Feed Your Brain for Addiction and Mental Health with Christina Veselak

Ever wondered how your diet might be influencing your mental health? Our enlightening conversation with Christina Veselak, a trailblazer in mental health nutrition and addiction recovery, promises to transform your understanding. Discover how Christina's personal journey, shaped by her encounters with chronic mental health issues and the surprising revelation of food allergies, set her on a path to explore the powerful link between nutrition and mental well-being. Her work through the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition and her nonprofit, Eating Protein Saves Lives, offers invaluable insights into how dietary changes, particularly protein and amino acids, can significantly impact mental health and addiction recovery.

Navigating the intricate biochemical landscape of our minds, Christina sheds light on how amino acids and cholesterol play crucial roles in brain health. Through engaging anecdotes and practical examples, we uncover the often-overlooked importance of maintaining balanced blood sugar levels and incorporating essential nutrients into our daily diets. Christina’s methods challenge conventional medication-focused approaches, advocating instead for a holistic understanding that integrates nutrition with mental health practices. Whether dealing with depression, anxiety, or addiction, her insights provide a refreshing perspective on enhancing emotional well-being through simple dietary adjustments.

Christina's compelling evidence-based insights invite us to rethink our approach to mental health and addiction recovery. By revealing the nuanced relationship between inflammation, neurotransmitter production, and cholesterol, she challenges prevailing myths and offers a more balanced view of mental health management. Her message that "eating protein saves lives" resonates deeply, offering both practitioners and individuals a transformative pathway toward mental health through nutrition. Join

The Gaslit Truth Podcast will be live and in person at the Feed the Recovering Brain Conference in Dublin, Ohio

Join us with the top names in brain health, including Christina Veselak, Hyla Cass, and Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure.

We’ll be bringing you interviews and behind-the-scenes content as we explore how nutrition transforms mental wellness.

Chapters

• 0:21 The Journey to Mental Health Nutrition
• 14:11 Nutrition's Impact on Mental Health
• 23:14 The Impact of Amino Acids
• 37:20 Amino Acids for Mental Health
• 48:01 Cholesterol in Mental Health
• 59:24 Changing Lives With Amino Acids

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hey everyone welcome back to another episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast. I am your host, therapist Jen, here with my co-host, dr Tara Lynn.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Right there Wrong way, jen, that's because your camera's turned around the other direction Anyway.

Speaker 1: 0:39

I know I'm trying to win the fingers wrong. It's got to go this way, but I'm going this way, all right, everybody. We had to mirror our fancy little mic flags and if we don't turn the cameras around, everything's backwards. So now I'm backwards and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. It's fine, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:01

So you guys made it to our podcast today, but we have a very special guest that I'm going to talk to. Terry Sounds good, so I'm really excited for this guest because she was my very first mentor when it comes to brain health and amino acids, so we are welcoming Christina Veselak to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Christina is an MS, a CN, an LMFT in Colorado, has been a licensed psychotherapist and addiction recovery relapse prevention specialist for over 40 years Along with tremendous experience in training and supporting the emotional, social and spiritual components of recovery. Her longtime expertise as a mental health nutritionist and training in Western herbal medicine allows her to effectively address many of the biochemical aspects of addictive disorders, including sugar, using dietary and supplement recommendations. Her own journey of recovery from PTSD, codependency and a myriad of health issues provides her with deep compassion, understanding and personal experience of hope and transformation. She is the founder and director of the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition, which teaches practitioners how to use diet, along with amino acid and nutrient therapy, to help prevent cravings and recurrent use in their clients by restoring neurotransmitter function and keeping blood sugar in balance. Finally, she is delighted to offer the nonprofit organization Eating Protein Saves Lives, Inc. As a source of life-saving information about optimally feeding the recovering brain, thus providing people with a solid foundation for their recovery journey. Please welcome Christina Veselak to the show.

Speaker 3: 2:42

Thank you so much, Tara Lynn. I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 2: 2:47

I am so glad that you're here because, as I stated before, christina is my very first mentor when it comes to amino acid therapy and I wanted to share a little story about how I got to her. I remember this was probably 10 years ago or more that I was feverishly searching for solutions, and I remember being on the internet typing in how can I improve dopamine naturally. I was typing this in in a Google search and was finding not much, and somehow I stumbled upon the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition and got real curious, was searching around in there and I found Christina and I found the course and I looked on it. I pulled out the certifications this morning and my first one was in 2015. My second one was in 2017. And then my husband, steve, took it in 2018.

Speaker 2: 3:42

So we've all taken her coursework and that set some pretty serious groundwork for me personally and professionally, and I share this wealth of information to anybody that is willing to listen. So your education that you give is so delightful on many levels. You're so informed, you're so educated and knowledgeable, and it has literally changed how I practice. So first of all, I wanted to issue a public thank you, because if not for you, I would likely not be doing this work that I'm doing, so thank you so much for that, and I have shared this information with therapist Jen, too, and Amanda, who works with me, and again anybody who will go ahead and listen. So I would like to learn more about your journey, christina, if we could start there, in how you got so interested in amino acid therapy and basic protein and nutrition. When it comes to addiction and mental health, I'm guessing on top of that too.

