Identify and Address the Root Causes of Brain Disorders

Dr. Elena Villanueva

It’s so good to connect with you too. I’m so glad to be here with you today. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Absolutely. Well, let’s start with brain chemistry imbalance is I know this is something that you look at and you have a wide range of different ways of really testing and understanding this. So, how does somebody know, Like, what are some of the key symptoms and signs that somebody may have an imbalance when it comes to their brain chemistry or some sort of brain disorder there?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

That’s a really great question to start with. You know, there are a lot of different symptoms that people can notice. That can be indicative of some sort of a brain chemistry imbalance, you know, anything from any type of sleep issues to mood changes, brain fog, memory loss, and it doesn’t have to be memory loss, like, you’re all the way into full blown dementia, it’s like memory loss. Like, man, I seem to be forgetting my keys all the time now, or, you know, like, I’m just, you know, like that kind of stuff. We want to pay attention to these things at the beginning, because, you know, being told that it’s a part of aging is a lie, you and I know this and so, you know, if we’re noticing it, let’s not, you know, dismiss it as an age thing, like, let’s pay attention. So, like, these small, like lapses in memory, right? If you’re having anxiety, if you’re having depression, if you’re noticing any type of tremor even at the very beginning stages of it, maybe you just notice it every now and then, it only happens a couple times a month, but you’ll go to pick up your coffee cup and you’re maybe kind of doing a little bit of this, and then you’re like, wow, what’s that? And then the next day it’s gone, but then it’s back three weeks later, you know, things like that, you know, those are some things that can be indicative of brain chemistry and balances.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, and of course, a lot of people, you know, they start to have symptoms, whether it’s anxiety, depression and they don’t really know how to address it themselves, and so they go into their doctor’s office and typically, you know, they fill out a questionnaire, the doctor talks to them, they’re not feeling good if they’re feeling like they’ve got anxiety panic attacks, they’re given an anti anxiety medications. If they’re sad, if they’re feeling depressed, they’re given antidepressants, and a percentage of people feel good, right? And they respond well to those, and then there’s a pretty large percentage of people that just get no response or even actually feel worse taking these and why do you think that is?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Well, you know, it’s not fixing the root cause of the problem. you know, these can be great short term, you know, let’s throw you a life raft so that you can feel better, you know, a lot of people don’t go to the doctor when it first starts, they wait and they go to the doctor when they’re in a reactive states, when it’s when it’s getting out of control and it’s a affecting their daily life, right? And so, you know, that’s the first issue right there is that people wait too long before they start trying to figure it out. But you know, these medications while they can help some people, they, there are a big segment of the population that they don’t help and that’s why doctors typically, you’ll see them rotating through different one until they find one that works. And so there’s a couple of reasons for that. Number one, it’s a shotgun approach. 

So the doctors are not doing any deeper type of assessments or testing so that they can try to really dial in on well what neurotransmitter or what neurotransmitters are out of balance and let’s give you a drug, it’s going to specifically target that. So they just do the shotgun approach like, you know, let’s cover our eyes and let’s see if we can hit that, you know, using the arrow, you know, you’re using the dark, you know, hit it in the middle of the board. But you know, usually when they prescribed they are assuming that it’s always a deficiency or a lack of serotonin the at the time, that’s the first approach that everybody takes well, people can have anxiety, they can have depression, they can have memory laws, brain fog if they have dopamine issues, and it’s not always a lack thereof. Sometimes it’s too much of a neurotransmitter that can really cause a lot of the same type of symptoms. And so the shotgun approach is one reason why it doesn’t work for people because they’re giving the wrong drug that’s addressing the wrong brain chemical, It’s not addressing the other ones that need help. 

