Amino Acids: The Missing Piece in Mental Health

Opening on amino acids and stress 0:00

It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, those things are depleting you of amino acids. And so what I've found is that the deficiency is the major thing. You just react very typically to the amino acids, meaning you respond very well. The smaller population of people who don't respond very well, it's because they're on fire in some other way. Their gut is on fire. Their adrenals are on fire. Something is on fire. And it's like, you've got to put the fire out because they're just working on adrenaline and cortisol right now and nothing's going to calm them down.

So I guess what I'm saying is this is like when people say, Oh, like, um, people with more, your anxiety might be the result of mold. Yeah, that's a hundred percent true. However, you can feel better before you deal with the mold. Correct. You know what I mean? Right. And then it makes your mold detox a lot easier, right? Because guess what? Your body doesn't do detox well under stress. So if we can reduce the stress in your body, your body will just naturally the portmull detox better and easier.

Welcome to Take Back My Brain with Lori Hammer, where real healing starts in the brain. I'm Lori, a functional nutritionist and mom who's walked the path from anxiety and burnout to clarity and calm. Each week, we're going to dive into brain-based tools like amino acid therapy, gut health, fasting and faith to help you reclaim your energy, emotions and sense of self. Hey, Dr. Chris, welcome back. Good to have you again. Yeah, it's good to be here again. Good. Yeah. Today we're going to dive into, for all you listeners, we're going to dive into the missing piece in mental health and kind of talk about traditional approaches that fail and why amino acid therapy is a good option for a lot of people out there to come alongside as they're dealing with mental health issues and also to help them get off their medication.

Broken mental health model and medication fatigue 2:00

So I know you and I were talking before, we love this topic. this topic love this topic love this topic because our mental health model in this country is uh sadly sadly broken and there is an epidemic of anxiety and depression that i feel like is being misdiagnosed underdiagnosed um poorly medicated can't medicate away a nutrient deficiency so i see people all the time coming into my office on zoom calls and everything they're like i'm on this med i've been on this med for 20 freaking years And I still feel anxious and depressed.

Well, one, why are you on that medication? Right? Like, why does your doc still have you on there? And they come in like I had a lady the other day. She literally she had 15 different medications they had tried in the last two and a half years. Do you at any point think that maybe we should Not try medications. Maybe we should look in a different direction. Maybe there's a huge nutrient deficiency, right? We trialed her. She was so deficient in amino acids and she's like, I have not felt this calm since high school.

Yeah. And they tried 15 different medications with her. Like it was just, she's like, I can't believe it was that easy. You know, she was crying. Like how easy can that get? And then we could deal with the hormone issues and then we can deal with whatever is underlying. But You go into the mainstream medical system and there's fabulous doctors out there and they are all out there. Most of them are out there because they want to help people, but they're in a broken system. And so then they do broken things.

And that is the frustrating piece. And I see people that are so damaged. by being on these SSRIs, these ADHD meds. Oh my gosh. Putting these kids on these ADHD meds when they're seven. And then all of a sudden they come to me when they're 35 and they've been on them for that long. Like I feel like that's medical malpractice. Like we have to take a bigger look at it. And you know, here I am going on my soapbox, right? Chris. This is like on fire, Lori. This is not to call mom. This is the mom of the air coming out.

This is mom on a mission, which is good because one, I mean, SSRIs and these mood altering medications are everywhere, right? And so they're popular. It's a hot topic. It's been in the news lately. I was just talking with a patient because everybody's talking about SSRIs because everybody's finally finding out What you've always known, Lori, and that's all of these SRIs come with what on the box? Oh, wait. It's a black box warning. Right. It's a suicide warning. Right. So people are starting to find out exactly how dangerous these SSRIs are.

