Rethinking Mental Health: Dr. Tracy McCarthy on Root Causes and Functional Medicine

Dr. Tracy McCarthy challenges the traditional pill-for-symptom model of psychiatry by exploring how functional medicine transforms mental health care. Learn how chronic inflammation, nutrition, and overlooked factors like toxins, mold, and hormone imbalances impact anxiety and depression. Discover actionable steps, from dietary changes and supplements like omega-3s to innovative treatments like TMS and even the microbiome’s role. This episode offers empowering insights and tools to help you achieve a healthier mind and body.

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Transcript

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Functional Medicine Approach to Mental Health

Nika Lawrie 0:24

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Lawrie podcast . Dr Tracy McCarthy , welcome to the show . I'm so excited to have you here today .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 0:38

Thank you , Nika . It's such a pleasure to be here .

Nika Lawrie 0:40

Yeah , so I'm really excited to get into it with you . Today we're going to talk about kind of the functional medicine approach to anxiety and depression . I'm sure other things will feed into that conversation too , as they always do . But before we get into that , tell me a little bit about yourself . What's your backstory ? How did you go down the path of functional medicine ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 1:01

Yeah , I'm happy to . So I'm a medical doctor and a psychiatrist and when I first got into medical school I was really driven by wanting to understand why do people get sick , what goes wrong in the body and then how can we help them . And before that I was an engineer . I was always like how do things work ? It's the same thing . I wanted to understand this and the first few years of medical school were really pretty satisfying that way , learning so much physiology and pathophysiology . But then as my training progressed , it became so much more about matching a symptom cluster to a diagnosis which that pattern recognition is very important and still very much what I do but then matching that diagnosis to a pill . It very much became reduced to that in many ways and my curiosity that always driven me and asking why , why does this happen ? It got kind of squashed , like I would ask why does somebody get schizophrenia ? And we don't really know . End of conversation . You know what pill are you going to give them ? And of course the treatment is important .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 2:03

But I really had this yearning to understand what's driving things and I got almost kind of trained out of thinking about it and fortunately for me later , you know , in my residency but unrelated to that , I became interested and became exposed to all this literature on chronic inflammation and the links of nutrition to inflammation and started to hear about people applying this . You know , started to hear this term functional medicine and I was amazed . I'm like there are doctors who are using these tools that I had begun to learn about and started incorporating my own life and just feeling better in different ways , just different things I'd made and I I frankly got really angry for a while because I realized , you know , I realized I thought , well , I naively thought I was going to learn everything I needed to know to help people in medical school . I mean , it's a silly idea now . But I really did think that and I was like , why didn't I learn all this stuff that's in the research , the nutrition training is minimal to zero and doesn't apply . I mean it's about extremes of vitamin deficiencies that we don't see in our culture and that's about it . And so I was very disillusioned , I was very angry for a little while , but I became really passionate about the subject because it was fascinating and I said this was why I went into medicine what is going wrong in the body .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 3:29

So then I started to get connected to the Institute for Functional Medicine , started doing trainings there and , gosh , I loved that because I was like , wow , yeah , this is why I'm here . This is that root cause , this is that detective work that I want to be doing . So I did all my training there , became certified as a practitioner and in the process realized , hey , if I want to actually help people this way , I can't continue to just be doing inpatient hospital-based psychiatry because it's not going to work in that system . I need to open a practice . Had to figure that out . But I had so much wonderful experiences along the way of first working with people with their nutrition and seeing results , and then working more on their digestion and then starting to address toxins and hormones and , of course , the microbiome and just seeing more and more amazing results .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 4:18

And the best part about it is people being empowered to really help themselves . It's much more of a partnership . It's not like the doctor tells you to take this pill and that's it . And they you know people , my patients before you know that when I was getting frustrated with this model of a pill for an ill , they were frustrated often too Like do I have the testification for the rest of my life , or hey , you know what's driving these symptoms . Is this pill actually fixing that or what else can I do ? And then also , maybe the medication's partially treating it , but these have side effects and they still have remaining symptoms . That's very common . So all these scenarios , you know , I felt like we could not address in that conventional model .

Nika Lawrie 4:59

Yeah .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 4:59

So I feel now extremely fortunate and grateful to have the practice I do , where I get to partner with people in this deep way and go , you know , get down into the roots and figure out what the pieces are and empower them , and it's just really satisfying .

Nika Lawrie 5:15

I love your story . I felt bad . I laughed a moment ago when you said that you got really angry . I didn't mean to laugh at the fact that you were angry , but it's . You know , I hear the story so often and you know , and it's so frustrating when we , when we realize that there's all these other tools and processes and things that we can do that are natural . Really , you know , it's a it's an almost simpler approach to health , but it's not taught to most of our doctors , it's not taught to our psychiatrists , our therapists , it's not taught in our culture , and it's so frustrating when you learn about it because you're just like , why are we hitting our heads against the wall over and over again and getting nowhere when there's all these other options out here that we can be helping people with ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 6:05

Yeah , 100% . I mean , I feel like probably that disillusionment , getting mad thing is just like almost like a critical step , because I think , you know , I really like forcibly had my mind opened . It feels like , and now I'm grateful every day that that happened , because now there's so much I keep learning and it just there's no end to the learning and it's wonderful . Yeah , and I think too , like when you talk about it's just not taught , it's just the model the acute care really comes from , I think , the early 1900s , and like figuring out what you know , for example , what caused tuberculosis and then what pill could treat that , and that's critically important . But it left us with this sort of idea that we're always looking for the single cause for something and then looking for the magic bullet for that , and that is not how chronic symptoms work at all .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 6:57

And total lack of understanding that there's going to and those multiple factors aren't the same in each person . Everyone's got their kind of cluster of contributing factors that manifest then as depression or as autoimmune disease or as gut issues , and we really have to have a different paradigm of looking for pieces and , like you said so often , it's the natural things that end up being the best tools .