And then number two, is that these can cause a lot of side effects. Sometimes these drugs can actually cause the exact side effect of what the drug is being given for. and so that can be a problem. And then other times, what was I gonna say? I was like, oh, and then, and then the third issue is that these things can have really terrible rebound effects. And so sometimes somebody might get on an antidepressant, for example, because they’re having depression, maybe some anxiety too. So the doctor gives them a pill, well, maybe within a month they’re feeling pretty numbed out and they’re not feeling anything, but they may start to gain a lot of weight and have a lot of bloating and start having all these other issues. Sometimes they can get on these medications, they actually start feeling worse, and then what’s even scarier is that, is that rebound effect when they try to get off the medication now, now they’re feeling worse than they were before. And so those are like the three top things that we talk about whenever we’re talking about, you know what you want to look out for, if you’re going for the Western medicine approach to trying to treat any type of brain chemistry imbalance.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, what you had started with their that it’s never actually getting to the root cause because very rarely is it just that your body is not producing or your receptors are not you know, built to receive that specific neurotransmitter, usually that’s a downstream effect, meaning that there’s other things that are going on that are often related to your environment, your lifestyle, that are actually creating this environment inside of your body, inside of your neurology, to where perhaps there is, you know, some sort of, you know, a lower production of the neurotransmitter or poor neurotransmitter receptor sensitivity, but that’s not actually at the root. So what are some of the main root causes that you’re seeing associated with these kind of mental health disorders?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Oh, this is where I love getting into this kind of stuff. And I love gathering all the research on this so that people can really see it. You know, it’s one thing for us to talk about it, but then showing all the research behind it in case studies gets so much fun. So the first thing that we teach about is that food like food can do it and it’s really time that we really have much more respect for the food that we’re putting into our body because it’s life giving for us and our food, it literally is our medicine, it is our best medicine or it’s our slowest form poison in some instances it can be a faster form of poison for people. And we show research and case studies where food can cause as severe of issues that even schizophrenia. And so you know, it’s really really important for us to understand that, you know, while several years ago we all wanted to dismiss it because nobody wants to, you know, everybody likes what they like, everybody likes to eat whatever that they like. But when you really can dial in and see that the food could be causing your bipolar, the food that you know, the cereal that you’ve been eating every morning of your life, you know with the toast for lunch, with the sandwiches for lunch and all this stuff that they could be gluten when you now we’ve got testing to dial in on that and we can show you this is causing a problem. So food is number one and then number two would be environmental toxins and there’s a lot of different environmental toxins out there. We have chemicals that we can test for and we can see it in people’s body. And and these chemicals include everything from like a trickle sand, which is a an antimicrobial found in hand sanitizers that was supposed to have been outlawed but we’re still finding it in soaps two different types of pesticides and organophosphates all the way to like the pallets and the different plastic and petroleum based stuff. 

And this stuff is known to cause massive dis regulation of our systemic engines in our body that all affect our nervous system or our brain. And then we also have heavy metals that are included in environmental toxins as well as mycotoxins are toxic mold. Then I teach a lot. I go into a lot of depth teaching how mold alters the brain chemistry. And I go into a lot of explanations. I keep it simple but I go into to an explanation and I can tell you which brain chemical is actually affecting the most and what kind of issues that it can cause. And then we have the medications, as I mentioned earlier, we also like to talk about the gut. However if we really look a little deeper, yes, the gut has massive impact on how our brain works or doesn’t work for us but what caused the gut to go into dysfunction and it’s all this other stuff that we’re talking about, you know the medications, the foods, the environmental toxins and then the last thing that I’ve been doing more and more research on this, Dave and I’m so excited to get to share this with you over the last couple of years is our unprocessed emotions. Unresolved trauma. 

