 Hi, and welcome to today's presentation on the pharmacology of recovery, dopamine, GABA, serotonin, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine. Now this is one of my favorite topics, so hopefully you will find it as interesting as I do. Over the next hour or so, we're going to review the function of the most common neurotransmitters, which are dopamine, serotonin, GABA, glutamate, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine. Now glutamate, we're going to talk about just a little bit, but glutamate is necessary to make GABA, and they work as opposite ends of the same sort of coin. One is excitatory, one's inhibitory. Then we're going to identify mental health issues associated with imbalances between the neurochemicals, and finally examine ways to deal with this that may include nutrition, sunlight, exercise, and or medication. So why do we care? Well, whether the problem existed before the addiction or was caused by the addiction or the depression or whatever happened, in early recovery from any mood disorder or addiction, nearly every person's neurotransmitters, their happy chemicals are out of whack. This can cause feelings of depression, apathy, anxiety, and exhaustion. In addiction circles, we call this post-acute withdrawal syndrome, because the drugs are leaving the person's body, which supplied sort of extra oomph and increased the neurotransmitter levels. In depression and anxiety, this is still early recovery syndrome, if you will. So we want to understand why you feel the way you do. What is out of whack and what can you do to help yourself? You know, your body makes your neurotransmitters, so in order for it to make those neurotransmitters, it has to have building blocks, think Legos. When you have enough Legos, you can make whatever masterpiece you want. If you don't have enough Legos, then you can't make it. Now, the cool thing about the way most people work on improving nutrition and exercise and that sort of stuff, if you give your body the building blocks naturally, then once it builds whatever masterpiece it needs to build, it's going to leave the leftover Legos behind. So you're not going to over-stimulate the system, like what happens with substance abuse and other situations where people flood their system, flood their brain with neurotransmitters. The next step is to figure out how to help yourself. There are a lot of different ways you can go about doing it and some ways you're going to be more on board with than others. So we'll figure out what might help you help yourself. So let's start with what are neurotransmitters? Well, the human brain is composed of roughly 86 billion with a B neurons. That's a lot of stuff to cram into your head. These cells communicate with each other through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Basically, the neurotransmitters go from one neuron and take a message and run to the other one and give it to the receiving neuron. These neurotransmitters are responsible for sending signals to your body about your mood, cravings, addictions, energy, libido, sleep, attention, concentration, memory, and pain sensitivity. And a bunch of other stuff that we're not even going to talk about here, such as movement, instability in some of these neurotransmitters is implicated in things like restless leg syndrome and seizure disorders. So your neurotransmitters are really important. That's sort of the take home message. And we're going to talk about some of the big ones as we go through this presentation. What I want you to get from it is the fact that living a healthy lifestyle in a way that will support your neurotransmitter production and support your body in building its masterpieces is going to be what's most important. About 86% of Americans have suboptimal neurotransmitter levels. Our unhealthy or unhealthy modern lifestyle is largely to blame. So let's think about this, chronic stress. So if you are running constantly, burning both ends of the candle, not getting enough sleep under a lot of stress, so your stress system is constantly excited, your body is going to wear down. And there are different ways to explain it, but it's important to understand that this chronic stress really wears on you after a while, which is why people start getting sick, which is why they start getting depressed. Their body is going, I can't do it. I don't have enough building blocks. I don't have enough time to build my masterpieces before you want another one. So the assembly line is breaking down. Poor diet, not even giving them the right Legos. Environmental toxins, which can basically if you want to use the metaphor like Legos still, environmental toxins can sort of break the Legos so they can't link up correctly. Prescription and recreational drugs and alcohol and nicotine and caffeine being some of our more common ones can all cause neurotransmitter depletion or imbalances. So either your body can't make enough, it uses it up too fast or it has too much of one and not enough of another. So let's talk about nutrition. I found out some cool things when I was doing my research on this presentation. Eating foods with a low glycemic index will improve the quality and duration of intellectual performance. So if you are diabetic, you're really familiar with a glycemic index. If you are not, you may not be as familiar. You can go to glycemicindex.com and figure out which foods are lower in the glycemic index. Basically the lower the food, the slower the sugar gets into your body and goes out so you don't have a peak and a valley. You have kind of a gently rolling wave of sugar infusion and use. This helps people