Depressed & anxious? Volunteering reduces symptoms

Depression and anxiety are hitting all-time highs these days, sending millions of Americans in search of relief. While many avenues reduce or eliminate symptoms, particularly functional medicine protocols that reduce chronic inflammation, one must still tend to the health of the psyche. One powerful but overlooked relief from depression and anxiety is to spend time volunteering.

Volunteering has been shown to relieve depression and anxiety, lower blood pressure, release the social bonding hormone oxytocin, improve contentment, and trigger the same dopamine reward centers in the brain that food, drugs, and sex trigger.

In fact, studies on volunteering suggest it’s beneficial for us because the human brain is wired to help others. Although greed and selfishness are characteristic human traits, researchers have also found that altruism and cooperation are inherent qualities that set us apart from much of the animal kingdom.

Volunteering can be a way to exercise these areas of the brain and the mind that can easily go neglected in our overly busy survival-oriented society. However, human survival over the millennia has been credited to our ability to work together in child rearing, hunting, gathering, creating domiciles, and caring for sick or older members of the community.

Given our evolutionary history, it’s no wonder so many people are depressed and anxious. Social isolation and loneliness are considered just as risky to health as are obesity and smoking. Most Americans live in single-family dwellings with no links to their neighbors or a community.

How volunteering helps relieve depression and anxiety

Depression and anxiety can be very inwardly focused disorders. Even if that focus is intensely negative, it creates a feeling of separation and isolation from others. People with these disorders also commonly complain of feeling like they are useless and a burden to others.

Volunteering, on the other hand, has been shown to help people feel more connected to others, more optimistic, and more useful and purposeful. This is believed to be due in part to the release of oxytocin that volunteering triggers. Oxytocin is a “love and bonding” brain chemical that is also released during sex or from cuddling a baby or a pet.

Oxytocin not only makes you feel better, it has also been shown to reduce stress levels and lower inflammation — two powerful factors in causing depression.

Volunteering works on another powerful neurotransmitter when it comes to mood: Dopamine. Dopamine is our “pleasure and reward” neurotransmitter that is released when we have feelings of accomplishment, pleasure, or reward. Addictions are dopamine surges run amuck as people become hooked on the dopamine rush that comes with drugs, gambling, and other pleasurable indulgences.

However, sufficient dopamine is necessary to help us get things accomplished as well as to feel self-worth and purpose in life, two things people with depression often lack. Volunteering triggers a healthy dopamine release that then extends into other areas of their life.

Researchers also point to the fact that volunteering simply takes you out of yourself. Although dismissing your woes doesn’t make them go away, having compassionate perspective for other people’s struggles can help put your own in healthier perspective.

Also, while volunteering has mental health benefits, a caretaker position is also your source of income is commonly linked with increased stress and burnout.

The paradox of “being too busy” to volunteer

Most people cite their overly busy lives and booked schedules for not being willing or able to volunteer. But the experience of volunteers frequently shows that a paradoxical effect happens when you work it into your schedule anyways — the stress-lowering and mood-boosting effects of volunteering reduce the sense of chronic overwhelm that many people experience daily.

Volunteering can calm the over anxious mind and relax the muscles and breathing.

Functional medicine and depression

Although volunteering has proven benefits for depression and anxiety, it’s important to nevertheless pay attention to physiological factors that cause depression.

Depression has now been linked to things like chronic inflammation, lack of gut bacteria diversity, too much bad gut bacteria, leaky gut, and compromised brain health, such as from a past brain injury or brain inflammation.

These dysfunctions can stem from food intolerances, blood sugar imbalances, poor nutrition, a sedentary lifestyle, undiagnosed autoimmunity, hidden infections, or other underlying disorders that antidepressants will not address.

Ask my office for more ideas on how functional medicine can help you relieve depression and anxiety.

Your gallbladder can cause gut and health problems

People tend not to think about their gallbladder unless gallstones become a painful and debilitating problem requiring surgery. However, your gallbladder could be causing gut problems or chronic inflammatory issues, even if you have no overt gallbladder symptoms.

In fact, gallbladder issues are one of the most common reasons people have chronic gastrointestinal symptoms that are difficult to treat. This is because people rarely consider gallbladder health.

The gallbladder is reservoir for bile, which it secretes to emulsify fats in the diet.

The issue with many cases of poor gallbladder health isn’t gallbladder stones but instead biliary stasis. This is a condition in which the bile becomes overly thick and doesn’t secrete well to help digest fats.

Gallstones are obvious and easy to diagnose. Symptoms of gallstones include:

• Severe and sudden pain in the upper right abdomen and possibly extending to the upper back.
• Fever and shivering.
• Severe nausea and vomiting.
• Jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes)
• Clay colored stools or dark urine.

Typically, gallstones include a trip to the emergency room and gallbladder removal surgery, one of the most commonly performed surgeries today.

However, by paying attention to your gallbladder health, you can not only avoid an unnecessary surgery that raises the risks of developing other health problems, but also you can improve your gut function and lower inflammation.

Sometimes in cases of biliary stasis, an ultrasound can show gallstones that have formed but not yet obstructed the gallbladder. However, for many people, overly thick bile is the problem. This can be identified via symptoms.

Symptoms of biliary stasis include:

• Bloating after meals
• Burping after meals
• Fish oil burps from fish oil capsules
• Fatty foods make you feel worse
• Floating stools
• Chronic constipation

These are symptoms that a conventional doctor may dismiss altogether, and that can also be caused by other imbalances.

Biliary stasis is especially common in overweight women over 40 who have had children due to the effects of hormonal shifts on the gallbladder.

It’s important to address gallbladder function and biliary stasis as sufficient bile flow is necessary to digest fats. When fats aren’t digested, the undigested fats cause imbalances elsewhere in the body.

Undigested fats can lead to poor sphincter function in the digestive tract, which facilitates the transport of bacteria from the large intestine into the small intestine, causing a condition called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). SIBO causes myriad symptoms, including chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, or both. Bloating is also common with SIBO.

Biliary stasis also backs up the liver’s detoxification pathways. As a result, the liver cannot effectively detoxify hormones, toxins, and other metabolites. This increases the toxic burden on your system, which in turn increases inflammation.

Many people with poor gallbladder function and biliary stasis naturally start avoiding fats, even healthy fats like olive oil and avocado oil. They also may avoid fish or fish oils because they get “fishy burps.” This increases health risks, particularly for the brain and the hormones, because we need ample healthy fats for optimal function. It also leads to deficiencies in the vital fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.

If you are taking all the right GI supplements and doing the right gut health diets but still not improving, your gallbladder health is one thing you may want to consider.

How to improve your gallbladder health

Fortunately, various nutritional compounds support gallbladder health, fat digestion, and liver detoxification, including dandelion root, milk thistle seed extract, ginger root, phosphatidylcholine, and taurine.

These compounds can also help if your gallbladder has been removed, along with ox bile.

In order to improve and maintain your gallbladder health, also include these practices:

• Eat 25–38 grams of fiber a day.
• Avoid processed and excess starchy carbohydrates (white flour, sugar, potatoes, pasta, etc.).
• Avoid trans fats, hydrogenated fats, and processed vegetable oils.
• Get plenty of essential fatty acids and omega 3s.
• Eliminate foods to which you have an immune response; gluten and dairy are the two most common.
• Support low thyroid function or autoimmune Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism.

Ask my office for more advice on how to support your gallbladder health or your general health if your gallbladder has been removed.

Nine possible reasons why you can’t lose weight

For some people weight loss is pretty straightforward: They just need to cut out sodas and sweets and hit the gym regularly. For others, especially those with a chronic health disorder, weight loss remains elusive despite and weight gain happens far too easily despite doing everything right.

Weight gain and weight loss resistance are very common symptoms among people with chronic health disorders. Contrary to popular belief, an inability to lose weight or keep it off is not a sign of a character flaw but instead flaws in your metabolic, immune, or neurological health.

Fat shaming is culturally accepted, particularly in the alternative health spaces and against women. The truth is, overweight and obese people may have some of the healthiest diets and lifestyle practices you’ll encounter. They have to — should they dare to eat “normally” they would quickly balloon out of control.

Instead of beating yourself up if you can’t lose the weight or you have mysteriously gained it too easily, consider if any of the following underlying causes may apply to you.

Nine possible reasons why you can’t lose weight — none of which are due to being lazy or undisciplined

1. You are a veteran lifelong dieter. The multi-billion-dollar diet industry coupled with unrealistic cultural body image standards have turned low-calorie dieting into a way of life. That works great in your youth, but as you age your metabolism fatigues from constant famines.

The human body responds to famines by progressively lowering metabolism and increasing fat storage hormones. As a result, each low-calorie diet can make you a little bit fatter than the last one once you resume normal caloric intake. This explains why diets have such low long-term success.

This phenomenon was most poignantly illustrated in a study of participants from the The Biggest Loser reality TV show. Six years after participating in the show, researchers found they were burning 800 fewer calories per day and the majority of them returned to their pre-show weight and had to under eat by 400–800 calories a day just to not gain weight.

2. Your hunger hormones are out of whack

Conversely, if you routinely eat ample sugar and desserts and processed carbohydrates (breads, pastas, white rice, etc.), you likely have leptin resistance and skewed hunger hormone function that causes constant food cravings and hunger. Minimizing or eliminating processed carbohydrates and exercising regularly helps improve leptin sensitivity so your hunger cues and fat burning returns to normal.

3. Your thyroid isn’t working well

One of the most common causes of weight gain and weight loss resistance is hypothyroidism, or low thyroid activity. And the most common cause of this is Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease that attacks and damages the thyroid gland. This is why many people do not lose weight even after they start taking thyroid medication. It’s important to address the underlying causes of Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism to improve your health and lose weight.

4. You are chronically inflamed

Chronic inflammation skews hormone function, metabolism, and gut health in a way that can promote fat storage and prevent fat burning.