Our thoughts, our beliefs and the words that we use every day in our language. And there’s a lot of science and evidence showing how this alters your brain chemistry and the rest of your systemic engines. All your biology and your body gets altered simply by something as powerful as our thoughts. Our words, our beliefs and these unprocessed emotions and traumas. And so those are, you know, those are the main root causes of brain chemistry and balances. And if we can uncover and and and and rule in or rule out which ones we have Because it’s very rare, David, anybody who’s struggling with these types of chronic issues, it’s very rare that there’s ever just one root cause. What our studies are showing and we have clients in over 18 countries. What our, what our studies are showing and our research is showing us is that people have a minimum of three of these different root causes all going on at the same time. And we teach them that, you know, it’s like your body. It is designed to heal and it is designed to perform and it knows exactly what it needs to do and if your body is not making enough of a brain chemical or it’s making too much and not able to break it down. it’s not because you’re broken, it’s because something is short circuiting the hard drive. The hard drive is getting short circuited. So what is the barrier or what are those barriers to healing? Let’s identify those. And then let’s start to methodically and systematically remove each of those barriers. And when we do that, the body comes back online and it recalibrate itself.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, and that’s a really good good summary and you hit some big ones, their food chemicals or toxins in general. And then you also talked about trauma and stress. You know, one more of that I would add and for sure is sleep sleep disorders, poor sleep quality. People getting, you know, blue light exposure late at night basically you know, like a malnutrition of light right? Not getting the proper lighting at the right time, not getting you know, exposure to red light and infrared in the morning, good quality UV B rays or UV rays during the day to help set the circadian rhythm and then getting out of the blue light at night. And optimizing sleep quality. So many people with sleep disorders and that you don’t drain your brain, you have this lymphatic system that helps drain the brain helps clean up all the damaged proteins and waste products in the brain. If you’re not cleaning that up, that’s going to be a big problem as well. And most people that I’ve seen that have mental health disorders have very erratic schedules, right? Sometimes the mental health disorders are feeding into that, like they get anxiety late at night, sometimes they’re just, you know, it’s just kind of how they it’s when they feel better, right sometimes. And circadian rhythm, this regulation is a big factor there.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, and to your point, you know, it can feed each other so that you end up staying on a hamster wheel. It can be the brain chemistry imbalance, causing the anxiety and the mind racing that then disrupts the sleep. Or it can be these environmental toxins that I’ll call the blue light and other environmental toxin, right? It’s an environmental influence that can then, you know, alter the brain chemistry, causing the sleep issues, which then precipitates more brain chemistry issues.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, yeah. It’s really big factor here. And I know in your work, you really highlight leaky brain leaky brain syndrome. So, let’s talk a little bit about that and what sort of impact that has on brain chemistry.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

So, a lot of our listeners are probably familiar with leaky gut. So, you know, with the leaky gut. Well, everything needs to stay inside of its own system is what I like is the best way to explain it. So, like, even the vascular system, the blood, our blood needs to stay inside its vascular system inside the veins and the arteries contained where it needs to be contained if you have a hemorrhage inside if an artery tears on the inside and blood starts leaking out into the rest of the body. It’s like battery acid to the body. It’s super toxic. Well it’s the same thing for our G. I. System. All the food and water that we drink needs to stay contained inside of the G. I. System. And if there is a breach in there either a micro micro tears or like openings as in the leaky gut where these little doors, these tight junctions become open all the time stuff can leak through or if you actually have an actual tear and anything gets out it’s very very toxic to the body. And so you know when when we have leaky brain it’s kind of the same concept, there is a blood brain barrier, there’s a barrier around the brain that very selectively only allows things in and very selectively can can target for things to be expelled out of that area. So it’s got like doors in it kind of like the gut system, it’s got doors and this barrier can be disrupted and it can become compromised from various different things. 

For many years it was known blood that a breach or a disruption in the blood brain barrier could happen from a physical trauma. So something like you know if you get a concussion and you hit your head that can actually cause a breach in the blood brain barrier, allowing things to come in that should not come in like toxins or different types of pathogens, some people might know that more as infections like bugs or viruses that don’t play well in our ecosystem now that you know, they get a they get a free ticket inside the brain, the same thing with like mold toxins or whatever is floating in the bloodstream, right, that normally would not be allowed to pass through into the brain. Now can get through. And the other thing that we have more recently learned that can cause leaky brain is not just like a blunt force trauma to the head. But when we develop what’s called leaky gut, which most of us have that because of all of the insult to environmental toxins, The stress that we allow ourselves to be put under all of these things can cause that when we have leaky gut we almost always tend to end up with some degree of leaky brain.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, yeah, and we have leaky brain, we’re gonna have higher levels of inflammation in the brain because inflammation is really like a survival pattern that your body has to prevent against pathogens from, you know, destroying vital organs like the brain. And so when we have high toxic load pathogen load, just higher levels of inflammation in general, you know the brain is going to for many people that’s going to suffer and that’s kind of the root there. 

