Balancing Brain Chemistry for Optimal Health

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Well, the obvious root causes stress, right? I mean, I just can’t remember, I can’t remember a time in my life and I felt more stress and you know, look at my teenage kids and see kind of what they’ve been through the last two years. It’s no wonder we have an epidemic of of teenagers who are really, you know, going through anxiety and depression issues, something that, you know, when I was a teenager, you know, I was I was just happy, you know, happy to get the keys to the car and go out and have a good time and those kind of things. But now it just seems like there’s just so much stress and that stress creates all sorts of imbalances in the brain chemistry that then manifests itself as mood disorders or mental clarity issues.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, absolutely. And I know you have been an expert in orthomolecular medicine for gosh, what, 23 decades now, and using that form of medicine to really help people. So let’s break that down and uh and explain what orthomolecular medicine is for those who don’t know.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So, orthomolecular medicine preceded functional medicine preceded integrated medicine. So, I’ve been in practice 32 years and I’ve seen these names change as we go through these different paradigm shifts. But orthomolecular medicine is a medicine that’s built around using the right doses. Oftentimes high doses of vitamins, minerals amino acids and essential fatty acids, the building blocks that make us us. And in 19, in the 19 late 19 sixties, Linus Pauling, two time Nobel prize winner, one in chemistry, probably the most brilliant chemist to come out of America in the last 100 years. People know him from vitamin C, but he was much more, you know, much more depth in chemistry than just that biochemistry. 

But he came up with this term Ortho meaning right molecule. Orthomolecular medicine, where it’s based on the idea that if we have something going wrong in the body, we’re having a warning sign what we call a symptom is because of a deficiency. Either you got something to little a deficient vitamin mineral amino acid, whatever it is or you got too much of something like some type of toxin now now we in functional medicine the way you and I practice that’s common, but back then to see a psychiatrist using over the counter supplements and amino acids was revolutionary, I mean it was something that that had never really been done and and they were having such incredible success using this paradigm.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I’ve heard several people that were you know like Linus Pauling, obviously he was nominated for a Nobel prize I believe, right? And he was kind of won that one too. 

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Yeah. He won is the piece for piece and then the other one was the biochemistry of the vitamin C is work with vitamin C. And some other things.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now let’s branch that now into neurotransmitters and we talked about anxiety, depression in our society now. So we know we’ve got these kind of neurochemicals, how do they affect our mental clarity and mood?

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So these neurotransmitters, our brain messengers and the ones that were really kind of focused on today are messengers that are being released from the hypothalamus gland, this is a group of nerve cells, cluster of nerve cells and organ in the brain and it’s releasing these messages throughout the day. So those neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and gamma amino butyric acid, these are messengers that are released to then allow the brain cells to communicate with one another and then to initiate reactions in the body, people have heard of of serotonin the happy hormone, right? So if you’ve heard of you know you’ve heard of PROzac and Lexapro and all these antidepressants that are out there now and there’ll be a new one out tomorrow, I’m sure. But but serotonin is one of many of these neurotransmitters that help to regulate our pain, our pain threshold, how much pain we experience, regulate our sleep, regulator mental clarity, our moods, regulate our bio movements, um regulate oftentimes our metabolism, how how well or how poorly our metabolism works. So they’re indispensable and yet they are very vulnerable to becoming deficient through different things that we encounter every day.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, for sure. And you know, there’s a lot of different medications that target these different neurotransmitters, like for example, somebody’s depressed, you know that a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists should say psychiatrists are prescribing things like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, so things like that um are antidepressants, you know, obviously a lot of people are out there, they think that these sort of neurotransmitter targeted medications are really the only, you know, clinically proven option when it comes to having these mood disorders and treating them.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

There’s quite a bit of debate about if they even work. And there’s quite a bit of a debate if the neurotransmitter theory with depression even holds up at this point having said, you know, Candace Perp, who also was a Nobel prize winner, she she came up this whole thing about neurotransmitters, the molecules of emotion and she’s come out recently and said, she’s really not sure that this theory works now, not to blow everybody away. So let’s stick with the fact that if you’re low in these neurotransmitters, you’re probably gonna have some problems with anxiety, depression, mental clarity issues, and some other things. But the antidepressant revolution which started in the 1960s and has now, you know, gone over the last 80 years or so, has morphed into uh more newer medications like PROzac was the first selective serotonin re uptake inhibitor, CeleXA Lexapro, a lot of patients that I work with, the fibromyalgia or on Cymbalta, that’s a big one for them. 

