Hello and welcome to the AnxietyRx podcast, a show created by an anxiety specialist and neuroscientist, me, that offers unique, practical, and actionable advice to help you understand what anxiety truly is and exactly what you can do to empower yourself to resolve it.
I'm your host, Dr. Russell Kennedy, an MD who suffered with crippling anxiety for 30 plus years, and traditional therapy from psychiatrists and psychologists really didn't help me feel better.And I also didn't like being on psych meds.
In 2013, after burning out and leaving medical practice, I came to the conclusion that if I was ever going to heal my anxiety, I would have to do it myself.
And that's exactly what I did, drawing from experiences with psychedelics and holistic healing, and combining those modalities with my scientific academic background in medicine, neuroscience, and developmental psychology.
Here on the Anxiety Arcs podcast, I offer a distinctly non-traditional and non-medical approach to understanding and healing anxiety.
So despite the fact I'm trained as a physician, in no way is what I say and suggest to be construed as medical advice because none of the ways I use to resolve anxiety has anything to do with traditional allopathic medicine.
From my own healing, I've created a distinctly non-traditional understanding and approach that helps thousands of people from all over the world understand and relieve their chronic anxiety.So if you're ready, let's get into today's episode.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the AnxietyRx podcast, the podcast that discusses both the science and the art of understanding and healing from anxiety.And today, I have a very special guest with me, Dr. Christine Bechara.
I hope I said your name right.She's like me.She's an MD traditionally trained as a medical doctor and then kind of saw that we're not really treating the root cause of illness in medicine and mostly kind of pharmaceutically based.
We're just kind of pushing the real root cause down the road and causing a lot of problems in the long term.She's written this book called The Gut Revolution which I've read and I really love and so many other people love it too.
And I have so many questions for you, Christine, but it's great to have you here.
Thank you so much.It's great to be with you.
So I know that we're probably going to hit a bit of a rough patch when it comes to alarm and where it comes from.So let's get into that right off the bat.So you're a big believer that the gut is basically the cause of like 99% of chronic illness.
I am.And it's not just me thinking that.I mean, we have so many research studies now that are showing that the gut really is the mother load of everything.It's linked to mental health, it's linked to immune health, weight management.
And we haven't really addressed it too much, even though our ancestors addressed it more than we do now.If you look at somebody like Hippocrates, Even back then he was talking about melancholia, right?
You know what the term means and translated it means black bile and he thought depression was just a backup of our intestinal system.
But we've gone so far away from looking at root cause of illnesses and just doing a quick fix of any medical issue and mental health issue as well that we've really just gone away from natural healing.
Yeah.And I think, you know, and the treatments too, they often make things worse, right?Like the medications and then the self-medicating, the alcohol.
I know you've talked about alcohol and its experience and its relationship to gut, you know, mishealth, if you could use that term.
And just that our society is so much about plastering over something rather than dealing with the underlying root cause of it.
I agree.Again, alcohol is another, I call it a panacea, right?Because it, or people think it's a panacea.It just kind of covers up a lot of issues.
And you probably know more about this than I do, but a lot of people who abuse alcohol are really covering up a lot of deep trauma and stress that they never dealt with.
But in regards to the gut, we know that alcohol causes a dysbiosis in the gut and it kills off all these beneficial bacteria.Just like if you think about rubbing alcohol that you're rubbing on your hands, it's killing off bacteria.
It's doing the same in your gut.And over time, it causes havoc. Interestingly though, most people that abuse alcohol are probably not eating the healthiest diet.And I think that combination is really what causes that ricochet effect of poor health.
Because if you look at the blue zones, they drink alcohol, right?You know, the blue zones, but they're eating really healthy.
And I think a huge part of why they're healthy is also the social connections that they have that are so different from what we have here in North America.
And I think we really need to start looking at how our ancestors lived and even how they lived 100 years ago or 50 years ago, which is very different from how we live now.But I think it's really affecting our health.
Yeah, I think the social connection, I write about that in the new book about the social engagement system, you know, eye contact, tone of voice, prosody of voice, body language, facial expression, this stuff that you and I are using right now to connect with each other, this serves to make us feel healthier in general.
And then we were talking before we started about, you know, it's going to be the chicken or the egg thing.
a relatively superficial view of anxiety is that it's the sense of alarm and the sense of alarm comes from overwhelming experiences as a child that weren't repaired.
You didn't get the love and connection that you needed and then that gets stuffed down into the body and guts down there.It gets stuffed down into the body and that
is what the true root cause of what we call anxiety is this sense of alarm that's held in our body, which also can be held in the gut, of course.
So we develop these horrible thoughts, what I call warnings, what-ifs, worst-case scenarios, because that reflects, because the mind is a compulsive, meaning-making, make-sense machine, that reflects how we feel in our system.
So if we feel negatively, our brain is going to say, okay, we feel negatively.What do we feel negatively about?
And then you start listing all of your, you know, my kids, my taxes, my job, you know, all these things we start listing and then it becomes this confirmation bias.So then we believe it because we made it up and then the whole thing cycles on itself.
So my whole thing about anxiety is that it's this alarm in our system
that creates the anxiety of our mind and because we're such a thinking focused society we believe that the thoughts of the mind are actually the cause of the anxiety when it's actually farther upstream.
It's actually in our system that's creating this negative feeling and our brain, because it has to make sense of it, starts creating all these negative thoughts which we believe because we made them up.
And isn't it true that the brain over time, when it has repeated negative thoughts, it just, it just starts to make it a pattern because it actually thinks that that's safer for us to develop that pattern.
And so, I mean, you've seen this, people get stuck in their negativity and their negative pattern and negative thinking.And then it almost just becomes a part of them.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.You know, one of the things about neuroplasticity is it works for you, but it also works against you as well.So, you know, whatever you focus on, you'll get more of.
So if you focus on complaining, you'll get more complaining.You know, if you focus on, and this is where gratitude stuff comes in, it's like if you focus on gratitude,
If the only purpose of your gratitude is to block that constant complaining, you're actually ahead in the long run.
I talk about in the book about this sort of metaphorical story about the man who hits himself with a hammer in the middle of the village square all day.And people say, well, why do you hit yourself with a hammer all day?