Many people enjoy easy weight loss by following an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle. Nutrient-dense foods void of inflammatory triggers also manage pain, gut problems, autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, depression  anxiety, and other health issues.

5. You’ve had a brain injury or have compromised brain function

Many sufferers of concussions and brain injuries find they suddenly gain weight after their injury and are not able to lose it. Brain injuries cause inflammation in the brain, which can not only impact brain function, but also disrupt metabolic, hormone, and immune in a way that promotes promotes weight gain and inhibits fat burning. Brain injury victims also often struggle with fatigue, exercise intolerance, depression, and other symptoms that interfere with appropriate fat burning and storage.

6. You have mold illness

Mold illness is increasingly being identified as an underlying cause of many health disorders and symptoms, including weight gain and weight loss resistance. Almost a quarter of the US population is susceptible to mold illness. Toxicity from mycotoxins, the byproducts of molds, can seriously impact metabolic, immune, and neurological health leading to unexplained weight gain and weight loss resistance. This refers not just to the dreaded black mold but also the more commonly found strains of mold caused by leaks and water damage in buildings.

7. You were born with an obese gut microbiome

Research into the gut microbiome, our trillions of gut bacteria, show they impact virtually every aspect of our health, including whether we are more likely to be thin or heavy.

Studies on both mice and humans have shown that obese subjects inoculated with the gut bacteria of thin subjects went on to quickly and easily lose weight.

Factors that impact your gut microbiome “signature” in a way that promotes obesity include being delivered via C-section, being formula fed versus breastfed, and frequent antibiotic use in childhood.

8. You are a victim of childhood sexual abuse or sexual assault or have PTSD

After more than two decades of trying to understand why most obese people regained the weight they lost, an obesity researcher made an accidental discovery — the majority of his study subjects had been sexually abused as children or sexually assaulted right before the time their weight gain began. This can drive complex PTSD and the genesis of a food addiction to cope.

Likewise, researchers have found a correlation between food addiction and PTSD in women.

9. You have a brain-based disorder that promotes food addiction and an eating disorder

For many people with weight issues, food becomes the source of torturous addictive behaviors that can then morph into eating disorders. It is increasingly being found that addictions and eating disorders are linked to brain-based disorders such as ADHD. Skewed neurological function triggers the obsessive thought patterns that lay the foundation for addictive eating and eating disorders.

Look for the underlying cause of weight gain and weight loss resistance to develop self-compassion

I hope this article helps you understand some of the factors that play into a chronic struggle with weight gain and weight loss resistance. Our society begs us to gorge on eat sugary foods and drinks through incessant advertising while a multi-billion-dollar diet industry and impossible pop culture body ideals value human worth based on thinness.

The result is millions of people, the majority of them women, internalize society’s fat shaming and develop shame and self-loathing around food and their bodies when the real sickness is in the society and not the individual.

The body is a miraculous machine that operates in constant service to us. You can learn to live and eat in a way that honors good health and function regardless of your size. Ask my office how we can help you.

Controversial new study reports statins useless

A controversial new study found that high cholesterol does not shorten life span and that statins are essentially a “waste of time,” according to one of the researchers. Previous studies have linked statins with an increased risk of diabetes.

The study reviewed research of almost 70,000 people and found that elevated levels of “bad cholesterol” did not raise the risk of early death from cardiovascular disease in people over 60.

The authors called for statin guidelines to be reviewed, claiming the benefits of statins are “exaggerated.”

Not only did the study find no link between high cholesterol and early death, it also found that people with high “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) actually lived longer and had fewer incidences of heart disease.

The co-author and vascular surgeon went on to say that cholesterol is vital for preventing cancer, muscle pain, infection, and other health disorders in older people. He said that statins are a “waste of time” for lowering cholesterol and that lifestyle changes are more effective for improving cardiovascular health.

Naturally, the paper drew fire and its conclusions were dismissed by other experts in the field. Statins are among the most commonly prescribed drugs — one in four Americans over the age of 40 take statins and the drug accounts for more than $20 billion in spending each year. Statin use has gone up more than 80 percent in the last 20 years.

Statins linked to higher risk of diabetes and other health disorders

In functional medicine we recognize cholesterol as a vital compound in the body for multiple functions, including brain function and muscle strength. Overly low cholesterol is linked with an increased risk of several health disorders, including diabetes.

One study of almost 9,000 people showed that people in their 60s who used statins had an almost 40 percent higher risk of type 2 diabetes. They also had higher rates of high blood sugar and pre-diabetes, or insulin resistance. High blood sugar disorders underpin numerous chronic inflammatory conditions, including Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Previous research found a 50 percent increased risk of diabetes in women who took statins.

In addition to raising the risk of high blood sugar and diabetes, statins also may cause such side effects as muscle weakness and wasting, headaches, difficulty sleeping, and dizziness.

Statins do not address the underlying cause of heart disease: Chronic inflammation

Statins may lower cholesterol, but they do not address the underlying cause of heart disease, which is typically chronic inflammation (some people are genetically predisposed to cardiovascular disease). The body uses cholesterol to repair arteries damaged by inflammation — the primary cause of heart attacks and strokes.

For instance, the vast majority of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol. In other countries where people have higher cholesterol than Americans, they also have less heart disease. In fact, low cholesterol in elderly patients is linked to a higher risk of death compared to high cholesterol.

Improving heart health through functional medicine instead of statins

Functional medicine is a great way to improve cardiovascular health because it avoids drugs that cause potentially harmful side effects. Although lifestyle changes may require more work than popping a pill, they address root causes of your disorder versus overriding them. This means you feel and function better overall.

What does a functional medicine approach to heart health look like?

• An anti-inflammatory diet
• Releasing feel-good endorphins on a regular basis through exercise (endorphins are anti-inflammatory)
• Targeted nutritional support
• Identifying and addressing the root causes of your inflammation, which are different for everyone. Possibilities include high blood sugar, poor thyroid function, an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder, chronic bacterial, fungal, or viral infections, leaky gut, or a brain imbalance, such as from a past brain injury.

It’s important to address things from this angle because cholesterol is vital to good health. It is found in every cell and helps produce cell membranes, vitamin D, and hormones. It’s also necessary for healthy brain function.

Inflammation promotes heart disease

Chronic inflammation and not cholesterol is the concerning factor in heart disease. The blood marker C-reactive protein (CRP) identifies inflammation. If it’s high, you have a higher risk for heart disease than those with high cholesterol. Having normal cholesterol but high CRP does not protect you from heart disease.

By using functional medicine to lower your inflammation and improve your heart health, you not only avoid the risks and dangers of statins, but also you get to better enjoy your golden years thanks to improved energy and well being.

Gut problems can have different root causes

In the world of functional medicine, it has long been known that gut health is paramount to the health of the rest of the body. For decades we didn’t fully understand why, although we knew the gut was the seat of the immune system and chronic inflammation. Now with the gut microbiome renaissance underway, we also understand how integral gut bacteria is to health.

As such, addressing gut health has always been one and continues to be one of the first steps in managing a chronic inflammatory or autoimmune condition. However, people tend to fall into the trap of thinking everyone needs to follow the same gut healing protocol, wondering why it works for some and not others.

As it turns out, repairing gut health is not a one-size-fits-all approach. There is not just one diet, one type of probiotic, or one gut healing powder that works for everyone. Although there are some basic foundations to gut healing — remove immune reactive foods, keep blood sugar stable, and create a healthy gut microbiome — the truth is you still need to know why your gut health deteriorated in order to address the root cause.

Examples of root causes of poor gut health

For example, a number of patients can come in with a complaint of constipation. While laxatives may help the patient, it is nevertheless important to understand why they are constipated in the first place. This goes for any digestive complaint and not just constipation.

Here are some different reasons why a person can develop a digestive complaint such as constipation:

• A past brain injury has dampened activity of the vagus nerve, which carries communication back and forth between the gut and the brain. This slows down motility of the intestines and causes constipation.
• The gut’s nervous system, called the enteric nervous system, has degenerated significantly due to chronic gut inflammation from immune reactive foods, too many sugars and junk foods, chronic stress, gut infections, or brain degeneration. Intestinal motility depends on a healthy enteric nervous system, and constipation develops.
• Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) releases gases that shut down motility.
• Medications impact intestinal motility and cause constipation.
• Dysautonomia, a dysregulation of the central nervous system, prevents the body from getting into the “rest and digest” state that allows for healthy bowel function.

A one-size-fits-all gut protocol can completely heal one person, create improvement in another, do nothing at all for a third, and perhaps make another even worse.

It’s also important to screen for more serious conditions. These can include gastric ulcers from an h. pylori infection, intestinal permeability — or leaky gut — from damage to the microvilli of the small intestine, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, or Crohn’s disease. Knowing whether these conditions are an issue also impacts how you manage gut health.

Also vital is knowing whether gut autoimmunity is the root cause of your gut issues. You can test for this through Cryex Labs. If so, this changes your expectations of your outcomes and how you evaluate your progress. Autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system erroneously attacks and destroys tissue in the body. Eventually this leads to symptoms and breakdown of function.

Although autoimmune disease cannot be cured, it often can be dampened or driven into remission for long periods of time. However, unpredictable flare ups also happen, and the person with gut autoimmunity must have realistic expectations in order not to feel demoralized if their symptoms flare and recede. Also, there is still much we don’t know about autoimmunity. For some people it’s easy to manage and for others it’s a constant battle. In these cases, the goal can be as simple as “more good days.”

This is an overview of why common gut-healing protocols work gangbusters for some people and little to not at all for others. Our digestive system is one of the most fascinating, complex, and influential systems in the body. The more scientists learn about it, the more apparent it becomes that gut health largely determines the health of the rest of the body, including the brain.