Speaker 2: 4:51

I know that I took it for mostly addiction, but can you share with us a little bit about your journey into this space as a traditional therapist, into a non-traditional which should be traditional nutrition and amino acid therapy?

Speaker 3: 5:09

Well, and first of all, Carolyn, thank you so much. I am so delighted because your story has been replicated by so many people, so many practitioners out there who've taken this information and run with it, which just makes the little cockles of my heart so warm, because it's why I do what I do to help more people. This ripple effect right, yes, 100%.

Speaker 2: 5:35

I literally can't thank you enough. Anyway, that'll be enough.

Speaker 3: 5:40

There are really two strands as to how I got to where I am today. The first is that I had very serious chronic mental health issues my whole entire life. I was depressed, basically from day one I had serious social anxiety. I was probably on the spectrum, I had disabling ADHD. You know, dot, dot, dot, I had it. And the very first thing I had that food could have anything to do with mental health issues was when I was in college.

Speaker 3: 6:17

And I come back from a lovely summer in Switzerland where my depression was less and I thought it was just because, hey, I'm in Switzerland, right, that's fun. I come back to school and my depression smashed back in and disabled me. I'd never been disabled by it before, but I couldn't study, I couldn't do anything. So I was sitting in the library praying and leaning over a stack of magazines and I just looked at the top magazine that just happened to be open to a page on how food allergies can cause psychiatric symptoms and how eggs, particularly, can cause depression. Now, this is 1976. And this was a really long time ago ago, right, and I read that article and I thought you know, I was in switzerland, I don't think I ate one egg the entire summer and I come back to school and I'm eating scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning because it's the only decent thing on the menu.

Speaker 3: 7:20

Hum, that's interesting, that that is she got curious and then it said that it takes four days to get an allergen out of your system and you can start feeling better on day five. So I thought, okay, I got five days, I have five days. I completely eliminated all sorts of eggs from my diet, any baked goods that had eggs in it, scrambled eggs for breakfast. I found something else I think I ate the sausages. And day five I woke up and I was functional. I was still depressed, but I was functional and it was like okay, lord, thank you. Okay, lord, thank you. And I went on. Okay, and then, by age 30, I am working. I'm working as an addiction counselor, I have a private practice, but I'm barely functioning. I'm exhausted, I'm depressed, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm right, I'm depressed, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm right. And I see this little ad in a paper for an outpatient treatment program that uses nutrition. I was in Berkeley, california, at the time, and this was about a woman named Julia Ross.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Oh yes.

Speaker 3: 8:39

Who just happened to practice at the on the other side of the bay from me. This was just around 1990. So that was also a long time ago and I made a appointment, went to see her and met her nutritionist, who shook my hand and immediately said oh, you're hypothyroid, because your hand is cold and dry and it's like really. And so it was sort of that meeting.

Speaker 3: 9:08

Two things happened. First I got introduced to mental health nutrition and amino acid therapy. I started learning from Julia. I met her amino acid rep and started having lunch with him every Friday Don Tyson. And started having lunch with him every Friday, don Tyson and he taught me the ins and outs of amino acid therapy. It was wonderful. And then I hired her nutritionist to see if she could figure out what was wrong with me. And she did at least a lot of it and got me on my healing journey and I was so impressed by that that I went and got the same training as she did healing journey, and I was so impressed by that that I went and got the same training as she did.

Speaker 3: 10:47

Hey, the best form of flattery is replication, right Like imitation, is the greatest form of flattery. Well, exactly, and that was in 1993. And then I started going to all of Jeffrey Bland's lectures on functional medicine before it was called functional medicine and I started applying everything I was learning to mental health and addiction and started integrating it into my practice.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Did you, because you're also a therapist, so was there a time did you ever get pushback from this? Do you get the same? That is crazy. Can you talk about that, like, because I know I'm shocked because the amount of pushback that Jen and I get and some of the people we've had on the podcast we've talked about it Everybody receives pushback. What do you think your secret sauce is to not get that type of pushback?

Speaker 3: 11:35

Well. So it depends who you're talking about. I do not get pushback from my clients because I think of how I introduce it to them. I have gotten pushback from, you know, medical professionals who think they know it all. And I had one doctor we were actually at a sort of social gathering he and I shared a client and he said to me well, you know, what you do is quackery, and but he said it. I knew he was trying to be provocative, right. And so I said you know, you remember that guy who discovered that the reason women were dying after childbirth was because the doctors were not washing their hands after surgery. And he started talking about how you need to actually wash your hands to prevent postpartum death and how everybody laughed at him and everybody called him a quack and everybody thought oh, these highfalutin doctors thought that, you know, he was ridiculous for about 40 years, and meanwhile women kept dying because they now refused to wash their hands until we now know that, oh my God, right. So I reminded him of this little story.

Speaker 2: 13:03

It's true, it's relevant.

Speaker 3: 13:04

It's very relevant. It's very relevant, and after that we had a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 1: 13:12

Ah, you just put him right in his place.

Speaker 2: 13:14

So I'm curious about how you said it depends upon how you introduce this concept of amino acids to your clients. So could you share with us how you do that to get the greatest buy-in? I think is the word I'm looking for.