And he says, because it feels so good when I stop. I think when we start going the opposite direction, and I think that's when people start doing the diets you recommend, the stuff you recommend for 30 days, they do feel better.
It is one of those things that what can we do?What are three off-the-top things we can do that are not that difficult that we can start changing our gut health right away?
Yeah, and that's really important that you mention that.And on a microscopic level, I wanted to talk about it because I think people really want to understand the concepts before they actually believe.
But microscopically, we know that stress, especially childhood stress, actually disrupts the gut and it causes dysbiosis and it causes an increase in harmful bacteria. And this does two things.
Number one, it causes a drop in glutamate, which is the precursor for GABA, which we know GABA is a relaxing neurotransmitter.It's a neurotransmitter that helps us to stay calm.
And they found that people with adverse childhood experiences actually have lower levels of glutamate, which is the precursor, but they also have elevated levels of harmful bacteria too.
And these harmful bacteria release these toxins in the form of lipopolysaccharides, which cause leaky gut.And then we have that whole inflammation traveling to the brain.
I mean, autoimmune disorders.
Yeah, yes, exactly.autoimmune disorders are really big one.We have a large part of our immune system in the gut.And, you know, if we have stress or emotional trauma that triggers that response in the gut, and that really causes a dysbiosis.
And I, you know, it's interesting, because we see a lot of autoimmune diseases more in women,
And I don't know if it's that women harbor stress differently, but what we do know, and this is maybe something that you can touch upon, but what we do know with autoimmune diseases is we know that they're more common in women, but
The X chromosome, believe it or not, actually has 900 immune sensing genes on the X chromosome versus the Y, which only has 55.And apparently those immune sensing genes are like hyper responsive to the environment.
It's like an evolutionary thing just to protect mothers and their children.But what happens is in some women, especially with emotional trauma, it's like a mechanism that can't shut off.
And then they develop autoimmune diseases and it's linked to the gut.And when we see a lot of IBS in people with increased stress, IBD is also linked to previous childhood stress.So we definitely need to work on that.And the way to work on that is
like what you do, which is work on the alarm, right?Work on relaxation techniques to change the mindset, but food.Okay, so we talked about GABA, right?So food can definitely help us feel better because
We can eat foods that are rich in that glutamate that some people are deficient in, and glutamate is present in certain foods like seeds, for example, or spinach, or certain grains have glutamate, eggs, for example.
All of these foods, if we list those foods and go grocery shopping and make an active effort to buy those, those will actually help increase our production of GABA, which can help us.We can talk about serotonin too.
Serotonin is another one that in some people we don't make enough, right?And an easy way to fix that is to eat foods that are rich in tryptophan.So tryptophan is an amino acid that converted to 5-HTP, which is 5-hydroxytryptophan.
I don't want to get into science too much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Which is serotonin, yeah.
So if you're not eating foods rich in tryptophan, and unfortunately, tryptophan we can't even make in our body.
You have to get it from diet.
Exactly.So I make a list for my patients.We do like a gut brain questionnaire and I look and see what they're deficient in.And based on that, I recommend certain foods.Walnuts, really good.Walnuts are like the food, in my opinion.
They really do seem to be.There is something in walnuts.I hear it all the time.There's something about it, too.And I wanted to ask you these questions, for sure, because I have in your book here.This is the GABA page.
I've always sort of said, well not recently but in general, that taking GABA supplements doesn't go into your brain.Is that true or is that not?
Because that's always what I thought is that it gets broken down by your gut and you don't actually get GABA into your brain and whether or not it crosses the blood-brain barrier is another thing.So does taking GABA supplements do anything?
It can help, but here's what it is with the body, which is amazing because the body is so smart.When you start taking GABA supplements, your body sees it as something that it doesn't really need to make anymore, right?
Because when you have that external, you know, the body is just being provided externally with something, it doesn't really feel the need to make it.
So it does help temporarily, but over time what happens is you're not going to be making enough agave on your own.So I really try to limit supplementation for my patients.
I use them, but I use them in adjunct to diet because you want to get your body making agave naturally, right?And it makes it naturally through the precursors that are present in food.
Yeah, the same question for 5-HTP.People take 5-HTP thinking that it's going to boost their serotonin.
Right.And I do supplement it when people are really low in serotonin, but again, it's temporary, 30 to 60 days, and they're off of it.And again, it's with food.It's the same with probiotics.People ask me the same question all the time.
I have all these questions to ask you, so keep going.
Is a probiotic good?Should I take a probiotic supplement?It's not going to hurt, and it might help a little bit.But again, what are probiotics?They're microorganisms that you're introducing into your gut, right?
But if you're not feeding those organisms, and they all need to eat, and if you're not feeding them the plant-based fibers that they like, they're going to die off.
So again, food is really the most important factor in improving your gut health, but also your mental health. So yes, probiotics are fine.
You're just introducing more strains into your gut, but you really need to feed them what they want to eat, and that's plants.
So does fermented food help with that sort of thing?
Yeah.Well, fermented food is good because especially if you're getting a fermented food that's both a prebiotic and a probiotic, like cabbage that's sauerkraut or kimchi, for example.So you're kind of doing both.
What about commercially?I'm sorry to interrupt, but what about, you know, you see these like Bix sauerkraut and that sort of stuff.Is that still good?
I mean, if it has cultures in it, it's good.It depends.You have to look and see.If the first ingredient is vinegar, it's probably not a really good probiotic.
Okay.Yeah, it's great.The other question I have, because I have these all lined up for you since I read your book, vitamin D. Now, I have read that vitamin D supplementations from a synthetic source is actually harmful.Is that true?
I don't think so.You need vitamin D3.Obviously, again, it's best to get it from the sun, but then we go into all of this skin cancer risk and all of that.
And so what I say is if you're getting a good amount of vitamin D a day, 10 to 15 minutes in the morning when it's not super hot and sunny, you're getting a little bit.But supplementation is good because it's consistent and it's reliable.
So I don't have a problem with supplementation.
So what do you recommend for people that you think need vitamin D supplementation?Because for a while there, I was taking like 5,000 international units a day.
Yeah.And how did that help you?Did you check your levels?
