Ending the Mental Health Epidemic with Julia Ross | Ep. 20

It's undeniable that we're experiencing anxiety, depression and mood disorders on a global scale now, with kids and teens being some of the most vulnerable in this epidemic. We need immediate solutions. 

If you can believe it, we've actually had the missing piece to our mental health crisis for decades.

In this episode I'm interviewing my mentor Julia Ross M.A., who is sharing her decades-long research and the 5 super-supplement solutions that will rebalance your depleted brain! 

⭐ If you like this interview, please give it a quick 5-star review and share it with your friends! 

 Inside this episode:

🧠 Your brain isn't broken, it's just depleted!

🌱 The fascinating story behind Julia's natural treatment for anxiety and depression (with a 90% success rate!)

⚡ The 5 super-supplements that Julia uses to solve mood, cravings and addiction problems

 🥗 Why don't we all know about amino acids if they actually work?? 

 🌿 How this holistic approach can help you even if you've tried EVERYTHING 

Julia Ross' website 

Julia's Youtube channel 

Book with Annika at: nourishedbynature.co
Instagram: @annika_taylor_ntp



IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:
 This podcast episode is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. 

You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. 

Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://www.nourishedbynature.co/disclaimer

Transcript

Why Mood Support Feels Urgent

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Is there a good success rate for anxiety and depression specifically?

SPEAKER_02 0:03

It's really so good that we can't even hang on to our clients. Up until very recently, the food industry has been very successful at dodging the bullet. So what happens to the part of the brain that's supposed to be producing all of these positive moods that we're capable of experiencing?

Defining The Bad Mood Epidemic

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Nothing good. Is there a possibility that we can reverse this downward mental health trajectory? We could have done it decades ago. So we have five mood centers in the brain. One helps us feel calm, one helps us handle stress, one gives us energy and motivation, one helps us to feel emotionally stable and calm and content. When any of these centers run low, like a gas tank on empty, we can experience what today's guest calls false moods. Julia Ross is a psychotherapist and the author of three best-selling books, including The Mood Cure. She's a world leader in the use of nutritional therapy for the treatment of mood problems, heating disorders, and addictions. It's undeniable that we're experiencing a mental health epidemic on a global scale now, with kids and teens being some of the most vulnerable. We need immediate solutions. And if you can believe it, we've actually had the missing piece to our mental health crisis for decades. Julia Ross is going to tell you all about it in this episode, and I really hope you enjoy. Thank you so much, Julia, for joining us today. This is this is a dream come true for me. Like I truly feel full circle because I read your book, I don't know, maybe seven, six, seven years ago, and it changed the trajectory of what I wanted to do professionally in my holistic health practice. And it changed, you know, the way that I approached mental health and thought about the way that our moods work. So I'm just so honored and grateful that you can come and share your wisdom with us today. So thank you so much for being here. Well, you're welcome. Why don't we just kick off the call by let's explain what the bad mood epidemic is? Would you mind walking us through? Because you talk about that in your book, The Mood Cure. You talk about we're in a bad mood epidemic. Can you explain to us what that is? Well, let's start with uh the prior few million years.

How Diet Changes Brain Chemistry

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Everybody, pretty much everybody now has forgotten or never experienced a normal mood. But I'm old enough to remember the phase. And you couldn't walk down the street anywhere without people whistling or even singing. Um, if you've ever heard of a barbershop quartet, there really were such things in New York City and all the big cities, there were these guys standing on the corner crooning and harmonizing, and nobody thought a thing about it. It was just normal. That doesn't mean that we didn't have a variety, you know, in our presentations and experiences of our moods, you know, we had bad moods, but that was the exception. Ordinarily, we were very upbeat, can-do, uh funny. Um that was my experience uh in this country um in California, uh, Southern California, Northern California, whenever we traveled, you know, as a family. So I don't want to try and paint too rosy a picture. We're still part of the human race. You know, we have problems, major problems with each other and so forth. But I do want to create, you know, the reality that we experienced, you know, unless you know we were starving or you know, there was a war, you know, at hand, our natural mood was was positive. So it's very hard for me to talk about the bad mood epidemic without mentioning what I think is the cause of the shift. That cause has to do with our diet. So really that was the only thing that shifted. And there's a lot of attention now about the um the problems with our diet shift causing obesity epidemics um starting in um 1995. So we've been aware of major problems uh and up until very recently the food industry has been very successful at dodging the bullet, you know?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Mm-hmm. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Continuing to seem like our our friend, you know, with all that's adorable child-targeted packaging and so forth. So the problem with the diet that we've been suffering from uh since really the early well mid-70s um has resulted in a kind of malnutrition, general malnutrition. So what happens to the part of the brain that's supposed to be producing all of these positive moods that we're capable of experiencing? Not nothing good. Uh so um let me say first of all that the nutrient uh whose loss is the most responsible for the deterioration of our mood and our health in general is protein. And the word protein really means first, primary, pro means primary. So it is the food that we need most in order to create all of the body's and brain's tissues. Protein is composed of 20 amino acids, and each one of them is like a celestial planet in terms of what it's capable of doing. And when you think of all the millions of kinds of tissues in the body, um how they can be primarily built with 20 amino acids is extraordinary. So as we became addicted to carbohydrate, which is a very, very easy thing to accomplish, especially with the new sugars starting in the 70s, high fructose corn syrup, for example, as primary example, um, the brain stopped getting adequate fuel. But the proteins, the uh specific amino acids that are required to provide good moods simply were not available in adequate amounts, and increasingly so. So when we have a diet that's almost entirely carbohydrates and uh damaged fats, um there's a price to pay. And our mood has been um steadily deteriorating, drastically deteriorating, and not only in adults, but in teens and in children. So uh I think we're going to get into the details of which nutrients are required to construct a good mood at some point. And it sounds like a daunting task, you know, people are going to be yawning and wondering about when the uh lecture on neurochemistry is going to be over, but uh they're going to be very surprised at how little food of the right sort uh is needed to restore our capacity for happiness and joy and excitement.