Speaker 3: 13:29

So generally I do it in the very first session as I'm getting to know the person. Sometimes people come to me because they know that this is what I do, but I've also had clients come to me with like EAP clients or people who had no idea that I do this and I say you know, one of the things that I have found in my work and my clients have found is that what we eat and don't eat actually significantly impacts our mood and behavior and that they're actually over-the-counter supplements you can take to feed your brain what it needs to function at its best. That can also relieve, you know, depression, anxiety, et cetera, and can help you avoid medication. Is this something you would like to learn about?

Speaker 2: 14:23

I feel like that's the golden question, isn't it? Is this something you'd like to learn about?

Speaker 3: 14:28

what I get. I get their permission, I get their permission.

Speaker 2: 14:31

What if they say no, nope, I have no interest one percent, one percent, and it's like fine, no problem.

Speaker 3: 14:40

And then a couple weeks, a couple months later, after we have a relationship going and we've got some trust building, right, then I ask them again. And now they know me and now, um, especially now, if I don't think it's an issue, I don't bring it up again. But because it's so often an issue for people, you know that this is when I'll bring it up and one of the ways I do it. So 99% of the time people actually say, really, you mean, you know about that, you can help me with that. They're so excited because they already have an inkling, but nobody's ever given them any direction. So the fact that they're going to get that from their therapist as part of psychoeducation, it does, yeah, it really really does.

Speaker 3: 15:28

But what I do with some of these other people is you know, here we are in session and they come in and they're all over the place, they're labiled, they're crying, they're not thinking, they're bouncing off the walls. And I'll say to them and I now have 100% accuracy rate when I ask them the question they say yes, it was like huh, you know when was the last time you ate protein today? And they'll look at me and they'll either say 7 o'clock this morning, which was eight hours ago, or yesterday. It's an apple protein. That's all I've eaten today.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yes, or does coffee count?

Speaker 3: 16:15

Right and I'll say is it okay? Again, I'm asking permission, is it okay if I feed you? And when the first time I do this, they sort of look at me blankly. After I've done this the third time actually, actually they come in and say guess what, I fed myself before coming in. Okay Right, they're so proud of themselves, jen.

Speaker 2: 16:40

Well, this is, this is um. So this philosophy of feeding your clients yes, I've done that Um and not anymore because I'm telehealth. So prior to telehealth, when I had the clinics that I had, we would me I mean we, I mean Steve would go to the store and he would stock. We had a fridge in our lobby and he would stock it full of protein shakes and he would stock it full of cheese and anything he could think of that was quick and easy protein snacks. So you would be surprised at how many people would come in and we had them kind of trained sit and have a snack before you come in.

Speaker 2: 17:22

You know, and yes, and so also I learned that question because you taught it to me have you eaten today? And usually I would get yes, and then I would say, oh, what have you eaten? And I would get cereal or a donut or something like that. And the people that I see that are either really depressed, really down so I know their blood sugar's off or super anxious, like this super anxious person is the tip off for me every time that they probably haven't even eaten yet today, and so I would literally go out into the lobby and be like crack this open and start drinking it and let's have the session that this way, a hundred percent of the time, they would do it 100%, just like you said. It's such an easy thing for therapists to do, you know, is to ask their clients if they've eaten today to have a productive session, you know.

Speaker 3: 18:20

Yeah, well, I even make it more specific, carolyn, I now say have you eaten protein today?

Speaker 2: 18:24

Protein. I just say protein, yep.

Speaker 3: 18:25

Yeah, I just go cut right to the chase and then I feed them. But I have them rate their symptoms on a scale of zero to 10 first, and then 20 minutes after they've eaten, and you know they notice those. They become more stable, they become more functional. They can now problem solve, they can now think, they can now ground right. People can't do any of the relaxation and grounding exercises you want them to if their blood sugar is low and their adrenaline is running. Yes, Right.

Speaker 2: 18:59

So so, interestingly, just the other day I had someone say oh, I'm not getting good sleep because I feel like I crash every day at 10 AM and I said said this is. I said did you have you eaten breakfast or anything? No, and I said okay, I think your blood sugar is low. And I said you can probably expect some anxiety after that. And they go is that what that's from? And I'm like yes, I said so, eat something around that time. You know it's, some of these things are not difficult. They're just not in your conscious thinking, you know.

Speaker 3: 19:32

Well, and I had a client who was very violent, had a lot of domestic violence, got diagnosed with bipolar one because they didn't have any other way of explaining the episodic violence. He actually started using alcohol to try to calm himself down. It didn't work. He just developed an alcohol use disorder and he got sent to jail. Comes out and hires me and I immediately get him on the food and the supplements and the protein every three hours and as far as I was concerned, the guy was a teddy bear For three months. He took full responsibility for his behavior, lovely, lovely person. And I was really bewildered. I didn't see any bipolar, I didn't see anything.

Speaker 3: 20:23

Until one day he comes stomping into my office and this rage is rolling off him and I'm actually scared. I mean I actually this is okay, really intense. And so I say really timidly have you had lunch? And for 10 minutes, for 10 minutes he goes on this tirade of how everybody else in the world got in the way of him eating lunch. Okay, tirade at the top of his lungs. And so I said can I feed you? And I defrosted an entire entree.