Yeah, but I stopped taking it at that level and then about two months later I did a level and I was kind of at the lower level of what's okay, right?
But I know when I take it on a regular basis and I do get the vitamin D, when I do get the serology, the blood test, that it is up.It is up into the sort of the high normal kind of range.
But if I don't supplement, it definitely, especially, I live in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, so it's mild here, but it's dull.There's not a lot of sun from November until March, so we don't get that isomerization.
We don't get that stuff for the vitamin D. So it is one of those things that I do tend to supplement.And then the other thing I was reading, God, I'm glad to have you here, cod liver oil is a great source of vitamin D. Is that true?
Yes, and it's a great source of omega-3 fatty acids too.
I keep taking that because I'm taking that.
While I'm taking on gut dysbiosis and adverse childhood trauma, omega-3s have actually been shown to help with that because they affect the gut.
But in regards to the supplementation, if you live in a climate that's a cold climate and you're not exposed to the sun, absolutely I recommend it.I recommend it for patients all the time especially if their sun exposure is unreliable.
And, you know, unless we're in a sunny environment and working outdoors all the time, a lot of us are deficient.I would say 80% of my patients that come in for the first time are deficient.
So and, you know, the lower the upper limit of normal is usually 30.That's even too low.You want at least 40 to 50 between 40 to 80 is really optimal.So I do vitamin D supplement.
Because I think it is sort of anti-cancer as well, like low vitamin D. Correlation isn't causation but it is correlated cancers with lower levels of vitamin D. Yeah.
And there have been studies that actually also correlate if you get a recurrency in a cancer, if your vitamin D levels are good, it actually helps with your response treatment.So it's a better prognosis when your vitamin D levels are optimal.
Okay, again, I'm really glad to have you here.So now I've been sort of gluten-free off and on since 2005.So I saw a naturopath back in 2005 because I had all sorts of asthma and all sorts of eczema.
So I went gluten-free and then about four to six months later, my skin completely cleared up.I still needed my inhaler, but I've been gluten-free since then.
I've had episodes where I go back and I go back and then within about two months, my skin starts to act up again and my asthma comes back.Here's the question.
Some authorities are saying it's not the gluten, it's the Roundup that they're spraying on it.It's the glyphosate they're spraying on it.I know this is a broad shotgun of a question.What's your feeling about gluten in general in North America?
Well, so there's gluten intolerance, which is celiac disease, right?Actual celiac disease.And I don't know if you've been tested for that.
Yeah.TTC levels are normal.I've had a long time ago, when I was having a lot of gut issues, I had anoscopy.So it's like 20 years ago and they didn't see any flattening of the villi in the small intestine.
So I haven't had it tested in a long time and I've stayed off gluten for the most part.It's hard when you're traveling. You know, that's when I find it the hardest.
And then I've also heard that if you eat sourdough bread, that for some reason the gluten isn't such a big deal.So these are all the things that I'm glad to have you here because I could just, hey, I'll just tell you about it.
Well, okay, so there's actual celiac disease, right?And those people do not have gluten, they can't tolerate it.But there are a lot of people that are now becoming intolerant to gluten because of the fact that they have a leaky gut.
And part of the development of leaky gut is glyphosate, which we've seen can cause a dysbiosis.It causes an inflammation of the lining of the gut. which then affects the permeability, right?
And I don't want to get too technical, but permeability means basically, for anybody listening, stuff that shouldn't be released into the bloodstream is now starting to become released because that barrier is not as strong anymore.
So some people, like for example, if you're not necessarily gluten intolerant, but you become gluten intolerant later on, it's because you may have developed a leaky gut from whatever is in the environment.
And then that has caused a reaction from your body to the gluten. So yes, glyphosate is one of them.There are a lot of gut disruptors that we know of.Processed foods have a ton of gut disruptors.
So yeah, unfortunately we've become a society where a lot of us have become gluten tolerant.In terms of the sourdough, so sourdough, yes, the raw form is great.It's a probiotic, right?It has cultures.But unfortunately when we cook it,
There's no probiotics, but the actual bread is still a little bit healthier.If you look at wheat bread from a hundred years ago or more, it was actually, we didn't have this before.It's the way that we're processing wheat right now is the problem.
So this is why we're seeing... So yeah, getting back to the anxiety story in the first place, I asked you diet stuff, which we'll intermittently come across here.
So it's just, I do notice that with my anxiety, when it was bad years ago, that diet had a huge role in it.And here was the bad cycle was that when I started feeling anxious, my ability to kind of be discerning about what I ate went out the window.
So it was this double whammy that I would get.When I was feeling okay, yes, I could watch what I ate and it was important.But as soon as the anxiety started taking me over, then it was like, okay, well, if chips are available, that's what I'll eat.
It's just like, if it's there, I'll eat it.Because often what used to happen with me is I couldn't eat because I was so anxious.My sympathetic nervous system was on a hyperdrive.
So my gut had shut down, essentially, and it didn't want to tolerate any food at all.
So when it did tolerate food, I would just gorge on stuff because that was how, I mean, I lived on tuna for, God, about three or four months at one point because that was about the only thing my gut would really allow in as a protein source and would give me some sort of sustenance that kept me going.
That was when my anxiety was really bad, like 2013 kind of thing.So it just, It is that sort of double negative.
It's like when you're feeling emotionally not that well, it's very hard to keep going to the gym, to eat properly, to do that sort of stuff.
So are there simple things that my anxiety people can do to sort of boost their gut health and give them a good like a little head start as far as keeping their mental health as productive as possible?
Yeah.And so the body is very smart.It's always looking for survival.So when you talk about the times that you were more anxious than usual, your body's almost really trying to find like a really quick fix to the deficiencies that it needs.
maybe serotonin, maybe GABA.So a lot of times people who are very deficient in serotonin will crave salty chips.So you were mentioning that, right?Or people who need to make a lot more dopamine, for example, will crave chocolate, right?Because
Chocolate has tyrosine, which gets converted to dopamine.So again, like our body is just so smart that if it doesn't get those things that it needs to replenish to make neurotransmitters on a regular basis, it's almost like it panics.
And then it's like, okay, just give me whatever, give me whatever comfort food and that, you know, like salty chips for whatever reason. it thinks that it will replenish serotonin.