Nika Lawrie 7:25

Yeah , yeah , I mean , I , I , I feel so often that we almost need , you know , three sets of a medical system where you have , you know , there there is a need for the expertise , and in different parts of the body , and there is a need for prescriptions and medication in some places , right , but then you need this whole section that is preventative and the approach of how do we look at the full body , the full system ? Right , like you know , our brain isn't working separately from our lungs , from our heart . They're all working together in a system , right , and so , like , how do we approach it from that ? And then I think we also need that really , like , let's take it back to nature . Like nature figured out how to make us all work . Let's use the tools that it's providing to help us function at our best .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 8:13

You know I couldn't agree more . I mean , I think to that last point . It's like what can we learn from looking at how we evolved ? You know , what might our DNA be expecting in terms of our environment that we can harness to help ourselves feel better ? And you know , I do want to stress too I'm absolutely not talking about throwing out the baby with the bathwater . Like you know , if I'm in a motor vehicle accident , please take me to the local trauma center , absolutely yeah , as a functional medicine doctor , I absolutely do use medications because these are tools . I'm agnostic about tools . I want to know what's a good tool , what's going to be safe and helpful . And there's a wide range . And lots of those are interventions , lots of those are supplements or herbs . Some of those are medications , right , and with this approach , it's really about figuring out what those underlying imbalances are and then using the best tools to help correct them .

Nika Lawrie 9:08

Yeah , absolutely Totally .

Nika Lawrie 9:11

Building off of this , let's talk about the anxiety and depression kind of piece of that , because so often in interviews I've done , you know , we talk about the functional medicine approach to kind of overall health or different elements , a lot of like autoimmune disease or different I don't know things that women are struggling with , often like hormone imbalance , but we haven't really touched a lot on anxiety and depression and I think it's so key to understand how that is linked to how the rest of our body is functioning , understand how that is linked to how the rest of our body is functioning .

Nika Lawrie 9:46

You know we were talking about the separation of , you know , the brain versus the heart , versus the lungs , and the reality is the brain is connected to the rest of the body and so it's probably going to be impacted by things . So I want to kind of get into that . But before we , before we really jump down that rabbit hole , can you just kind of give a base explanation of like anxiety and depression and they're similar but they're also kind of two different things and what are kind of some of the signs or symptoms people might be experiencing , just as a general concept ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 10:16

Yeah , okay , great question

Exploring Anxiety and Depression Treatment

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 10:17

. So you know , we have in psychiatry the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual , which we , you know , is our official guide for labeling things with the actual diagnosis , which is really just a bunch of people agreeing Like , right now , this is the consensus that these symptoms equal , this label . But the truth is all these things exist on a spectrum right , spectrum right . So anxiety can be , you know , anything from you know , kind of an excessive degree of worry , feeling , you know , preoccupied , stressed all the time about different outcomes . You know , to the point that it's like usually the issue is how much is it impairing you ? But it can be impairing your happiness , you know it can be that simple , be impairing your happiness . You know it can be that simple .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 11:14

Two , all the way to full diagnoses , like you know generalized anxiety disorder , panic disorder , obsessive compulsive disorder , these different spectrum of anxiety disorders . And then with depression , it's more about there's sort of two sides to the depression coin that it can show up as , like you know , in my training , it's like there's nine symptoms . You have to have five of them , but , right , it's going to be like depressed mood , so sadness , for example , um , anhedonia , which is like lack of enjoyment of things you normally would enjoy . Sleep disturbance is part of it , but for some folks it's sleeping too much , for others it it's not sleep . There can be problems with concentration , there can be suicidal thoughts , but don't have to have those . I can go on . But it's just like they are two different entities but they coexist often and they can feed each other .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 11:57

Often . I've definitely met people who they had an anxiety sort of secondary to their depression , because it was like , well , why am I feeling so bad ? Why ? And they create additional worry and then the anxiety , when it's wrong , it can also lead to depression as well . So I would often say they're two sides of the same coin , but there are different things driving them . Often there are common roots as well from the functional medicine point of view of , like , what are the physical body drivers and I'm talking about beyond the social factors that we might be much more aware of , which are just as important . But the overlooked physical parts is kind of probably what we're going to talk more about today . But they can be not quite the same in anxiety and depression .