Speaker 2: 21:06

You're like this man is getting some food. The whole thing, the whole thing, the whole thing.

Speaker 3: 21:11

I thought you're gonna say a pot roast, and then you started I know that's what I thought she made him a whole that's funny I I I used trader joe's when stopped my freezer, so within 10 minutes his color, which was purple, came back down to normal, his jaw unclenched, his fists unclenched. He took a deep breath and he said oh my God, I used to be that way all the time and I never used to eat. I am never, ever, missing a meal again for any reason.

Speaker 2: 22:05

We live in this world that food is optional, yeah, you know, and and the diet culture and calorie counting and all of this stuff, and I think that's a huge precipitator to the mental health crisis that we're in. Um, and also the idea that it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you eat. So processed foods and junky things. Like have you ever been I there was a, uh, eating disorder clinic near me and, um, they would literally put, like you know, those little bags of chips and stuff, like they would have them eat all of that crappy junk food all day long, you know, in an attempt to not have an eating disorder. But they're not feeling any better. No, they're not. They're not feeling any better. They're just giving them empty calories that don't mean anything for the brain except for inflammation.

Speaker 3: 22:54

Well, exactly, exactly. It's like they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Yes.

Speaker 3: 23:01

Yes, you know. Yes, they want to get rid of food phobia, which is good, but let's get people eating food that's actually going to feed the brain rather than inhibit brain functioning. Yes, and you see, this is the piece that's been missing in the mental health field and the addiction field forever and ever on in. We have known for many decades the nutrients the brain needs to function optimally. That science came in a long, long time ago and yet it's never, ever become part of our conversation. It's never applied.

Speaker 1: 23:38

Well, it's never applied.

Speaker 3: 23:40

It's never thought about Psychiatrists, don't even know it. The nutrients the brain needs to function.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Right, because they think the nutrient is a prescription. That's what you need is a medication.

Speaker 1: 23:54

I mean, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about, you know, 15 years in the field and I didn't learn this until I got curious and Terry introduced this idea to me and I'm going oh my God, this is, this is revolutionary. Like where the hell has this been? Because I've done all the trainings and got the credentials and all the you know extra, all the extra traditional things right, I've done all those and then, all of a sudden, I'm like wait a minute. You're talking to me about protein, you're talking to me about amino acids. What is this?

Speaker 2: 24:30

Yeah, yeah, and you see, unfortunately this is also true of your psychiatric nurse practitioners and if you're, of your doctors, your psychiatrists, Well and I want family doctors too, and OBGYNs, anybody that's prescribing, Like it's not Jen and I talked about this before it's not just psychiatrists, it's psychiatry, which is practiced by a lot of medical professionals, not just a psychiatrist, that's right so. And so we've talked about this too, Jen and I. This idea that everybody in addiction centers we'll just stick there talks about dopamine, Like, oh, it's a dopamine issue. That's why you have substance abuse problems In mental health.

Speaker 2: 25:18

It's always about serotonin, right, Like, oh, it's a serotonin. So we pick one chemical and be like, oh, mental health is serotonin, and if it's an addiction, it's dopamine. But that's as far as the conversation goes. Like it's like you've got a broken brain and this is how it's broken and there's no way to fix it except a medication. And this is why I got on Google years and years ago and was searching how do you fix dopamine naturally for somebody Like, how do you fix these things? And that's when I came across you and amino acids. So I would love it if you would spend some time on a little bit of education on amino acids and just kind of hit the primary ones the serotonin, the dopamine and let everyone know how these are made and how we as people can influence these on our own, if you wouldn't mind, Absolutely, but I want to start with something.

Speaker 3: 26:20

You know, I was trained 40 years ago and you know you guys were trained more recently than I was. But we were all taught that if we thought there was a biochemical issue going on with our clients, we had no option. Best practice is to refer them to a psychiatrist to be put on medication. And that there is. It was completely black and white.

Speaker 2: 26:46

That's still the case today. That is still what they're teaching people. Yes, it really is.

Speaker 3: 26:50

And wouldn't it be tragic if, truly, that was our only option, if there was nothing else we could do? It is tragic, but you see, there's a wonderful thing. There's all sorts of things we can do to take care of the health and well-being of our brains ourselves and to teach our clients how to do it. And this is because the brain mediates everything. It mediates our mood, our behavior, our ability to learn and access and utilize skills. You know these skills we try to teach our clients and they try to learn. We actually have to have a functioning brain to learn and access skills right mind blowing.

Speaker 2: 27:32

That's a mind-blowing concept that we have to have an online brain to teach a skill and use it.

Speaker 3: 27:38

Like that's not rocket science that just this is not rocket science, maybe brain science, but it's not rocket science, it's it's pretty basic. Well, so what does the brain need to do its job? Okay, so, bottom line, it's our brain's job to allow us to cope with stress gracefully, gracefully, right. We get to flow, we get to creatively problem solve. We right, we get to modulate our internal reactions. We, we get to do all of these things when we have a functioning brain. However, when we don't have a functioning brain, not so much. That's when we get depressed and anxious and irritable and crave relief. And then we find the drug of choice, including sugar, and it's like, ah, I want more, give me more, give me more.

