The real truths about mental health that has the potential to save lives.
In the second of 4 episodes, Coach Britt interviews the brilliant Dr. Brant Cortright Ph.D professor and author of Functional Psychology for Anxiety, Depression and Congnitive Decline.
This cutting edge perspective on the brain, mental health and psychology will BLOW YOUR MIND! (pun intented)
We've been going about psychology and mental health all wrong.
You won't want to miss all four episodes with Dr. Cortright. For more on his work, books and interviews, you can find him at https://www.brantcortright.com/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
The real truths about mental health that has the potential to save lives.
In the second of 4 episodes, Coach Britt interviews the brilliant Dr. Brant Cortright Ph.D professor and author of Functional Psychology for Anxiety, Depression and Congnitive Decline.
This cutting edge perspective on the brain, mental health and psychology will BLOW YOUR MIND! (pun intented)
We've been going about psychology and mental health all wrong.
You won't want to miss all four episodes with Dr. Cortright. For more on his work, books and interviews, you can find him at https://www.brantcortright.com/
Thinking aout getting certified as a Holistic Gut Practitioner, looking for a personal Gut Restoration Program or maybe you want to try our FREE course "How to design a gut health coaching practice," find everything you are looking for at enrollhwca.com
What if every experience, every hardship, every obstacle was given to you not to break you, but to mold you and strengthen you. What if the center of your suffering was actually the key to ultimate health? And what if your own pain was meant to be the catalyst for your rate purpose? Welcome to bud belly life, empowering purpose, mind to microbiome. Dr. Bra, obviously mental health, um, is a huge deal. And that's my, one of my passions. I had anxiety in some level depression since age four, you know, as a child, you<affirmative>, and I can, I can attest for, like you say, that it's a combination approach for environmental, um, and you know, the experiences that we go through and, and, and it's multifaceted like anything. Um, but right now, I mean, we, we already had what I would consider a mental health epidemic. Um, and now we've seen it skyrocket way beyond that since 2020. Um, I talk about the brain gut a lot, and all I have to do is share a couple things about mental health or some factoids that challenge the common misconception that it's a broken person, that it's only the only treatment for it is pharmaceutical medication. Um, all I have to do is touch on some of those things and my DMS start flooding my messages start coming in, um, with people with their personal struggles and stories, acting like, you know, and not acting like stating that basically this is the first time they've heard that there is another way that there's another reason that there's maybe hope for them that the level that they're living at or surviving at whether on pharmaceuticals or not is not the end of the road for them like a diagnosis. Like they were born this way, or they were messed up because of childhood trauma and PTSD. So therefore the is the best it's gonna be for them. Um, and I think when we bring some of that stuff to life, we, we challenge that misconception and people are starving for that. So tell me, you know, a bit, you know, gimme some of your insight on the mental health epidemic, um, and what you think from that functional perspective of environmental. Um, and especially in correlation to the recent changes and experiences that people have been through. OK, good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So since the 1960s, um, Alzheimer's is up by five times. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, um, anxiety disorders are now the number one problem, mental health problem in the United States has now overtaken depression. Okay. And one in four women between 20 and 45 is taking an antidepressant one in four. I couldn't believe that statistic. When you said that in your book, I was shocked. Yeah. Yeah. And it especially hits young people. Um, school, age kids, the rates of oppression are five to eight times what they were in the 1960s. And the rates of anxiety are eight times what they were in the 1960s. And that's not with better testing. That's the exact same standardized tests that were used back then. Plus now we have a D D ADHD, autism, all these that were hardly even known back then, mm-hmm<affirmative> um, something like according to the, um, the CDC over a third of teenage girls have a diagnosable anxiety disorder. And over a quarter of teenage boys, this is crazy. Isn't it? This just seems like something is seriously wrong here. Um, and it's like, what is it? It can't be genetics, right? Genetics takes 10,000, 50,000 years to, to do something it's clearly something environmental. Well, it may be the psychological environment change or something to that. But as we just talked about, the physical environment has changed dramatically. We have all of these neurotoxins now in our environment. Mm-hmm<affirmative>. So what we need to do is really see how these