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Nootropics to Reduce Anxiety and Promote Relaxation w/ David Tomen - Connecting Minds Ep 23
181 Plays4 years ago
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rdMbqIhFGiM
Get this episode on your favourite podcast player here: https://christianyordanov.com/ep23-david-tomen/
On this episode of Connecting Minds we have part 1 of 3 with David Tomen, a returning guest, where we discuss using nootropic supplements for specific purposes.
Today’s topic is Nootropics to Reduce Anxiety and Promote Relaxation.
If you like this episode, you may also like:
Ep18 Using Nootropics To Optimise Your Brain Health and Mental Performance w/ David Tomen
Youtube: https://youtu.be/T1mXmooz53s
Website: https://christianyordanov.com/18-david-tomen/
Links to Davids’s resources and social media:
Website: https://NootropicsExpert.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OJP2cnNB04NacojV9MZWg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidtomen
David’s book Head First: https://nootropicsexpert.com/head-first/
Best Nootropics for Anxiety: https://nootropicsexpert.com/best-nootropics-for-anxiety/
Top 7 Nootropic Adaptogens to Conquer Anxiety and Stress: https://nootropicsexpert.com/top-7-nootropic-adaptogens-to-conquer-anxiety-and-stress/
Links to Christian’s book and social media:
My first book Autism Wellbeing Plan: How to Get Your Child Healthy - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084GBBDL9
Website: https://christianyordanov.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/christian_yorda
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBu5V9XLVnr-Mlh8etxiG4w
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianYordanovCoach
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christian_yordanov/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Connecting Minds Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
Guest Introduction: David Tomin on Nootropics
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Jardinov. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we have a repeat guest on. It's David Tomin of NeutropicsExport.com. David was very kind and gracious to join us and share his wisdom and insights on all things Neutropics. And this is part one of a mini series on using Neutropic supplements for specific purposes.
How Do Nootropics Help with Anxiety?
00:01:08
Speaker
Today, we're going to cover how to use Neutropics to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. There's a couple of articles to David's website neutropicsexpert.com that goes into more depth on the supplements we covered today. So please be sure to check those out. He also has the book
00:01:27
Speaker
Headfirst, which is a great resource on, again, all things Neutropics. And he's coming out with a second edition that I would highly recommend you check out if you're at all interested in Neutropic supplements. So I hope you find this episode informative. And without further ado, here is David Toman of NeutropicsExpert.com.
00:01:48
Speaker
Today on the Connecting Minds podcast, I have David Tauman again to talk all about all things new tropics. And this first topic that we will discuss will be new tropics to help with anxiety and promote relaxation. But before we get into that, David, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me back again, Christian. It's an honor.
David Tomin's Personal Journey with Nootropics
00:02:13
Speaker
Maybe very briefly, can you just give folks that haven't listened to the previous podcast, can you give us a 30,000 foot view of what's your experience with new tropics and why should we listen to you? Sure. I started down this path probably about 13 or 14 years ago when I was diagnosed adult ADD.
00:02:38
Speaker
And up until that time, all of my adult life, I had a problem with focus and didn't know why I bought the books, couldn't figure it out. And a psychiatrist said, you're adult ADD, so you prescribe Ritalin. And I started using it. And within the first couple of days, it was like somebody turned the lights on in my brain. It was like a miracle. And within a couple of years, I started growing taller into Ritalin.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I panicked and I decided that I was going to find out rather than just discarding it, I was going to find out how Ritalin worked. And I did. I found out it was a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. I found out that my brain was low on dopamine and a set of choline. And what I needed to take to boost that, I got those supplements from GNC, made myself a little stack and Ritalin started working again. And I've never had to change the dosage until this day.
00:03:26
Speaker
And then several years later, I ended up in the ER. And by that time, I had not heard the word the term nootropics. All I knew is there was dietary supplements that could help the human brain.
00:03:39
Speaker
And a few years later, I ended up in the ER and I was diagnosed with severely hypothyroid. And one of the things that comes with hypothyroidism often is memory loss. And I completely lost my memory. I had two different neurologists test me for Alzheimer's. It came up negative. They couldn't help you. They could figure out what it was. And so I started doing my research again and
00:04:03
Speaker
figured out how to get my memory back. And that's when I finally found out that these things were called nootropics. But it was really, really difficult to find this information. I had to go to PubMed and the different websites that hosted peer-reviewed clinical studies because nobody had written any books on it. I mean, there were no websites. And one thing led to another. I found a nootropics expert because there was a need for it.
