Gut-Brain Connection: Why Anxiety May Not Be the Real Diagnosis

If anxiety, OCD, or brain fog have felt like permanent diagnoses, functional medicine practitioner Dr. Jess Armine has a different explanation, and it starts in your gut.

Dr. Armine and I are talking about how your gut, immune system, and nervous system are in constant conversation, and what happens to your mental health when that communication breaks down. If you have been told your symptoms are just anxiety and handed a prescription, this episode gives you the language to ask better questions at your next appointment.

For anyone who has ever felt like the diagnosis they were given was a dead end rather than an answer.

CHAPTERS

3:30 Anxiety vs Root Cause

7:10 The Sore Throat and Strep Throat Analogy

12:45 Understanding the Gut-Brain Axis

18:20 Microbiome Imbalance, Inflammation, and Mental Health

24:00 Testing, and Nutrient Absorption

30:10 Somatic Therapy and Nervous System Regulation

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Transcript

Symptoms Versus Real Diagnoses

Speaker 1 0:00

The diagnoses of mental health, uh anxiety, OCD, ADD, and so forth are not actually diagnoses. They're a list of symptoms. A diagnosis should point to a root cause. For instance, if you have a sore throat, that's a symptom. If you have strep throat, now I know why you have the sore throat. If you have anxiety, you're not telling me why. You're telling me that you have excitation or you're having an uncomfortable feeling. Now, there are lots of reasons for anxiety. One of the major ones is coming from the gut, and it's been over the past ten years the recognition of the relationship between the brain and the gut. Hence a lot of issues, especially with chronic inflammation or any chronic illness. The gut is either a major factor or at least one of the contributing factors.

Show Mission And Guest Welcome

Dr. Jess’s Path Into Functional Care

Speaker 0:40

Welcome to the New Normal Big Life Podcast. We bring you natural and integrative health information and stories about nature that we hope will inspire you to get outside an adventure, along with a step-by-step plan to help you practice what you've learned to create your own new normal and live the biggest life you can dream. I'm your host, Antoinette Berafato, the wellness warrior. Let's get into today's topic. Welcome to New Normal Big Life, Dr. Jess. Why don't you tell us who you are, what you do, and the one big idea you want us to remember from the expertise you'll share today.

Speaker 1 1:13

Thank you for having me. Appreciate this opportunity to speak to your audience. I have been a healthcare provider in one form or another for the past 50 years. I started in New York City as an EMT, became one of the first paramedics there. Beyond that, I went to College for Nursing and got my RN and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and I spent four years in the military as an army nurse. And then I decided to go to medical school. And finding that most medical doctors didn't like what they did, I've met a bunch of chiropractors and they loved what they did. And so I went to chiropractic school and graduated in 1986. For the first several years, I practiced your standard chiropractic. But beyond that, I started getting an interest in the wider view of alternative medicine. And one of my sons developed a mental illness and the medications were destroying him. So I launched into a very extensive amount of education. As a result of that, and he's doing incredibly well. He's now 38. He's a graphic artist and has full-time work and one of the most intelligent men I've ever met. But I also learned an awful lot of things that to help himself. I was on the forefront of the genetic, the genetic craze that we have now. I wrote some of the programs for it. The first one certified in a subspecialty called neuroendoimmunology, which I'll talk about a little bit today. Mitochondrial dysfunction, cell membrane integrity. And as a result of that, I've written scientific papers. So if the one big thing I want people to take away from this is that chronic illness is not permanent. There are things you can do and considerations you can have that will not only improve it, but maybe cure it, depending on what the exact thing is. Chronic illness is not necessarily a life sentence.

Why Anxiety Can Be Physiological

Speaker 2:49

Wow, that's impactful. And this is going to be a three-part series with Dr. Jess. So I hope you'll listen to all three. So let's talk about how most people treat anxiety and depression as a brain problem, but you're treating it as a different sort of problem, as a gut problem. Can you explain what the gut-brain connection actually means and what that changes for health care?