Nika Lawrie 12:46

Can you talk a little bit about the separation and approach that maybe functional medicine might take versus traditional medicine in treating these issues ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 12:59

Yeah , absolutely so . Functional medicine again seeks to ask why . Why is this happening ? And you know that's certainly something someone would do in therapy , which is a very important tool for either depression or anxiety , and I'm a huge fan of therapy and lots of different types of therapies can be helpful . Also , why in the body ? Not just why , like in your life , not just what are the stressors , what was the trauma , it's also like what's the nutrient deficiency , for example ? What's the infection ? So , with the conventional model , you go to your doctor , either your primary care doctor or , if it's a more severe case , you may be referred to a psychiatrist and your options are going to be therapy and medication .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 13:41

It's just about the end of the list . Now there are some other treatments , like TMS , which is a transcranial magnetic stimulation which can be effective for depression , or some other applications , and there's even ECT , but these are less common , right , the majority of people are going to be offered medication and be recommended to do a therapy which they often don't have good access to .

Inflammation and Mental Health Connection

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 14:06

But and the medications we have for depression and anxiety aren't great . Yeah , part of the problem , you know I said earlier I use , you know , medications as tools , absolutely . But I have certain medications that I think are really effective and safe and then other ones that are kind of , you know , that are really tough to use . They have lots of side effects , and then there's some that just don't work that great and unfortunately our antidepressants fall into that last category . Studies show they're , you know , pretty similar , slightly better than placebo . It's not saying much at all and you know they definitely come with side effects . And anxiety medications , you know there's some of them are very , very habit forming . You can become on them and I mean that's even true of antidepressants that you can be , you develop , you know , your body , your brain adapts and then you can have a withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome when you stop them . So you're not without issue . Again , sometimes it's the right tool to use . I'm not judging that , I am just saying that , like , I want us to have good tools and use everything available to us . So the functional medicine model is gonna look at , ask why , first of all , and try to use the best tools to correct the problem . And if someone needs , like , acute stabilization and medication is the answer for that , then that's appropriate . But that then gives you time to go . Okay , what's going on with the inflammation that's driving this ? Where's that coming from ? That's a big difference , right , there is just going deep into why and looking at the body and recognizing how it's connected . I mean , we were laughing about this earlier , right , because you're like , yes , the brain is actually connected .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 15:46

When I was first learning functional medicine , I was actually really I was kind of worried . I was like , does this apply to mental health ? Because I didn't see any examples of it and I was so conditioned about this siloed model that we're in , right , like there's cardiology over here , there's gastroenterology over here . I mean , even when you think about the brain , there's neurology and psychiatry . Right , it's like you're crazy when you think about it . So I had seen examples of autoimmune disease and gut stuff getting better with functional medicine . But I was not sure about mental health until I finally started to see some examples of people using that and that was very inspiring to me . And then , as I started to learn the connection with inflammation and depression , it really became clear . And I'm at the point now in my functional medicine career where you know we joke , everything causes everything . I mean , depending on the right person . It's kind of true .

Nika Lawrie 16:43

Yeah , absolutely so . You mentioned inflammation a couple of times . Can you talk about what the connection is between kind of our mental health and inflammation throughout the body ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 16:53

Yeah , inflammation is really the common pathway that symptoms end up occurring from . So there's all manner of things that can cause inflammation , and inflammation is your body's response to an infection or an injury , some kind of trigger , and it's not a bad thing . We absolutely need acute inflammation , short-term , appropriate inflammation , to recover . So if you get an infection or you sprain your ankle or something , that's the immune system and inflammation mounting a response to heal your body . But when there's chronic triggers to that inflammation , then you've got this sort of simmering fire of inflammation in the body that's going to cause a lot of collateral damage . When you're in that mode , you can't be repairing and restoring organ reserve and it's that chronic inflammation that manifests in all these different ways in our chronic health conditions , whether it's diabetes or psoriasis or migraines or whatever . So , yeah , it shows up a lot of different ways , depends on your genetics and your environment and your unique life circumstances , and it depends somewhat on what those triggers are , but inflammation is a common pathway .

Nika Lawrie 18:09

What are some of the things that we might be doing in our life on a daily basis especially with the kind of standard American diet that are triggering inflammation throughout the body ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 18:19

Well , the standard American diet is a great place to start because I know why I said it . Yeah , right , well , it's the low-hanging fruit , in a way , and yet sometimes the hardest thing to change , because it's so Just everywhere it presents Exactly , we're surrounded by it . But really , a standard American diet is high in processed foods , and why is that a problem ? These processed foods are full of what we would call industrial seed oils , like canola oil , soybean oil , these cheap grain-based oils I mean , vegetable oil is a euphemism for these these do not come from vegetables and these are high in omega-6 fats , and omega-6 fats are pro-inflammatory . I tell people they are the gas pedal on the inflammation , as opposed to the omega-3s , which is the breaks , yeah , and we don't have much omega-3 in the diet . We have tons of omega-6 . So every processed food , every cracker , cookie chip you eat , is like you look on the back , it's fried in canola oil , soybean oil . These are all full of those . So that's just like lighter fluid on the inflammation all the time .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 19:25

And then the processed carbs in those are part of the problem as well , spiking people's blood sugar . There's so much I can say about that and the role of blood sugar and anxiety . We can talk about that , but just these carbohydrates that are really stripped of nutrients and and they're again mainly grain based which is a problem like corn or wheat , and they also often contain a lot of pesticides like Roundup . So these things damage your microbiome and other pesticides can harm you in other ways or could be hormone disrupting chemicals . So it's like not got a good stuff for you and it's got a lot of stuff for you .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 20:05

That that's the processed foods , right , um , and ? And then people also are not eating healthy fats and they're not consuming a wide variety of colorful vegetables and , um , often they're not eating enough protein . I see that all the time . So standard American diet is like high glycemic load , meaning like spiking your blood sugar all the time , lacking nutrient density you know just doesn't have a lot of nutrients and then very pro inflammatory . So it's like , and you can look at it , it's not giving you good stuff and it's causing a lot of trouble .

