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Metabolic Psychiatry | The Positively Healthy Mom Podcast with Dr. Matthew Bernstein
39 Plays28 days ago
🎙️ Welcome to The Positively Healthy Mom Podcast! 🌟
In this episode, Laura Olinger chats with Dr. Matt Bernstein, a leading psychiatrist, about the powerful connection between food, metabolism, and mental health.
✨ In This Episode: Dr. Bernstein shares his personal story of his sons' health challenges and how it changed his approach to psychiatry.
We explore the surprising impact of food and metabolic treatments on severe mental illness. Insights into autoimmune conditions, PANDAS, and the importance of pursuing alternative explanations for health issues.
Practical advice for parents on recognizing signs and advocating for their children's health.
🎧 Tune in to discover a new perspective on mental health and healing!
Follow us on social media: Facebook: Positively Healthy Coaching https://www.facebook.com/share/1BEBDR52Ub/?mibextid=wwXIfr Instagram: @positivelyhealthycoaching https://www.instagram.com/positivelyhealthycoaching?igsh=MWpnejF2YTIxbzhnYg== #MetabolicPsychiatry #MentalHealthAwareness #AutoimmuneDisease #FunctionalMedicine #ParentingSupport #ChildhoodIllness #HolisticHealth #FoodAsMedicine #MentalWellness #AlternativeMedicine #PositivelyHealthyMom
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom Podcast, where positive parenting meets well-being.
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode of Positively Healthy Mom. I'm your host, Laura Olinger, and I'm very excited to introduce you to our guest today. Dr. Matt Bernstein is up in the Boston area, and he is the chief medical officer of Ellen Horn and also chief executive officer officer of Accord Mental Health. So, Matt, I'm really excited to have you on the show today.
Personal Story of Mental Health Challenges
00:00:31
Speaker
Can you share a little bit about yourself and your personal story with your sons relating to mental health Sure, sure. Well, first, thanks for having me on the show. i'm really excited to talk with you.
00:00:43
Speaker
um And I'm a clinical psychiatrist. I've been so for more than 20 years, trained at Mass General and McLean. I worked at McLean for a while as part of the Harvard system. Yeah.
00:00:55
Speaker
And, you know, I've always been interested in alternative approaches to try to help people get better. I've always worked with people with pretty significant mental illnesses. ah But things really changed for me when my kids got sick. So I have three boys, my wife and I have three boys.
00:01:11
Speaker
And about seven years ago, when, um, they were ages 12 and 14, they really fell apart. They were prior to that very well adjusted, doing well in school, playing sports, music, friends, all of that.
00:01:26
Speaker
And really almost overnight, developed very severe anxiety, depression, physical symptoms, It took us a long time to figure out what was going on because it looked very much like a straight mental health condition.
00:01:40
Speaker
Eventually, we learned that there was a lot of ah physical component to what was going on. ah They had an autoimmune condition that was attacking, essentially their immune system attacking their brain called autoimmune encephalitis, um which was caused by toxins and infections.
00:01:57
Speaker
And it took years to actually figure out what was going on and figure out how to help them. so So that really opened my eyes to the idea that not all things that look anxiety, depression, and mental health maybe
Rethinking Mental Health: Physical Causes and Diagnosis
00:02:11
Speaker
are that. and Sometimes it's due to a physical cause. And that really um changed the way I think about my job and how I try to help people.
00:02:20
Speaker
That's really interesting because, you know, as these kind of symptoms present, I think that the average mom out there would first start off with a pediatrician or maybe go to ah psychologist or think their child should be in therapy. And you being the psychiatrist were even a little bit puzzled, like what's going on here? So how would the average mom out there kind of know to kind of persist and pursue getting some type of diagnosis like this?
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's hard. um I wouldn't say that's an easy thing to know. and of course, we started with pediatrician, ah therapists, psychiatrists. My wife is also a psychologist. So we were looking and we know we had good resources up here. We were sending them, you know bringing them to good people.
00:03:06
Speaker
But we really were getting no help. from that system. And then the more we were looking at things, we were looking at some physical symptoms that they were having, trouble um eating, trouble sleeping.
