07 - Gut, Brain, and Mood: Naturopathic Pathways to Mental Health

In this workshop-style episode, Emma explores the powerful connection between gut health, the brain, and mental wellbeing. Drawing on both naturopathic and Chinese medical perspectives, she explains how deficiencies, trauma, and family predispositions can manifest as low mood or mental health struggles - and how holistic healing can transform the picture.

You’ll learn:

 🌱 Why serotonin, trauma, and family history all begin in the gut
 🥦 How diet, intolerances, and deficiencies influence mood and brain chemistry
 💊 The role of supplements such as omega-3, B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, and vitamin D
 🌿 Herbal and naturopathic approaches for emotional balance - from ashwagandha to skullcap
 ☀️ The lifestyle habits that nourish the nervous system: hydration, light, oxygen, movement, and community

Emma also shares practical strategies for detoxification, food intolerances, amino acids, and combining naturopathy with therapy for long-term healing.

This episode is both practical and hopeful - offering clear steps you can take to rebuild balance in the body and mind.

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Transcript

So welcome to the naturopathic workshop on mental health. I'm here to talk about the connection between the gut, the skin, the lungs and the mind. So in the Chinese system, we connect anything to do with mental health and brain health with actually gut health. 

So everything originates there within the gut. And we know that 80% of serotonin is made actually on a bowel level, on a gut level. And so often when people are feeling low in mood, they're actually maybe quite low in the good bacteria and high in the not so good bacteria. 

So the bad guys are coming out to play and that really disrupts the whole absorption within the gut and enzyme quality, as well as neurotransmitters. So the pathways, the neurotransmitter pathways actually become blocked or break down when there's deficiencies going on within the gut. So diet is so relatable to how we are within our moods. 

And there's many writers on this subject where there's a connection between excess carbohydrate or glutinous products and the connection between people who don't do well on gluten and don't metabolise it well, and how it makes them feel on a mental health level. So there is some links in some writers such as Dr. Karl Pfeiffer, where he links depression, schizophrenia, severe mental health disorders with actually an issue within the bowel, maybe in the previous generation. It doesn't necessarily have to be always in one generation, it can be over multiple generations. 

So you often see men within a mental health case where there's mental health deficiencies, there's issues of the previous generations with addictions and bowel related disorders such as celiac, bowel IBS, diverticulitis, colitis within the family history. So often we don't just jump into depression, it's a predisposition within the family history. And some of that can be issues with food intolerances, issues with allergies, but also we inherit trauma. 

So within the body, if we don't process trauma within one lifetime or previous generations, it does exist and affect us on a lung level and a mind level where the body actually stores grief. So grief actually, of course, if it's suppressed or unprocessed, will land as depression eventually. So when we're thinking about depression, we're thinking about suppression. 

I always think of the word, what has that person suppressed when they become depressed? Because it's something, you know, the human spirit, we all work hard to stay upbeat, we all try to be optimistic. But there are certain things if we don't process our emotions, and if the diet is not supporting us, that leaves us low in certain amino acids, for example, which feeds into serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, etc. So we're going to talk a little bit about diet first. 

Before I do that, I want to really look at and remind you that in order to heal, we have to get to the root of the issue. So when people go down the medical route for treating depression, that might be right in that moment, maybe it's a severe case of mental health crisis, and it's a way of, you know, sort of supporting the body short term. But whilst that's happening, underneath that is something that needs to heal. 

So sometimes the medication supports someone while they're getting to the root of the issue. It really is only meant to be a short term plan rather than a long term plan, because that can then lead to suppression. And then the person then, when they try to come off that medication, they might find they end up feeling the same emotions that they started with when they went down to that. 

So it's important to recognise, okay, some people do need medication in a crisis. But actually, even on medication, you can be doing the underlying work within the diet, supplementation, lifestyle changes to be able to eventually, if you decide to come off medication with the help of the GP, you might find that, well, you will find that actually it's an easier process to be able to do that gradually, and to be able to then feel the support from your natural health regime. So when we're looking at gut health, there are certain foods that are really challenging to the bowel. 

And we know that processed gluten is, you know, processed carbohydrates, white carbohydrates, also foods that have high sugar, high yeast content, foods that are actually destroying the gut bacteria. Even some of the drinks that we consume, caffeine, alcohol, acidic coffee, you know, coffee that's highly processed, instant coffee. So all these things affect our gut health. 