Nika Lawrie 20:48

I have a question . So I know , as I had been starting to change my diet , I'm very addicted to sugary drinks Like I love Starbucks and things , and I've worked past most of that . But then when I talk to clients I work with or other people that are asking me questions about how to change their diet , they always talk about the specific addiction that they have to some type of food . Like it's very you know , they don't want to give . They're fine changing most things , but they don't want to give up this one thing and it's usually the thing that is usually the worst for them , because they eat it the most often , right .

Nika Lawrie 21:16

Do you have any advice from that kind of repetitive habit addiction perspective of how to overcome those habits ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 21:25

That's such a great question , and I think it . I think there's a lot of tools and the answer may look different for different folks . Sometimes that craving for that particular substance the sugary drink that could be driven by something going on in the body like a fungal overgrowth , yeast overgrowth may really increase your sugar cravings . Maybe it's something to do with dopamine balance in your brain and what that reward is for you . I like , though , to encourage people to do experiments . So think about cutting this out forever , cause that feels very depressing and overwhelming , you know . But to see how do you feel if you take it out for like two weeks , three weeks , how is your sleep ? Now ? You know , how is your anxiety Like if the , if the blood sugar is spiking from these things , there will be people who will notice , wow , my anxiety dropped a lot when I got rid of it , or I'm sleeping so much better . And , gee , I didn't realize I was actually sensitive to caffeine , which is like way more people than they realize , right ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 22:29

So you know , making these just to just try and see , and I think a lot of people are willing to do that experiment rather than like , oh , I have to be deprived of this thing Once they see the benefit for themselves . That really changes the risk reward around it . And then they usually get more interested in finding alternatives that can fit the bill , like , if it's like you need a carbonated drink , well , maybe you can drink , you know , a bubble water of some kind with lemon or something . Or , you know , have a decaf coffee with some healthy fats you put in it or something . There's ways you know to have these enjoyable rituals that have to deplete you .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 23:06

I mean , we help our patients with that all the time , right ? But yeah , the , the , the craving thing is real , you know , and there there can be other tools sometimes , you know , for example , hypnotherapy . There's some good results people can get for cravings from that . I think I encourage people to start with the experiment . See how you'll just try it a little bit , and then the awareness begins to grow and then the motivation begins to set in .

Nika Lawrie 23:31

Yeah , I think that it's the momentum piece . I know for me , one of the things that I did when I was so , I used to drink this . Before I was kind of getting into functional medicine and nutrition , I used to drink a Starbucks drink every day and I think it . I mean , it's appalling when I think about it now , but it had , I think , 64 grams of sugar in it and it was like you know , and it was my breakfast every morning . I'd get it on the way to work every morning , my breakfast every morning . I'd get it on the way to work every morning and for me , I gave my husband credit , my credit cards .

Nika Lawrie 24:05

So I couldn't buy anything for a couple of weeks , like that was my you know kind of put myself in credit card jail so that I couldn't spend the money , and then I did a timer on my phone like a day counter , and so I kind of like you would do for like AA or something right , yeah , give me some credit yeah exactly , and you know I'm in the thousands of days now and I still keep it going because it's just a reminder of like how far I've come .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 24:32

Yeah , and you can feel so proud of that and like , yeah , compare back and now it's not hard . It was hard at the beginning , you know .

Nika Lawrie 24:37

Yeah , and when you see those , you know thousands of days . You don't want to break that and go back to zero again so it can keep your kind of momentum going . I think that momentum is a really big piece .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 24:47

I would totally agree . I totally agree and I think you know for anybody I'm sure you do this as well but like when you are starting to work on changing the diet , like we don't start with the hardest thing , right , you start easy things and then at some point we do come up against that , that that you know that drink I do every day , that I have you know it's causing you trouble you know ?

Nika Lawrie 25:15

Yeah , so you mentioned a minute ago about like a fungal overgrowth or things like that . Can you talk about you know how our gut impacts , like the gut-brain connection and like how the functioning of our gut and the bacteria in our gut really influences the way our brain is working and how we're feeling , our moods throughout the day too .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 25:33

Yeah , it's really amazing how powerful that connection is and I think we just are really still scraping the surface of what we know . That I mean the research . Every day there's new papers about gut microbiome and the connection to any disease , any illness , but so much mental health is connected to this . So there's several ways that the gut impacts our brain .