Another one, like if you're not making enough acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter responsible for the speed of neurons and how fast they travel, if you're not making enough of that, your body will crave like fatty foods because that choline molecule is actually a fatty membrane.
So it's really interesting, right?So what I tell my patients is, and this is something that you can check.I have a questionnaire, but also, I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Braverman.He's a psychiatrist, Dr. Eric Braverman.
Yeah, you can actually search his, he has a gut brain questionnaire.And then based on this very lengthy questionnaire, he'll actually tell you what you're deficient in.And then based on that, you can replenish.
So like serotonin, for example, if you're really low in serotonin, start eating foods that are higher in tryptophan to make 5-HTP and serotonin. So if you don't replenish these slowly and regularly, your body will crave these crazy things, right?
So turkey skin, foods, bananas, edamame, again, walnuts.And I have a whole list and I can definitely send you a list.
Well, I know you talk about bananas and about being genetically modified or being organic and leaning more towards organic bananas.Now, can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah.I mean, everything's genetically modified nowadays, right?
Yeah.I don't know.I don't even think we can escape GMOs.
Yeah.And I never used to recommend organic bananas in the past because the banana leaf is thick and usually protects the banana from external sources.But now I say, you know what, just get organic bananas.
But we really have to just change the way we grow food. to heal.And unfortunately, you look at countries like Africa that aren't as advanced or industrialized and they're eating healthier than we are.
Yeah, that's the irony of it.The other thing I wanted to ask you about is the ACE studies and autoimmune disease, especially in women.
We kind of touched on it a little bit before, but just a little bit more about how that shows up in women more than men and how sort of the ACE thing disrupts, you know, childhood trauma disrupts the gut.
Yeah, I mean the ACE, if people don't know, so it stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, so any kind of trauma.And even there's obvious ones, right, like sexual abuse, physical abuse, but there's emotional, verbal abuse.
There's, you know, there's a few things I've heard
Rejection, bullying, you know, there's all sorts of stuff in there, yeah.
And it's just, I was listening to Frank Anderson talk the other day about, you know, big T and little T trauma and how he hates that term, and I hate it too, just because it's, you know, it's like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, trauma is in the body of the beholder.
So, you know, sexual abuse can be handled by some people, you know, whereas, you know, losing your goldfish can drop someone into a complete state of, you know, emotional dysregulation.So it's really subjective.It's so subjective.
And then if your gut isn't working properly, the chances of you subjectively looking at your life in a positive way are quite low.
Yeah, and this is what we see.We see a lot of IBS, especially the diarrhea predominant in people with ACE.We see a lot of autoimmune, inflammatory bowel disease.We see a definite link between adverse childhood experiences.
Again, whether or not the chicken or the egg came first, is it due to this gut disruption that we're seeing and this causes this effect?We don't know. We just know there's definitely a link.
I mean, there's a link to other medical problems to increase heart disease risk in people with adverse childhood.
Totally.Everything actually across the board.Yeah.If you look at that.The other thing that it reminds me of is my friend Mark Wilin's work who wrote a book on intergenerational trauma.They didn't start with you.
It talks about if you are at odds with one of your parents and you sort of disown them or whatever, your chance of developing chronic disease by 60 is about 60%.
If you're at odds with both of your parents, your chance of developing some sort of chronic disease by 60 is 90%. Wow.
So there is this, you know, there is this link, this sort of, this is why, you know, when I talk about the art and science of healing anxiety, you know, we're mind, body, spirit.So in medicine, we're, you know, decent at the body,
You know, we're decent at that.Mind, we're kind of okay at, but spirit, we're terrible at.
I'm not saying that we have to be, you know, full of faith and religion and that kind of thing, but we have to kind of address the spiritual component to connection, human connection, being connected to yourself as much as being connected to others.
I say, you know, anxiety is a separation of your adult self from your child self and your mind from your body. and all anxiety is separation anxiety.Dr. Gordon Neufeld, my mentor in developmental psychology, talks about that.
And if we can bring ourselves back together, we can bring the adult and the child back together within us and we can bring our mind and our body back together, we can start developing the platform we need to create this better health.
Maybe not even good health, but maybe just better health too.One of the things that I see so much in my people is irritable bowel syndrome.
And one of the things that I postulate, because I have theories on everything as you probably know, when you're younger and you experience trauma and you never know when that trauma is not going to be there.
So your sympathetic system is always a little bit on.So it's always a little bit on and it also has a hair trigger.So then when the parasympathetic hits, it often hits just complete fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome.
We get this dysregulation of sympathetic and parasympathetic rather than teeter-totter, one's on, the other's off, in childhood.They're both on.You have your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time.If you look at the way the gut works,
So the sympathetic shuts the gut off and the parasympathetic turns it on.It's sort of a simplified version of that.
But if you're parasympathetic and sympathetic are fighting at the same time, it's no wonder people are getting gut constipation, diarrhea.You're not getting peristalsis.You're not getting that rhythmic flow that you need.
So that's my kind of little background theory about interval bowel syndrome is that people have their foot on the gas and the brake at the same time and the gut doesn't know what to do. Just a thought, like you're the gut person.
I really like that analogy.I think there's definitely validity to it.And then they've done studies on, have you seen that study that they've done on mice where they cut the vagus through the brain and they lost all fear? Yeah.
Then you can stimulate the vagus nerve and you can help treat PTSD and anxiety.Absolutely.Yeah.So definitely this tweaking in this fine line that we need to work on.
But what do you tell your patients when they have anxiety in terms of what you were talking about spirituality?I mean, gratitude makes such a difference, right?Just journaling.
And it's really hard for people because you're in this sort of milieu of negativity.You know, you've got all this norepinephrine in your brain.It's really, you're in this hyperactive system.So you kind of tap into the evolutionary fear physiology.
And when you're in fear, like I said before, you shut off your social engagement system.So you shut off eye contact, tone of voice, positive voice, body language, facial.So you shut this off.
And the social engagement system is helping us connect with other people, but it also shows us how to connect with ourselves and originally through our parents.
So if our parents are engaged with us, if they are making eye contact with us, if they are really engaged with us, we learn to modify and to mature that social engagement system.