focus. Sometimes we think if we're really hyped up we can focus and that's true for a short period of time. But then as that wears off, if you crash, then you're no good to anybody. Dietary proteins contribute to good cerebral function and assist with the liberation and use of neurotransmitters with tryptophan playing a particularly special role. So that's a really clinical way of saying if you eat a diet that is healthy and you're getting enough protein and quality proteins and we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later. But it'll help your brain function and send those neurotransmitters into the synapses so they can run between the neurons. Differentiation and functioning of brain cells requires omega-3 fatty acids. We've heard a lot about omega-3s and omega-6s in the past and the recent past and they are important. When a person's brain is developing in utero and all the way up through their early 20s, it's even more important for them to have omega-3s in adequate supply in their diet. At the end of the presentation, we're gonna talk about different places that you can find some of these different nutritional building blocks. So it's not quite so confusing because you don't wanna go out and just start getting supplements. If you get them, you're not necessarily going to supply them in the right ratio. And you may be overloading your body which can result in toxicity with some things and with others it just results in really expensive urine because your body just excretes what it doesn't use. Omega-3s have also been found to help prevent and or treat psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and Alzheimer's related dementia. So if you have a tendency to have depressive episodes, you might look at your omega-3s and make sure you're getting enough. Is this gonna be the magic bullet? Likely not, but it can help. It can certainly help and it can't hurt. Iron is necessary to ensure oxygenation and for the synthesis of neurotransmitters. Most of us get plenty of iron because we eat enriched baked goods, cereals, those sorts of things all the time. So iron is one of those that you can really easily get toxic levels of. Now with all this being said, it's important to remember that only your doctor or a registered dietitian can make prescriptions and tell you what kind of foods you should eat. This presentation is just to sort of educate you about the building blocks that may be important so you can go and talk to them and say, how can we create a plan that'll work for me? Other minerals and things that people need, iodine provided by the thyroid hormone ensures the energy metabolism of brain cells, which is great. Where do we get iodine from? A lot of different places, but most people get it from their iodized salts. Does this mean you get to put more salt on everything? No, because it means you're probably already getting plenty you don't need very much. Vitamin B and all of your B's, your complex B's, I'm not gonna go into a whole bunch of detail, are necessary for utilization of glucose in the brain. It's necessary for brain energy. Your brain needs energy to function. So if you wanna get rid of that foggy headedness, we need to make sure that our brains are getting enough food, enough energy, enough fuel to do what they need to do. Vitamin B9 preserves memory. Vitamin B12 delays the onset signs of dementia. Vitamin B12 has also been implicated in helping people focus and concentrate a little bit better. Vitamin B6 and 12 are also involved in the synthesis. The making of neurotransmitters. Some neurotransmitters can't be made if B6 and B12 aren't there. Now, your B vitamins are generally found in really good supply in the majority of your grains, in the majority of your baked goods, your cereals, in American culture. Most of our enriched foods provide a whole lot of B vitamins for us. Nerve endings contain the highest concentrations of vitamin C in the human body. Who knew? You think vitamin C is being an immunity sort of thing. Vitamin C also helps the nerves do what they need to do. So remember, we talked about those messengers before. You have the sending neuron and the receiving neuron. Both of these are nerve endings. If they don't have enough C, then they're not gonna be able to give the information to the messenger to carry from one end to the other. So C is really important. And then vitamin E is necessary once this neuron gets the signal to transmit it down the line to the next, to the end of that axon and keep the thing going. So we need Bs, Cs, Es, iodine, iron, and omega-3s, among others. So you're sitting there going, oh, my brain's gonna explode. The cool thing about nutrition is if you eat a colorful diet, you're probably getting most of what you need. I worked with a nutritionist when I was teaching at the University of Florida and she had some cool tricks. She said, use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, because most of us overeat anyway, and have at least three colors on your plate at every meal. If you do that, you're likely going to get all of the nutrients you need. So let's talk about our favorite one, dopamine. Dopamine is what makes people feel a rush. It's that reward chemical. It's also responsible for movement, memory, pleasure, reward, learning, behavior and cognition, and attention. Now dopamine is one of those chemicals that's involved in restless leg syndrome. It's also implicated in a lot of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. So it does a lot of stuff. It's important to understand that we learn by the excretion part in part of dopamine, because when we do something and there's a