physicians, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychiatric nurse practitioners and others practitioners who are really interested in learning more about these approaches. They are seeing the same issues we see with some of the medications (and not getting to the root cause of anxiety) and they are excited to expand their knowledge base. It’s just so exciting to see the pendulum swinging!

We both really appreciate the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference. If you’re a practitioner and haven’t attended it’s a must-attend event. If you were there you know what I mean. It was also super to meet so many of you after my talk and at my booth. If you’re not a practitioner do tell your doctor about it. Save the date for 2017: September 28 – October 1 in Orange County, California.

We did this as a live video feed on Facebook hence the references to posting questions and Facebook. It was also the end of the event and the people next to us were packing boxes and using a lot of tape so apologies for the weird noises.  

Feel free to share your results with zinc and GABA Calm and any questions you may have.

Filed Under: GABA Tagged With: anxiety, benzodiazepines, children, GABA, GABA Calm, Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference, Nicole Beurkens, Trudy Scott, women, zinc

The Anxiety Summit: Nutrition as a Foundation for Other Therapies

June 18, 2014 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

nicole b

This is day 10 of the Anxiety Summit. Dr. Nicole Beurkens, PhD, Licensed Psychologist, Certified Brain Injury Specialist, Certified LENS Practitioner, is interviewed by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Nutrition as a Foundation for Other Therapies

  • Why good nutrition status is important for people with anxiety and other mental health issues
  • What kinds of nutrition changes are encouraged
  • Challenges with helping parents and families make nutrition changes

Here are some great gems from my interview with Nicole:

Many parents are not even aware that food can affect their kids”

We should keep our minds open to the idea that what you eat can impact how your brain works”.

Here is a recent article from the Horizons website: The Nutrition-Anxiety Link in Children with Learning, Mood, and Behavior Challenges

Get your free gift from Dr Nicole Beurkens:  Horizons Healthy Brain Diet (RED/YELLOW/GREEN foods)

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

UPDATE: the summit concluded on Tues 6/24 – season 2 of The Anxiety Summit will be in November 2014. If you’d like to be on the notification list just sign up 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 + interview highlights and listen when it suits you

Filed Under: Antianxiety, Food and mood, General Health, The Anxiety Summit Tagged With: Antianxiety Food Solution, anxiety, Nicole Beurkens, nutrition, the anxiety summit, therapies, Trudy Scott

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