Nutrients and Amino Acids in Enhancing Mental Health with Dr Koby Taylor, PharmD

Dr. Koby Taylor, a pharmacist from Southern Utah, shares insights into his health approach that puts emphasis on nutrient deficiencies and how they impact mental health. He talks about the effects of these deficiencies on the body's chemistry, shedding light on how they influence the need for medications. Dr. Koby stresses the importance of amino acids derived from proteins, which are essential components of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, and their significance in how we feel in a day...or in a life. He also shares insights on how we take in and absorb nutrients, or how we block their absorption and miss them entirely.  We discuss some interesting insights into how pharmaceuticals  can affect the process of absorption, and it is one episode you will definitely want to catch!
In the same vein, an exploration of the power of perspective and challenging traditional beliefs is discussed, shedding light on how experimenting with various modalities like magnesium soaking, breath-work, sound therapy, yoga, and Qigong can aid in healing and wellbeing. This episode is another conversation emphasizing the correlation between diet, mindset, and mental health.

Link for Perfect Amino by Body Health:  https://bodyhealth.com/products/perfectamino

00:01 Introduction and Meeting Dr. Koby Taylor

00:14 Dr. Koby's Unique Approach to Pharmacology

01:27 Dr. Koby's Personal Health Journey

02:12 Understanding Nutrient Deficiencies

03:14 The Importance of Potassium

05:15 The Impact of Medications on Nutrient Levels

05:39 The Role of Nutrition in Health

06:53 The Importance of Digestion

07:47 The Connection Between Medications and Mineral Deficiencies

09:48 The Impact of Stress on Digestion and Nutrient Absorption

11:27 The Role of Nutrients in Disease Prevention

13:21 The Importance of Amino Acids

14:49 The Impact of Processed Foods on Health

18:03 The Role of the Nervous System in Digestion

20:16 The Connection Between Food and Mood

22:51 The Importance of Regular Bowel Movements

25:17 The Role of Amino Acids in Neurotransmitter Production

27:28 Understanding the Impact of Diet on Health

30:09 The Importance of Eating Real Food

33:05 The Role of Amino Acids in Serotonin Production

38:34 Childhood Memories and Dark Chocolate

39:13 Understanding the Role of Magnesium

40:02 The Importance of Proper Digestion

41:08 The Impact of Folic Acid and Folate

42:06 The Connection Between Diet and Neurotransmitters

42:41 The Role of Amino Acids in Mental Health

43:53 The Risks of Unbalanced Diets and Supplements

44:29 The Importance of Eating Protein and Nutrient-Rich Foods

45:04 Understanding Serotonin Deficiencies

46:28 The Benefits of a Balanced Diet

48:22 The Impact of Technology and Diet on Mental Health

50:11 The Role of Amino Acids in Addiction and Mental Health

55:06 Understanding the Effects of Alcohol on Neurotransmitters

01:11:40 The Importance of Seeking Truth and Personal Growth

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the What Really Makes a Difference podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Becca Whittaker. I've been a doctor of natural health care for over 20 years and a professional speaker on health and vitality, but everything I thought I knew about health was tested when my own health hit a landslide and I became a very sick patient. I've learned that showing up for our own health and vitality is a step by step journey that we take for the rest of our lives. And this podcast is about sharing some of the things that really make a difference on that journey with you. So grab your explorer's hat while we get ready to check out today's topic. My incredible guest network and I will be sharing some practical tools, current science and ancient wisdom that we all need, no matter what stage we are at in our health and vitality. I've already got my hat on and my hand out, so let's dive in and we can all start walking each other home. Hey, and welcome to today's episode. I am really happy to talk with Dr. Kobe Taylor, but I'm even more happy to introduce you to him. We had a really interesting conversation that I think you'll enjoy. Dr. Kobe has been a pharmacist for over 20 years and in That profession, you already find a lot of really intelligent people, especially regarding body chemistry, but he has taken it to a whole new level. Like so many of us, he thought he knew a lot about health until he had his own health challenges and learned there was a lot more. So when his health challenges happened, he really started to dive into the actual chemistry of our body. One part I find really interesting about our conversation is he says the side effects of most medications are actually because of the nutrients that those medications contain. bind to and deplete from our bodies. So he began to look at micronutrients and amino acids and what we need to actually build up the nutrients and the absorption of those nutrients in our bodies. And he focused specifically on mental health. So we talk about neurotransmitters. Those are the chemicals that help run our brains and bodies that help us feel connected, happy. Loved, and give us drive, really. We talk about digestion, and we talk about perspective, and healing. It's a fascinating conversation, and I think it'll be worth your time. And for this episode specifically, and the episode before, I would like to thank you for your patience in putting up with some of the sound difficulty that I was having. Welcome to tech. Ha ha ha! The microphone that I was using in this episode. came partially unplugged and it made the sound a little tricky to help. I thought the conversation was so valuable that even though the sound hurts my pride a little, I'm still releasing it. So thank you for your patience and we'll all learn together. Welcome to the show. Dr. Coby Taylor, I am So happy to meet with you today. I know we've been discussing a little bit before we started about what we can talk about. And I feel like I'm a kid in a playground. So for those who have not come across your work, Dr. Kobe is a pharmacist. And he works in southern Utah, but he is not your average pharmacist. So most pharmacists I, I actually really look forward to talking to if I need to take a medication because I feel like they really know the ins and outs of the medication. Um, perhaps even better than the doctors that prescribed the medications. I mean, it is your job to know the chemistry of the body. But what you have done differently is instead of pushing or talking about only the drugs, it seems like you have really switched your practice. Into looking at the chemistry of the body in what is deficient in nutrients, in amino acids, in absorption to help the, help them, the vitality of the body. So fewer medications are actually needed, and I know that has got to have a story. So can you tell me how mm-Hmm. you went in the process. from, you know, graduating pharmacology school, setting up a pharmacology practice into what you are teaching now, which is nutrient and amino acid deficiencies. Yeah, absolutely. So it's been, yeah, it's been a journey. Uh, and it's really my own personal health. So, um, it's been almost 10 years ago that I, Um, I ended up in the ER with a blood pressure of 225 over 185. I felt awful, impending doom. Um, I thought I was having a heart attack. I had a lot of stress, um, going through divorce. I had, uh, I wasn't doing all my own business then. I was working for somebody and, you know, 12, 14 hour days and lots going on. Um, And I didn't eat vegetables. I didn't eat healthy. I drank a lot of Mountain Dew. I love Dairy Queen. So I, my, the ways I was coping was mostly sugar and caffeine. And I just didn't realize the importance of nutrition. It wasn't taught. I had no classes in pharmacy school. I had some that talked about food and drug interactions. But most of my information on nutrition didn't happen until I was very, um, young. And so, or, like, right, I was a freshman in high school. And so I just did it, you know, and even in college I got a little bit. But you're Um, I went there, my potassium and magnesium, you know, were some of the lowest, one of the doctors that he'd ever seen. And so it made me think like, well, if I really low on these things, what is it I really need? What's my body really looking for? Cause you know, you're, you have an often we crave things, you know, sometimes we crave salty and then I would say that craving really probably is accurate. I really need that. But if I'm craving a bowl of ice cream, is that what my body really needs? Or a donut or a Coke. We all know there's not really a whole lot of nutritional value in some of those things, and yet that's what we crave. So as I started to dive in, so my very first thing was like, just asking a simple question. It was like, if I need to increase my potassium, how would I do that? And so I started looking at, and there's prescription meds, but what I realized is what I really needed was more potassium. And the government shows that 99 percent of Americans don't eat the recommended amount of potassium. Most people say a banana 99 and it's included on all food labels, but most of us just don't know about it. And so we skip that line. We look at the carbs and we look at the sugars and we might look at some of the ingredients, but we're not really looking at some of these micronutrients or electrolytes to say, you know, and your body doesn't function. And it's a crisis. If you're low in potassium, you've got a headache and high blood pressure and anxiety and jittery You don't feel good, your muscles can't contract, you don't function correctly, uh, your heart can stop, you know, and so there's real things, your blood pressure goes up, and so there's real