And the better your social engagement system within yourself, the more ability you have to self-soothe, the more internal connection you have. The worse that is, the less internal connection you have.
And that's what I was saying back is that so often a lot of my people with anxiety and when I was a doctor, like depression, eating disorders, all that kind of stuff, had this separation from themselves where they didn't really want to take care of themselves.
So they wouldn't look after their diet.And there's another thing is that I think when we have trauma as children, and it's from the parent, we're always waiting for that parent to kind of come back and look after us.There's this childlike part of us.
I know with my dad, like my dad died years and years ago, right?But there's part of me that's still kind of hoping that some magical other is going to come back and start taking care of us.And I think we kind of push off and it shows up in diet.
It shows up in, you know, when I'm going to the gym a lot, I'm watching what I eat.But if I go into a phase where I'm heavily into writing, I'm waking up at five in the morning because I've got this OCD kind of brain going, my diet goes to shit.
It just does.And my wife will say, are you eating chocolate and chips again?And it's like, yeah. And maybe that's because I'm craving the chocolate, like we were saying earlier, and the salty foods.
And the acetylcholine, because acetylcholine is the number one neurotransmitter in the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system.
So the more acetylcholine we can produce, the more relaxation effect that we can have, which often occurs through the vagus nerve, which of course affects the gut.
So the whole thing, that's why I really enjoyed your book, was it just sort of pulls everything together.It's like, here's a unified theory as to what's going on, which is one of the reasons I really liked your book.
Yeah, I mean, it's, people complicate it more than it should be, right?But really, food is medicine.Just eat the foods that you need to eat to help you make more of these calming neurotransmitters and things will be okay.
But it's, I think it's hard to convince someone of something, like you said, if they're enjoying that negative mindset and just living in it.And it's a comfort zone, right?
It's a familiar zone.Yeah.I mean, one of the things that I've written about fairly extensively is that, you know, this Freudian concept of repetition compulsion.
You know, what was normal for you in childhood, you'll unconsciously replicate in your adulthood.And it'd be interesting to see, like, how people maintain the same diet that they were fed when they were younger.
That would be one of the things that repetition compulsion. But if you had a lot of chaos in your childhood, you will unconsciously replicate that chaos.And one of the ways of replicating chaos, maybe unconsciously, is just eating a crappy diet.
In university, in med school, my diet was horrible.And I told myself I was always on the run, but yet there were my fellow medical students who were actually taking care of themselves.
And I could see that they were doing it and they were eating properly, kind of thing.And I kind of resented them for it because in a way I'm looking at them like, why can't I take care of myself?This is the whole thing with diet.
It's part of really self-care is this diet piece.And I don't think in our society we recognize the self-care component of our diet.
You know, it's funny that you mentioned chaos because that repetition compulsion, not only does it happen with diet, but do you see that all the time when people start choosing a partner that's toxic?Oh, totally.It's repetition again.
It's that familiarity of chaos that they want from their childhood in their partners.
And it's funny, you know, and I was listening, I listened to quite a bit of Esther Perel and she talks about, you know, there's, you have three marriages in your life and if you're kind of lucky, it'll be with the same person.
So it is one of these things that, that we pick partners that reflect something that we need to heal in ourselves.
So, you know, if you had an abusive father, and because this happened, I wrote about this in the book as well, my patient who I call Janet, had this abusive father and she kept picking these abusive, she was this beautiful woman, and she had all this male attention all the time, but she would only pick abusive alcoholics to be partnered up with.
And then she'd come into my office and she'd be crying and her mascara would be running and that kind of stuff.And she'd said, I picked another one, right?So it's like, yeah, and I told her about that.
She finally got it, but still, it's one of those things that I think it's so ingrained in us, depending on when it starts.If it starts really, really young, it's so ingrained.So I think it's something that she always had to fight.
I mean, I haven't been her doctor for many years now, but yeah, it is this sort of sense that human beings equate
familiarity with security right so what was familiar to you in your childhood if you had a parent who is like domineering and yelling at you you know you may wind up picking some some person who does that for you or you may wind up being that kind of person yourself
So it's really interesting how we unconsciously replicate these things and that was one of the other things I talk about the book is I just said, you know, what were the patterns you were shown in your childhood and how are you still replicating those patterns?
For me, my mother was a registered nurse, my dad was crazy, not a lot of the time, but a fair amount of the time.She worked a lot.My mom worked a lot.I was left to my own devices to find food.
My wife still says, you're scrounging around like a squirrel for food.I'm the prototypical male where the fridge is open and I'm standing there blank faced.There's all these healthy choices in front of me, but I don't see those.
All of a sudden, oh, there's chocolate milk.
Not that chocolate milk's not necessarily that bad, but it's just like my daughter and I both have this chocolate milk addiction, and I can't have it in the house because I will drink the two liters of chocolate milk.
If it's sitting in the fridge, I will drink it all, like if it's there.I won't drink it in one sitting, but over the course of a day, I'll go back, another glass, another glass, another glass, and I'm kind of like sidelining here a little bit.
But I think it's- Chocolate milk with you when you were younger?
I think so.I think it was one of those things where it was always available because my mom used to get it a lot and it was always available.
When I went through med school, the pediatricians actually suggested chocolate milk to kids because it had some nutrients in it. And there's one my daughter gets called Fairway or something like that, and she loves it.
So every time I go over there, as soon as I walk in the door, she hands me a glass of chocolate milk.It's just a thing that we have together kind of thing.
I was obese when I was younger, and I had certain comfort foods that I now consciously avoid. coffee cakes, like Drake's coffee cakes in the packages.I literally, those were my comfort and I would eat those all the time.
And now I rarely have them, but when I have them, I'm just, just taken back to this.
Oh, for sure.It's craft dinner for me.I don't know if you guys know what craft dinner is, but it's craft dinner for me.
My wife will also know that I'm stressed because I make myself lunch every day and she'll notice if the craft dinner pouch is out for more than a day.
I can have one thing a month of craft dinner, but if she sees I've had two in a week, she knows that I'm stressed.
You know, and one of my, when I used to do stand-up, one of my favorite bits was with a friend of mine, Stron Proudlove, who was one of my favorite comics in Vancouver.
