Do You Have a Moody Brain?

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU HEAR THE WORDS “MOODY BRAIN”🧠? Do you automatically think, “This doesn’t apply to me”? Or, do you think, “Wow, that’s me to a T”? In my experience the overwhelming majority of people who come to me for help have some degree of mood brain. The problem is only half of them even realize it. There are five different types of moody brain that I've identified through the years. I’m going to share them with you on today’s show so you can identify whether you have moody brain and which type you are.

 🌟HIGHLIGHTS🌟

03:51       The Moody Brain Spectrum
05:27       The 3 fundamentals
07:44      The bar is set pretty darn low when it comes to prescribing psychiatric                                                    medications.
11:44      Cost of Depression in the US $326B/year
12:40      Fatigue and Low Energy cost the US $400 Billion/year!
13:30     The average employee productivity is only 72%
 15:07    What is moody brain?
16:35     5 brain Types: SAD, stressed, sluggish, scattered, 7 layer salad (also includes                                        sleepless, sickly, stocky (wt control issues)
 22:09     As we age, moody brain issues increase

Dr. Brian is a functional medicine practitioner with a subspecialty in epigenetics and nutrigenomics
If you have a question for Dr. Brian, please contact him at https://drbriangbrown.com/question

And if you are ready to take your life, performance, mood, and energy to the highest potential check out his FREE 5 day Gene Hack Boot Camp: https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

 Do You Have A Moody Brain?

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

brain, moody, mood, medications, psychiatric medications,  fundamental, type, health professionals,  fatigue, prescribing, sad, professional, physical, mental health, expressed

Dr Brian G Brown  00:57

The mission is simple: to help high achievers naturally eliminate emotional and physical obstacles, so they can optimize their life for higher achievement. Welcome, you just entered the Genesis zone. Good day, and welcome to the Genesis zone show. This is Dr. Brian Brown, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us on this beautiful Thursday. 

It is a beautiful Thursday right now. But yesterday was horrible here. We had power outages, all kinds of stuff. It was crazy. Bad storms blowing through but a beautiful day today, blue sky and wonderful weather. 

Do you have a moody brain? Do you even know what that term means? In today's show, we're going to be exploring the meaning of moody brain. And we're going to find out whether you have a moody brain or not. So, what is a moody brain? You know, I can't take full credit for the terminology moody brain. It's been around for a couple of decades. But there's only been like three mentions of it in medical literature, and no one's really giving it given it a specific definition. 

So, before I tell you what my definition of moody brain is, I want to hear from you. When you hear the term, moody brain, what do you think of? What does it conjure up in your head? If you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook, drop your answers in the comment section below. And tell me what you think of when you hear the term moody brain. If you're listening to this on the podcast, drop me your answer in Facebook Messenger at Dr. Brian G. Brown. And tell me what you think of when you hear the term moody brain?

I really would love to hear what that term conjures up for you. I get some pretty interesting responses. And so far, none of those responses had been wrong, been off base. Most people can identify with what they feel like moody brain is especially for them. 

Now, over the years, I've come to appreciate, firsthand what a moody brain is and what it looks like. Having practiced psychiatry for the past 24, well, almost 25 years, I've worked with clients in my professional life, who have undoubtedly had moody brains. Now personally, I've struggled with a moody brain myself, if you know anything about my story, you know that I've dealt with a moody brain in the worst sense for about 16 years. I was ultimately on nine different psychiatric medications during that time just trying to solve my moody brain issues. 

So, what is a moody brain? Or what is my definition of a moody brain? Well, first, before I answer that, I want to want to go into a few things allow me to lay out a bit of a foundation here, a moody brain occurs on a spectrum or a scale of sorts. On one end of the scale, you have mild, moody brain issues. And on the other end of the scale or spectrum you have severe moody brain issues. Now not every time, but in most cases, if your moody brain is on the severe end of the spectrum, you've at least been offered psychiatric medications, but there's a good chance you were actually on those psychiatric medications. Now sadly, when people who are on the mild end of the spectrum, or the scale, or even the moderate,  kind of in the middle end of the scale, position on the scale, they're generally on psychiatric medications as well.

Dr Brian G Brown  05:14

So, you have to scratch your head and wonder if the people on the severe end of the spectrum or scale are on medications and the people on the mild end of the scale, or spectrum are on medications. 

Why is this? Why is everyone on medication? Well, the reason I say that it's sad for people on the mild or moderate end of the scale to be on psychiatric medications, because fundamentals get overlooked. Now, these are fundamentals that you as a non-health professional, a non-mental health provider, or non-mental health professional, probably wouldn't know about. 

But fundamental number one is this. All psychiatric conditions, have a medical cause until proven otherwise. 

Fundamental number two is if a person is on a psychiatric medication, they must periodically be challenged to come off of those medications.