Nutrition, Microbiome, and Hormones

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 25:55

So first of all , there's the nutrition and digestion piece , the nutrient absorption . If we're not getting these nutrients into the body , even if we're eating them , if they're not getting absorbed , then we're not benefiting from them . So the gut has a huge role right there . And if we don't have these key nutrients , I mean , why do they matter for the brain ? Well , this is what things are built out of and how they're on . So I tell people like you know , if the hardware isn't working like you're not going to , even if you try to change your thoughts the software like you're going to have trouble . You have to have healthy neurons . So you need your amino acids from those from your proteins , and you'll be able to break protein down and get those because you make neurotransmitters out of right . You need your healthy fats . The brain is like largely fat . Yeah , a lot of that right and important hormones that are impacting how we feel are made from fat as well . So there's that piece .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 26:51

And then you mentioned the bacteria , so the microbiome , that's all the bugs living in and on us , right , mostly bacteria , but also viruses and sometimes even protozoa or , you know , helminths . Historically we usually had some parasite load . It's interesting it's changed . But , like how we and fungus , so yeasts as well , and the majority of this microbiome is in the gut and the majority actually in the large intestine . And these bacteria primarily I'll talk about do a huge number of jobs for us . They're breaking down all kinds of things and freeing up the nutrients and antioxidants . They they'll even like sequester medications . They do really interesting things . They do a lot of detoxification , um , so we and we co-evolved with this . We're supposed to have this . Basically , a whole other organ of bacteria there weighs about two to three pounds .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 27:50

If you were to add up all the bacteria doing all this work for us and we wanted doing the right jobs and when we don't have the right balance of bacteria , then they can't do those good things for us . They can't make these wonderful things called short chain fatty acids , that fueling a whole healthy microbiome and helping our whole system . They can't make the right kind of anti-inflammatory messengers called cytokines that are helping calm inflammation . They can't make some neurotransmitters like they make GABA , which is the calming neurotransmitter right . So if you don't have them , they can't do it . And then if you've got overgrowth of the wrong kind of bacteria , they're producing all kinds of inflammatory messengers and they are blocking detoxification in certain ways . So that balance really , really matters .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 28:39

I mentioned that they can produce these different compounds .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 28:42

These get absorbed into the blood , travel through the body , go to the brain like the neurotransmitters I mentioned , but they also , amazingly , can travel up the vagus nerve rain into our abdomen and our chest and innervates all our organs there and is in charge of digestion and in charge of slowing your heart rate , slowing your breathing . It is actually amazing to me that these chemicals can do this thing called chemotaxis and travel up the nerve . So there's more than one way that they're getting to your brain and impacting it and they're supposed to be . Like I said , we co-evolved with these bacteria . This is supposed to be happening and when it's out of balance it can cause so much trouble . So there's cool studies , for example , taking like mice that are anxious and mice that are not anxious , and you take the microbiome you know through like a fecal transplant from the anxious place and put it in the non-anxious mice and they become anxious . Yeah , all these studies showing the role just the microbiome , but you know they didn't change the diet of these mice or their environment , it was just the bacteria .

Nika Lawrie 29:47

Yeah , I actually I saw someone this is a while ago , but someone do , they were actually doing it and I let me preface this before I say it , that I don't recommend people doing this on their own . Definitely see a physician , talk to people , you know , figure out what's going to be safe and best for for you . But I saw someone who it was some kind of documentary , it's been a couple years now where she had severe depression , where it was causing suicidal thoughts , and so she actually did a fecal matter transplant from I think it was her boyfriend or brother or something like that , where she actually blended it and put it into capsules and took it , yeah , and it completely it removed her like depressive issues , it removed her suicidal thoughts , and so you know it was a personal experience , it was her own thing . So again , you know it's a very delicate , not our medical advice right now , but it makes the point right .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 30:50

Yeah , these microbiome , they're highly , highly influential .

Nika Lawrie 30:55

Yeah .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 30:56

It just in all areas . I mean , there was a great study came out a few years ago with fecal transplants and autism and the dramatic difference there , right , yeah , I mean so much brain connection to the gut and I think , like I said , I think we're still just scratching the surface of that .

Nika Lawrie 31:12

Yeah , absolutely what . Share your thoughts on hormone balancing , especially for women ? I hear story after story of women who are struggling with brain fog and anxiety and depression and you name it Right . And then they go and they finally get their hormones balanced , especially those in um kind of perimetopause or menopause phase , Right ? And then it's like the clouds clear and the sun comes out and they're like , oh my gosh , I can function again , I feel some joy again . The sun comes out and they're like , oh my gosh , I can function again , I feel some joy again . What ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 31:47

are your thoughts on hormones and hormone replacement therapy and kind of balancing all of that ? Yeah , I think my thoughts are what you just said , which is hugely influential . I definitely see people all the time with premenstrual symptoms , like even premenstrual dysphoric disorder , which is like the more severe form of like sadness or irritability , your mood swings before the period , and we see that estrogen progesterone imbalance and when you can resolve that , their life can be completely different , so much better . And I absolutely see the effects of menopause all the time , so much better and I absolutely see the effects of menopause all the time . Treating that with hormones , like with , for example , progesterone my gosh , it's like the magic sleep aid for postmenopausal women . It's so great when that's what they need because it makes such a difference . But hormones are hugely impactful and I think women have been underserved in this area Absolutely and I think this service you know in the sense of the Women's Health Initiative study , like 20 years ago , this great book on that Estrogen Matters . I recommend people read if they want to know that story

Holistic Approach to Mental Health

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 32:50

.