Speaker 1 3:16

Let me first say that the care of mental health is incomplete. The diagnoses of mental health, anxiety, OCD, ADD, and so forth are not actually diagnoses. They're a list of symptoms. A diagnosis should point to a root cause. For instance, if you have a sore throat, that's a symptom. If you have strep throat, now I know why you have the sore throat. If you have anxiety, you're not telling me why. You're telling me that you have excitation or you're having an uncomfortable feeling, you know, heart racing, and you're jumping around a lot. Situational anxiety, you break up with a significant other stress at work, is understandable and appropriate. But anxiety for no reason that you kind of live with, I call it endogenous. And since we're not getting simple from the psychiatric profession, as it being a physiological problem, is normally treated with things like benzodiazepines and stuff like that, which is only compensating for it. Now, there are lots of reasons for anxiety. One of the major ones is coming from the gut, and it's been over the past 10 years the recognition of the relationship between the brain and the gut. Hence, a lot of issues, especially with chronic inflammation or any chronic illness, the gut is either a major factor or at least one of the contributing factors.

Gut Signaling And Neuroimmune Crosstalk

Speaker 4:24

So, Dr. Jess, walk me through what's happening in the body. How does something going wrong in your gut, like an imbalance of your microbiome, the good versus bad bacteria, end up causing brain fog, mood swings, or even ADHD-like symptoms?

Microbiome Basics And Leaky Gut

Speaker 1 4:38

Okay, so I talked about neuroendommunology. Okay, what that is is the relationship between the nervous system, the hormone system, and your immune system. Simply put, your brain puts out neurotransmitters, things like serotonin and stuff, and it's got the receptors for that. Your hormones put out hormones, they have the receptors for that. The immune system puts out things, cytokines, chemicals, don't worry about it. When I say big words, ignore them because I'm going to explain it anyway. But each of those systems have the receptors for each other system. So they're constantly in conversation. Constantly. Gut dysfunction comes from several things. Leaky gut syndrome. What that means is that there's openings in the gut where antigens can get through and your immune system acts upon them, creates antibodies. And other things, it's inflammation. Inflammation, chronic inflammation, is the root reason for many illnesses, depending on your genetic predispositions. Specifically for mood problems or brain problems, the body communicates by signaling. Okay? You don't have to know the exact things. What you have to realize is that it's signaling. It's not only signaling from the immune system to the endocrinal hormone system, it's signaling to the brain and back. This signaling can get messed up and that causes dysfunction in that other system. I gave a lecture on in the Ultimate Hormones Conference on what do you do when you're doing everything right, but it's not working? Where else do you look? One of the major places was the gut for those two reasons. Now, the microbiome itself does its own signal, and normal microbiome balance will signal the way that we are used to since time immemorial, and it helps balance the brain chemicals. Whereas an altered microbiome is going to give you altered signaling and it's going to mess up the brain neurotransmitter balance. So you combine the chronic inflammation that's building up from the leaky gut syndrome and the various signaling that happens directly, if we're just talking gut brain, you can see why an increase in one creates more dysfunction in the other. It's literally as simple as that. When you realize that, now you have a possible reason, physiological reason for the way you feel, be it anxiety, be it depression, be it whatever. Either as a primary reason or at least a very big contributor, but it's something you can work with as opposed to this is my life.

Speaker 6:55

So, Dr. Jess, for those unfamiliar, can you explain what the microbiome is?

Speaker 1 7:00

Microbiome is a fancy word. When you take probiotics, lactobacillus, all those guys, all those fancy little microbes that you put in your body to balance it sit in your gut. And there's lots of names for them. You can separate them out, and believe it or not, it covers the entirety of the inside of your gut. Very crowded in there. Okay. And the way it balances itself is they don't let anybody else in. But between stress, physical, emotional, spiritual toxins, microbes, and so forth, it tends to kill off some of those guys. Okay. And then an imbalance occurs. Maybe candida comes in. It's like a weed fills in the blanks.

Speaker 7:35

There's an overgrowth of yeast. So the immune piece to the gut-brain connection, it's what most people miss. So how does gut permeability or what some people call leaky gut trigger an immune response that travels all the way up to your brain?