But that still doesn't change the discomfort that people have in talking about it. Yes. Because there is definitely a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge. Um, and then what to do as an alternative. And, um, I do like, I agree a hundred percent with what you said. And I will also say this too. It doesn't matter if you've been on a medication for 20 years or you've been on a supplement for 20 years, it's not making you feel different. Why are you doing it? Yeah. Cause we don't want to be in symptom management.

That's not the deal. You know, so things I truly believe that if something's going to make a difference for you, it's going to make a difference for you in a relatively short period of time, easily within 30 days, but usually less than 30 days, you'll feel a shift. Um, because if it's good for you, your body loves it. You're going to feel it in some way, shape or form. You're going to feel it. That doesn't mean that you're going to heal in 30 days. It just means you're going to feel that symptomatic shift.

Yes, very quickly for something that you desperately need. And you don't have to wait and you don't have to think, Oh, I can't stop this because there's no other alternative. There's always something different. Another medication, another supplement, another therapy. There's always something you can try. Um, but what I was telling you is, is like, I was, I was having this conversation with this. mom of an adult child and she's really into health and nutrition and he's on FSRIs and so she's been doing a lot of research and she's finding out all this information that you and I have known about for years and she's like I can't believe how dangerous these are for people and I've told my son and he's like I can't make a change now because my life's so stressful.

I'm too stressed out. Too stressed out to make the change. Right. Which I get. It's like, you feel like you're in the storm and you're like, I am just holding on for dear life right now. I can't make a change because that's going to stress me out. Meanwhile, you and I are outside of the situation. We're thinking, wow, you can handle this better. After, if we just sat down and had a conversation for 30 minutes to an hour, I'm confident we could find something really simple. that would actually alleviate your stress and help you deal with your wedding in two weeks, your moving in three weeks, your new job in four weeks.

We can help you navigate this, but it's scary for a lot of people, which again, is wonderful to be around Lori because it's not scary for her.

Fear, stress, and nutrient depletion 7:00

She just knows the truth and speaks the truth and it is what it is. And that's wonderful. to be that way. Having been in practice for 20 years, I'm very confident in certain things and most of my patients aren't. And it doesn't matter what I say to them. It doesn't matter. They're like, can I just have you in my pocket or can you come with me when I'm in my pocket? I know, right? Can you come with me, please? Right. I got a doctor's appointment. Do you want to come with me? Because he's going to try to talk me into this and I don't know how to explain to him what you said.

But yeah, SSRIs and other mood-altering medications, they're just a big deal right now. There's a lot of information out there that people, I don't want to say should have because I want to shed over it all over anybody, but. Um, having that knowledge and confidence can really help you make a better decision and not a decision out of fear. That's the huge thing. Isn't it Chris? Like that spirit of fear, you know, God didn't give us a spirit of fear. He gave us one of power, love, and a sound mind.

And so power. So we, we know what we need to do, right? We've got the Holy spirit in us, the power, the love, and then a sound mind. And people are so afraid not to have that sound mind, you know, Alzheimer's dementia is so prevalent right now. And so our age group is like, Oh, you know, mom has dementia. So, Oh my gosh, I'm so afraid of getting dementia, but then that fear alters our brain chemistry, that fear alters our thought processes. And I feel like we live in this society that's very fear based.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, marketing is very sophisticated nowadays and it understands human psychology and it understands sociology. And so they know how to, quite frankly, manipulate people into making decisions out of fear where they normally wouldn't make those decisions in a calm state. Right. And so, I mean, from a very young age, it's just based on my dad and who my dad is. It's like the second somebody tried to sell me anything, by using fear negatives, like my BS radar would go up and I'll be like, I'm just gonna walk away from you and not trust anything you say.

Even if it's good for me, the way you're doing it is like, you're trying to manipulate me into saying yes in some way, shape or form. And so people do it for a reason, it's effective. But once you become aware of it, it doesn't mean you're gonna manipulate people. It means you can become aware of how you are being manipulated by fear and worrying what ifs. You know, well, if you stop this, if you stop what you're doing, you might go back to what you were before and you probably don't want that. So you better just stay with this for the rest of your life.

