Episode 231: Unlocking the Power of Neurotransmitters: The Key to Better Health and Wellness

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Dr. Deb 1:20Welcome to Let’s Talk wellness now, the podcast where we uncover the latest trends, tools and tips to empower you to take charge of your health and well being. I’m your host, Dr Deb Functional Medicine Practitioner, naturopath and advocate for natural healing. Today, we’re diving into a topic that impacts every aspect of our lives, our neurotransmitters, these tiny, little chemical messengers in the brain influence our mood, energy, focus, sleep and even how our body processes pain, understanding how they work and what happens when they’re out of balance, can give us A whole new perspective on achieving optimal health and wellness. So let’s get started. So what are neurotransmitters Exactly? Well, think of them as the brain’s way of sending text messages to the rest of the body. They’re chemicals that relay messages between nerve cells and impact how we feel, think and act. Some of the major neurotransmitters you may have heard of include serotonin, dopamine, GABA and norepinephrine. Each one has a specific job, and together, they keep us functioning at our best or not, depending on their balance. So let’s break down the big players. Serotonin, known as the feel good neurotransmitter, it affects mood, sleep and appetite. Dopamine, the one that controls the reward and pleasure center, but also plays a big role on focus and motivation. Now dopamine also controls our mood. When dopamine is off, we can behave in somewhat of a bipolar manner when it’s too low, we’ll see symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease and GABA. Think of that as your brain’s calming force. It helps you reduce anxiety and improves sleep. Norepinephrine is your alertness and energy, and we rely heavily on this neurotransmitter. It’s a neurotransmitter that is produced by the adrenal glands, and when it’s off, it controls some of that fight or flight response that we see epinephrine is another neuro adrenal transmitter that affects appetite and energy and focus. Now, these sound pretty important, right? So let’s take a look at what happens when these neurotransmitters are out of sync. When neurotransmitters are out of balance, the effects can ripple across the body. Low serotonin, for example, is often linked to depression and anxiety. A deficiency in dopamine may make you feel unmotivated or stuck in a mental fog. And GABA levels when they’re low, you can experience a heightened anxiety, or even insomnia and norepinephrine, too much can lead to high stress and panic, while too little can cause fatigue and brain fog. But what causes these imbalances to begin with? Well, it’s not just one thing, factors like stress, poor diet, inability to absorb nutrients from the gut, lack of sleep, toxins and even our genetics can influence how these neurotransmitters are produced and how the body uses them. Now, a stressful lifestyle, for example, can deplete serotonin and. Dopamine levels over time, as well as norepinephrine and epinephrine, making it harder to manage that stress effectively, chronic illnesses like thyroid disorders, adrenal insufficiency, autoimmune disease, these all impact our neurotransmitter production, and we all know about the chronic issues of gut health these days, often referred to as our second brain plays a huge role here too. Did you know that about 90% of the serotonin is made in your gut, and this is why gut health is so important and mental health is so deeply connected today, if you don’t have enough serotonin in your gut, you can’t utilize that in the brain, and it can’t make you stay asleep longer. It can’t make you feel good. And oftentimes, these antidepressants are reliant on the amount of serotonin we have in our body to work efficiently. So if you’re taking an antidepressant and it doesn’t feel like it’s working, it may simply be because you don’t have enough serotonin to begin with, and adding serotonin back in, and getting your gut to absorb these and create these neurotransmitters from our amino acids more efficiently, can actually make your antidepressants work more efficiently and be better for you. Now the good news is that we can optimize these neurotransmitters. We can take steps to balance our neurotransmitters naturally. Now let’s talk about a few ways that we can do that. Nutrition is key. It always is. It’s where we start in the world of keeping our bodies whole and balancing things properly. Your brain needs the right building blocks to create these neurotransmitters. So for example, foods high in tryptophan, like Turkey and nuts support serotonin production. Tyrosine rich foods like eggs and fish help boost dopamine and magnesium found in leafy greens and nuts are crucial for calming the nervous system. Quality sleep is essential for neurotransmitter balance, but it’s a double edged sword, because if you don’t have enough of certain neurotransmitters, you’re not going to sleep properly. For instance, if you’re deficient in serotonin, you need serotonin in the brain at its highest point in order to keep us in a nice, deep REM sleep. So without enough serotonin, you can have sleep disturbances. One of the ways that we determine if this is an issue is what time you wake at night. So typically, people who wake between one and three in the morning have a liver issue. Their liver is not clearing their toxins appropriately. However, people who wake between three and five have a serotonin issue, and that’s what’s causing their disruption of sleep and giving them more serotonin, especially at night, can keep them in that deeper sleep and make sleep quality improved. Now, certainly stress reduction, we all talk about that. It’s really important. Most of us are under a lot of stress, whether we feel it or not, so doing practices like meditation or mindfulness, or even spending time in nature, can lower the stress hormones and boost that calming neurotransmitter like GABA. Now GABA is known as nature Xanax, right along with L theanine. So if you’re struggling with anxiety and you’re taking medication and it’s not working. You really want to look at these neurotransmitters and see if you’re deficient in some of them. And they can actually help balance your neurotransmitters, raise up that GABA level, so that you’re not so anxious and not so nervous, and that way we may not have to use medications like Xanax in cases like this, I love a product called Gabi tracks, which you can find on our full script link for anxiety. It works very fast. It’s a chewable. I oftentimes recommend it to people who have trouble when they fly, because you can take two GABA tracks. They’re chewables. They taste great, and it just takes the edge off. It takes that calming, or gives you that calming, relaxed feeling. It takes the edge off without making you feel groggy. There’s no addiction to it. There’s no concern for overdosing on this product. It’s really a nice supplement. It’s just an amino acid, it works beautifully. Exercise is another really important thing. Regular movement increases dopamine and endorphins, and it helps you feel more energized and more motivated. We oftentimes find people who have problems with addiction, whether it’s gambling or. Sugar or alcohol or drugs have an imbalance in their dopamine, and if we can get their dopamine levels up, they’re not looking for those addictive hits anymore. And when people have addictions and they’ve been struggling in overusing alcohol or drugs or things like that, doing a neurotransmitter tests can be extremely

Dr. Deb 10:23effective in us finding the neurotransmitters that are out of balance. And then we can also look to see if there’s a genetic component that’s contributing to some of these issues as well. And you can actually test for these neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters can be tested by blood or by urine. Now, from a functional medicine standpoint, they’re much better tested via urine because we’re seeing functional issues from a diagnostic disease issue. We want to look more at blood testing that gives us a different aspect of things. So using these tests appropriately can really help identify different medications that might be helpful, or different supplements that might be helpful for you. In some cases, we may supplement with amino acids like five HTP for serotonin, this is a precursor to serotonin, or L tyrosine for dopamine. These are very helpful in increasing these amino acids that make these neurotransmitters and can be used safely with medications, if you’re working with providers that really understand how to utilize these amino acids so that you don’t overdose on them, and then there’s some really exciting areas of research now in ...