Amino Acid Trialing And Success Rates

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Just kind of talking about neurotransmitters, I'm kind of curious for people who maybe have friends or family who are experiencing chronic depression and anxiety. I know that's why I I got into this field. It was family members and friends who had depression. And I just remember feeling like I'm just at a loss. I mean, I studied for maybe seven, eight years until I came across your work. But um, I just remember, I deeply remember the feeling of I do not know where to go. I want so desperately to help these people. And I just remember that kind of like just feeling like I'm at at the end of myself and I just don't know where to go from here. And I know a lot of people listening might feel that way about themselves or about a family member. So I'm just curious, could you kind of explain to us? I know that you've had lots of anxiety and depression cases that you've worked with over the decades. Is there a pretty good success rate for these people working with amino acids and um the way that you do nutrient therapy and that you teach? Is there a good success rate for anxiety and depression specifically?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

It's really so good that we can't even hang on to our clients. We do amino trialing. So our first session is assessment. And we talk to them about what's going on and what they're experiencing. We look at the results of their questionnaires, and then at that point we have a very good idea of what we can do for them. And uh I can't even remember the last person where we said, you know, I think in your case, we won't be able to do anything for you. There have been people where we couldn't do everything that they needed, and we knew that from the beginning. But uh that that's the even that is the exception. Um so people come in, and whether they're coming uh because of negative moods, emotional eating, or addiction, we have a good idea right from the start, and so we schedule a second meeting, at which point they have received an amino trialing kit. So samples of all of the aminos that we might need to trial in our in our Zoom sessions. At this point, 90% um have positive experiences and their symptoms either reduce dramatically or stop. If they've reduced dramatically but not completely, then we know it's a dosing uh issue and we raise the doses. Um and then we make sure that they know how to eat enough protein so that they won't need to stay on the individual amino acid supplements for forever, um, depending on their own physiology. Uh, they may they may need three months, they may need six months, they may need in the longest case, um a number of our addicted clients have needed uh the supplementation in addition to a high protein diet for a year.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

A whole year, Julia. Imagine that. It's such a short amount of time when we're talking about these lifelong afflictions. Yes, 10 years on SSRIs, you know, every yeah. Oh gosh. Oh yeah. So wow. So you sh you just said about 90% um success. And and I just love I love that. I love within weeks, within weeks.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

We don't have to wait for it. Uh we I had a trainee who was a PhD psychologist, marvelous person. And her clients loved her so you know they she saw them long term, but she could see that, you know, there were certain mood states that all this wonderful therapy wasn't getting rid of. And she took my course and she started to submit cases to me. And I could see that her clients were better, but their scores they still had symptoms. They were less severe symptoms, but they and so what I finally found out, realized, was that she was giving them such low doses that it was just taking them, you know, six months to get the complete benefits. And I had to work with her for another three months until she got used to giving people higher doses from the start and monitoring them quickly and raising doses quickly. And then she sent me several cases where she got them all from average scores of 10 on all the symptoms to zeros within three months.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Ten being the most severe symptom and then zero being none at all. I just I don't I don't know about you, Julia, but I don't know any other modality that treats the whole person in this way, and also that isn't dependent. You're not getting dependent on these things. So they're to support you when you need them.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

And there also aren't side effects.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

That's another really big point that we should bring up is that free of side effects. Um, I mean, of course, any supplement if you take too much or if it's not the right fit for you, or you're mixing it with the wrong medication, sure. Um, you talk about all that in your book. Um, but that's that's the beautiful thing, is this is um from it's a food, food-based supplement. Um, and I think that's what a lot of people listening to this podcast are coming for is alternatives. And that's why I think it's such an incredible thing to talk about. And I'm never gonna shut up about this. I know that you haven't yet. Kind of on that, I'm kind of curious, just talking about food and the food pyramid. There's been a lot of talk about that recently in the news. And I appreciate that because there's less of the sugars and carbs, there's more focus and emphasis on protein. But they've also brought about, they've been talking more about we need to prioritize mental health and addiction. And I was wondering if you could maybe speak a little bit to that because I know you have a little bit more insight on what's been going on recently.