And fundamental number three, is just because you have mental health symptoms, it doesn't mean you have a mental health disorder. 

Now, let me address fundamental number one first. And my psychiatric training all of our Clinical Directors and supervisors harped on us the mantra that all psychiatric conditions have a medical cause until proven otherwise. Now, generally speaking, this is how it plays out in in psychiatry. In fact, it's how it plays out in primary health care, because primary health care does more psychiatry than psychiatry does, because there's such a shortage of psychiatry. 

But this is how it generally plays out if the client has had a recent physical with laboratory where blood work and urinalysis. And all of that came back as “normal”, then generally everyone, every health professional proceeds with prescribing a psychiatric medication. Now, if the health professional obtains their own labs, as long as those labs fall within the ‘”normal range’, or even the abnormally acceptable range, and yes, you can be abnormal, as long as it's just a little abnormal. And they go, it's okay. Then they too will, will prescribe medication and proceed forward with prescribing a psychiatric medication. 

Now, the nuance here is in the interpretation of normal, from a Western medicine standpoint, labs will by and large, be “normal” enough to recommend starting medications. Now, what I'm trying to say here without being rude is this, 

Dr Brian G Brown  08:14

the bar is set pretty darn low when it comes to prescribing psychiatric medications. If we look at fundamental number three, and fundamental number three, being not all people who have mental health symptoms have a mental health diagnosable disorder. That is critical to understand because just because you're sad, doesn't mean you have depression. 

Dr Brian G Brown  08:38

Just because you're not dealing with stress. Well doesn't mean you have generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, even with obsessive compulsive disorder, which is an anxiety disorder. Even if you have obsessions, or compulsions. It doesn't mean you're obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's hard to get health professionals to understand this. 

Dr Brian G Brown  09:02

It's even harder to get health consumers clients to understand this. But that's why I want to do this education because it's critically important to understand that these fundamentals get overlooked all the time. And we go straight to prescribing medication, and it's wrong. It's not the right thing to do for a client. 

Dr Brian G Brown  09:23

Now, let's talk about fundamental number two. Once a person is on a psychiatric medication, current mental health guidelines and a lot of people don't hardly anyone recognizes this professionally, or as a client in the community. Nobody recognizes these clients aren't expected to know it but health professionals are, but once a person is on a psychiatric medication, current mental health guidelines say that health professionals have a dutiful responsibility to if they prescribe that medication. They should periodically attempt to taper their medication and discontinue it in order to see if the client can actually come off of the medication. 

Do you know how many clients that I meet, no matter whether they're on ADHD medication for adult add, which I have a quite a bit of a hang up about adult ADHD, because criteria says it should start at age five or six or seven. That was early elementary school years. But that's a whole nother conversation for another day. 

People who are on adult ADHD medication, people are on anxiety medications, depression, medications, medications to help with energy level and concentration and focus. All of those medications, they'll come in to me and they'll say, man, I've been on these medications for 20 years, 30 years even. And I'm thinking oh, my gosh, I said, has anybody ever tried to get you off of them? And they say, No, I've been on them straight for that whole length of time. 

And I just scratch my head and go, Oh, my gosh, I mean, why are these people subjected to this? Well, I don't know why they're subjected to it. It boils down to and I've asked a lot of health professionals, why they are hesitant to actually give a trial off of medications. And this goes for psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse practitioners and the whole nine yards, anybody who's prescribing psychiatric medications, it boils down to, we don't want to rock the boat. 

In other words, it's based on the fear that the client will decompensate if they come off of their medication, that's an erroneous fear. Because guidelines say we should try to get people off of medications. And if we're not trying to get them on off of medications, in my personal professional opinion, it's malpractice not to actually try that. So, here's why some of this fear exists, I think, and notice I said some, not all, but some of the fear exists, because in the back of a health professionals mind, they are aware of the burden nationwide, and I'm talking about the United States right now. They are aware of the burden of these conditions and the symptoms. For example,

Dr Brian G Brown  12:14

 in the United States alone, depression cost the US economy as much as $326 billion a year, according to the most recent economic numbers in 2020. Okay, now, if we add to this the cost of anxiety, which pre pandemic affected over 40 million US citizens, and it's almost doubled from that now. 

Dr Brian G Brown  12:41

And anxiety accounts for the most commonly diagnosed set of conditions among healthcare altogether. But even without an official diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, the economic burden of poor stress management alone cost Americans $300 billion. But what if we add to this fatigue and low energy? Well, economic experts agree that fatigue and low energy costs the US economy $400 billion annually.

Dr Brian G Brown  13:18

 And experts agree that they also agree that physical fatigue is synonymous with mental fatigue, and can lead to unwanted mental health and brain health challenges. And lastly, what about brain fog, lack of focus, and distractibility?