But actually, if we are low in good bacterias within our diet, so if we're not bringing in live food, for example, fermented foods, kefir, fermented sauerkraut, these types of high energy superfoods, we can find ourselves always at a deficit. So therefore, the mood will be sometimes being affected by your diet day to day. So it's interesting that we can relate some of the good bacterias to mood and certain positive emotions, and some of the bad bacterias to feeling low in mood, some of the lower vibrational energy, sadness, you know, anger, feelings of distress, etc. 

So the cleaner we eat, and the more bacteria present, that's of a positive bacteria, there's a greater chance to actually lift to lift the mood and produce some of those positive emotions. So we can do quite a bit of work with diet through detoxification of the bowel, through naturopathic techniques, such as colonics, enemas. But also the diet, you do need fibre in the diet, you do need to have, you know, good amount of good quality carbs, things like brown rice, if you're able to tolerate it, not quinoa, maybe the seed grains, a good amount of vegetable content. 

I noticed these days, people just don't eat enough vegetables. So you know, having vegetables twice a day minimum, and trying to bring vegetables even into the morning with the juice, a smoothie, to be able to get that fibre quantity, but also all those minerals that regulate our mood and our like, and our energy, basically. So we, it's easy to think, oh, you know, let's reach for the probiotics here. 

But actually, prebiotic rich foods, your sauerkraut, your beetroot grated, your grated carrots, your artichokes, you know, they're really, really helpful. And to think vegetable content, when we're thinking about prebiotics, probiotics, of course, would be your fermented foods. So there's various strains of probiotics within the range of fermented foods, if you're eating live foods, that has a profound effect on how you feel within your mood and actually lays the foundation for absorption of other nutrients, which we're going to talk about shortly. 

So for mental health, we are talking really about the balance of the mind. So sometimes, you know, lifestyle habits are going to be really essential as well. So you could have the perfect diet, but if you're not, if you're running on stress and cortisol, that would really affect your mental health. 

So factoring in nature, you know, being out in nature, nature walks, exercise, light, peace, yoga, some of these factors, some of these things will just help to give you a strength within the nervous system that gives you another layer of protection in energy. Grounding and being with the right type of connections. So community, community friendships, sharing, like-minded people, having an exercise regime, having a meditation regime, having enough oxygen and light within the day. 

And these are all things that really help this area of our life. We could also use flower MDs to support the emotions. We could use homoeopathy if we felt inclined, if we had the right advice there. 

So there's many ways of supporting ourselves without having to go down the medication route. The supplementation, there are key things that turn people around really quickly when they're in a crisis or when they're in a mental health deficit then. And I'd like to say, you know, rather than say mental distress, I'd like to use the word deficiency. 

So mental deficiencies, you know, when we suddenly feel low or, you know, maybe nothing's happened to us externally, but we suddenly hit a low point and, you know, symptoms flare up, you know, certain times of the year, for example, when there's the darker months. And in those cases, there are key supplements that completely turn people around so quickly that I always find that, you know, it's so powerful. People can be doing lots of counselling, psychotherapy, and that does really help.

If they're nutritionally deficient in key nutrients, then that's going to have a profound effect on how they're feeling and how they support themselves daily. So the key ones which, you know, come up for everyone in this stage are omega-3. So omega-3 brings light to the body, it helps with the neurotransmitters and particularly serotonin. 

And in the form of EPA and DHA, which is the form that comes from fish or algae. So anything from 500 to 1000 a day really supports the brain. And without that, actually people crave more fat than they need, more sugar than they need, more carbohydrate than they need. 

So it was really, really essential to keep those omega-3s, especially EPA and DHA going during the autumn and winter months, particularly when there's low mood. The B-complex is really essential, it regulates the nervous system with a big emphasis on vitamin B3. Vitamin B3 is the non-flush niacinamide, which is a form of B3 that really supports the nervous system. 

So that really is a powerful one for the mood. And alongside that, B12 and B6. So when someone is supporting with a B-complex, there's an emphasis on those three B vitamins. 

So B3 helps with the nervous system, B6 helps with the utilisation of zinc. Zinc is really important for the hormones in the nervous system. And B12 gets the oxygen to the brain. 

So sometimes if we're not oxygenating enough, we can feel low in mood and that really affects the way we think and feel. So the B-complex, really, really important. And then once the B's are in place, the magnesium and zinc, crucial for regulation of the mood, as well as vitamin D. So vitamin D is a building block for the hormone system. 

