E 233 Is Your Child’s Diet Making Their Anxiety Worse? Here’s the Truth

Struggling with Teen Anxiety? Discover Detective Ev's Functional Medicine Secrets

Is your teen battling anxiety? You're not alone. In this episode, we talk with Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev, who's helped over 50,000 students overcome anxiety and thrive.

Here's what you'll discover:

Evan's incredible story of healing himself & others using functional medicine
Actionable tips to help your teen manage stress & improve their mental wellness
The surprising link between sleep deprivation & teen anxiety
Why nutrition & gut health are crucial for mental clarity
How environmental factors impact our kids' mental health

My audience gets a free course with 5 screening tests.

Free Course

About Evan Transue:

Host of the Health Detective Podcast
Owner of Bucks County Light Therapy & Functional Medicine Center
Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist
Resources:

Podcast

Functional Medicine Center

Book

Bucks County Life Therapy


Don't let anxiety control your teen's life. Tune in for practical solutions and real hope!

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

Find my podcast
Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
More information

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me for the Teen Anxiety Maze. And today I have a really fun guest with us, Evan Transue, and he's a. k. a. the detective, Detective Ev, and I love that. And we're going to dig into what that means exactly here in a minute. And he is the host of the Health Detective podcast, and he is also owner of Bucks County Light Therapy and Functional Medicine Center.

He graduated from Functional Diagnostic Nutrition in 2017, and prior to finding that, he and his mom had suffered a variety of health challenges for over a decade. So when he went through the functional diagnostic, diagnostic nutrition system, it totally transformed his and his mom's life so profoundly that now his, the work that he learned about in the work that he does is now centered around spreading that.

information [00:01:00] to everyone, but he likes to spread it around to middle school and high school students as well, which is great. And he's already spent time talking to over 50, 000 students already. So I definitely wanted to get his information on this podcast. So Evan, thank you for being with us. 

Evan Transue: Yeah, thanks for having me.

It's always, I get into a lot of podcasts that are more functional medicine focused, but admittedly, and I would say this on there too. These are my favorite ones because this is where we can actually. Talk to people who can apply this information and really change the trajectory of a kid or teen's life.

So I'm just grateful to be here. 

Cynthia: Oh, that's great. Well, why don't you start with your health journey? Like what, what was happening that caused you to think there might be something else you needed to look into? 

Evan Transue: Well, my journey started when I was five. I started exhibiting my first health sorry, physical health and mental health symptoms then.

So what that looked like at the time was what I now know were panic attacks. We did [00:02:00] not figure that out. My parents and I being the way I did not figure that out. Then severe stomach pains, migraines. So nothing that people haven't heard of per se, but It was odd in the sense of we didn't have any rhyme or reason for this.

It wasn't like you eat something and this happens or I go to this certain place or I'm in this certain circumstance and a panic attack happens. I would just kind of have a few days out of the month where I would get these symptoms. Now at five, even if you're, I found this to be true for a lot of people I've talked to as well.

If you're dealing with stuff when you're young, it's not that it doesn't suck when you're dealing with it. But you are five or six. You have a short attention span. So once it's gone, you kind of just go back to being a kid. I didn't put much thought into this at the time. These were just weird things that happened to me, and I didn't like them.

And when my parents took me to the doctor, it was for the mental health stuff specifically. Now I'm 28, almost 29. We're going back 23 years. And so I want people to think about how much mental health stigma has changed in the last four or five [00:03:00] years, thankfully, mostly for the better versus what it was like 23 years ago.

And I think the same stigma that affects people like us at one point in our lives, I'm sure affects professionals as well. I think it affects doctors because they're not expecting certain things. So just, just because they might be more aware does not mean they don't get affected. And the reason I preface with that is because when we went into the doctor's office, I did not get diagnosed with dealing with panic attacks or an anxiety disorder at the time.

The doctor said to myself and my parents, one of the few things I remember from Five is it was that impactful. He said, this isn't something to worry about. Evan gets himself a little too worked up and he's going to outgrow this. This wasn't someone with malintent that was trying to screw me over. I always try to emphasize that on every podcast.