Speaker 1 7:50

The immune response is literally the inflammation. The immune response means that the antigens, the bad guys, like have the opportunity to get past the gut barrier, the cells and the mucus layer. The body recognizes that as the enemy. So the way that it takes care of it is to create antibodies or things that will literally tie it up like hog tie it. Now, the more that that happens, your body develops these things called memory cells so that you react quicker. Now, normally this is a good thing, because any bad guys that get in, which does happen occasionally, they take care of it. But when it happens more consistently and quickly and with a bigger response, those antibodies create actually equal inflammation. And it's the inflammation that's coming from, which is from the immune system, from that antigen antibody reaction, that engenders illness, a chronic illness. That's where you get autoimmune diseases, where you get mood disorders, that's where you get almost anything that is a chronic illness, and that includes what's going on in the brain, that's the reason for it, and that's the immune brain connection. It has goes all through inflammation.

Speaker 8:55

So, what kinds of symptoms would a person feel if they're having a leaky gut? And is it different at different stages? So, for example, would an adult feel something different from a child, or would a senior experience a whole nother set of symptoms?

Speaker 1 9:12

A super good question. Let me answer it in this way. This is gonna sound really trite, but anybody with a chronic illness should assume they have leaky gut. Define a chronic illness. Autism is a chronic illness. If you have an ADD child or ADHD child, chronic illness, you should assume it. Why? Because the treatment for it is very benign, there's no risk. But if it's there, if it's there and you don't treat it, you're allowing chronic inflammation to build. What does it feel like? The difficult thing about leaky gut is not it doesn't often show up as gut symptoms. Often it does, but not all the time. So if you have any kind of alteration, chronic diarrhea, chronic pain in your gut, a portion of that is going to be leaky gut. There may be a primary problem like H. pylori or you know ulcerative colitis or whatever, or bad gluten intolerance, which, you know, when it gets to gluten allergy, that's gets tough. But um it's not always gut problems. But if there is a chronic gut problem, obviously you should be thinking about the treatment for leaky gut because it also treats that. Any kind of disorder that you have that does not have a proximal cause. How do mothers know this? Well, they have an ADD child or an autistic child, and they're going here, there, and everywhere, and it's just not getting better. They treat it with medications, they treat it with herbs, they treat it with various single therapies, and and nothing sticks, if you will. Part of that, a good part of it, is the leaky gut that's creating the inflammation, which is also neural inflammation, that's giving rise to those symptoms. Is it total? Sometimes it is, but most times it's not. It's a part of what's going on, a good part, and it's something that if you treat it, improves the condition significantly. In a senior, all those aches and pains, all the arthritic problems, even rheumatoid, are all chronic inflammation based. And after you've lived a certain time of your life, I'm sure you've been exposed to a bunch of different things that would have created leaky gut, and you can decrease that inflammation, you can have better lifestyle. Your joints do not have to ache, but if you have bad joints, you can tell you can be hired out as a weather indicator because you're gonna know what's happening way before it happens. But you don't have to live like that. It's not your lot in life. If you treat the leaky gut, you will probably take care of a goodly portion of it. Yes, it's not gonna bring the cartilage back, but it will stop the process, which believe it or not, can decrease pain by 50, 80 percent. In other people, it's almost entirely there's no one thing. Unexplained symptoms that you've thoroughly checked with your physicians and so forth. At least consider that leaky gut is there.

Testing Markers And Root Causes

Speaker 12:03

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Speaker 1 14:04

Usually do at least an organic acid test. And those markers in an organic acid test will tell me if there's presence of candida, bacteria, clostridia. It tells me about the entire energy creation system, which is vital for any kind of healing. It'll also tell me the uh balance of the acidity in the body, it will tell me whether you're utilizing your antioxidants correctly, it'll tell me how what your balance of your vitamins and minerals are, it will tell me if you're absorbing, breaking down your proteins and absorbing. Those are the things that I can glean. Okay, I don't have to have a million tests. There are a lot of doctors that do a lot of tests. But sometimes when you're looking for something and you know, like a like I I saw this in a movie, if there's a wedding and you don't know where the wedding is, well then you look for the people delivering flowers or the baker. I can extrapolate from what I'm reading as to the causations. And leaky gut is a biggie because it creates inflammation, which creates those dysfunctions. So the more dysfunctions I see, the probability of leaky gut is much higher. I can also target areas like if you have chronic fatigue and your glycolysis, Krebs cycle, and stuff that kind of stuff is very dysfunctional, then I've got a target to work with that I can look at somebody in the face and say, Yes, this is gonna work. You can your your energy is going to improve. But if the inflammation continues, as much as if the root causes continue, exposure to the toxins, mold, anything else, what's gonna happen is it's gonna keep coming back. So also when I treat it, if it doesn't last very long in I haven't already looked for an area, I start looking real, real close because I like to treat the whole person.