But these medications, it’s it’s important to point out that they have potential side effects. Ironically, these antidepressants can cause anxiety and depression, they can cause diffuse acute pain, they deplete your natural sleep hormone melatonin, they can cause weight gain, they can cause suicidal tendencies, more so a teenager than in an adult. And and it’s, you know, important to point out that no one has an antidepressant deficiency and these medications are, as you describe, designed to help you hang on to serotonin. So, again, selective serotonin re uptake inhibitor, they’re designed to help you hang on to what serotonin you have in your brain, but if you’ve depleted that serotonin or you just don’t have enough, just genetically the way God made you, you can’t produce enough if you’re using a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and there’s nothing to re uptake, it’s not gonna do anything. It’s like using a gasoline additive in an empty gasoline tank. It’s just it’s not gonna work. We also know David that in the meta analysis where you look at sometimes hundreds of different studies In this case, probably dozens of different studies on antidepressants. We see that antidepressants are no better than a sugar pill 50% of the time. So 70% of these studies show that uh that these medications are no better than sugar bill, 50% of the time. Now, that’s not to discourage or to be little anybody that’s on these medications. If you feel like they’re helpful, that’s fine. But they’re not without some baggage and they’re not without some controversy.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. And you know, when, whenever we’re thinking about what, you know, mood disorders from a functional perspective, I always think brain inflammation, we know that with these mood disorders, there’s an underlying level of inflammation and there may be issues with, you know, people either not producing enough serotonin or breaking it down too quickly. These could be issues that the person may be dealing with, but the brain inflammation is there and you know, it’s like this underlying fire affecting the brain and we we’ve got to address that root cause in while we may, you know, in certain cases, address particular neurotransmitters and if we’re only focusing on the neurotransmitter, we may get some symptomatic relief, we’re not actually getting to the root cause. And in the case of a lot of these medications, like if we’re breaking down the enzymes that metabolize serotonin, if we are inhibiting those enzymes, the body starts, our physiology starts to adjust around it and it will increase the amount of enzymes. 

And so then we, you know, we need higher and higher doses of the drug and then we have terrible symptoms if we ever like miss a day on the drug where you know, if we’re trying to come off of the drug too quickly, I mean it could be catastrophic. And so because the body, the whole physiology has adapted and adjusted to it. So this is problematic. Some of these things can be helpful short term, but you know, we really want to be thinking about getting to the root cause factors. Now, I know that you really like to use mono amino acid therapy as you’re working with people. So, can you explain that in more detail?

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to just before I do is say, I totally agree with you about this inflammation. The brain information Brain on fire. This is something, this is really kind of a radical thinking, you know, to think that your inflammation is causing your depression but you know, if we admit it, inflammation and stress are probably the two drivers of every unwanted health condition out there. So it’s really shouldn’t be a revelation that inflammation, it’s rain inflammation is playing a role in depression. So then I think from what I found over the years of working with a lot of patients with mood disorders, it’s a combination of nutritional deficiencies, certainly poor diet stress, but also inflammation. But where did these neurotransmitters come from? You know, So they don’t come from PROzac. You know, Again, those medications are only designed to help you hang on to what serotonin you have. These neurotransmitters come from proteins. So when we need a protein and that protein, we have amino acids. So there’s a certain form amino acid, there’s 20 of them, nine that are essential and 11 that are non essential, the nine essential amino acids your body cannot make those, you have to get them in your diet. And unfortunately, there’s people in our population that cannot take the food that they eat and convert it into these neurotransmitters. And particularly there’s a, there’s a big uh subset of fiber manager folks who just don’t have a enzyme that you mentioned earlier and that and the cayenne urine pathway which takes tryptophan, one of these essential amino acids and then converts it into by bedrock. See, tryptophan, they don’t have that enzyme, they can’t do it, it’s blocked. So they’re already at risk. But where these uh neurotransmitters come from is foods that we eat. So serotonin, the brain. 