SSRIs Rise And Tryptophan Disappears

SPEAKER_02 13:58

I'd be glad to. I was just thinking um about the the place in this, you know, you asked about how this evolved and um you know, part of the evolution was the um introduction in the very late 1980s of the first uh SSRI, antidepressant. And it was the first of you know, many, probably 15 others, various companies introducing their own and competing and and winning uh as the medical profession jumped on board, you know, with completely inexperienced with dealing with mood problems. The general practitioner was handing out uh antidepressants, and that's certainly been part of the evolution. Um, because you know, I had to admit to myself uh in the 1990s uh that there were some benefits from SSRIs. I was completely uh unwilling to do that until one of my clients who had been had a very serious eating disorder for years and um and and a mood disorder as part of it, um suddenly she was in recovery in our program. But it turned out that we were not evaluating her mood adequately, and she was still experiencing some depression. And so, kind of in secret, she went to see a psychiatrist. Her mother took her to see a psychiatrist, and she got on to Prozac, and she felt better, and it was obvious that she was better. At that time, uh, the the nutrient that the brain needs to make its natural antidepressant serotonin, which is the name of the neurotransmitter that provides us with uh all shades of depression relief, um wasn't available. Um when Prozac came out, it did not um sell well. And that was because the amino acid needed to make serotonin, which is called tryptophan, was widely known and used even in the psychiatric profession. They just weren't interested in a drug that did what the nutrient was doing so beautifully already. And so uh in coordination, of course, with the FDA, uh, and this is a long story that I won't go into uh at this point, but maybe another time, uh the pharmaceutical industry was able to ban the use of tryptophan in the United States for 15 years. And that was long enough for the antidepressant medications to grab hold. And by the time it was released in about 2005, um for you know over-the-counter consumption again, all the doctors, psychiatrists, general practitioners were completely convinced about antidepressant drugs and um so uh that's part of of the evolution because the antidepressant drugs, although especially initially being able to provide uh some improvement for a lot of people, um, there were also so many side effects. And one of them is weight gain. And we're talking about millions of people on these drugs um battling completely unnecessary weight gain, in addition to starting to eat uh the cuisine of the food industry, you know, uh, which only added to the problem.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Uh so you're saying that before, prior to SSRI's really launching into our world, we were using amino acids and tryptophan to great success.

Neuroscience Makes Mood Nutrients Obvious

SPEAKER_02 18:21

That that's a really important point in this evolution. Physicians in the country and lay people were using amino acid supplements by that time, by this about the same time, you know, certainly in the early 80s and beyond. So the source of these amino acid supplements, where do they come from? You know, who decided to make them and why? Well, the source of all of the progress that I'm gonna that we'll be talking about throughout this interview is the the field of neuroscience, which was new in the 70s. And everyone had access to the research. So that means the pharmaceutical industry had access to it and was building its SSRIs, and the nutrition industry had access to it and was importing uh amino acids that the um neuroscience researchers were discovering were the primary source of the neurotransmitters that created positive mood. So everybody had access to it at the time. And it was it was a wonderful period of tremendous excitement. And the information was so extraordinary because it was so simple and easily applied. These neuroscientists discovered, to their amazement, really, that our natural antidepressant, our natural tranquilizer, our natural stimulant, our natural painkiller, all of these brain neurotransmitters were constructed from very simple uh protein constituents, single amino acids. So that meant, you know, that was heaven for the for the nutrition industry and for the country. You know, it was it was a marvelous, uh, a marvelous time uh until the pharmaceutical industry and the nutrition industry collided and the the power uh was with the pharmaceutical industry.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

That's crazy. I feel like it's so close to like an alternate reality where had that whole situation not happened and tryptophan hadn't been wrongly banned, and the story's in mood cure, but it was wrongly banned. It's so strange to me that everyone might know about amino acids if this was widely known, which is our job today. Getting this information out today. But yeah, if you wouldn't mind circling around and kind of explaining a little bit why is mental health and addictions, why is this kind of coming back up right now in in the US anyway? We're talking about it more and trying to find solutions to that. Could you kind of talk us through that a little bit? I'd love to get back to that because it's very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Um we have uh an extraordinary Secretary of Health and Human Services who himself, um, he's very open about this, experienced um, you know, a nightmare of 14 years of addiction and a great deal of mental anguish involved. So he's very interested in our mental health as well as our physical health and in providing new solutions. Now, why do we need new solutions? Um and the reason is that the solutions we have just don't work very well. And people are becoming very disillusioned, for example, with SSRIs. They're using more than one, uh, and they're still not getting the relief that they should be getting. And so he is turning to The world of nutrition, you know, in a big way, as you mentioned, with the food pyramid actually resembling our traditional diets worldwide. You know, what are these simple, healthful foods that are, thank God, still available? And the most recent uh development, you know, there's been a lot of attention to autism, but a great he's been talking from the very beginning, you know, the beginning of his taking office, about um the incidence of mental illness in children uh and teens and adults, and how, you know, this is the first time we're hearing openly about how much worse it's gotten. He has a particular interest in the plight of those who've become addicted in this country, which has also become enormous. And there's a huge private industry uh been treating it since the 1980s, and uh more and more government-funded agencies and programs nationwide as well trying to deal with the problem. But like our mental health, our um ability to withstand or recover from addiction has been impervious. You know, we have not responded to anything. And uh in the case of addiction, the blame is typically put on the addict, you know, that they aren't uh they're not trying hard enough and so forth, they're not committed, they're not motivated. But the truth is that the the programs themselves are just not meeting the need because they haven't understood the need, and because actually meeting the need would be detrimental to profits. And unfortunately, that uh profits rule when it comes to private addiction treatment, uh in at least in the corporate programs. But ignorance is kind of the overriding problem. They just haven't known where the source of the addiction, where do these cravings come from, that become so strong that, you know, uh even the will to live is eclipsed by them, you know, let alone the quality of life. Um and so uh there's been a uh just in the last month an initiative to take a completely new look at addiction treatment. And uh the uh the leadership is coming from uh a very interesting quarter. The actual head of this new uh imperative is um a man with a PhD in theology, uh, who is a recovering uh addict uh himself. Um and his primary um interest prior to uh his elevation here uh has been uh creating a support system for addicts in the uh prison system. Um so that and most most of whom are are addicts, you know, committing crimes um as part of their addiction. But that's a huge need. It is a huge need. And and he sees where it can be accomplished that it's really helpful, but in the big picture, it's a drop in the bucket. And he has been uh very interested in hearing about the um possi the nutritional possibilities that have been really um established uh uh in cun in programs all over the country uh since the late 1980s in particular. So he's actually made a commitment that this nutritional technology will be part of uh this new approach to treatment going forward. His name is Monty Burks, for those of you who uh are interested in in looking him up. So he's just setting up his office, you know. He's but when he got the information about nutritional recovery from addiction, he dropped everything and and made an appointment to find out about it. And then brought in one of the really established bureaucrats in the addiction field uh in the government to then have follow-up meetings. So I think this is uh, you know, a wonderful door opening for demonstrating the effect that we can have if we restore, you know, the needed nutrients uh to the needed parts of the brain.