00:04:32
Speaker
I figured that if I was having such a hard time finding out information about how to fix my memory, what was the average person doing if they had a problem with memory or anxiety, depression, OCD, or whatever? And that was my motivation for starting a no tropics expert. I figured that we all entered an authority site on this and that's what it turned out to be.
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, your book is an amazing resource. I'm really looking forward to the next edition. For the listeners, if you're interested in new topics, we're talking about, what is it? 600 pages of information on the monster of a book.
00:05:15
Speaker
Let's get right into it, David. If our goal is to either reduce anxiety or to promote relaxation in some form, let's say a lot of deadline stresses, maybe we just had a baby or a second child and it's craziness, work, life balance, all that stuff, or there's a pandemic running around, you're scared for your health, for your family's health,
00:05:42
Speaker
How would you approach this problem of reducing anxiety and or promoting relaxation?
Finding the Root Cause of Anxiety with Nootropics
00:05:50
Speaker
I think, Christian, the best way to go about doing this is to find out what's causing the anxiety in the first place. And of course, most people don't know enough to do that. And so they end up just trying, they read someplace that an adaptogen helps anxiety. So they went out and they bought a bottle of ginseng or they bought a bottle of go-to cola or something and not really aware of why it works and how it works in the brain.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so there's two different approaches to. Addressing anxiety i think the most. The smartest move the best way to go about doing it in the quickest way to get a solution is to find it with the causes in the first place.
00:06:34
Speaker
What I'm going to talk about next is the most efficient way to go about figuring out what's causing your anxiety, and that's through trial and error. And you do that by testing different precursors for different neurotransmitters. Because when a doctor prescribes something like Xanax, for example, and there's just the assumption that the problem with the person that's got is with GABA. And if it doesn't work,
00:07:02
Speaker
they're frustrated and the doctor doesn't know what to do and they don't know what to do because nobody's ever talked about anything other than GABA being the cause, problems with GABA being the cause of anxiety or serotonin being the cause of depression. And so to get the root cause of anxiety that if you really haven't got, one way to do it is if you've used a prescription anti-anxiety med and it worked, find out how it works.
00:07:32
Speaker
What it does in your brain, does it boost serotonin or does it boost GABA? And then you've got a clue on which nootropics to go and try. But if you have no idea what's causing your anxiety, the only thing you can do is go through the list. And that includes acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, GABA, glutamate,
00:07:55
Speaker
And the way you test these is by trying a precursor. A precursor is the molecule that's required to make that neurotransmitter. So, for example, Christian, you're low in dopamine. To boost dopamine, you'd use L-tyrosine. And L-tyrosine, along with some of the B vitamins and magnesium and a couple of other minerals, goes on to make L-dopa, which goes on to make dopamine, which goes on to make norepinephrine, which goes on to make epinephrine.
00:08:26
Speaker
And so you try L-tyrosine for a couple of days and see if your anxiety goes away. And if that doesn't work, then you move on to the next neurotransmitter and let's go after acetylcholine and test that. And how do you fix that? To boost acetylcholine, you need a precursor like alpha GPC or CDP choline, which provides a choline molecule along with acetylalkarnitine, which is a cofactor. You use those together in a little stack.
00:08:55
Speaker
and boost acetylcholine and see if your anxiety goes away. Use that for a couple of days. If that doesn't work, then you go on to GABA, et cetera. You just move down the line and there's not a lot to test here, but it's going to take maybe a week or 10 days to get through all of these unless you get lucky and you try something on the first day or the third day that works. And so for example, if you find out that your problem is with GABA,
00:09:23
Speaker
What do you do? How do you fix that if you don't want to use prescription meds? There's two ways to do it. You can get GABA as a supplement. Now there is a school, a lot of people believe that GABA is, the molecule is too large, it can't cross the blood-brain barrier, so it's useless as a supplement. But if you take a look at the reviews on places like Amazon for people that use GABA as a supplement, a lot of people are having success with it. Why?