Speaker 2: 28:33

It feels good Because it feels good and initially it works.

Speaker 3: 28:37

So what's actually going on? Well, the brain is run. The brain mediates its moods specifically through four chemical families called neurotransmitters. Specifically through four chemical families called neurotransmitters. This is the catecholamines. That includes dopamine, norepinephrine and adrenaline, and those are our survival neurotransmitters. They're also responsible for reward, joy, motivation, get up and go right and coping with stress.

Speaker 3: 29:12

They're made out of a particular nutrient called an amino acid that comes from the protein we eat. So when we eat protein, it's made up of amino acids. We digest it. These amino acids go all through our body, doing all sorts of things. They make our muscle, they make our skin, they make our enzymes, they even make our DNA. Some of them get into the brain and make in the presence of vitamins and minerals. So we have to get those two from our food. They make our neurotransmitters. So dopamine is made out of the amino acid l-tyrosine. And we get, you know, all these amino acids from our high protein foods, your meat products, your milk products, but also your nuts, beans and seeds. If you really have to be vegan, which generally is not great for your mental health, but if you work at it really hard, you can make it work. So we get these aminos from the protein we eat. We can also buy them over the counter.

Speaker 3: 30:20

Somebody's figured out how to synthesize these amino acids free form. If you take them orally, they get into the brain within 20 minutes. If you take them orally, they get into the brain within 20 minutes. So I can turn off a craving, full-blown, physical craving, in 20 minutes. I can shift a mood state within 20 minutes. And the amazing thing about amino acids is that they're anti-addictive, because they're rebuilding your neurotransmitters rather than depleting them. It's sort of like how can something work so well without being bad for me? Because they're rebuilding your neurotransmitters rather than depleting them. It's sort of like how can something work so well without being bad for me? No, this is actually good for you and good for your brain. So we get dopamine and norepinephrine, or get up and go. It also helps with ADHD, by the way.

Speaker 3: 31:16

Way from the tyrosine we get serotonin. So serotonin is our flow, we. We can feel good about ourselves, we can move up the social ladder. Okay, they did studies with lobsters. I don't know why they did studies with lobsters, but they found't know why they did studies with lobsters, but they found that lobsters with the least amount of serotonin were at the bottom of the pecking order. Apparently, lobsters like to climb on top of each other into sort of a pyramid thing. Well, the lobsters with the most serotonin are at the top of the pyramid and the lobsters with the lowest serotonin are at the bottom.

Speaker 3: 31:52

Interesting. Well, same thing with rats and same thing with human beings, that we need enough serotonin in order to flow with stressful situations, in order to let go of anxiety, in order to sleep because we can settle our mind down and stop worrying so much. We need enough serotonin to feel good about ourselves and to be socially adept, really. And so that's made out of the amino acid tryptophan that we find in food. That turns into 5-HTP, that then turns into your serotonin, that then turns into melatonin. Now, you know, a lot of people who have sleep issues turn to melatonin and overdose themselves and their children, and that's a bad thing.

Speaker 2: 33:48

That is a bad thing.

Speaker 3: 33:49

What's really going on is that they don't have enough serotonin. So we can use either tryptophan or 5-HTP, and different people respond differently to these. You have to be a little careful. If you're on an SSRI or other medication, you know, just talk to somebody who knows what they're doing and 20 minutes See aminos work in 20 minutes. 20 minutes after we take our 5-HTP or our tryptophan, it turns into serotonin and then turns into melatonin that we can use to sleep at bedtime.

Speaker 2: 34:28

Yeah, I just want to point something out real quick, because, before we move too far away from dopamine, the depression that I think that I see more frequently is dopamine related rather than serotonin, and I think that has to do with the stress and cortisol. And, yes, exactly. So if you're feeling that low, I just don't care. Type of depression type stuff. I mean, that's more dopamine, and I feel like so many people are put on medication that impacts serotonin for that type of depression, so they still are depressed, or they now are anxious, or you know some something else. Do you see it the same way then, too?

Speaker 3: 35:13

Well, I, I, I very much do, and in fact this is what I teach. I don't like my students using the word depression because there's so many different types of depression with so many different causes and it presents so differently in so many people. But we can break it down into some categories. So low dopamine depression is your slow, sluggish, apathetic. I don't care, you just want to crawl into bed and never get out again. Because why bother, you know? Um? And low serotonin depression, on the other hand, is an anxious, agitated, worried type of depression. So for the slow, sluggish depression, you give them 500 to 1,000 milligrams of tyrosine, usually, and within 20 minutes they're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Now there's biochemical individuality. Everybody's different. Some people need a little fingertip, other people need three grams. So you start low and then you build. Sometimes you need to go lower, but you know, you figure that out really quickly.

Speaker 2: 36:28

Um, I want to say tyrosine for me, when, when I know that I've taken enough, when I get that low, like fatiguing thing, like I really feel like my brow is very heavy, Like I feel like my eyebrows are heavy and I can shut my eyes at any moment, and when I know that I have the ideal dose, for me it just feels like a little pick-me-up, Like I don't want to shut my eyes anymore, Like I'm like you know, it's not like a stimulant, right, it's not going to be like, oh no, I can clean five houses and do all these things, but it's just more of this. Like I don't feel that lethargic draw down in my face, you know. So that's my indicator.