Dr Brian G Brown  13:36

I'm glad you asked. Because the latest research shows that lack of focus, whether you're working or not working, lack of focus cost the US economy another $391 billion. Now they took into consideration lost days in productivity from work. 

In fact, there's a there's a really good statistic in this particular study that looked and said that the average employees only productive 72% of their day. Imagine that 72% of their day. So, 28% of the time, the salary that the company is paying that person 28% of that salary is just blown out of the water, evaporates into thin air because they're not productive. They're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, because a lack of focus. 

So, the study looked at work life, but it also looked at nonwork life. What is the lack of focus cost us say when we're driving, and we're distracted or we're not thinking straight and we have a fuzzy head and we wreck a car and we destroy property?  All of this adds up $391 billion dollar burden just because of lack of focus. 

Now when you add all these up, if you hadn't done that already, like a math nerd that I am, that total burden comes to $1.4 trillion annually. And in the US alone. 

What does a moody brain mean?

So back to the question at hand. What does a moody brain mean? Well, it's quite simple. A moody brain is a brain that is imbalanced in some way. Either chemically, emotionally, or circumstantially. What I'm talking about there is it can be based on what's going on in your life right now. It can be based on your physical environment, what are you exposed to, those exposures, chemicals, things like that. But there's a chemical imbalance, there's emotional imbalance, or there's a circumstantial imbalance. 

And there are five types of moody brain. And these are five types that I've come up with over the course of my life, over the course of my career. And you're gonna see me talking about this more, because I think it's really important. And I will be completely transparent and honest with you at this point. Because of the hangups with psychiatry, I have prided myself for a long time, for 12 years that I've been doing functional medicine, I'm going to go on record and say right now, for 12 years, I've been running from psychiatry, okay. I've been running for mental health, when in reality the whole time, it's been right there. 

Because every single client and all of the stuff that I'm teaching you right now, these five types come from the clients that I see. And I will tell you this, most of the clients who come in, a majority of them have moody brain, but about half of them don't even realize they have moody brain until we start talking. And then once we do a deep dive and we start digging through the layers of things that are going on, when I work with somebody, I start understanding that this person has a moody brain. And if we take care of the moody brain first, most of the time, everything else falls into alignment. Now not all the time, sometimes we have to go back and do clean up and work with some other areas in the bodies, things that are out of balance. But for the most part, if we take care of the moody brain first, everything falls into alignment. 

The Five Moody Brain Types

1. Sad

2. Stressed

3. Sluggish

4. Scattered

5. Seven layer salad

Now, what are the five types, the five types of moody brain are the sad type. Now notice I'm staying away from clinical diagnosis. Like I'm not saying depressive type, I'm saying the sad type, because this in this particular type. This is a person that has a sad mood, a dysphoric mood, a melancholy mood. Whatever reason, if it's caused by a diagnosable condition, it's caused by a diagnosable condition. If it's not, it's not remember, this falls on the spectrum. So even each of these individual types, they have their own spectrum, mild, moderate, or severe. 

Okay, so we have the sad type of moody brain, and then we have the stressed type. Again, notice I didn't say the anxious type or anxiety type, this is the stress type. This is the person who has difficulty with stress management for whatever reason. Remember, there's a chemical imbalance there somewhere, or emotional balance or a circumstantial balance imbalance. All right, so we have the sad type and the stress type,

 then we have the sluggish type. This is the one that struggles with energy and fatigue. And remember, what research shows us is that energy and fatigue are more than just about the physical body and the physical body's response.

Dr Brian G Brown  18:24

It's about how the brain responds as well. It's about emotional fatigue, mental fatigue, and the two go hand in hand, you can't separate them. You can't separate physical fatigue, physical low energy from mental fatigue and mental low energy just can't do it. And 

then we have this what I call the scattered type. So the sad type, the stress type, the sluggish type, and the scattered type. Now think of scatterbrain. Okay, this is the person who has a hard time focusing, they're inattentive at times, they're distractible, and they just have a lot of brain fog, they can't quite seem to think through things like they used to be able to think through things. That's the scattered type. 

Now, the fifth type, and you're gonna laugh at this one, because I couldn't come up with anything better. But I wanted something that gave a visual picture. The fifth type is seven-layer salad. Okay, so seven-layer salad means that you've probably got a little bit of the sad type and you may have a little bit of stress type in you, or sluggish or scattered. You don't have to have all of those. 

But you're a mixture, this conglomerate of sad, stressed, sluggish, scattered, and then we add to that sleepless, the person who's having sleep problems, so the sleepless type and then we add to this this sickly type. This person who has immune issues and just isn't well, they feel off they feel like their body's not quite right. 

And then the stocky type, meaning the person who has weight control issues? Okay, so a lot of people fall into the seven-layer salad category. But some people are distinctly sad types or stress types or sluggish type or scattered type. 

