Naturally Healing Your Brain

WE LIVE IN A WORLD DEPENDENT ON PRESCRIPTION MEDS! SOUND FAMILIAR? If you or a loved one has ever experienced mental health… or brain health challenges of any kind, then this show is for you. I’ll be discussing some of the latest research related to genetic differences between men and women, the gut-brain connection, a deeper look at the consequences of sleep deprivation, a natural supplement that can help with anxiety, depression, and sleep, as well as the one diet that will not only help your mood but help memory and brain function as we age.

Key Points in This Episode
[00:00]    Welcome to the Genesis Zone Show with Dr Brian G Brown
[01:22]    Women are genetically at a greater risk of depression than men
[02:53]    Depression increases risk for Metabolic Diseases
[06:16]    Big Pharma and the push for Synthetic Meds
[10:55]    Sleep Deprivation Promotes Aging
[12:00]    The Connection Between Inflammation and Disease

Connect with Dr Brian Brown, the Moody Brain Expert
🌎https://DrBrianGBrown.com
👍https://www.facebook.com/drbriangbrown
IG:@drbriangbrown
LinkedIn: @company/dr-brian-g-brown

🧬Find more information about genetics, epigenetics and how they impact your overall health and performance🧬 in Dr Brian's FREE Master Class on Gene Hacking https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

 ITZ_EP112_Naturally Healing Your Brain

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

depression, gene, Mediterranean diet, brain, glutamate, olive oil, inflammation, melatonin, study, neurotransmitter, GAD1, linked, snips, major breakthrough, GABA, MSG, naturally, works, researchers,  anxiety, genetic differences, gut brain connection, metabolic diseases, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, sleep deprivation, trapped emotion, oxidative stress

 Dr Brian G Brown  00:54

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 show. This is Dr. Brian Brown, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today. I don't take it for granted, I know you could be doing a million other things. And you're here. Thank you for that. 

So, we live in a world dependent on prescription medications. Does this sound familiar? Maybe you or a loved one is stuck in that hamster wheel of maybe that is dependent and you didn't even ask for it. But it's there. If you or a loved one has ever experienced mental health or brain health challenges of any kind, then this show is for you. 

Today, I'll be discussing some of the latest research related to genetic differences between men and women. The gut brain connection a deeper look at the consequences of sleep deprivation, natural supplementation that can help with anxiety, depression and sleep, as well as one of the diets one diet that will not only help your mood, but also help your memory and brain function as well. 

First up, Gene Russ, researchers at McGill University in Montreal, looked at genetic profiles of more than 270,000 study participants. To say that this was a huge study is an understatement. Now, I don't want to bore you with the technical details of this study, because there was a lot of information there. 

But they found that biological females have 11 different gene snips that are related to depression, whereas biological males only have one gene snip related to depression. That just tells you that women are 11 times more challenging sometimes when it comes to managing mood. And I don't know if it's more challenging. 

There's a lot of different layers there and in a good way for most parts because those 11 different gene snips there were put there many millennia ago for survival and for survival of the fittest, survival of the species. And they're there for a reason. So, they're there for a good reason. But they can create and wreak havoc on our system today in this modern society. 

So how do we live with those things? Well, interestingly, among these 11 Gene snips, there were some crossover links between depression gene snips and metabolic disease gene snips. Now, this simply means that women with depression are at significantly higher risk for developing metabolic diseases such as diabetes, and polycystic ovary syndrome. And yes, polycystic ovary syndrome is a metabolic condition. Whether you've been told otherwise or not. It's a metabolic condition. It's not anything else. It's not an ovary issue. It can cause issues with the ovaries. But it's because of these metabolic challenges. 

And now we know we're beginning to understand why PCOS clients and why diabetic clients are sometimes 15 to 20 times more likely than the general population to struggle with depression and anxiety. Well, it's no wonder that's the case because there are these 11 different gene snips that crossover into other health categories, and health control mechanisms. And one of those is metabolic. 