Speaker 3: 37:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Yeah, as. I'm sitting here. I'm taking my 5-HTP here, christina, as you're talking. There you go. I take one this morning, it's right here.

Speaker 3: 37:25

Well, here it is. Yeah, here's my tired scene and I took it maybe an hour before we started our interview. Look at us.

Speaker 2: 37:38

Look at us with all.

Speaker 3: 37:39

Don't like this brand so much, but you know well, you see, the thing about aminos is that some people are so depleted that we need to take them every day throughout the day. For me, I I need. I was so depleted, I had so many things wrong that I needed to take them for 10 years, 10. Okay, I didn't need them anymore. And so now you know both, both Terry and I came off this really intense conference and then I had, you know, a 10 hour drive home, and this week I've just been a little tired. And this morning I woke up early and that was fine, but very quickly it was like, can I go back to bed? It's like no, and that was when the tyrosine came in. So we can now use it. Now that we're regulated and our brains are well fed and we're eating good food and we're doing well, right, we're managing our stress, we only need things just like little spots.

Speaker 2: 38:39

Yep, yeah, well, and I find so Steve is the poster child, my husband, for needing five HTP in the winter time.

Speaker 3: 38:49

Right.

Speaker 2: 38:49

Yeah, and so that's when he'll start and he'll ask for it. He'd be like, yeah, I think I need some 5-HTP now, because he understands he gets that like it, you know. So it is one of these things and that's what I want people to know that it.

Speaker 2: 39:16

Amino acids are something that we get primarily from our food. So if you, if you are eating a good diet and taking amino acids, you know eventually you won't have to take the amino acids anymore, or as much or as many, um, and you'll get in touch with your body to know when that time is. And if you're coming off of antidepressant or some type of psychiatric medication, it might be longer. You know that you're going to have to take something to restore that balance, but eventually you can pull back and then use them as you need them. But it's interesting because sometimes we all need reminders of what we need. And I want to present the story because when Christina and I were at the IMMH, which is the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health Conference this last weekend and I went to meet her and I think that was the very first time that I've met you in person- Exactly, it was so much fun.

Speaker 3: 40:10

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2: 40:12

And she got to meet my son too. So much fun. Yes, exactly, and she got to meet my son too. So, anyway, so I had was looking for something cause I had such extreme back pain, and it was extreme and I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to fly out the next morning cause my back had hurt so bad. I was like I don't know how I'm going to sit on an airplane. So I went up to Christina and I said do you have anything? Because I had been chucking down the ibuprofen way too many and I was nervous for my liver and all those things. And so I went up to Christina and I said do you have anything? I was thinking about curcumin or bromelain for pain, and she goes oh, she has the bottle right now. She goes you forgot about this and it is DL phenylalanine. And I said for pain, like for physical pain, and you said for emotional and physical pain, and I was like give me all of it, give me it all.

Speaker 3: 41:10

I want it all right now, and I did. I gave her a handful of pills.

Speaker 2: 41:13

She gave me a handful of them and said take these. And I was like, okay, so I started, I took a couple of them and my son and I were walking around and I said I feel a little better, Like my back feels a little bit better, and I took a few more when we had dinner and then my son and I were dancing that night and yes, and I thought there's no way I'm going to get out here to be able to dance. We did. I woke up the next morning zero pain. I had Christina, I had no pain and I was like this can't be true, Like this can't, this can't. I didn't take ibuprofen, I didn't do, I just took the DLPA and I was pain-free. Now, does this happen to everybody? Probably not, but I felt like it was a miracle. But that's the reminder that sometimes you forget about the things that help you until you reacquaint yourself with them again. So I was grateful and maybe, if you would like to talk about the endorphins, that would be kind of nice right now.

Speaker 3: 42:18

Yeah, yeah, okay. So the endorphins are the chemicals in our brain that help us cope with physical and emotional pain. They're sort of our internal opioids and sometimes they get depleted because they are actually require a whole lot of protein in order to be made, and if we're on a low protein diet or if we've had chronic emotional or physical pain, we use them up. When we use all of our neurotransmitters up in great big gobs if we're under, you know, extra stress, and this is why some people just love their opioid medication. Or there's some, you know, some people take oxycodone or whatever you know, after a surgery and it's like eh, I don't like it, I can take it and leave it. And other people it's like bring it on relief, warm fuzzies, ooh, I like it, comfort, comfort. And those are the people who end up getting addicted because they need more and more to get the same effect and their endorphins are running low. So because it's made out of a, it's a very large, long protein chain. You can't just use one amino acid to remake your endorphins. It's kind of complicated. So a researcher in the 1970s again a long time ago this is not new information created a synthetic amino acid in the laboratory out of something else called D-phenylalanine that actually allows the endorphins to stay active in the brain longer, and so that's what I gave you, terry. I gave you straight D phenylalanine and it works beautifully. Now he designed it, he discovered it, I should say, to help reduce the amount of morphine needed by postoperative patients. Interesting, yeah, yeah, that's why it was originally developed.

