The Anxiety Summit 4

The Anxiety Summit – Nutrients that Fuel Brain Power and Reduce Anxiety

June 8, 2016 By Trudy Scott 35 Comments

Dr. Drew Ramsey, M.D., psychiatrist, farmer, author of Eat Complete, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Nutrients that Fuel Brain Power and Reduce Anxiety

The nutritional psychiatry movement and food as medicine
The impact of food on brain health, neurogenesis and BDNF
The hippocampus and your diet
The 21 nutrients that are key for brain health
The impacts of low zinc, low B12 and low choline diets
How to get these nutrients in your diet

Here are some gems from our interview:

One, oftentimes mental health symptoms stem from dietary insufficiencies. So people can feel more down, more anxious, more cloudy in their thinking based on the types of food that they’re eating. And then secondly the strongest data is in terms of prevention. So if you do have a disorder – if you have an anxiety disorder or you do really struggle in a way with your mood there’s some data that both the development of depression and the recurrence of depression – it’s very highly correlated with your dietary pattern. And so nutritional psychiatry in summary is looking at mental health through the lens of food and then adding nutrition as a tool to our toolbox as clinicians. I suspect most folks who are listening, maybe you’ve seen a mental health clinician. If you think back to that initial intake was there really detailed dietary history that understood you as an eater? And usually the answer is no. And even in my own practice until a number of years ago that was no. And I’ve trained at some of the best places when it comes to mental health.

No fault of those organizations but it feels to me that this has been a tremendous blind spot for us both in medicine and in mental health. So I’m very excited to see this growing movement. We have the new International Society of Nutrition and Psychiatry Research. There’s been tremendous interest from the American Psychiatry Association in terms of how do we get this into our treatment standards. So it’s a very exciting moment I think in mental health. And I also personally like it because it allows me to talk about some other subjects besides psychotherapy or medications with my patients. And so it’s a lot of fun to be talking about kale salads and do you know how to make ceviche and have you ever made mussels at home.

I love that Dr. Ramsey says: “I eat for a bigger hippocampus.” The hippocampus is an area of your brain involved in emotional regulation and learning. We talked about this in the context of the research published by Dr. Felice Jacka and her team: Western diet is associated with a smaller left hippocampus and anxiety

Dr. Ramsey talks about zinc and animal protein:

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

And low choline and anxiety:

And if you look especially in terms of anxiety really there’s not a lot of data, not a lot of scientific data about anxiety disorders and food. There’s some but the clearest data signal comes from the Hordaland study that looked at correlations of anxiety disorders and different nutrients and found people with lower choline had much higher rates of anxiety.

Dr. Ramsey has written some wonderful books. Here are two of them:

Eat Complete: The 21 Nutrients That Fuel Brainpower, Boost Weight Loss, and Transform Your Health

The Happiness Diet: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body

Here is Dr. Ramsey’s 7-Day Brain Boost

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

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

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

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety and the Importance of Community

June 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 24 Comments

James Maskell, creator of Functional Forum, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety and the Importance of Community

The definition of community and examples
The Functional Forum and a medication talk by Dr. Hyla Cass
The effect of social support on HPA axis function during pregnancy.
Social support for parents of autistic children
An interview with Kelly Brogan: the role of community in mental health
Community and social anxiety/introversion

Here are some gems from our interview:

…the solution to chronic disease is integrative or functional medicine because it’s preventive, it’s proactive, it’s participatory on behalf of the patient. And so our goal and our vision is big Trudy. The first thing has been to increase the supply of these functional medicine doctors because you need them and they can’t be replaced by technology. The human element is a really big part. But the first step is to get enough of those doctors and then the next step is to galvanize those practitioners into a really efficient system that takes the best use of technology. It takes the best use of human interaction and uses practitioners in the most efficient way to be able to keep and get people well as effectively as possible.

What we need is people to work together. We need collaboration, not competition. We need people to really see the gifts of everyone. And really we need it to be a meritocracy [definition: a social system in which people’s success in life depends primarily on their talents, abilities, and effort].

Here is the big take-away from James – when it comes to community:

…the real results that we see that are most powerful Trudy is where people have been able to pair getting together into a community with other healthy behaviors. So getting a group of people together to go on a run or to go on a walk together. You get the power of the community plus you get the power of everyone getting the exercise together

Just going back to your idea of supporting each other, doing something together with a common goal. Going back to the Benzo Buddies story. Imagine if that group had local groups getting together. So they’ve got this online forum supporting each other but if they got together and cooked a meal together and also meditated together and then supported each other getting off the benzodiazepine. So that would be what you’re talking about the getting together and also supporting each other online.