And he'd say, he'd come on stage and he'd say, ah, I just don't want to brag, but I won a contest with Kraft Dinner.And I won a year supply of Kraft Dinner.But when it arrived, it was only 180 boxes.
And I wondered, even at Kraft Dinner, they're kind of saying, don't eat this shit every day. And there's like, he used to start with that.And it was just one of the funniest lines, you know, but it was that Kraft dinner is comfort food for me.
So again, it's just like anxiety and comfort.It goes together.And it's not such a bad thing because it is you looking after yourself.Like when I'm eating Kraft dinner, I know that I'm kind of doing my best to look after that child in me.
That's still, you know, that still feels alarmed at points.
So it's picking the right, it's picking the right foods really.
Right.And my intention is to, have the reader or the person that I'm trying to educate about eating healthy is visualize what's going on in your body, what your brain needs, what your gut needs right to help your brain and just try to implement it.
So I'm a big believer in people really won't change unless they're motivated by knowledge and the workings of their body and how it works.
And pain.I noticed like in my work, people don't do anything until the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing something.And that's just human nature.
I mean, I used to see that in my practice with people who I knew had anxiety and depression in their backgrounds.And I knew they were fighting, I knew they were struggling, and I knew that they did not want to go on medication.
They knew that they went on it.It did help them in the past, but it also created all sorts of negative side effects and that kind of stuff, too.They would often see it as a defeat.
It's like, I've been fighting this for six months, this anxiety, this depression.I'm just going to have to go back on Paxil or whatever it was.
Often we would put them back on Paxil and stuff, but these are the days that we didn't even look at diet in medicine.There's all sorts of things on Instagram that says, medical doctors aren't trained in nutrition.It's like, yeah.
Yeah, because we're trained in pharmaceuticals.We're trained in fixing something right away.The thing about fixing diet is it's going to take two, three, four weeks before you start seeing a difference from it.
In this immediate gratification society, that's way too long.
But it works.It works.Yeah, I know.
So what would you recommend for people who are anxiety?I know that it's hard to make a blanket sort of statement.I think vitamin D I think is probably a blanket kind of statement.What do you think about inositol?
Oh, that's so weird.I was just going to ask you about inositol.What do you think?
Yeah.I love inositol.I literally recommend inositol to everyone I know who tells me as soon as they start saying anxiety, I give them a list of foods and I say, you must take inositol.And I've had people respond to it so well.
I have too.I've had people that respond really well, kind of, sort of well, and then not at all.But it's worth a try.
So the not at all, are they taking enough?Because some people need up to 18 grams.
That's the thing. And I think that's probably the case, but then it becomes so unruly that if you need to take that much, it's just too much of a lifestyle damage.
Well, so I actually kind of warn them ahead of time.I'm like, listen, you might need to take a lot more.So start at a low dose.I usually recommend the pills first because they have the low dose.
I'm coming to see you.I have anxiety.So you're recommending it and I'll stop.What do you recommend?
So I'll say start with 2,000 milligrams a day.That you can get in pill form.I think the largest dose is 1,000 milligrams.And then I say, you know what?
You might need to start moving into the powder formula, which is you're just putting it in your drink.I haven't had anyone need more than eight grams.I know the studies say up to 18 grams.
So 8,000 milligrams, which is four pills in the morning, four at night.But I also, I put it with L-theanine and ashwagandha, and I kind of make like a little cocktail. And I've had so many people respond to it, and it works.
And then because they come off, they'll be like, wow, I need to go back on.
2000 grams of inositol, how much do you need, like a gram?
No, you don't need that much, like 250 milligrams.
250, okay.That's affordable because the aneine is expensive.
And then the ashwagandha.Ashwagandha is also a mixed bag because I also have told people to try it.And in some people, it seems to help them, and in other people, they've come back and said, my anxiety is worse on ashwagandha.
Interesting. Yeah, I found with inositol, maybe the two cancel each other out.
Oh, maybe.I haven't done a combination, so that's a good, yeah.So you're teaching me all sorts of stuff.
Yeah, that one's always in the mix, and then I'll add L-theanine and ashwagandha, depending on how severe their symptoms are.
And this is BID, this is twice a day?
I'll start with one today because it can cause a little... In the morning or night?Oh, usually in the evening.
So, but then a lot of times I'll have to do two days, two times a day.
So... Okay.What about creatine?I'm just, I'm getting it.Like I'm using, I am using you today.Like you are like, this is it.I get a chance, a shot at you.I'm going to, I'm going to say everything I can.
Yeah.I mean, creatine, I'm not opposed to creatine.It's not one of those I always recommend.I know a lot of people love it and muscle and exercise tolerance and all of that.But I mean, I haven't seen any adverse studies.No.
I mean, apparently, you know, it can affect the kidneys.Yeah.I mean, but that's I see what I used to do a lot of like I never I never was a bodybuilder, but when I was younger, I would work out a lot.
And I had I saw pictures of myself and I had just way too much muscle on my frame.It just looked weird.
And I took creatine back then and it did help with strength.And it does, I think it's sort of boost up the muscle fibers.It imbibes alcohol or alcohol imbibes water into the fibers.So it makes them look bigger.It makes you look bigger.
as well, which is, I think, one of the reasons why men like taking creatine as well.But there's a lot of stuff out now suggesting that creatine may actually help with neurotransmitters.So they don't know which one's yet and that kind of thing.
But it's interesting to see if creatine may be a supplement that helps people with anxiety.I'm going to try and get somebody on the program that can talk about that.But there are so many things.
So are there supplements, you think, that are sort of across the board?Vitamin D, for sure.Anositol trial. Ashwagandha.Anything else?
Lutein is another big one, especially if they tell me they have constipation and they're females.Females just use more magnesium for some reason because it helps with uterine contractions.
So especially if you're a female on childbearing ages and you're constipated, you're probably magnesium deficient.So that's another big one.Maxitrate, one of my favorites.Yeah.What else am I giving? Vitamin D, everyone's on vitamin D. Sure.Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's great.So a big topic here, Ozempic.
Okay.Nervous laugh. So I don't know, I get a lot of heat from other doctors that love Ozempic.And I'm not opposed to it, but to me, you really have to need it.