Speaker 3: 44:36

However, the FDA doesn't like it. They don't know what to do with it. It's an amino acid, but it's synthetic. So is it a drug? So you can actually I just found you doctors can actually prescribe endorphin. It's called endorphin MD, but the rest of us can buy it online. Now we can not buy it over the counter because the FDA doesn't allow that, but we can buy it from Amazon, from my website, which is wwwaminoacidtherapycom. There you go and you can get it within a couple of days. What you can buy over the counter Carrie, raise your bottle is DLPA, so the FDA allows us to buy it over the counter from the vitamin store. Yep, in that form, that is, half D phenylalanine for pain relief and comfort and the warm fuzzies, and half L phenylalanine that turns into dope, that turns into dopamine. Okay, it turns into tyrosine and then dopamine. So now we get a little mood and energy boost along with our pain relief, and I can feel that.

Speaker 2: 46:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:01

I can feel that yes, cause I've been taking this since I got home too and I definitely can feel that, like I don't have that sluggish thing, I want to circle back around to high levels of stress, deplete all neurotransmitters. Yes, because I think that's important for people to know. And then also identifying what stress is right, because I think people think about stress as just being the load of things that we have on our plate, right, and we just talked about physical stress as being like pain, you know, um, pain and inflammation and and all of that. So an illness, an illness, injury, illness, all of all those things are stress, that's inflammation and yeah, and so I think that's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 46:52

that stress and you know we live in a very high stress load society as it is is depleting of your neurotransmitters. Now I have a question, because you know the chemical imbalance theory of depression and anxiety doesn't hold up. So how do you account for amino acids help with all of this? And I know medication causes imbalances. There's a lot of things that cause imbalance, but just by itself, how do you consolidate that information with amino acid therapy?

Speaker 3: 47:35

I think, the chemical imbalance. So, for instance, they're saying well, because we're now discovering that inflammation can cause depression, that means that it's not a serotonin or dopamine issue, it's an inflammation issue. It's an inflammation issue. Well, the fact is, it's still a dopamine and serotonin issue. Why? Because inflammation interferes in the brain with the conversion of amino acids into neurotransmitters. Hum, Okay, you still end up with a deficiency in your transmitters that's now been caused by inflammation.

Speaker 2: 48:45

Okay, so then it would be solving that not through medication, but through also solving the inflammation and rebalancing the amino acids at the same time rebalancing, not changing the structure and function of your brain with a medication, right.

Speaker 3: 49:04

No, you just give people more aminos to overcome that little blockage that the inflammation is causing. And it will, while you're working on discovering all of the causes of inflammation and lowering it, and taking different nutrients such as fish oil, that is neuroprotective and decreases inflammation in the brain, right, so does turmeric and nac and some other things. Okay, so we know what to do about inflammation. End result is we decrease inflammation. The brain makes more neurotransmitters, aren't we happy? Wow, it's like magic. The other thing that a lot of people don't know Okay, cholesterol. So, for, we need to be making enough neurotransmitters, which means we need enough amino acids and enough vitamins and minerals to make our neurotransmitters. Um, we need to make sure there's no blockages in this creation process, like inflammation and heavy metals, because they'll block those pathways. But now they have to get out of the cell into the synapse and be picked up in the next cell.

Speaker 3: 50:22

This is a cell membrane issue, so we also have to have functioning cell membranes. Well, what are cell membranes made out of? Cholesterol, omega-3 fatty acids and phospholipids that come from our legumes and our egg yolks and all these things that we've been told are bad for us. Um, we need all three of those fatty acids in the cell membrane and in the axon. You know the myelin sheath. We don't have any myelin. We end up with ms yeah. Well, so the myelin sheath is also made up of cholesterol. Well, the cardiologists don't appear to know this.

Speaker 1: 51:06

Okay, I just love how you talk the cardiologists want her cholesterol.

Speaker 3: 51:13

They, I think, be happy if we didn't have any at all.

Speaker 1: 51:15

Yes.

Speaker 3: 51:16

Right, but the fact is, cholesterol is so important in our body that each cell makes it. We make our own cholesterol because we have to have to have it and research has found very solid, very real research has found that the lower cholesterol drops total cholesterol it's on your regular medical report every year drops below 170, the more at risk you are of suicidal depression.

Speaker 2: 51:51

So there's. I've read research about people on statins and the rates increasing, rates of depression being on statin, and that's the reason why.

Speaker 3: 52:03

Yeah, that's the reason why. Well, there's, there's actually three reasons. Okay, the biggest reason is because we need cholesterol in the cell membrane and the axon, but the brain, just our neurons, just don't work without cholesterol. Okay, bottom line, they don't work. But cholesterol does some other things in the body. Secondly, it creates all of our adrenal and reproductive hormones. It creates our cortisol, it creates our adrenaline, it creates our testosterone, as well as our estrogen and progesterone. So guess what happens when those chemicals drop, when we have low cortisol and low adrenaline? We're depressed.

Speaker 2: 52:48

Yeah, you're going to get a diagnosis of some medication.