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Absolutely. And so it’s really important, you know, when we are, when we’re working with people who are chronically sick, whether it’s just brain related or they’ve got chronic illness in their body, which almost everybody that has chronic illness in their body, they almost all like 99% of them tend to have some sort of mental issue to, which is understandable if you’ve been sick for five years or longer, it’s going to make you feel depressed. You we just want to feel better again. And so when we’re working with people, we really like to take this foundational approach of let’s clean up the body, let’s pull out all of the toxins, whether it’s mold, heavy metals, plastics, you know, chemicals like, you know, infections like whatever’s going on in the body, let’s clean it up and then let’s seal the systems, let’s close the doors on all of these systemic engines and then let’s start to replenish and give the body back what it needs and you know what, just by doing this foundational stuff, David, you know, we see like no joke, like over 90% of the cases that we have that we have their bodies come back online, their body and their brain re calibrates and these people get better, it doesn’t matter what they have going on when you do this type of foundational work, the body gets better and this is just a testament to what we talked about earlier that the body knows what to do. It wants to heal itself when it cannot. It’s because there’s something in the way that’s preventing the healing. So if we identify what those barriers are, remove those barriers then the body can get back online. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. And you’re helping people with this with your brain body mastery program. And I know you incorporate some different testing and labs, looking at brain chemistry, looking at toxins, things like that. Can you talk more about that?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Yeah. So this program, you know, it’s really evolved over the years and it’s a 12-month program. The reason being is because our research and our studies over the years, David have shown us that it takes an average of nine months to get mold and chemical toxins out of the body. Some metals, we can get out sooner. But as you know, some heavy metals, they do take longer. But you know, even if a person has a heavy metal like mercury that can take a couple of years to fully extracted out of the body if they get all the other toxins out. These people are noticing massive improvements in how they feel a lot of their symptoms and conditions are going away again, which is a testament to how resilient the body is. But so we take people through 12 months of work, starting with the first couple of months really dialing in on their foods. And some mindset shifts because it’s hard to just you can’t just give someone a hand out and go well you can give me a hand and say start taking these foods and stay away from these because you know I guarantee you they’re gonna come back the next month and they’re just not really gonna have been able to implement, they’re gonna feel depressed and more anxiety because of changing all the foods. So we spend the first couple of months really diving into getting their mind and their hearts to really resonate with all the changes that they’re making. 

Once we get them into all of the food and dietary changes and some of these mindset shifts that’s where we start going deep into detoxifying them and we do that for several months, tracking them every few months with labs and advanced assessment forms. In fact we have our own clients now David, they are putting together their own case studies, we’re teaching them how to track their own progress what to expect on their follow up labs and how to modify their protocols if necessary. Once their toxins are gone, once all these barriers to healing once all the toxins and stuff has gone out of their body that’s when we go in and we do a really deep gut repair and then now their body can really replenish all the nutrients that it needs. And that’s where, you know, usually you usually it’s between month six and nine where people where the cases that we have, who are having a lot of brain chemistry challenges. 

