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YHM 074 - The Connection Between Trauma, Inflammation, and Psychological Health Special Guest: Dr. Melanie
38 Plays1 year ago
Join us on Your Health Minute as we unravel the complex interplay between trauma, inflammation, and psychological well-being.
Special guest Dr. Melanie Garrett, ND, a renowned expert in neuropsychology and environmental medicine, shares insights that could transform how you view your health. Discover how trauma impacts your body's inflammatory responses, the psychological roots of poor health, and actionable strategies to enhance well-being.
Don't miss this eye-opening discussion on optimizing holistic health.
Follow Dr. Melanie:
https://sociatap.com/drmelaniegarrett/
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Transcript
Introduction & Episode Overview
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to an episode of Your Health Minute, brought to you by Aqua Omega. I am your host, Max Marion, and with me is my co-host, Calvin Morrow, and we also have a new moderator joining us today.
00:00:24
Speaker
That's Elena. Today, I'm pretty excited about the show, Calvin. I think our listeners are really going to benefit from this, and that is the connection between trauma, inflammation, and psychological health. I'm super interested in this and knowing more, and to learn more about that today is a very special guest, and that is
Dr. Garrett's Journey to Naturopathic Medicine
00:00:43
Speaker
Dr. Melanie Garrett. Dr. Melanie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, so are we. I think this is going to be a very interesting topic, lots of things to cover, lots of things for our listeners to learn about, and for us personally to learn about as well. But before we dive into that, I always love to give our guests a chance to tell our listeners a little more about themselves, how you got into naturopathic medicine, and in particular, your interest with trauma and mental health.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah. So my journey actually started in conventional medicine. So I studied Western medicine for three years, at which point I actually decided to switch. So my passion has always been kind of psychiatry and I went through kind of my own journey, which I feel like many
00:01:29
Speaker
Um, people who practice do the same kind of thing. So, um, you know, I was faced with hormonal issues. I was faced with kind of anxiety, depression, uh, the gamut of stuff. And I ended up going actually the natural route to heal my own stuff. Um, so I came to this kind of crossroads between, you know, do I want to study Western medicine or is this going to give me kind of the scope that I'm looking forward to help people moving forward?
00:01:51
Speaker
And now that I have these utilities, these tools that are of a more natural essence, should I go that route? So I ended up leaving conventional medicine. I went into naturopathic medicine, finished my studies there, and now I have a more functional approach. I do believe in both sides. Western has its role. Naturopathic medicine has its role. But the foundation, I think, what I love about naturopathic medicine in general is the time that we have for people. So the fact that we
00:02:18
Speaker
are able to sit down and go through a health history for about an hour and actually get to know that person and get to know what makes them tick and what's going on in their psychological aspect, not just their physical health. That gives me the groundwork to then really make change in my perspective. So that's kind of where I came from and where I'm at. And now I'm moving forward with naturopathic medicine. I think that's really cool. That must have been a big decision for you at that point.
00:02:44
Speaker
It was, yeah, no, it was a big decision and it was challenging to say the least because you have, you go up against opinions, right? So that was my first kind of... How were your parents and all that? They were the hard ones, honestly. I'm very stubborn and I'm very, when I'm going a direction, I'm going a direction. I really don't care what other people think. So they knew that, but they were definitely not happy about the decision.
00:03:12
Speaker
So how do you feel now that they can see your motivations and they feel good about things? I was gonna say now that they're on my team now They're like they say things like oh people are moving in the natural direction and you know people are going that way So it's good and they see my clinical practice. So now they understand why I did what I did but yeah
00:03:32
Speaker
It's awesome. You got to follow your heart rate. Like if something's telling you or you're being called to or something, you got to, you got to follow that. I just feel like if you don't have the passion behind it, first of all, you're not going to be happy in your work. And, you know, obviously you're doing some great work and we're happy to have you here today to talk about this. So.
Trauma and Inflammation: The Nervous System's Role
00:03:50
Speaker
Maybe start by defining trauma and how it impacts inflammation. Yeah, I'm curious about that. Yeah, sorry. You cut off for a little second. So define psychological health and how it impacts inflammation. Psychological health and the link between trauma and psychological health.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, that's really interesting. And actually, that's something that's kind of become more prevalent in my practice. So when I started practicing, my assumption was that I was going to be working with more an adult population, and it kind of molded and became what it was supposed to be. So now I work a lot with actually adolescents, particularly early teens, late teens, and mothers. And what I'm seeing is the impact between the psychology of these individuals
00:04:34
Speaker
and then what's coming back on blood work. And that's really interesting. So linking that kind of scientific aspect. And what I love is that we're finally getting the research. So we have indicators like CRP, EOSR that tell us that there's inflammation in the body.