00:09:51
Speaker
It's not because it's crossing into the brain through the blood-brain barrier, but GABA is synthesized, or it's metabolized in your gut. And there's some kind of communication going on between your gut and your brain via the vagus nerve, likely the vagus nerve. And so you can use GABA, or pharma GABA is a naturally made form of GABA using yeast, which seems to be much more bioavailable than regular synthetic GABA.
00:10:19
Speaker
Try pharma GABA. Another way to do it is L-glutamine. L-glutamine enters your body and it goes on to make glutamate and L-glutamate goes on to make GABA. And there's a cycle there, L-glutamine, L-glutamate, GABA. It's an important cycle. And if that cycle breaks down, it results in anxiety. Anyway, those are two ways to boost GABA.
00:10:43
Speaker
And so if you figure out that indeed it is GABA, that's a problem. That's when you can start experimenting with other supplements or other adaptogens like herbs that boost GABA. Now, there's no sense in using something like, let me give you an example here, ginkgo biloba.
00:11:11
Speaker
If you've got a problem with GABA, there's no saying sense in you trying something like Ginkgo because Ginkgo doesn't act on GABA. Ginkgo acts like a monoamine oxidase inhibitor or an MAOI, which it inhibits MAOI, so it boosts dopamine. And if you've got a problem with GABA, it's not going to help you. But the ones that will help you are drugs or herbs like Bacopa monetary.
00:11:40
Speaker
Researchers at Benares Hindu University in India showed that bakopa was as effective for anxiety as the benzolorazepam. So that's one option. Another one you can try is lemon balm. The lemon balm is, it's an adaptogen, it's used for stress relief and to reduce panic attacks. And how does it do that? It does it by inhibiting GABA transaminase enzyme.
00:12:09
Speaker
And that GABA transaminase enzyme, when you inhibit it, it increases GABA levels in your brain. Does that enzyme break down or convert GABA to another compound? Each one of these neurotransmitters has got an enzyme that steps in to get rid of that neurotransmitter once it's used. So in the case of GABA, it's GABA transaminase. When dopamine is monoamine oxidase, when it's acetylcholine, it's acetylcholinesterase.
00:12:38
Speaker
When you inhibit that enzyme, what you're doing is you're forcing the existing neurotransmitter that's in your brain, whether it's GABA or acetylcholine or dopamine, to not be discarded, but forced back into the extracellular space.
00:12:59
Speaker
So lemon balm acts as a GABA reuptake inhibitor of sorts. Correct. Cool. I have tried that actually. It does work for me for sleep. Okay. So you can assume that you might have an issue with GABA. So that takes longer and it's more frustrating for people, especially if they don't know what they're doing because they're not aware of what these natural herbs, how these natural herbs actually work.
00:13:21
Speaker
All they know is that lemon balm reduces anxiety. Or ginkgo biloba reduces anxiety in some people. Or rhodiola rosaei reduces anxiety in some people. But they don't know why it works. And it's important to find out how it works. Because if it doesn't work, if you find out how it works, and you find out that rhodiola influences serotonin and norepinephrine,
00:13:46
Speaker
And that means that you haven't got a problem with serotonin and norepinephrine if you've used rhodoreal and it doesn't work. Yeah. So you go on to another herb, but first you check out the other herb and find out how it works. If it affects serotonin and norepinephrine too, you don't want to bother trying it because that's not going to work for you either. You want to try something that's going to work on one of the other neurotransmitters.
Supplements and Herbs for Anxiety Management
00:14:09
Speaker
Okay, so by the way, would this be the order that you're going through these? Would this be the order that you would try? So you start with GABA first. What would you try next if GABA reuptake inhibitors or modulators don't actually work?
00:14:29
Speaker
That's a good question. It depends. It depends if you've used a prescription drug in the past that worked for you, then you have some knowledge you have something to work from. And then you can go straight to that neurotransmitter, yeah? So if you were using Xanax, for example, and that worked for you, that works on GABA. So then you go looking for herbs that boost GABA one way or another in your brain.
00:14:56
Speaker
Or you get the agaba supplement, like pharma agaba, or you get L-glutamine, which will boost agaba in the long term. So, but if you don't know that, then you just kind of like take a look at the list and you start someplace and you try them one at a time. It doesn't really matter where you start, unless you have a sneaking suspicion that there could be a problem with one particular problem and you want to address that first.