This is why we are seeing so many chronic health conditions in modernized societies that subsist largely on industrialized agriculture and food processing. The commercialization of cheap, processed, chemically laden, and highly sweetened “foods” largely void of produce has inflamed and damaged the digestive tract, decimated the gut microbiome (some researchers call it an extinction event), and ravaged the brain in today’s modern populations.

Fortunately, functional medicine excels when it comes to repairing and maintaining gut health. Ask our office how we can help you.

“Lazy” and no motivation can be due to inflammation

Many of us are pretty good at beating ourselves up when we have lost our motivation, calling ourselves lazy or worthless. But research shows laziness, or lack of motivation, can actually be a symptom of chronic inflammation.

A natural state of health is to want to engage in life. If you don’t want to and don’t care, this is a red flag to look for an underlying health condition.

New research shows that chronic low-grade inflammation hinders the activity of areas in the brain responsible for motivation.

Called the dopaminergic signaling system, these parts of the brain rely on sufficient dopamine, a brain chemical responsible for motivation, drive, and a sense of self-worth — hence the feelings of worthlessness that often accompany low motivation or “laziness.”

The hypothesis is that when the body is suffering from chronic inflammation, this means it has an injury or illness it must heal. In order to meet the demands for healing, the brain lowers drive and motivation so that energy is freed up for healing.

Our everyday tasks and chores, or working toward our goals and dreams suddenly no longer feel worth it.

That’s because inflammation has down regulated areas of the brain that link a sense of reward to effort and work.

We can especially feel this when we are laid up with the flu or a bad injury that can make watching Netflix tiring.

However, low-grade chronic inflammation is not just about the flu or an injury anymore. It is an epidemic problem these days, as evidenced by the mushrooming incidences of chronic inflammatory disorders, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and cancer.

In fact, many brain-based disorders are often a consequence of inflammation, including depression, anxiety, fatigue, memory loss, brain development disorders in children, and even acute psychiatric conditions.

Understanding the cause of no motivation can lift shame and stigma

Because chronic illness and inflammation causes lack of motivation and fatigue, sufferers are often stigmatized for their condition.

The majority of people with chronic illness are women, and they are commonly dismissed or disbelieved by doctors in the standard health care model or even by their own families.

What’s worse, many internalize the stigmatization and suffer in isolation and with shame around their low energy and lack of motivation.

That’s why it’s important to understand “laziness” and lack of motivation can be symptoms of a larger, underlying problem and not character flaws.

Why is modern life so inflammatory?

Compared to our ancestors and many people on the planet today, many Americans have it pretty easy in terms of ease and convenience.

Yet why are we so inflamed and chronically ill?

Here are just a few factors driving epidemic levels of chronic inflammation and illness:

Blood sugar is too high. Advertising, restaurants, grocery store aisles — everything about modern life is hellbent on making us gorge on sugar and processed carbohydrates. However, science shows high blood sugar is one of the most common and relentless sources of chronic inflammation.

Modern foods are pro-inflammatory. Gluten intolerance is responsible for more inflammation than people realize, thanks to modern hybridization, storing, and pesticide use of gluten grains and other grains. Industrialized fats such as canola oil, soybean oil, and hydrogenated fats are recognized as inflammatory and are ubiquitous in the food supply.

People eat too little produce. Americans eat about half the amount of fiber they should to be healthy. A diet rich in plant fibers creates a gut microbiome rich in healthy gut bacteria. Bad gut bacteria and an unhealthy microbiome are pro-inflammatory and pro-disease.

Modern life is sedentary. Except for workers whose jobs are physical, our ultra-convenient, screen-based lives are extremely sedentary. Lack of regular physical activity and “sitting disease” are sources of chronic inflammation.

Modern life is toxic. Numerous studies link numerous toxins to inflammatory-based conditions. Plastics, pesticides, car exhaust, scented cleaning products, chemically laden body products and foods — we live in a sea of environmental toxins and heavy metals the body was not designed to manage. We are also exposed to too much artificial light, which confuses our biological rhythms and triggers inflammation.

People are stressed out. Despite our many comforts and conveniences, rates of depression, anxiety, and stress are high and afflicting younger and younger people. These negative emotions are known triggers of inflammation. When you experience them all the time, it can lead to inflammatory-based health disorders.

How functional medicine can help you restore your natural motivation

Although we are up against many daunting assaults on our physiology, functional medicine recognizes this and has strategies and protocols to help you.

One of the most common rewards of a functional medicine dietary, lifestyle, and nutritional game plan is the return of energy, motivation, and ambition.

“Laziness” and lack of motivation are red flags. Ask us how we can help you remedy them.

What kind of brain inflammation do you have?

If you have a chronic health or autoimmune condition, chances are you also suffer from brain inflammation. Brain inflammation causes symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, lack of motivation, and depression. We all have some degree of brain inflammation, but it can range from barely perceptible to debilitating depending on how advanced it is.

What kind of brain inflammation do you have? We can look at brain inflammation as either subtle, moderate, or severe, and as transient or chronic. Brain autoimmunity is another cause of brain inflammation and brain-based symptoms.

Subtle brain inflammation:

• Brain fog
• Slower mental speed
• Reduced brain endurance (can’t read, work, or drive as long you used to)
• Brain fatigue after exposure to specific foods or chemicals
• Comes and goes with exposure to triggers

Moderate brain inflammation:

• Fatigue
• Depression
• Lack of motivation
• Inability to focus and concentrate for long periods
• Sleepiness
• Need to sleep more than 8 hours
• Lethargy
• Loss of appetite
• Unable to be physically active

Severe brain inflammation:

• Disorientation or confusion
• Dementia
• Delirium
• Coma
• Seizures
• Difficulty speaking
• Tremors or trembling
• Involuntary twitching

Transient neuroinflammation:

• Symptoms are activated by exposure to a trigger but subside. Person has more good days than bad.

Chronic neuroinflammation:

• Symptoms are persistent symptoms and the person has more bad days than good.

Brain autoimmunity:

• Autoimmunity is a condition in which the immune system attacks tissue in the body, mistaking it for a foreign invader. Neuroautoimmunity is more common than people realize and can cause a wide range of neurological symptoms, depending on the area of the nervous system being attacked. Symptoms are caused by flares of the autoimmune condition, which can be whatever triggers the body’s immune system. These people also have symptoms of brain inflammation.

Why the brain becomes inflamed

Most people think the brain is made up mainly of neurons and that neurons run the show. But in recent years, research shows neurons only make up about 10 percent of the brain. The rest is made up of the brain’s immune cells, called glial cells. Glial cells outnumber neurons 10 to 1.

Although the glial cells are the brain’s immune system, scientists have discovered they do much more than defend the brain. When the brain is not battling inflammation, glial cells support healthy neuron function, clear away plaque and debris that can lead to brain degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and they help facilitate efficient pathways of communication in the brain.

Factors that cause brain inflammation include a brain injury, unmanaged autoimmune disease, high blood sugar, eating inflammatory foods, undiagnosed food intolerances, excess alcohol consumption, a chronic viral or bacterial infection, leaky gut, leaky blood-brain barrier, hormonal imbalances or deficiencies, or other chronic health conditions and imbalances.

When the brain is in a chronic state of inflammation, this takes glial cells away from their job of supporting neuron health, debris clearing, and neuronal communication. This not only causes symptoms like fatigue and depression but also raises your risk of more serious brain disorders down the road.

If your symptoms are in the mild category, following functional medicine protocols (finding and addressing the root causes of your brain inflammation) can help restore your brain health. As long as you follow a healthy diet and lifestyle, you can keep brain inflammation at bay.

These strategies include:

• Balancing blood sugar; lowering blood sugar if it’s too high.
• Removing foods that cause an immune reaction from your diet, gluten in particular.
• Repairing leaky gut and leaky blood-brain barrier.
• Improving microbiome diversity.
• Addressing autoimmune conditions.
• Addressing chronic infections.
• Taking high-quality glutathione and other supplements to dampen inflammation.
• Daily exercise, especially high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
• Hormonal balance if necessary.

If your brain inflammation symptoms are in the moderate to severe category, you still need to follow these steps, but you may need pursue one or more of them very aggressively, as well as adjust your expectations. Unlike the immune system in the body, the brain’s immune system does not have an off switch and inflammation can move through the brain like a slow-moving forest fire for months, years, or even decades. If you have not been the same since a brain injury or other brain insult, this may apply to you.

Additionally, if glial cells undergo a severe inflammatory event, such as a brain injury, they can become “primed.” A primed glial cell permanently changes its physical structure to function less as a neuron helper and more as an immune soldier. This also shortens its lifespan. As with neurons, we only have so many glial cells — their numbers dwindle as we age, and unmanaged brain insults and injuries and unhealthy diet and lifestyle habits can accelerate their demise.

Once glial cells are primed, acute inflammatory events can trigger your brain inflammation symptoms, even if you are following a healthy diet and lifestyle. Also, symptoms from triggering events will be much more severe once your glial cells have been primed. Whereas someone with mild to moderate neuroinflammation may suffer from some brain fog or fatigue if triggered, a person with primed glial cells may see loss of brain function, depending on the area of the brain most affected. This could mean bouts of memory loss, inability to speak properly, loss of muscle function, fatigue so severe they are bed ridden, and more. Once your glial cells are primed, it becomes necessary to structure your life around preventing flares.

Note: One scenario that can occur with primed glial cells is that anti-inflammatory functional medicine protocols may work great for a few weeks and then the person has a rebound crash with severe symptoms. This does not mean the protocols aren’t working, it just means you need to slow down with your protocols and keep systematically working through the various mechanisms until you find your primary triggers, whether its blood sugar, hormonal imbalances, or a dietary or chemical trigger. They will be different for everyone.