And when it goes darker, the weather changes, we don't get as much light. But if we don't have enough vitamin D stored in the body, which is stored in fat cells, it really affects the way that we feel and think and our mood. And we all know we'll feel better when it's sunnier, you know, when we have more light. 

And it could be a lifestyle habit as well, that you work indoors, you're in front of a computer, maybe you're not having natural light for large periods of time, because maybe you're caring for someone else or you're in an office, etc. So in those cases, you need to really supplement with vitamin D and to really think 3,000 to 5,000 international units a day with vitamin K in that. So that really is the building blocks. 

And then we can go to herbs. So if you're on medication, there are certain herbs that you can't prescribe alongside your medication, such as an antidepressant. St. John's Wort is a popular herb for boosting the mood and dealing with anxiety. 

But it does interact with medications that would be contraindicated if you're on antidepressants. There are other herbs that can be helpful in this situation. Passionflower, Holy Basil, sometimes known as Tulsi, very, very good for supporting the mind. 

Also the herb skullcap, skullcap is amazing for the nervous system. So you could have tincture or teas in these forms. Ashwagandha is a really great mood booster for helping you to really support your nervous system in tea form or tincture form. 

You could also go to CBD. CBD, generally, if we take it in the morning, will work on the serotonin cycle. If we take it in the evening, it works on the melatonin cycle. 

So it will have a different effect different times of the day. Generally, what you get in the health food shop is a 10% CBD. Doctors now can prescribe it. 

So it is a prescriptional medication that you can ask for. And it's generally very good for stress, very good for anxiety. If you take it in the morning, it's great for mood. 

Sometimes your GP will prescribe it. For some people, if they're in pain alongside low mood, they may need to go higher with the dosage so you can get 20%, 50% CBD. But I generally say start off with the 10% and see what that feels like in the body and then increase dosages as and when you need it.

And you may need the guidance of a GP there in terms of prescription. So it is there available. People often don't know that they can ask for it. 

So it's possible to have that discussion with your medic if you wanted to. So CBD is really very powerful. No THC in there.

So it's working on serotonin, melatonin, inflammation. Well, sometimes low mood can be inflammation of the brain. And so when we're thinking about our mood and our balance of brain health, we're thinking about inflammation on a gut level as well. 

So a low inflammatory diet. So how that looks is, you're avoiding your gluten, no grain ideally, no white potato, taking out foods that are highly processed. So that would mean no pasteurised dairy, no white sugar. 

That reduces the inflammation at a gut health level, which then will have a effect on your brain health. So go to the herbs. There are herbs. 

You can still use a medication, check it out to the naturopath. You can always get in touch. You can check it out with your GP or a pharmacist if you are on medication to be sure that what you're doing is supporting you alongside what you're doing if you are on medication. 

But if you're not on medication, you can really work with amino acids, for example, 5-HTP, which is a supplement which feeds into the serotonin cycle. 5-HTP is an amino acid which regulates the mood and sleep balance. So on average, people take 50 to 100 milligrammes of 5-HTP in the evening. 

That is one that you can't combine with antidepressants. So that could be something you could reach to if you want to do instead of medication. So there's amino acid complexes out there which regulate the nervous system. 

There's a really nice writer on the subject who's well-researched called Julia Ross, and she's written a book called The Mood Cure, where you can actually do a survey and work out which amino acids you're deficient in, what gives you a clue really of your body type and where you're at on a mental health level. So she's a nice writer, and you can do some research and have a look at that, or book a consultation with myself and come along and have a session on Zoom or one-to-one, and we can go through the process of what you need in order to regulate your mental health. So moving on to naturopathic techniques.

Naturopathic techniques are so crucial because the more your body detoxifies, more easily you're detoxifying, the better you feel generally. So creating movement in the body, movement through exercise, saunas, potentially colonics if you needed them to get the toxicity moving. And also really, as I said, getting the movement happening because the more you move, the more oxygenation in the body. 

So usually when there's low mood, there's low oxygenation and there's sluggish pathways in regards to your detoxification pathways, liver, colon, etc. And so that is something that can make a big difference exercising the movement and naturopathic techniques in any situation where there's mood disorders and low mood. And as I said, working really with the principle that potentially these deficiencies can have a huge impact once you correct long-term deficiencies such as chronic B vitamin deficiency.

People turn around their mental health quite quickly if they're prone to deficiencies, and that runs through family histories. So mental health is not just a psychological issue, it's chronic deficiencies that can happen over many generations. And of course, sometimes there has been, as I talked about, suppressed trauma. 