00:15:25
Speaker
I think most people go for the serotonin, like 5-HTP seems to be a common choice for that. They do because that's what they know. Yeah. And that's unfortunate because if you take a look at the data, over half of the people that use these drugs don't get any satisfaction from them because that's not their problem. That's the reason why it doesn't work.
00:15:52
Speaker
It's something else that's the problem. So, you know, somebody will be sorely disappointed if they try something that increases serotonin in their brain, like using L-Tryptophan. I don't recommend that people use 5-HTP, not long, short term, yeah, but long term. After four or five weeks, studies show that it just stops working. And user reviews back that up too. But L-Tryptophan is the best way to boost serotonin in your brain.
00:16:21
Speaker
But if you try L-Tryptophan to boost serotonin and it doesn't work, hopefully you know enough that this is not the end of the story. It's time to move on to something else and to try something else that works on a completely different neurotransmitter in your brain. Awesome.
00:16:42
Speaker
Okay. So let's say we've tried gaba and, um, uh, some type of serotonin, something that boosts or whatever, uh, keeps serotonin in the synapses. Um, what, where, where would you go? Where would you go next if those two don't work? Then I would try dopamine next or acetylcholine next. Those are the two main other ones. Um,
00:17:10
Speaker
Either one of them, too much acetylcholine can cause anxiety. Not enough acetylcholine can cause anxiety. And certainly not enough dopamine can cause anxiety, or too much dopamine turns into norepinephrine, which can cause anxiety too.
00:17:28
Speaker
You have to find out one way or another, you have to figure out what the cause is of your anxiety. If you want to get any satisfaction in solving the problem. Unfortunately, a lot of people, and you'll see this in user reviews on places like Amazon for particular supplements, say a lemon bond supplement, you'll have half the people or three quarters of the people saying, what a fantastic supplement, this did this, this, this, and this. And the next person will say, didn't do anything for me. And that person that didn't do anything for them,
00:17:58
Speaker
Hopefully, they didn't give up. Hopefully, they went on and tried something else. Yeah. By the way, do you have actual resources on this particular topic in your book or the website? Is there something we can link to that folks can read further there? The best thing to do is to link through to I've got one called Best Neutropics for Anxiety.
00:18:21
Speaker
And that is the page that walks you through each one of the neurotransmitters separately and explaining what that neurotransmitter does and why it would cause anxiety if something went wackle with it and what to do about it. And then there is a second page that you can visit, and that one's called Top 7 Neutropic Adaptogens to Conquer Anxiety and Stress.
00:18:47
Speaker
And those talk about the neurotransmitters, but they talk about the herbs that used rather than the precursors like L-tyrosine or L-tryptophan. We don't talk about that on this page. On this page, we just talk about the herbs that address those neurotransmitters.
Ashwagandha and Lifestyle Changes
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've actually, I got some ashwagandha extract. I was using that for about three, four months. And I found that really helps with sleep just on its own. Is that one of the, is that covered in your top seven there? It sure is. Ashwagandha is a funny one because it's a very, very powerful
00:19:30
Speaker
supplement for brain repair because it helps restore synapses and axons and dendrites. But it also acts as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, so it boosts acetylcholine in synapses. And it also works to enhance GABA and serotonin receptor. It enhances GABA and it
00:19:59
Speaker
support serotonin receptors in your brain. So it's covering three different neurotransmitters. So somebody might get lucky with ashwagandha and find out that it works for them and not never really know what the cause was for their anxiety. Ultimately, if you get satisfaction, who cares about what the cause of your anxiety was? Absolutely. Why it's important to know the cause of your anxiety is if you're having problems trying to find the right supplement to solve the problem.
00:20:29
Speaker
And I think we're not really advocating here. For example, if you're in a stressful relationship, if that's the cause of anxiety, we're not saying we should just take a bunch of supplements to reduce the pain or the anxiety. We should always, if there's some lifestyle interventions,
00:20:51
Speaker
if there's some nutritional intervention, some other supplementation, nutrient deficiencies, parasites, that can be a severe cause of stress and anxiety for people. We should be addressing those, lack of sleep, et cetera, too much coffee. So that's kind of what I wanted to just make sure that we're not just... Because in a sense, taking a few supplements, you're kind of treating symptoms,
00:21:17
Speaker
which is okay to do to get some you know near term short to mid term relief but long term we really need to be thinking about how to how do we remove those stressors right. That's true to an extent I would disagree with you in one way though is what if the person like I got a problem with dopamine and acetylcholine in my brain.