What Amino Acids Are In Practice

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Well, that's incredible. And I mean, you have so much experience with addiction recovery and using amino acid and nutrient therapy for addiction recovery. Um and I mean, you know, we could do a whole nother episode on that alone. I'd love to, because we're talking so much about amino acids already. I'd love to explain to our audience. Sometimes people don't even know what's what are amino acids, or we know what it is, like we learn about it in school, building blocks of protein. But what are we talking about when we're talking about using amino acids for mood? Would you mind just explaining real quick what amino acids are as far as supplementation?

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Well, fortunately for us, the supplement industry has been able to create nutrient supplements composed of exact replicas of very specific amino acids. So the antidepressant amino acid tryptophan is available as an individual concentrate, really, um, made from enzymes. So they're actually biologically identical to the the basic um amino acids that that humans require as well. Um so uh we we have access to all 20 of the amino acids that exist. And what we've found uh in our work to restore optimal mood health is that only five uh are needed for this enormous task that has occasioned so much suffering to reverse it is really a very simple matter. And it's based on this technology that was developed decades ago, and uh the the the country that developed it was Japan.

The Five Mood Centers Explained

SPEAKER_00 28:28

And so you're saying that amino acids we can use specific extracts so we can isolate these and we can use these to support different parts of our brain. Let's go into that right now. Would you mind talking about the five mood centers of the brain and explaining to us um how you have pioneered using amino acids to help people with anxiety, depression, overwhelm stress, sleep issues. I mean, the list goes on and on. And we just mentioned addiction briefly and cravings. We're gonna kind of focus more on the mental health and the mood health side of it, but you know, this has applications for pretty much I like to think any problem you have, amino acids can probably fix them. So let's go ahead and talk about those m five mood centers.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

It might help to know that I discovered them, uh their therapeutic value um amino acid supplements in uh the mid-1980s. And uh at that time I was the um director of outpatient programs for uh an addiction treatment center that it was uh and I had expanded it into three counties, primarily treating the adolescents who were suddenly stricken with addiction as teenagers. So I had already been in the addiction treatment world for about six years by that time, and had worked with a lot of alcoholics. But in the mid-80s, we were starting to work with cocaine addicts. And uh by 1985, we were faced with an epidemic of crack cocaine addiction that was so virulent that no program in the country was able to address it. All of the inpatient programs, which were thriving, they were it was a new industry at that time, uh were seeing their crack cocaine patients disappearing within 24 hours, even when they made a hefty deposit that was non-refundable to try and keep them. Um and the mood problems that they had without crack cocaine were uh extraordinary. I mean, the tremendous depression and fatigue. But it was unbearable. Um we were having the same experience. We couldn't, our residential program you know couldn't keep crack cocaine addicted people uh in residence, so we couldn't help them. Um and it was just at that time that I discovered uh the neuroscience um of mood. And uh the neuroscientist who was doing the studies that most interested us in the addiction field was fascinated by the neuroscience of the addicted brain. And he created a supplement that provided a single amino acid, which in the first study had the most extraordinary benefits. Um and uh what they found was that um instead of a 40% AWOL rate within the first 10 days, they had a 4% AWOL rate overall. You can imagine when I saw that study, the next thing I did was to contact our nutritionist. You know, I I had hired nutritionists hoping that maybe an improved diet would help, but it didn't. But she happened to know something about nutrient supplementation. And I said, research it, you have a week. If it's safe, we're gonna start it next week. We have a new client who uh is not homeless, he is somehow managing to keep a job, but uh, you know, he's using a lot and it's destroying his family, and you know, but he's very motivated to try anything. And so a week later we were handing him uh a bottle of the amino acid called tyrosine, which is the direct fuel for our natural, naturally energizing, motivating, focusing neurotransmitter. The generic name is uh catecholamine, but there are several of them. Uh dopamine is one, norepinephrine is another. Um so we gave him the bottle, we told him to take four 500 milligram capsules um three times a day, and uh we made an appointment for the following week. And when he walked in uh the following week, he said, This is the first time in five years where I haven't used crack.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Stop. This is a true story.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

This is a true story.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Oh my goodness.