reward, we go, oh, I want to remember that and do it again. It's also responsible for helping us focus and learn and pay attention. Dopamine imbalances have also been implicated in ADHD and among other things. It helps with cognitive control, so you don't have racing thoughts. You can think from, you know, you can think something through without getting distracted six ways till Sunday. Ooh, squirrel. Attentional control. So you can pay attention to what's going on, pay attention to your surroundings. And again, you're not like that dog in up that every time it sees a squirrel, it's just off to the races. Impulse control. Even if you're thinking, you're paying attention, sometimes we have these impulses to interrupt, to get up and do something. Dopamine is responsible for helping us with impulse control. So we can wait our turn. We can ride the wave of whatever craving it is without having to get up and do it. And working memory. Dopamine is what's involved in telling us, yes, I want to remember this, or no, this isn't important to remember. So very few people, unless you're working with someone who has schizophrenia, but very few people have too much dopamine. Most people are suffering from insufficient dopamine if there is a dopamine imbalance. When people don't have enough dopamine, they're not emotionally responsive. Think about Eeyore. Nothing really got him excited. They're not motivated. They're not overly expressive. They just, they're just blah, you know, they don't really want to talk. They don't really want to get up and do anything. And they have difficulty concentrating and poor memory. So it's important to remember that there are a lot of neurotransmitters that also are responsible for every single one of these things. So if you're going through the checklist going, yeah, that describes me to a T. It may be dopamine. It may be something else. Everything, all the neurochemicals in your brain are in balance. They're in a level of homeostasis. It's kind of like when you make bread. You want to have things in a certain ratio. And if you don't, it either doesn't rise or it falls apart or it's too hard. The same thing is true for all the neurotransmitters in your brain. So it's not all about increasing everything. Other people who have insufficient dopamine may also experience more pain than others, restless leg syndrome and ADHD. So how do we increase our dopamine? Well, medicinally, there are some things that can help do it. Ideally, we do it. We let our body make its masterpiece by giving it the right Legos. Diets high in vitamin C, E, magnesium and tyrosine, which is a protein, will ensure you've got the basic building blocks. At the end of this presentation, I have a chart that shows you some of the more common foods that will provide the building blocks for multiple neurotransmitters. So you're not going, well, I can't possibly eat all of these foods. You can take that to your nutritionist, to your doctor, and figure out what would help create a healthy diet for you. Lists of foods known to provide dopamine building blocks, chicken, almonds and walnuts, apples, avocado, bananas. Bananas are really common. There's one you're going to hear over and over again. Beets, chocolate is also really common, which I like. But we're not going to have a very healthy diet if we try to get all of our building blocks from chocolate, although I'd love for it to. Green leafy vegetables, spinach, kale, those are the two big ones, romaine lettuce, green tea, lima beans, oatmeal, sesame and pumpkin seeds, turmeric, watermelon and wheat germ and or whole wheat because whole wheat obviously has wheat germ in it. In addition to nutritional things, sunlight is important. And if you've watched other presentations that I've done, you know I harp on this fact that we need sunlight to set our circadian rhythms. We need sunlight to help our bodies make that natural vitamin D. The stuff that you take in the pill form isn't used nearly as efficiently as the stuff your body makes. So if your body can make the vitamin D, let's by all means, let it do that. So how much sunlight do we need? One study has indicated that about 15 minutes, three times a week, is probably enough to help the serotonin and dopamine and all the neurotransmitters. Add to that, you want to have sunlight, but you don't need to be out in the sun necessarily. You want to be in a bright room when you're awake so your body knows that, hey, it's daytime, it's time to be awake. And when it's time to start winding down, you want to start dimming the light so your body knows, oh, it's time to start secreting serotonin so I can make melatonin so I can go to bed. Medications to increase dopamine, you know, there are a few out there and we're not going to go into a bunch of those because it's really difficult to get the dopamine precursors to cross the blood-brain barrier. But Mirapex and Requip, which are two medications that are used in restless leg syndrome, can increase dopamine receptor activity so it's not creating more, it just means that the receptors, they're more active and they're going, give me more, give me more, give me more, which, you know, can work. So dopamine's buddy, norepinephrine, gives people the motivation and the energy and the desire to get up and do stuff. Dopamine says, that was awesome, let's do it again. Norepinephrine says, okay, let's get up and try. It's one of your fight-or-flight excitatory neurotransmitters. It's the one that says, we need to do something. It is implicated in motivation because it makes you want to get off the sofa. When you don't have enough norepinephrine or when your body gets too