Speaker 3: 52:51

We're depressed. Okay, so this is the second reason why dropping your cholesterol will lead to depression and maybe some erectile issues in some gentlemen out there. Okay, the third thing is is that the liver uses cholesterol. The liver's job is to detoxify us of all the nasty guys, right, but it uses cholesterol to do that. The liver's job is to detoxify us of all the nasty guys right, but it uses cholesterol to do that. No-transcript. Okay, cholesterol is where all the police throw all the bad guys into the paddy wagon and get rid of them. How does it do this? It binds the toxins to cholesterol, turns it into bile, which is stored in the gallbladder, shoots into the small intestines, where it also emulsifies our fats and allows all of these important fats to get digested properly, and then it carries the cholesterol, carries the toxins out of our body and eliminates them. So what happens if we don't have enough cholesterol? We get this toxin buildup Interesting.

Speaker 2: 54:14

And toxins make us depressed.

Speaker 3: 54:16

And there's medication.

Speaker 2: 54:17

Well, there's medication, an SNRI in particularly, that starts with an EFF and ends with an XOR. One of the side effects is increased cholesterol, to which the answer to that is not to get off the medication but to introduce a statin. So a lot of people on some of these psychiatric medications end up with high cholesterol and it's written off as well. You know there's high cholesterol in my family, this whole thing and I'm like but you're 35. Like what?

Speaker 3: 54:54

The body's trying to detoxify itself from the drug Interesting by increasing the cholesterol is what I think is going on here.

Speaker 2: 55:05

I mean, that would make sense, wouldn't it? Yeah, but you know, this conversation isn't about making sense, right? If it made sense, everybody would do it right.

Speaker 3: 55:19

This is why I love the name of your podcast, right, the Gaslit Truth. Yes, because this is where we have been gaslit by the medical profession over and over and over and over again, right, which is one of the reasons for the epidemic in the mental health and addiction issues. Yeah, in our country, because people have poor mental health, they have emotional pain, they have depression, they have anxiety, they can't sleep, they look to addictive substances for relief. This is normal, of course we do, and now we have an addictive process going on which is actually run by depleted neurotransmitters. This is why amino acids work so quickly to turn off withdrawal symptoms when you're stopping a either a medication or a street drug, or alcohol or sugar, um, and why it prevents um cravings. You know, post-acute withdrawal is actually which people just have to say well, you just have to live with post-acute withdrawal. No, you don't, it's due to low blood sugar. So, eating protein every three to four hours and taking amino acids to re-botan your transmitters, we can turn off post-acute withdrawal within 24 hours and keep it away.

Speaker 2: 56:40

Why are addiction centers not all about this?

Speaker 3: 56:56

not all about this, because most well, we have your big chains who are basically run and funded on some way or the other by the pharmaceutical companies, because everybody wants to now put their patients onto medication and so we don't want anything to get in the way of writing prescriptions. Unfortunately, that's me being really honestly cynical. Hey, I live in West Virginia, right where the opioid companies caused a very, very, very serious addiction problem. Okay, so you know. So there's precedence here. That's one.

Speaker 3: 57:32

Some unethical companies, addiction treatment programs not all of them by any means, but they exist and they're actually honest about this when you talk to them that they live off their return offenders. They actually need people relapsing to come back to keep them alive, so they're not actually interested in lowering their relapse rate, and that's really tragic. Other people just don't know. Nobody's been taught this. I'm one of the few people talking about this in addiction conferences, and maybe you too. Nobody knows this. Nobody's been heard it, even though the research goes back to the 50s. So many people don't realize that.

Speaker 3: 58:19

Bill W himself he wants to be known more for his work in nutrition and addiction recovery than for helping to found AA. He told his wife, lois this before he died yeah, nobody knows this. And he couldn't get any traction in AA, you know, because they said well, we want to be a spiritual program. Well, that's great. That's only one leg of the three-legged stool, right? Biochemical, psychosocial, spiritual. Well, if you only have a one-legged stool, one leg on your three-legged stool, guess what happens? You fall over. If you have two legs, the psychosocial and the spiritual, you fall over. I call this the third leg of the stool. Now, if all you do is biochemistry, you're going to fall over too, right, yeah, but you need a functioning brain to do the rest of the work. The rest.

Speaker 2: 59:23

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I could probably talk for another hour or two hours.

Speaker 1: 59:28

I'm just listening and loving. I'm like, okay, I got to get more of this woman in my life. Okay, here we go 100%.

Speaker 2: 59:40

So I wanted to direct people again to two places, well, three, to Christina's website again, which was what was your website? Again, christina, for you.

Speaker 3: 59:51

Aminoacidtherapycom.

Speaker 2: 59:53

Okay, and there's two other places, which would be the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health, nutrition, and that is that. Please check that out for Christina. It is a simple concept, but somehow we overcomplicate the shit out of addiction and mental health and I love the simple approach of this that eating protein saves lives and that's because of the interaction between protein and amino acids and neurotransmitters and blood sugar and all the other things. So check her out with her beautiful work in addiction and hopefully you'll be just as inspired as I have been with her work, and we'll continue to share what I know in as many places that I can. So I would like to thank Christina Veselak for coming on here and for changing my life and for changing my practice. I'm getting all misty-eyed just talking about it. So thank you so much for being here and if you're listening to this episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast, please make sure that you like, comment, subscribe, give us five stars and send us your gaslit truth at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1: 1:01:11

Thanks, christina, thank you.