They're still looking at the data. And I think you're going to find that a lot of these 11 Gene snips that women have to deal with when it comes to depression, are also linked to cardiovascular disease, cerebral vascular disease, and maybe even cancer. They did not come out with that data. I'm just making some assumptions based on some of the gene snips that they put in there. And some of the previous research that I've done, I haven't had time to go through a deep dive and do the correlations myself. But when you look at the studies, a lot of the gene snips associated with depression and women are also related to these other areas. But we know for sure, based on this study, that there's definite strong link between depression and metabolic conditions like diabetes and PCOS and women.

Now, what is the impact of this? Well, for starters, at a larger scale, the biological process is roughly the same for men and women. At least that's what current neurotransmitter theory states, according to the team at McGill University, but as I've said in previous episodes here on the Genesis Zone Show, neurotransmitter theory is antiquated and will be superseded by epigenetic theory very, very soon, because epigenetic theory is actually going to have some teeth that you can sink into, based on the evidence that I'm talking to you about right now. I mean, you can't refute the evidence. 

And the evidence is there is depression, that simple cut and dry, it's just genetics. It's just neurotransmitters. No, it's very complex, I think it involves multiple systems within and without the body. And that's a conversation for another day. 

But now we're getting more specific. And we're starting to understand things at a deeper level. And neurotransmitter theory as a standalone theory will go by the wayside very, very soon, mark my word on that. 

So, if you really want to get technical, when we remove the neurotransmitter theory from the equation, the biological processes are completely different for men and women when it comes to depression. Okay, they just are. And that's the facts. We now know the facts, now we can deal with the facts. And now we can start organizing and coordinating care in a better, more specific, more custom tailored way. 

Sadly, I think this also means that researchers are going to take this information now. And they're going to start recommending the development of six specific pharmaceutical treatments. Why is this unfortunate? Because it involves Big Pharma and empowers Big Pharma to make synthetic treatments to deal with things like depression, that way, and they never address the underlying root cause. So it says the genes themselves, you see right now we can nutritionally support the genes naturally, to function at their highest level. 

But Big Pharma throws that out the window, they don't understand that because you can't patent it, you can't make money off of it. So, they just kind of throw that out. And it's so sad that they have to do that they want something that's synthetic, that they can patent. And then they can sell for billions of dollars. And that's what they're going to do. Or at least that's what they're going to try to do. 

But smart, educated people, people who stay in the know, people who are on cutting edge of things, and want to do things naturally, they're going to figure out a way to do it. And we're already starting to do that. Now. I do this every day in my clinical practice with patients, and it works. And we get people off of prescription medications very successfully. And if they're not on prescription medications, we're able to keep them from getting on prescription medications. 

So why do we need another new prescription medication to fight depression? Oh, that's right, because we haven't had any new antidepressants hit the market in years. It has a drop pipeline, as they call it in the industry. So why not create a new medication and fill the pipeline up? Well, I hope you sense my sarcasm. There is a lot of it, and I apologize. But I don't make apologies for stating the facts and stating the truth. I've been in the medical industry for a long time. And I think it's one of the industries that has the potential to do some of the best good and we don’t need traditional medicine. When you're in an accident, you have a broken leg, you're having a trauma event. You need Western medicine; you need to be able to be fixed that way. 

But from a preventative standpoint, are there things that we can do naturally ahead of time that can manage these 11 different gene snips associated with depression and women to avoid even getting depression or make depression better? I think the answer is yes, I see that clinically. Moving on. 

Next up a team of genetic pharmacologist at UC San Francisco have successfully mapped out a pathway

Dr Brian G Brown  09:52

and this pathway and I think there are multiple pathways by the way, but this pathway in particular Links chronic gut pain or irritable bowel syndrome, if that's what you want to call it to the brain, and more specifically at links, irritable bowel pain, irritable bowel syndrome and chronic bowel pain to anxiety centers when centers within the brain. Okay, this is fine. 