things that are happening, and often that's not what we're talking about, and so I realized that, you know, a single, say a banana, so a banana's got 450 milligrams, as we age you have to go clear up to like 4, 500 milligrams of intake of potassium, and so I mean, if you're at that level, that's 10 bananas and so per day to maintain. And so no one would, no one's, no one would ever do right. And there's other things. So an avocado has got almost double, triple that, you know, so the banana lobby has done a good job of getting people to think banana. But, you know, we do, even our kids, we give them Gatorade. Gatorade's got, you know, 35 to 50 milligrams of potassium, and that's a long way away from like 4, 000 milligrams of potassium. So a lot of people have figured out in working out different things that they feel better when they have an electrolyte. You know, coconut water's got 500 to 800 milligrams. They don't always taste, you know, like a Gatorade per se, but The dyes and sugars we know aren't great. And there really isn't that much of a new key nutrient, even near blended salts. I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you're having a headache, you're not ibuprofen deficient. And it doesn't mean that ibuprofen doesn't have an effect. It does, you know, and I still think there's a place for medicine and I don't necessarily want people to just stop all their medicine. I want you to figure out why or how to do those things. And so, um, but I think it's. So I just started adding that into my diet and started eating more and started eliminating the things that were taking it out. A lot of soda pop actually binds with minerals and pulls them out and so make increase your demand. And then you look at prescription medicine. You know, there's tons of medicines that actually cause nutrient deficiencies. And the side effect of the drug is actually the deficiency it causes. So you don't get side effect day one or day two, you get it six months down the road when the nutrient is depleted. And we don't, because we've been on the drug for so long, we kind of. Don't think it's the drug and yet you can look at the package and sort of kind of go backwards and look at those things and start to find that most diseases are associated with nutrient deficiencies. And there is quite a bit of research around those things. So that was a piece, you know, and then shortly after that, as I started looking at nutrients, you know, as you start reading and things, it's like, I don't know, the powers that be start knowing those things. And so this platform came up and I read, um, Julia Ross's book, Mood Cure, that talks about amino acids. And I ended up doing a course with a lady that's been doing it for 20 years. And I started using that in my practice with patients. And so when we eat a protein, there's lots of things that have to happen. And so we need enough stomach acid in the gut to denature the protein. So you have to open it up. And then the enzymes from the pancreas, your proteases, bind, you know, go to that and chop it up. So if I don't have enough stomach acid, I don't de nature very well, if I didn't chew my food very well, it's harder for those enzymes to get in and break it up. So you got a big chunk of meat in your stomach, it, you just, it, you're not going to get as much out of that. So simply just simple things, you know, chewing your food, uh, possibly adding apple cider vinegar in to lower the pH and help break up stuff. You're just replacing what's not there. And as we age, we make less stomach acid. Um, ultimately, yeah, go ahead. I'm just going to say, I'm going to pause you real quick to break a few of these things down because you're saying incredible things. So, number one, I love what you said just going back to that the side effects of some medications are actually those medications depleting our body of some minerals. I have never made that connection before and it seems so obvious now that So, I mean, common side effects are pain, muscle cramping, muscle fatigue, migraines, other infections, and all of those things. Our immune system depends on minerals. Our muscle system depends on minerals and absorption, amino acids, all of the things that we use to repair. So, before we move on from that, can you tell me what are some common medications that people are on that they might not know are depleting their mineral deficiencies. I'm thinking right off, there's got to be proton pump inhibitors or antacids that do that. That's right. Because if you're talking about, if your stomach acid isn't potent enough to break down the food that you're bringing in, you can be bringing in really healthy food with tons of protein, but if you can't break it down, You are not getting, you're not getting the part and you see people, yeah, they go on these diets and they're on over 12 weeks. They get frustrated because they're eating so much salad and they think, ah, I've been on this paleo diet for 12 weeks. I don't really feel any better. You know, but yet we haven't really looked at the nervous system and the stress and the fight or flight and the gut health. To really understand are they getting those parts and even labs, you know, when we talk about nutrients, it's, we're really deficient. Everybody said, well, what labs would I run? And I'm like, well, I wish I could tell you because there's not even really, you know, in research base there, you can go look at some amino acids, but they're not standard of care. So we're not even testing. We might test potassium and magnesium and, you know, now we test like vitamin D. You know, you can run a B 12, you can run an iron, but, you know, and based on symptoms, sometimes the doctor will run those things, but they're not standard, they're not like part of your basic thing that you run. Some are, but for the most part, there's thousands of stuff that we need to run with. And we don't do that. So yeah, protumpin and averager absolutely look, change the pH of your stomach. And we do that. It helps with ulcers and helps with healing. It helps you changing the pH. So, you know, like H pylori can die or go away, but we should, if we do that drug, say we haven't got an ulcer, I want to do it for 12 weeks. A lot of people just stay on it and it's very effective at getting rid of heartburn, but it depletes calcium and folic acid. Um, magnesium and all these different minerals because your, your pH is changed in the stomach and you don't absorb them now. And so I think for people to know, especially if they're pregnant, um, I mean your fetus is building its bones based off the structure and its nervous system. And if you're completing some full of gas. I feel like it should come with a warning. Protein filled containers, like antacids. I also saw a study when I was at a conference, I cannot remember to reference it correctly, but it was talking about how it increased your risk of getting the nasty kind of COVID, like of being a super spreader, and of not recovering well from it. It was so high, I can't remember the words. It was like 200 percent or something crazy thing. So I can't quote it correctly, but it basically really affected your ability to recover from COVID as well. And I would argue that zinc, zinc. So when you lose your taste and smell, it's a zinc depletion. And you'll have signs of that, you know, you can see it, your nails, you know, how brittle your nails are. My hair is falling out. You'll have like marks on your nails. So there's things in Eastern medicine that providers recognize and can see. And then you go to a, um, traditionally trained Eastern practitioner and they look at your eyes and they look at your tongue and they look at your nails and pinch your skin and they're like, Oh, you're iron deficient and they can just see it. But we, we've kind of lost a disconnect and we're not trained. This doesn't mean that your providers don't want to do those things. They just don't know. And there's an assumption in America that no, we're not hungry. So we're well fed, but we're missing these key nutrients. And even the government knows that we have these deficiencies. We know like 80 percent of people are deficient in magnesium, um, which comes with cramping, but it's small in 300 biochemical functions. So your ability to make testosterone and progesterone and, um, Make cholesterol, um, can all be impaired in all of your neurotransmitters run with magnesium. So if I'm low, I could be, I could not sleep. I could. And then my body stress. So then I, my cortisol goes up and it shuts off your digestion, only making things worse. So I'm either in fight or flight or I'm in rest and digest. If I'm in fight or flight and freeze, My body's not putting energy to digestion. It takes a lot of energy to break out food. And so it's like, it's just trying to keep you safe so you can run away from the threat. Um, and we just, you know, our breathing's impaired. Our, you know, there's so many things that are connected that we just don't talk about. That's this cascade of events that leads to inflammation. And so those key nutrients matter. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I keep thinking. Um, you are exactly on my vein of thinking. So you're talking about being in fight or flight or being in a stress response. I feel like nervous system regulation is like the top tier thing that makes a difference in our health and in our vitality. But let's break this down a little bit more since you're an expert here. So if we, if we are stressed, it's A lot. You're talking about the energy that digesting takes and it's interesting to pause a moment on that. It takes a lot of energy to digest. Your liver has to be functioning and pumping out the right things to break down food. Your gallbladder has to be functioning and pumping out things to break down the fats. You have to have the stomach acid that you need at the potency that you need to break down the fats. The proteins. And then all this stuff has to churn in your gut, it has to be added and worked upon by the bacteria in your gut, both the ones that help us and the ones that make our life more complicated. It has to go through all this whole process. It is a complicated thing. It deserves, um, a moment to think about, wow, when we are eating. We need to try and have our nervous system in a state that can handle the food that we're putting in there. Correct. Because what happens to the food if we are super stressed and we're pounding in our Mountain Dew and our, like, granola bar as we're going to work, and we aren't really letting our system do that? What happens to the nutrient deficiencies? What happens to the food that hits the stomach and the gut? And a lot of those things that are simpler to process, they get digested. And so, but the chemical loads, so your dyes and sugar substitutes now are foreign chemicals. And so processed foods are full of those things. And a lot of these dyes are even been mis appropriately labeled, meaning The manufacturer is trying to get you to eat these things and if you look at the chemicals are the reason, you know, like some of these soft drinks are banned in other countries and there's even like black box warning in Mexico on soda drinks of the ills of health, just like in this pack of cigarettes. So the data is there, the research is there, but you're, you know, and some of the flavors are different around the world because the chemicals that we use in America are banned. So a lot of countries don't allow mind altering substances, and so the red dye in a drink or yellow dye in a drink hits a neurotransmitter. So when I drink it, I do get an effect. I definitely feel a buzz. This is why somebody who's, you know, would say, I'd rather you cut my arm away off than take away my soda. And I'm like, well, is there any nutritional value? And everybody's like, well, no, but I'm like, but I do feel better. And when you're in fight or flight, Your, your logical part of your brain turns off, you're not thinking, you can't, you don't advocate for yourself. So if you're like in a panic attack, like the last, you're just trying to get out of the panic attack, like, and you're going to do anything, whatever that is to try to get that. And so usually we pick something that hits faster and I wish asparagus and you know, broccoli and Brussels sprouts hit. But they don't. And if I told you in a panic attack, just eat some asparagus, you'd be like, I don't do anything. And that's a part that you don't realize is that the good food you eat and the small choices you're making on a daily basis is preventing anxiety tomorrow and next week. Some of our nutrients are stored for months, B12s in your system for months. And so we don't realize that a decision even to stop a multivitamin today might prevent me from having. Um, having symptoms six months down the road, you don't know what you prevented. We're not real great at preventative medicine or talking about how to do those things. And that's generally why those things are there. You mentioned bacteria too. Good bacteria are good because they, they'll take, they generally like fiber and they live on fiber and they let you keep the magnesium in the B12 and they help you reabsorb your estrogens and they might even release dopamine and serotonin. There's no reason for them to do that. But they're trying to help you feel better and bring balance bad bacteria like Candida and Lyme and some of these things still nutrients like a crazy, they literally sit inside your gut waiting for you to do all this work to digest what you are, and then they still, and then they release other chemicals that make things more inflamed and more some poke holes in your gut and do other things that just increases your cascade of events. So it's it's a Thank you. That's part of the thing is we're getting more and more research indicating how to identify what's missing. But I've, and I've had really good success just looking at symptomology and being really honest, like anxiety is such a common thing today, but it is not a normal state and nobody likes it. No one wants to be in a state of anxiety. And so I'm going to game online shop, binge, um, sex, porn. I might go to harder things. I might do caffeine or nicotine, even harder heroin, cocaine and meth, all of which hits those things. But what a lot of people don't think about is the processed foods. These manufacturers put these sugar substitutes and dyes in there because it temporarily gives you relief and then you cycle back through at a deficient state. And so the anxiety is worse and we're literally just. It's going from drink to drink and you'll see like in an autistic kid, they're super sensitive to dyes. The moms are like, Oh yeah, do not give them red dye or do not give them a sugar substitute because they cannot glutamate, they cannot process it, they cannot handle it. And so they've got differences in their genetics. And so it's like, how do we really get those parts in to his farming? We've changed the way we farm. And so. Even our quality of our food, like when I was a kid, we were supposed to eat three servings of fruits and vegetables. We're currently at seven to get what's recommended. And again, that's probably just the sufficient amount. Like how much is it? Do I need, if I'm optimal or how much is it I need, say I've got cancer. Some of the studies go clear to 20 servings. You try to eat 20 servings of fruits and vegetables and they're just not as nutrient dense. If the farmer hasn't thought about how to get those nutrients in. Then it doesn't happen. And most of the nutrients are put into the fruit or vegetable right at vine ripened. And so if it wasn't grown local and it was, you know, we buy an orange that came from South America that was picked a week early. It doesn't taste as good. And the nutrient content is half or a third of what it is when you're eating an orange that was picked vine ripening and buy it from a guy on the corner street. And so your kids today don't even know foods have seasons. They don't know. They might even know what a good food even tastes like. We really were designed to rotate through foods and eat through different things. And so it's, how do we get, you know, how do you really, how do you get the parts in? And if somebody is really sick, their nervous system is messed up and they live in fight or flight. That's where supplementation for me can have a huge difference because if I put things in, in a broken down state or in an activated, you know, methylated or active forms, I don't have to worry about digestion or whether or not there's genetic issues or whether or not they're going to activate their nutrient. The part goes in and then people are like, uh, how is it that I feel better in 24 hours when I've been on prescription meds for weeks and months? Chasing my thing and I don't really feel a big difference or, you know, it's helping marginally, you know, and that's the part that's interesting is, you know, like 40 percent of what I dispense is serotonin based. Um, so all of my antidepressants, my anti psychotics, my migraine meds, my pain meds all work on serotonin to some level. If I'm not supporting what I need to make serotonin, how can I reuptake it? And so sometimes I see people really depressed or anxious that are on this huge drug load and they're new, they don't realize that their nutritional demand has gone up because of all the drugs they're on because in order to clear Prozac, you use B6. So if I'm already struggling with a B6 deficiency and I add a drug in now that's, I've got to use B6 to chemically clear Prozac from my body, my nutritional demand is actually more. And I didn't really get to the root cause of what's really causing the problem. So putting in an activated form of B6 in a supplement, you know, and do I need supplements forever? No. Hopefully it guides somebody to say, Oh God, I probably should eat better. But I, it's hard to advocate and get somebody to eat better when they're in panic. Because when I'm in panic, I'm going to drink a coffee. I'm going to drink it. And it's not that all those things are necessarily bad. It's just understanding we as Americans, our chemical load is off the charts insane. And it's because in my opinion, the government is not doing what they're supposed to do. FDA's jobs, right? Safe and effective drugs, but they're not looking at it that way. And even how they measure it. There's other countries that are like, You know, they're not doing it the way we're doing it, and they're actually have a lot more thought about their foods and how they're growing their foods, and you're seeing a lot of people go back to where they are growing their own things, or trying to buy local, or you're in co ops, or you're ranching to try to get better nutrients. We know we feel better. But, you know, I think when we start talking nutrients, we start to see the real why, why is this making a difference and it shifts and changes those gut bacteria and ultimately down regulates the nervous system, getting rid of cortisol so that I can sleep. And so I can, um, breathe, right? Because when I'm in fight or flight, I start to breathe through my mouth. And so I contract and I, and it just makes things worse. Now I'm in this, you know, inflammatory. And there's really interesting studies, even on mouth breathers of how they fill. So I think I'm throwing a lot at you, but I'm just going to pause you so I can fire some questions from back at you. Okay. Um, you're talking a lot about farmers and foods, which I love. So I actually just interviewed someone named William DeMille, who is coming up in the lineup after you, and a few people after