are affecting the brain and to be begin to really shift our understanding. So the standard American diet, which is abbreviated S a D is a recipe for anxiety, for depression and for cognitive decline, right? It's it's high, bad fats, low, good fats, high carbohydrate high in, uh, highly inflammatory full of processed foods, pesticides. Um, it's crazy. Um, you know, this epidemic started when a few things started happening. One was when the dietary guidelines shifted to include low fat and high carbohydrate in the 1980s, that that began to really shift where people and the medical establishment began to say, no, we need to cut out fat and we need to use more vegetable oils, and we need higher carbohydrate at that obesity epidemic. The mental health epidemic, the chronic disease epidemic began to take off also about that time is when glyphosate started being used. Mm-hmm<affirmative> and it's just been a steady line up. It's been almost exponential. It's been amazing how much that has, um, infiltrated our environment now. So to heal the brain, again, we need to work at the level of the brain, but also at the level of the psyche. So at the level of the brain, we about before, you know, the four pillars, neurogenic, ketogenic, or low carb anti-inflammatory and gut friendly. Okay. So it turns out that when your neurogenic rate increases, anxiety goes down, depression goes down cognition, and the book goes into about 30 or 40 different nutrients. We can take, let me just say one of them, which is omega three fatty acids, fish, um, Christine, Christine, San, uh, neuroscientist at the university of London increase the nerve rate by 40% simply by adding omega threes to the diet. Omega threes are the fundamental building block to the brain mm-hmm<affirmative>. So the brain consists of about two thirds fat and of that a third to a half of it is DHA. And DHA is one of the three omega three fatty acids, right? There's ALA EPA and DHA. ALA isn't terribly important. EPA is important because it's a powerful anti-inflammatory, but DHA is the building block of the brain. And the brain is always building new neurons and new connections. And so we need high quality building materials. We need good DHA to, to support that process. They didn't experiment with monkeys sometime ago, where they raised one group of my monkeys on a low omega3 diet and one on a high omega3 diet. And then they looked at their brains and the low omega3 diet monkeys had very simple UND differentiated brains, but the high omega3 diet monkeys had very complex richly, differentiated brain, almost like humans. It's the single most important thing nutrient anybody can do. Um, some others would be blueberries, green tea extract, um, hi antioxidant foods. Yes, yes, exactly. Also antioxidant also antiinflammatory, but highly neurogenic as well. Methyl charco, um, a form of heparin, which is a bio flavanoid keeps new brain cells alive, um, because about half of them will die unless we use them or support them with nutrition. Um, also if you, when you take omega threes, it's, it's important to do a molecularly distilled form of omega threes because mercury accumulates and fish mm-hmm<affirmative>. So if you do too much poorly made fish oil, you're not doing your brain a favor. Mercury is I think the second, most powerful neurotoxin known second only to plutonium. Um, it, we, we don't want that in our system. And most people need three to four grams a day of high quality omega a three. And if you're vegan, you can algae forms of it. Okay. So that's neurogenic ketogenic, meaning low carbohydrate and high good fats. Our brain and our bodies can use either glucose as fuel or Keone bodies. Fat as fuel glucose is a very dirty fuel. It produces inflammation, oxidation, a lot of other byproducts, but Keone bodies or fat is a very, very clean, fuel efficient fuel. Richard VE a Harvard researcher looked at how D cells respond to Keone bodies as fuel and discovered that for example, the mitochondria of the heart are 28% more efficient when they're fueled by ketones. And since the brains, uh, the neurons of the brain, uh, mitochondria, there are also, uh, very similar to that, of the heart. It's believed that your brain will also operate a 28% greater efficiency when you're on a ketogenic diet. And if you've been, uh, if you've been in what's called nutritional keto, there is a kind of clarity, a kind of stability that comes to the brain that is, is really quite wonderful. Um, and it turns out that a ketogenic diet is also neurogenic. It also is anti-inflammatory. Um, and also particularly as people get into their forties and fifties and they experience some degree of insulin resistance, which means that their blood sugar level goes up. And so a good test for anybody to do is called the hemoglobin A1C, which is like a snapshot of your glucose levels over the last three months. And if it's over 5.0 or 5.1, you'd be well advised to bring it down because for every 10th, every 0.1 that rises, there's a faster rate of cognitive decline that happens. So Alzheimer's is something that happens 20 to 30 years before we see symptoms. So if you're in your twenties or thirties, now is the time to start eating, right.