Yeah. And here's six other medications on top of that one to deal with it. Yeah. Yeah, just gets my blood. It gets my blood boiling because we are, our society, because of our food system, the environment, there's so many things that deplete us, right? Right. And so we're, and we, it's normalized that you have anxiety. It's normalized that you have ADHD. It's normalized all of these things because that's just what everybody has is it's an epidemic of burnt out people. And so you can't medicate burnt out people.

You can't medicate away a nutrient deficiency. You actually have to go fix the nutrient deficiency. And so we've created this whole society of nutrient deficient people. And Dr. Weston, a price proved that a hundred years ago, right? Like traveling all the world and looking at all these societies, the most nutrient depleted people have all of these issues. What we're having right now. And so you, you have to go in and fix that. You have to fix the blood sugar crashes and the emotional crashes and those kinds of things.

And you can't fix them with a medication. We can't keep medicating our population and expecting different results. Yeah. You know, when I was in chiropractic school and going through diagnosis and x-rays and, and, um, you know, looking at different conditions and all of these things, the, the one thing that kept them being repeated. to us was the hardest thing to identify is normal. It's easy to identify abnormal, but it's hard to identify normal. And so what I think people struggle with is what does normal look like?

And they think that they're abnormal, they're mistaking their abnormal for normal. And so I think it's appropriate to at least talk a little bit about what does a normal stress response look like? Because That's what we would expect to see in somebody who doesn't have a problem. You know, it's like, we all have stress in our life. Amino acids don't stop the stress from coming at you, right? Correct. But amino acids help you handle the stress better because, and I don't know how you describe it, but I basically say, look, when you're in a stress situation, you're going to burn through things faster because the fire is just hotter, right?

And if you don't replenish them either through your own microbiome or through your diet, then you're just going to be in that heightened state of stress, burning through them more and more and more and having less and less and less. And that's that kind of vicious cycle that people get stuck in until they crash. And so you shouldn't be crafting after an interaction, a bad interaction with your boss or being on vacation with your family. We can have disagreement. We can have these stressful situations where we have money issues or family issues or legal issues and get through it and then come out the other end and go back to baseline and be normal.

That is a healthy, healthy response, right? Yeah. Well, I'm even thinking of just saving your marriage and I have so many, because I see mainly women, right? And they'll be like, yeah, my husband doesn't bother me as much anymore. You know what I mean? It didn't change. Amino acids didn't change his habits.

What normal stress recovery should look like 13:00

Amino acids didn't change what's going on with the husband, but it changed their response to their husband, right? Yeah. And I even had husbands call me in the appointment with their wife. They're like, hey, so and so, my hubby really wants to talk to you just to thank me. Like, and then they want to be on the amino acids too. They're like, this has totally changed her response to life. Like, cause she's not burnt out. So she's not yelling at the kids. She doesn't want to go down in the laundry room in, in, in a corner and hide from everybody because it's just too overwhelming.

That's not normal. Right. No, the normal response would be. Okay, we need to take a break as a family because mom's overwhelmed right now and I'm going to go take a nap kind of thing. Or you're able to navigate life appropriately. Yeah. I would say if I'm going to be completely honest and just give a little insight to the shift that happens, I would say specifically the way amino acids help in a marriage, or at least I've seen it in my marriage, is, is that you realize that blaming the other person isn't actually the issue.

The issue, you know, like all of a sudden you're like, or, you know, you know, things still fall apart. And then all of a sudden I realized, Oh, you know what? It actually isn't her fault. All of a sudden, like, like the ability to be, to be empathetic all of a sudden and be like, you know what? I'm just angry. I'm angry. It's not anything to do with anybody else. I can see that now. Like all of a sudden it's like, I can actually see that now. Right. And which is important, you know, from an emotional spiritual standpoint to stop blaming other people for your problems.