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 32:50

But , like , hormones are very important and when they're out of balance or you don't have the right amount , you can suffer greatly and it's not just the hormones . Right , a lot of the things impact the hormones . So , again , the microbiome I mentioned detoxification can be blocked by certain bacteria . Well , estrogen can absolutely be recycled in the body instead of excreted . When you have bacteria producing this enzyme called beta-glucuronidase , that will undo what the liver had just done to try to get rid of the estrogen . So you have to attend to the whole picture , right ? Insulin , like blood sugar , is going to affect your hormones thyroid you have to look at the other hormones too . But I agree totally . They are massively important and when we get those balanced it can be a game changer .

Nika Lawrie 33:41

Absolutely so I want to go into we've kind of talked about the kind of big picture of you know how this can impact us and how you know how things are sort of working . But I want to talk about some practical solutions , and maybe you can touch on your natural mood solution program too . I'm like what are some practical lifestyle changes that we can start implementing today that'll start improving our mood and hopefully helping our mental health too ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 34:09

Yes , it begins with really fundamental things and I wanna just say , before I list these off , that I don't want people to get overwhelmed . The real important thing is to just start with one thing and take baby steps and just know that these absolutely add up . There's just this wonderful synergy . So if you first start going to bed at a good time so that you can prioritize your sleep Now I understand some people have real trouble sleeping , so I'm not talking about that . But for those who are just kind of ignoring their sleep and not making sure they get enough but they could that's a place to start right there . That's hormones . That's going to set blood sugar sensitivity . Insulin sensitivity is so important . When you don't get enough sleep , the brain doesn't have a chance to detoxify . That's the only time when it happens is overnight , so you've got to attend to that . That's a good basic first place to start .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 35:03

Then you know , when it comes to nutrition , we talked about the standard American diet . So starting to make some changes where you know if you see there's some kind of processed food you're eating , all the time trying to come up with a better option for that , focusing on nutrition like what is this food giving me ? Sure you're getting healthy fats like avocado oil or coconut oil or olive oil , and not these industrial seed oils like canola oil that we were talking about . Eating a wide variety of the rainbow of fruits and vegetables , that's going to give you all sorts of important compounds that feed your microbiome the right way and making sure you're getting adequate protein in each meal so that your blood sugar will be stable . That right there , those steps which you don't you're not going to do all that at once , but in those steps are going to have a humongous impact .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 35:52

When you've got that foundation laid , you can you want to start thinking about supplementing for the things that you can't get enough of , and and that's you know . In my online program , the Natural Mood Solution , we go into a lot of detail about that and that's an educational program . For hey , how can you address these overlooked underlying physical causes of anxiety and depression ? That is really missing in the soil at this point . There's been a lot of depletion , so we don't get it in our food , and adding some magnesium can make the world of difference to your sleep quality . It helps a lot of people with anxiety , helps their bowel function . It helps hormone production , helps a lot of things .

Nika Lawrie 36:37

Do you have a specific version of magnesium ? I don't like which one .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 36:44

There are many forms of magnesium . You know I don't like which one , which one . There are many forms of magnesium , so I , for anxiety , I really love magnesium glycinate and you know , if you're a little more stopped up then I would say magnesium citrate . You still absorb the magnesium in that case , but it'll help you have more regular bowel movements , which is critical for toxifying and for a healthy microbiome . You have to be having daily bowel movements , so that's really really important . So magnesium is a good one to supplement with . And then there's a few other areas I would recommend supplementation to .

Nika Lawrie 37:16

And the big ones I usually try to mention . I know you mentioned omega-3 earlier , but I think we're so deficient in omega three because of the diet , and then vitamin D , DK a combination there . Do you have thoughts on either ? I know omega three definitely , but yeah 100% agree .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 37:32

And there's tons of research on omega threes and their anti-inflammatory role and their antidepressant role . And unless you're eating like high omega three fish , like four times a week , you're not getting enough . Um , you know , people will say , oh , I have flax seed or chia seed . Well , you , you convert almost none of that , like 2% , to the omega-3s in the form we need . So you really need to supplement if you're not getting them from the fish . And , um , yeah , that's hugely , hugely important and makes a massive difference to how people feel . It takes a few months to feel that because , kind of , do an oil change on your body ? It takes time .

Nika Lawrie 38:07

Yeah , but I love that .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 38:10

I didn't coin that , I learned that from my teachers , but like it's really true , it takes time to replace these different lipids and these different membranes and and it , but it really makes a difference .

Nika Lawrie 38:18

Yeah .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 38:19

And vitamin D yeah , huge . Like you know , I was just listening to a wonderful lecture , dr Greenblatt , talking about suicide risk and like what really matters for this and the research in what raises risk . And it's really interesting and one of these was and some of this research is done by the military that vitamin D levels under 15 , people had 50% higher suicide risk . I mean , vitamin D is critical for so many things . You probably know it's actually a hormone . It's so important for immune function so that means it's going to affect inflammation Again , that common pathway , right . So getting your vitamin D up at least to 30 , but optimally more like 50 or 60 , really makes a huge difference .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 39:05

And then the other one that we haven't talked about is B vitamins . That's the other . I think with mood , that's really really , really important . Folate was a B vitamin . That's very important and for some folks they really need extra support around folate because they're genital . And the other one I would say is B12 . People , as they age , they can't absorb B12 as well . And then , of course , vegans aren't getting it in their diets . They have to supplement , but fixing people's B12 levels can be a game changer . And B complex you need the other Bs too .

Nika Lawrie 39:43

Yeah , that's what my mom always talks about getting her her bee shots and she loves it . She's like I always feel so much better and it makes you a lot , right ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 39:51

Yeah , it must be important if it feels so good .