Speaker 15:50

And why doesn't a person's general practitioner or even all of the specialists that they're going to pick up on this gut-brain connection?

Speaker 1 15:58

I will tell you they're beginning to. I I've been invited to lecture family physicians, I already lecture other MDs, I teach a functional medicine course, and I'm I'm really well known for making complex things simple. And by the way, those doctors need everything simple. They're not stupid by any means. They've gone through medical school and that it's a thought pattern, it's a thought paradigm. For instance, they treat on an acute care model, which means that they look for a root cause and they presume that the body will take care of itself. When the condition gets chronic, certain amount of things have happened, certain dysfunctions that are based on a lack of things in the biochemical pathways, a lack of the ability to break down foods to the pieces that you need that your body will rebuild are not on the radar. So the body won't take care of itself even though you've taken care of them with causes like Lyme disease or yeast or whatever it happens to be. And so the treatment of a chronic illness is much different than the treatment of an acute illness. You have to treat from both ends, from the causation end and the result of the causation. Why don't they do that? Well, a couple of reasons. They're not trained that way. Again, they're not stupid. I never yell at somebody who works within the parameters of the training. They're looking for different things than I'm looking for. They may be looking at celiac disease as being the only gluten-related gut problem. Yes, it is a gluten-related gut problem, but I look at gluten intolerances and things that don't affect the gut. It took a very long time for traditional medicine to acknowledge non-gut-related gluten intolerances as being a causation. Of course, they treat it by diet. They don't treat leaky gut because they don't believe that leaky gut exists. If you think that autoimmune diseases have no reason, if you think that autism or any of the neuropsychiatric diagnoses don't have a root cause, you're not going to look at it.

Speaker 17:57

And when you talk about chronic versus acute, can you explain the difference between the two for those unfamiliar?

Simple Steps To Start This Week

Speaker 1 18:05

An acute problem would be like a strep throat, a type of illness at its beginning. Usually fairly easy treatable, urinary tract infections, throat infections, and things like that. So usually that's very easily recognizable. And when you go to your medical doctor, what they do first is say, you listen to you, obviously, and they look for anything that is really bad. They make sure that doesn't exist first, and they come down to the conclusion, okay, it's this, and they treat it. Antibiotics, whatever it happens to be. And it resolves very quickly. There are reasons for this. But when there's multiple root causes or ongoing root causes, like living in a moldy house or working in a moldy office, it's different. You do have to get rid of the root causes, but after a little while, you need to take care of what those root causes did to the body. Since that's not on the radar, okay, I'm not going to look for it.

Speaker 18:56

So just to recap, someone's sitting at home and they're thinking, well, you know, maybe my problem is related to my gut and they're struggling with their mental health. What are the two to three most impactful things they can do this week to start shifting that gut-brain connection?

Somatic Work That Still Doesn’t Stick

Speaker 1 19:13

You know, one of the reasons that this is difficult to treat, even with alternative practitioners, is the treatment is so simplistic. One, you have to think about the fact that the gut brain axis and leaky gut exists. And you say to yourself, hey, I'm going to try it. Two, one of the things that you have to do almost all the time is replace the mucus layer. That's done with different fibers. And I looked into fibers, and there are people who do that and they get bloating and so forth. One that has the least reactivity and is still incredibly good at doing this is acacia powder. That is for the ultrasensitive stomachs. So it's good for everybody. You know, you just get that, you put one or two scoops in water, and what that does is replace the first layer of protection. That's where your microbiome lives and eats, and that's where those antigens get trapped, and the immune system ties them up rather than reacting to them. Treating leaky gut takes a lot more other stuff than that, but also, and this is something for everybody, so listen close. Our bodies need vitamins and minerals for their biochemical processes, otherwise, things don't work. We take multivitamins, but nobody talks about absorption. Do they get it? Bioavailability. Exactly. Remember, medications they have to prove bioavailability before the legal approve them, but the supplement companies don't have to prove it. So they can put almost anything in any form. Not that you do this on purpose, but they do it based on price. In any form, and they're not lying to you. Think about it. When you take a vitamin, it goes down into your stomach, it's got to break apart, then it gets absorbed, and then it goes through the liver a couple times, gets released in circulation, and then it's got to get to the cells somehow or another. If you look for the word liposomal, L-I-P-O-S-O-M-A-L, and there are good liposomal vitamins almost anywhere you can get them. Okay, Amazon's a lot of different places. Here's the thing liposomal vitamins get directly into the cells. They absorb through the mucous membranes and get directly into the cells. So absorption, that's the best absorption, almost like an an intravenous. There are now dry liposomes or in capsules. I happen to know the scientists who created the process. Used to be only liquids, but now the dry liposomes absolutely work. And I've proved it by like like blood cell analysis. And since several companies are making them, the price has come down to a reasonable level. That is something you can do for yourself no matter what you have, even if you're healthy and you want your body to work optimally. So liposomal vitamins and just replacing the mucus layer is a good first step. And also realizing that this may be an issue. If that little stuff starts to help, then you should access a practitioner who really knows how to treat this and complete the process, which is only a matter of using digestive enzymes to break down your foods and getting some substances, either glutamine and butyrate to help the cells heal, and maybe re-establishing the microbiome with certain types of probiotics that are not fancy, but they work.