And there are people that have very high BMIs, like if your BMI is over 30 and you've tried dieting in the past and now you're going into risk factors for heart disease and other chronic illnesses, I don't have a problem with you taking Ozempic.
I do not. give it long term.In my opinion, if you're going to take ozempic, it's more like crutches when you break a leg or whatever, and it's helping you temporarily while you change your diet.
So when I have patients that need it, I will work on the gut and changing their diet while they take it.And then usually after six months, they're off.
And I guess, you know, the behavioral stuff has to come back because when you go off it, you know, you're going to start noticing that the weight's going to come back on again and emotionally, like, what are you going to do with that?
You know, so I think that's where I would kind of sort of go in there and start looking at my old thing about, you know, the old thing about alarm for me is that it is a younger version of you.It's still trapped in your body.
You know, when you're young and you experience stress that's too much for you to bear, you repress it, suppress it, whatever Freudian term you want to use, into the body, right?It's stuck down there.
And there are some theories, including mine, that the insular cortex deep in the brain, which kind of is a way station between mind to body, body to mind, makes an emotional signature of trauma from your youth and it works with the amygdala.
So if you were yelled at by your mom constantly when you're younger and you're in a grocery store and you hear someone yelling, it may not even be at you, you will revert back into that.
All emotional, when you see someone losing their, they're in an age regression.
So it's a matter of can you understand where this is coming from and understand that if you start gaining weight, if you're back on this stuff, that it's not the end of the world.You can sort of bring it back, but it's not.
I think in this society, we just depend on the pills so much to kind of, and they work to some extent.That's the thing.We've kind of dug our own grave in a lot of ways in medicine because this stuff does It helps symptoms for sure.
Yes, it works but I won't give it to anyone unless they have a BMI over 30 because we've seen long-term use of it.There's increased incidence of thyroid cancer, pancreatic issues, pancreatitis.
And while we're on the issue of Ozempic, so Ozempic and all those medications work on GLP receptors, right?Right.So GLP receptors have been shown to decrease appetite.
They slow gastric motility, but we have natural ozempic GLP receptor agonists in the form of butyrate, which is made by our gut bacteria when they eat food that are rich in certain fibers.
So if you're eating foods that have inulin or other fibers, plant-based fibers that again, inulin, we can't digest.So we're eating it for them, not for us. Yeah, I mean, it's what bulks up the stool.
But on its way out, it's fermented by beneficial gut bacteria and they use it and it's almost like they feed on it.And once they're full, they send the same signals and activate the GLP receptors.
through this postbiotic called butyrate and they also activate another feedback loop that also works in the satiety center.So we have natural GLP-1s, but there's nobody again.Betromedial hypothalamus.Yeah.
Betromedial hypothalamus.That's one of the satiety centers in the brain for sure.
Yes. Not horrendous.I've given metformin.
It's not a glowing endorsement, but yeah.
I mean, some people need it.If you're a diabetic and you're overweight, I'm fine giving you metformin.Again, I need to stress lifestyle changes, diet modification.You need a crutch for a little while, that's fine.
I'm fine keeping people on metformin, but after six months in terms of weight loss, it doesn't really help.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you because there is a bit of a push now to use metformin in people who are insulin resistant.
What do you think about that?
It helps.It helps, but they found that it helps for a short period. If you want to really work on insulin resistance, stop eating all day.That's my recommendation because what happens with insulin resistance is our cells become resistant to insulin.
And the reason why they become resistant to insulin is because when you eat all day, what happens?You're eating, you provide glucose, but glucose can't enter cells without insulin.
So every time insulin is released and cells see insulin, it's almost like that boy who cried wolf.They just don't want to see insulin all the time.
Yeah.A way to really limit that is to eat in a shorter time period.So then your cells aren't seeing insulin all the time.So I usually recommend people to eat two meals and a snack.Most people do not need to eat three meals if they're not underweight.
Six meals is the worst advice.You're grazing, you're constantly releasing insulin, you're predisposing yourself to insulin resistance because your cells just don't respond to insulin as well when they're seeing it all the time.
I call this social media hell when two equally credentialed experts say the exact opposite thing.
It's so hard and I feel so bad for people.I have medical training.I kind of know what goes on in the body but then I see some of this stuff that's out there that's just so far out and I have training.
What are these people doing when there's two people that are saying the exact opposite thing?And that's true in anxiety as well.There's a big push about you can fix anxiety by just changing your thoughts, which makes me want to have a seizure.
But it's one of those things that in my experience, it just does not work that way.
Well, the way that I rationalize that is I say, look at the places where they have longevity and they have increased lifespan, right?And those are the, again, the blue zones, the Mediterranean diet, what are they eating there?What are they doing?
We need to follow what they're doing.And what they're doing is they're eating mostly plant-based, right?We know this, the five countries that are part of the blue zones, they're all doing the same thing.
Mostly plant-based, a little bit of animal protein.They're active.They're doing work, but they're socially connected.A lot of them are socially connected.I mean, I don't know if you know Loma Linda, California.
It's one of the blue zones and it's a seven day event as they're vegetarians, but they're also very close knit communities.So You know, I can make stuff up, but I don't.I like to follow whatever the science says.
And the science says follow what the people who are living the longest do.And they fast, too.They don't eat all day.
Right.Yeah, and I think that's the thing, too, is that there was another thing that I was reading the other day about this guy.His diet is that he only eats fruit before noon. That's it, and then afternoon.There's always these things.
I still wake up with a little bit of alarm every day.It doesn't bother me so much anymore because I know it's just part of my physiology, but I typically don't eat until ... It's not a problem for me not to eat until noon.
Like, so I'll eat at noon and then I'll be ravenous.I'll have a bunch of crap dinner and I'll eat like a semi-normal dinner.And then that's kind of it, eight o'clock.Then from eight o'clock till noon the next day, like I'm 63 now.
And it's one of the things, and it's like, I've always wondered like why how, because my friends, they all look like their age, right?We're all 63.And they always bug the crap out of me every time we're together.It's like, what are you doing?
And I think a lot of it is just my whole life, my whole anxious life.I've only eaten between like 11 a.m.and kind of 7 p.m.And I think that's what's kind of kept me younger.It's just a theory.It's just something that kind of bounces into my head.