Trigger-happy neurons

Outside of brain inflammation lies another mechanism of brain-based symptoms called “neurons close to threshold.” This means that a triggering neurological event, such as smelling perfumes for the chemically sensitive person, eating gluten for the gluten intolerant person, pushing your brain past what it can handle (with reading, working, studying, driving, etc.), too much noise for someone who is sound sensitive, etc. can fatigue fragile neurons and trigger symptoms.

For instance, a scent-sensitive person may develop migraines and fatigue walking past a perfume counter, or a gluten sensitive person may suffer from brain fog and fatigue after eating gluten. Or a day-long drive may take three days to recover from for the person whose neurons have lost endurance.

Poor health and chronic inflammation sabotage neuronal mitochondria, the energy factory in each cell. This causes a neuron to fire too easily, and then to fatigue. A classic example is tinnitus — auditory neurons are too close to threshold and “hear” noise that isn’t there, which causes ringing in the ears.

In these cases, rehabilitation includes anti-inflammatory strategies for the brain, but also gently exercising the neurons back to better health. This may mean a gradual introduction of essential oils for the scent-sensitive person, using hearing aids to gently stimulate the auditory neurons for the person with tinnitus (there are other causes of tinnitus, this is just one), or gradually increasing reading time each day to build endurance.

This is a broad overview of neuroinflammatory concepts. Ask my office how we can help you manage your brain inflammation.

New study links PPIs to earlier death, chronic disease

If you struggle with heartburn or acid reflux, you just pop some pills for that, right? Turns out regular use of drugs to treat heartburn, acid reflux, and ulcers can lead to an earlier death. These disorders are some of the easier to manage using functional medicine protocols, so it’s unnecessary to risk shortening your lifespan through chronic disease when you can enjoy improved health instead.

A recent study found that chronic use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) is linked to an increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and upper gastrointestinal cancer. The degree of risk increases with duration of use, even if you take low doses. Other studies have linked PPIs to dementia, bone fractures, and pneumonia.

Common brands of PPIs include Prevacid, Prilosec, Nexium and Protonix.

The study looked through the medical records of more than 200,000 people over 10 years. They found those who took PPIs had an almost 20 percent increased rate of death over people who took other types of acid-suppressing drugs (unfortunately, they did not compare death rates to people who took no acid-suppressing drugs). This applied to both prescription and over-the-counter PPIs.

What’s even more alarming is that researchers found more than half the people taking PP!s had no medical need for the drugs and PPI-related deaths were more common in this group.

Why you should address the root cause of your acid reflux or heartburn instead of taking acid-suppressing drugs

It’s assumed overly high stomach acid causes heartburn and acid reflux, but in most cases it’s due to low stomach acid. Stomach acid is vital to the health of the body in its role of digesting foods, in particular meats. When stomach acid is too low your stomach is unable to properly digest foods. Your small intestine does not want to accept improperly undigested food — this will damage its lining and contribute to intestinal permeability, or leaky gut. The low pH of the stomach acid prevents the valve to the small intestine from opening and, as a result, the contents of the stomach shoot back up into the esophagus.

Although the food is not acidic enough to gain entry into the small intestine in a timely manner, it is too acidic for the delicate tissue of the esophagus, which it burns as it shoots back up toward your throat. The extra time the food spends in your stomach also causes it to putrefy, causing that acid stomach sensation, or the feeling of having a brick in your stomach. Some people quit eating meat not because they want to be vegetarians, but because eating meat makes them feel sick.

Low stomach acid contributes to digestive issues throughout the rest of the digestive tract. As undigested food travels into the intestines, it causes inflammation and damages the lining of the intestines. This leads to intestinal permeability, or leaky gut, a condition in which the lining of the small intestine becomes inflamed and leaky. Leaky gut allows undigested foods into the bloodstream, yet prevents micronutrients from passing through because of the inflammation. Undigested foods in the bloodstream trigger inflammation throughout the body.

Stomach acid serves another useful purpose in that it kills bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens that may be in your food, preventing them from getting into the digestive tract and the bloodstream. When stomach acid is low, you lose this additional layer of protection.

Sufficient stomach acid also prevents food sensitivities. Undigested food particles trigger the gut’s immune system to become over burdened and over reactive. This causes the immune system to start reacting to more of the foods you eat, creating immune reactions that become food sensitivities. This is called losing oral tolerance, and it can be a primary cause of food sensitivities and other health issues.

Symptoms of low stomach acid

• Heartburn
• Acid reflux
• Indigestion
• Stomach ulcers (low stomach acid raises the risk of an pylori infection, which causes stomach ulcers)
• Nausea
• Belching after meals
• Hiccups after eating
• Constipation
• Diarrhea
• Undigested food in stools

What to do for low stomach acid

You can help support your stomach acid by taking betaine hydrochloric acid (HCl) capsules. Take HCL after you begin eating a meal with meat or protein. How much do you take? Keep increasing your dose until you feel warmth in your stomach, then cut back down to the previous dose. You may need quite a bit in the beginning but then find you need to gradually lower your dose over time.

If you feel intense gastric burning with even one capsule, it means you may have ulcers and an H. pylori infection that can be treated with nutritional compounds.

Ask my office for more advice on how to manage your heartburn, indigestion, or acid reflux, and how to improve your overall health by improving your digestive health.

Many doctors misdiagnose trauma as ADHD in some children

The number of children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the United States has risen from 6 percent to 10 percent in the last 20 years. While childhood brain development disorders are on the rise overall — increasingly evidenced as a result of brain inflammation — newer research suggests some children exhibiting symptoms of trauma and family dysfunction are being misdiagnosed with ADHD.

In a quest to understand why ADHD diagnoses were highest among low income children who lived in stressful, violent areas, researchers set out to determine if their ADHD symptoms were a product of their environments.

Experiences such as chronic stress, abuse, neglect, maltreatment, and violence can change a child’s behavior. Research shows that many children diagnosed with ADHD also deal with poverty, divorce, violence, and substance abuse in the family. The more adverse effects a child experiences, the more likely they are to be diagnosed with ADHD.

Children whose trauma manifests as ADHD also tend to be less responsive to conventional ADHD medications and therapies.

Many of these children’s parents were also diagnosed with ADHD and grew up in similar environments.

Symptoms of childhood trauma that can be mistaken for ADHD include:

• Inattention
• Inability to focus
• Impulsivity due to acute stress
• Hyperactivity
• Difficulty controlling their behavior
• Rapidly shift from one mood to another
• Dissociative states, which can be misinterpreted as being distracted

A survey study of more than 65,000 children found that children diagnosed with ADHD had significantly higher levels of poverty, divorce, violence, and family substance abuse. Children who had experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were three times more likely to be medicated for ADHD.

Assessing chronic childhood stress

Scientists measure the effects of childhood stress on health in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. This consists of a short quiz that assesses the link between childhood traumas and disease risk.

The higher the score the more likely a person is to suffer from chronic illness as an adult. This study on ADHD and trauma also shows children who score high on the quiz are more likely to be diagnosed and treated for ADHD.

ADHD and other brain-based disorders also linked with brain inflammation

Of course, not all cases of ADHD are a result of childhood trauma. Researchers are increasingly linking childhood brain development disorders such as ADHD with brain inflammation, or neuroinflammation.

Ninety percent of the cells in the brain are microglia cells, the brain’s immune cells. Once considered to function only as glue that holds neurons together, researchers discovered glial cells serve many important functions.

They dispose of dead neurons, beta amyloid plaque, and other debris in the brain that could interfere with healthy neuronal function. They also facilitate healthy neuron metabolism and neuron synapses.

In children, microglia help ensure proper brain development. They do this by pruning developing communication pathways in the brain to be efficient and high-functioning.

When glial cells are pulled away from supporting healthy neuron function into supporting brain inflammation, the developing brain is more likely to develop and grow improperly and with an increased risk of dysfunction.

Many children are born with neuroinflammation, which is passed on to them in the womb from their mothers. Mothers with unmanaged autoimmunity, chronic inflammatory disorders, and brain inflammation are more likely to pass on these immune dysfunctions to their children.

Things that can cause brain inflammation

Factors that cause brain inflammation include:

• Diabetes and high blood sugar
• Poor circulation, lack of exercise, chronic stress, heart failure, respiratory issues, anemia
• Previous head trauma
• Neurological autoimmunity
• Eating gluten when you are gluten intolerant
• Poor brain antioxidant status
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• Environmental pollutants
• Systemic inflammation
• Inflammatory bowel conditions
• Leaky blood-brain barrier

Managing brain inflammation

In addition to addressing dietary and lifestyle factors and chronic health conditions, compounds that dampen brain inflammation include:

• Apigenin
• Luteolin
• Baicalein
• Resveratrol
• Turmeric
• Glutathione

Ask my office about the best nutraceuticals to help dampen brain inflammation, as well guidance on functional neurology rehabilitation techniques to manage ADHD and brain development disorders.

Exercise shown to significantly benefit psychiatric patients

A recent study showed that exercise showed more benefits than pharmaceutical drugs and psychotherapy for patients in psychiatric care facilities. It helped reduce anxiety, depression, anger, and physical agitation while fostering a more integrated sense of self. The study asserts that exercise can reduce the time spent in psychiatric facilities and the dependence on prescription drugs.

Psychiatric in-patient facilities are often crowded, and patients frequently experience distress and discomfort in them. This often serves only to exacerbate their symptoms. As such, psychotropic medications are the first response for patients entering into this system, followed by psychotherapy.

A researcher at the University of Vermont decided to see what would happen if patients were prescribed daily exercise as well. Of the roughly 6,000 psychiatric hospitals in the United States, only a handful offer gym facilities.

Researchers built a gym that could accommodate about 100 patients at the medical center’s in-patient psychiatric hospital.

They then led patients through regular one-hour exercise programs as well as nutritional counseling.

About 95 percent of patients reported the exercise improved their mood, while more than 60 percent said exercising made them either happy or very happy, as opposed to the sadness they originally felt. The majority of patients also reported feeling improved physical well-being.