Here are some of the studies we discussed in the interview:

The aim of this study, Effect of social support on HPA axis function during pregnancy, was to assess whether individual differences in social support alter psychological distress and cortisol during pregnancy. There were 82 pregnant women in the study. Psychological distress and cortisol were assessed in all three trimesters. It was found that:

Pregnant women receiving inadequate social support secrete higher levels of cortisol in response to psychological distress as compared with women receiving effective social support. Social support during pregnancy may be beneficial because it decreases biological sensitivity to psychological distress, potentially shielding the fetus from the harmful effects of stress-related increases in cortisol.

New research also shows that for parents of autistic children, more social support means better health, protection against stress-induced immune problems and reduced inflammation

Dr. Hyla Cass, MD, integrative psychiatrist shares how to safely get of SSRIs and antianxiety medications and how to maintain good mental health once you are off them. She is addressing physicians but the information is valuable for anyone. This was filmed at the Functional Neuropsychiatry meeting of the Functional Forum in January 2016.

Dr Kelly Brogan, integrative psychiatrist, another past speaker on the Anxiety Summit and author of the brilliant new book “A Mind of Your Own” discusses the role community can play in mental health.

I tied community and social anxiety/introversion together with the discussion about pyroluria.

Here is the link to the next Functional Forum , a wonderful resource for integrative practitioners in the world of functional medicine (doctors, therapists, nutritionists etc).

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

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

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

The Anxiety Summit – Opening: benzos, electroshock, blueberries, sauerkraut and the vagus nerve

June 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 56 Comments

The host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution opens up the Anxiety Summit Season 4.

Anxiety Summit opening: benzos, electroshock, blueberries, sauerkraut and the vagus nerve

My vagus nerve story and how GABA helped
Why we need an integrative approach: Electroshock, LSD, BPA, zinc deficiencies, medication side-effects
An update on benzodiazepines and what we can learn from the Swiss and Blue Zones
Anxiety: new research on blueberries, gluten, sauerkraut, low vitamin B6 and iron, foods rich in polyphenols
An overview of the speakers and topics on this summit

My vagus nerve story – the videos document the journey with GABA and vagus nerve exercises 3-6-6 breathing and happy birthday humming.

This article published just last month is just so distressing to even contemplate: American Psychiatric Association Lobbies FDA to Electroshock Children

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

Also published last month is an article in the New York Times called: LSD Like Drugs Are Out of the Haze and Back in the Labs.

modern scientists are picking up where their forerunners of the ’50s and ’60s left off. They are studying hallucinogens’ potential to help smokers kick the habit, to undo addictions to drugs and alcohol, to cope with cluster headaches and depression, and to deal with obsessive-compulsive and post-traumatic stress disorders.

Earlier this year a bill was put forward in Massachusetts proposing informed consent for benzodiazepine use. They will be submitting it again in a future session.

Here is the blog post and research on blueberries and serotonin: Blueberries boost serotonin and may help with PTSD and anxiety

Rats that were fed blueberries saw an increase in serotonin levels and the study authors suggest that the neuroprotection offered by the blueberries may offer support for those with PTSD. Presumably this could help those with anxiety and depression too, since low serotonin can also be an underlying factor.

Here is the blog post and research on gluten and OCD: Integrative Medicine Approach to Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety

The 7-year-old boy was put on a gluten-free diet and they saw a huge reduction in his OCD symptoms and anxiety and an improvement in social behavior and school work.

A paper published in August 2015: Fermented foods, neuroticism, and social anxiety suggests that:

consumption of fermented foods that contain probiotics may serve as a low-risk intervention for reducing social anxiety

Here are some of the other papers I mentioned:

Here is the master blog with all the speakers, their topics and their individual blog posts with additional information, links to studies, books and other resources – The Anxiety Summit Season 4: All the speakers and topics (keep in mind that the speaker blog links will be live/active from the day of the speaker interview)

If you already have my book The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings, I recommend that you skim through it again and review the chapters on the food basics, gluten, amino acids, pyroluria and digestion. If you don’t yet have a copy, I highly recommend getting a copy so you can be educated as well as empowered.