00:21:41
Speaker
I know that and I've had since I was in my teens. And so lifestyle interventions for me would not be helpful because I tried lifestyle interventions for years, decades, and it didn't work. So it depends on the situation, you know? I mean, it's just everybody is different.
00:22:05
Speaker
I think you're right. Let me give you an example of something where a lifestyle intervention cannot be done. I'm working at the moment with a US-based company and I'm in Europe. I am at the computer until 11 to 12 PM every night. Someone might tell me,
00:22:26
Speaker
Or you take like five different things to help you see. I take, you know, glycines. I don't have ashwagandha now. But, you know, I take glycine, I have GABA, I have that lemon balm kind of valerian mix that I was talking about that has a bit of pharma GABA. So I take a bunch of stuff and not every day, but I cycle it on and off and I smoke some CBD and people can tell you, well, you're just, you know,
00:22:53
Speaker
Whatever. I am forced to do that because of a lifestyle thing that I cannot change at this time. So I think that's kind of what I was talking about in that specific case. Long-term, obviously, I'm going to be working on it. I'm glad that you brought that up, Christian, because this comes up fairly frequently. What is too many supplements? And my answer to that is always the same. It's how many it takes for you to get better.
00:23:23
Speaker
And you use it. How long do you use them? You use them as long as you need to. If you have to use them for the rest of your life, you use them for the rest of your life. If it fixes it in two or three months, fantastic. Then you can stop, but don't feel guilty or some kind of moral obligation to think one way or another because ultimately, I mean, it's your life and you want to live your life feeling good.
00:23:53
Speaker
And you do whatever you have to do safely to get there. And we can do that with natural nootropic supplements to support that. That's not the only answer. That's the one that I advocate because that's what I specialize in. But certainly there are other things you can do like lifestyle interventions too.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah.
Supplement Cycling and Neurotransmitter Tests
00:24:12
Speaker
And for example, for anxiety, what I tell a lot of people is tapping. So emotional freedom technique, that's another thing. That's a great adjunct. So you can do it for two, three minutes is all it takes to do the exercise. And it actually really works. I've read some research that really works. But just before I forget, there's a couple more questions on this topic before we move on to the next one, David. So
00:24:36
Speaker
You just said something that actually feeds into this one. In terms of the herbs, what cycling strategies would you kind of employ? With the herbs, there is no cycling strategy. It's not necessary. Okay. Not if you're using in the recommended dosages.
00:24:57
Speaker
Okay. And more is never better. There are recommended dosages that cover a range from a low end to a higher end. But if you find something that works, don't use more than the recommended dosage because it's not going to work any better. In fact, it might be dangerous. Got it. Got it.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think I used to be very much that kind of guy, you know, more is more, more is always more, more is better. More on the nodal backfire on you. Yeah, yeah. And one final thing, actually, this is something I kind of, I've not done the questionnaire myself, there's this
00:25:36
Speaker
questionnaire that I forgot the name of it. I know I have a tab somewhere on one of my browsers open, but it's basically it's a fairly lengthy questionnaire that you answer a bunch of things about your moods, your energy, and it kind of tells you which neurotransmitter is dominant in your body or system or whatever person.
00:26:00
Speaker
Do you think that's worth doing? Absolutely. Not necessarily before if you're aware of it as part of your tool set, it's certainly worth doing. Dr. Braverman wrote a book called The Braverman Test. The Edge Effect.
00:26:19
Speaker
And in the book, The Edge Effect, he's got a bunch of questionnaires. And the idea behind these questionnaires is to isolate what neurotransmitter you've got a problem with. And I found out that I had a problem with GABA. I had no idea until I did that questionnaire. So yeah, they're very, very helpful. It's one of the tools to use. It's certainly not the only one, but it can be really helpful, and eye-opening too.
00:26:48
Speaker
Also, I'm definitely going to do that this weekend. I still have the tab open. I just looked at the amount of questions like, damn, I don't have time. David, thank you so much for your insights on this topic. My pleasure.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:27:10
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds.
00:27:12
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.