The researchers stated the exercise had greater benefit for patients in psychotic states for whom psychotherapy can be unproductive.

Other studies have shown positive benefits of regular exercise on more acute psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. For instance, one study found regular aerobic exercise improved symptoms and lowered depression in about three-quarters of participants with schizophrenia.

Regular exercise is also shown to help people with schizophrenia improve their working memory, attention span, ability to understand social situations, and overall brain function. In general, regular exercise targeted the cognitive deficits that many people with schizophrenia struggle with and improved those.

Aerobic exercise has also been shown to help people with bipolar disorder have less severe manic episodes, sleep better, and reduce symptoms of depression. However, exercise can also exacerbate manic symptoms in some cases.

Numerous studies also show the benefits of exercise for depression and anxiety.

Why exercise improves mental disorder symptoms

Although an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle are imperative for managing symptoms associated with mental disorders, exercise must not be overlooked. This is because of the many benefits exercise gives to the brain.

For example, exercise boosts a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF supports the brain’s neurons in their daily functions as well as helping the brain repair damage and stave off neurodegenerative disease.

Exercise also boost endorphins, our self-generated opioid chemicals that produce euphoria and improve mood and well-being.

Both BDNF and endorphins help relieve depression and anxiety, make us feel better about ourselves, and reduce inflammation the brain and body — inflammation in the brain is a common factor underlying many cases of depression.

The best exercise to release BDNF and endorphins is high-intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT is a form of exercise in which you work out as hard as you can to reach your maximum heart rate, allow yourself to recover, and then do it again. This type of workout can give you great results in durations of under an hour — many HIIT workouts are only 20 or 30 minutes.

Improve your health by lowering brain inflammation

HIIT’s anti-inflammatory benefits also mean you are preventing Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, and other diseases of brain degeneration. Brain inflammation is a very common problem today and found to be a common underlying factor in depression. Poor diets, inflammatory foods, chronic stress, environmental toxins, head injuries, and sedentary lifestyles are some of the factors that can cause brain inflammation.

Common symptoms of brain inflammation include brain fog, fatigue, memory loss, decline in cognition, slow thinking, anxiety, and depression.

Unlike the body’s immune system, the brain’s immune system does not have an off-switch, so brain inflammation can burn through your brain for years or decades. Eventually it can trigger more serious neurological issues.

Ask my office how functional neurology and functional medicine can improve mental and mood disorders and help you lower the risk of neurodegenerative diseases.

Four reasons why eye contact can over st imulate the brain

If someone doesn’t look you in the eye during a conversation, they may come across as rude, aloof, or suspicious. Though avoiding eye contact can convey those things — or shyness — some people avoid eye contact simply to avoid short-circuiting their dysregulated neurology.

There are several reasons people avoid eye contact that have nothing to do with being arrogant or rude.

Eye contact avoidance and autism

For instance, avoiding eye contact is especially common in people on the autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered neurological reasons why eye contact is stressful for people with autism. Eye contact over stimulates the subcortical system, an area in the brain responsible for reading emotions in other people’s faces.

The subcortical system is the layer just beneath the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain that plays a role in consciousness and thought.

Direct and sustained eye contact and looking at facial expressions activate the subcortical system. This response is what allows newborns to instinctually respond to human faces. But for the ASD individual, eye contact over activates the subcortical system, causing extreme stress and discomfort.

The scientists hypothesize this is a consequence of an imbalance between brain networks that activate and inhibit activity in the brain, thus leading to over activation and agitation.

As a result, the “social brain” is not able to appropriately develop. Other studies have shown this trait can be identified in infancy.

Forcing these individuals to maintain eye contact can be neurologically inappropriate and stress-inducing.

Gentle, gradual habituation to eye contact over time, however, has the potential to gently strengthen and relax the overactive subcortical region.

Eye contact triggers fear response in people with PTSD

People with autism aren’t the only ones who struggle with neurological imbalances.

People who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) have also been shown to become agitated by eye contact.

A 2019 study of women with PTSD from childhood abuse found that their brains associated eye contact with threat. Their brains also had to compensate with heightened emotional regulation compared to the brains of the control group.

A 2018 study performed brain scans on subjects with PTSD and a control group during eye contact with a video simulation. In the control group, eye contact activated the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making, personality, and social behavior. The prefrontal cortex also helps a person assess the nature of the person they’re looking at.

However, in the PTSD group, the simulated eye contact did not activate the prefrontal cortex but instead the periaqueductal gray, an area associated with pain, fear, and anxiety. This area of the brain is also associated with submissive and passive defense responses to PTSD such as disassociation and depersonalization.

Eye contact difficult for people with social anxiety

Avoiding eye contact is also common in people with social anxiety as it raises their anxiety levels. Avoidance of eye contact is associated with shame, embarrassment, and self-consciousness, things people with heightened anxiety suffer from.

Thinking and concentrating can be more difficult while making eye contact

Sometimes we all need to break eye contact to put our thoughts into coherent sentences. This tendency may be more pronounced in people who aren’t natural orators.

Research shows you’re able to speak more thoughtfully when looking away from a person. A Japanese study found participants struggled to find the right verbs for a language task when making eye contact with faces on a screen. The scientists asserted that eye contact drains our cognitive resources needed for other tasks — the more complicated your story (or lie?), the more difficult it will be for you maintain eye contact.

Is your brain inflamed? How to know and what to do

Do you have any of the symptoms of brain inflammation, also called neuroinflammation, listed below? Brain inflammation doesn’t hurt like an inflamed ankle would. Instead it causes various symptoms, depending on the person, including:

• Brain fog
• Unclear thoughts
• Low brain endurance
• Slow and varied mental speeds
• Loss of brain function after trauma
• Brain fatigue and poor mental focus after meals
• Brain fatigue promoted by systemic inflammation
• Brain fatigue promoted by chemicals, scents, and pollutants

The brain can become inflamed like the rest of the body, although the brain has its own immune system. It’s important to take brain inflammation seriously because it can rapidly degenerate the brain, raising the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other brain degenerative diseases. In fact, scientists have discovered that brain aging is more related to the brain’s immune cells than the neurons, as previously thought.

Learning how to spot and dampen brain inflammation can help you enjoy better brain function, slow the aging process, and lower your risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

What causes brain inflammation

Brain inflammation can be caused by inflammation in the body, such as from chronic joint pain, infections, leaky gut or gut inflammation, or an unmanaged autoimmune condition. Inflammation in the body releases immune cells called cytokines that activate inflammation in the brain.

This is now being cited as a primary cause in many cases of chronic depression, such as in cases where people don’t respond to antidepressants. This is because the medications do not address brain inflammation.

The brain’s immune system

At the root of brain inflammation are microglia cells, the brain’s immune cells. They were once considered simply to be glue that held neurons together, but newer research shows how important to brain function they are. In fact, they outnumber neurons ten to one.

When the brain is healthy the microglia dispose of dead neurons, beta amyloid plaque, and other debris that interfere with healthy communication between neurons. They also facilitate healthy neuron metabolism and neuron synapses.

However, when something triggers inflammation in the brain, the glia cells switch into attack mode.

This hinders communication between neurons so they fire more slowly, creating symptoms such as brain fog, slower mental speed, slower recall, and slower reflexes.

Brain inflammation also shuts down energy production in the neurons, so brain endurance drops, making it harder to read, work, or concentrate for any length of time. This also leads to depression.

In the long run, chronic neuroinflammation results in neuron death and brain degenerative disorders.

Factors that cause brain inflammation

Many things can cause brain inflammation. If you have symptoms of brain inflammation, you want to address any of these factors to restore health to your brain.

• Diabetes and high blood sugar
• Poor circulation, lack of exercise, chronic stress, heart failure, respiratory issues, anemia
• Previous head trauma
• Neurological autoimmunity
• Eating gluten when you are gluten intolerant
• Poor brain antioxidant status
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• Environmental pollutants
• Systemic inflammation
• Inflammatory bowel conditions
• Leaky blood-brain barrier

The blood-brain barrier and brain inflammation

One of the biggest risks to triggering brain inflammation is a leaky blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is a thin lining that surrounds the brain and is designed to allow only nano-sized particles in or out as needed.

However, like the gut, it can become damaged and “leaky,” allowing foreign invaders in to trigger the microglia. Although the blood-brain barrier degrades easily, it can also regenerate through dietary and lifestyle modifications similar to how you can repair leaky gut. For instance, high stress degrades the blood-brain barrier, but normalizing stress can allow it to repair. Simply stabilizing your blood sugar and stress levels, removing inflammatory foods, addressing chronic health issues, and taking powerful antioxidants can help restore the blood-brain barrier.

Factors that can break down the blood-brain barrier

• Chronic stress
• Alcohol
• Elevated blood sugar and diabetes
• Chronic environmental toxic exposure
• Elevated homocysteine from B vitamin deficiency
• Poor diet and antioxidant status
• Systemic inflammation

Taming brain inflammation

Brain inflammation can be caused by a food intolerance, lack of sleep, gut infections, hypothyroidism, extreme stress, autoimmunity, systemic inflammation, and other factors. If you start to feel your “head clear” when addressing brain inflammation, that’s a sign you’re on the right track. Although various botanical flavonoids can address brain inflammation, you still need to address the underlying cause of inflammation.

Compounds that have been shown to help dampen brain inflammation in addition to addressing underlying cases are:

• Apigenin
• Luteolin
• Baicalein
• Resveratrol
• Rutin
• Catechin
• Curcumin

Dose depends on the degree of brain inflammation. Ask my office for high-quality, extremely bioavailable forms of nutraceuticals that help dampen brain inflammation, as well for guidance on how to address underlying causes.

The body makes best drugs for depression and memory

We all want to feel good, and many people turn to outside sources to produce those feelings. Those sources can include alcohol, prescription medications (anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs), illegal drugs, food, and other sources that ultimately rob of us health.

