Peter Bongiorno

We’re getting ready for the Anxiety Summit! It starts next week June 6^th and runs through June 16^th and I can’t wait to share all the amazing speakers and resources with you.

If you’ve already signed up for the summit these top six reasons will inspire you even further. If you haven’t yet signed up I hope to motivate you to join us and learn nutritional tools to overcome anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, OCD and even insomnia and stress eating.

(1) More and more children and adolescents have anxiety

Dr. Zendi Moldenhauer, integrative psychiatric NP, is one of the wonderful summit speakers. Her topic is Anxiety in children, adolescents and young adults: an integrative psychiatric approach, and she shares this:

Anxiety in children and adolescents is on the rise globally. The number of teens ages 13-18 who have been officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder is only 8%, however our real-life experience shows it to be closer to 1 in 4 or 1 in 5.

Dr Zendi shares that many anxious children and adolescents actually have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and that by addressing gut health we can see anxiety symptoms disappear. The adrenals can be supported with theanine, an amino acid that promotes alert relaxation, and low GABA levels can be boosted with a calming amino acid such as GABA-Calm.

(2) American Psychiatric Association Lobbies FDA to Electroshock Children

This is the title of a recent article published on the CCHRINT website and here is what they are saying:

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is aggressively lobbying the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow it broader use of Electroshock (ECT) on patients, including children.

While the APA looks to seizure-inducing, brain-disabling, electricity as a form of ‘treatment,’ lobbying the FDA to make ECT available for children, no one in medicine, let alone psychiatry, has a clue how ECT machines ‘work’ or how passing large amounts of electricity into a child’s brain ‘treats’ the subjective mental disorder.

It’s unfathomable to me that with what we now know about nutritional psychiatry (see more on this below) that we could be considering something as awful as this.

(3) We can control the size of our hippocampus by what we eat

Dr. Drew Ramsey, M.D., psychiatrist, farmer and author of the new book Eat Complete, another wonderful summit speaker, covers Nutrients that Fuel Brain Power and Reduce Anxiety.

I love what Dr. Drew Ramsey says in our interview: “I eat for a bigger hippocampus.” The hippocampus is an area of your brain involved in emotional regulation and learning. Don’t you want a bigger hippocampus?

We talked about this in the context of the research published by Dr. Felice Jacka and her team: Western diet is associated with a smaller hippocampus: a longitudinal investigation. Here is the conclusion of the study:

Lower intakes of nutrient-dense foods and higher intakes of unhealthy foods are each independently associated with smaller left hippocampal volume. To our knowledge, this is the first human study to demonstrate associations between diet and hippocampal volume concordant with data previously observed in animal models.

(4) Tryptophan and GABA give you hope and an immediate feeling of calm

The Anxiety Summit has been called a “bouquet of hope” and these calming and mood-boosting amino acids are my favorite nutrients for anxiety because they offer so much hope right away. They get much coverage this season.

Serotonin and anxiety: tryptophan, 5-HTP, serotonin syndrome and medication tapers, an interview with Dr. Peter Bongiorno, ND, author of Holistic Therapies for Anxiety and Depression:

Low levels of tryptophan contribute to generalized anxiety and panic attacks. Back in the early 1990s, a laboratory I was associated with at Yale University performed “tryptophan depletion studies” and which volunteers who were already prone to anxiety were put on a tryptophan-free diet. Within days, these people were extremely anxious, panicky and unstable – and they had lots of trouble staying asleep.

In my interview, GABA: Blood brain barrier controversy, concerns, best forms and how to do a trial for eliminating anxiety, I cover the research and practical steps on how to get the best results. But most importantly you’ll hear heartwarming success stories from people who use GABA, like this one:

It helps lower my overall anxious feeling all day (anxiety for no reason). I just started increasing the dose slightly and am beginning to take it a few times a day to help with social anxiety.

And this one:

It changed my life in minutes! Take it every day now. No more hopelessness!

If you have anxiety I want you to have hope that you will find an answer and I want to give you tools and resources to get there.

Tryptophan and GABA give you HOPE and relief right away while you are addressing some of the bigger underlying causes of your anxiety which may take longer to address. Some of these more complex causes may be leaky gut, mercury toxicity, gluten issues or Lyme disease and are also their own topics in the summit.

(5) Anxious individuals are actively looking for nutritional solutions

In a paper published earlier this year, Herbal medicine use behaviour in Australian adults who experience anxiety: a descriptive study, out of 400 anxious Australian adults in the study:

• 47% were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder
• 82% experienced anxiety symptoms in the previous 12 months
• 3% had used prescribed pharmaceuticals for anxiety
• 8% had used herbal medicines for anxiety

The authors of the study voice concerns about the dangers of self-prescribing saying this about the widespread use of herbal medicines:

Herbal medicines are being used by adults with anxiety and are commonly self-prescribed for anxiety symptoms. These behaviours are concerning as people may not be receiving the most suitable treatments, and their use of herbal medicines may even be dangerous. It is critical we develop a better understanding of why people are using these medicines.

Based on my practice and after interviewing over 100 experts on nutritional solutions for anxiety and seeing the research, this is my belief: more and more people who are not getting solutions from medications are being smart and are looking to address the root cause/s of their anxiety naturally and nutritionally. Are you one of them?

I’m all about self-empowerment and being informed and the summit delivers plenty of practical content and the research.

(6) Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric illness

Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric illness affecting children and adults. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association Of America, it’s estimated that 40 million American adults suffer with an anxiety disorder. These numbers are much higher because you may never get a diagnosis and be counted (just look at the Australian herbal study below). You may not even identify with the term anxiety because you have felt like for so long and just think ‘this is me, this is just how I am.’

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can change these stats. You can feel on top of the world again!

The summit offers hope and solutions, research and success stories!

Discover the connections between anxiety and brain food, why healthy fats and turmeric feed our brains, how grass-fed red meat helps with anxiety, the impact of coffee and gluten, the best gluten testing, GABA and the blood brain barrier, serotonin and tryptophan, best forms of GABA and tryptophan, anxiety in autism, MS and anxiety, Lyme disease and anxiety, mercury and lead detox, leaky gut and the SCD diet, low cholesterol and low oxytocin, the microbiome, stomach acid and zinc, fluroquinolones, methylation, pyroluria, the importance of community and much more.

Join us June 6-16^th online – register here www.theanxietysummit.com

And please share widely!