Chemical serotonin is very calming. It’s an antidepressant that helps mental clarity and helps to regulate your bio movements. You have more serotonin receptors in your intestinal tract and you do in your brain. That’s why when you get when you get nervous you get butterflies in your stomach. But serotonin comes from the amino acid tryptophan which combines with five which I’m sorry combines with B vitamins B, two B, three vitamin C and the mineral magnesium and then that converts into five hydroxytryptophan and then turns into serotonin. Serotonin is one of two calming or inhibitory neurotransmitters. The other one is gamma amino butyric acid which is derived partly from L glutamine. And then there are the catacomb means these are the stimulating neurotransmitters. Like opioids which comes from L. L Phenylalanine, another essential amino acid norepinephrine which comes from L Phenylalanine and epinephrine which comes from L Phenylalanine These stimulating neurotransmitters. What did you mentioned dopamine as well because dopamine dopamine would be in the left one out. Dopamine absolutely comes from L Phenylalanine and and opioids actually come from the mirror image of L Phenylalanine comes from the L Phenylalanine important that I collect that.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

And opioids we think about like in our endogenous li produced opioids were thinking of endorphins kind of like when you go out for a run and at first your joints are kind of a little bit sore and then you get going and then all of a sudden the pain goes away and it’s like wow you just kinda get this runner’s high if you’ve ever experienced that um that’s kind of that effect of the endorphins. So that’s what you’re referring to there.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Yeah and that’s why exercise is one of the best antidepressant therapies. You can initiate it really works quite well but any time we’re under stress our body or our bodies releasing these chemicals leasing these neurotransmitters to deal with that stress. When we’re under stress our body is releasing a small amount of opioids to deal with that stress. And if we never turn that stress off eventually we can deplete that you know that neurotransmitter, same thing with serotonin when we stay under stress? We can you know deplete that neurotransmitter. And then we start to have issues with anxiety and depression and feeling stressed out. Or my having issues with loose bowel movements from your bowel or mental clarity where brain just can’t think of the word we want. But stress really is the driver for so many of these disconnect with the brain communicating with the rest of the body.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah and so how do you determine what amino acid somebody may be deficient in. 

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So I’ve got a prop here because it’s better for me to kind of read through and I’m gonna be real quick with it though but this is a book that’s out of print right now. This is the first book I wrote about anxiety and depression. I’ve updated it in my thigh bro book but there’s a questionnaire on my website and I’m just gonna read this real real quick. But if you have a deficiency of opioids then in this little survey here you would check three or more of these little questions. So your life seems incomplete. You feel shy with all your closest friends. You feel insecure, you often feel unequal to others. When things go right, you feel undeserving, you feel like something’s missing in your life. Now there’s a whole whole of the list. 

But if that resonates with you you probably are deficient in these opioid neurotransmitters. Then the G group for Gaba gamma amino butyric acid which is very common. This is what you would use for anxiety. Um And this one is you feel anxious for no reason. You sometimes feel free floating anxiety. You feel edgy, feel a knot in your stomach, falling asleep as hard, staying asleep as hard. You often use alcohol or other substances to calm you down. If that resonates with you or you’re shaking your head then you’re probably low and gamma amino butyric acid. The great thing about these amino acids that are available over the counter who get them anywhere. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