However, it only takes a little bit of work to produce our own feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins. Endorphins not only make us feel better, they’re also very beneficial to the body and the brain and usually work in conjunction with other beneficial chemicals our bodies make.

Endorphins are important to immunity and neurology and some studies suggest chronic conditions are in part a result of low endorphins. Low endorphins are linked with alcohol fetal exposure, alcoholism, drug abuse, anxiety, depression, and chronic psychological stress.

How endorphins help the brain

Endorphins are neurotransmitters that facilitate communication between neurons. They also interact with opioid receptors in the brain in a similar way to morphine or codeine to reduce our perception of pain.

But they also do so much more. The most beloved benefit of endorphins is they produce feelings of euphoria. This is the “high” people get from exercise.

They regulate appetite hormones and sex hormones and enhance immunity. They also help with fibromyalgia, headaches, and chronic headaches.

Best of all, endorphins have been shown to help reduce depression.

Here are some ways to boost your endorphin levels:

• Strenuous exercise. High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great way to boost endorphins and other chemicals that help your brain, including brain derived neurotrophic factor and nitric oxide. The beauty of HIIT is that it can be adapted to your fitness level.
• Acupuncture or massage therapy
• Sex
• Meditation
• Laughter
• Healthy socialization
• Play

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and brain health

Another weapon against depression you already have in your arsenal is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is an anti-inflammatory brain chemical that promotes growth of new neurons. It plays a major role in memory formation and storage, and has also been shown to play a role in relieving depression.

The most well-known way to boost BDNF is through high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Even just a few minutes a day of HIIT can boost BDNF levels, meaning you don’t have to be a hardcore athlete to reap the benefits of this brain chemical.

Whereas a post-exercise endorphin rush gives you immediate and obvious results, the key to promoting BDNF levels is consistent exercise that gets your heart rate up — best brain results from BDNF occur a few months after consistent exercise. Shoot for an exercise program that you can do every day and keep going lifelong.

Below are a few ways endorphins, BDNF, and other chemicals the body naturally makes can improve your brain health:

• Prevention of cognitive decline
• Protects you from neurodegeneration that causes disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Alleviates depression
• Boosts intelligence
• Improves learning and memory
• Improves creative thinking
• Grows new neurons in the hippocampus, the seat of learning and memory in the brain
• Prevents addiction
• Increases pain threshold
• Improves attention
• Reduces inflammation
• Improves brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to learn new things

Endorphins and BDNF are just a couple of factors to consider when you are looking to manage depression, anxiety, fatigue, memory loss, brain fog, and other brain-based symptoms.

Other things to consider include gluten sensitivity, food intolerances, chemical intolerances, quality of diet, leaky gut, inflammation, nutritional status, brain health, and more.

For more information about managing your depression, memory loss, and other brain-based symptoms, contact my office.

Studies show botox injections impact the brain

Although millions of people receive Botox injections to reduce the lines associated with natural aging, multiple studies suggest these seemingly harmless wrinkle-reducing shots may impact brain health.

For instance, some research shows Botox manages to make its way into the central nervous system.

Additionally, studies on rat found that when the active ingredient in Botox was injected into one side of the brain it could be found on the opposite side of the brain. Even Botox injected into the rats’ whiskers showed up in the brain.

Although these studies used more potent, purified forms of the toxin and not the diluted form found in the cosmetic injections, its ability to travel into the nervous system raises concerns nevertheless.

Botox affects brain signals from hands

A Swiss study on humans also found Botox affects the areas of the brain associated with the hands. This is because the face and the hands occupy areas of the brain that neighbor one another. The researchers found that the paralyzing effect of Botox on the face inhibited sensory input to the brain in this area, thus altering brain mapping of the hands.

Researchers theorized that loss of movement in the face caused by Botox injections could affect touch sensation in both hands. They called for further studies to determine whether Botox also affects other parts of the body.

Botox impacts the brain’s ability to read facial expressions

The human brain is highly adept at reading and responding to facial expressions — it is primary to how we communicate. We instinctively mimic facial expressions in one another as a way to understand, communicate, and empathize. However, Botox erases this vital aspect of communication by paralyzing facial muscles. Researchers believe this inhibits the person’s ability to interpret the emotions of others through their facial cues.

In fact, a study in 2011 found subjects with Botox injections were less able to read the emotions of others compared to those who had received different types of fillers for wrinkle reduction. Additional research suggests Botox also makes it more difficult for a person to feel their own emotions.

In other words, Botox injections can hinder the ability to empathize, read emotions in other people, and even feel your own emotions.

Other cosmetic fillers also potentially problematic for the brain

Fillers other than Botox used to reduce the signs of aging have risks as well. For instance, some people have reported that filler injections blocked blood flow to their eyes and caused blindness. There have been about 50 reports of this happening.

Although it’s rare, fillers can also get into an artery that feeds the brain, thus causing a stroke. Four reports of this happening have been reported.

Compared to the millions of people who use fillers this means these complications are pretty rare, but users should be aware of the potential risks.

Complaint reports about Botox and fillers are common

Given the popularity and easy access to Botox and fillers, more studies should be done to evaluate their safety. As for now, anecdotal reports on beauty forums, reported complaints, and lawsuits paint a frightening picture the average person isn’t aware of.

For example, some Botox users claim they suffered from devastating brain injury, chronic pain, double vision, and difficulty breathing after receiving Botox injections.

Additional complaints on online forums include drooping eyes and eyebrows, intense pain and headaches, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, dizziness, and more.

The consumer watchdog group Public Citizen found Botox was linked to 180 life-threatening conditions, 87 hospitalizations, and 16 deaths during a 10-year period. Because Botox doesn’t have much regulation, it is believed harmful side effects go largely under reported.

Other adverse side effects from Botox that have been reported include difficulty swallowing, respiratory compromise, generalized muscle weakness, a drooping eyelid, pseudoaneurysm of the frontal branch of the temporal artery, flesh-eating disease, sarcoidal granuloma, Fournier gangrene, and abnormal curvature of the spine in the neck, and death from anaphylactic shock. 

Meditating daily stops aging brains from shrinking

Sadly, as we age our brains begin shrinking, and loss of brain tissue means loss of brain function. But there are some simple things you can do each day to prevent this. The brain is highly malleable — or plastic — meaning it readily grows and adapts to input and stimulation. Much like a muscle, your brain operates on the “use it or lose it” principle.

Studies have found that people who have been meditating for seven to nine years had increased grey matter in sensory areas of the brain compared to control groups. It’s believed this is because meditation teaches you to be mindful of your body, breath, and physical sensations — all in an attempt to find relief from the hamster wheel that is the human mind.

But the good news is you don’t have to meditate that many years to change your brain.

Change your brain in 8 weeks of meditation

A follow-up study showed just eight weeks of daily meditation thickened many important areas of the brain, to the point where 50-year-olds were showing the same amount of grey matter as people half their age.

The areas of the brain meditating thickens include:

• Decision making and working memory
• Learning and memory
• Emotional regulation
• Empathy
• The ability to see things from different perspectives
• Neurotransmitter production

Meditating shrinks the brain’s fear center

Equally important, meditating shrinks the amygdala, the area of the brain that generates fear, anxiety, and aggression. This results in reduced stress levels overall.

The participants in the study were told to meditate 40 minutes a day. However, they still showed good results with an average meditation time of 27 minutes. Other studies show even just 15 to 20 minutes a day produces significant positive changes.

Meditating before you exercise can reduce depression better than either exercise or meditation alone, finds another study.

Mindfulness practices that benefit brain health

Meditation isn’t the only mindfulness practice to improve brain function and health. Although its benefits are profound enough to make it a daily routine, also consider these additions:

Yoga. Yoga is a proven way to improve brain function and stave off memory loss. A study had one group of people do 15 minutes a day of brain training exercises and a weekly one-hour brain training class. The second group did a yoga class one hour a week and 15 minutes a day of meditation.

After 12 weeks, both groups showed enhanced cognitive function. However, the yoga group also reported more elevated moods and improvement in “visuospatial” memory, which is important for balance, depth perception, and the ability to navigate the world.

The yoga group also showed better focus and the ability to multitask.

Tai Chi. A recent study found tai chi is very protective and supportive of brain function. Study subjects did one hour of tai chi twice a week for 12 weeks. After the study, they had significantly higher levels of brain compounds that indicated the generation of new neurons and improved plasticity — the ability of the brain to make new neuronal connections and pathways. Both of these functions are paramount in protecting the brain from aging.

Tai chi has another brain benefit — it promotes better balance. Can you stand on one foot easily? How about with your eyes closed? You should be able to. Poor balance is an indication the cerebellum, the area of the brain responsible for balance and coordination, is degenerating too quickly.

A degenerating cerebellum does more than make you unsteady — it also contributes to more rapid degeneration of the rest of your brain.

One of the primary functions of the cerebellum is to serve as a gatekeeper, regulating information that goes to the rest of the brain. When the cerebellum degenerates, too much sensory input floods the brain.

Symptoms may include:

• Restless leg syndrome
• Tinnitus
• Hypersensitivity to stress, light, and sound
• Depression
• Fatigue
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Poor metabolic function…
• …and other symptoms you wouldn’t normally associate with poor balance.

Tai chi is a Chinese art based on a series of slow, flowing motions and breathing exercises and has been shown to be excellent for improving balance.

Other ways to slow or prevent accelerated brain degeneration include daily exercise, an anti-inflammatory diet, functional neurology rehabilitation and optimization of the brain, and functional medicine protocols to reduce inflammation and reverse chronic health disorders.

Ask my office for more advice on how we can help you prevent Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Fecal microbiota transplants improve autism symptoms

The exploding rates of autism, which forecasts a surge in adults with the disorder in the coming decade, has pushed the boundaries of autism research. Now, dramatic results from a 2019 study show a significant and lasting reduction in autism symptoms among children who underwent daily Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) for seven to eight weeks.