00:03:18
Speaker
And again, those can be part of psychiatric syndromes. But then we started realizing they were getting like weak. They couldn't move in the way that they used to move. They weren't able to perform in school. I mean, they literally...
00:03:30
Speaker
couldn't be in the classroom. They couldn't read, even though they were avid readers before. And this started to look like way more than just depression or anxiety. But of course, in the mental health field, the doctors and the therapists will probably say, oh no, that can be part of depression and anxiety. We just need to keep going with the medications and the therapies.
00:03:49
Speaker
But they literally were getting no help. And that's one of the signs that's really important. The other sign is um if things happen very abruptly or all of a sudden, it didn't seem, it seemed totally out of the blue for our kids. There were two at the same time.
00:04:03
Speaker
And those two were in one middle school, whereas our other son was in a different middle school. um And so that also was a clue that maybe there's something environmental going on. And, you know, I think,
00:04:15
Speaker
Sometimes moms just have an instinct and they just know. um Probably more than dads, even though. and And I would say in our case, it was the case, you know, my wife really, she kind of knew there was something wrong with...
00:04:28
Speaker
the the treatment, we weren't getting help from these standard treatments. And she started looking around for, there has to be an alternative explanation. She found this diagnosis called PANDAS, which is an autoimmune disorder caused by streptococcal infections.
00:04:43
Speaker
We started looking for doctors who knew about that. And sure enough, you know, when we started getting the lab work regarding that, they had very abnormal lab work. And so, you know, sometimes you just have to have an instinct and pursue it when things aren't working.
Metabolic Psychiatry and Innovative Treatments
00:04:57
Speaker
he it And so then how did that lead you into your journey on kind of this whole path of, you know, metabolic health and, and you know, kind of bridging that gap? Like, how does that meet mental health?
00:05:10
Speaker
Sure. Great question. So initially we were just focused on getting our kids better and we were doing all of this um alternative medicine, functional medicine, environmental medicine.
00:05:22
Speaker
But along around that time when we were working on all those fronts, I heard a lecture McLean Hospital from a doctor who was talking about using ketogenic diets to treat severe mental illness.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I was blown away by what he was describing. he was talking about reversing treatment-resistant schizophrenia with a diet, which you you know probably most of the people in the audience just simply didn't believe what he was saying. yeah i had already had my mind sort of blown by what was going on with my kids, so it was easy for me to understand it And I was taking note that this is really important. I want to go back to this in my career, but we still had a couple of years worth of work with our kids and I wasn't able to apply this to my patients yet.
00:06:09
Speaker
But once my kids started getting better, i started thinking, oh, i want to start, you know, going back to this and trying to realize, well, how can we apply these metabolic treatments to people with significant mental illness. And that was a journey that I started undertaking probably about three years ago, starting to apply it to people in my in my practice.
00:06:29
Speaker
um And I've seen just dramatic benefits, absolutely incredible benefits from food, fixing severe mental health conditions, which was not part of my training. It's not part of most doctors' lexicon at all, but it's a very much emerging field within psychiatry called metabolic psychiatry.
00:06:48
Speaker
i And I had never heard about that until I started learning more about it. But, you know, me personally, I'm fascinated on the topic. So i um I do have an autoimmune condition as well. I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So I'm very cautious about what I eat.
00:07:02
Speaker
And I was even having some joint pain. um And I went to the doctor and you he said, oh, you know, it's arthritis. And I said, well, should I go gluten free? Because I used to be gluten free and I stopped. And he goes, oh, no, that has nothing to do with
00:07:17
Speaker
And I was like, well, I kind of think it does. But I think that there is just this disconnect in general between, you know, and he was an older doctor, I think he was kind of close to retirement, you know, where they're not really aware and not trained. And it's not, it's through no fault of their own, just the training isn't there ah to bridge that gap.
00:07:33
Speaker
um And so how are you kind of, i mean, we can maybe jump ahead to this accord program. Is this how you're getting the word out there and helping treat more patients by by this program?
00:07:44
Speaker
Yes, it is. So, ah you know, at first I was, like I said, I was doing this with my patients in my outpatient practice and the people who are motivated, who wanted to make these changes, we were seeing these incredible results.