him, to be released. And, um, through him I learned a lot about what is in the soil and then, If there are not nutrients in the soil, you cannot pull the nutrients out into the plants. Into the plant. I know we digest food that plants have already digested, right? But we, the plants, the bacteria, the bacteria in the soil, we all have a kind of a part to play in this ecosystem that ends up giving these little building blocks to us that we need to break down our food. So, his work will be coming, and if listeners are interested, that is a fascinating interview. But, I did see a study, I know you referenced it in some of your work, so I wrote it down, but I'm going to find it really quick. That's what it was. Vegetables and fruits, um, had a 5 40 percent decrease in protein, calcium, phosphorus, riboflavin, and vitamin C between 1950 and 1999. That is huge! 5 40%! But when I saw that, I was also thinking, that's just until 1990. Yeah. Now, think about what we, like, now the chemicals that are on the ground that are also binding the nutrients or killing the nutrients, they're killing the, um, bacteria in the soil that break down the nutrients. So even worse now. So I've heard other people say we are always hungry. But not often very fed in this country. That's right. That is very true. Um, so what we're looking for are the nutrients. So just to say here here on that. It's something that's also fascinating to me. But I'm wondering, um, Two questions from what you said. Number one, how does drinking a soda or eating the sugar actually short term help our anxiety? And then what does it cost? We were talking about how when we're in a panic attack we will do Whatever it takes to do, to solve a panic attack, and I do know people, I'm, I'm one that wants sugar, or crunchy things, fast, when I'm super stressed and I don't know what to do, and I know I'm not alone. So I'm wondering how that helps, and then, I also have a question about, uh, something after that. So I'll answer that, and then we'll circle back. So how does it actually help, and then what does it cost? So the red dye in different dyes do different things. But so specifically red dye hits serotonin. So it actually causes a little bit of release of serotonin sugar. Uh, whether it's a dye or, uh, or a sugar substitute or sugar itself, um, will also can release neurotransmitters. Sugar binds to four neurotransmitters. And so it obviously can have an effect in calming regardless of what's missing. So whether it's serotonin or dopamine or endorphins, um, GABA, it has an effect on those systems. And so it temporarily makes you calm down. Once I calm down. I will get your frontal lobe kicks back on and I start to logically think, but we're very reactionary. If you look at animals, they don't have frontal lobes. They basically live between sympathetic parasympathetic sites. And so they're moving through, um, different pieces of those stages. And so, you know, like an animal, um, It's really interesting that I've done some work with horses, but you, you can watch them when they get spooked and they go on a fight or flight and then they pee or poo so they can run faster, get away. Sometimes they freeze, but usually they'll bolt and start jumping, running, moving, and then you watch them. They'll come back down. They'll actually move their ears and they'll. Yawn and they go back in their breathing changes and they go back into and they self regulate, but because they are the logical part of brain, they don't necessarily know what triggered it or how to work their way out of it. So they're caught in a fence. They just keep fighting and fighting and fighting until they hurt themselves. Where we could, if we had a logical part, we can logically work through and say, how am I going to do that? And so that's where we make these patterns where we get PTSD or we get these other patterns that we're stuck with in this fight or flight space. When I sit around in high cortisol. All day long, and you could be there totally because you're just off on magnesium or potassium. It can be triggering those things. Um, sometimes our sugar level will be that way as well, so that sodas will hit sugar. Uh, the sugar system or insulin system. And so they'll release a little bit of insulin. Even diets will do that. And those can Regulate things as well. And if I have a dysregulation I've got hypoglycemia and different things like that, I might drop down and then trigger anxiety, like a rebound anxiety just from that cycle. So the food manufacturers have hired neuroscientists and they're, we think that they care about flavor when in reality, most of them are actually looking at how can we get people to be more addicted and kind of in the cycle of looping with our food. And so the chemical load is really high, so we have thousands of chemicals in America that we use, um, that are just not even in other countries. And so this is where you see a huge difference. So because our chemical load is so high, our nutritional demand is really high because in order to clear chemicals, my body's putting all these resources with magnesium B6, vitamin C, B12 are all being used to clear things and get rid of things. Okay, so how it helps, you know, if we can think it through, our frontal lobe, perhaps outside of the panic attack, then we can maybe help break it down into what we may be missing to look at what it is. Because if I know, okay, in certain states, actually a soda really helps me feel better for a second. You know, that can be, okay, I might be depleted in neurotransmitters like serotonin and I'm going to have you talk about neurotransmitters in a bit because I loved how you teach it. So we can be depleted in some neurotransmitters that we require to help make us happy or we could be having a problem with our blood sugar that also has to do with some, can have to do with some amino acids, um, or we have a food addiction that, uh, that it's matching the addiction, we get a little Pop of dopamine because we actually got our fix and then it goes down. So it's like, okay, why? It could be any of these things that are making me feel better. And then we can experiment with what it is that we actually need, which is not the soda. Right. But what it is we actually need. Right. And, but what it can be costing is as we are increasing our chemical load. It's actually taking more of what we may already be depleted in. Our body needs those nutrients to detox. It needs those nutrients to bind them. It needs those nutrients to balance everything else. And if we're using it all to get rid of what was our quick fix, then we are putting ourselves in a hole further and further. Further and further. More and more soda, which means it's And you can replace soda for cookies, or for Cheetos, or for all kinds of stuff with dye. Or sugars that are really addictive. That's right. Such a good point. So, um, before we move to neurotransmitters though, I did have a question based on, or before we moved to neurotransmitters, I will say one thing you talked about was if people are already struggling, if you already have a chronic illness, or you already had depression, or you already had something else, and you're trying to get off of the medications, It can be a really tricky spot because if you already were depleted, and those medications were further binding them, and now it takes more of the nutrients to release them from your system and process them. That is a tricky place, and I'd just like to kind of give a little more pause and credit to that. A lot of people that I know when they're trying to get off of medications, if they do go into a slump, like I think of it as a neurotransmitter slump, a depression or Frustration or feeling like none of this is even going to work anyway. I think it's important to know that can be part of what's happening. Like you're coming into your deficit and this is when we nourish it. A lot of times when we feel depressed we, a lot of people I know can stop eating. Stop eating. Very much or just eat the things that are easy to eat because you don't have a lot of energy. When I was at my sickest and I was working with a functional medicine doctor, I met with him every week or two. Um, online, that was one thing he was just adamant about was that I eat and I'm like, but it takes so much energy, energy to get up and to do that. So I'm like prep and buy and do all those things. Yeah. I'm like, I'll just have a granola bar. He was like, no, you will have frozen butternut squash in your freezer and if you can't do anything else, you're just going to put it in a skillet, put a little seasoning on it and eat butternut squash. That's right. He's like, if you don't give yourself the nutrients. And I just, honestly, so I wouldn't get in trouble with my doctor, started to eat more calories per time, but to make it real food and it did help me get through those slumps better. Plus, if you're eating the real food, then it helps your gut to detox, right? You're not giving it as many chemicals to work through, but you're also The foods with lots of fiber, uh, really like fiber that absorbs a lot of water, not just the bristly fibers, like squash, apples, other stuff. If it can move through your gut, that's helping get your chemical load out. Right. One of your key detox systems and so you have to be having a bowel movement and you have to be moving and so if you don't understand, you know, I talked, I quit asking the question. Are you constipated? Because I found that people would mark. No, but then you would ask how often they had bowel movements and they'd say, well, every 4 to 5 days because my mom or sisters are that way. And I'm like, You're not detoxing. You can't go. You're like, and, and you don't realize how much damage does that do. And then of course, bacteria, bad bacteria, they don't want