That’s where they usually start to notice a lot of changes. That’s not to say that some of them don’t notice it within the 1st 30 to 60 days, just from making food changes because we see that too. But you know, we see a lot of people have those really big transformations between month six and nine. And then usually usually people that are on any type of psychotropic medications, you know, for anxiety, depression, bipolar, like whatever it is, usually in the first four months of their second year, they’re able to wean off of all of their medications if they weren’t able to do it in the first year, they’re able to do it in their second year. Why? Because now all their systemic engines are back up and running their online now they’re working. So now for the first time ever, they can start to wean off and they don’t start to have these terrible effects again because now their their bodies working now they can get off of their medication with their doctors help of course and and and now they can finally get to experience for the first time how their bodies working. And they don’t need those medications anymore.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, that’s fantastic, basically you’ve brought down inflammation, you’ve helped restore more integrity to that blood brain barrier. You’ve reduced the toxic load supporting the gut, right? And so, you know, that’s really the foundation and you talked about some nutrition changes, food changes. What are some of the big changes that you’re having people make?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

So food? That’s such a great question. Food is so bio individual. And we’ve, you know, we’ve had so many people ask us over the years, well, Dr. V, what do you believe in? Do you believe that everybody needs to be on like the carnivore diet or the vegan diet or the vegetarian or the paleo? Like how do you know, fruitterrian? I’ve had people ask me that too. And you know what I say is that, look, you know, when we start you in a program, we’re gonna try to cover all bases. We can do genetic testing, food sensitivity testing, and micronutrient testing to see what you’re deficient in and what your body is responding to. And that can get very expensive for some people, Not everybody can afford to do that. So, how can we take a more broad approach that’s gonna work for most people if they can’t afford to do all of those labs, we put them on an anti inflammatory diet, David. 

And so, you know what we encourage for them to do is for 30 days, Not for long sustained, right? But for 30 days for most people, this doesn’t include everyone. We have them stop animal protein just for 30 days. Because if your gut is a mess, you’re probably not digesting that animal protein. Anyway, it’s sitting in your gut and it’s not getting digested and it’s not getting absorbed and so well and and and if it’s not getting digested, you get a build up of ammonia which causes an inflammatory response. So just for a very short time, we’ll pull them off of animal protein and we substitute with plant based proteins in powder form to make sure they’re getting all of their amino acids. You know, enough protein every day because we have to have protein. We have to it’s a building block of everything in our body. And so and then we’ll put them on vegetables and fruits and non glutinous grains like quinoa. so we’re taking out the anything that’s inflammatory to the body. We’re pulling that out. 

Some vegetables can tend to be inflammatory, like tomatoes and eggplants. So we’ll like pull out the night shades, we pull out certain things and we keep them very, very simple diet for about 30 days. Do you know that? We have seen people drop almost almost 120 points in cholesterol in 30 days. We’ve seen their c reactive protein levels drop as much as 7 to 8 points in 30 days, not doing anything else other than changing the diet. And so that’s what we do when we start after the 30 days. Then we’re like, OK, let’s go ahead and let’s add some animal proteins back in staying grass fed, organic wild caught, stay away from pork and you know, and and and let’s add that back into your regiment, but let’s stay on anti-inflammatory. So no sugars, no gluten, no soy, no corn. Like there’s just some basic things that we do with people to keep it as simple as possible for them.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, for sure. Now are you seeing like a percentage of your demographic responding better on like a low fod map diet? Because I know we’ve seen that where a certain percentage that come in, it’s like we take them off what are healthy foods, even broccoli, you know, cauliflower, a lot of cruciferous vegetables, even avocados. And they seem to feel better write in fact, you’ll have people that will say, you know, it seems like when I eat healthier, I actually feel worse. Right? And oftentimes to sign that, you know, their gut is over fermenting a lot of these things. So I was curious when you said that you’re doing a lot of vegetables and fruits, if there’s a percentage that you’re seeing don’t respond well to that and that you have to change things up and go low fod map. There absolutely is.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