Speaker 22:21

So for men and women who are already doing somatic healing work or nervous system regulation, how does gut health either support or sabotage those efforts? It supports it. Are those two systems in a feedback loop?

Speaker 1 22:34

Everything's in a feedback loop. Everything's interconnected. Think of your body as a big webby thing, okay? If you put it on a bicycle wheel and spin it, as long as it spins good, dysfunction in one or more areas will cause it to wobble. That's the biggest problem with people like methylation practitioners. People who practice a certain thing, they look at it like a rabbit going down a rabbit hole. Okay? By the way, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you treat the whole body, which is to say give it generally what it needs and let it figure it out, it will take care of all those interacting biochemical processes and these feedback loops. So if you're doing somatic therapy of whatever ilk and you're still having some issues, sometimes somatic therapy is is the you know the last thing that you need because you've done everything else and it's not working. That's what you do. Great, wonderful. I have a lot of people who do a lot of spiritual work and somatic therapy, and that's all they're doing, and they're wondering why it's not working. So I look more physiologically. Okay. If you're doing this kind of work and you're not getting where you want to go, and you're constantly struggling, like if you stop, things keep coming back, consider the gut. Since that's the usual suspect.

Speaker 23:45

And for listeners who are not familiar with somatic therapy, can you give them a few more examples of what that might look like?

Speaker 1 23:52

Well, energy therapy, like Reiki, GCOM, other somatic therapies that just doesn't come to mind at the moment. Help me.

Speaker 23:58

Anything that basically balances the nervous system or resets the nervous system, right?

When Stimulants Make Kids Worse

Speaker 1 24:03

Brain balance, exercise certain exercises, you know, cross-crawling, things that are geared towards balancing the nervous system, often balancing the spirit, acupuncture, stuff like that. Here's the thing: anything that looks to balance you, either from the chakra system or the acupuncture meridians, or by exercise, trying to balance your nervousism, works pretty good, except if it doesn't stick. And this is anything you're doing. Okay, you're taking medications, and you know, you have ADD, you have an ADD child, and they're taking things like Adderl. And they're good when they're on the medicine, but as soon as it wears off, they're off to the races again. There's reasons for that. Okay, there's reasons why those medicines are actually horrible for somebody and make the back of the kid's head blow off.

Speaker 24:46

What do you mean by that? You said it makes the back of the kid's head blow off. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 24:51

That's an expression I like to use. Okay. Attention deficit disorder is either a lack of certain neurotransmitters, which if you take those medicines that stimulate the adrenal gland will help them while the medicines affect. And if they have neural inflammation from some type of chronic illness, parasites, viruses, and so forth, and there's a lot of inflammation up there, and their mind's racing so fast that they can't pay attention, and you give them something that increases that, it makes them much, much worse. And I term that, and I like to make my patients laugh, okay, by blowing by blowing the back of their head off because there's just so much stimulation going on. And that difference tells me what the target. If it's the neurotransmitters, I know what supplements to give them to build those. If it's the latter, then I know I gotta treat leaky gut because I gotta cut down that inflammation.