And then the D group the dopamine is you lack pleasure in life. These are the folks that just everything you know then nothing tastes good anymore. Life’s just not, there’s not many fun their life is less colorful. You feel less attached spiritually you just really don’t care just blah and that’s a sign of low dopamine. And then the other one is the norepinephrine the in group. And that’s this is the one that gives you energy drive ambition. So you suffer from a lack of energy. Oftentimes it’s difficult to get going start projects don’t don’t finish them. Feel paranoid, feel depressed quite a bit of time. So that’s the end group. And then the last one is the s group. It’s hard to go to sleep and hard to stay asleep. Pain has become more magnified. You start to be associated with serotonin. Yeah serotonin. So you’re mentioning pain. Yeah pain is a big one. Yeah lowers your pain threshold. Is that serotonin level goes down. You’re more likely have flare ups when you get irritated. You know get stimulation can make you become more stressed out loud noises, Bright lights. These kind of things. But that’s a little survey. Now you can also test there’s tests to do that. I used two years ago I used to do a lot of neurotransmitter testing now though this little questionnaire works quite well on my practice that I can tell just from that questionnaire what that individual is low end and then based on that can recommend the amino acids that they need to be taking along with a good multivitamin because you need those cofactors.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. Yeah absolutely. Now there’s also some different things to that people can do, like just some natural lifestyle things that can help improve really all the neurotransmitters. I know I know for me for example getting regular sun exposure. My goodness, I always feel significantly better just getting out in the sun. Like today I worked out in the sunshine got I probably got 45 minutes of high quality son and you know as we’re doing this, it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s late in the year, it’s November as we’re talking here um fortunately here in Georgia um you know we’ll have warm days pretty much year round from time to time it’ll get cold but from time to time we’ll have warm enough weather and um you know I get out as much as I can whenever when it’s nice. I try to schedule at least 30 minutes out there um shirt off if it’s warm enough so I can get as much sun of my body as possible. And that’s like there’s no no supplement to me that helps me as much as just getting that really good quality son. So there’s some things people can do. Obviously sunshine is a big one. What are other things people can do naturally?

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Yeah sunshine, vitamin D3. We know if your vitamin D3 level is low and really low and for for probably as well as a functional medicine practitioners, anything below 50. So they’ll tell you if it’s above 30 it’s okay, but if it’s below 50 I mean I can’t tell you how many patients have had over the years. And particularly by five row patients who once we get that vitamin D. Level up that they notice that their pain dramatically goes down and their moods quite a bit grounding. I think it’s a big one who are so detached from the light, you know, from everything around us and so just taking your shoes off and going out in the grass and getting ground. I know it sounds silly but there’s numerous studies that show just that just doing that can make a dramatic improvement in your moods.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, that’s actually what I was doing. I was actually working out on my front lawn bare feet. So I was exercise sun exposure and grounding at the same time.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

You’re doing it all. Yeah, so that sun isn’t super important. And that’s why so many a lot of patients I work with a mood disorder is one of the first things I get them to do is to get them to get one of the satellites. So many of them have seasonal affective disorder. That’s compromise. You know, their moods are compromised as it gets dark earlier in during daylight, savings time in the fall and the winter. You know, I think that exercise again is crucial. I think that’s super important, staying hydrated, cleaning your diet of sugar is probably the number one trigger for low moods and anxiety, you know, as far as things that we’re taking into our bodies, it just really wrecks havoc on the nutrients that you need to be able to make these neurotransmitter when you’re eating that sugar, you’re depleting your B vitamins and um causing inflammation that can affect the brain. So I think just cleaning up your diet is really important for these folks.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, super critical. And I’ll add in laughter. So you know, they say laughter is our greatest medicine when you’re laughing, you’re giving a boost to all those neural transmitters in particular. You’re releasing a lot of those opioids, natural endorphins to help reduce pain to give you more pleasure, pleasurable feelings in your in your brain, your body. And it’s like a you know natural reset on some of these neurotransmitter issues and then good relationships, right? So you know, we release a lot of oxytocin when we have, when we feel connected with others, whether that’s actually, you know, some people do really well with just actually cuddling, right? 