Addiction Breakthroughs From Tyrosine

Serotonin GABA And Endorphins In Minutes

SPEAKER_02 33:22

This is a true story. And and I um I talk about uh you know clients like him in the mood cure. Um, but that so that was you know, that was the wake-up call. This was a gold mine of some sort. I knew it was a gold mine for our stimulant addicts. We used it with our methamphetamine addicts that were starting to proliferate. By the way, the uh National Institute on Drug Addiction has declared that they have no cure for uh methamphetamine addiction uh or cannabis addiction. Uh and what they don't admit is that they don't have very good solutions for anything, but uh but nothing at all. You know, I I appreciate the honesty of um of that department at this time. So we had nothing but excitement about pursuing Dr. Blum, Kenneth Blum, who was the neuroscientist who cracked the cracked cocaine epidemic. Uh and he continued to do research in in alcohol addiction, and there was even better response um at that point, and then later on in the 90s, uh he did research uh in food addiction. And uh at at at those uh for those problems, he needed to use four different amino acids. So when we wonder why are we food addicted, you know, why are we gaining this weight? Why can't we stop? Well, you can see right there that a food-addicted brain is deficient in four neurotransmitters. A crack cocaine addict is only deficient in one. And the same is true of mood. Various negative moods result typically from a combination of deficiencies. We may not have enough of our natural stimulants to feel optimistic and and uh excited about life, but maybe we should go back at this point to to talk about the natural antidepressant. So our natural antidepressant is is neurotransmitter is called serotonin. And the nutrient, as we mentioned before, that feeds it directly is called tryptophan. So tyrosine feeds the catecholamines, tryptophan feeds serotonin. So we've got half of our neurotransmitters covered with two amino acids that have direct effects on the brain, and they and they demonstrate their effects within minutes. So we're talking about less than five minutes, and it might be a good time to tell people to look at my YouTube channel where they'll see uh demonstrations of amino acids being provided and how quickly the volunteers start reporting the changes that they're experiencing. I discovered that the tryptophan and a um a very similar um amino acid 5-hydroxy tryptophan. Um they became available in the late 90s, and that's when we were able to provide something besides antidepressant uh recommendations. Um and again, uh we did very quick trialing of a few clients, saw the tremendous benefit, and you know, dusted off our hands. Well, we've got depression taken care of now. Uh so for a psychotherapist, you know, I'm I'm talking about magic. Uh and uh at any rate, moving on, uh we still had anxiety and stress levels through the roof, and uh there really was no safe medication. The only medication um available still uh are benzodiazepines, um, which are tranquilizers that are incredibly addictive, are almost impossible to withdraw from in a lot of cases. We have solutions now, but it's still a challenge to withdraw from the benzos. Um but one of the key factors in replacing a benzo uh is the use of the amino acid, uh, one of the amino acids that uh creates natural relaxation and stress relief. The first of those amino acids, there are only a few, but and they all they all target the same part of the brain, um which it is the source of our tranquility. And uh it accomplishes that by um neutralizing adrenaline. So stress is literally adrenaline, and GABA, gamma aminobuteric acid, is the neurotransmitter that neutralizes it so that we have a balance, an appropriate balance. Yeah, well, we can handle stress when it comes up with a shot of adrenaline, but we're not stuck with it. We're not, you know, literally stressed 24-7 by it as we started to be. So now we we can provide three of the four answers to prayer when it comes to mood.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