So I hope you're able to identify, you know, which of these types kind of resonates with you, if you feel comfortable enough, telling us that, put it in the comments, if you're watching this live on YouTube or Facebook, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, whoever you are, whether you're watching it live or watching it on podcast or on a replay, direct message me on Messenger at Dr. Brian G. Brown, and tell me what type you think you are, I would love to hear because I know what numbers look like in the clients that I work with. I know how the percentages break down. 

But I'm always open to hearing from, the larger audience and kind of seeing where people fall. And if this even resonates with them, I love to see, I would love to hear from you whether or not this resonates with you. If you think this is a bunch of crap, tell me “I think it's a bunch of crap.” I would love to hear that. I'd love to have that conversation. So which type are you? 

If you're not one of those expressed types that I just mentioned, you may or may not have anything to worry about at the end of the day, when we dive into your genetics, we can tell. Now notice I say expressed type. Okay, so you could genetically be an unexpressed high, meaning you've got the genes for these issues, but they're just not expressed. You're not having issues with them right now. And you may never have issues. But could you pass them down to a child to the next generation? Well, research shows us that yes, we can pass these things down for up to seven generations. And I was actually talking to a client of mine, a friend of mine the other day, and said, “Did you see the newest study that says 14 generations?” And I said no, you've got to send that to me, because I need to look at that. Because I'm always fascinated with how many generations things get passed down, especially things like stress responses and mood responses and things like that. So, this moody brain concept, we know its generation when we know it gets passed down. And we know it can skip generations. So just because you don't have one of these identifiable expressed moody types, it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't mean that you don't have genetic issues, it means that you could we just don't know it until we check it.

Dr Brian G Brown  22:28

So, from a functional medicine standpoint, from a biohacking standpoint, it's really good to check those genes and make sure they’re on point, make sure we're doing everything we can to protect you. Because we know that as we age, the older we get, especially over 60, 65, the chances for moody brain issues actually playing a lot larger. And we need to be on top of that now at a younger age before we move into those years. But anyway, you get the idea. 

Now, if you are one of those people that can identify and say Yes, Dr. Brian, I am that type right there. This is the expressed type that my body is telling me that I have the know this working with a qualified health professional, who will look at all of your physical causes, whether they be blood work, or your analysis, or gut microbiome issues, or food sensitivity issues, and most importantly, genetic issues, because it's the foundation of everything, work with somebody who can help you do that. Because if we go back to that, first, that first fundamental oversight is that all things are medically driven in psychiatric symptoms, all things are medically driven until proven otherwise. 

So, we owe it to you, you owe it to yourself to do due diligence, and find out the minutiae of detail, whether or not we can do that. Now, I will say this, when that fundamental was created, which was in the 1940s, that everything is medical until proven otherwise, think about, think about the scope of availability we had in the 1940s to be able to determine whether a person had a medical condition or not, it was very limited. Now we have all of these things that are available to us to be able to look at, yet we haven't changed that protocol since the 1940s. When they say it takes 20 years to for medical advancement to come into mainstream. I disagree. 

I've always disagreed with that statement, because I can tell you fact after fact, after fact, and medical practice, where we're still using technology and ways of doing things from the 1940s, I don't understand it, but it is what it is. And I do think it's actually dynamically driven, I think is Big Pharma driven. Because everything that I'm talking about here, Big Pharma doesn't have a stake in. So, if you are one of those people that has as expressed type that you can identify, make sure you're working with a qualified person who can help you work through those exact causes, and really rule them out before you jump on the pharmaceutical medication bandwagon. And if you're on medicines, and you're looking at, okay, I really want to come off these medications in the most humane way. And I want to put measures in place for my body that can make sure that I stay off those medications. Again, you need to work with a qualified health professional, who functional medicine professional who can help you do that. If you're looking for somebody, I am available. Message me, I'd love to have a conversation with you. So last thing. That's it for today, I hope that you found this content helpful.

Dr Brian G Brown  25:59

I really do. I'm really changing the way I think. I'm evolving and the way I present and I'm going to be getting more focused on brain health. In the coming weeks and months. I think we owe it to you the listener, I owe it to myself to be talking about these things. The world needs it, you can tell $1.4 trillion cost burden to the US alone.

I mean, we need to be talking about these things, don't we? So, if you find the content here at the Genesis zone show helpful, informative in any way, by all means, I would love for you to hop on Spotify, hop on Apple podcast, give us a thumbs up, give us a like, subscribe to our channel. 

If you're on YouTube, subscribe to our channel, it would definitely help us with ratings and ratings help us get the message out so that more people can hear this. 

Tune in next Thursday, at noon, eastern standard time for our next In the Zone segment where I'm going to be sharing with you again the latest technology related to optimizing your genes, optimizing your brain and body and just moving you forward in this human journey that we're sharing together, most informed, most trusted and most grateful that you spent this time with us today. Until next time, I'm Dr. Brian Brown stay in the zone.

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