00:07:58
Speaker
We were able to lower medications in many um ah instances. We were able to improve symptoms, more energy, better mood, stabilization of bipolar disorder. i was just seeing these incredible things that I never thought would could could come from food and and met metabolism.
00:08:15
Speaker
um But what we also learned in this, what I learned is that it
Accord Program and Lifestyle Interventions
00:08:20
Speaker
is hard. Not everyone has the motivation to it make all those changes at home. um And so ah the idea was we you know created this program, which is an immersive program residential program outside of Boston where people can be immersed in this whole new way of eating movement. There's a whole whole you know bunch of aspects to it um in a 30 to 90 day program, depending on preference and what people need, and then learn all the skills to be able to apply this when they get back home as well.
00:08:50
Speaker
So it's really about, you know, getting a chance to try this different treatment and also learning how to sustain it so that they can continue that um in their own life when they get back home.
00:09:01
Speaker
Wow. That's, I mean, yeah, I can imagine people listening are like, what? You know, like it kind of kind of like my brain is like, you know, the fact that you can treat like severe mental illness with, an and you're saying maybe not everyone and not everybody's receptive to everything, but in general, that this is an approach that's working.
00:09:19
Speaker
So can you share kind of some examples of the types of foods that are helpful or the types of foods that hurt? Sure. So a ketogenic diet um is any diet, and it can, so it can really encompass a lot of different ways of eating, but it's any diet that allows the body to produce these things called ketones, which are basically fat molecules kind of chopped up into little pieces in bite-sized pieces that can get into the brain. And the brain loves use ketones for fuel.
00:09:48
Speaker
And the ketones also are a signaling molecule that tell the brain to do all these wonderful things. ah We've known that these ketogenic diets have treated epilepsy. They started in treating pediatric or child epilepsy back at the Mayo Clinic in 1921. So for more than 100 years, this diet has been used to treat a severe brain disorder.
00:10:10
Speaker
And basically what a ketogenic diet needs to be in order to get your body to produce these ketones, ah you need to eat a very low amount of carbohydrates and moderate amount of protein and most of the calories need to come from fat.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so that can be done with an omnivore diet. It can be done with a Mediterranean style diet. It can be done with a vegetarian diet. It's a little harder to do it with a vegetarian diet, um but it can be done.
00:10:38
Speaker
um We just need to make sure we're getting those macronutrients in the right ratios. That's the important part of it. And so there's not like one single food that that is the the the most important food. Although, you know, if I had to pick perfect foods, I would talk about things like eggs and avocados.
00:10:55
Speaker
um These are foods that are ketogenic and very healthy um and have all kinds of wonderful health properties. um and and And I think, for you know, most people do well with them.
00:11:06
Speaker
um But it's really not about single foods. It's really about a style or a pattern of eating that makes the body produce these ketones. And it's enhanced by doing some exercise. So it's easier for the body to make ketones when someone's moving their body as well.
00:11:20
Speaker
And that's also very good for metabolic health and brain health. The data for exercise and brain health are is very, very solid. And we've known that for now decades, how important exercise is for brain health.
00:11:33
Speaker
Absolutely. And so who are the patients that are coming to see you? Like who who are these people? So these are people with a mental health diagnosis. We've had people with depression, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder.
00:11:49
Speaker
Many people have comorbid anxiety, insomnia. Some of these folks come in with you some significant metabolic issues as well. They may have gained a lot of weight from being on psychiatric medications, um or you know even yeah they may be pre-diabetic at this point, or even diabetic.
00:12:06
Speaker
type 2 diabetes, and they want to try to solve their mental health condition through this metabolic approach. They don't want to keep trying different medications or the medications they've been on have not fully solved their problem or they've had a lot of side effects.
00:12:21
Speaker
And they really want to use diet and exercise and mindfulness and these lifestyle interventions to manage their mental health condition. So that's probably the most important thing is someone's motivated that they want to use this approach ah to manage their their issues.
00:12:36
Speaker
That makes so much sense because as you know a coach, I'm specialized in behavior change, whether it's parents or teenagers. And the last thing I need is a client coming who says, I'm here, but I don't want to change.
