These days it’s impossible not to be concerned about our mental health. If you yourself don’t have symptoms of depression, anxiety, difficulty focusing, difficulty remembering, insomnia, and others, it is likely that you know someone who has. Mental health issues are on the rise, and is a major cause of disability.
I am a functional medicine specialist now, but when I was practicing conventional internal medicine only, I witnessed a lot of cases of anxiety and depression that failed to respond to prescription medications. Moreover, many of the patients who had depression, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, memory decline, etc. also had other non-mental problems like irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis, chronic pains, fatigue, eczema, asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. So one wonders if, for example, the depression is a result of the medical problem, or vice versa. Are these mental health issues just confined to the brain, or are they just one of the manifestations of other dysfunctions in the body?
Our brain is an organ, just like the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys are. It gets affected by our overall health. As a functional medicine physician who looks for the hidden causes of disease, what are the things I check when there is a mental health issue in my patients? Here is my short list:
1. Nutritional deficiencies/excesses. Our food is not just a source of calories for energy. They also provide us chemicals that we need to manufacture neurotransmitters like serotonin, melatonin, GABA, dopamine, etc. The protein, fats, vitamins and minerals in our food provide the materials and support the enzymes that make these neurotransmitters. Overconsumption of refined carbohydrates and sugars can cause a cascade of unhealthy chemical reactions in the body that eventually affect the brain.
2. Gut health and microbes. There are numerous published studies showing a strong connection between the health of your intestines and your brain. The types of bacteria in your gut and the food you eat have major effects on what chemicals are created in your intestines, chemicals that eventually enter your bloodstream and affect your brain. Did you know that more than 70% of your serotonin, commonly known as the happiness hormone, is made in the nerve cells of your intestinal walls? Did you know that if you have a low amount of certain beneficial bacterial strains, that you may not manufacture enough of GABA, a calming neurotransmitter, and that if you have a large amount of yeast or certain unhealthy bacterial strains, that you may manufacture more of the “adrenaline” type of neurotransmitters, making you anxious, insomniac, and restless? There is plenty of research evidence showing that our gut bacteria have major effects on our emotions, behavior, and overall health. Unfortunately, traditional medicine has largely ignored that research. Most conventional practitioners are not even aware of them and do not check gut health when assessing patients with mental health issues.
3. Stress and Lifestyle. Stress increases inflammatory chemicals that have all been linked to depression, bipolar disease, autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s. Therefore, stress management skills are very important to learn and teach. Inadequate sleep and physical activity also contribute to difficulties with memory and mood.
4. Toxins. We live in a toxic world, whether you believe it or not. The questions are how toxic are you, and are you helping your body avoid and remove these toxins. One major category of toxins are the heavy metals, especially mercury and lead. Mercury is ubiquitous in our environment and is a great mimicker – can present as almost any chronic disease because it disrupts so many biochemical pathways. High body burden of these metals are easy to test for and are treatable.
5. Food sensitivities. Eating foods that one is sensitive to causes the gut to be inflamed and “leaky”, allowing for a dysregulation of the immune system, and widespread inflammation, including of the brain. It is important to find out if one has food sensitivities. The most common of these are gluten and dairy sensitivities.
6. Genetic difficulties. There is a common genetic mutation in a process called methylation, that predisposes one to depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia, and many other medical problems. Mutations that affect our methylation can be checked for using various laboratories, and we can actually circumvent these mutations’ bad effects thru nutrition and supplementation.
As you can see, a pharmaceutical drug approved for depression, anxiety, ADD, etc, may not be helpful if you have any of the above hidden causes of mental health issues. Seeking consultation with a Functional Medicine physician like myself may be what you need to reduce the burden imposed by this disabling set of health problems.
Zorayda “jiji” Torres, MD