This was someone who actually believed that. So how do you possibly know it was panic attacks then? Are you self diagnosing? No, I ended up going into that doctor well, different person in the practice, but same office 10 years [00:04:00] later when this became panic disorder and they diagnosed these as panic attacks and panic disorder at that time.

And I remember my parents being almost more upset than me because they said, these are the same things that we came in for 10 years ago. He's been dealing with this exact same thing on and off the whole time. So that's really how it started, how I eventually figured out that I needed to. Incorporate a holistic element to this was getting to my late teens and early twenties.

I started to realize that I was stacking on more diagnoses. I actually had seven different medically diagnosed, not self diagnosed conditions at the age of 18, both both physical and mental. And I did not need to be a doctor or a PhD or even a genius to say, this doesn't make sense to me. How can I just keep getting sicker and sicker?

So that was the, you know, Philosophical side. I'm like, how does this make any sense? The other side practically was, and just being transparent, I didn't want to know what [00:05:00] 68 looked like if this is what 18 looked like. And yes, I've had suicidal ideations from depression, but Maybe a, you know, psychologist would disagree with this, I don't know, but I had what I almost called a practical ideation at that time where it's like, why would I want to be here if I feel like this all the time?

So there became this almost ultimatum in my head where I needed to figure this out. Otherwise, I'm not doing this for another 60 years. That's all I know. 

Cynthia: Hmm. Well, your story is just. Touching my heart because my daughter, when she was in elementary school, and I think it started around five or six, she now knows it was panic attacks, but then she did not know what was happening to her.

And she said, I actually thought I was crazy. And cause I was like, why didn't you tell me you were having these panic attacks? And she said. Well, I thought that there was something wrong with me, and I didn't want you to know that there was something wrong with me, so I never told you, and she was having him at night in her bed, and so, you know, we're asleep or whatever, we don't [00:06:00] know that it's happening, and then she started throwing up before school every single day, probably around second grade, and I thought she had a food allergy or something, you know, I had no idea what was going on, and she was not diagnosed with anxiety until she was an adult.

I think about that so much. Like we, and we did, I did take her to the doctor to see if she had a gastro problem or, you know, like some other thing happening that was causing her to have this. And I think at that time they were like, well, there's nothing wrong there, you know, see you later, whatever. And we never did pursue anything else.

And then she had high blood pressure by the time she was 18. And now I'm wondering, you know, is that connected to like. It probably is in some way because I don't have any of these diagnoses myself, but she has all these things and I'm like, why does she have all these diagnoses? So I'm gonna, I'm interested to know more.

So then you'd realize there was something [00:07:00] else that you needed to check into. 

Evan Transue: Yeah, and my life was just like a mess at the time. And I only say that because I think parents really start to worry when their kids going down the wrong track and In one sense, you, they'll find as we go along here, like I'm a realist, I'm not a pessimist or an optimist, I don't think I'm either, I'm, I'm just a real person.

You should be worried, like, things can happen that are bad, when kids are doing drugs and driving cars, drunk on alcohol or whatever it might be. At the same time, There are also stories of hope and figuring things out. So it's not the end of the world always either. But at the age of 18, it was actually in the three weeks surrounding my 18th birthday.

I went from this, like, I didn't describe this well in the beginning, this nerdy kid, teacher's pet. I was like the type of kid at one point legitimately who would have told on someone else for talking. If the teacher left the room and told us to be quiet when we left, like I was that guy, I was not making a lot of friends doing that stuff.

And I go from that. To in the three weeks surrounding my 18th birthday, all of these things happened, kicked out of school, not coming back, arrested and sent to [00:08:00] juvie, and spent my 18th birthday on house arrest and just for the summary version of this, it was all involved with drug stuff and the implications of that, so, you know, how do you go from this nerdy Straight A teacher's pet kid to dealing with like very serious consequences.

So that was another thing I was reflecting on is just my life kind of objectively sucked. And it wasn't to say that there's not worse situations. I could have been in extreme poverty dealing with all this. So I'm glad I didn't have that case, but there was no prospects for the future. My health wasn't getting any better.