00:12:48
Speaker
I don't want to do anything different. right It's like, well, what's the point? right Why are we here? And so like okay so what you're saying is the people that are come to you are open to changing their lifestyle understanding I love that it's such an intensive, it's an an immersive program. And so what other types of care or treatment are they getting while they there besides the food and the exercise and the mindfulness?
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah. So we have a dietitian on staff who's helping to create this meal plan. We have a chef who's there making the food and the chef really engages people in a lot of cooking. Because again, what we're talking about is sustainability in order to sustain this diet and be happy about doing it. It's helpful to be able to cook some of your food.
00:13:30
Speaker
If you're you know not able to do that, it's going to make it a lot harder. um We really try to get people's circadian rhythms aligned as well. That's a big part of metabolic and mental health.
The Role of Technology and Practical Tips
00:13:40
Speaker
So people who are sleeping until you know late morning, we're trying to get them up earlier, see the sun, which is a great cue for the body to um get their circadian rhythms entrained and get to bed early, block the blue light at night before bed. and So we're doing all of that. We're also doing a lot of measuring whole time. So we're getting lots of extensive lab work before they come and every month.
00:14:03
Speaker
we we have continuous glucose monitors on people so that we can see um what their glucose is doing based on these interventions. We're checking ketone levels, we're checking body composition.
00:14:15
Speaker
And so, you know, all of that's going on while they're doing these interventions. And we're seeing the correlations between how they're feeling physically and mentally with these numbers and and what's going on with their metabolism.
00:14:28
Speaker
That's awesome. So you're kind of able to measure progress as they go. So that way they know, okay, this works. I now need to take this out into my real life. And love just like the totally, you know, holistic approach because that's really what it takes, right? Like we're not like these little, um, you know, test tube people. We're just, we live in the real world. And so it has to kind of like match up to the real world.
00:14:49
Speaker
Um, what I'm just curious, kind of throwing a monkey wrench in the conversation, How does, so I'm in a class right now called Consciously Digital. And so I'm reading a lot of really cool research about how technology and how our devices impact our stress levels and our mental health in general, and how addicted that we are, all of us you know, we always within a hand's reach have a phone or multiple devices.
00:15:15
Speaker
And so what, what, What can you do or or does that play a role maybe in any type of the treatment for your patients? Like, is that helpful to kind of think of that as well?
00:15:27
Speaker
I mean, this is a broader topic than just metabolism, you know, but it's a great question and, you know, an important, really important topic. Yeah, we are addicted to these phones and we're getting, you know, you know, constantly cued by them. They're buzzing, they're beeping, they're drawing us in. i mean, people have shown that, you know, it's harder to pay attention and concentrate, even if the phone is in the room with you, even if it's not on and you never pick it up.
00:15:51
Speaker
I mean, there's incredible research about this. There's very, very smart people at these companies creating apps that are designed to addict us and they're good at it. And you know many of us are addicted. we We can't go anywhere without these phones. We can't go more than 10 or 15 minutes without picking them up and doing all kinds of things on them.
00:16:12
Speaker
um So it's very important to have an antidote to that or a counterbalance to that in my view. um a period of time during the day when you're working or you're doing something enjoyable where you literally put the phone away.
00:16:27
Speaker
i turn my phone completely off. I power it down when I sleep. I think that's a really great practice for people to just completely turn it off. um And I still have a landline so that, you know, in emergencies, people can reach me overnight.
00:16:40
Speaker
I don't want that phone on next to me. um So the the other way in which it plays a really important role is the blue light coming from these phones, preventing us from making natural melatonin ah before we go to bed. You know, when the sun goes down, our our brains are attuned to start producing melatonin, in which it allows us to transition into sleep. But it does a lot more than that.
00:17:02
Speaker
Melatonin is a master... detoxifier regulator in in our brains, especially telling ourselves to do the recycling and take out the trash essentially of all these toxins.