In fact, that’s why we have all of our clients filling out some very, very deep detailed history and advanced assessment forms. Because we will have a certain percentage of people that will come in. You know for example we had one this morning that we were going over you know together all of our coaching team and she came to us having SIBO so you know we’re definitely gonna change the way that we’re doing the foods so that we don’t cause more bloating and more discomfort. Also like if we have a diabetic or somebody with an off an issue then you know we might go you know what let’s exchange this basic anti inflammatory diet for a low fog map diet because this is gonna work better for you. So, Absolutely we do. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. So you’re getting the bio individuality there with that. Now I know you also will look at genetic testing how to what sort of genetic polymorphisms specifically are you looking at in terms of brain chemistry imbalance is.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Well so we used to do a lot more of the genetic testing. I’ve collected so much data over the years that I don’t do as much in the beginning I do it more towards the end when their body has gotten back online and we want to start slowing the aging process down and really like optimizing their bodies. But when we do look in the beginning at genetics some of the things that we’re looking for are things like an entire series of like 15 to 20 different methylation genes. A lot of people are familiar with the m th fr 67 70 12 98 C. But there are really a lot more that we like to look at for us to really get a better picture. Why do we look at the methylation genes closely? Well look at those, David, because your methylation genes are like a central hub that are driving a lot of your other genetic engines and your other organ systemic organ systems in your body. So in fact your methylation genes drive over 250 different chemical reactions in your body, including the production of serotonin including the production of dopamine and things like that. And so we want to look at the methylation genes to see how that could not only be affecting directly the brain chemistry but how it could be indirectly affecting the brain chemistry because it may be affecting your thyroid systems or your endocrine systems or any of those and they all affect one another at some point. Some of the other genes that we like to look at are the M. A. O., M. A O. A, M A. O. B. Those are responsible for the breakdown of serotonin, not the production of it. And sometimes when those genes are I like to call them maybe mala expressing if we’re not giving the body what it needs and those jeans kind of get switched on to do something different than what they would normally do, it can start burning through the serotonin faster, leaving a person depleted in their serotonin. 

Looking at the God genes, the G. A. D. Those are responsible for producing Gaba. And if we have a lot of mutations in those genes sometimes that could lead us, it’s not just the gene itself. So you can have the mutation in the gene and your genes could be working perfectly. But if you’re under a lot of stress, if you got unresolved trauma, unprocessed emotions, you’ve been sick for a long time, chances are the gene isn’t working. Like it could or like it should. And so what we can do is we can give extra Gaba to that person, you know, because they’re showing signs of low Gaba plus their genes are showing that they could potentially have low Gaba, plus they’re really sick and they’ve got this unprocessed trauma. So let’s give you some gaba, let’s see how you feel. Oh you feel better. There you go. Let’s just keep you on some java for a little while as a life vest. Not forever because honestly what we’ve been able to see is that once people get better in mind, body and spirit, those those God genes will start working again and they don’t need to take gavel for the rest of their life, you know, you know, and so and so like those are some of the ones that we look at and there are a few others but you know over the years like I said we’ve done less and less of it because we find that we find that it’s not necessary for us to get the outcomes that we’re looking for and if we hit a roadblock in the person’s healing process we may come in and go you know what we’re four months in, we’re not seeing what we were expected, let’s go ahead and let’s run run this genetic test so that we can get some deeper info.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. Really interesting. And yeah for the genetics, they really are just giving a predisposition, showing you a predisposition. So kind of like a weak link and you know if you’re stressed, if you’re toxic then you’re gonna express those weak links or you’re more likely to. And so you’re really trying to address obviously all the foundational lifestyle things so that way somebody can express their genetic potential at their highest level. And you mentioned nutrient deficiencies. What are some of the big nutrient deficiencies that you’re seeing associated with people that are dealing with mental health disorders? Brain inflammation issues like that.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Oh wow. Yes. Oh my gosh! So many of us are having massive nutrient deficiencies, not just because we’re not getting enough of it in our food But also because of leaky gut which makes it very difficult for the body to uptake and utilize those nutrients. And we’re also seeing it because of the way that we’re, we’re like running the car till the wheels fall off. We’re using way more than we’re putting in. And then finally a lot of these chemicals in these toxins they block the cellular receptor sites. So when the B. Six for example, is one of them. When the B six comes knocking on the door saying I’m here for a delivery, I’m gonna come in so I can give you what you need. It gets blocked maybe by another by a toxic chemical so it can’t even get in. But vitamin B six is one of them super super necessary for proper brain chemistry, balance and proper brain chemistry function. B 12 is another one. 