Nika Lawrie 39:54

Yeah , it's huge , definitely .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 39:56

Yeah , and you know people are on medications that are depleting these vitamins and aren't informed of that . I mean , I can think of a patient who was on metformin , which is a pretty useful medication for blood sugar , kind of one of the better ones out there but it's notorious for depleting B12 . I never told her and she had all these health improvements on the metformin , but after like a year on it she was so depressed and I was like , did anyone tell you you need to take B12 ? Nope , and then within a week of taking B12 , she felt like a new woman . So these things matter a lot .

Nika Lawrie 40:31

Yeah , yeah . One of the other questions I had for you is asking about your advice for people who may be struggling on their kind of health journey . I know you've gone through that journey as a practitioner , as a physician , right Like going from traditional to more functional medicine approach . Do you have advice for the patients who are struggling to get the answers or the support or the care that they need from traditional , and how to approach that ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 41:01

Yeah , that's actually why I created my course , because I think that you know , first of all , there aren't enough functional medicine physicians out there and it's hard to get them accessible for everybody , and it's also not what everybody needs .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 41:14

I mean , not everyone needs like the full detective work . They need some fundamentals and some foundational stuff , and they'll get a lot of people , get a lot better from that , and so that's the gap that I saw and I felt . You know , I want people to be able to get the education that's going to help them help themselves . So that's . You know , my program , the Natural Mood Solution , is really all about looking at the foundations , the fundamentals of that supplementation of anti-inflammatory , nutrient dense diet , of blood sugar regulation , digestion , and then some about avoiding toxins and detoxifying . This is the place to start , I feel like , and you baby step your way into making changes and then it really adds up , and then if you've gotten a lot better but you have certain things that aren't better , that may be the time to then find a practitioner and go deeper . But that practitioner will be so happy that you've already taken all those steps .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 42:08

That's hard , yeah , because you have to do that stuff . You can't bypass that .

Nika Lawrie 42:15

Yeah , definitely . One thing is I didn't bring up detoxification and toxics or toxins very much in this conversation , or really at all . I talk about it so much in other shows and so I think a lot of listeners know about that . But just to touch on it before we close out today the connection to mental health and well-being what is your take on that or advice you have ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 42:40

You know , my take on it is , the longer I'm learning and practicing , you know , I really I feel like maybe it was about two years ago where I just was suddenly like you know what it all comes down to toxins and trauma . That's what it feels like to me .

Nika Lawrie 42:53

It is right yeah .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 42:54

In a way , that's a very incendiary combination and , in a way , toxins are just another trauma .

Toxins and Mental Health Impact

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 43:00

So , yeah , toxins can be a lot of things . Right , it could be hormone disrupting chemicals , um , you know , from pesticides , from personal care products . You know , it sounds like you've been doing a great job of education your listeners about that , which is I try every day .

Nika Lawrie 43:14

Every day I'm like it's everything right .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 43:16

Or , you know , from your water or your food and obviously we can't control . We can't control of all our air and stuff . But there are things that are in our control and that's what's worth working on , but also mold toxicity . This is something , unfortunately , is really common and totally missed by most people . Yeah .

Nika Lawrie 43:37

I have an interview I just did last week that's about to come out , all about molds and the impacts on our health . It's so important .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 43:45

So that's a big driver of people's depression and anxiety absolutely can be from that . They usually have other symptoms as well . But absolutely don't think that I mean you've gone over it in that episode , so I won't go deep into it , but I see it all the time , I treat it all the time . It's a big deal . Making sure you're not living in mold is one of the best things you can do for your health . And then , yeah , we talked about endocrine disrupting chemicals , heavy metals also a big contributor , right , we know mercury , lead these things can be ruinous to the brain and these are part of in the research that Dr Dale Bredesen's done on Alzheimer's , for example .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 44:30

You know , you see that some of these patients have quite a bit of heavy metal . There's a lot of disease there . They'll find that infections or , you know , problems with blood sugar . There's many contributing factors , but these metals are an issue for brain health as well . So toxins absolutely play a role , and a big part of the way they play the role too is their impact on the microbiome and that with the Roundup , you know if they're killing off your good bacteria , that's , you know , and they're just blocking different things in the body that the body can't work right when you know this metal is taking the place of some other thing that should be there .

Nika Lawrie 45:05

Yeah , absolutely . So I have two questions for you to close out the show . Before I get to those , is there anything that we haven't touched on today that you would want to share , or any kind of advice or tips or anything that you might have that we haven't touched on ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 45:24

This one thing that I think we were mentioning these different nutrients . I want to mention one more important nutrient . That's zinc . Zinc is another one that I think people are often very , very low on . I test people and I see people low all the time , and that can have a lot to do with brain function as well . So I want to mention that and I will say too .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 45:44

I'd like to say a little more about blood sugar , because , I've said several times , blood sugar affects anxiety . But I want to just explain that when people eat a higher carbohydrate meal or they have trouble managing the carbohydrates because they've become insulin resistant , they're like on that pre-diabetes or diabetic path . Maybe they have polycystic ovarian syndrome , which is another thing related to insulin resistance . The blood sugar will spike after you eat that high carb meal and then it will plummet and when it's dropping rapidly , you will release adrenaline and that cause you to feel anxious and feel maybe shaky , not feel good , and this can be happening overnight . I tested my people with continuous glucose monitors and we see that this is a major cause of their waking up at 2 am or 3 am . So that's a big one that can be fixed .