used to having too much, you can experience symptoms of insufficiency. When faced with severe stress, ongoing stress, maybe you hate your job and it's just horrible, you know, a whole bunch of different things can cause severe ongoing stress. The stress response system activates and raises norepinephrine and stress hormones. It says, we either need to fight or get the heck out of here. So you're increased arousal, you're not gonna sleep, you're anxious, you're potentially irritable, you know, touchy, that sort of stuff. Emotional instability, you may be happy, you may be angry, you may be cranky. You're just kind of all over the place. And eventually the person may feel depressed because they just, they're exhausted. They're plum exhausted from being so stressed all the time. Prolonged stress leads to underactivity of the stress response system. The stress response system gets so used to having too much of this chemical. It says, I can't run at this high level anymore. I need to back off a little bit. So it shuts down some of those receptors. Then when the stress backs off and the norepinephrine goes down, it doesn't know to open these receptors again. So then the person doesn't feel any motivation. They feel somewhat depressed, daytime fatigue, concentration and focus issues, and general apathy. If you have too much norepinephrine, you know, I said too much and too little can be bad. We wanna find a nice balance. It can cause problems with concentration because you're just, you're like a little chihuahua. You know, you just wanna get it all done. You wanna get it all done. You wanna get it all done now. Difficulty with focus. Depression, again, falling asleep, daytime exhaustion because there's just too much in the system all the time and it's, you're getting exhausted. Anxiety and poor sleep. So how can we help our body get the right balance of norepinephrine? Well, one of the ways is to provide it good nutrition. Again, with the tyrosine, bananas, beans and legumes, chicken, cheese, chocolate, again, eggs, fish and seafood, meat and oatmeal. Oatmeal, bananas and chocolate come up quite a bit. A daytime nap they found and I really liked this when I read it because I love my naps. Daytime naps can also double your levels of norepinephrine. That doesn't mean take a three hour nap in the middle of the day. You wanna keep it to under 45 minutes so you don't confuse your body and mess up your sleep at night. But a daytime nap of anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes has been shown to double levels of norepinephrine in people so you have more focus, more concentration and it's longer lasting. Another neurotransmitter is GABA. GABA's purpose is anti-anxiety and anti-convulsant. Great. Anti-anxiety is probably the one we're gonna focus on right now. GABA is made from glutamate, like I said earlier. If you've ever, and most of us have, tried to make a warm bath, you start out and the hot water hasn't all gotten there yet. So you have more hot water and less cold water and as it runs, then you have to adjust it a little bit so it gets the right balance to keep it warm, not too hot, not too cold. Then as the water heater starts to run out of hot water, you have to turn down the cold water to keep it warm. Same basic thing is going on with GABA and glutamate. They're constantly in this balancing act to make sure that you are motivated but not overly anxious. Nearly 40% of the synapses in the brain, you know, that billion number, work with GABA and therefore have GABA receptors. So almost half of the receptors are not gonna be functioning at optimal capacity if they're not getting the building blocks they need to make GABA. If you have too little, you may be feeling anxious. Hence why we said it's involved in anti-anxiety. Depressed, you stay anxious and stressed for too long, you get exhausted. Difficulty concentrating. If you're anxious and stressed, do you really have good focus? Usually not. Insomnia. So you're anxious and stressed, which is keeping you up at night, which is making it more difficult for you to concentrate. You see where we're going with this? It's also implicated in seizure disorders, racing thoughts, cold hands, heart palpitations and shortness of breath. So going back to where can you get some of these things? Lentils again, oats again, bananas again, brown rice, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, almonds and walnuts. We've heard that one before. And fermented foods like sauerkraut and yogurt. This is one of those neurotransmitters that requires the B vitamins to be there. So making sure that you're getting a good complement of different foods. And most of your grains are gonna be kind of your brown color. And most of your foods that provide like vitamin C are going to be your green and your red color. Medications. Drugs that increase the availability of GABA typically have an anti-anxiety and anti-convulsant effect. Now, if you're working with somebody or if you are somebody who has issues with addiction, a lot of doctors will start out with something called Gabapentin or Neurontin. Because it's less addictive than, and has less abuse potential than the benzodiazepines and the barbiturates like Valium, Xanax and GHB. And finally, our buddy Serotonin. Serotonin does a lot, but I want you to remember that Serotonin is what's usually blamed for people feeling depressed. But we've gone through all of these other neurotransmitters and every single one of them, an imbalance in that neurotransmitter can cause feelings of depression. So it's important to remember that while it may be possible that you have too much or too little