I'd ruined a lot of the relationships through my actions. So. You know, it was a really serious time where you're like thinking, okay, what am I going to do here? So what ended up happening is and I'm a total believer in this so I'm gonna go more This would be considered like more of a New Age spiritual concept, even though I am a Christian now There's a wonderful book called the alchemist by Paulo Coelho And he says when you make a powerful decision the whole universe conspires to make it happen something along those lines [00:09:00] All I know is I experienced what I would say is that.

And I don't mean it woo woo, it's just that's what happened. I decided I need to get better from a circumstance that happened with a high school girlfriend. Because that was like my final straw. And when that decision was made, I'm sure my brain started looking for opportunities as well. But it was like the right things just moved into my life to support me with this.

And it only took about three or four months before I met this guy named Eli. Who I just, I'm, we're not. It's not that we're not friends. It's just, we completely disconnected almost 10 years ago. So it was like this man was dropped into my life and just directed me on the right path. He got me involved in a group of young adults all about three, four years older than me, but young, nonetheless, and I looked up to them.

I thought they were amazing. I wanted to be like them and. To be in like this group, more or less like they read books, they read personal development books, they were listening to audios in the car. Like if we're driving somewhere, we're going to conferences together. So these same [00:10:00] six month period, I am arrested in juvie.

And then going to personal development conferences with my new friends as we're listening to audio books on the way there. So if that doesn't show you know, people can be greatly infected by affected by their environment. I don't know what does, but that group is what helped me, not just from the personal development perspective, Cynthia.

But because I always try to beat around the bush with this because people judge these things, but I'm not at it anymore. It was like a network marketing thing, right? Like affiliate marketing and you're growing to the groups and you're inviting your family, all that stuff. So. I'm not against it, but I'm not in it anymore.

Bottom line is the product that that company sold, which meant nothing to me at the time. I just wanted to be around these people was a high potency multivitamin. Now we were doing events multiple times a day in the summer, just trying to recruit our friends and get them in. So every event, you know, you want to be a product of the product.

So we're drinking this stuff all day about two or three months after starting that I [00:11:00] noticed objectively that my My anxiety and depression was so much better. It was no denying that. I, of course, thought, well, I stopped using drugs as much, even though I had these problems before the drugs, and I got new friends.

That must be it. Well, the company ends up, you know, getting sued for, you know, a pyramid scheme type thing. They did actually win the court case, to be clear, so I was not in a pyramid scheme, but it ruined the reputation, obviously. Like, you're just, you're not getting back into it after that. So I kept all the friends, though.

Some of them are still my great friends to this day, but the product stopped being consumed by me. And after two or three months of stopping the product, I noticed that my symptoms started to come back pretty severely. And I'm sure I used way less intelligent words at the time, but the thought process was something along the lines of, I wonder if nutraceuticals can have an effect on mental health.

Again, I wouldn't have known the word nutraceuticals at the time, but. I just started getting curious and I go on Dr. Google, not a PhD, not a doctor [00:12:00] myself, but I go on Google. I say, can you know, vitamins affect mental health result after result after result saying yes. I'm like, why is no one telling me this?

How is this not the case? And I can actually send you. The paper proving this so no one has to take my word for this. You can go read the scientific studies And you wonder why this is still not being shown because this was 10 years ago I knew this and again science is only getting better with it So once I realized though the bottom line is this That something that I could do in my lifestyle could affect these health issues Even if it only moved the needle a little bit It created this like fiery intensity and passion for, okay, if I can get 5 percent better, why not six?

Why not seven and eight? So I just had it in my head that I am absolutely ignorant, like literally ignorant. I don't know enough about this, but I keep getting better. The more I find out. How far can this go? I just was like a walking experiment to see how much better I could get and I'm [00:13:00] getting ahead of myself.

But today, you know, I stand on this podcast. I'm using my standing desk right total. Now I'm way too deep into the health stuff, but I do not meet the diagnostic criteria for any of those seven health conditions. And I was told one was completely incurable and would lead to hearing loss. So this is not like it.

You know, something that I could hide. I would objectively have hearing loss in one ear, and apparently I just have the longest remission in the world, because western medicine won't give it to me that it doesn't exist in me anymore, but I must be dealing with a long remission. So if it's just a long remission, I will happily take it.