That's incredible. And you really feel it. Like GABA was the first amino that I tried before. I mean, probably five years ago now, but it was the first one. And it sold me on amino acid therapy because I just took one tablet, lozenge, and I don't think I realized how stressed I was until I took it. I felt so like, oh, is this what is this how I'm supposed to feel? Like, and I don't mean in a way where I'm so like sedated, you know what I mean it's it's not like I was sedated, I didn't feel tipsy or like so out of it. It was just like, oh, this is probably how I'm supposed to actually feel, like where I don't have that hamster wheel of worry and overwhelm and stress.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Well, GABA is available, you know, as you say, in lozenge form and you know, capsules, whatever, and at whatever dose, actually, very low doses of GABA can be very, very effective. Probably the lowest dose available is about 100 milligrams. And uh in a lozenge form, it absorbs so much better. Some people do need a lot more, and and 500 milligrams is is available uh for people who at least initially need a lot more. Um why don't we move on? Now that we've uh you know given people back their energy and vitality and their ability to uh be relieved of stress and worry, let's go to our final challenge, which was restoring our natural uh ability to experience pain and relief from pain, you know, so that life presents us with pain and it's inevitable, but there are degrees of emotional pain uh that are intolerable and that go on too long. One of the reasons that uh we're suffering an enormous increase in the number of opiate addicts uh in the country is not just because of the supply of fentanyl, but because we're so vulnerable. We need pain relief so much. It turns out that the neurotransmitter that transmits pain relief is very large. It's the largest one. It requires more amino acids. It's harder to build and maintain. And so this vulnerability to pain has just increased as our dietary supply of amino acids has deteriorated. There is an amino acid that is able to preserve what we have and what we're building. And there there may be a tendency among people who get addicted to opiate drugs to make too much of an enzyme that actually destroys endorphins. So the the body is always making neurotransmitters and destroying them and keeping a balance going. And this amino acid called D-phenylalanine is an unusual one, and it keeps the balance in our favor of allowing us to build up endorphins rather than destroying them too rapidly. And again, it takes effect in minutes so that we have an unbelievable ally when emotional pain is a chronic problem. For example, you know, probably the majority of people that come to us who have food addictions talk about food as being their friend, that comfort food is what they're looking for. So they're telling us in their own language that their natural endorphin levels are low. And when they trial the DPA, within minutes, those cravings are gone because they are experiencing the natural or their natural ability to be comforted and to uh to love something besides chocolates.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, because the cravings there. If you have low endorphins, it's it can be chocolate, things like dough and bread. And I've certainly experienced that. And there's a reason why, you know, you have a breakup or something happens and you just want to go straight for the ice cream and the dairy. It's very sedating, isn't it? It's very calming and the endorphins, that's a good sign too, that you your endorphins are low, and that's really important to support that. It's I just think that's so interesting. I've tried that before too. Like, oh, I have a craving for a piece of toast, which, you know, whatever, but then I take and then you know the DPA, and then that craving just goes away. So it's really interesting to see, like, oh, that's just a low, you know, that's a low neurotransmitter rather than a true, I need this food, and this is nourishing for me. Um, I think that one's so fascinating. Well, now we've done it. We have restored uh our mood chemistry. And I don't know if it's clear to people that this is so, so power, like how powerful this actually is. I I want to give an example. So I had a client who had, you know, came to me with really low, low moods, really low energy, low motivation. Actually, his moods had been low since he was probably, I think he said around seven or eight. And Finally, I started working with him and I had him do the mood questionnaire, which is on Julia's website. You can go on there right now at cravingcure.com and you can download that for yourself and see where you're depleted, which is right where you need to start. It's the best place to start. So we found out long story short, he had low serotonin, right? And he started 5HTP. He told me, I don't even think it was three days, Julia. I think it was maybe two days. He texted me and said, I have motivation. I am getting projects done. I am writing music. I'm doing things that I love and I care about. Even my friends are noticing, like they're like, dude, what's up? Anyway, it was incredible. Like the text that I received from him, he's like, I'm a different person. When it really all just comes down to it is simple. The way that you made it, the way that you wrote the mood cure, which I have my copyright here. It's simple. You follow the steps, you can fill out the mood quiz. It's not complicated. And that's what I love about it. And I appreciate about appreciate so much about you. And that's just one of my client stories. I have many. I have many and many, you know, family and friends. But it's just incredible to be able to pinpoint what's the mood center in your brain, or two or three or four, however many. And then being able to support those with nutrients, it blows my mind every time.

Glutamine Hypoglycemia And GLP1 Links

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Well, you brought up a really important point in that how do we know someone's deficient in one or more of these four magical brain sites and their fuel? We know because scientific research has demonstrated what the symptoms are when we come become deficient in any of the four. And we've been able to create a very accurate deficiency questionnaire in four parts. And people identify with the with the symptoms on a scale of one to ten. And it's just, you know, a five-minute miracle, really, to be able to identify your own neurotransmitter function on a single piece of paper in five minutes. The thing we haven't talked about yet, you actually mentioned five factors a few minutes ago. And so far we've only covered four, but there's a fifth factor, which frankly I don't do justice to in the mood cure, but there is a section on it. And if you look up hypoglycemia in the index, you can find some very nice information about how to provide adequate fuel to all four of these brain sites that require constant infusions of glucose, a very steady supply of glucose, so that they can do their job. So it turns out there isn't a single amino acid that can supply the brain with additional glucose should the levels drop too low at any time. And that amino acid is called glutamine. So what does this have to do with mood? So the cells in the brain need a steady supply of glucose. Why is that such an issue? And the issue again comes back to diet. We've got uh a you know a national cuisine that creates hypoglycemia just by its very nature. Highly refined carbohydrates, sweets and starches cause a sudden increase uh in glucose in the bloodstream, which the body regards as an emergency and sends out insulin to neutralize it and store it as fat in the body, leaving us again hypoglycemic. So we have too much and then we have too little, and then the body helps us by putting out signals, and those signals are very uncomfortable. Hypoglycemia, uh, in terms of mood, there are at least 20 different negative moods that hypoglycemics suffer from inattention, irritability, um, anxiety. Um it goes on and on. And uh there's actually a list in the mood cure of the symptoms, potential symptoms of hypoglycemia.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Yeah, I think of when I'm hangry in between meals and I feel irritable. And I mean, definitely in the past, I've I've even been walking through the store and and I didn't eat that day, and then I felt like I was gonna have a panic attack, or I'd feel nervous and shaky and jittery. I think most people probably understand at least what it feels like to be hangry and don't understand that that's you know, low that low glucose, high insulin in the body causes anxiety and panic.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