to be gone. They don't want you to excrete them. And so they're slowing everything down. When you're low in serotonin, you don't feel satisfied and full. Your gut's not moving. A lot of them, a lot of the receptors, serotonin receptors are in the digestive tract and a lot of your, even your vagal response is heavily communicating back with the brain between the gut based off of what your serotonin levels are. And so you're not, and, and depression, you know, Um, it can be serotonin, but there's all these other pathways that actually we know are have depressive states, but we don't really have great prescription medicines and so we don't talk about those pathways and they're not as well mapped out in the literature, but we don't. If you have a deficiency, if you have too much glutamate, you can be depressed. If you have imbalances to the GABA, you can be depressed. You can have. Um, even other enzymes where your amino acids ability to convert. So it's like, you know, we, there's 20 amino acids in the body and nine of them are essential and all of your neurotransfers come from an amino acid. And so if I'm not digesting it, um, because I'm stressed and, or I'm not eating it or I didn't chew it well, um, I don't have the building block and you'll see, you know, like, um, Oftentimes, people will get, uh, feel really great on vegan, but over time, they start to deplete in amino acids. If they're not consciously thinking about eating the right kinds of things, you know, you have to eat a lot of beans to get enough amino acids. And if I've eliminated eggs and meat, those are some of the key things that have, um, have protein and have those things. And so, We run a lab, you know, doctors do run a poaching lab, but the normal range, in my opinion, needs to be a lot tighter and a little bit higher on the skews. What I find, especially in chronic illness, if you want somebody to feel better mentally, You have to give them those amino acids because you're, you're serotonin and dopamine in GABA's system are all based on, endorphins are all based on amino acids and kind of how some of those things are rolling. You are going exactly where I wanted to go. So for those of us in, as listeners that don't know what amino acids are, can you help break it down? How do we get them? How, how do we take them in and then what needs to happen for us to digest them and have them to use? And what do they mean? So ideally you would take, and it's interesting, different meats have different blends. And so, um, a lot of people eat whey protein, for example, whey protein is not considered a complete protein. It's actually really low in tryptophan. Tryptophan is the essential amino acid that we need to make serotonin. Um, we've heard that it's high in Turkey and it's actually really high in dark chocolate. And so when somebody is craving dark chocolate. The acid of the cocoa bean is actually broken down some of the, of the amino acid already. And so when I put that in, in my cheek, I'm absorbing tryptophan and it's often really high in magnesium too. So one of the cofactors to run that pathway. So within 15 minutes, mom got a piece of chocolate and she went from a kind of an anxious, overwhelmed state to a more calm state. I like that chocolate because at least it has real things in it. Your Coca Cola. It doesn't have any, there's no nutrition. If anything, it's net negative. So the carbonation is now binding with the magnesium and iron and Some of the very things you need to make serotonin. Um, it temporary releases your, your stores, but it didn't replace it. So if I don't eat anything to replace it or fix it, I'm going to go back to anxiety in four hours. And I'm going to want to drink another Coke. Um, I'm going to pause you for a minute. Because I have to giggle. Because I know dark chocolate is, has good things in it. I hated dark chocolate when I was little, right? Because it's more bitter than the milk chocolate I liked. But my mom always had a little stash of dark chocolate. And we were like, fine, mom, you have it. And she would feel better. But the thing that's making me giggle is I was separated from my husband for a while, and it was a stressful time. And I started to be a dark chocolate little hoarder. I cleaned out. My mom was, I lived at her house. And my mom was helping me clean out the little bedroom and she found all these little bags of dark chocolate with things missing and she said, Becca, what is happening with you? I thought I knew dark chocolate was high in magnesium. So I thought it was because I was stressed and I needed magnesium, but I started taking magnesium supplements and it was not the same. A little bit, and not if I would chomp it, but if I would put exactly like you said, a little bit in my cheek, breathe and relax, like, so it's the, you said it was healthy and And so you get a little bit of it and sometimes the caffeine, not more natural, but that binds to the dopamine. So you get a little bit of a coverage, um, of some of those key things, but you, you've replaced it versus depleted it. And so you're, the longterm effect is a little bit better. with some of those things. And so it's, for me, it's like you, we get amino acids from protein. And when I eat protein, it's, you know, so you eat a steak or chicken, how well I chew it is one big piece. So we, we, you know, studies show you should chew it 30 times. Well, if you've ever chewed something 30 times, it is not chunky. It is like a, yeah, you don't have to really think about it, but it creates this chyme. We in America, we drink a lot of fluids with our meals and often soda. And so we're, we take a bite, we chew it a couple times, we take a big gulp of water or something with it and we swallow leaving this big chunk in the stomach. Well, your stomach doesn't want things to move until it's in this liquid chyme state. And so it could take hours to Let the acids kind of ball around and you've got this chunk of meat rolling around in there and eventually a lot of it doesn't get broken up So and I need I need stomach acid one of the key things that you need to make stomach acid is folic acid so in America Folic acid is in It's been fortified in wheat. So we've put it into our wheat supply. The problem is, is there's no natural source of folic acid. It's actually folate that you find in fruits and vegetables. Um, and then some cases we still have to methylate. So if I have MTHFR, our genetic condition, where I cannot activate my folate, I'm taking folic acid in and I can't do anything with it. It's actually causing inflammation and toxicity. And some people think, I can't eat wheat. And they think it's the gluten issue. Very likely it's because it's inflammatory, but the other part that you don't maybe realize is the folic acid that's in it that's actually causing this toxicity. And if I don't have enough folic acid, I don't make enough stomach acid. If I don't make enough stomach acid, I don't denature proteins. If I don't denature proteins, I can't use my protease enzymes from my pancreas to break up to get the amino acids out I need to make my neurotransmitters or even build muscle. So you're, we, and it's a trillion dollar industry with pre and post workouts. And those people have heard of aminos like to make me build muscle and look good in the mirror. And so a lot of us will do that. And a lot of those products will leave tryptophan out because it is extremely bitter. It tastes horrible. And so that's part of the reason why dark chocolate's bitter is because it's got a higher amount of tryptophan and has that, that bitter taste. And so supplements that leave it in really struggle to mask it. And so you do see products out there that are more of a blended thing, and that's just a different way to put it in as a supplement. If you can buy it in where the amino acids are already broken down. Now I don't have to worry if I've got stomach acid or pancreatic enzymes, I can just allow it to absorb. And that's where people, you know, eat a single amino acid in a capsule or in a supplement form. And they think. Oh my gosh. Like my anxiety went away. Is that possible? And I'm like, yeah, if that's, if you find out what's missing, your body does that, but So you could be taking aminos, but be low in tryptophan. That's correct. Because you're not getting the right blend. There you go. And they're competitive, too. So some of them use the same receptors and even some of the same enzymes to convert. And so if a person, there's genetic conditions where people's enzymes, some of the same enzymes that convert tryptophan to serotonin are the same ones that convert L phenylalanine to dopamine. So if, say, one person's eating a whole bunch of L phenylalanine in a supplement, they inherently could cause their serotonin levels to go down. So it's a competitive system. So if I'm bulking up and I'm eating all these bars and shakes and things like that, I could actually be worsening my mental health. I might look good in a mirror because I got the amino acids to build muscle, but if I'm not eating a balanced diet, That I might be offsetting those things and that's probably where medicine like 3. 