00:04:48
Speaker
But a lot of the times it's like we're not understanding what the cause is. It's like, okay, there's inflammation in the body and then we've got to get it down. So then we go to cortisone or anti-inflammatories to bring the inflammation down. But the cause is still that kind of mystery, right? Like what is causing this? And studies are coming out, they're showing that adolescents, so trauma that we experience in adolescence is actually linked to some of those CRP levels.
00:05:13
Speaker
which makes sense because if you take a step back and you kind of look at that whole picture, it really always comes down to the nervous system, right? The nervous system is kind of the big orchestrator that communicates with all of our organs, right? It communicates with our hormones. It communicates with our gut directly. It communicates with our immune system, which is in our gut. So when the nervous system is stressed, then all of these kind of downstream effects
00:05:38
Speaker
can occur, right? So I always start with the gut because the gut seems to be that first kind of stage one layer where we then have to go in, intervene, and make sure that that's a good, stable foundation before we add on top of it. But going back to the principle of what we were talking about is the psychology. So
00:05:55
Speaker
I always talk about the nervous system in terms of the two aspects, right? There's the sympathetic, which everybody knows. It's that fight or flight that is our stress, essentially. And then we have the parasympathetic, which is our rest and digest. That's when we're supposed to calm down and go into that more easygoing mode.
00:06:12
Speaker
The problem is is that society unfortunately nowadays functions more in that sympathetic rather than the parasympathetic so that delicate dance that supposed to be happening between the nervous system isn't happening anymore so we're not getting that break system on the parasympathetic we're getting more of that sympathetic drive.
00:06:29
Speaker
And that's where the psychology comes in because psychology is really just our perception and our awareness of the world right so that brain and those neural networks are formed from zero to seven or those key age indicators and then from seven onward it's kind of developing on top of those neural networks that were already set so.
Impact of Family Dynamics and Technology on Child Trauma
00:06:50
Speaker
kind of, to come full circle is, you know, when we experience things that are traumatizing, we start to compound more and more on them in life. And then that's when we start to develop conditions like anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress, bipolar, you can put that in there as well. That's, that's amazing. Like, so what, what's, you mentioned seven and eight, what are the main contributors to those traumas that you're seeing in your patients?
00:07:18
Speaker
So I would say the biggest ones, it's actually interesting because I'm into energy medicine as well. So I kind of work with like the energy system and how that impacts. But I want to say the core ones are always kind of, for those of you who know energy, the solar plexus is kind of like our self-esteem, our shame center, those feelings of not being enough, of not being good or sorry, not being good enough. And that perfectionism quality as well. So I find that when kids are in a dynamic,
00:07:46
Speaker
where they're either not getting attention, so we have that neglect wound, or they're feeling abandoned, or they're getting that feedback from either their peers or their parents that their performance is not good or not good enough. That is a huge aspect that sets the groundwork for then later on building on top of who they think they are as an individual. And I find individuals who are prone to that trauma itself
00:08:13
Speaker
anxiety tends to go on top of that anxiety and depression because they're constantly on to a level of performance they're trying to perform right they want that feedback and they essentially they want love that's what you're trying to get from your caregiver so when that attachment style is not formed and not reinforced in a healthy way that's when we start to develop trauma and there's so much more of that I mean you see that like I just
00:08:41
Speaker
Personally, like you go to the restaurant and you look at kids and like they're, they're usually like, if you look around, they're sitting on a tablet or something like that. They're not getting attention from their parents. They're not a gift from their caregiver. And it feels like, you know, it might feel okay in the moment because they're not communicating that to you, but it sounds like you're creating some, some pretty deep lifelong scars here.
Diet, Stress, and Mental Health
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not even that like it's the brain chemicals. This is where I get fascinated because we have this rise of like ADHD and developmental disorders that essentially are coming from dopamine. So dopamine is our reward hormone, right? So when we have deficiencies of dopamine, we can get ADHD symptoms.
00:09:22
Speaker
But when you look at a tablet, for instance, I always compare it to back when. Back when, we were not stimulated that much. You weren't going through that spectrum of emotions. You weren't seeing something that was making you laugh, and then seeing something that was making you cry in a matter of 15 seconds. So the fact that these kids are so neurologically wired to change those pathways, it's causing almost an overstimulation of the body, and you're eating up those neurochemicals where you wouldn't normally.