Speaker 1:Do you have a desire for fulfillment? Does helping people tap into their own health mentally, emotionally, and physic fire you up? If you believe in the impact of the gut microbiome on overall wellness, you may be an H WCA coach for more info on our cutting edge health coach trainings, visit H WCA coach.com. What would you say to people that I think this is a, where I come in, where it gets tricky for me focusing on the brain gut, because I got here because of a passion for mental health, because the power it had over giving me my life, my life back. Right. Definitely. Um, and a allowed me to exist and live, you know? Um, but it sounds like we're just talking about food and diet and a lot of these people, which we are, and the there's good reason for that part. Um, but there's a lot of people that are going okay. You know, I am, I'm a child of trauma. Um, not only was my diet bad, but I mean, I'm a child of trauma and that holds all a lot of the weight in their mind. And some people were given multiple weights against them. Yeah. Um, you know, we, it's all of those things in their environment, in their diet and then in their experiences. Yeah. And so how can you speak to them a little bit and empower that journey for them to seek out these things when there's the, you know, trauma and, and deeper to trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thanks for bringing us back to that. I, I got carried away with that last one.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's great info.
Speaker 2:Um, because that's right. Again, we are psychophysical beings. And so it turns out that trauma also has a big impact on the brain it creates and the gut. Absolutely. And it creates inflammation. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, there is a neurogenic slowing and the hippocampus actually can shrink with severe trauma mm-hmm<affirmative>. So the hippocampus is a very interesting part of the brain. It's this Crescent moon shaped structure. Um, and half of it is involved in cognition, in processing new memories. Mm-hmm<affirmative> and the other half is involved in emotion regulation, particularly the regulation of anxiety and depression. So it's also the main part of the brain that grows new brain cells. So in Alzheimer's, for example, it massively attacks the hippocampus. And when that happens, the person can't make new memories. And when we stop making new men memory, when the rug of memory is pulled out, the whole self begins to collapse. Right? You, you look you're on people who have Alzheimer's and it's like, they're not there that they're, you know, some part of them is really gone their identity. Yeah. So it turns out that severe stress can actually reduce the eyes of the hippocampus by one quarter. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. That's like saying one of the four chambers of the heart isn't there. I mean, that that's really significant. However, the hip also is the place where new brain cells grow. So you can regenerate<affirmative> cells in the hippocampus. And so this neurogenic part of the diet, I think, is really important. Um, the other half of it is really then working with trauma. So there are a number of psychological processes involved with anxiety. One of them, as you mentioned, is trauma having trauma as a child, whether it's physical trauma, sexual trauma war, um, an accident, um, whatever it is that has a big impact on the brain that that can change how the brain, but more than that, it puts the whole nervous system on high alert on red alert, the person becomes hyper vigilant mm-hmm<affirmative>. And so is just ready to jump at the slightest bit of stimulus. That seems similar to what, what caused it mm-hmm<affirmative>. And so getting into therapy with a trauma oriented therapist, I think is very helpful. Most therapists are not, um, educated in really working with trauma, much of the traditional psychotherapy techniques and ways of work can actually make trauma worse. It's a very different paradigm working with trauma, right? First we need to resource the person we need to have the person be safe before we get into any kind of experiencing of the trauma, as opposed to regular psychotherapy, where you just sort of jump right into it and try to tough your way through it that can simply be retraumatizing and just mm-hmm,<affirmative> just recycles the, the, the trauma. So it's, it's important to get into therapy with somebody who is really trained in trauma work, either somatic trauma work or EMDR.