0 where we want to customize stuff Really comes in where we're not all the same and so different people like different proteins and different meats and feel better with different things and That's some of the nuances with your genetics and the bacteria in your gut and all these factors that influence those things but ultimately You have to eat protein, chew it better, and then make sure you're getting all the parts. So I need folate or methyl folate, um, B6, B12, magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, iron, all to make serotonin. So if I'm, and those are the most common deficiencies in America is right. So we know iron deficiency is common. Magnesium is even more common. Uh, folate issues with MTHFR is 44 percent of the population. So the issue is not so much for me, what I think a lot of people and what I dispense medicine for to a lot of people are serotonin deficiencies. So if I just ate the 13 things you need to make serotonin, I know if, you know, and there's still people that they're have genetic issues and they just won't go down that pathway and they still may need a prescription drug. But I found a lot of people. They're just not supporting what their body really needs. So the drug just makes what you did make last a little longer or work a little better. Um, but sometimes you see people where they're on these things and they're still depressed and have tons of anxiety. And I would argue maybe you don't have serotonin. We used to be able to compound serotonin. There are labs out there that you can run that will actually tell your serotonin level. But that is not a mainstream thing and a lot of doctors don't know that. So they're not running those tests. They just. Basically try things. You come in depressed, you're going to get suggested to be on a Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, you know, an SSRI. And if one doesn't work, they'll try a different one. Um, but there's no talk. Not, you know, I would say never, but a lot of people have never had a conversation about. What is it that I need to make serotonin and how do I increase that? And so you have to eat those foods. So beautiful. Just so beautiful. I'm so grateful you're paying attention and aware and can further this news because I think that's so true. And when I think about the things you're eating that help you have those parts to make the serotonin, um, those are things that help other systems also. So, I don't, I know you're more familiar with the nutrition that has specific amino acids than I am, but I'm guessing, in general, if you're eating a variety of colors, and if you're eating leafy greens, and eggs, because they have like everything, but healthy, healthy, free range, organic eggs, if you can find them, that aren't so expensive, but eggs, good meats, from like happy animals, So the more you can source from local farmers or from other people, it doesn't have to be as expensive if you work with local people, I've learned. You know, hunters, sometimes they need to get rid of their meat also. So there's that. And I'm guessing if you're doing things that are fibrous, like the squash, the apples, all this stuff, that's helping your detox system. It's helping you digest. It's feeding your healthy bacteria. It's creating neurotransmitters. It's doing things that actually help you in your day and help you age better. That's right. So, instead of just taking a medication to try and give you some of the pieces, but that may tie up other pieces, eating that way helps you now, helps you then, and if we can find ways that make it less expensive and easier to do, then that's a lifestyle choice that has to be made. That's right. And so small little things that make a huge difference and it takes time like your cortisol is not gonna, you know, your gut and cortisol didn't break overnight and they don't generally just magically fix overnight. So for me, that's the piece I, you know, a lot of people say if you're sick, you know, start in the gut. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, but I usually start with some just. I mean, no acids because I and some key nutrients because I'm like, and I want them in an activated form so that I can get somebody out of panic, out of that anxiety, out of the cycle. Because if you're have more logic now, I'm more motivated to go for a block or to go eat fruits and vegetables or, you know, cause if I'm just ruminating and cycling through, it's really hard to make the choices. I think that is valuable wisdom. Because it does take energy to make your food, to shop healthy, to find a farmer, to do all of those things. But, yeah, you're right. It's that slump right before then that needs some help. And that's when people finally are like, okay, fine, I will take it on today. I'm not a big fan of antidepressants or anti anxiety because I can't think of anything else. But if that can deplete the nutrients further then you have further to clean out. Doing what you're doing where you can help people get out of that while building the system is just, that's beautiful. Uh, when I was thinking of it was when you were talking about getting people out of the panic. So I know some people that have worked with you. And you have been on my, on my list to work with for a long time. My husband's as well. We keep saying, we need to get down to St. Down to the city where you practice to, to have an appointment. Life's just busy. But the people I know that have worked with you, I, I have known a couple very close to me that have come in with very serious depression, suicidal ideation, um, real difficulty, concentrating problems with big addiction. Um, And I, a friend of mine that went to see you. She came back and she had different amino acids and, um, I just went to visit her to drop something off and I was talking to her about what massive problems I was having with sleep and stress and she showed me your intake form and I thought it was so fascinating when you had to like check the boxes on the symptom list that you just asked right away like, Okay. Addiction to sugar, addiction to alcohol, addiction to whatever. Not, not as like a guilt thing, but as a, if you're low in this thing, it will make these things. Let's look at how many of these symptoms you have that relate to this amino acid. I thought that was so fascinating because it took the like guilt or shame out of having things like suicidal ideation, like anxiety, like all of those to look at like, Whoa, I could be. Deficient in this nutrient and there's 10 symptoms and I have 10 out of 10 in that. Like, give me this little pill that has no side, no negative side effects. If I, if I take it in the dosage, you said That's right. I know you said we they can't compete for receptors. Yeah, I, I was interested in what you were saying about the L-glutamine receptors because L glutamine I have had prescribed to me quite a few times to help my gut right. Help. But, sometimes in very high doses, and when I was on a very high dose of alpha glutamine, I did notice I struggled more with regulation. It's kind of a tricky, it is, and it's, you know, bad bacteria can convert glutamine to sugar. And so for some people, they've got a lot of overgrowth, you've got to fix the gut before the glutamine works. Right. Cause now it's being stolen and that's, and so if somebody has, uh, yeah, their symptoms get worse or they start to get itchy or they start having issues and I'm like, Oh, we need, we need to back up. We need to work on SIBO and work on clearing some of these overgrowths. So that the glutamine can actually get absorbed and be used, uh, you can usually do smaller doses for mental, but you'll see curving. Your sugar cravings will go away. Somebody who's low on glutamine will be hangry. Um, if it's a five star alarm that someone needs to be fed and everyone knows that everyone's day is not as happy if that person is not. Mr. Mill, you know, you have a kid that's like, oh my gosh, they've got to eat and it's like we drop everything to try to find them food because it's, they're irritable and nobody wants to be around it. That's generally a glutamine issue. And glutamine is converted to glutamate, which is converted to GABA. So if you look at the GABA system. We use Valium, Xanax, all your benzos are binding to GABA receptors, but your Ambien, Lunesta that are sleep based are GABA based, and when I'm low in GABA, which we know is low in fibromyalgia and irritable bowel, it's, uh, and it's in really healthy foods too, but When that's low, I'm gonna, I'm overwhelmed. I'm stressed. I ruminate. I'm thinking about, I'm more likely to be stuck in the past or thinking about the future, but my mind is just ruminating, ruminating, ruminating, and I can't go to sleep because I can't turn my brain off. You just talked about two thirds of the women that I know closely to me right now. So it's crazy as a supplement, you can go buy GABA and it's usually paired with theanine and sometimes magnesium. And the reason it works is you're just putting back in that nutrient and, and someone will say, well, the CNS isn't supposedly have receptors for GABA to cross because it's made in the brain. But I'm like, people must have leaky brains because I sell a lot of bottles with a lot of cysts. And because it works so fast, like you take it in like 15, 20 minutes of your overwhelmed stress, your muscles loosen and your mind starts ruminating and you think, uh, is this possible? And I'm like, yeah, it's again. And it's not absolute. It's not like a, you know, it doesn't work for everybody because not everybody's, you know, it's, it's hard. Somebody's symptomology, like anxiety, could be any nutrient. And so sometimes it takes a little bit of work to figure out going down in the weeds sometimes to try to figure out what's missing. And it can change from day to day. So it's like, you know, one day I ate really good. And so tomorrow's better. And it's just hard because a lot of your mental state. Is about what's going to happen tomorrow with what I did today, and that's sometimes we don't think that way. We like to see results really fast and things. Gabba sells itself because it works so fast and so if it's off. You can have it. So some people will have ADD issues. Most of your autistic kids are deficient in that system. It's broken. Um, some of the, the GAD enzyme specifically, if that's off, you know, and then you can be depressed from those things. And so some people will find that they start to use alcohol. Alcohol binds to GABA