Hang with me just for a second, when they stimulated the tissue cells in the intestinal wall, they manipulated those, in other words, that kind of tickled them or stimulated them. The nerve signal that went from the intestinal wall stimulation to the brain landed in the part of the brain where anxiety is controlled. In fact, on diagnostic scans, PET scans, functional MRI scans, the brain lit up like a Christmas tree and those areas. So, when they stimulated the gut, they saw a reaction in the anxiety centers of the brain. And this is a major breakthrough as a remarkable finding! It’s the first of its kind. 

And it's a door opener to understanding the relationship. Hear me when I say this, the relationship between emotion, maybe even trapped emotion, and the various organs in the body and where that where that trapped emotion may even live. So we've got to do a little bit more research on this one, but this one is worth keeping an eye on and I'm going to be personally keeping an eye on it. And I'll keep you up to date on it if we get more information when we get more information. But chalk this one up as a major breakthrough for the field of Preventive Medicine, functional medicine, and even medicine in general. But it's a major breakthrough.

Sleep Deprivation 

While we're on the subject of gut health and the brain. Did you know that the less sleep you get each night, the more prone you are to having inflammation throughout your body and your brain? That's right, sleep deprivation increases oxidative stress; you may have heard of the term free radicals. So free radicals just kind of go wild, we get more oxidative stress and, and this is stress at a cellular level. This is the assault on our body at a cellular level. So when we're not getting the sleep that we need, we're under a lot of oxidative stress. In other words, it literally sets your body's inflammatory systems on fire. Okay, and guess what else? In a study published just last month in Nutrients journal, researchers found that using a high-quality probiotic reduces the inflammation associated with sleep deprivation. And it counteracts the oxidative damage being done to your body and brain from that sleep deprivation. 

This is another great finding. And here's why. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times. All diseases start with inflammation, controlling inflammation and you control the disease. I mean, why do you think steroids are the number one prescribed anti-inflammatory in the entire world? It's because the medical system depends on steroids to rescue people to pull them away from the brink of death. But there's a joke in medicine that if you give a person enough steroids, you can literally make the dead walk. And it's kind of a tongue in cheek joke. But there's a lot of truth to that because you can pull people back from the brink of death just by controlling inflammation and putting that fire out. 

So put out the fire and depression, anxiety, most all other mental health illnesses, brain issues, as well as a host of other physical health concerns are just beginning to improve. And yeah, you heard me right. depression and anxiety are linked to inflammation, inflammation specifically in the brain. And now we know that it's linked to inflammation in the gut because we know the processes related to irritable bowel syndrome and chronic gut pain are related to inflammation within the gut. 

Well, if a researcher can tickle the intestinal lining, just barely, and create an anxiety stimulation in the brain. Imagine all that inflammation throughout the entire intestinal lining, and I don't want to gross you out. I just want to give you the facts. That's a lot of surface area. If you can imagine a tennis court and you take one side of that tennis court and cut it in half, and you lay your intestines out. In the end, it would lay end to end across the half of that tennis court. That's a lot of surface area guys. And there's a lot of inflammation, a lot of damage to be done and a lot of stimulation of anxiety centers in the brain. And when that is inflamed, that's why I wanted to share these two studies and put two and two together for you. 

Chronic sleep deprivation leads to inflammation. And what can we do about it? We can get a handle on it by putting out the fires with probiotics Believe it or not as crazy just the craziest thing. So, the obvious answer is we need to correct sleep deprivation. But how? 

In the next study that I'm going to share with you researchers found that using melatonin was linked to decreased self-harm in young people with anxiety, and depression. Think about that for a minute. Young people who had known histories of depression and anxiety, had decreased suicide, suicidal ideation, suicidal 10 attempts, if they took if they took melatonin, and I've used I've done pediatric psychiatry since the very beginning since I started practicing in 1999. And I've done adult psychiatry, I do a blend. So, family psychiatry is where I've landed. Now functional medicine slash functional psychiatry, but I use melatonin all the time. 