Speaker 1:That's my, I love EMDR for that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:EMDR is fantastic. Um, also MDMA is on a fast track now, um, as a breakthrough therapy, mm-hmm<affirmative> with the FDA, um, in the phase two trials, out of 107 people who had PTSD for an average of 17 and a half years after three MDMA sessions, one year later, th two thirds of them had no PTSD symptoms. Mm-hmm<affirmative> um, so they're expecting that will become legal in the next year, maybe two that's another way of working with it. Um, but finding somebody who is savvy around trauma is really important. So that's one cause of anxiety. Mm-hmm<affirmative> another is, um, it really comes out of generalized anxiety disorder, um, which is something called. So signal, anxiety. This is something Freud discovered a long time ago that, you know, if we grow up in a family where certain feelings are not okay, because they threaten the parents in some way, and everybody has some of this mm-hmm<affirmative> where if I have these certain feelings, it's gonna threaten my tie, my mother or my father. And so I, I push those down. I learned to so sequester those feelings mm-hmm<affirmative> later on in life, when those feelings start to come up, the defenses are now in place. As they start to come up, all of a sudden the unconscious goes danger, danger, danger, anxiety, and the unconscious pushes the down before the person even knows that they've been feeling them. All they feel is some mild anxiety. And then that passes generalized anxiety disorder say, say anger. I start to feel anger. I say that was forbidden growing up. I start to feel it. I start to feel anxious. I don't quite know why a little bit later I feel better, but I realized later, oh yeah, I was really angry at that person. I didn't realize it at the time.
Speaker 1:So you didn't express it or maybe set your boundary or handle
Speaker 2:Exactly. Right. So a lot of generalized anxiety disorder is that it's essentially the fear of being ourselves mm-hmm<affirmative> and the thing is we can't undo it ourselves. Right. Cause we learn this in relationship mm-hmm<affirmative> and we need to unlearn it in relationship, like with a therapist, with another person who's saying, yeah. That's okay. It's okay to feel it's okay. To be angry. It's okay to express it. Mm-hmm<affirmative> repeated expression of that over time. It, it becomes okay. Again. Um, another is, um, inadequate self soothing, uh, structures inside where the mother, when the baby is crying, picks up the baby soothes, it calms, it speaks to it strokes. It allows her calm, nervous system to entrain the upset, nervous system of the baby mm-hmm<affirmative>. And I repeated over and over again, after a while the baby, and then the child begins to internalize that begins to be able to self sooth when it's upset. Many people have inadequate experiences of that, where they have not learned to fully self soothe, to self calm, or to find a place of real peace inside. And this is a place where meditation could be really helpful finding a deep place inside of peace and calmness. So there's other things as well, but those are some of the ways in which working psychologically mm-hmm,<affirmative> also really helpful.
Speaker 1:<affirmative> and I think that, um, what's beautiful about everything that you just gave everyone on in the realm of mental health is that you showed that it takes multiple tools to really, like you said, is it the chicken or the a, we really, we need to, we need to take both. If we really want to do better, to live better, to not struggle with chronic depression, anxiety. I mean, I was in my thirties before I was able to really break through mine. And I always say, you know, at that point in time, most of the common world would tell me that it was impossible that if I'd had it since age four, um, and, and I still struggle with all kinds of anxiety disorder type things, but I'm not stuck in a full blown panic attack in the middle of the grocery store for no reason. Um, you know, things like that. And so it shows that there's hope. And because I moved those boulders, I've spent a decade now moving more boulders guy, know that we can just move another and move another. And we're not stuck. We aren't doomed because we had an adverse childhood experience or multiple we're not doomed forever because of choices that were outside of our own choices or experiences that happen to us, we can restore and we can bring ourself into alignment using the tools that you just talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful.
Speaker 1:So I thank you for that, that one's, that's very, very, I'm very passionate about that. Thank you for joining us for another empowering episode of Budha belly life. For more information on gut health and mindset, resources, visit Budha belly life, the.com and remember heal yourself and then empower others to do the same.