Right. But amino acids just all of a sudden just kind of open that insight and allowed, allowed talk therapy to work better as an example. Right. And all of a sudden, like, you know, you, you get these emotional spiritual breakthroughs all of a sudden. I wanted to share that from a guy's perspective of, you know, because you see women a lot and it's like the same thing happens to husbands and men too. All of a sudden, our anger kind of just goes down a little bit and we start to see the world the way it is and not the way we think it is.

Right, right. And do you think it's harder for guys? I mean, because us women, we talk all the time, right? We're just going to share our emotions. And like my hubby, he's very stoic, very reserved in what he thinks, says, and feels. But I know he feels really deep. And when he does take the amino acids, one, he's a little more talkative. And his response to stressors in life is it doesn't stress the rest of us out. So I think if your responses are stressing your family out, that's a pretty key indicator that that's not a normal response.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't want to say it's tougher for guys. I'll just say it's different for guys. I think guys want to take a certain amount of burden on themselves. You know, they want to take care of their wife. They want to take care of their families. And so they see it as a good thing to not burden other people with things. But at some point it becomes, you know, what I would call too as like the wounded dog where, you know, let's say hurt people, hurt people. That the whole thing of is like, you can just see it when guys get angry or they shut down, there's some sort of, emotional wound there usually, sometimes a physical one, but like there's an emotional wound there and it doesn't have to be as deep as you need to go counseling.

It just has to be that you don't feel like yourself or you're angry all the time, you don't know why and you can't explain it. And so why talk about it if I can't explain it to you? Because I think most guys don't process things through talking them out. They process things through thinking them out. Well, and then you end up at the doctor's office because you're like, there's something wrong with me. And then they give you a medication, um, because there's something wrong with you. You have a chemical imbalance and there's some amazing studies that have come out.

This is like, that's not even a thing. So, you know, the chemical imbalance is not a thing and a medication doesn't fix that chemical imbalance. So it just actually alters your receptor sites in your brain for those specific nutrients so that you can't absorb tryptophan correctly or your minerals or your B vitamins or whatever, because they're damaged. And you don't have that recycling process that goes on in the brain anymore. And so that leaves you nutrient deficient. So you, you go in nutrient deficient, you get a medication and then you come out even more nutrient deficient than you started.

And then you add, you know, blood sugar crashes on that. And so that's why, you know, when we started this, like our mental health system is so broken because none of it goes back to the foundations. None of it goes back to. Do you actually digest your food? If you don't digest your food, you can't break down protein. If you can't break down protein, then you don't have amino acids to go around to rebuild your neurotransmitters so that you can have less stress in your life. So we have to go back to, well, let's fix the deficiency.

Let's support that nervous system. support those neurotransmitters, then let's work on your digestive process. Cause once we've got that nervous system, calm down. Oh my goodness. We can actually teach your body how to digest correctly and change your lifestyle. Like we don't even go back to those things anymore. Right? So we have to go back to the lifestyle. We have to go back to you. Are you eating 17 times a day? And why is your blood sugar crashing? Because if your blood sugar crashes all the time, You're going to deplete yourself all the time and you're going to be on this huge like roller coaster, this hamster wheel that never ever stops.

Amino acids, marriage, and emotional regulation 18:30

And that's why, you know, we're always talking about go back to amino acid therapy because it's the foundation protein and fat are the foundations of everything your body needs. And so if you don't have those foundational. components, you cannot heal your brain. You can't heal your nervous system. And you're always going to be anxious and depressed no matter how many meds you're on, because most of the time those meds, if they work for a little bit, great. But then long-term, you know, they don't work.

And then the people are on them for 20 and 30 years. And I just don't understand that thought process. Well, I think most people want to feel better first, and that's what drives them to all of these meds, right? But then like you're saying with the amino acid, it's like you're deficient in these amino acids. You naturally want to ask the question, well, why? And then from the patient's perspective, you're like, okay, this is great, but I don't want to be spending all this money for the rest of my life.