Serotonin, it also may be possible that you have too much or too little of something else. So if you're not seeing the results that you want from the first round of medications the doctor puts you on, talk to him or her. Because it's likely that a different Serotonin medication or a different medication altogether may be more appropriate for you. Unfortunately, there is no way to measure neurotransmitter levels because they are found everywhere. They're found in the skin, the gut, the brain. So judging what your neurotransmitter levels are in your brain are almost impossible. So it's really important to keep track of how you're feeling before you start taking a medication, before you start an exercise program and how you feel afterwards. Serotonin helps regulate mood, sleep patterns, appetite and pain perception. It's in the brain, but 80% of it is in the gut and intestines. So if you have gut and intestinal issues like irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease, you may find that you have more of a Serotonin imbalance or you may not, but it's important to understand that if your gut and intestines are not functioning well, then some of your Serotonin that your body has to work with is probably not getting absorbed as well. And it's also found in the skin because Melatonin is made from Serotonin. If you have too much Serotonin, and this is gonna be important in just a second, I'll show you why, too much Serotonin can also lead to symptoms of depression, apathy, emotional flatness, being passive, a lot of these sound a lot like what we were talking about with insufficient dopamine, difficulty sleeping, concentrating, learning, poor memory, difficulty making decisions and sexual dysfunction. One of the side effects of a lot of the selective Serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the SSRIs is sexual dysfunction. It's important to understand that. Now sometimes you may need an SSRI, sometimes it may help, but increasing that level of Serotonin past what your body's used to may lead to symptoms of sexual dysfunction that are short-term or ongoing. Again, talk with your doctor if this is a bothersome symptom. Before we get any further, it's important to understand that Serotonin syndrome is caused by way too much Serotonin and it can cause symptoms of shivering, diarrhea, muscle rigidity, fever, seizures, and irregular heartbeat. If you are feeling really bad, even if you just started taking an SSRI, call your doctor. On top of that, it is really important to tell your doctor about any supplements that you may be taking that may be monkeying with the Serotonin system. Now if you're eating a lot of chicken, that's not gonna do it, but if you're taking something like 5-HTP or SAMI or any of a variety of different herbs, those can all increase the level of Serotonin and when combined with an SSRI can cause Serotonin syndrome, which has been known to kill people. So please be aware that Serotonin is not something you really wanna monkey with on your own. Too little Serotonin, depression, anxiety, pain, sensitivity. People express Serotonin differences differently and part of it is because of hormones and we're gonna see that in a second. Women are more likely, but not everybody, to experience mood disorders and carb cravings. Men are more likely to be impulsive, have difficulty being attentive and lean more towards self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. So, you know, let's tie this all up. Estrogen is needed to produce Serotonin and Serotonin is broken down into melatonin. So melatonin helps us sleep. Serotonin helps us feel good and estrogen, well, you know. When somebody has too little estrogen, you know, during menopause, for example, or if you just naturally have too little estrogen, you may not produce enough Serotonin, which means you may feel depressed, which means you also may not produce enough melatonin, which means you may have difficulty sleeping. So looking at it may not be adjusting Serotonin, it may be adjusting estrogen. So if you chart and you find out that you are feeling sleepier and more irritable and more depressed, but you can't sleep as well, at certain times when your hormones are lower, that's important information. Likewise, PMS, when your estrogen goes up. If you have too much estrogen, remember on this slide back here, if I can get to it, whoops. When you have too much estrogen, you're also going to potentially create too much Serotonin. When you have too much Serotonin, then you may have depression, apathy, passivity, difficulty concentrating. So that PMS stuff may be related to too much estrogen creating a situation where your system's flooded with Serotonin. The nice thing is they found that there are medications that can help to block that, or you can just sort of pay attention and figure out lifestyle changes to help with it. It's not just estrogen though, it's not just PMS. Low Serotonin and high testosterone leads to aggressive behavior. So it's important to understand what your testosterone levels are. Testosterone will sort of moderate Serotonin. So if you have too much testosterone, maybe you started getting testosterone injections, or people who are taking steroids, may display behavior that's more aggressive, more fearful, more anxious, more hypervigilant, because they don't have enough Serotonin and they have too much testosterone. So it's all about balance. Now does that mean that testosterone supplementation is bad? That's something for you and your doctor to talk about. Same thing with any supplementation to see which is the lesser of two evils. If both situations, either not getting the shot