00:09:49
Speaker
So it's impacting the neurochemicals, not just the behavior as well. And where's the not good enough coming from? Mostly you think, like in your opinion, is it because they're comparing themselves to some of the things they're seeing on social media or on some of these on YouTube or whatever? Or is it just the parents that are not like offering that positive reinforcement enough or just not enough attention?
00:10:12
Speaker
I think obviously there's many causes of that. One of them is the dynamic of the family. The dynamic of the family has changed. We have women in the workforce. They're less available to families. They have more stress. When you have that kind of dynamic where they're not used to not having the parent there,
00:10:33
Speaker
then you're creating that feedback system where they don't think that usually the infant is going to blame themselves. That's the bottom line. They're not looking at it at a logical perspective of like, mom is at work and she's doing all of these things, right? They're just looking at it like, I must have done something wrong because I'm not getting the attention that I need. And the bottom line is I'm probably not good enough. I've done something there.
00:10:54
Speaker
right so we have that change in the dynamic of the family structure where that infant is not getting that positive reinforcement typically because the parent is just psychologically not there because there's expenses there's things that they need to do they have other things on top of that plate and then added on top of that we have the shift in
00:11:12
Speaker
the technological aspect of life, right? So we do have the comparison, you're seeing everybody's highlights, you're seeing, you know, all of these people growing up way faster, you're seeing the spectrum of financial advantages, right? There's people who have more financial advantages that have certain things that other people are going to want, or, you know, things online that are showing like, for instance, I always come back to the fitness industry, because this is something that was close to my heart.
00:11:38
Speaker
You look at the fitness industry and you look at like bodybuilders and stuff like that and it's very admirable, right? It's like these people have amazing bodies. They've done all of this great stuff. When I was bodybuilding, I was on steroids to be on stage. That was like a prerequisite to get on stage.
00:11:54
Speaker
A lot of the clients, I ended up personal training for a period of time. The people would come in and they say, I want to look like you. I always had to have that realistic conversation with them. It's like, you can look like me, but you're going to have to give up this. I've also taken anabolic steroids to get here. This isn't a natural physique that I have.
00:12:18
Speaker
You know, you see that all the time where it's like, even like celebrities that are like, so ripped. And they're like, Oh, yeah, so I'm like, there's no way, there's no way, even in professional sports, there's, there's no way.
00:12:32
Speaker
you can be six foot four 340 pounds and have a six pack and bulging arms. It's like you're not physically designed naturally to look like that you can take some things and give yourself an advantage and look like that.
00:12:46
Speaker
but there's no way. Your honesty is honestly really, it's really refreshing and it's really cool. I hope more people kind of take that route moving forward. We were talking about, we were just talking about that today. We were talking about influencers and things like that and how they influence on social media. And I was just saying, you know how cool it would be
00:13:04
Speaker
to see a celebrity or an athlete just being really honest in off season and be like, this is what I look like in off season. Like it's very much go through peaks and valleys and in bodybuilding, I'm sure it's the same thing. Like when you're not preparing for a show, you don't look the same thing as that like three month period leading up to your, your show time. And not just that talking about the sacrifices that you need to make to get there. That's like, that's some real stuff. Like, like, like Cameron who works with us, um, here,
00:13:32
Speaker
He he was a professional bodybuilder as well and he talks about that too he's like it was almost like an obsession like when I had to eat what I had to do like what all these things is again if you're not willing to do that forget about it but like be honest with yourself if you can do that from the beginning or not but yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
I was really excited about doing this podcast today because I just finished a book by, is it Yabur or Gabor Mate? Oh, I love him. It was really interesting because he was talking about the link between trauma and disease.
00:14:07
Speaker
And it was really cool. And in my mind, I think, you know, almost every single chronic disease and illness that we're faced with today can be linked back to inflammation. And so when I saw the topic today, I was like, this is really cool. Like, let's talk about inflammation and how this trauma is causing this inflammation. Because I think a lot of times people either suppress the trauma or they don't deal with it. So then you're, even if you're, you know, it sounds like even if you're living a relatively healthy lifestyle, you can still have this chronic inflammation in your body.
00:14:37
Speaker
I want to talk about that. That's like, that's really important to talk about. And I think it's important for parents to know that too, because you know, as a parent, like you want, you want to give your kids the best possible start you can.