How do I eventually get off of these, right? And so that naturally brings us to the, why aren't you getting this from your food? How come you're not digesting your food? Most people don't actually realize that the amino acid that we use, your body also makes, right? The good bacteria in your gut make things. And the reason why they're good is because they make good things for you, right? So there are bacteria in your gut that make gap. There are bacteria in your gut that make tryptophan. So why aren't you making it?

How come you don't have those good guys? How come you don't have them in more abundance? And so that's always, the leading question with aminos is like, okay, so now what can we do to heal your gut because of the gut brain connection that everybody loves talking about today. We all love talking about it is very, very real. And we don't ignore it with amino acid therapy. We are putting a really, really good band-aid on and like it's better. I don't even know if a band-aid is a good enough explanation.

We're giving you back what you don't have, right? And worst case scenario is you're just taking these for the rest of your life because you can't make them and your guts all messed up. And that's the worst case scenario is that you're going to feel great for the rest of your life. You're just going to do it through. Right. That's not a bad worst case scenario. Way better than medication for the rest of your life, right? That's right. Right. Exactly. But that's not the goal either. The goal is not for you to be on supplements for the rest of your life.

The goal is to fix the deficiencies and then address the underlying cause why you have the deficiencies in the first place. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's reasonable. And I would say that 99, if not 100% of people who walk in our doors want that. That's what they're looking for, right? Yeah. And that's very reasonable. And I would say that it's very doable. I'm always hopeful, as I'm sure you are, that you can restore somebody's health. We always run into reality, right? It's like, if you break your leg, You know, does that mean you're going to, your legs got, we have the ability to heal your leg back to the way it was before it was broken.

Maybe you might walk with a limp a little bit. It might be sore and like storms and stuff. And so healing looks different for everybody. The sooner you get to healing, the more you can recover. Right. Right. So like somebody who he, like one of your clients who's a teenager in her twenties is going to heal more complete and better than somebody in their fifties or sixties. It is just, just what it is. Yeah. Yeah. But everybody's going to heal. Like I haven't seen anybody not get better yet with this.

It's amazing. I love it. I know. It's a lot of fun. I mean, even if you don't respond amazingly well to the amino acids, because there's always going to be a handful of people where you go through the whole trialing package. And when I say trialing package, if you haven't heard these episodes before, we open up the capsule of an amino acid, put it underneath your tongue, wait a couple of minutes, and then, hey, what do you feel? Does something feel different, cognitively, emotionally, or physically?

When, when we're doing that, all of a sudden, you know, the light comes on for most people, but there's always a few out there that it just doesn't. And then we know we just have to address some other things first because their body just isn't able to respond to that at the moment. And that's okay. Um, but it's the trialing process is what helps us to get to that place to say, are these going to work to rebuild your nervous system and to calm that down so that we can go ahead and address those other issues.

But like you and I are working on a, uh, you know, a mutual client right now. And. Her Lyme disease is so, so prevalent right now. And her cortisol is so high that really, unless we deal with some immediate stuff first, those amino acids aren't going to work. We did the trialing and she responded to a few, which was great. But when she takes them internally, because her digestive is so messed up, there's, there's an issue there. So we have to work around a few things first, but most of the time, over 90% of the time, it's not that way.

It's like people just respond to the amino acids. Yeah. Yeah, that's 100%. That's 100% correct because it doesn't matter if your anxiety is caused by high cortisol levels, by hidden infections like Lyme or mold or heavy metals, or all of these other things that are associated with anxiety and stress. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, those things are depleting you of amino acids. And so what I've found is that if the deficiency is the major thing, you just react very typically to the amino acids, meaning you respond very well.