Cynthia: Wow, so you got trained in this functional medicine, nutrition, and so what is your advice to these parents and these kids, like when you're talking to the kids or the parents that are listening or the kids that are listening, like what can they do to start Adding this goodness to their life. 

Evan Transue: Yeah, so there's some advanced things that, of course, you can get into.

We don't have the time to talk about that today. And quite frankly, I don't think you need [00:14:00] to start there. The bottom line is a paradigm shifting understanding that what we are doing in today's world particularly if you are in the United States of America, or most of North America in general, We're poisoning ourselves and this is never again.

This is realist. This is not to fearmonger, but we need to be aware of this stuff. The chemicals that we put into our foods are banned in many other countries. That is not a conspiracy theory or an opinion. And I only, sorry, I only say it like that because I'm so used to people being almost shocked by the claims that I'm making.

So I'm just sticking to facts. It is not an opinion to say. That we use chemicals in this country in our food that is not legally allowed in other countries It is not an opinion to say that not only do we not Label genetically modified foods in america. They're completely banned in other countries some of which we classify as Third world.

So these quote unquote countries that are apparently so undeveloped compared to us [00:15:00] are smart enough to say, Hey, you guys go be the guinea pigs for this, you know, we'll, we'll stop this. The other aspect I think it's one of the biggest ones that probably affected my generation. Although it was a little bit different for me growing up, but certainly affecting this modern this current one is how we've affected.

Ourselves with light and the inappropriate use of artificial light and the lack of use of natural light. So that's why you know, my wife and I have this functional medicine center when we say light. It's like, what does that mean? Well, we're like a plant. We're supposed to be outside and getting Natural sunlight.

One of the things that we're doing with artificial lights is it gives us the ability to do what we can watch this stuff on phones or computers 24 7. And I'm really glad that you're getting to watch this right now because you're consuming positive information. So that's the pro of it. But everything that has a pro has a con.

One of the cons is I can stimulate my body now. All day long and the light specifically that naturally comes from [00:16:00] computers is so bright that it actually tricks our brains into thinking that it's what's called solar noon. So solar noon is when the sun is highest above the horizon. This is what we would call middle of the day.

Again, not an opinion actual fact. So if I'm staring at something at 11 p. m. That is telling my body that it's the middle of the day. But then I do that for the entirety of my existence from the time I'm born until, you know, the time I'm, you know, 15 as a teenager, we're seeing problems with this that I don't even think we could have ever comprehended.

And that's what our kids are experiencing. A kid that is born today. You know, you got the artificial lights on in the hospital, then you take them home. There's artificial lights there. Mom and dad are watching TV in the background because they're working two jobs each trying to survive in today's world, make this all work.

Kids are getting the screens way too early, like the iPads and stuff like that. And then they're up at night under lights. And then the last thing that they'll get is we turn them off if we're smart before we go to bed. But the problem is, Cynthia, it takes about three [00:17:00] hours for our bodies to realize that it's dark now and to produce proper melatonin.

So we basically have a chronically sleep deprived population, including us, but where we guinea pigged these kids is we're saying now Okay, now we're going to see what happens when you do that in development, because even with what my parents, they're in their fifties, what they experienced is still different.

Yes, they had TV. Yes, they had lights, but it was not the same intensity and level that we're experiencing today. So we're just saying, yeah, what happens when you have a bunch of kids walking around that are sleep deprived? And we again, yeah. Just studies. What we know is that kids, that kids under the age of 18 that stay up past 12:00 AM are 42% more likely to be diagnosed with depression.

Second leading cause of death from 10 to 35. So 10 years old to 35 years old in America is suicide. That's the second leading cause of death. Number one cause of suicide is untreated depression. So if I told someone today. That there was a [00:18:00] 42 percent chance that they'd get a 42 percent increased risk of getting cancer from doing X, Y, Z activity.

Most of us would stop. That's why most people, not all, stopped smoking cigarettes, right? We stopped doing these things. Yeah, I tell people this all the time, and I wonder how many have actually applied this information. And the reason I compared it to cancer, by the way, is because cancer is obviously a scary thing and a major killer.

One of the biggest things that we're increasing the risk of one of the biggest things to ask acts as a risk factor for one of the leading causes of death from 10 to 35. So I'm sorry, I know I'm going off here. I hope it's half interesting, but I'll pause there and it's like, yeah, I don't need to run a functional lab test with you to tell you we got to adjust the sleep.

