I see many patients who have diagnosed anxiety and depression from a medical doctor. They are never told what the problem is other than they have to work on their stress and take a medication. The patient is left feeling like they have nothing to do but follow the doctor’s orders. The main two neurotransmitters involved with anxiety/depression are dopamine (reward/motivation) and serotonin (stress resiliency). When dopamine levels are high it causes anxiety and depression when it is low. Medications do not address this issue. It does not have to be this way. You can make your body more resilient to stress in many ways. I want to highlight 3 of these.
Improve the health of the gut
Many people do not know that most of your dopamine and serotonin is made in your gut. It is also broken down in the gut. If you have gut issues like IBS (which is puzzling to many providers), you will have more of a chance of having anxiety or depression. Low stomach acid or use of acid reducing medications will also cause low dopamine and serotonin levels in the body. You need sufficient stomach acid to digest protein so you can absorb the necessary nutrients to make neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. I like to say, “you can’t make something out of nothing.” Another issue that often comes up is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). This issue is when bacteria from the large intestine crawl into the small intestine and ferment your food creating either methane or hydrogen gas. When your gut health is poor, your brain health is poor. Your gut talks to your brain 90% of the time, so what you are often feeling is coming from your gut and not your head. I like my patients to complete a process that helps clean up the SIBO issue, work on digestion of your food, repopulate the large intestine with good bacteria, and then feed those bacteria so they have a chance to grow and thrive. This often starts to clear up anxiety.
Work on the “Tryptophan Steal.”
This is when your body starts to “steal” tryptophan, which is an amino acid from the protein you eat. Your body will use the tryptophan to make B3 and then there isn’t enough to produce serotonin. Since you cannot make serotonin, you can become anxious or depressed. Why does your body not want you to be happy and stress resilient? It doesn’t want you to die! What do I mean by that? Your body has a great need to keep your cells alive so it will “steal” tryptophan to make Niacin (B3), which is needed to keep your cells alive. I will have patients use a combination of both Niacin, tryptophan, and something called 5-HTP to help restore proper levels in the body of both Niacin and serotonin.
Low testosterone/progesterone levels and high estrogen levels in both males and females.
There are many toxins that act like estrogen in our body. Things like plastic, pesticides, and personal hygiene products can cause an estrogen toxicity issue in your body. These chemicals also can cause lower testosterone levels. Toxicity affects the liver and gut where estrogen is broken down. When you overload the body with these toxins, it slows down the breakdown of dopamine (reward chemical) in the body. This then causes you to be anxious and more stressed than you would normally be, causing cortisol levels to increase, blood sugar levels increase, and you may experience brain fog. I like my patients to clean up their environment at home. Some ideas are to filter their water, stay away from plastic as much as possible, eat organic foods, and use the Healthy Living App to purchase products for their personal use. You can’t be a clean fish in a dirty bowl.
These three things will cause most of the anxiety and depression issues in people. I you are lost I would suggest working on the chemicals at home first, making slight changes to your habits and the products you use. Next eat as much clean, real food as possible. This will help supply your body with the necessary nutrients it needs to make more serotonin. Lastly, I would work with someone who can get your gut working well, improve your detoxification process in your body, and give you the tools you need to help with your anxiety.