They’re very physical touch, love type. I am, my wife is, so you know, just hands on cuddling. I know my daughter it’s like she can be misbehaving and I’ll just pick her up and hug her and just kind of hold her now. She’s four. Right? So I pick her up and hold her and it’s like just totally melts her, right? So all the stress, you know, things like that, that’s going on in her brain totally melts her and then she’s just you know, well behaving girl, little girl again. So just feeling connected, you know, physical touch, feeling connected, super beneficial. These are things that you could be doing that don’t cost anything um that you could just be making sure you’re getting enough of that, getting enough laughter, vitamin L. Right into your day to day life.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Absolutely. And I think, you know, that’s kind of why we’ve seen the state that we’re in is because we were disconnected for so long, you know, two years were limited, who you could see what you could do. I mean it was, you know, it’s very stressful and especially for I think for teenagers probably more than any other Children and teenagers, adolescents and teenagers probably than anybody else because they’re just at that age, you’re just a social achiever. I mean that’s you know, you get a lot of your satisfaction interacting with your guys or your girls, whatever that is. I think it’s very important to to really realize that we control how we react to things now, you can either acknowledge that or not, but it’s true, I mean, so one of the things, you know, I remember uh Wayne dyer, one of my mentors shared this years ago before he passed and he said, what do you get when you squeeze an orange every time you get orange juice, every time you squeeze an orange you get orange juice. What do we get when someone squeezes you? You know, what do we get? Do we get anger? Do we get irritability? Do we get some saying something that you wish you didn’t say and you regret? And I think it’s important to realize that we’re human beings instead of human doings. I think we’re all kind of focused on do do do do do do, which really doesn’t allow much time for just just being just, you know, having time to think, I really encourage all my patients to do an hour of power every day. 

Something I know you do and if you can’t do an hour power, although everybody, most everybody can find an hour of the day. It’s maybe it’s a half an hour and a quarter an hour. But that’s time where you’re meditating, You’re praying and your journaling, you’re doing affirmations and you’re kind of thinking about what you’re gonna do that day. You’re kind of looking into the future. And but I think the biggest part of that is just nurturing yourself with with material, whether it’s Joyce Meyers or Wayne Dyer or Zig Ziglar just saturating yourself with positive thinking and acknowledging that when you get under stress, the first thing, the first step in the right direction is realizing that feeling and it it takes practice, right? I mean most people are just reacted so it’s not an easy thing to do, but once you start using this our power, half an hour power, whatever it is and get in touch with yourself this God within then when you get exposed to the stress and you start to feel that now, you know, okay, I know what that is and you can take a second and instead of lashing out you can, another quote from Wayne Dyer, you can choose peace over, you know, confrontation. It’s sometimes it’s better just to be to be peaceful than to be right.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, true. I mean in our society, I think a lot of people are looking for reasons to be offended. They’re looking for reasons to feel like a victim and uh you know, that’s actually a really can create a vicious cycle. It just creates more inflammation, more, more brain inflammation in your system. And so instead you want to be obviously looking for reasons to choose joy, choose happiness, choose peace, choose reconciliation. So totally in agreement with you on that one. Now let’s talk about some foods and herbs that can support rule, really reducing inflammation in the brain and supporting these different neurotransmitter pathways.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So I think really note to me one of the best diets out there is the paleo diet, I just think that’s a really healthy diet. The keto diet is certainly a wonderful diet too. I have found for most of my patients it’s a little harder to stay on. They just find eventually that that diet becomes a little too stagnant for them. But you know, the common denominator for both of those is eliminating the simple carbs, you know, and the grains which we know unfortunately. I love pasta, but we know that those grains can create inflammation there just I mean, the science is there now, whether you have a problem with the gluten, you know, you may not have celiac, but we know that that that gluten in particular can really cause damage to the cells that line the intestinal track, leading to leaky gut and generating allergic reactions that can create inflammation anywhere in the body. I’ve had patients over the year, David that they had all sorts of illnesses that I was able to to really clean up and then the only thing to be hanging around would be their brain fall. 