I don't need to run a functional lab test to say, hey, you shouldn't be eating crap. Now there might be a point where someone has become. The toxin burden has become so high on their body that yes, you greatly benefit from those labs. I was one of those people, but I've seen so many [00:19:00] kids turn around so fast because, you know, we have more we have more pep at five years old.

Like, yes, I still have high energy at 28, 29. I know I had more energy 20 years ago. I know I could run until my body just had nothing left. Right. My parents, I could burn them out all day. So when you give a. A better working engine, the right fuel, all of a sudden the car starts working quicker and better and faster.

It works when we're 50, 60, 70 as well, it just takes more time to heal. So, you can do very small changes that seem small at least, and all of a sudden your kid's back to normal. Now, how do we get teenagers to apply that? Well, That's, that's a whole different thing. And we're going to need a large societal shift.

And that's why we need more people that know about this. 

Cynthia: Yeah, definitely. So in your, in your work, then you take these families and you do this testing and stuff to see what is exactly going on and then give them some help in doing that. Or, or what exactly does your, your Your business do 

Evan Transue: I admittedly work more with adults.

[00:20:00] I have colleagues that work with kids. So if someone's really interested in that of course, they can reach out. We'll get them connected. But I end up just attracting more adults. And so if someone's coming to my wife and I be, she has the same training. excuse me, as myself what we end up doing is we're using what we call our five foundational labs.

So these are labs that test for things that we see consistently going wrong in chronically ill people. And that is illness of physical health and illness of mental health. Their hormones are going to be affected. Their gut health is going to be affected. Their oxidative stress is going to be affected.

Affected. And they're going to most likely, this is kind of interesting develop food sensitivities. So that's not the same as an allergy. An allergy you probably know about pretty early on because the kid's reacting. You might unfortunately have something scary like they have to go to the hospital.

You don't eat that food anymore. Food sensitivities. Are foods that we eat that create an immune reaction. That's just not an allergy. It's the simple definition. It's any immune reaction. That's not an allergy can be looked at as a sensitivity, [00:21:00] but those are largely developed as a result of things that we're doing in today's world.

So this is a reason that the labs help, but are not essential for people in the earlier stages of this. What happens is it's a vicious cycle where maybe you got sick because. You know, you're someone that stayed up super late. So that was the major stress on the body. You're a night owl and you stay up super late.

And now you start developing these other things. So I don't want to be confusing. It's like maybe the initial stressor was staying up late. All right. Chronically and not getting enough sleep. So now I might develop a food sensitivity because of that. And people say that sounds crazy. Is that possible? Yes, because the gut health is what largely leads to these food sensitivities or lack thereof, I should say develops these food sensitivities.

So over exercising not sleeping drinking alcohol and doing, you know, actually terrible stuff, all of those things could develop this. So now I started with one stressor that I know about. But now I've [00:22:00] developed other stressors that are still contributing to this this overall stress in my body.

So that's where the labs can become useful. So if someone comes to us, that's what we do. We just look at all this stuff. We help you with the same lifestyle things that we'd help anyone with. But we figure out where Your body has uniquely gone awry so that we can help you in a faster route. But the truth is, I mean, people start for free, right?

Labs are not cheap. And we don't make money off of it. It's not cheap at all. So I, I know I sound like the worst salesperson, but I'm not, I'm selling an idea. Right? If you need those services like me, that's great. But if you've been sick for a year, you don't need that yet. Unless you got all the money in the world.

Just go do basic lifestyle stuff consistently for a few months. See what happens. 

Cynthia: Yeah, that's such a great idea because I do think people probably want to try the, you know, what's one shift I could make first before I decide I need to do the whole thing. But that, it gives you a lot to think about.

I've been trying to be healthier with my eating over the [00:23:00] last probably four years and I feel like I'm pretty good at it. Now, but it took, I mean, I was in my fifties before I cared what I was eating. And so now I'm trying to figure that out. And now I have grandkids, so I'm watching them. And luckily all their parents are super concerned about it.