You know, and these are vitamins that when we run our bodies hard and we’re under stress and we’re sick our bodies using more than we’re putting in. And so putting these in is really important. And we always tell people put in a methylated form of B 12, you know, you don’t have to spend a ton of money on genetic testing if you can’t afford it. To know if you need a methylated B 12 versus regular B 12 but just take the methylated form because this way you’re just covering all the bases and your body is getting what it needs. Methyl folate or folic is another one, right? And we always tell people just take a methyl folate, another one would be vitamin D. You know, so many people are deficient in vitamin D. Even if they live in the southern latitudes sunny states, Why? Because the lifestyles have changed, people are in front of their computers all day. They’re not going outside and playing like they used to. 

And so you know when you get low in vitamin D. That can make you, that can give you depression, it can make you brain fog. Iron is another one that you know, if you get low on your iron, it’s not only going to affect your thyroid, it’s gonna affect your energy levels and your brain function as well. You have your fatty acids, oh my gosh, we’ve got to get the fatty acids and the protein, the amino acids, we need to get all those. So you know, those are just a few off the top of my head that I know are super, super necessary for proper brain chemistry function, vitamin C is another one. And you know, oddly enough, like, you know, a lot of people would think, oh I’m not low in vitamin C. You know, like I eat an orange every day, but you know, a lot of people are deficient in a lot of these nutrients unfortunately,