00:17:16
Speaker
And if we don't have our melatonin system working, we're not ah able to do that as well overnight. So it's incredibly important for health. And the blue light from the phones really does get in the way of being able to produce natural melatonin. So you know Even if someone is using their phone all day, I beg them, plead with them, please either turn it off for at least an hour before you go to bed too, if they're able, or there's some settings on the phone that really do block all of the blue light from your phone.
00:17:45
Speaker
It's a little hard to find them on the Apple phone. It's under the accessibility. They have to go ah through about three different sub screens to get to this where you literally can remove all the blue light.
00:17:56
Speaker
But it's very important. And so for people who won't put their phone down, i at least teach them how to do that, which is which is a great thing to know how to do. a Yes. Yeah. i I'm just um thinking how...
00:18:08
Speaker
helpful your must program must be even more because it is that intensive environment and I'm sure they are allowed to have their phones but the fact that there's so many activities treating them instead of just being in their home environment where they're going to their psychiatrist once a week or or maybe getting a med check every two or three months but they're still doing all the old behaviors so when you're in the accord program it's all the nutrition, all the things that
Essential Elements: Nutrition, Exercise, and Sleep
00:18:33
Speaker
we've mentioned so far. And so that like kind of total support package sounds incredibly helpful.
00:18:38
Speaker
um Okay. What else do we need to know? Like how um can moms actually who are listening use this information? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think the most important message I want to give to moms is that you know the nutrition and movement really matters.
00:18:58
Speaker
This is not just like a sideline thing because you wanna be fit and you wanna not have a you know physical health issue. Metabolism affects mental health. It is mental health essentially. um And it's going to make a huge difference in someone's overall health to really think about the quality of the food.
00:19:17
Speaker
really try to get their kids not to eat so much ultra processed food, not so much sugar, um all of that. It's very, very important. I wanted to cite one study that really illustrates this point. So this came out JAMA Psychiatry and night in 2021. So very prestigious journal, Journal of the American Medical Association. the psychiatry division of that journal.
00:19:39
Speaker
And they showed that kids who had the highest level levels of insulin at age nine compared to the lowest levels had a three times more a greater risk of developing a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia.
00:19:53
Speaker
And the kids who gained the most weight during puberty had a five times greater risk of developing major depressive disorder when they got into their teens and twenties. So this really matters. This is not just, Oh, you know, it's nice to eat healthy. you know, this is, this is about fundamentally the health of the brain and, and the body. And so, you know, whatever small things that can be done, I know it's very hard. It's hard to get kids to eat the right way. It's hard to have time to cook. It's hard. I mean, I get it. I, you know,
00:20:24
Speaker
I parented three kids through teenage years. It's hard. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's really important and it's really worth it. Well, I so appreciate that kind of research-based and medical-based um evidence because I feel like this is something I'm always sharing either with my family or with my clients and and my you know followers on social media, like that these things all matter.
00:20:49
Speaker
And so it's not just like you said, like, oh, let's just go for a walk because it's good. Like, right? There's actually really good evidence about walking in sunshine and sunshine and our diet and sleep and all these things. That's right.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah. it's it there' There's science behind this. It's not just a nice thing to do. It's also a nice thing to do, but there's real science about this is going to protect your health and protect the health of your family. It's really worth it.
Where to Learn More about the Accord Program
00:21:12
Speaker
a What a great message. Well, I so appreciate your time today. How can people find more information about the Accord program? program And if they want to follow up with you, how can they do that? Sure. So we have a website.
00:21:24
Speaker
It's accordmh.com. So if someone just types in accordmh.com, they'll we'll get to our website and learn all about our program. And if people want to talk to me or contact me directly, they can find me on LinkedIn.
00:21:37
Speaker
I'm one of these people that's not on all the social media channels, but I do have a LinkedIn account and I do check that. um So if you know people wanted to get in touch with me, they can. um And yeah, I just really appreciate you having me on the show. um And it was great talking with you.
00:21:53
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, again, thank you because, um you know, we never know who's listening. And I do have listeners actually from all over the world. And they're there i don't know statistically you would know what the number is that are dealing with um mental health issues or severe mental illness. So there's got to be somebody who needs your help. And so I'm so happy we could bring your message today. And thank you for your time.
00:22:15
Speaker
Thank you.