Low cholesterol, tryptophan & methylation on Hormones – A Women’s Wellness Summit

Just sending you a quick reminder about the upcoming summit.

You’ll learn why you don’t have to accept anxiety, depression, mood swings, headaches, constant fatigue or dramatic periods, and how to find answers from some amazing women’s health experts!

Join me and educate yourself online and no cost from April 11-18, 2016 on Hormones: A Women’s Wellness Summit.

(you can register here https://qt247.isrefer.com/go/WWH16reg/trudyscottcn/)

Understanding your hormones may sound like an impossible mission, but it’s really not. As we learn to incorporate healthier choices into our lives, we feel better. And, as women, when we feel better, we can do anything! And as I like to say we deserve to feel our absolute best all the time!

Join health coach and acupuncturist Bridgit Danner, LAc, FDNP, and the 30+ health and wellness experts she has gathered to teach you how to keep your body in sync with your life.

Even if you’re not a woman, tune in to learn more so you can understand the women in your life – your mom, your sisters, your wife, your girlfriend, your daughter. Or share this information with the women in your life. You may even pick up some ideas for yourself, for example most of my interview is applicable for men too.

Here is a snippet about the importance of cholesterol from my interview which airs on day 3: Balance Brain Chemistry to End Anxiety

A lot of people talk about concerns with high cholesterol, but if you’ve got very low cholesterol, you don’t have the raw material to make your hormones. That’s going to affect your mood. There’s actually research showing that very low cholesterol, a total cholesterol below 150 can make you more prone to mood problems and actually increase your risk for suicide.

If I see a woman with very low total cholesterol, the first thing I think about is absorption, as you just said. Have they got a gall bladder? Maybe they haven’t got enough bile production. Have they got damage to the gut, so they’re not able to absorb the nutrients that they’re eating? And when we add in extra healthy fats, and if you’re already doing that, then I would say look at the digestive component and see if that’s a factor. I’ve seen many women with hormonal issues just get their total cholesterol up, and their hormones start to balance a lot better, which is pretty amazing.

I also talk about how to figure out how much of the amino acids you may need and how to do a trial. In this snippet I’m talking about tryptophan for the low serotonin, worry-in-your-head kind of anxiety:

once you start on the tryptophan, for example, and the starting dose for tryptophan is 500mg. You start on that and you see how much did it improve? Wow, it went from an 8 or 9 out of 10 to a 6 out of ten. But I could definitely see some improvement. So after a few days, increase it. Go from 500mg to 1,000mg, twice a day. Yes, it improved 2 more notches, great. We’re making some gains, here. Then another few days later, or maybe a week later, add another one: 1,500mg, twice a day. Wow, now I’m feeling great. This is the dosage you stay on for a while until you feel like you don’t need it anymore.

If you increase it to the 1,500mg, for example, and you didn’t get any added benefits, then you would just go back to the lower dose. So it’s very individualized, it’s very targeted, meaning it’s targeted to your unique needs. Not everyone needs the amino acids. But if you score high on the questionnaire, and you do a trial and you benefit, then you know you need them. And then you just increase until you get the point of no more benefits.

And here is a snippet from Dr. Jill Carnahan’s interview – What’s the Big Deal About Methylation?:

we generally don’t treat methylation by itself. We treat it in the context of the patient. I’ll say that over and over again today because I think what I see in the internet and what I see with responses to my blog articles and things are patients saying, “Give me a protocol. I got this defect. What do I do?” It’s so important for patients to realize that just because you have a genetic defect, it does not cause disease. It’s genetics plus environment.

What is methylation? Basically, methylation is a process that’s involved in cellular repair. That repairs your DNA and RNA. All the time, we’re getting toxic insults to our body, chemicals and environmental things, foods even, and they can damage our DNA and RNA. Methylation is one of the processes that actually repairs those things so we don’t develop things like cancer.

Number two would be helping to create neurotransmitters. This is basically involved in our thinking, our mood, our concentration, our focus, our drive, and things like sleep, and ability to have just happiness and joy [and no anxiety]. People who have methylation issues will often have trouble with neurotransmitters.

Number one, repair DNA and RNA. Number two would be create neurotransmitters. Number three/number four would be detoxification, very involved in detoxification. Your processes to basically take care of toxic chemicals. Then, also, for immune system function which is related to the detoxification process.

Dr. Carnahan shares how our neurotransmitters are affected by methylation and how this impacts anxiety and depression:

The biopterin pathway is part of the methylation cycle. It actually comes from the folic acid metabolism cycle. If that isn’t running properly, this is where you make phenylalanine which is a precursor for tyrosine, tyrosine which is a precursor of dopamine, and tryptophan which is a precursor of 5-HTP.

You can also catch these great speakers on day 3 with myself and Dr. Carnahan:

• Keesha Ewers – Common Causes of a Low Sex Drive
• Jen Wittman – How to Have a Thyroid-Loving Lifestyle
• Amy Medling – How to be a PCOS Diva

Other summit speakers cover the adrenals, low testosterone in women, PMS and missed periods, endometriosis, how to have gorgeous skin, fertility, pregnancy and post-partum, perimenopause, your hunger hormones, toxins in your food, bio-identical hormones, cell phone dangers and much much more.

I hope you join us online from April 11-18, 2016 on Hormones: A Women’s Wellness Summit

You can register here https://qt247.isrefer.com/go/WWH16reg/trudyscottcn/