I I really would like to say something about what a miraculous molecule the amino acid glutamine is, so that in it you get this enormous bang for your buck with glutamine, you not only get enough glucose for every cell in your body to operate, which is amazing, there's more glutamine in the bloodstream than any other amino acid because it's used in this way. Uh, but in addition to that, um, it has been found to be curative for the most remarkable array of health problems. During the AIDS epidemic, it was discovered that approximately 30 grams a day of L-glutamine could prevent Kaposi's sarcoma, which was the cancer associated with AIDS. Um, recently, one of the pharmaceutical companies has come up with a medication called Endari, and they're calling it an immunomedicine. And it's just glutamine, enormously expensive for no reason. It's very helpful in recovery from diabetes as well, but not with diabetics who are on medication. They have to be off the medication. However, the most remarkable thing, and this does have a lot to do with the underpinnings of diabetes, um, is that uh glutamine is the primary component and the regulator of GLP1, which is a peptide that has been duplicated in the medicine Ozempic.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

A rather hot topic right now.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

These medications really are just uh duplicates of um a chain of amino acids that the body naturally is supposed to be able to create, but of course our diet prevents that. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

So I mean, yeah, makes me want to go take some L-glutamine right now. I love it and I use it for gut health, but ever since I've been talking with you about it, now I take it more often. When I trialed it, I noticed that like I felt more like my brain turned on and I felt more alert. It was really cool. Yeah. So it was a good sign that, you know, I needed that. And gosh, so we've went over the amino acids that you have used and pioneered. Because I know it took you a while to like figure out which ones to use. I mean, you described it. You started with the tyrosine and then went to tryptophanophyl HTP. And you've researched and you've taken so much time, and everything is just I just love the way that you've done this. Very professional, you've tracked the case studies, and I'm curious. This works so well for you. This has worked so well for your clinic for decades, for so many practitioners who you've trained as neuronutrient therapists. I just, I can't help but wonder, and I think anyone listening is wondering if this is real and if this works so well and if this could work for me. Why in the heck don't I know about this? Why can't I walk into Target and see this the first thing I see? Why isn't this on television? Why isn't this on YouTube and TikTok? Like, why isn't this out there? Can you do you have an answer to explain why this feels niche still?

Suppression Fears And The Dopamine Hoax

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Yes. Um I'll give you the historical progression of the suppression of this information and then talk about something that's been happening that's very interesting, which I call the dopamine hoax just in the last 15 years or so. So um in in 19 uh eighty seven, um Prozac, the first SSRI antidepressant medication, was released and it did not sell well. And that's because the psychiatrists in the country were familiar with the use of tryptophan. So in 1989 they were able to work with the FDA to get tryptophan banned temporarily, but that temporarily lasted for 15 years until all of the SSRIs had become established. So I made that point before, but that's so that's the beginning of the suppression of the nutritional use of all this wonderful neuroscientific evidence that had been coming out since the 70s about how we could improve our moods. Um in the late um 1990s, uh Dr. Blum had published a study uh using four the four amino acids that I've talked about today. Uh well, five glutamine was involved in addition to the other four amino acids. He had combined them in a formula for overeaters and he'd done a study on 125 Optofasters who had completed their weight loss and they they'd lost, you know, typically 100 pounds. Um and they were given no instruction. The they were just taken off the octafast product, um, and they did whatever they did. Um except that half of them took this amino acid blend every day. And at the end of a year, the half that were not taking the amino acid blend had regained all of their weight. The half that were taking the amino acid blend, and we're not talking about anything terribly strong, but you know, enough to fit four amino acids, five amino acids fit in into one capsule. But even so, taking several a couple of times a day, most of them had regained none of their weight. So one of the pharmaceutical companies decided to make that formula big time. It was Schiff. And they got it into all the pharmacies in the country, and a television special uh about it uh received the producers received 50,000 calls of people wanting to know where they could get their hands on it. This is you know, we're talking um 1997. I was involved in the documentary. They they interviewed a lot of our clients for it. So I I know this from personal experience. And Dr. Blum, you know, was someone that was really the hero of the amino acid therapy world and you know, was justified in in uh in in what he did. Um and his study was excellent. But the pharmaceutical industry, in conjunction, I'm sure, with the food industry, created this extraordinary fear campaign. They arranged to be on a segment of 2020 uh in which they claimed that the tiny amount of 5HTP was potentially dangerous, that it might perhaps cause the problem that tryptophan had caused 10 years prior. And there was no evidence of that. 5HTP had been used in Europe for at least 15 years with no problems, but they did that sort of thing, and it culminated in a directive to all the pharmacists in the country not to carry this product. And they all complied and they sent it back to Schiff, and Schiff had to abandon the whole project.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

That's crazy. Okay, so they just kind of pushed that off the table, and then that kind of left a bad taste for amino acids, and companies they just didn't want to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

They didn't want to risk it. Yeah, they were terrified of poisoning their customers.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

So fear tactic, and it worked. So I was talking to you about the the more recent suppression that I I call the dopamine hoax, and that is that um as the SSRIs have gotten uh closer to their patents running out, um, serotonin has disappeared from the discussion of of mood improvement. The only neurotransmitter that's being talked about now and and has been for about the past 10 or 15 years is dopamine. Now, dopamine is a neurotransmitter, and it's an important one, but it has very little influence on mood. Very little direct influence on mood. And this, so there's been a battle between those people who want to only focus on dopamine, and those who are saying, you know, all credible scientists saying, wait a minute, we know perfectly well that dopamine has almost nothing to do with mood. It has to do with movement, programming movement, and many other things, but not mood. So the campaign has continued despite, you know, the objections. So the interest in neuroscience has been growing and growing. There are now BA programs, MA programs, PhD programs in neuroscience, but none of them are talking about all the neurotransmitters. They're just talking about dopamine. Just focused on. Yeah. So I, you know, I found this very strange, very mysterious, until just recently when I discovered that as the patents for the antidepressants targeting serotonin have run out, they're making new dopamine-targeted antidepressants that are going to be coming on the market. So that this has all been a campaign preparatory to a new excitement about a new medication.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Okay, because I do feel that everyone knows what dopamine is. I mean, we talk about dopamine detoxes when we, you know, don't look at our phones and our devices. We talk about dopamine all the time. And that does make sense, you know, that we're throwing that out there into the zeitgeist so we can maybe sell medications targeting that. But what you brought up was interesting because dopamine is just part of the catecholamines. It's a smaller part. There's norepinephrine and epinephrine, and you know, it's very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