And so alongside the naturopathic work, having therapy can really make a difference. But therapy alone without the nutritional support only gets people so far. So it's a combined approach where you might choose a therapy that supports you and then combining the naturopathy and nutritional therapy alongside that to be able to heal and get over any long-term issues. 

But I think that often people go to therapy before they go down the nutritional route. And I think you actually need to be quite strong for therapy mentally because talking through things that maybe have been traumatic, going over issues that may have caused difficulties previously, if you're nutritionally deficient and you feel weaker in the body, it's harder to cope in those situations. So I like to help people really with the building blocks for the nervous system to be able to allow them to feel like they're ready and up for therapy to be able to then, you know, be able to process easily whatever is needed to be processed in the body. 

Because often I use the analogy, if someone has therapy and they haven't detoxified the body or healed and corrected these deficiencies, it's a little bit like cleaning one room in the house and moving all the junk into another room. So it sort of goes away for a while. You can revisit it at another time. 

You just need a trigger or something, you know, stressful to happen and things come right back up. Whereas if you release things on a cellular level and you correct the nervous system, you reset the nervous system, then basically then it has, you have better chance then of healing longer term and not coming up against that obstacle again in the future. So as I said, therapy is amazing. 

It's just using it alongside the nutritional support and really making sure your brain is hydrated because the brain is made up of mostly water and fat. So if we are dehydrated and fat deficient, the brain actually can shrink and, you know, it becomes difficult then to process information, difficult to think clearly, difficult to regulate the mood. And so first stages of treatments are always deeply hydrating on a much deeper level, cellular level, working with essential fatty acids, particularly omega-3, bringing more energy to the body through the B vitamins and healing the gut, which heals the brain-gut access. 

So you'll have that direct connection, then at gut level to brain level, which I think we all know if we do a detox, you feel great in your mind for a while, but maybe some people introduced the wrong foods back in. So then they're back in that sort of low mood cycle. So it was quite nice also to identify food intolerances and to get an idea through either hair analysis or through food intolerance testing or kinesiology, for example, understanding what the food intolerances are, because taking out those foods will actually improve the gut health and improve the mood.

And it's then that you heal the gut with the natural probiotics and the probiotic-rich foods, the live foods, because if we continue to eat foods that are upsetting the system and causing inflammation, the good bacteria doesn't do that much. It's actually sort of landing in a space which is conflicting within the body. So the cleanup of diet before we introduce those healthy bacterias has a very, very profound effect. 

And detoxification and rebuilding in that order really is very powerful when we're thinking about mental health. So just going to recap, working with diet, hydration, fatty acids, increasing your protein over carbohydrate, ideally going grain-free if there's a case where you're having an acute or chronic crisis in this area, working with B-complex with an emphasis on B3, B6, and B12, omega-3, especially DHA and EPA, working with magnesium and zinc, vitamin D. And then that leads into the herbal tonics. So you might choose one or two of those tonics in tea for more tincture. 

So that could be St. John's water if you're not on medication. If you are on medication, ashwagandha is safe, holy basil, which is Tulsi. You can also go to skullcap, lemon balm, also for support for the nervous system, passionflower. 

And then leading into a dressing, maybe if you're amino acid deficient, that will affect how you utilise protein and that will affect how well your neurotransmitters function and fire up. So have a little look at Julia Ross's work, The Mood Cure, and address amino acid deficiency, potentially using 5-HTP if you're not on medication, and potentially working with amino acid complex if you notice there's a number of deficiencies. And that sometimes happens with vegetarians and vegans where they might have become amino acid deficient over time and they haven't realised it. 

Or it can even happen to people who eat a meat-based diet. It's sometimes based on lifestyle and quality of food as well. So ideally going organic and thinking about protein, including plant protein in the diet as well as animal protein if you use animal protein.

So finding a balance between the proteins and ideally more vegetarian sources over animal sources. And then naturopathic techniques. So get that movement in, find exercise that you really love. 

Get out in nature, make it a habit. Be in light, in the light. Even on a cold winter's day, we need light. 

And if we don't get it, we have to mimic it with red light therapy or broad spectrum light within our homes. And of course, oxygenation. So oxygen feeds the brain.

And so if we build in exercise, breath work, yoga practise, that has a very big effect on how we feel on a mental health level. So I'm going to stop there and go to questions. If you need me, my details are on the video here 07854425930. 

You can always email me as well. Hello, it's schoolandnaturopathicnutrition.com. And I will see you soon. Thank you.