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Archives for April 2015

The Anxiety Summit Season 3 speakers and topics

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20+ of the World’s Experts and Opinion Leaders Share Powerful Nutritional Solutions for Your Anxiety, So You Can Feel Calm, Joyful and On Top Of The World Again!
Join Food Mood Expert and Certified Nutritionist Trudy Scott as She Interviews Researchers, Doctors, Psychiatrists, Nutritionists, Consumer Advocates, Psychologists.
Discover the Very Powerful Connection Between Food and Mood!
Hear the Science and Learn Practical Tools You Can Start to Use NOW!
Be Empowered, Take Charge and Feel Hopeful!
Practitioners… Get Solutions to Help Your Clients and Patients.

There will be a speaker blog for each speaker with links to studies, snippets from the interview, related articles and blogs, videos if they are available and a speaker gift. This will be a place for you to comment and ask your questions during the summit.

Here is the complete speaker line-up and some snippets from a few speakers.

Wednesday, May 6th
Trudy Scott CN, “New 2015 Food/Nutrient Research on Anxiety and Speaker Highlights”
Dr. Daniel Amen MD, “The Brain Warriors Way to Attacking Anxiety, Depression and Aging”

Here are a few snippets from my wonderful interview with Dr. Daniel Amen, THE brain doctor!

  • women’s brains are more active and we make less serotonin
  • testosterone boosts GABA and sugar consumption can drop your testosterone by 20%
  • benzodiazapines reduce blood flow to the brain (and we know that they can cause pseudo-dementia
  • Amen proposed that the BCP (birth control pill) is likely the reason that 23% of women 28-60 are taking anti-depressants
  • eat real food, plenty of organic produce, healthy fats and grass-fed red meat

Thursday, May 7th
Julia Rucklidge PhD, “What if… Nutrition could Treat Anxiety and Depression?”
Rebecca Katz MS, “Your Brain on Food: The Science and Alchemy of Yum for Alleviating Anxiety!”

Here are a few snippets from my interview with Rebecca Katz, the queen of yum!

  • Pumpkin seeds are “nature’s smallest antidepressant next to a snowflake”
  • Pumpkin seeds are a source of iron which has been shown to boost cognitive performance, especially in women of childbearing years. Iron is also a co-factor for making our neurotransmitters
  • Parlsey and mint are so accessible and eating them “is like eating oxygen” (I recently shared the delicious pomegranate olive mint salsa recipe from Rebecca’s new Healthy Mind Cookbook

Friday, May 8th
Summer Bock, “Sauerkraut for Gut Healing and Reducing Anxiety”
Dr. Peter Osborne DC, “Grainflammation – How Grain Consumption Contributes to Anxiety and other Mood Disorders”

Saturday, May 9th
Lierre Keith, “Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet”
Kaayla T. Daniel PhD, “Real Food for Anxiety: Butter, Broth and Beyond”

Sunday, May 10th
Dr. Allison Siebecker ND, “Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth and Anxiety”
Ann Louise Gittleman PhD, CNS, “The Parasite/Anxiety Connection”

Here are a few snippets from my interview with the legendary Ann Louise Gittleman PhD, CNS, grande dame of nutrition!

Monday, May 11th
Dr. Eva Selhub MD, “How to Heal Anxiety with Nature and the Body, not just with the Mind”
Dr. Jill Carnahan MD, “Is Toxic Mold the Hidden Cause of Your Anxiety?”

Tuesday, May 12th
Joe Tatta DPT, “Nutritional Influences on Anxiety and Musculoskeletal Pain”
Magdalena Wszelaki, “Foods to balance your hormones and ease anxiety – part 1”

Wednesday, May 13th
Dr. Benjamin Lynch ND, “How Methylfolate can make you Feel Worse and even Cause Anxiety, and What to do about it”
Magdalena Wszelaki, “Foods to balance your hormones and ease anxiety – part 2”

Thursday, May 14th
Mira Calton CN and Jayson Calton PhD, “Micronutrients for Eliminating Anxiety”
Yasmina Ykelenstam, “Histamine-containing Foods: their Role in Anxiety, Depression and Schizophrenia – part 1”

Friday, May 15th
Dr. Peter Bongiorno ND, “Serotonin and Anxiety, Happiness, Digestion and our Hormones”
Yasmina Ykelenstam, “Histamine-containing Foods: their Role in Anxiety, Depression and Schizophrenia – part 1”