Here is my gift to you, a song called Top of the World (grab the mp3 at this link)

A new beginning, a brand new day
All of my fears are gone away
I feel so calm, so free, so whole
Right now, I’m feeling on top of the world

On top the world
Right now, I’m feeling on top of the world

And here is another special gift: transcript of this entire talk!
Download the transcript here (right-click on the link and select “Save link as” or “Save target as” to download the file to your computer)

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

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

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

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety: the SCD diet, carbs, adrenals and leaky gut

June 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 25 Comments

Steven Wright, creator of SCDlifestyle, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: the SCD diet, carbs, adrenals and leaky gut

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet /SCD: the history and the basics
The GAPs diet – the similarities and differences
Stressful times and panic attacks and recovering
Adrenal health and restricting carbs too much
Leaky gut and glutamine

Here are some gems from our interview (I really enjoy Steve’s common-sense advice, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed):

And so if you can adopt the mindset of hey, you know what, this is just an exploration of food. I’m just going to throw out all my beliefs for six months and I’m going to try buying that weird fruit at the grocery store; I’m going to buy a new pan; I’m going to burn some things and just try to make it an exploration, like try to mess it up. If you can do that, if you can get some sort of mindset shift there where it becomes a fun little game, what I would do is I would have a spice of the week and I would put that spice on everything. I don’t care what they say in cookbooks or chef schools, I’ve never been to chef school actually. I would like love to go maybe sometime. But I would just take like oregano and I would put oregano on everything. I’d put it on my vegetables; I’d put it on my fish; I’d put it on the beef; I’d put it on the chicken I cooked just to see what it tasted like. Like somebody says you should never put rosemary on your whatever you’re cooking. Well how do they know? Why don’t you make up the choice for yourself?

We cover leaky gut, autoimmunity and anxiety:

So your immune system is concentrated in your gut. It’s remarkable to think of that, but the reason why is in case these different molecules of the wrong size or the wrong type get into your gut then they gum in and they just kind of like start to attack it and it creates a war. And so if your gut is chronically leaky, like it is for essentially anyone with an autoimmune condition, because that’s per Dr. Fasano’s theory, that’s essentially the way in which you become autoimmune, you’re going to have a war raging in your bloodstream, in your body, in your gut for all day all night. And so that consumes a lot of resources; it creates a lot of inflammatory cytokines; it also regulates some other pathways, which can be circulated, end up in the brain and end up causing anxiety and depression. And so I do believe that there is a subset of people who have anxiety who have either leaky gut as one of their main causes or at least it’s contributing to it. And so digestive health is really important for anxiety in my opinion.

This article: Diet and Inflammatory Bowel Disease, discusses the diets commonly recommended to IBD patients and reviews the supporting data for the low-fermentable oligosaccharide, disaccharide, monosaccharide, and polyol diet; the specific carbohydrate diet; the anti-inflammatory diet; and the Paleolithic diet. The authors of this paper do say that the role of dietary interventions in the management of IBD still needs to be tested vigorously in patients.

Here is the SCD Quick Start Guide

And for health practitioners wanting to learn how to get their message out in a bigger way and help more people: The Practitioner Liberation Project

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

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

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

The Anxiety Summit – Is Coffee Your Hidden Anxiety Trigger and How to Substitute It with Delicious and Healing Drinks

June 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 25 Comments

Magdalena Wszelaki, founder of Hormones Balance, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Is Coffee Your Hidden Anxiety Trigger and How to Substitute It with Delicious and Healing Drinks

Caffeine, anxiety and panic attacks and our genetics
How coffee impacts blood sugar and increases sugar cravings
Coffee: the gut, adrenals, sex hormones and the thyroid
Is decaf ok?
How to use chicory, dandelion, carob and reishi as great alternatives
Rooibos and tulsi/holy basil as anti-stress herbal teas

Here are some gems from our interview:

If you’re having type 2 adrenal fatigue so that means sometimes it’s s super high. Your adrenals are pumping out too much cortisol. Sometimes it’s too low, sometimes it’s just okay. You can get that done through testing – hormone testing, saliva testing with cortisol. The issue is that in times of low cortisol release you’re going to be pretty brain dead and this is when we want to bring the cortisol level up with coffee.

The problem is the adrenals are already exhausted and that’s the reason why they are firing off with the wrong timing. Sometimes it’s too high, sometimes it’s too low. Women who have this “I’m tired and wired” thing going on late at night where they’re just lying in bed exhausted, can’t fall asleep. That’s very often adrenal fatigue stage 2 with higher cortisol levels at night. And so this is where coffee just exhausts your adrenals even further. So you might get that instant release as in like you’re getting this clarity in your head. You’re getting that energy to get through the day. But in the long term coffee is really going to just exhaust the adrenals to the maximum.