And so they, you know, they don't eat all the junk and I'm glad about that. But then. I have these like older thoughts, like when it's going to be Halloween time and I was telling my husband, we're going to buy him books and they're going to, you know, like whatever their, their trick or treat bag is going to be like.

Stuff to do crafts or something. I don't know. And he was like, no candy. And I was like, they're not going to want them to eat candy anyway. And we shouldn't want them to eat candy. Like we should be glad they're not eating candy. But they're like, it's like, it's almost like we're abusing them because we're not going to give them candy because that's what you're supposed to do on Halloween.

But I think when you're talking about societal change, the world does have to change to make this [00:24:00] super doable. So I'm glad that more and more people are going to know about it. 

Evan Transue: Yeah. That's not something they want to hear, you know, but that's, that's the reality is we need people that listen to these things.

And, you know, I'm making up the number. I don't know Cynthia's numbers. If a hundred people listened. Yeah. It's going to be two that actually lead the way, but you will affect other people in your life. And that's just the blunt message because I know where we're at and people are. And myself too, I'm so prone to what other people are doing.

That's how we're wired. Yes. But the problem is everyone's doing the wrong thing. So it takes a few of us to say enough's enough. I'm done feeling this way. I want to prevent this for future generations. I'm stopping, you know, and I don't care if you don't like it, but I've been doing this for 10 years now and the people that have been impacted in my life because I took a stand 10 years ago.

Are now people that are taking stands for others. So I know it can work and it has a ripple effect, but it's just gonna be a lot of work. Cynthia. 

Cynthia: Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. Well, and if the listeners want some, like a more advanced [00:25:00] lesson or whatever, you have the podcast, the health detective podcast that they can listen.

And I'm sure you, you know, talk about this stuff at length. Like. with different experts and stuff. So that will be helpful for them too. And I'm going to have links to all of your stuff. And I, did you write a book too? 

Evan Transue: I did. I don't, I don't even talk about it much. It's kind of funny, but I wrote a book called overcoming mental health challenges, how I resolved 13 years of mental health issues naturally.

In a sense, it's kind of perfect for a parent. So it's on Amazon. It's been there since 2020 it's four years ago. 

Cynthia: Okay. Well, I will put a link to that too, because because this is a mental health podcast and parents do I think parents are looking for all different ways to help them with their anxiety or other mental health challenges.

And so I think that could be helpful for them to have some different information, because if we could just eat better. to then feel better, why wouldn't we do that? Like, it just seems like the right thing to do. And so I hope that [00:26:00] people can take advantage of this information and try to make a few changes that would be helpful to them.

So is there anything else you'd like to leave my listeners with before before we go today? 

Evan Transue: They'll have this up, but it might not work right now if you type it in, but it will work before this is live. So they always do something for us. So it's FDN. I'll send it in the chat, fdntraining. com slash anxiety maze.

And that will just have like cool resources for you guys where you could get the links to the health detective podcast, check that out and other stuff. So. Even at the company I do the podcast for, we produce so much free content. If you just sat there and listen to this, you could go through 360, 70 hours of podcast content alone at the time of recording this completely for free.

Yeah, we got a course. Yeah, you can pay for it. Start there. That's what I always say. And then if you really liked what we did for free, tell your friend that wants to buy the course. That's good. Everything comes back, you know. 

Cynthia: I agree. I always feel the same way, too. You know, I [00:27:00] do a lot of free content. And if they like it, I want them to work with me.

I can walk alongside them and help them. Usually I see myself as an accountability partner. I'm sure you probably are like that a little bit, too. Just trying to help people. Feel like they can, they can do it and sort of support them along the way. So, 

Evan Transue: well, that's what it is, right? I could get, there's a reason we work with people for three to six months.

I can give you a protocol in two hours, but whether you follow that or not, it's a different story. So we 

Cynthia: all need a little bit of help and support in sticking with things like that, especially when it's new, like you want to, you kind of have to stumble around with it a little bit before you really find the comfortable way to do it.

And so I'm. I'm just glad there's people out there like you and your company and your wife all doing this work. It's beautiful. And I just want people to, to check you out and make sure that they are looking after their nutrition. 

Evan Transue: Yeah. Thank you so much. 

Cynthia: You're welcome.