The Gut-Brain Connection
00:14:50
Speaker
I understand life can be stressful, but you need to understand the core impact that you might be making on your child for the rest of their life. 100%. Yep.
00:15:01
Speaker
And I mean, there's obviously there's more causing the inflammation than just trauma. You know what I mean? Like there are environmental toxins. We can bring the food into it. Like there are those external factors that are causing it, but it just seems to be everything kind of in that bucket, right? And psychological health. I love that Garamate gets into that because I feel like he's really kind of opened the doors to the conversation where I think more people are open to that.
00:15:24
Speaker
But it was cool. Like even some of the things he was talking about was like the dissociation, like at least it was like physical abuse or sexual abuse, but like the physical disassociation between the mind and the body. And when you wouldn't even feel like the tumors or the cancer, whatever building up inside of you, that was like, like your mind's a powerful thing. And like, if you're trying to escape something and it's a physical kind of trauma, it can do that. It's wild. For sure it is. It's really fascinating how the,
00:15:52
Speaker
brain does that, you know, where you will not have a memory at all of something that happened because it was traumatic. I'm wondering, maybe can we, like, there's obviously different levels of trauma, right? So, is it all levels of trauma? Maybe we can give some, like, examples for our listeners. Because some stress is good and some, you know, some stress is good. You want to, you don't always want to be in, like,
00:16:15
Speaker
the parasympathetic state, but like you need a little bit of stress, right? That's what exercise is, right? Like you're stressing your body out and that's a good form of stress. Let's talk about the good, the bad, and maybe the ugly, right?
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, definitely good stress. I feel like stress is a good motivator too, right? That's where drive comes from. It's like if you have an exam, you better be stressed about it. Otherwise, you're probably not going to pass. Right. I tell my daughter that all the time. She's becoming a relatively high level gymnast, and she gets the butterflies, but that's the stress and the anxiety. I tell her all the time, that's like your
00:16:52
Speaker
Like you can harness that power if you can kind of dip into it and you can use that explosive energy while you're, you're out there and kind of feed off of that. Right? Like, so that's, that's good, good type of stress, good type of feeling. And depending, sometimes it folds people too, right? Like it can fold you.
00:17:09
Speaker
Well, I think it makes your character stronger. I mean, you guys are entrepreneurs too, so I think there's an entrepreneurial aspect to stress where resistance is good in my head. Yeah. I tell people at the time, a little pressure makes diamonds, right? Yeah. If there's not resistance, you should actually be worried because you're probably not growing. You need to hit that resistance, plus you need to push through it, so that's where the aspect is good. But I guess on the flip side,
00:17:30
Speaker
when it's psychologically hurting you, right? So when you've gone to the market or you've gone to whatever your life and the feedback is negative, so you're getting negative feedback, I guess that's when the stress is obviously bad, right? Like you're getting that signal that it's not working for you in a way that it should. And I think that's the differentiation between good and bad is, is it progressing your life or is it not?
00:17:55
Speaker
What are physical symptoms like that you could, like someone could potentially ignore because you're talking about this stress and right away, I went, you know, you're talking about good stress, either in sports or in business or whatever, but being constantly under that, that stress, well, eventually you're going to burn out.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, so this is where I see kind of the nervous system burnout and I kind of bring it full circle, right? So I always talk about like the mind-body soul. I think there's all that you have to look at each tip of the triangle, right? So the physical stuff is the inflammation. The mind is the mental stuff that's going on. And then the spiritual is your spiritual connection to your body, which is that more energy system in my mind. So kind of going back to that,
00:18:39
Speaker
It's a spectrum, and I see this in my clinical practice, of people who are aware and then people who are not aware. And the people who are aware, they're usually going to feel the tension in their shoulders. That's the main one. It's the difference between this and this. And they'll go out throughout their day, and you'll notice certain things will trigger you or certain topics or certain people will make you go like that. Well, that means you're holding stress in your system. There's something, right?
00:19:05
Speaker
The other ones is if we're talking about that solar plexus stomach, it's the pit in the stomach, right? So that's your anxiety. That's your stress. That's your shame center. That's when you're feeling something in a negative way that's making you kind of collapse instead of expand.
00:19:22
Speaker
So those would probably be the two ones that I notice the most. And then I do, like I said, have those people who just don't feel their body at all. And we do get into that dissociative phase where they've blocked out all memories and all feelings to the point where they're not connected to their body. And my role is to then reestablish that connection. So we talk about where's your spiritual life.