So, like a case in point fibromyalgia patient that had a lot of pain insomnia, low energy by doing, you know, testing and figure out what was going on, able to get those issues solved, but they still were depressed, you know, or they still had anxiety issues and then we would do a food allergy test clean up their diet and lo and behold within two or three weeks, their moods dramatically improved their anxiety goes away. So food allergies are something definitely that can be a trigger for all sorts of unwanted health conditions including brain fog, anxiety and depression. I mentioned sugar you know I mentioned that earlier, I think you got it. You know uh the other one I see that really can cause folks a lot of problems is artificial sweeteners in particular, nutrasweet. You look at you know how that breaks down, what is it? It’s formaldehyde and some kind of ant ant killer or something. I mean it’s not something you want to be putting in your body. And unfortunately a lot of people get addicted to diet sodas because of that asp arctic acid in there which is you know, stimulating brain stimulates the brain but also can create a lot of neurological problems that then can manifest themselves as mood disorders or our mental clarity issues.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah, for sure MSG is another one. Monosodium glutamate which you know, has a whole list of names. Now they don’t typically write monosodium glutamate but it increases it causes more free glutamate in the brain which can cause too much excitation. And when these neurotransmitters are over excited they actually die and they create and they spill out uh calcium and other contents that actually leak into other neurons and create kind of an exciting toxicity process. And so that’s why you know there’s something called, I think it’s like Chinese restaurant syndrome or something where they used to use all this msg they probably still do in the rest in these, you know, very inexpensive kind of all you can eat Chinese buffets and people would have like tremendous headaches coming out of there because they were getting all this neurotic psycho toxicity. 

So you gotta look out for things like idolized yeast. I mean there’s a whole, if you look up different names for monosodium glutamate, there’s like a whole list. I know Dr. Russell Blaylock has a whole book about that. So that’s another big one now. Some foods I think of when I think about the brain, I think something like wild caught salmon because you’ve got tons of omega three fats, right for the brain, right? You got astaxanthin which is you know, what gives it its pink color. And that’s this incredible antioxidant that you know, salmon swim upstream against the rapids and they can jump up to 10 ft out of the water. I mean there’s incredible mitochondrial energy production going on there and it’s credited to be the omega threes and the Xanthan that allow it to do that. So I think of those and I think of extra virgin high polyphony, all fresh pressed extra virgin olive oil which has these powerful polyphenols, Aaliyah Cantel and hydroxytyrosol, all that hydroxytyrus all actually crosses the blood brain barrier and it’s like a natural, you know, very, very powerful anti inflammatory in the brain. So those are some good things that most people respond really well adding into their diet and see really good improvements here.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So and I see my adolescence and I don’t really take care of a lot of new disorders, like you used to take care of a lot of adolescents when my book came out, my anxiety and depression book came out years ago and those in particular those, those age groups, you see that they’re so deficient in omega threes and oftentimes just getting them on omega threes in particular, really raising up the D. H. A. level can make a big difference. You know, bringing that up but most people are skewed, they have much more omega six than they do omega threes and ideally you’d have that balanced. But this imbalance of omega six to omega three, this creates a lot of inflammation and generates a lot of our academic acid which can create inflammation in the brain but also can affect mood. So one of the things I think is very important if you’re not officiated and I’m not, I wish I was but I know how healthy it is. My kids love it. My wife loves it but just official, you know just taking a high quality good official supplement a couple of 1000 mg on a daily basis. I think it can be really really helpful and steer clear of seed oils. You said the extra extra virgin olive oil, cold pressed virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil. But steering clear of all these grain oils um And seed oils can really help to rebalance this omega three omega six ratio.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah that’s super important. Now I know you’re using a lot of kind of single amino acids, kind of targeted amino acids based on the questionnaire. Like for example using Gaba for you know somebody that scores poorly in the Gaba questionnaire using five HTP or a trip to fan when some um doing poorly on serotonin and phenylalanine or like a dl phenylalanine. For somebody that’s scoring poorly with norepinephrine um Are those the main amino acids that you’re using or using any herbs like things like CNN and stuff like that with it.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