The people, the smaller population of people who don't respond very well, it's because they're on fire in some other way. Their gut is on fire. Their adrenals are on fire. Something is on fire. And it's like, you've got to put the fire out because they're just working on adrenaline and cortisol right now and nothing's going to calm them down. So we're not saying, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is this is like when people say, oh, like, People with more, your anxiety might be the result of mold.

Yeah, that's a hundred percent true. However, you can feel better before you deal with the mold.

Why foundations come before deeper protocols 24:30

Correct. You know what I mean? Right. And then it makes your mold detox a lot easier. Right. Because guess what? Your body doesn't do detox well under stress. So if we can reduce the stress in your body, your body will just naturally support mold detox better and easier. Yes. Yeah. There's an order. I mean, I guess what I've learned is there's an order to things now. Right. And, um, And I always thought there was an order and I always tried different things, but amino acids just, you start with amino acids, you calm the body down as much as you can, then you can start to address those underlying things and heal the gut.

And I mean, I would say at the end of the day, if you, you know, it all kind of comes back to the gut because all these toxins destroy your gut, give you leaky gut, allow these hidden infections, these hidden toxins to become really bad in you. Um, and that that's where the meat of the work is. And I think a lot of people study that part, but they ignore the amino acid part. And, um, that's where a lot of people just hit walls is they're missing that first component. Right. And it's just foundational.

Just found it. And that's why it's foundational. That's why it's the first. Because like you so eloquently said, the reason why you need protein and fat is because You are a protein and fat. You're not carbs. Everybody thinks you need carbs because you're not made of carbs. Carbs are good, quick energy, and there are health benefits to carbs too, yes, but you're made of protein and fat. And if you want to rebuild and heal, you need protein and fat. Right. And amino acids make up protein chains. And so you have to have those foundational piece, that piece and God designed our brains to heal, right?

When we remove that interference and we give the body what it needs, then that, that piece, that healing, all of those things come in. Like he, he, he made this beautiful design and we try to like usurp that design and you know, go around the foundational piece when you always have to address foundations first. You know, what is. You know, what's kind of like hypnotizing and fun about being a practitioner is getting going in the weeds and learning all the different things and micromanaging this.

It's kind of fun. It's like detective work. But you know, the reality is, is that you don't need to go into the weeds to help people. No, you don't know. You really don't think they're much more simple, like amino acid therapy, the, the gut protocol that we, that we go through the detox protocol that we go through. Like it's designed to be simple and designed to not micromanage because no matter how much fun I have trying to understand the human body, like God's already designed it to be self-sufficient.

And there's something that's stopping it from being efficient and So the protocols are designed to eliminate the things that are causing the insufficiencies, right? So you're missing this amino acid. Boom, we can all of a sudden make the body more efficient. You have this hidden toxin that doesn't seem to be going away. Boom, we remove it. And then all of a sudden, you start to act normal. You have this PTSD experience and you're having trouble processing it. And you go to therapy and talk therapy and boom, all of a sudden, all of your symptoms get better because you got an emotional breakthrough.

Like it really is that simple of just finding those things that are stopping your body. And we don't, we definitely don't need to micromanage your body. No, not at all. Yeah. You know, if we're going back to the mental health piece, I have seen firsthand people who have had voices in their heads on psychotropic medications because of these voices diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, whatever. We changed their diet out, even outside of the amino acids, just changing their diet, like removing things that they are sensitive to.

Those voices went away. Yeah. Right. So it was never a mental health issue. It was something that was irritating their nervous system. And so that should always be our first line of defense. What is more foundational than going, what's my body sensitive to? Right. We're going to fix the deficiencies. What's my body sensitive to? Let's remove that interference. Let's fix those deficiencies. And then what do we have left over? Right. So the mental health system in our country is so broken because nobody's addressing everybody's like, Oh, you have this XYZ symptom.