00:19:44
Speaker
How does this feel in your body? I will bring up emotions. I'll say, you're happy. Where do you feel that? You're sad. Where do you feel that? Then we go into the psychological kind of memory, essentially, right? Because I'm tapping into that subconscious mind of when I replay this, where do you feel it? And more often than not, that's how you kind of get through that dissociative. Like sometimes the dissociates, they can't bring up the memory, but if you can get to a memory, then that's when they can start to reconnect with their body.
00:20:13
Speaker
That's cool. It is interesting. Never really thought about the brain, you know, like something happening that then affects your body as like an inflammatory response.
00:20:23
Speaker
Right. That's the thing I, that was even on my radar that could happen, but it all makes sense as you're, as you're talking about it now. And it's making me like look back and think about all the things in my life that, that have maybe, you know, caused like, uh, you can feel it in your gut too, right? Like if you're stuck in a bad situation or something doesn't feel right, you can feel it in your, your gut, right? It's like, there's that gut brain connection that's
Diagnosing and Treating Gut Health Issues
00:20:44
Speaker
just there. So, and speaking of the gut, how much does diet play a role in all of this? Like if you're,
00:20:50
Speaker
If you're, you know, you're going through something traumatic and just thinking of like, if people tend to eat, make poor dietary decisions, right? Well, yeah. And you have less energy. So you just, you know, you go to a fast food joint instead because you just don't have energy to make a nice, healthy dinner. And then I can imagine things just snowball in the wrong direction. And you get that little dopamine hit in the, like in that little moment, but then you're going to feel crappy not too long after that. Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, I always like the guy is my first thing that I fix pretty much in everybody. It's like standard practice. How do you test for that? Like, what do you, what are you looking for when you're. So it depends on one of my favorite tests is most, I don't know if you guys know mosaic labs.
00:21:32
Speaker
Okay, I was gonna say they have one called the oat test. So it's the organic acid test. And it kind of gives you a breakdown of multiple levels. So it'll give you a breakdown of what's going on in the gut, whether the gut bacteria are balanced. It'll tell me about mitochondria and barely into mitochondrial health as well. So it'll tell me the status of the mitochondria, whether they're functioning. And then in the mitochondria, there's that something called a Krebs cycle, which is essentially the cycle that produces your energy.
00:21:58
Speaker
So it tells me if there's any deficiencies in that Krebs cycle and if there are what they are. And then it'll also tell me kind of like vitamin deficiencies, what else is on there. Those are the main ones. So it kind of gives me a snapshot of what's going on in the system. If I want to go something further, there's something called a GI map, which is a breakdown of the bacteria, whether there's viruses and parasites in the gut bacteria. So it'll give you a whole bunch of markers. What's the basis of the mosaic test? Is it a stool sample?
00:22:28
Speaker
It's a urine urine test. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. That's cool. And then from, from there, depending on what you find, what type of protocols are you putting in place? Is it, is it mainly diet? Are you bringing in some supplements, some probiotics? Like what are you, what are you doing at that point?
00:22:46
Speaker
So it's a combination at that point. Usually it's dietary adjustment. So the nice part about the indicators and the main ones that I see is it'll tell me if there's candida overgrowth, which is, again, hugely linked to fatigue and mental health. It'll tell me if there is leaky gut syndrome, which again is attached to mental health. And then it'll also tell me about mold, which I would say is one of the most silent
00:23:10
Speaker
I don't want to say killer, but killers that cause a lot of havoc in the system that are not on people's radars. Depending on what that is, then I will make sure that the gut is balanced. That's always a good probiotic depending on what the person needs and what strains essentially I'm looking for.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then I want if they do have leaky gut, I've got to balance that. So usually that's your glutamine products, your gut effects, stuff like that. And then once that's done, then I work on the nervous system because I always go back to the nervous system because it goes straight down into the gut, right? It's that my enteric plexus. So if your nervous system is throwing things off and you're constantly getting triggered as much as I'm trying to repair your gut, you're just going to keep causing issues down there.
00:23:54
Speaker
I was reading you post about the Vegas nerve. Yep. The Vegas nerve is a monkey. Right. Cause there's a lot of issues, but yeah. Sometimes I felt that the most. I did some cryotherapy, like one of our, uh, one of our retailers, he, um, he just bought the master franchise for, I cryo for Canada. And so he had us have to go check it out and I did it. And I was like,
00:24:15
Speaker
He's like, you'll feel it. He's like, you're going to feel it. And I was like, all right, whatever. You know, like I'll try anything. And we did like the deep cold. I came out. It was so stimulated. It was unreal. And all the lights were like crazy bright. And I slept like a like a baby that night. Yeah. Wow. Huge burst of energy and it's a crazy good sleep. But it was amazing. I was like, I was like my first real experience really feeling that like it was really cool. What is the Vegas Nerf?