FMT involves transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy, carefully-screened donor to the colon of the recipient. It is successfully used to treat colitis and Clostridium difficile and is being investigated for other disorders, including obesity and autism spectrum disorders.

Autism rates have more than doubled in the last 20 years and continue to rise, along with other childhood brain development disorders. This rise is increasingly being traced to imbalances in the immune system that affect brain development, and immune health is increasingly being traced to gut bacteria, or the gut microbiome.

In other words, gut health profoundly impacts brain health. In the developing child’s brain, poor gut health can trigger imbalances in brain development and myriad symptoms, including symptoms of autism. In addition to brain-based symptoms, many children with autism also struggle with gastrointestinal symptoms and poor digestive function. Both parents and researchers note a correlation between gut symptoms and autism symptoms.

Past research has shown children improved after taking an antibiotic that killed off “bad” gut bacteria, however the improvements were temporary, even with concerted probiotic use.

The 2019 Australian study used FMT on children with severe autism and monitored the effects two years later. The two-year follow up showed very promising results.

Parents reported their children’s autism symptoms steadily declined throughout the treatment period and during the following two years. Professional follow-up evaluations showed an average reduction rate of autism symptoms of 45 percent. They also showed an almost 60 percent reduction of gut symptoms.

Prior to beginning treatment, researchers found that the subjects with autism had poor gut bacteria diversity and were missing key beneficial bacterial strains, such as Bifidobacteria and Prevotella. Because of how profoundly gut bacteria impact the nervous and immune systems, researchers believe this affects how their brains develop.

Study subjects were first treated with an antibiotic, a bowel cleanse, and a stomach acid suppressant. Then they were given FMT daily for seven or eight weeks.

Follow-up stool analysis showed the FMT treatments substantially increased gut microbiome diversity and introduced beneficial strains of bacteria. At the two-year follow up, both these markers had gone on to improve.

The research team is now working on optimizing dose and duration for clinical use one day. They are also working on a trial using the therapy for adults with autism spectrum disorders.

Although we can, thankfully, influence our gut bacteria, we nevertheless come into life with gut microbiome “signatures” that start before birth, as maternal gut microbiome diversity is a factor. C-section delivery, reduced or lack of breastfeeding, antibiotic use in childhood, and diets high in junk foods and low in fiber all play a role in establishing unhealthy gut microbiomes.

Although FMT is not yet clinically available, it points to how vital gut health and a healthy gut microbiome are to the developing child’s brain. A key component in a healthy and diverse gut microbiome is a diet diverse and ample in plant fiber — people should be eating primarily vegetables at every meal. Children should be eating 20 to 40 grams of fiber a day (depending on age) and adults should be eating 25 to 40 grams a day.

The earlier you start your children on a vegetable-heavy diet the more readily they will eat these foods as toddlers and children.

The Hazda people of Tanzania, one of the last remaining hunter gatherer populations on the planet, eat 100 to 150 grams of plant fiber a day and exhibit one of the healthiest gut microbiomes on the planet; Americans have the worst.

Aim for about seven to 10 servings a day of produce. One serving is a half-cup of chopped produce, or one cup of leafy greens. Because sugary foods can be inflammatory, opt for veggies and fruits that are low in sugar and unlikely to destabilize your blood sugar.

Adults should eat at least three to four servings of produce per meal – that’s 1.5 to 2 cups of chopped veggies or 3 cups of leafy greens. Or break that up into five meals if you eat more frequently to stabilize low blood sugar. Children’s needs vary with age.

Work your way up gradually with fiber consumption if you’re not used to eating it — too much at once will overwhelm the digestive system and cause problems. Increase your daily fiber intake by 1 to 2 grams a day. Equally important is to avoid foods and chemicals that promote bad bacteria and kill good bacteria, such as junk foods, sugars, and the use of toxic cleaning chemicals.

Ask my office for more ways to support your gut microbiome.

How grief and heartbreak can turn into physical illness

We've all heard the term "Died of a broken heart," but most don't realize it's actually possible. Intense stress brought about by profound grief can sometimes damage the heart and spike inflammation in the body.

Grief is a powerful emotion, rendering many of us unable to function normally for a time. Mortality rates in those who are widowed is highest in the first six months after the death of a spouse and decreases over time. Heart disease accounts for the majority of these deaths.

We've known for a long time that inflammation is damaging to the body. It's at the root of major health disorders such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, and autoimmunity. Inflammation is also at the root of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

A recent study shows us that a broken heart isn't just an emotional metaphor, but can be the result of physiological changes that happen when we are under intense emotional stress.

The study delved into how emotional stress increases inflammation. Researchers found that grief can increase systemic inflammation and lower heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of how one's body responds to stress. Lower HRV and raised inflammation are risk factors for heart-related illness and death.

Subjects who had recently lost a spouse and reported "elevated grief" were found to have inflammation levels 17 percent higher than those who didn't feel as strongly, and the top third had levels an impressive 54 percent higher than the bottom third. Simply put, grief can kill us through inflammation.

The findings applied to both women and men, and in particular for older adults.

A second study looked into "broken heart syndrome," a rare but serious condition in which the heart weakens and bulges following extreme stress such as grief. The disorder mainly strikes women over 55, and while sometimes fatal, tends to resolve over time.

The researchers found the syndrome is linked to how the brain controls the nervous system under stress.

Normally, the sympathetic nervous system ramps you up to cope with stress by increasing heart rate and respiration. Once the stress is gone, the parasympathetic nervous system calms the body back down to normal levels.

The researchers found that in subjects who had survived broken heart syndrome, signaling was deficient in key parts of the brain associated with emotion and stress, resulting in a lack of calming after the grief.

Simply put, a broken heart may start in the brain.

Support your body through grief

While we all must take time to move through grief, there are ways to make the process easier on your body.

Compounds for pain and stress relief. Grief can result in physical pain. Physical and emotional pain are processed by the same area of the brain. These natural pain-relief compounds may help ease both:

• Vitamin D
• Essential fatty acids such as cold-water fish oil
• White willow bark, a natural anti-inflammatory reportedly similar to aspirin
• Herbal adrenal adaptogens such as rhodiola and ashwagandha

Reduce inflammation. While ongoing grief can keep inflammation levels high, do your best to calm it with these methods:

• Avoid high sugars and carbs
• Avoid processed foods, especially commercial seed oils
• Keep blood sugar stable by eating frequently enough, and eating enough protein and healthy fats such as cold water fish, nuts, and supplemental omega 3.
• Eat plenty of vegetables and keep fruit (sugars!) to a minimum
• Take resveratrol and curcumin in combination
• Support glutathione levels by taking s-acetyl glutathione or its precursors such as n-acetyl cysteine
• Exercise regularly but no so intensely that you raise inflammation levels
• Drink plenty of filtered water

Allow your body to rest. Grief is exhausting, so give your body support with the following:

• Give your body plenty of time to sleep
• Avoid working too much in an effort to hide from emotions
• Avoid drinking too much alcohol
• Practice daily stress-reduction habits such as mellow yoga, stretching, or chi gong

We all must grieve, but when grief leads to losing a sense of life's meaning, it can become dangerous. If you are under intense emotional stress, contact my office to find out if your body's response is becoming dangerous, and learn how to mitigate the effects.

Teen depression explodes along with smart phone use

Although depression continues to rise among the population as a whole, it is rising most dramatically among teens, and smart phones may be largely to blame. Major depression diagnoses among teens have risen more than 50 percent in the last decade. While academic challenges and relationship woes can promote depression, scientists blame the precipitous rise on those evil twins, the smart phones and social media. Considering almost 20 percent of people suffering from treatment-resistant depression attempt suicide, this is concerning.

Also, in functional neurology and functional medicine we know other factors burden the teenage brain and contribute to depression. A rise in childhood brain-based disorders and neuroinflammation are also at play — treatment-resistant depression is increasingly being understood to be a problem of an inflamed brain.

Researchers found a correlation between smart phone use and depression. The more time teens spend on their phones the more depressed they are. Increased smart phone usage also raises possible exposure to the emotional anguish of cyber bullying.

Excessive smart phone use triggers another behavior that plays into depression: sleep deprivation, which has been linked to mood disorders, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.

Compared to pre-smart phone days, teens are isolating themselves thanks to technology. This is not news to parents who grew up in a different era.

Today’s teens are spending more time in front of a screen instead of with each other hanging out — virtual hang outs have taken the place of roller rinks, bowling alleys, basketball courts, swimming pools, and secluded gathering spots.

Fewer teens work part time jobs and date. In fact, 56 percent of teens date today compared to 85 percent 30 to 50 years ago. (The good news is teen births are down.)

Research shows these changes in teenage behavior and emotional states happened rather abruptly around 2012, which coincides with the year when teens with smart phones increased to more than 50 percent for the first time.

Meanwhile, rates of teen depression and suicide have exploded since 2011. And now, research shows three out of four teens owned a smart phone by 2017.

Unfortunately, as clearly addicted to their smart phones and online hang outs as teens are, this modern collective habit is making them unhappier than previous generations. Research shows a correlation between time spent on screens and social media and degrees of unhappiness — depression rates among girls is more than double than among boys. Likewise, the less time kids spend on their phones and tablets, the happier they are.

In fact, teens who spend three or more hours a day in sucked into a virtual reality raise their risk of suicide by more than 30 percent.

Childhood brain development disorders and teen depression

It’s easy to pin all of teens’ mental health woes on smart phones. While they clearly play a role, today’s teen are hit with a double whammy: industrialization has significantly impacted the human brain, and young people’s developing nervous systems are the most vulnerable.

The rates of childhood developmental disorders has exploded in the last 20 years, including ADHD, autism, OCD, and learning disabilities. These disorders are increasingly being linked to the effects of environmental toxins, poor diets, and stressful lifestyles in both pregnant women and children.