Okay. Let's just medicate it, try to medicate it away. And it never, ever works. And we have this whole society that has normalized anxiety and dysfunction. And we have these kids that don't know who they are because they've been on medication since they were five. They don't actually know how to feel. I have this client that she's 35 years old. She's been on meds since she was 12. When she came to me, she was on five meds. She'd been pretty much on those same five types of meds since she was 12 years old and she was 35. And so going through this whole process with her, she's like, I didn't know, I didn't know how to feel any of this.

So was it hard? Yeah, it was hard. The amino acids help. She loves the amino acids and now she doesn't need super high doses of them anymore. She's cutting back on them. But these are been my lifeline as I come off these meds and learn how to navigate life on life's terms. What does it feel to actually be real angry? What does that feel like as opposed to a medicated angry or a medicated sadness, like she just, you know, experiences sadness in her life. And she's like, but I navigated it. She went home to be with her family for a little bit.

And she's like, I have never been with my family unmedicated. And we, you know, talk through it before she went talk through it when she came back. She's like, you know, it wasn't that bad i handled them really really well and they saw a different me that wasn't medicated and so like all of a sudden you get to be this person that god created you to be off of this medication and the world gets to experience you that way and you're working on your nutrition at the same time as she's training for a marathon and like all these beautiful things have happened since she you know, decided like, Hey, I don't want to be this way anymore.

I don't want to be on these meds. I know there's something deeper in me because when you put these kids on these medications, they don't have any, any idea who they are, who they're created to be. Well, they don't at 12 years old, they don't know. No, I mean, just in general, like my kids, I mean, you know, I want to be Superman or I want to go be an electrician and you know, now he's a piano tuner.

SSRIs vs amino acid therapy 31:00

So like, they don't know. So I'm. You know, but you have to give them the tools to do that. And just because somebody is struggling doesn't mean they need a medication. Let's just figure out why that's happening to begin with, you know, and as a practitioner, I think, you know, do the foundations first, just do the foundations first. And amino acid therapy is the foundation for all of that. Since, since I got fired up Lori here and we started talking about SSRIs. Do you want to just like quickly?

I don't know if you can do it quickly. Do you want to just kind of talk about what they're actually doing and what they're trying to do compared to what like an amino acid would do just like real quick? Yeah, absolutely. So an SSRI tells your body's own system, Hey, you don't need to make serotonin in a nutshell. So we have serotonin receptors. Isn't it. Aren't you taking an SSRI because. You have low serotonin symptoms though. Correct. You're taking an SSRI because your serotonin symptoms are low.

So the misnomer that people have is that when they take an SSRI that gives their body the. makes more serotonin in their body when it actually doesn't. So basically it puts their serotonin mechanism to sleep. The medication comes in, falsely inflates serotonin in between the two synapses in the brain. And you might feel better for a little bit, but it basically just dampens your own body's production of serotonin. So it kind of, kind of like puts it to sleep. Like you're in that dreamy world of serotonin, and then it stops your receptor sites from recycling.

So you have receptor sites and all of your cells that will recycle whatever's leftover after your body uses the serotonin. So there's an efficiency that goes on in the body. So those SSRIs shut down that. efficiency that goes on in the brain. Right. And so, um, you, that's how you become dependent on them because without it, you feel even worse because your own serotonin mechanism has basically been shut down. Whereas with amino acid therapy comes in and it nourishes the brain and it kind of wakes them up.

It's kind of like people say their brain starts to tingle. you know when they take the amino acids because all of a sudden it's being fed it's kind of like you're so exhausted and you haven't eaten all day and you eat and all of a sudden you have more energy that's what happens when you give the body the amino acids all of a sudden those serotonin receptors go oh hi good morning we are here you know we're gonna produce things today we're not sluggish anymore because you've given us the nutrition that we need so that's it in a nutshell So I guess, like, I'm sure you've heard this and I've heard this thing, you know, people talk about, oh, you don't want, I don't want to take melatonin because if I take melatonin, I'm not going to make it.