00:24:43
Speaker
The vagus nerve, essentially it's the 10th nerve and it controls the nervous system and your gut function. When it's off, then you experience more anxiety. You're not able to do daily motor functions. It's part of the autonomic, so your natural functions. Okay. Would it be obvious for someone to be like, oh yeah, my vagus nerve is out of whack today?
00:25:06
Speaker
I mean, I look at it when, okay, so. Ooh, my vagus nerve is not so good today. Well, that's always how it is. You wake up in the morning, man, my vagus nerve.
00:25:23
Speaker
And then maybe you could do something about it. I was going to say, when you feel stressed, it can be the vagus nerve, right? Or if the gut's not functioning and there's low motility, again, we're looking at the vagus nerve.
Integrating Naturopathic and Conventional Medicine
00:25:36
Speaker
But I pay less attention to the vagus nerve, and I haven't really dug into the research, so I can't talk about it from a scientific perspective. But just basic things, like you said, like chirotherapy or hot and cold therapy, essentially all you're doing is you're resetting it.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yes, really cool. When you're looking at the gut, are you having them journal what they're eating on a regular basis to see if they have any food sensitivities and how they feel after they eat and what's going on there?
00:26:07
Speaker
Yes and no. I do do elimination. It's all case dependent. It's depending on what I see with that individual and then what I think is feasible for their picture. I'm a huge fan of ketogenic. I like the ketogenic diet for the principle of mitochondrial health. If we're really going down to the root of things, I really do think that the mitochondria plays a large role
00:26:30
Speaker
in our ability to function, our ability to detox, all of the good stuff. So if I can get somebody on a ketogenic diet, I will do that. But it's obviously not feasible for kids. I find kids struggle with ketogenic. So that's when I will move to more of an anti-inflammatory diet, which is that gluten free, dairy free, and then processed sugars if we can take them out. And then if we're looking at behavior, dyes is a huge one that I will take out of the diet if we can.
00:26:56
Speaker
dies. Yeah, that's a big problem in Western society. Like it's crazy. Like you go over Europe, you won't find any of that stuff. No. So what kind of food will we find dies in?
00:27:07
Speaker
Cereal, like juices, all over the place. When we went to the States, I noticed their fruit loops were like neon colors, which in Canada, it's like all the fruit loops were like more mild. And even then we're still way behind Europe. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. I mean, comparing just like ketchup ingredients, Europe versus Canada. It's, it's wild. Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
I always go for the organic ketchup because it actually says what's supposed to be in there. It's like sugar, vinegar, and I think tomatoes. The less number of ingredients or the least number of ingredients, typically it's better. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. So given your background in neuropsychology, maybe we could discuss how the brain health impacts our overall physical health.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean going back to kind of that basic thing of the nervous system, right? So I always talk about where it goes down. So it goes straight down to your gut, right? And your gut is the creator of your serotonin, which is your happy hormone. 95% or 90% is made in the gut. So if you've got a poor gut microbiome, you're disrupting with that.
00:28:18
Speaker
Um, your bacteria are also important for the synthesis of nutrients, right? So your gut microbiome in order to absorb, it has to be good, but also to get those nutrients into a form that's usable, they have to be good, right? So if that's not working because of stress, then all of a sudden you're going to have nutrient deficiencies, which are going to further
00:28:36
Speaker
decrease your health, essentially. So going back to that, it's like your gut needs to be good. Your gut also creates your immune system. So I find histamine reactions, which are also really big in society right now. When the gut is not good, we open the doors to leaky gut. And what happens is we can get an increase in histamine. So I don't know if you guys have heard of MCAS, mast cell activation syndrome.
00:29:04
Speaker
I'm sure our listeners will be curious to know. Okay. I was going to say it's a histamine, essentially syndrome that's coming from starting with poor gut health. So poor gut health, inflammation, and toxins are essentially what's happening and you're getting an overproduction of histamine and that's traveling throughout the body and you get a whole bunch of different symptoms like dizziness, low blood pressure. It tends to be the symptoms that actually people aren't paying attention to because low blood pressure, for instance, I find
00:29:30
Speaker
It's something that's kind of like braised by in medical science. It's like we're worried about high blood pressure, but low blood pressure, it's like not really an issue. But for me, it is an issue because it's telling me that something's not going on in the nervous system that should be keeping that in balance, right? It's supposed to be in a reference range for a reason.