Melatonin

I've used it ever since I began practicing because it works. I never understood how or why it worked. But now we're starting to see the evidence come out and show us these. This is how these things work. So do you know what melatonin does? And this was not brought out in the study. This was simply an observation that these researchers found in this study related to younger people with depression and anxiety. Those that took melatonin had fewer episodes of self-harm. Okay? 

They did not postulate how that happened. But I know how that happens. Because I've done the studies on melatonin. I've done the deep dives and going down the rabbit hole and understand exactly how it works. 

There are two major things that melatonin does. 

-It decreases inflammation. We know that melatonin in the right doses decreases inflammation not only systemically throughout the body, but neurologically in the brain for remember depression and anxiety. inflammatory disorders. Yes, are neurotransmitters involved? Certainly, they are. But they're inflammatory disorders. First and foremost. Remember, any illness, any chronic disease, anything like that, in the body is inflammatory based. And melatonin decreases inflammation remarkably well. 

-It also down regulates the GAD1 gene. And when you see a person with depression and anxiety, you can almost take it to Vegas, that person, if you were to place a bet that person would have a positive GAD1 gene that they inherited either from one or both of their parents. Okay, plain and simple. When we check the genetic profile on a depressed or anxious person, they're going to pop positive for a GAD1 Xen, and that immediately tells me this person is going to need melatonin because the GAD1 genes are responsible for regulating a chemical in the brain called glutamate. 

Glutamate is responsible for exciting your brain. So if we go back to that study, where they were stimulating that the epithelial tissue in the intestinal lining and creating that anxiety response in the brain, guess what that was happening in the prefrontal cortex? And if you dig deeper into the study, it was probably stimulating glutamate centers within the front part of the brain. Okay? 

So if you raise glutamate, you make somebody more anxious, you make them more depressed, okay? If you lower glutamate, you decrease anxiety, you improve mood, okay? And that's what melatonin does. Melatonin down-regulates glutamate, so that it's not so active.

Dr Brian G Brown  18:50

And as a result, when that happens, there's a nice little chemical, it's another neurotransmitter. It's called GABA and stands for GABA amine, Gamma Amino Butyric Acid. But you don't need to remember that. But GABA is your best friend. GABA is very calming. It's like nature's way of giving you Xanax without you having to take Xanax, okay, it's very calming, it just calms your brain right down. 

And you can naturally increase GABA in your brain by:

-breathing exercise, 

-meditation

-melatonin

-several other supplements that you can take to support the body so that that glutamate GABA system works like it's supposed to. 

Negative Effects of MSG

So, there's a lot of things that you can do. Oh, by the way, this is just a little tidbit, file this in the back of your head. If you know somebody that struggles with depression or anxiety, have them stay away from MSG. Think about this. MSG stands for monosodium glutamate, okay, so if you've ever had somebody that struggled with anxiety, and they get exposed to MSG when they go out to eat because a lot of restaurants use it. It's used as a preservative, it's used to make food look pretty because it makes food shiny. So, a lot of restaurants use this to make the presentation of the food better. 

But if you get exposed to glutamate, and you have this GAD1 gene, and you notice that Ooh, my heart rates going up a little bit, I feel a little bit nervous, I feel a little bit jittery. Guess what? You're probably a GAD1 gene patient. And you don't need to expose yourself to glutamate or MSG. 

I tell people to stay away from MSG anyway is bad for you. I don't like it. So just keep it off your table at all costs and keep it out of your mouth. Because typically get GAD1 gene. It's just not good for you. All right. 

Preventative Actions to reduce risk of Alzheimers

Lastly, and this is the last study I'm going to talk about today. And I think it's a hot topic, especially for people over 40, especially for people over 40 who have a family history of Alzheimer's or some form of dementia. The question comes up in the office all the time, Brian, I don't want to end up like my mom, I don't want to end up like my grandfather. There's Alzheimer's in our family, and I'm just scared to death of developing it. What can I do? 