or getting the shot, if both situations cause problems, which one is easier to deal with and improves your life the most? Nutritional building blocks for Serotonin is a lot more of your browns, whole wheat, potatoes, brown rice, lentils, oats and beans. There have been some studies that have found that dietary tryptophan, not taking supplements, but eating a diet high in the amino acid tryptophan, may affect your Serotonin levels. And they looked at people who were taking SSRIs and like Zoloft, not volume, Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac, to see if changing their diet helped their mood at all in the presence of this medication. And they found that it did. Medications, SSRIs, SNRIs, 5-HTP and SAMI, will all affect Serotonin levels. Does this mean you should run out and start taking them? Please no. Please talk to your doctor. Even if you're not taking a prescription medication for Serotonin, you can cause yourself Serotonin syndrome by taking too much of any of the herbs and taking herbs in combination. Exercise also increases Serotonin and promotes relaxation, which is why a lot of us like to start our day working out because it clears the fog and helps us relax and get ready to start focusing. It's also why a lot of people like to work out at the end of the day because they get all their stress and frustration out and they feel more relaxed. Sunlight is also helpful. The skin acts as a neuroendocrine gland and some sunshine exposure stimulates skin production of most neurotransmitters. So it sort of wakes up the whole body and says, let's get up and get going. Remembering that 15 minutes, three times a week is enough to do this. We don't need to be basking in the sun and doing all kinds of those things. And a lot of people don't like to sit out in the sun a whole bunch of time, a whole lot. Most people, if they're going to and from their car, going to work and they're going out to the mailbox and a few things like that each day, get their 15 minutes of sunlight. Acetylcholine, in lower amounts, acetylcholine can act like a stimulant by helping the body release norepinephrine and dopamine. It is also implicated in memory, motivation, cognitive thinking, sexual desire and sleep. Too much acetylcholine can cause all the symptoms of depression, nightmares, mental fatigue and anxiety. Too little acetylcholine can cause symptoms of Alzheimer's dementia, Parkinson's and impaired ability to think, pay attention and just get excited about anything. As acetylcholine goes up, acetylcholine's an excitatory neurotransmitter, serotonin goes down and it's in a balance, kind of like the hot and cold water in the warm bath. Your meats, dairy, poultry, chocolate again, gotta love it. Peanut butter, wheat germ, remembering whole wheat also has wheat germ in it and Brussels sprouts and broccoli can help support your body in making acetylcholine. It's important to understand that there are certain medications that are over the counter that may be reducing your acetylcholine levels or making it less available to you. If you're on any of these, just be aware of it. Most likely the impact it's having is relatively negligible, but in certain people who are overly sensitive, it may make a big difference. Atropine, you're probably only gonna see in the hospital. Benatropine, which is cogentin, some people may be prescribed. That's a prescription, you're not gonna see it over the counter, but chlorotrimatone, draminine, benadryl, any of your diphenhydramines and xiaman and wellbutrin, which you're often used or talked about for smoking cessation and dextromethorphine, which is the cough suppressant that's in all of your cough medications, will all reduce the acetylcholine precursors. Now, generally you're not taking enough in an over the counter medication to have an effect. Some people are really sensitive though. I know I cannot take draminine. If I take draminine, I am just really grumpy and depressed and lethargic the entire time it's in my system. But I tend to be really sensitive. I take half of the normal adult dose of benadryl and I'm like drooling on myself. So understanding your own personal sensitivity to medications is important. So I promised you this nutrient summary. Now, you may not like everything on this list. I know I don't, but you can find things that give you the building blocks to support multiple neurotransmitters. Almonds and walnuts. Your omega-3s are a little bit hard to come by unless you eat flaxseed or unless you eat a lot of fish if you eat fish. So it's important to pay attention to whether you're getting those. A lot of Americans don't get enough omega-3s. Your B complex is founded just about everything. Vitamin E is in your wheat products. It's also in peanut butter and some of you a little bit in green leafy vegetables. A lot of it is found in walnuts. So I like walnuts, I like oatmeal, I like bananas. So put all those together in a breakfast in the morning and I've given my brain brain food to start the day. Lima beans, brown rice, cheeses and it's not any particular type of cheese. It's not like cheddar or Gouda or American, it's just cheese. Cherry tomatoes and there are some really good ones out right now. There's one called a jelly bean cherry tomato which is just the sweetest thing I've ever tasted in my life. They're awesome. If you like tomatoes. Chicken, chocolate, green leafy vegetables, green tea, lentils, meat, specifically beef. I said chicken up here. Oatmeal, peanut butter, potatoes and wheat germ. Did you know potatoes have a whole lot of vitamin C in them? Gotta love that. Potatoes are also give you the building blocks for