Saturday, May 16th
Karla A Maree CNC, “Pyroluria, Amino Acids and Anxiety: Real Cases, Real Solutions”
Trudy Scott CN, “Pyroluria, Amino Acids and Anxiety: Troubleshooting when you are not getting results”

Sunday, May 17th
Dr. Kim D’Eramo DO, “How to use MindBody Medicine to Reverse Anxiety in 3 Minutes or Less”
Lebby Salinas, The Fooducator®, “How Gluten Elimination Healed Me and Eliminated my Anxiety”

Monday, May 18th – you’ll vote for your favorites to be replayed

Tuesday, May 19th
Dan Stratford, “My Anxiety-Zinc Story and the Message of Hope We Offer”
Trudy Scott CN, “Closing call: 30+ Nutritional & Biochemical Causes/Solutions and Recommended Supplements”

Wednesday, May 20th  you’ll vote for your favorites to be replayed

I have not yet interviewed Dr. Ben Lynch ND, on “How too much methyfolate may actually make you more anxious”. [4/24/15 interview has now been done]

Nor have I interviewed Dr. Peter Bongiorno ND, on “Serotonin and Anxiety, Happiness, Digestion and our Hormones” [4/24/15 interview has now been done]

Let me know if you have questions you’d like me to ask these doctors.

I hope you can join us! And do let us know which speakers and topics are of particular interest in the comment section below.

The Anxiety Summit site has officially launched! Yay! You can now see all the incredible speakers and topics at www.theanxietysummit.com

I am just so excited to kick this off Wednesday May 6 at 9am PST. It will run thru May 20 with 2 speakers per day available for viewing at no charge.

You will, of course, have the option to upgrade and purchase digital audios or digital audios/transcripts. And now for the first time we’re offering physical CDs with audios/transcripts.

This will be over 25 hours of top-notch anxiety nutritional solutions from people I have hand-picked! Plus 3 talks I will be doing on new research, amino acid and pyroluria troubleshooting, 60+ nutritional causes of anxiety and the supplements I recommend.

If you signed up for either season 1 or season 2, or pre-registered for season 3 there is no need to sign up again – you will get the season 3 daily emails announcing speakers, gifts, fun drawings and special offers.  If you’re not sure if you are signed up, you can sign up again no problem. If you use the same email address you won’t get duplicate emails.

Register here www.theanxietysummit.com 

 

Oxytocin, social anxiety, pyroluria and autism

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autism-awareness

I recently blogged about the possible connection between oxytocin, social anxiety, pyroluria and depression and would like to share that there is also a connection between autism, low oxytocin and social anxiety, and possibly pyroluria too.

It’s Autism Awareness Month so I’d like to share a video from Dr. Kurt Woeller D.O., an integrative medicine physician and biomedical autism specialist. He is also a lecturer, educator, and experienced practicing clinician offering specialized diagnostic testing and treatment for individuals with complex medical conditions like autism, mental health disorders, multiple sclerosis, and other chronic health conditions.

Dr. Woeller shares how helpful oxytocin is for social anxiety, facial recognition and voice recognition in individuals with autism and Asperger’s syndrome

An interesting therapy for certain individuals on the autism spectrum is something called oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced in our bodies and it has a wide range of effects. When a woman is in labor, oxytocin helps with uterine contractions so it is useful for the delivery of the baby. When a mother is breastfeeding her newborn, oxytocin can be released and it is felt that oxytocin helps with mother to child bonding that occurs with breastfeeding.

This is important for human to human interaction. Oxytocin is also released during physical contact between two people, and we know it is released in large amounts particularly during sexual intercourse.

As a therapy, oxytocin has been very helpful particularly for social anxiety. There are a couple of other effects that are interesting with oxytocin. Oxytocin seems to help with facial cue recognition. That enables us to tell the difference between a happy face, sad face, inquisitive face, etc. It also helps with voice cue recognition as well.

They did a study with adults on the autism spectrum and who had Asperger’s as well and they gave them an IV infusion of oxytocin and then measured their response over a two week period of time. What they found was that the individuals that received the oxytocin did much better at looking at pictures of different facial expressions and picking out the differences as well as listening to recordings of different voice emotional cues: an angry voice, a happy voice, etc.

Oxytocin is a useful remedy to consider particularly if the child, teenager or adult that you know has social anxiety issues or lacks the recognition of facial and/or voice cues.

Oxytocin comes as a nasal spray and does need to be prepared by a compounding pharmacy.

Usually you dose oxytocin once a day, maybe twice a day or even as needed situationally. You can give oxytocin before going into a situation where your child has a problem with social anxiety.