00:29:47
Speaker
So you see things like that dizziness, the itchiness, the diarrhea, orthostatic hypotension, which is essentially like standing up and falling over, blocking out. So anyways, what I was saying is the syndrome seems to be on the rise in the past couple of years, which is really interesting. So there's something that shifted on a societal perspective that's also increased in health. Like everybody, just the food that we're being fed and what's being told is like acceptable to eat.
00:30:17
Speaker
It's destroying our guts, not just that. Like the dependency on, like you're talking about leaky gut. I was amazed. Like I was looking up statistics. I can't remember it now. Maybe you can look it up Atlanta, but it was like the number of deaths that are caused annually by non-sterile anti-inflammatories. And it was crazy just basically destroying people's guts and causing leaky gut syndrome and essentially poisoning you over time.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'd be curious what that number is because I actually just had a patient who had ulcers from NSAIDs. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's causing issues and it's it's not talked about at all. That are that die from non-sterile 21 to 24 million annually. Yeah. And that's from the National Institute of Health.gov.
00:31:07
Speaker
Wow. Okay. So tens of millions of people every year. That number's gone up since the last time I looked at it. I thought it was like, I was going to say eight, but I didn't want to misquote myself. That is wild. Yeah. Yeah. People depend on him, right? Everybody's like, you're talking about inflammation, these traumas. He thinks everybody has inflammation. Everybody has pain in their body, right? There's all, there's this constant pain, which is a symptom of, of inflammation. And so you get a little bit of pain, get a little headache, get a little, this little discomfort, boom, slapping that, slapping.
00:31:37
Speaker
these, these, uh, over the counter pills, like, like, like their tic tacs. It's crazy. Well, it becomes part of your daily routine almost. Right. Yeah. I feel like you can't function without it, but then eventually you don't function at all. Right. And here, but at all times people got arthritis. They're just popping them like nonstop. So what are like, so what was the case? Like, I mean, I don't know if you're allowed to talk about it now, but what did you do to, to help that person that ended up with the stomach ulcers?
00:32:04
Speaker
So that was, she actually ended up going the Western medicine route. So they ended up putting her on a PPI and then just monitoring her. So yeah, I was gonna say, I have my things about PPIs. I don't love them either, but you know, they have their role.
00:32:20
Speaker
They have their role, right? Yeah. That's nice. A lot of these things, if they can be like stop gaps, right? To get you to like a place where you can start dealing with the underlining cause. I think that's, you know, a lot of the times with what it's there for, but it becomes a crutch and it becomes just almost like a, you know, use this for the rest of your life.
00:32:40
Speaker
Well, I mean, the stomach acid too, it has an important role that I think is not well understood. Like even from my perspective, I'm still trying to figure out kind of the role because there's histamine receptors in the gut. So there's some role between the stomach acid and histamine. And I find people who actually go on the PPIs for long-term, then we end up dealing with more issues that start popping up, especially auto autoimmunity. So there seems to be more of a picture there that I think we understand.
00:33:07
Speaker
There's so much more research coming out around like gut and microbiome and gut health, I feel like. Is it just recently like we've just become so much more fascinated or interested on gut function? I think it's like five, 10 years is like research like coming out like nonstop. Yeah, I think it's the functional medicine movement to be honest. Like a lot of my mentors and the people who I kind of look up to and follow, they reiterate that like the gut is kind of the cornerstone of health.
00:33:35
Speaker
And I don't think we always thought that way, but I think they're the ones kind of taking charge. And it's interesting because we always look back to like people like Hippocrates, which is like the father of medicine, right? He always preached actually that the gut was the first thing that you were supposed to heal before anything else. So are you working more collaboratively now with practitioners?
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I do have a couple of practitioners, actually a practitioner in Calgary. His name is Dr. Hoffman. He offers kind of like, you can work under him. So I follow a lot of his stuff and then I'm in, I'm going to be in one of his programs to kind of work underneath him and go by case by case. Cause he works on stuff like MCAS. He is an actual medical doctor who, who's working in the functional medicine space, which really intrigues me about him.