And I've always known that a carbohydrate-controlled diet is one of the best things you can do. Leaning on the edge of a higher protein. I'm not saying keto or, or anything like that. But a very clean, higher protein, lower carbohydrate diet works remarkably well. 

Mediterranean Diet 

We've seen research on that for decades. But this particular research study now shows, and it just came out that a Mediterranean diet is associated with successful aging. Individuals in the highest upper 25th percentile are more likely to have great quality of life, and less likely to have depression, and less likely to have cognitive impairment or cognitive decline simply by eating a Mediterranean diet. Think about it. You're getting healthy fats in that diet, a ton of olive oil. I met a guy at a conference in October. This guy was a Michelin star, restaurant chef, he and his wife. They worked at several Michelin star restaurants in New York City. And they realized they couldn't have a family and do the chef's life. So they were traveling one time to the Middle East. And they noticed that the olive oil there was absolutely amazing. And they long story short started importing olive oil from the Middle East to their sources and connections that they had in New York, other people that own restaurants, other chefs in the New York area because everybody wanted this amazing tasting olive oil. 

So, this guy's an olive oil nerd. And a longer story short, he ends up leaving his full time job as a chef, his wife leaves her full time job. And that's all they do is import olive oil from all over the world. He has some of the most amazing tasting olive oil I've ever tasted. And I subscribe to a service of yours where we get three large bottles of olive oil once a quarter, and this time they're from Spain, sometimes they're from Australia, sometimes they're from the Middle East. Sometimes they're from Greece. They come from all over the world. 

So the Mediterranean diet is chock full of healthy fats. If you're buying olive oil from the grocery store, make darn sure it's a high-quality olive oil. You can't always tell by the price. It's a good beginning indicator, but you need to do your research on your olive oil. Because I've become an olive oil snob and I put it on everything. I was formerly a proponent of butter but I'm still not against it. Organic grass fed butter is great, but I put olive oil on everything. When I plate food, Drizzle olive oil on it. Plain and simple. I make a salad. Drizzle olive oil on it. Typically, my salad dressings always are related to that. 

But the Mediterranean diet is more than just olive oil. It's about eating good clean proteins, organic chickens, chicken products or organic fish. A lot of nice clean vegetables. You can look up Mediterranean diet anywhere online and you'll see what I'm talking about most people listening to the show already know what a Mediterranean diet looks like. And a Mediterranean diet hands down when you go straight down the line genetically for what genetic people genetically need and their eating profile. 

You can take a Mediterranean diet and modify it if somebody is genetically a leaning towards and they need more protein We can take a Mediterranean diet and swing it to a higher protein Mediterranean diet, if somebody is a less protein, higher carbohydrate and eat, and yes, there are people that are genetically out there like that, we can still take the Mediterranean diet and swing it that way. I'm a huge Mediterranean diet proponent, because it's so versatile and everything that we can do. And now we know that it helps us age helps our Brain Age more easily, more gently, and really keeps us out of trouble. I personally think, and this is just me, but I personally think the Mediterranean diet because of the EVO, the extra virgin olive oil, and the cleanness of that. 

It's an amazing oil for putting out the fires of inflammation. So if we look at the aging process, in general, it's an inflammatory process. And the less we can, the more we can dis-inflame ourselves, our brain, our body, the more gently we're going to age. So Mediterranean diet, guys, that is the order of the day. 

The information that I just shared with you today, is literally a thimble full of the tools at your disposal at our disposal as a team. Over the past few decades, I've developed a proprietary system that I call the Genesis Zone advantage method. It's a simple five step process that begins with a telephone call. If you're tired of what I affectionately call the moody brain syndrome or moody brain symptoms, and you want to get them resolved quickly and naturally with without being dependent on medications, then message me at Dr. Brian G. Brown, you can reach me at that handle on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. I'll be glad to answer any questions you've got. 

And if you want to, we can even set up a really quick 15-minute call and go from there. Most informed, most grateful, most trusted that you spent this time with us today. Again, I don't I don't take that for granted. Thank you for your time. This is Dr. Brian Brown over now.