Key Takeaways And Gaslighting Talk

Speaker 25:41

So, what more would you like to leave listeners with? This has been such an insightful conversation.

Speaker 1 25:46

Thank you. If this episode helped you, number one, you should subscribe to this channel, okay? And you see chronic illnesses, I hope you see it in a completely different way. Share with somebody who's struggling, because once you understand the why of something, everything starts changing. Even if you've been told there's no reason, there's probably a reason. It's probably a reason. So put in the back of your brain, let it percolate for a while, let it stay with you. If your intuition says, hey, there's something, especially a mother who has this intuitive sense that something's going on and nobody's listening, there is something going on. The powers that be in the universe gave mothers an intuitive sense that is almost infallible. But we've put them into a society that disparages that, causing them to take care of their children by trying to out-research and use the medical research to out-research their physicians, and it creates conflict. Physicians should listen to mothers more. By the way, the one phrase that'll get you kicked out of my course is that can't happen.

Speaker 26:47

One of the reasons that patients feel gaslit by their doctors is because they often say that doesn't happen in the United States, for example. For example, when I had listeria, I was told by doctors and specialists, you can't get listeria in the U.S., it doesn't happen. And then later, because it went untreated, I developed listeriosis. So yes, when a doctor tells me that doesn't happen, I know they're gaslighting me.

Speaker 1 27:17

They are. And sadly, they're not purposely gaslighting you. They really believe it doesn't happen. If you haven't been trained to say, I wonder why that happened, okay, and you've been told, absolutely, that can't happen. Now, I've built my entire practice around taking care of complex multifactorial illnesses that have not seen success elsewhere. I developed a manner of thinking, which I call bioindividualized medicine when I'm teaching, that looks at the genetics that and I listen very much. I take a very long history and I find out where the issues are, regardless of the relative efficacy of it. Because Sherlock Holmes always said, when you rule out the impossible, whatever's left, however improbable, must be the truth. So guess what? Things just don't happen for no reason. Autoimmune diseases don't happen because of genetic predisposition. They happen because what's creating the ox what creates the oxidative stress that causes your genetic predispositions to occur. If it were genetic, it'd be it it would be there when you were a baby. Why isn't it?

How To Find Dr. Jess

Speaker 28:25

Right. And for listeners, genes exist and they can either be turned on or turned off. So just because you have a gene, you carry a gene that you inherited from your family, your ancestors, doesn't mean you're going to develop that illness. For example, my father developed Alzheimer's and his twin brother did not. His sister lived to be a 106, she never developed dementia, Alzheimer's, or Alzheimer's or any cognitive decline. Exactly. Exactly. So, Dr. Jess, how can listeners find you and connect with you? And if they're looking for a practitioner, how can they become a patient?

Speaker 1 29:09

Well, my Instagram is Dr. JessArmine724. My YouTube channel's got a ton of videos I've done over the years, and that's just Dr. Jess Armine. And if you will want to know a little bit more about me, you can go to drjessarmine.com. And on the bottom left-hand side, you'll see get acquainted. So if you wanted to talk to me and see if I can help you, you hit that button and schedule a free half 30-minute consultation. And what we're going to do there is talk about what's going on and see if we get along. And this way, in this way, I can let you know in no uncertain terms if I can help you. If I can't, I'll let you know that too, because I'm not going to lie to anybody. I take a very limited amount of cases because I spend so much time on them. But that would be a way of us interacting to see also if we get along. I mean, you like to feel good with your doctor, okay? And yes, I'm jovial all the time, people, so I treat disease as a bully, which you either punch it in the nose or you laugh at it to take away its power, you know, and I like to laugh at it. And when you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, which is what I practice, I can tell you to stay away from those doctors who insist that you get a significant amount of lab tests before you see them. That is not good practice, and it's a practice management technique. If you spend all this money on labs, because everybody wants tests, then you're going to follow whatever because you spent, you've made an investment. I interview people, I review old lab tests before I even think about more lab tests because sometimes all those questions are answered. Many times it is. So be careful.

Speaker 30:40

Thank you so much for joining us, and I hope, wellness worries, you'll come back for part two and three of this discussion.

Speaker 1 30:49

Thank you so much. The information in this podcast is not medical advice and should not be treated as such. Always consult your physician or healthcare professional before pursuing any health related procedure or activity.