receptors and say, when I'm overwhelmed and I just need to calm down, I drink a glass of wine. And so. Um, it's just understanding that it's an imbalanced system. I'm not alcohol deficient. I am, um, really GABA deficient. And so if you put the part in, you know, cause you'll see if somebody uses a lot of alcohol now they have paranoia and their anxiety is worse. And so they're like, and some people will drink wine and they're like, Oh my gosh, it makes me anxiety so horrible. I can't drink it. I'm like, well, that's why it's because your systems, you're out of balance, you're too low. And so you just need to get the part in. They've got to go down that pathway. So clarify for me, that's fascinating. Clarify for me what you mean by alcohol binds the GABA receptor. So alcohol, it binds the GABA receptors and temporarily calms the system. So it's an inhibitory thing. So it brings down this, your anxiety level will calm. Sometimes my body thinks it has GABA because it's bound the receptor. That's correct. So it is not going to go through and continue all the lovely things GABA has? Correct. Temporary placeholder. That's correct. And sometimes people will pair it with a meal. So they go and they eat a more nutrient dense meal. And then the nutrient dense meal helps replace and push those things where they maybe don't cycle. If I skip food, right, and I just did the alcohol, and I drink a lot of it, now I'm more likely to maybe be up all night. Pacing, anxiety, ruminating when the inhibitory state wears off in about four to six hours. And so you're just understanding how things fit in to your big scheme of stuff. And it's, and we all do it. We're all craving things. We're chasing neurotransmitters all the time. So your kids that are fortnight gaming or Instagram or Netflix scene or. We're just trying to sue their brains and trying to bring us back to balance. And so people find things that help them. Um, they just don't realize. Marijuana, THC, hits four neurotransmitters. And so it, it absolutely has an effect. But my kids that are smoking it three times a day are going from anxiety attack to anxiety attack and are paranoid and not able to focus. Their drive's down because their dopamine is so depleted. They don't connect. And one of your main symptoms of dopamine depletions is apathetic depression, which is a disassociated from other people. You distance yourself. So you see a kid who's gamed for six hours and they're not the same kid. They don't want to talk to you. They don't want to hear you. Their frontal lobes not functioning. They don't make eye contact. Their ears are turned off. Their dopamine depleted and what they really need is L phenylalanine or tyrosine to get their systems back up to baseline so that their frontal lobe comes back on and they can have a conversation. But usually we're trying to have a conversation with somebody who's in panic. We pull them off the game. They're mad. They just want to get back to the game because they don't understand what's happening to their brain. They just want their screens and they want, you know, you take away their phone and they go have their, you've taken away their mechanism to self soothe. And so a lot of us are, we choose those things, but it's heavily hit with dopamine, a natural way to get dopamine is to hug or to do cold plunging, or to do things that again, bring back balance to those systems and increase our capacity to maintain our stores so that we don't trip into these things because when I trip into that thing, I'm going to drink the energy drink. I'm going to eat my talkies, my Doritos, my, Food that just temporarily give me relief, and because they hit harder, a lot of kids, that's what they gravitate or pick. Oh, that's such a good point. I know exactly what it looks like when you're talking about that. I call it the tech haze. I'm like, what has just happened to you? Who are you? Yeah, exactly. So people, so just making sure as I'm summarizing it correctly. So, if they're in a depleted state, they'll be more likely to reach for Tech or talkies or energy drink. That's right. And that further depletes because it hits our dopamine system. We actually get the dopamine by doing those things. Mm-Hmm. But it depletes it further. Or some of those things may bind, keeps you in the cycle receptors. That's right. But then we're lower and we're lower and then we're lower, so. So if you have a child or you know it's you or someone you know that gets to these cycle. So the better ways would be to have an analysis to see if you are low on certain amino acids. And if you're in a state where you know, you're cycling like that, then it's a valid thing to go straight to getting some of the amino acids. That's right. Right off the bat. So how do I get the part in, right? Yeah. So evaluate. So you have the, the mechanisms you need to start fixing the engine. I think of it like, hand me the, Wrench, hand me the thing, and it's pretty hard to do without it, right? Right. So if you, if you have the parts you need to start fixing your system, then you can do that. Right. And also do things like dopamine and natural dopamine, things like hugs, conversation, connection. Connection. Really showing up. And then while you're doing that, start making some good food. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Before we, uh, wrap up real quick, I just wanted to Make sure that I have covered, so the neurotransmitters that we are really looking for in America, endorphins, which help pain, serotonin, which helps us feel good. I mean, you can add habit Lene, which gives us drive and, and connection focus. Right. So deficiencies in dopamine or a DD and restless leg. Okay, perfect. I know, GABA we just talked about. Help me, I know I'm missing too. Uh, you've got, um, norepinephrine is in the same pathway and so you sometimes I go with Wellbutrin and some things, mental health things, and it's just further down the dopamine pathway. So it's kind of, you're supporting that as well. Your L phenylalanine and tyrosine go down to that pathway. And then your insulin is kind of the other one that has some neurological effects and things like that. Those are the main things that amino acids help create. They're some of the main things we are missing in America. They come from protein. So, a lot of people I know that are sick start to eat just a vegan diet. But, what I have seen is there's a lot of good results at first, but I almost wonder if those good results are mostly from dropping the processed crap and starting to eat real food. That's right. You are not careful to get in the protein. And I would say that's right. Then I do see within a few months, some of those systems start to break down. That's right. And it's usually more mental issues, which is directly related to the amino acid piece you can get. So beans and rice is a complete protein. Um, in combination in third world countries, that's primarily what they're eating. Eggs have all nine. They're complete. Quinoa is complete. Um, soy, which you have to be careful with in men, the estrogens and things like that, is a complete protein. So you can do it in vegan land, but you've got to be eating a significant amount of those things. So you're like, well, I don't like beans. Well, you can't, how are you going to do that? So it's like, and that's fine, but then you need to supplement. If I'm not going to eat the part, um, Then I've got to be able to figure out how am I going to get that in. So you've got a girl who's iron deficient, I can almost guarantee she's likely dopamine deficient. She's, iron is one of the key things to run that pathway. And she's not eating meat. She's like, I don't like meat. I'm not going to be able to focus, I'm going to have ADD. And so it's just supporting those things. And sometimes. Systems, you know, some things will fix faster. ADD sometimes takes a little bit of time. Um, and it's, there's different types and there's different deficiencies. And there's some enzymes things. So there, you know, it's sometimes a little bit more tricky to figure out. But there's, but I'm very confident that, you know, nothing else. There is a path to wellness. There, there is a way and what you do matters. What you're eating matters. And so. It's just breaking that cycle and breaking those loops and giving yourself enough runway because your gut health, your bacteria takes about, you know, at least 21 days to really see a noticeable shift in labs of things I'm doing neurotransmitters and some of your brain things is about 21 days before you can actually start to see the chemical things. And that's where a lot of people, they get fed up with the system. They're like, I'm going to just go off all my antidepressants and all my prescription meds. But they didn't do anything to try to support their body through that process. And so they'll go into a severe withdrawal and feel miserable. But if you look at drug rehabs, they use IV amino acids. That's one of the key things. They charge thousands of dollars for that. Um, and a lot of us could do a lot more. If somebody's really, really sick and there's gut, it's just nothing. Nothing's getting absorbed. IV makes sense. Again, I'm just putting in parts. But for most of us, If we just need to eat it, you know, and even if I can eat it in a broken down form, so I love a product called perfect amino. It's got eight of the nine essential amino acids. They leave out histidine on purpose because it's converted histamine and some people have too much. And so it's a really balanced, quick way to put in these amino acids and be like, well, I'm just gonna eat more protein. And I'm like, that's fine if you chew it. And you get your digestion working and you recognize it's going to take some time. You're not going to see the result as fast as you are if you take it in a