00:34:30
Speaker
Um, and then collaboratively, like in terms of Western medicine, yes, because obviously there's limitations with naturopathic medicine. There's certain things, unfortunately, that people just get beyond my capacity to help them. So I do find, especially neurologists, neurologists can be like, I've always seen that as like, this like great opportunity to collaborate. It's like, we've got a completely overloaded like medical system right now.
00:34:59
Speaker
but we're not helping anybody understand how to get healthier or feel better.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think there seems to be, there's a gap. And I think it's an ego gap, to be honest, where I find a lot of my resistance comes from the fact that I am a naturopathic doctor and medical doctors don't love that. So if we could get past, I think the ego, then I think we'd be more effective because it's clear, like you need both sides. You know what I mean? You do need both sides, right? Like I've always said that. We love naturopathic medicine.
00:35:33
Speaker
do a ton of work with CCNM. We support a lot of their programs as well. We're starting to support a lot of the research that's going on there as well, too. We have a study that's coming out actually any day, I guess. We're just waiting for the peer review on the impact of diet, nutrition, and high potency omega-3s on anxiety and depression.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah. And get some other really cool projects in the work there as well. But I've always said, I don't understand why. And I guess maybe you just pointed it out. It's an ego. Maybe it's an ego thing, but like, why aren't we working together? People could benefit so much from that. I would love to imagine a world where it's like,
00:36:14
Speaker
Wouldn't it be amazing? Is there any countries that you see that, that you see this collaborative effort or is it still just going to take some time and I guess? Growing pains. Maybe growing pains or just some adaptation or some like early adapters where it's like, hey, like this is what's happening and this really works.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say probably the closest is China because China, they have the hybrid medical system, right? They have their traditional Chinese medicine. Because their aging population is kind of, I was just reading about that two weeks ago. I got this whole huge report on it and they're, they're, they've invested heavily in helping their people get healthier and feel better. And the whole goal is to uncrowded and overcrowded healthcare system.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like if people just saw a naturopath once a year, you know, it's like this whole plan from like, from like, I think it started like last year or the year before all the way to like 2035. And it's created a huge boom for the health industry in, uh,
Conclusion & Contact Information
00:37:16
Speaker
in Asia. It's, it's really cool. You just take care of your body and it's going to prevent so many hospital visits in the future. Right. Like I think so. It's unreal. Yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker
And not just that, maybe some of those visits because people can't get a family doctor or something like that, working with an asherpathic doctor, you can prevent a lot of those unnecessary emergency room visits as well. It's taking proactive steps towards, you know, a moral... Is that what we should be doing as a society? 100%. As you say, there's a lot of things we should probably be doing. Sometimes it's just hard. People are a little lazy at the same time.
00:37:55
Speaker
But you know, you'll be happy if you do it now versus doing it in five years when the problem is much worse. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? What does it suffer the suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or something like that? For our listeners who would maybe want to reach out to you afterwards and potentially continue the conversation or, or book a consult with you, what would be their best way to, to get all of you?
00:38:23
Speaker
Yep. So on Instagram is dr.melanniegarret, which I would say I'm probably most active on. Uh, my website is also dr. Melanie Garrett. If you type in dr. Melanie Garrett and Google, all my stuff will pop up too. Um, I would say probably my website is the fastest way to get in contact with me. So there's a contact form on there. And then there's also a booking link. Um, unfortunately I can only see patient content on there. I can vouch for it. I, I, I was creeping on there. We'll have those links in the, in the description of this podcast too.
00:38:52
Speaker
So all you have to do is click a link and make it super simple for all our listeners. That's how you're going to get ahold of Dr. Melanie and see her fantastic content that she has on her socials or even potentially reach out and see her in person. So you can, you know, start taking those steps to a, to a healthy or happier you, you know, those proactive measures, which we were talking about. Yeah. I feel like we talk a lot more about this. We should have set up a follow-up. But so maybe even some tips for parents and things like that to prevent these traumas for building up in
00:39:21
Speaker
Cause I'm sure you could just do so many small little things. Nobody's doing it intentionally. I don't think so. I don't think anybody's doing this intentionally. And so, you know, just some tips and tricks, maybe put your, put down your phone when you get home or you got a ton of tips you can offer, but like, it's, uh, it's so important. Obviously we can, we learned about that today. Yeah. I want to thank you again, Dr. Melanie Garrett for being on our show and for everyone who's listening. If you made it this far, please be sure to share this podcast, give it a five star rating.
00:39:50
Speaker
Dr. Melanie, thank you so much for being in the show. It was so great having you today. Thank you for having me. It was fun.