But when I look at them and they ask me, it's like, well, I think I just intermittent fast.Just my disposition has been that way because when I woke up with anxiety for so many years, I couldn't eat until noon.
I always say it's amazing I don't look like 160 with all the cortisol and epinephrine and norepinephrine I had running around in my brain.
I definitely agree with you on the intermittent fasting.I've been doing it for 30 years and I honestly think it's the reason why I have no chronic medical problems either.
I think it makes a difference.I got a little arthritis in my hands this year.I noticed playing golf, but in general, I'm pretty healthy.I think that's got something to do with it because my diet could be better for sure.
I don't have a really clean diet.I eat fish once a week.I follow the things.I take supplements, that kind of stuff. But it's not like I'm eating this meticulous diet or anything like that.
I'm just sort of generally eating reasonably what I consider reasonably healthy and not eating a lot of processed stuff.So why did you write the book?We only had about five minutes left, so why did you write this book?
Why did I write this book?Because so many people are unaware of these simple things that we can do, like what we just talked about.Eating in a restricted time period is so good for our immune system.
It allows our gut to not work on digestion all day.It works on others, making neurotransmitters, immune strength.So simple, simple things that I think people have been misled into believing that health is complicated.
because every time I have a conversation with someone about something very simple like changing certain things in their diet, they're just perplexed.
That's why I wrote the book because I got sick of telling everyone the same thing over and over so now I can just say read the book.
Well, what I liked about the book is it's like it's short little things like here you go, this is it, it's not a long drawn-out, it's not overly technical, it's coming from an MD so you've got the medical background behind it and it's very readable.
And it's just like, oh, yeah, okay.And it's doable.Like these things are doable.You know, so.
I feel the same way about your book, too.Oh, thanks.I don't know about you, but I had to go to about 10 different drafts.It was a lot longer.I was like, you know, I don't need to put this.I don't need to put this.I don't need to put that.
So it went from like 300 pages to 179.Yeah.People don't read anymore.
Well, and that's true, TLDR, you know.It is one of those things, too.But you know what?In my population, anxious people are usually really smart.That's what I've noticed.
They're really intellectual because they've been going to the frickin' rumination brain gym since they've been eight years old.So they like this stuff.They like when I talk about the bad nucleus of the stria terminalis and all this kind of stuff.
Not that the book is overly technical.There's parts of it that are quite technical that my nerdy people love.But it is one of those things where I think people just
We're leaning towards science now more than ever, and I don't know if that's necessarily a great thing, like again, mind, body, spirit, because I think we're leaning towards certainty.
And the thing about medicine, as you and I both well know, is there pretty behind the times.They're very consistent, but anything new that comes out, it takes 10 to 15 years before it actually meets the mainstream.
And if you look at the ACE study, like the ACE study when it came out in 1997, it was taught in med schools across the world for the next seven or eight years pretty heavily.And then it just fell off the map.
So if you look at med students graduating from med school today, half of them haven't heard of ACE studies at all. And I think that's because as medical doctors, we don't have a freaking clue of how to deal with emotional trauma, right?
So it's like we have medications.So my little joke is that if you go in to see your medical doctor and you got anxiety from childhood trauma, both you and your inner child are going to get a Paxil prescription. Right?So it is one of those things.
And I don't want to denigrate medical doctors and I don't want to denigrate psych meds because we absolutely positively need them.But it's just like it's so knee-jerk.It's so automatic because medical doctors aren't trained in trauma.
They're not trained in using non-pharmaceutical measures to help people. And you get seven minutes a patient.You don't have time to go into their trauma.You don't have time to really go, hey, what are you eating?What aren't you eating?
This kind of stuff.And it's too bad the way medicine is going in a lot of ways.But again, I think things have to get bad before they start changing.
And I think the general public is starting to have a bit of a backlash against pharmaceutically driven medical doctors. because it's kind of like this is not, we know intuitively that this isn't helping us long-term.
It's sort of keeping us kind of handcuffed to the system in a lot of ways.
So things like eating a better diet, looking after your gut, even just thinking about your gut, even just creating that mental energy that you're going to sort of start looking after your gut and looking into it makes a difference.
I do think that we are conscious beings, not to get too woo on you, but I do think we're conscious beings and we can direct our energy in such a way that we can change things.It doesn't have to be a big sledgehammer of a medication.
Another reason why I wrote the book is that if you educate yourself, you're empowered to change.
And then you want to.So often people go, I have to lose weight.It's like, what if you want to lose weight?What if you want to go to the gym and build muscle?What if it's, oh, I got to go to the gym.There's that old thing I read about years ago.
It's like, instead of saying I have to, saying I get to.I know it sounds a little Paul DeAnna, like turn that smile upside down, but I get to go to the gym right now.Am I tired?Yes, I'm tired.Do I want to go to the gym right now?
No, but I get to go to the gym right now.I get to sort of build my body up and keep it as healthy as it can.My mother's 91 and she's starting to fail now. But she kept active and that's why she made it to 91.Anyway, I'm prattling on here.
Is there anything you want to just sort of touch on before we go?How do people find you?I know you're on Instagram.
How do people find you?They can find me on my website fromwithinmedical.com or on Instagram, DrChristineB. for.Look up The Gut Revolution on Amazon.
Gut Revolution, baby.It's a great book.It's a great book.I've got it sort of marked up here.And I asked you most of the questions that I have.I was like, she's not going to know what hit her when I get a hold of her today.
So it's like, thanks so much, Christine.I really love being able to ask questions that have been really on my mind for a long time because I don't understand a lot of this gut stuff.
It does play a huge role in mental dysregulation and the more I understand, the more I can help my own patients with it.So thanks for being here and I'm sure I'll have you back.
Thank you so much.Appreciate it.
Well, that's going to do it for this episode of the AnxietyRx podcast.Thanks for joining me.As always, my goal is to make sure that you don't have to suffer with anxiety the way that I did.
That's why I wrote my book, AnxietyRx, now in its second edition, and created my very affordable MBRX online program to help you heal from anxiety instead of just coping with it.I post episodes every week, so I'll be back.