Although it’s up to parents to work with their teens to help them engage in activities other than Snapchat and Instagram, functional neurology and functional medicine help address the metabolic health of the young brain.

This involves addressing not only neurological imbalances that may have been in place before birth, but also inflammation, blood sugar imbalances, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle. After all, depression is increasingly being recognized as an inflammatory disorder.

Metabolic issues to look out for with brain development disorders include:

• Inflammatory foods and food intolerances
• Chemical sensitivities
• Chronic infections — bacterial, fungal, or viral
• Digestive issues and leaky gut
• Autoimmune disease (when the immune system attacks and destroys tissue in the body, which can include the brain)

The types of brain rehabilitation a child needs depends on their history and a functional neurology examination. Together with nutritional and lifestyle protocols, we develop functional neurology rehabilitation exercises tailored to the individual’s neurological needs.

Many families notice rapid and significant changes in their teens’ behavior, mood, sociability, learning, and other brain-based signs.

Ask my office how functional neurology can help if your teen suffers from depression.

Fail a sobriety test while sober? Your brain is in trouble

Even if you don’t drink or, heaven forbid, drive drunk, it’s still worth conducting a sobriety test on yourself while sober. This can give you valuable information about your brain health and your risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s. This is because the sobriety test measures the function of your cerebellum, the area of the brain most commonly known for its role in balance and coordination. This area of the brain is most compromised while under the influence of alcohol. However, the cerebellum is also very vulnerable to the ravages of modern diets, stress, and lifestyles.

Poor cerebellum function does a lot more than compromise your balance. It also can raise anxiety, cause insomnia, make you sensitive to sound and light, accelerate degeneration of the rest of your brain, and skew your metabolic and hormonal function. The cerebellum is basically the gatekeeper of input to your brain. When its function starts to fail the brain becomes overwhelmed with excess sensory input. This keeps your brain and body in a state of red alert, or chronic stress.

Sobriety test exercises that can tell you whether you’re in trouble. If you fail your sobriety test while sober, the exercises used in the test can also help you improve your brain function and health.

Sobriety test exercises:

One-leg stand test: Stand with your feet together and arms at your side. Keep your arms at your side during this test, do not raise them for balance. Raise one foot off the ground and hold it there while looking at it and counting slowly (one one thousand, two one thousand…).

If your cerebellum is healthy you should be able to stand comfortably on just one leg while doing this exercise. If you sway or start to lose your balance you know your cerebellum is compromised. Practice this exercise several times a day to improve your brain health.

To further challenge yourself, stand near a wall or something you can grab in case you start to fall. Then perform the exercise with your eyes closed. If you get good at that, then perform the exercise while standing on a piece of foam to make it more challenging, and then with your eyes closed.

Heel-toe walk test: Another common sobriety test is the heel-toe walk, also called the walk-and-turn.

Keep your arms at your side during this test, do not raise them for balance. Walk heel to toe on an imaginary line for nine steps, pivot, and walk heel to toe backwards for nine steps.

Although it’s not part of the sobriety test, we recommend you first begin by simply standing heel to toe before trying to walk. Stand next to a wall or something you can grab in case you start to fall. Can you stand heel to toe with your eyes closed? How about on a piece of foam?

You should be able to perform this test smoothly and without wobbling, swaying, or tipping. If you can’t, this means your cerebellum is compromised and you need to practice this several times a day to slowly improve the health and function of your cerebellum.

Although it’s not part of the sobriety test, another way to test your cerebellum is to stand with your feet together and close your eyes. If you sway more to one side, it may indicate that side of your cerebellum is more compromised.

Other signs or poor cerebellum function include dizziness, nausea in cars or on boats, or nausea or dizziness when seeing things move swiftly such as in movies.

Don’t overdo it cerebellar exercises

It’s common for people with cerebellar dysfunction to become easily nauseous or fatigued. Do not push your brain past its capacity by overdoing these exercises. Just a few minutes a few times a day should have you rapidly seeing improvement. If you start to feel nauseous or dizzy, simply stop and allow your brain to rest. Try the exercise for a shorter time next time. You want to exercise your neurons without overtaxing them.

Why good balance is so important for your brain

The cerebellum doesn’t just manage balance and coordination. Newer research shows it also plays a role in emotions, memory, language, planning, and abstract thinking.

When the cerebellum loses function, it starts to fail at gating information to the rest of the brain, thus overloading the brain with more information than it can manage.

This causes symptoms such as:

• Anxiety
• Irritability
• Emotional reactivity
• Insomnia due to a racing mind
• Light sensitivity
• Blood pressure changes
• Digestive issues

Other signs of a damaged cerebellum include:

• Loss of coordination of motor movement
• Inability to judge distance and know when to stop
• Inability to perform rapid alternating movements
• Staggering, wide-based walking
• Movement tremors
• Tendency toward falling
• Slurred speech
• Weak muscles
• Abnormal eye movements

Is my cerebellum compromised?

Functional neurology and functional medicine offer ways to restore cerebellar function through diet, lifestyle, and customized brain rehabilitation exercises. For instance, the cerebellum is extremely vulnerable to a sensitivity to gluten, dairy, or other foods, but gluten especially. If you have poor cerebellar function, please ask my office about ways to determine if your diet is a factor in your rapid brain degeneration.

Also, please ask my office for information about how we can use functional neurology to identify your areas of compromised brain function and more targeted ways to improve brain health and lower your risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Memory slipping? This brain chemical may be low

If your memory is starting to slip, if you get lost on common routes while driving, and if you find your brain isn’t working the way it used to, it’s important to know about the brain chemical, or neurotransmitter, called acetylcholine. Early signs of poor acetylcholine activity are a red flag for dementia and Alzheimer’s. In fact, the symptoms of acetylcholine deficiency and early dementia are the same.

Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter tasked with converting short-term memories to long-term. This happens in an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which also happens to be the area of the brain that degenerates in dementia and Alzheimer’s.

See if any of these signs of poor acetylcholine apply to you:

• Loss of visual and photographic memory
• Loss of verbal memory
• Memory lapses
• Impaired creativity
• Diminished comprehension
• Difficulty calculating numbers
• Difficulty recognizing objects and faces
• Slowness of mental responsiveness
• Difficulty with directions and spatial orientation

Other symptoms of poor acetylcholine activity include forgetting common words, forgetting what you were talking about in the middle of a conversation, difficulty calculating numbers — such as counting backwards by sevens, and slow mental processing.

Low acetylcholine also can manifest as poor spatial orientation or memory. This can be seen in losing your sense of direction or getting lost on well-traveled routes.

It’s important not to laugh these off as senior moments if they are happening regularly. They are serious red flags that your brain is radically declining in health and function.

In addition to applying functional neurology protocols and principles, it’s useful to see whether supplementing with acetylcholine can help you. If you have a hereditary risk of Alzheimer’s this can also be a good ally in your tool kit. Even if your memory is fine and your risk is low, supporting acetylcholine can optimize your brain function for better performance.

Many of the nutritional and botanical compounds that support healthy acetylcholine activity have also been shown to help protect the brain against the plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease.

Another benefit of supplementation is the brain does not become tolerant to compounds that support acetylcholine — it is something your brain will benefit from ongoing. With some supplements or drugs, you need to raise the dose or take breaks in order to have the same effect. However, with compounds that support acetylcholine the opposite can happen. Stimulating the receptors with acetylcholine compounds makes them more responsive and you may find you need less supplementation as time goes on for the same effects.

Here are some compounds that have been shown effective in boost acetylcholine activity:

L-Huperzine A: One of the most effective compounds for poor acetylcholine activity, and to boost memory and cognition.

Alpha GPC: An easily absorbable choline to raise acetylcholine levels that has been shown to improve cognition. It has also been shown to help with stroke recovery.

L-acetyl carnitine: An amino acid that activates acetylcholine receptors and improves cognition and delays the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Pantothenic acid: This B vitamin (B-5) helps increase acetylcholine levels in the brain.

Acetylcholine dosing

If you take compounds to support acetylcholine, the amount you take does not depend on your body weight but instead on your degree of need. Start with the recommended dosage and gradually increase until you notice a benefit. You can see whether even more continues to help you improve or if you have found your ideal dose. Too much can cause negative symptoms such as muscle cramps, nausea, and increased gut motility.

Signs that it may be helping you include improved memory and mental clarity.

How often you need to take it is also individual, whether it’s once a day or three times a day.

If taking acetylcholine makes you “crash” and develop fatigue, this does not necessarily mean it’s bad for you. Instead, it may mean those neurons are so fragile that acetylcholine support pushed them over the edge. If this happens, you may benefit from very small doses to begin with. If you know your brain is fragile to start with, it’s wise to start with small doses anyway.

If taking acetylcholine immediately makes you feel nauseous or even vomit, this is a red flag you may need to support your vagus nerve, the nerve that runs between the brain and the gut.

Foods rich in acetylcholine

If you are a vegan or vegetarian, acetylcholine support may help you because dietary sources of acetylcholine are primarily found in animal foods:

• Liver and organ meats
• Egg yolk
• Beef
• Tofu
• Nuts
• Cream
• Milk with fat (not non-fat or skim milk)
• Fatty cheeses

It’s important to get enough acetylcholine in your diet because if you don’t, your brain will break down healthy brain tissue to supply itself with the compounds needed to make acetylcholine: phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylserine.

Support general brain health

Although acetylcholine support can be great for supporting your memory and cognition, it is not a magic bullet. Your brain still needs a good supply of oxygen from healthy circulation, a steady source of energy from a diet that keeps blood sugar stable, and the right stimulation.

If you’re not exercising regularly, actively challenging your brain, and supporting your brain through a healthy diet and lifestyle, then you will experience a decline in brain health regardless of what supplements you take.

Ask my office how functional neurology can help you improve your memory and lower your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.