If I take progesterone, I'm not going to make it. If I take these hormones, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make it, which we know isn't necessarily true. But what you're saying is that with SSRIs it's a hundred percent true. They are shutting down your own body's ability to make serotonin. Right, and we don't know what else they're shutting down. Let's just be honest. The studies really haven't proved that they don't affect anything else. In fact, they've proved that they actually affect your norepinephrine, and they affect your dopamine, and they affect so many other things in your brain.

Well, that makes sense, because they're all connected, right? Yeah. Interesting. And who was SSRIs recommended for, according to the medical model? Cause I know there's black and we talked about the black, the black box warning on it, but like, they put kids on as young as two, but is it approved for kids as young as two? Yeah. So in your experience, then when people get, um, transition onto amino acids and you're working with their practitioner, right. To help lean them off of their medication.

Um, how long does it usually take somebody? I know it depends on how long they've been at it, right? If they've been at it for 26 years, it's going to take a longer time than somebody. Sometimes not though. Yeah. Sometimes it's fairly quick, just depending on how their body responds. So, um, you know, 90 days, 90 days to six months, depending on how many meds you're on and what kind of meds you're on. Yeah. I mean, what I like about amino acid therapies is that when people do have this desire, when they have this understanding of, you know, I know I.

I don't want to be on this medication and I know I shouldn't need it, but I've tried to get off of it and I can't, and I don't know how to get off this medication. The nice thing is, is that amino acid therapy does give you that opportunity to heal your body so that if you have the desire to reduce your medication or even get off your medication, you can effectively work with your doctor to reduce those levels and still be supported nutritionally so you don't crap, right? So it actually gives you that mechanism to be able to, to, to make those choices.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I was just, I was just thinking of a client that I've been working with and she's just slowly tapered off and it took her really just 90 days to get off, but she was just on one medication. Um, but each time she dropped it down, you know, with her doc, there was a little bit of a lull, but we bring. some extra amino acids in, and then that lull would, you know, go away. Right. So that's the beautiful thing. And it does stop some of those, um, like brain zaps are a huge thing for people.

You know, every time I try to come off my medication, I get these brain zaps, or if I forget it for a day, I got brain zaps and it takes like a week for them to go away. You know, it is really, really, really, really rare to have that when you're on the amino acids and tapering.

Tapering support and closing thoughts 36:30

Yeah. But it's a great tool to help people who are looking to taper. Yes. Find an amino acid practitioner who can work with your with the doc who puts you on those medications, like working together, it's a very efficient, it's a very effective way of doing it. I wish I knew of another way to do it. I don't know of another way, to be honest with you. Yeah, no. And if you have a really good psychiatrist or doc, you know, some people are on other medications like Prozac, and you can do like a Prozac bridge.

And there's so many different things you can do. So you do want to work with a qualified practitioner, I have a list of those. You know, if any of you want that, I'm happy to find somebody who can work with you from my mind thrive certification. If you're a Practitioner out there, you're like, oh my gosh, I need to learn amino acid therapy. This sounds amazing. You do need to learn it. You really, really do. So contact me or it'll be in the show notes where you can check out the mind thrive course that Dr.

Chris has been in for a very long time with me. And, um, this has been a fantastic conversation. Now you get the jazzy Lori and we start talking about this stuff. That's right. I can't get so bad because I hate to see people suffering for so long. It just it just drives me nuts. So no, we shouldn't. We have a sound mind in Christ, power, love and a sound mind, not the spirit of fear. Amen. Awesome. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you, Dr. Chris for being here with us again, and we will see you all in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to Take Back My Brain. If today's episode helped you connect with hope or direction, I want you to follow the show, leave us a review and share it with someone who needs it. And if you're ready to start your own healing journey, explore our courses and our coaching programs at lorihammer.com backslash store. So until next time, remember you cannot medicate away a nutrient deficiency and healing your brain isn't just possible, it's powerful.