Here are some of the studies on anxiety and coffee discussed in the interview:

Caffeine can cause anxiety and panic attacks. This study showed that people with panic disorder and social anxiety may be more sensitive to the anxiety-causing effects of caffeine.

In this paper, Caffeine abstention in the management of anxiety disorders, the participants had generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. They had been on medication and they’d been on therapy and they drank one-and-a-half to three-and-a-half cups of coffee a day. None of them had benefitted from either the therapy or the medication. When they stopped the coffee within a week the anxiety disappeared.

Here are additional studies we discussed:

magdalena roasted chicory latte

Here is Magdalena’s recipe for ROASTED CHICORY ROOT LATTE

Time to prepare: 15 minutes; Time to steep: 10minutes; Serves: 1; Equipment: blender

Ingredients

1 tbsp roasted chicory root

2 cups water

1 tbsp ghee, coconut butter or butter (if tolerated)

1 pitted date

fresh nutmeg (nut or powder)

How to make:

Bring water to a boil, add chicory root and steep for 10 minutes.
Strain and transfer to a blender.
Add the ghee (or any fat you decide to use) and the date. Blend for 1 minute at high speed.
Top with freshly grated nutmeg and enjoy.

I shared my carob recipe: Carob Cinnamon Delight instead of coffee – a calming hot beverage and mentioned rooibos tea how it’s A Functional Food in the Management of Stress (an interview from a prior anxiety summit)

Here is Magdalena’s gift: Finding Hormonal Balance Through Food and Essential Oils

And here is Magdalena’s wonderful no-cost introductory Hormone Balancing Workshop/webinar (many of my clients have attended and love learning about eating for hormone balance from Magdalena)

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

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

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

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety: the role of fats, turmeric and wheat

June 5, 2016 By Trudy Scott 37 Comments

Cyndi O’Meara, Nutritionist, founder of Changing Habits, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: the role of fats, turmeric and wheat

Oils ain’t oils and fats ain’t fats: the danger of vegetable oils
The benefits of butter and other healthy fats
The impact of wheat on anxiety and depression
Turmeric for detoxification, inflammation, depression and anxiety
How to get the most out of consuming turmeric

Here are some gems from our interview:

The healthy fats for me are any fat that nature has made. So that could be a saturated fat in a plant based oil such as coconut oil or it could be a saturated fat in animal fats. So in the winter there would not be a lot of saturated fat around. It would be more in the summer.

And in culture and traditions we ate seasonal foods. So when the animals were fat they had saturated fat on them and we would consume those fats. If they were producing dairy which would usually be in the spring and right through the summer we might eat that and that had saturated fat in it. So we would have these types of fats in the summer. In the winter we had lean meats because the animals were lean. They didn’t have stored fats on them. Neither did we.

I look at the morphing of margarine and the fact that it’s been seen as a healthy fat and it’s not a healthy fat. It’s a chemicalized, manmade, manufactured, polyunsaturated fat that is normally liquid at room temperature that becomes solid because of what they do.

We also discuss inca inchi oil, a plant-based oil:

Inca inchi is very high in vitamin A and vitamin E – inca inchi seed oil is one of the most amazing plant based oils. It’s also called sacha inchi, so it’s a South American seed and it’s 86 percent essential fatty acid and 48 percent omega-3 which means that we can make our EPAs and our DHAs with it. So it’s a more sustainable omega-3 base as opposed to fish oil. And it’s one of my favorite oils and it’s got a profile that’s similar to flaxseed oil and I can use it to make my mayonnaises, my pestos. I can make all beautiful salad dressings with it. I can drizzle it over some fresh vegetables that I’ve just steamed.

We talk about Roundup/glyphosate being sprayed on wheat and canola and the research work of Stephanie Seneff (interviewed in season 1 of the Anxiety summit): looking at the effects on the gut bacteria, the shikimate pathway and hence serotonin and anxiety, depression and autism.

Here is the TEDX talk that Cyndi recommended – Jeff Iliff: One more reason to get a good night’s sleep

And a recent study on camu camu – Antioxidant and associated capacities of Camu camu (Myrciaria dubia): a systematic review.

A program to increase the visibility of camu camu can contribute substantially not only to the management of inflammatory conditions and its positive contribution to overall good health but also to its potential role in many disease states.

Here is Cyndi’s book: Changing Habits, Changing Lives

Here is a digital gift from Cyndi: Depression e-report and Changing Habits Changing Lives audio book

Here is the link to learn more about the new wheat documentary (online screening June 24-30): What’s With Wheat.

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

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

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