GABA and serotonin which are both calming neurotransmitters. Interesting to think about because I know after I eat potatoes I tend to get kind of sleepy but it's also a heavy food, it's a starchy food. So thinking about how you eat, thinking about your exercise levels, thinking about how much sunlight you get and that's really what I wanted you to take from this. Not so much that you need it to be on medications but there are a lot of things you can do to support your body in its recovery and support your body in having the tools it needs, having the Legos it needs to build its masterpieces. Think about three ways you could have used this information in the past week. What could you have done to tweak a meal a little bit to make it just a little more healthy? And how can you start integrating this knowledge into your routine? Maybe park a little further away from the building so you walk a little further. You're getting exercise and a little bit more sunlight. Small changes. I don't want you to think that for most people the best course of action is not changing everything by the being. The best course of action is making small changes. Getting that integrated so you're used to doing it like drinking more water. Do that for a month. Once you're used to doing that then add another small change instead of just overhauling everything all at once which usually is very uncomfortable and doesn't work so well. So there's a variety of different neurotransmitters involved in addiction and mood disorders. It's not always about increasing a neurotransmitter. Sometimes you need to decrease it or allow your body to decrease it. Human brains try to maintain this homeostasis. They wanna maintain the warm bath and too much or too little can be bad. A balanced diet will provide the brain necessary nutrients in synergistic combinations. That means the stuff that we eat is already prepared in the best possible ratios and you don't have to have a degree in biochemistry in order to figure out which amino acid you should eat with this and that and the other. Eat a good diet and you will get most of what you need. It's impossible to get an accurate level of different neurotransmitters in the brain while you're alive. And the whole point of this is to increase your quality of life. So we have to go on how you feel, what makes things better, what makes things worse which is why charting and journaling can be really effective tools for your medical providers to help you figure out what might work or what might be causing the problems or exacerbating the problems you're having. Treatment of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and pain disorders is often like making a good marinara sauce. I really love the stuff to food but anyway. First we wanna identify what the symptoms are and then decide what we need more or less of. If a person is showing symptoms of depression then we've gotta figure out is it not enough norepinephrine? Is it not enough dopamine? Is it not enough serotonin? Is it too much serotonin? So we wanna understand what they're doing, how they're feeling and sometimes we've just gotta try. We gotta start one place and then okay, that didn't work. Let's try something else and it's trial and error a little bit and I know that doesn't make you feel really confident and happy. But unfortunately at this point diagnosis of the cause of most mental health issues is more of an art than a science. Figuring out these things and making this marinara sauce and figuring out how to balance these things should be done by a physician. But it's imperative that clients, that people understand what's going on so they can communicate with their doctor and go this worked or this didn't so they can understand that this is a short term side effect not something that's gonna last forever it's just gonna be the next week is kinda challenging. For example, a lot of people when they start SSRIs, depression medications, the first week they feel pretty crappy. But after that they start feeling better but they're not gonna feel the full effect of the benefits in the medication for four to six weeks. These are all important tidbits of information for people to have. You may be on medications for physical ailments that are impacting your mood. Opiates are depressants. So if you have chronic pain and you're taking something like oxycodone or hydrocodone or Percocet or that which is the non-generic of those. You may be feeling depressed and lethargic. Which is why please make sure that everybody your entire health team knows all the medications and herbs you're taking. Understanding the interaction between these medications is also vital to understand to making the best recommendations for you. If you're taking something that is already affecting your neurotransmitters I had one client who came in and she was presenting with some schizophrenia symptoms and was prescribed an antipsychotic which lowers the dopamine levels but she was also taking a medication for restless legs which increases the dopamine. So the two doctors weren't communicating and they didn't realize that they were basically counteracting each other and she was on way too many antipsychotics. So it's crucial. There isn't a big database where they all talk. I wish there were because it would make a lot of these errors a lot more difficult to make but there aren't and a lot of the stuff that you take over the counter medications and herbs and vitamins can also impact your medications effectiveness. So be open, be thorough with your physicians and your practitioners about what you're taking so we can help you let your body make the masterpiece.