Dr Woeller uses the Meridian Valley Lab 24-hr urinary oxytocin test which, according to them “is the best method to capture the pulsatile peaks and valleys of oxytocin production.” You can order the test (and interpretation) via his testing site Lab Tests Plus

There are a number of studies that support the use of oxytocin for improving eye-contact, facial recognition and social anxiety:

Here is a snippet from my book The Antianxiety Food Solution on the estimates of the prevalence of pyroluria (be aware that can vary depending on the type of clients/patients a practitioner works with):

Joan Mathews-Larson, considered an expert on the subject, reports the prevalence as follows: 11 percent of the healthy population, 40 percent of adults with psychiatric disorders, 25 percent of children with psychiatric disorders, 30 percent of people with schizophrenia, and 40 percent of alcoholics.

Abram Hoffer worked primarily with schizophrenic patients, but he found pyroluria was also present in 25 percent of his nonschizophrenic patients, including adults with anxiety, depression, and alcoholism, and children with learning disorders and behavioral disorders.

According to McGinnis, pyroluria is also present in about 46 percent of people with autism spectrum disorders and 71 percent of those with Down syndrome.

I work primarily with adult women who are anxious, depressed, or both and have found that at least 80 percent of my clients with moderate to severe anxiety have a large number of pyroluria symptoms.

Based on this and the research we’re seeing on autism, social anxiety and oxytocin, I would expect that if you have pyroluria you may also have low levels of oxytocin and may need to address this, especially if you not getting complete resolution with the zinc, vitamin B6 and evening primrose oil.

 

Healthy Mind Cookbook and pomegranate olive mint salsa recipe

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healthy-mind-cookbookI’m excited to have had the opportunity of interviewing Rebecca Katz for season 3 of The Anxiety Summit. She has a new book The Healthy Mind Cookbook and I can’t wait to share our great interview.

Until then I’m sharing why I love this book and a wonderful recipe from her book, the pomegranate olive mint salsa.

Let me share why I love this recipe book:

  • It’s all about food for the brain and how to have a healthy mind and great mood!
  • I really appreciate the Culinary Pharmacy where the science behind the ingredients is shared. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know I love the science!
  • Rebecca’s focus is on yum! The recipes are delicious and the flavors just pop! I would have to say that one of my favorite sections is the Dollops chapter. Rebecca says “these dollops are snazzy surprises, acting as delicious high notes” and “many of the dollops contain healthy fats, which work to make brain-boosting vitamins and minerals more bioavailable” (the recipe below is from the Dollops chapter)
  • The food photos are positively mouth-watering (my only complaint is that there is not a photograph that goes with each recipe)
  • She has a section on Reducing Recipe Reading Anxiety, where she shares how to use these recipes as a blueprint and how not to get overwhelmed when there are ingredients you don’t recognize, can’t find or don’t really like. I’ll share below how I modified this salsa recipe to my liking and how it still turned out great.

Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa

1 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
¼ cup finely chopped mint
½ cup Kalamata or green olives, chopped
½ cup finely chopped fennel
¼ cup pomegranate seeds
¼ cup chopped walnuts, toasted
2 scallions, minced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
A pinch of sea salt

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir gently to combine. For optimal flavor, cover and let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. For taste, you may want to add another squeeze of lemon or a pinch of salt.

Makes: 2 ½ cups.
Prep time: 15 minutes.
Storage: store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.

healthy-mind-recipe1
The picture from the Healthy Mind Cook book

My comments and modifications to the recipe:

  • When I read the ingredients I was surprised about the quantity of parley and mint but used this amount anyway and the end result is incredibly yum!  
  • We didn’t have all the ingredients so we left out the pomegranates and used raisins instead, we replaced walnuts with almonds and I’m not crazy about raw scallions so just left them out – and it was still amazing! This all ties back to the section on Reducing Recipe Reading Anxiety.
healthy-mind-recipe2
The first time we made it – served on salmon

 

  • We LOVE this recipe – it has become a standard in just a few short weeks. We have had it with both salmon and with lamb chops (it’s the best mint “sauce” for lamb)
  • The salmon above was also one of the recipes in the book: Roasted Ginger Salmon, and was delightful. In this one we left out the cayenne pepper and doubled up on the ginger – I love ginger!  I’ll share this recipe in a future blog post.
  • And now we need to make it with the pomegranates!

So get shopping and chopping and enjoy a delicious salsa for your brain and taste buds!  Let us know how yours turns out and what you serve it with.