We've lost uh, you know, from the conversation on on, you know, healing our negative mood epidemics, we've lost all of the keys. You know, we're not we as far as most people know, there are no other neurotransmitters. And one of my colleagues got a PhD in psychology, and they were taught this, that dopamine was really the only neurotransmitter to pay any attention to, and that any other neurotransmitters were just made in the gut, as if the brain didn't have this huge source of neurotransmitter production.

Reversing The Trend With Food

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Right, right. Oh, that's fascinating. And I'm glad you shed light on that because I think that's really important for us to be aware of, you know, as that starts to come out and we can kind of arm ourselves with facts and with truth. So I am curious. I mean, we talked about the bad mood epidemic. Um, is it possible to undo the bad mood epidemic? I mean, if you look at the statistics, they're crazy. Like even since 2020, the statistics for anxiety and depression and the amount of time people have had to take off work, it's debilitating. Is there a possibility that we can reverse this downward mental health trajectory for ourselves and our kids and our grandkids?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:30

We could have, we could have done it decades ago. So the really question is can we get around the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry? You know, after two weeks after my first book, which was also a bestseller before the moon cure, it came out, you know, about four years before the moon cure, the diet cure. Uh, two weeks after it came out, I got a call from someone from one of the largest snack food companies in the country. And that tells you how closely they monitor us and admitted everything about their food and what uh and its effects. Um they just wanted to know what whether I thought their food was actually physically addictive, in addition to being damaged and you know, creating malnutrition and hypoglycemia and all kinds of problems. So um this this is the our time. Because of um Secretary Kennedy creating this atmosphere uh and all these projects to improve our diet, that's the only way that we can permanently raise children who are free of all these maladies, is to feed them properly. And that means that we ourselves have to be free from our addiction to processed food, which is the most, you know, deadly of all addictions ever known. So uh we have an opportunity, and this is a country that jumps on new dietary and nutritional fats, and we can very, very quickly demonstrate how incredibly effective these things are and how quickly they take effect. I mean, just looking at my YouTube channel's volunteers experiencing amino acids, you know, you can imagine that, you know, all over the internet, uh and you know, at the corner pharmacy, you know, do you want a sample? Whatever, uh, it it would be uh spread like wildfire. And so that's where they start is being free from the cravings for toxic food. And then once they're free, they have a normal appetite and they can enjoy and provide for their families, the kind of food that will get us back to pre-1970s mental health and physical health.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

And I think that that's really beautiful that also, you know, in your book The Craving Cure and the Diet Cure, you talk about hey, if you have cravings, you don't need any willpower. You can use these amino acids to give you what you need. You're not gonna have cravings anymore. And that's a whole nother episode that we can maybe go into later, but it's incredible. So I think what I'd like to end with here and wrap up with is what message would you like to give to anyone listening who just feels like, you know, oh, I've tried medications and I've tried therapy and exercise and diets and all of the things already, Julia. Why should I give amino acids a try? Like they probably won't work for me because I've tried everything else. What would you tell these people?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

I would tell them, go to my YouTube channel. All of those people had tried all of those, tried all of those things before they tried the amino acids, and um go to my website um because there you'll find a handbook, an amino aid handbook, um, that you can order with simple directions about how you can trial this safely and effectively. And you can also get your own amino acid trialing kit. Um and if you have any questions or are just reluctant to do something like that on your own, you can come and see us at the um at the clinic. Uh so and that's there's plenty of information about that on the website. There's also a list of people, uh, and Annika is going to join the list uh soon, I hope, uh of um nutrition professionals and psychotherapists. So quite a group of people who um and other health professionals who have trained in amino acid therapy and can uh help help you online uh in you know very easily.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

I will link to your website. I will put all of that in the show notes. So it's super easy. Absolutely, yeah. Um, and yeah, I guess the answer is I was gonna say, where can people find you, but we just talked about it, your website. So I'll link that there. And yeah, I just want to end with thank you, a personal thank you, Julia. My life has been so changed. My mental health, my energy, um, even just working with you in the practitioner program this year, I've learned so much already. So I just want to thank you. The world needs a million more clones of you. And I appreciate you so much. So thank you. You're welcome. All right, we'll talk to you next time. Thanks so much for being here today. Bye bye. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode, you guys. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you are interested now in amino acid therapy and nutrient therapy for your mood health or for a loved one's mood health, you can go to nourishedby nature.co, book a free consultation with me. That's a 20-minute consultation that gives us plenty of time to go over your health goals, your health concerns, and I will help you figure out the next best step for your mood wellness. That's nourishedbynature.co. We'll see you on the next episode.