raw, broken down form. So, uh, Perfect Amino by BodyHelp, um, is really, like, really great success. Or you can do individual aminos, but that one is, it hits lots of things for lots of people. And, and a lot of people are thinking like, You know, they do it and they think, is this for real? And it is, it has a, it's a little bitter because of the tryptophan, but I'm like, they've done an amazing job of masking it better than at most. Um, cause a lot of stuff, when you look at it, a lot of things leave that out because it's so yucky. Okay. So just as we wrap things up here, I'm wondering. First, if you can tell people how they can work with you, because that would be one of my questions if I didn't already know. So, how can they do that? Whether they are in Utah, or whether they are Yeah, so I talk to people all over the US. We have a website called FusionSpecialtyPharmacy. com. Uh, you can go on there and you can book an appointment with me. It doesn't really matter what appointment you book with me. Uh, you can book one specifically on aminos or general health. Um, we go through assessments, ask questions. It's about an hour of collection time and questions. And then I work to make a plan with you. Um, If somebody wants to do more deeper dives, things like that, we can do programs and structures and kind of meet, you know, uh, whatever your need is. It kind of depends on the person how much handholding you may need and helping people to understand. I'd like to educate because I know if you understand the why, you're more likely to stick with the program. So but you can call the pharmacy directly, uh, Fusion Specialty Pharmacy, and they'll usually push it back to the website to book with me. So the best way is just to go on and book an appointment and then kind of connect that way. Um, I do virtual consults and things all over the U. S., so. Okay. And I will put the link for that in the show notes. And you also work with all ages. I do. I think kids are, I love kids. I think it's, it's, you know, obviously we're working with parents and dynamics of that. Sometimes it's tricky to get them to eat the things they need to eat, but ultimately, um, it can be really impactful. They, their guts aren't as messed up. And so they generally flip faster. So you'll see results and some of those things quite quickly. Um, I think it's good to know, because most people I know that have teenagers right now, the teenagers are really struggling with anxiety or depression, or ADHD, or concentration. And this is just another tool in the toolbox. To kind of help get other things. Obviously, I still love breath work and emotional support and therapy and things like that. With some of those pieces and helping them find their way, um, through those, you know, through life, trying to figure out what matters. But I think you can do that a lot more effectively if you're physically balanced. Say it's like, um, yeah, well, find, find ways to be calm. Ultimately trying to get people to sleep and sweat and detox, you know, so you're having bowel movements, you're going to the bathroom. Things are online working. Those are all positive signs, so. Exactly. And again, things that make a big difference in making life better now and in the future. That's right. So, in wrap up, I have a few wrap up questions for you just so we can get to know you a little bit better and lead with some of your wisdom. So, two questions. Yeah. The first is, what book is on your side table? Or what book have you been drawn to reading? Yeah. Um, I, I love a book called Living Untethered or Untethered Living by Michael Singer. Um, it's been super impactful at pointing me toward, uh, who I really am looking at kind of the guilt, shame, and just letting go. That is right. It's his second book. Same guy. His second book is really has a lot of techniques and the, it does, I think he does a better job of describing who we are with apical ways to actually shift and let go of things. So basically if someone's triggered, um, it's a great way to kind of recognize that it's something in me that I need to look at. So if something's triggering me, it's not the other person's fault that I'm triggered. It's something that I think, well, why am I so triggered by that person in this conversation or in this situation? And then it's like, what, how can I let that go? How can I, you know, not let it affect me? Because oftentimes the other person is not even meaning to do something intentionally and we're taking that on. And so it's helped me realize a lot of stuff that I've picked up from a kid. Um, I don't know. That's been a really fun book. Last question. Oh, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Last question would be, can you tell me about a decision that you have made or that you would encourage other people to make that's really made a difference in the vitality in your life? I think, um, I call myself a seeker of truth, and so it's being open to the idea that you might believe something or know something you think this is an absolute and to just be open to the idea you That maybe there's a different lens or perspective so that if you can look at a situation and see it through someone else's eyes or through a different perspective or lens, I might, it doesn't necessarily mean I have to get rid of the belief. But I can certainly reframe that or see that in a different way. So it's like I struggled for most of my life, locked into memories and thinking that these are absolute things. And I've learned that if I can change my perspective of the memory and I'll let go of the memory, traumas and things like that, I'm finding that there's purpose in those things. And so it's allowed me to find or seek truth. And so I've gone to lots of different places. People and books and knowledge, um, and found a lot of, um, peace and calm by just unwiring or rewiring some of the things that I just thought were absolute and most of them led to guilt and shame. And so it's like, all things that purpose. I've tried a lot of stuff. So I do, uh, magnesium soaking or, uh, sound bowls or, um, breath work for me is just phenomenal in helping shift or get into other States and like, we didn't even get into a lot of altered state stuff that we kind of talked about, but you're, there's a lot of ways to get into space where I can find peace and calm. Um, and let things go. And I've been yoga or qigong. There's so many different modalities out there and really, you know, talented people that can kind of help with some of those things and just being open to the idea of just trying some of that. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay. Have a good one. Goodbye. So now you can see why I was excited for you to get to hear from Dr. Kobe. Thank you for your patience with the sound once again. I thought it was such a valuable conversation that I released it anyway. If I could think of A summary for our conversation. It would be that what we put into our body. And that can either be giving us nutrients through the healthy foods that we eat or through some of the medications or other foods that we eat can be binding our nutrients. Healthy food, um, greens, eggs, proteins, vegetables, fruits, they are so much more than just a picture on your Instagram plate. Or so much more than just something that takes a little extra time to eat. They literally give us the building blocks. for feeling good. I have thought often that it's It's interesting, sad, but interesting that when we feel super stressed, we often eat while we're super stressed and maybe eat things that don't give us as much help in our bodies, which then can make it worse. Or if we are feeling depression or just really sad or lethargic, often we eat things that are faster and easier, perhaps more. processed that don't have the same amino acids or nutrients. And then our bodies can't build back those neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine that help us feel good and give us drive. So we feel like we're in a hole and then we push ourselves further into that hole. But that's why we have these conversations, right? Is because then the next time we're faced with that, we can have Dr. Kobe's voice in our minds that remind us if we want to have those neurotransmitters. We build it up and we feel the effects of what we have eaten. Even up to the weeks or months with what nutrients we have to build our own health. I think that's just such a valuable perspective to share. For next week, I am really happy to introduce you to Dr. Tom Michaud. He is one of the foremost doctors in the country in treating lower extremity problems. He works with Olympic athletes. He is a chiropractor that has just done so much for research in the profession. And you will find out straight out of the gate, he's a super intelligent guy. We talk about plantar fasciitis, about orthotics versus minimalist shoes, about um, exercise. And more than that, it's the research showing exercise. He's a research junkie, so we talk about the reps and the weights that you can do that are different than you may have heard before. And they end up keeping you safer, there's much fewer injuries, and you get the same muscle gains as if you were to do really heavy weight. low repetitions. So we also talk about a key to preventing falls and a way that you can get huge gains in balance and athletic performance. Even a 1 percent increase in strength of this overlooked body area can give you a 7 percent decrease in fall risk. Really, 1 percent increase in strength can do so much. So if you want to find out what body part we are talking about and to learn safer, better way to exercise, whether you are sick and can't do very much or whether you're wanting big gains, follow us for the research and we'll see you next time on what really makes a difference. Have a good day.