Nika Lawrie 46:35

That's so huge . I put out a social media post a couple months ago . I had eaten something that was heavy in white rice rice and I wear a continuous glucose monitor on and off , and so I was able to track it , and you know I'm pretty careful about that stuff , but so even for me it spiked quite a bit and then it crashed really hard in the middle of the night and I woke up in the middle of the night , and so I was able to find those exact connections right Between the blood sugar dropping heavily from that you know glucose spike that I had from the rice , and then it wakes me up and then you know it takes a long time for your body to fall asleep and then you're tired the next morning and then you want sugar and it's just this whole spiral , kind of thing , it's just cycle right .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 47:20

Yes , cycle right . It's so hard to fall asleep because there's all this adrenaline running through your body and it's such a powerful thing to have people realize like , oh , that's why it's happening and here's what we can do to change it , and it's really treatable . So I think just really , really , blood sugar is huge , and running around with a high blood sugar all the time also is associated with depression . So that's a major cause of inflammation in people and it's something we can do so much about . So just want to reiterate that that's something really worth working on .

Nika Lawrie 47:49

Yeah , absolutely Well . Thank you so much for just sharing all of this knowledge . I'm so grateful for it . I think it's so important educate as many women as possible about like there are things that you can do that are in your own hands . You know within grasp that you can do to really feel better , both mentally and physically . So I'm always so grateful to have individuals like you experts come on and just share their knowledge . So thank you very much and thank you for the work you're doing . I just want to commend you for that , cause I think it's so important .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 48:19

Thank you for that , and I agree with you , that's my same . Passion is like getting people to know there's so much you can do and it's so hopeful . Yeah , yeah , it's really empowering .

Nika Lawrie 48:29

Yeah , the hope is there , for sure , definitely . So , before we close out , can you share , where can listeners find you and connect with you and anything that you would want to share in that sense ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 48:40

Yeah . So first I have a nicely digestible bad pun free gift . It's called the Top 10 Overlooked Causes of Depression and Anxiety , and that's really easy to find . It's at drtracymccarthycom , backslash top 10 . That's T-O-P and then the number 10 .

Nika Lawrie 49:00

I'll put it in the show notes , just to make it easy .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 49:02

Yeah , because I encourage people to check that out , because that talks about some of these things we've mentioned and this is where you can start really easy , like here's some ideas and that's just easy to take action on . And then I'm on Instagram at DrTracyMcCarthy , and then my practice website in Northern California it's DrTracyMcCarthycom . My program that I mentioned , the Natural Mood Solution , is at naturalmoodsolutioncom . But if you get that top 10 guide , it'll also kind of lead you through more information and eventually , more information on the course , if it's something you're looking for .

Nika Lawrie 49:36

Perfect . Everything will be in the show notes , make it as easy as possible for people to find you , and I really I encourage listeners to reach out and check out her course , because I think this information is so important , especially if you're dealing with any type of mental health issue for sure . So , dr McCarthy , I have one last question for you today that I ask all listeners , or all people I interview what is something inspiring that you've either experienced or learned that you would like to share with the world ?

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 50:10

I'm going to share a book that I love , that part of what really changed my thinking . I'm going to grab it . Since we also here , it's right here on my bookshelf . For those who are on the podcast and watching the video this is called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr Weston A Price . This is a dentist who did all this research in the 1930s . He's the one who discovered what became known as vitamin K . Yeah , yeah .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 50:31

In the book .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 50:31

It's all called Activator X , but this book changed my life because this is him and his wife traveling the world looking at different peoples that have not yet been exposed to Western foods and looking at the rate of cavities and their rate of malocclusion , which is like what we would call now you would need braces if you have malocclusion and the dramatic difference with when they're eating their traditional foods and then when the Western diet is introduced .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 50:58

These people did not have cavities and did not need braces before these things happened and that really changed my life to understand that we are meant to be healthy really , and so where's the mismatch with our environment now that is leading to that and that's where we can intervene . But the book is just fascinating and there's all these cool pictures and you go everywhere in the world and they're eating very , very different diets in these different places , but these diets all meet the nutritional needs that you know that are sadly , our standard American diet is falling so short

Evolutionary Perspective on Dental Health

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 51:29

on . So to me it was a very inspiring and fundamentally kind of paradigm changing book .

Nika Lawrie 51:36

You know , it's funny about him and the journey that he went on . One of the things that really strikes me now is whenever I see , you know , like , think about anthropology and ancient humans and you see the skulls with the teeth that still remain , and the teeth are like you know , they're formed perfectly , just like if you'd had braces . Yet they didn't have braces , and so why is that so different now and what is happening ? And so it really helps you think about the struggles that current human bodies are going through and the difference over time .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 52:13

Yeah , I found it extremely thought-provoking that way and it just really stayed with me . I think it always shifted my worldview .

Nika Lawrie 52:21

Absolutely Well . Thank you again so much for coming on the show . I'm so grateful . I really appreciate you .

Dr. Tracy McCarthy 52:25

Well , it's been a real pleasure . Thank you so much for having .