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah and two other big ones that I found as well are zinc, zinc being a big one and magnesium magnesium is so critical for all the neurons, the mitochondria within all the cells of our body. And so, you know, I always say magnesium is the body, what oil is to a car. You know, the more we’re running right, the more stress we’re under, the more we’re doing, the more we’re depleting that magnesium and a lot of people, that’s probably the one I would say magnesium, from my clinical experience is one supplement that when people start to take they notice a difference. The majority of people will notice a difference pretty quickly if they’re deficient. It’s like, wow, all of a sudden their brain is a little bit more calm, relaxed, less anxiety, better sleep quality. Things like that’s kind of a low hanging fruit, although it’s not addressing all the root causes, it is supporting more relaxation more, more kind of a calming effect in the body and supporting mitochondrial energy production as well. Are you seeing that too?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Oh yes, absolutely. And one of the things that I like to explain to the clients about like how magnesium works is, you know, I’ll tell them well, you know, remember that we are an electrochemical machine. So we are both electric and we’re chemical and when we’re having nerve impulses all happening in the brain and in the rest of our body. It starts out as a chemical reaction that converts into an electrical impulse and magnesium and calcium both and sodium, right? All of those play a really big role in the firing of this, you know or the you know from to be able to go from this chemical reaction to the electrical impulse. These different nutrients play a really big role. And a lot of us are deficient in these like the magnesium like you mentioned and so we’ve got to put the magnesium in so that we don’t have misfires. You know, it’s going to prevent the misfires is how I like to explain that to a lot of people. That’s how it calms your nervous system down.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, that’s so good. And what is the correlation that you’re seeing with people living in moldy homes being exposed to mycotoxins and dealing with these kind of mental health disorders.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Oh my gosh, Mycotoxins can cause some of the biggest mental health issues that we’ve seen. Oh my gosh, we have so many stories of people who I thought that they were broken, they had been diagnosed with these just horrible, horrible mental health like things, some really, you know, severe things and these people were not functioning and it turned out that it was toxic mold in their body. So with mold, it can cause a lot of problems in your body, it can literally cause everything from type two diabetes to other types of autoimmune issues. It can cause cancer. It can cause a lot of different things. But what a lot of people don’t know is how it so adversely and dangerously impacts your brain train your central nervous system. And so one of the ways that it does this is that it when you get mold in your body, it inhibits or prevents the conversion of dopamine into epinephrine and norepinephrine. And that’s a normal sequence that happens in our body. When that happens, we end up with this massive accumulation or build up of dopamine and remember what I said earlier. It’s not always a deficiency or a lack of a brain chemical that can make a person have symptoms. They can have too much and they can create a lot of the same symptoms. So these people… 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Because when you have too much dopamine, your body starts to blunt the dopamine receptor, right? Kind of like too much insulin in the body, you can develop insulin resistance and so kind of the same thing here with dopamine. So now you get less sensitivity.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Yeah, yeah, true. And it actually is very toxic to the nervous system. If you get too much of a nation it’s toxic to the nervous system and then you end up with an epinephrine and norepinephrine deficiency and that can cause a lot of the same symptoms as like if you are deficient in serotonin. But when you get this build up, there’s some interesting research on this. The very, very first research I learned on this several years ago was when I went to a great Plains labs seminar and I started learning about this issue with dopamine. But you know, even though the medical industry says that it’s a lack of dopamine that causes Parkinson’s, guess what we’ve seen. We’ve seen that. It’s an over abundance of it. And a lot of these people, they’ve got mold in their body that’s preventing the conversion. So they get the build up of dopamine, they start getting symptoms like memory loss, mind racing. And then and then the next thing you know, it takes them into having tremors, then they get diagnosed with Parkinson’s and then their doctors make this assumption that they don’t have enough dopamine. So they put them on l dopa and then they start progressing with their disease even faster. But the ones that come see us that choose not to do the el dopa instead they choose to detox the mold out of their body. We’ve seen people get out of their wheelchairs, David. It’s just incredible. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Amazing. Amazing. And so how do people get access to the brain body mastery program?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Easy. Super, super easy. Go to our website modernholistichealth.com, you know, registered to get our emails whenever we are having a master class you know, learn more, go to the master class, watch what we’re doing, see if that resonates with you, you can go straight to our website, you can schedule with us, you can just get the emails and no or you know, David, thank you so much for supporting our work. So I know that whenever we have these, you are usually supporting this work for us and thank you.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, that’s right. And the brain body restoration mastery program that you want to look out for, and what would you say would be the perfect candidate for that program?

Dr. Elena Villanueva

You know, somebody who has who’s tried a lot of things and it hasn’t worked. I would say those are the good candidates. The other good candidate is going to be somebody who you know, we’re gonna take a little bit of a different approach, David, we are the perfect candidate for us is somebody who wants to understand their body. They want to understand how it works and they want to be an active participant in their healing. Because we’re not gonna tell you, take this and go home and see me in a month. We’re going start teaching you literally how to be your own doctor. We’re gonna teach you how to break down all the assessment forms, how to interpret your labs, how to put your protocols together. And if that’s not something that you want to do, then we’re probably not the right person for you. But if you want to take a very active role in your own healing, then we are a good fit for you.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. And I think really that’s health care in the 21st century here, it’s all about really mastering your own physiology and so understanding what your what’s going on with your labs is a key component of that understanding why you may have certain symptoms, you know, and why they may come and go and why, you know, certain stressors may impact them. And I know in your program you got you’re really helping them understand that and that’s going to give them lifelong success, not just kind of a short term fix. And then they go back to a certain lifestyle or they have more stress. They encounter some sort of trauma later in life, like all of us do at certain points, right? And then they revert back to having symptoms, but instead they’ll have the idea of what’s actually happening and you know, nowhere to nowhere to go and know what to do to help bring their body back into balance.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Well, great Dr. Elena, so guys check her out modernholistichealth.com. Thanks so much for joining us here. Just a wealth of knowledge, appreciate all the great work that you’re doing. And we’ll see you soon. Dr. Elena be blessed.

Dr. Elena Villanueva

Thank you so much. Dr. Jockers will talk to you soon.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Absolutely.