So really kind of steer clear of herbs. Not that there’s not a place for those I think I think there is it’s just that over the years what I’ve found is a lot of times the herbs can create some side effects that the amino acids don’t and that can be an allergic reaction. You know St. John’s Wort has got a lot of science behind it as a monoamine antidepressant. It works very very well but it also can cause problems with intense some you know you get you get too much sun when you when you’re on that you can think of that term for that. And so that can create some problems and it can create some issues with headaches.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Like photosensitivity.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Thank you. There it is just you can think of. So that’s one that can work really well. But I usually start with the amino acids one that I like a lot and really when you like the brain function question a lot of times people will fill that out and I go Dr. Murphree, I’ve got I checked all those, you know where do I start, do I take all of them know the first thing you wanna do is calm everything down. So the first thing you wanna do is get your serotonin level up and then the second thing is probably get your Gaba level up Gaba would be for those folks of you that are having issues with anxiety. So if you’re already taking benzodiazepine medications or you have in the past because you have anxiety issues or you wish you could take them because you’re so anxious uh Gaba works very, very well. It’s it doesn’t normally have any kind of side effects to it and it works within about 15 minutes after you take it. In fact when I have a medical practice years ago I had an integrated medical practice and we would have folks that would come in and have the white coat syndrome. 

You know where you sit down and the doctor walks into the nurse and they’re gonna take your blood pressure and it spikes up. We would see that periodically. And and when we saw that we would just give them 500 mg of Gaba and then wait another 15 minutes. And sure enough they’d be calmed down and we could take their blood pressure. But yes you can use these amino acids and they work rather quickly and I think they most of the time work as well. If not better than prescription antidepressants. One that I haven’t mentioned I want to bring up before we run out of time is Sammy. So is an over, you can buy that over the counter, it’s a supplement. 

And a lot of times what I find is my patients have an elevated inflammatory marker called homocysteine. Sometimes it’s a genetic Litsch that’s brought on causing that with methylation. But every time I see that I know that that individual is not producing Sammy. S. And M. A. Thinning which is crucial for our mental clarity for our moods. It helps to make melatonin helps to helps to make serotonin and norepinephrine. And when you’re low in that you really can have um problems with low pain threshold, low moods. Numerous things start to show up problems with your liver detoxing. You know, Sammy really helps with detoxing the liver. So that’s another one that I’ve probably in the last few years used more than than I used to is the Sammy.

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Yeah. Yeah homocysteine is a metabolic uh basically a metabolic yeah it’s a waste product that the body converts into either glutathione or Sammy. And you know, if it’s elevated increases your risk of stroke of neurodegenerative conditions, all Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer as well. Yeah. So it’s really important that you figure out that’s actually a really, really important lab that we recommend everybody get on a regular basis.

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Few people get it right. Every person I work with, I want to see what that is because it tells me so many things about that individual and a female, it should never be above eight. And for a male, I think it’s nine is usually my number, but it’ll go up and when you test for it, it’ll go up to 14. But if you’re, you know, if you’re above an eight as a female, above a nine as a man, you’ve got some issues. Yeah, for sure,

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Definitely want to bring that down. So that’s great Dr. Rodger has been a fantastic interview. So, any last words of encouragement and where can people find out more about about you? And, you know about this uh brain questionnaire that you’ve got?

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

Well, so, thanks, David. It’s always fun. You’re such a, you know, just a delightful host. And so knowledgeable. It’s always fun hanging out with you. You know, I think if you’re battling with some low moods or some stress and feeling anxious. I think that you owe it to yourself to try a more natural approach. These amino acids and things that we’ve mentioned can be taking with antidepressants. I’ve been using them for 30 years. And uh and and the risk of any kind of potential side effect is very very miniscule even combining them with other medications. Obviously, you know, you probably want to work with a practitioner but you know, things like uh the Gaba and five HTP. These things you can get over the counter the same thing with CMI. But if you’re interested in taking that brain function questionnaire, take you just a few minutes to do so. You can do that at superhealthyhuman.com or yourfibrodoctor.com and you’ll see a patient resources, you click on that, you see health conditions and you’ll see a brain function questionnaire. That’s where it’ll be. 

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Awesome. Well guys, check out Dr. Rodger Murphree’s website again. Yourfibrodoctor.com or superhuman, what is it? Superhuman… healthy human,

Rodger Murphree, DC, CNS

superhealthyhuman.com

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

Thanks again. Yeah, there you go. Thanks again for your time. Dr. Murphree. Always great conversing with you and guys, we’ll see you on a future presentation. Future interview, everybody be blessed.