The Intelligence of Symptoms Part 4: Fatigue, Water Retention, Depression & Anxiety

And here's the thing, and this could ruffle feathers, but it's truth. And it is a truth that I absolutely believe and that has been scientifically proven.

While these drugs can make you feel quote unquote, less depressed because well, they call them antidepressants. There's a couple of things we know. First, They work almost equally well as a placebo.

So in many cases, it just the placebo effect that makes you better. That's the first thing and that is true. And we know that it's true because we have the studies to back it up.

But beyond that, They can make you feel less depressed because they can numb you out. And that is what happens in the majority of cases. Welcome to Vitality Radio, the podcast that helps you make sense of natural supplements and thrive without pharma drugs.

I'm Jared St. Clair. Welcome back to Vitality Radio and welcome to the last episode in this series. We've come through the repair crew, fever, inflammation and pain, the elimination channels, mucus, cough and skin, The gut, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, reflux, and every step of the way, it's been the same idea.

Your body isn't manufacturing symptoms for no reason. It isn' malfunctioning when it produces a symptom. Its responding, its working for your benefit.

even though it doesn't always feel that way. Today we bring it home with three that are quieter than the rest. but that hit a lot of us right where we live, fatigue, water retention.

And then the one I've been building towards all series, the ones I care about the most and that I have been talking about a bit on Vitality Radio lately and will continue to talk about because it's a passion project for me.

That is what happens in the mind, depression and anxiety. We're going to save that one for last on this episode and we're gonna spend some real time on it because of everything that we covered in these four episodes, The drugs that we reach for to numb the mind are my single biggest concern, and I'll talk about why in a minute.

Let's talk fatigue first. Being tired. Not the ordinary, you know, I had a long day. I'm pretty bushed. It's time for a nap or a bedtime. But the day in, day out fatigue, especially if it hits for weeks and then months and years, that heavy toward pulled toward the couch exhaustion where your body is practically begging you to stop, there's a reframe on this one.

Fatigue is not a problem to be solved, fatigue is an instruction. and it is one of the most common symptoms that I hear at Vitality on a regular basis.

When your body needs to put energy towards repair, fighting an infection, recovering from stress, calming down, healing something. It does something very deliberate.

If pulls energy away from everything else, it makes you tired on purpose. Its rationing. it's saying, I need you to stop spending energy on being busy and productive and stressed out because I needed that energy over here for repair work.

The tiredness is often the body enforcing rest because rest is when the deepest healing happens. Think about how obvious this is when you're sick. You get hit with a bug and you can barely keep your eyes open.

That's not the illness beating you. It's your body clearing your schedule. Its shutting down the non-essential systems so it can pour resources into getting you well.

Sleep and rest are when your own body does its most serious repair. It's healing, it's recovery. And fatigue is how your body forces you to show up for that.

That's exactly why the first thing I look at with anyone dragging through their days is not a supplement. It's their sleep. Real, deep, consistent sleep is not a luxury and it's not negotiable.

It is the single most important repair window your body has, the time when it does its heaviest cleanup and rebuilding. If you are chronically shortchanging your sleep and then wondering why you're exhausted, your bodies isn't malfunctioning, it is sending you the bill.

for all of the neglect in many cases that you've been giving it. So before anything else, protect your sleep like it's the medicine it actually is. Consistent bedtime, a dark, cool room, good sleep hygiene.

If you're not familiar with that term, look it up. It's important. And get off the screens. long before you get into bed, because that light tells your brain it's still time to be awake.

Now, I'm gonna be very open and frank with you on this. This part of this episode, i am teaching to myself, as I am also hoping to share this information with YOU, Because I AM VERY GOOD at neglecting my need for sleep.

I oftentimes push myself too far into the evening and get up too early in the morning based on when I went to bed, I actually have been getting a lot better at it.

I think my wife would actually agree that oftentimes bedtime is nine 30 or 10 when it used to be 11 or 1130. That's been a shift and it's a good one, but oftentimes I am looking at my screen as I'm turning off the lights.

So I need to work on this too. I get it. This is a thing that many of us deal with. And yet I am convinced, if not to the extent that I'm willing to make the change 100% yet, but I''m working on it that this is critical.

There's another one that pairs with it and Jen has been doing this consistently now for at least a month and I've joined her a few times, but not consistently yet.

And it's Another one. That I think is incredibly valuable that I believe in that. I talked about on this show before that, I have yet to work into my daily routine.

So I'm not the guy who's going to tell you that I do all of these things exactly as I recommend doing them. I try to practice what I preach to a large degree, but I am also a human and I make myself busier than I probably should.

But the one that Jen's been doing that I've been joining her for here and there is morning sunlight get outside in the Sun within the first hour or so of waking Even just for a few minutes that morning light hitting your eyes is what sets your body internal clock for the whole day It anchors your cortisol rhythm so that you get your natural energy in morning when you want it.

And it helps your body produce melatonin at night. So you actually sleep when it's time. It is literally setting a 16 hour clock saying, okay, it is morning.

I'm awake. Now we're going to work and play and do whatever we do for 16 hours. Then it will be time to go to bed and get that eight hours of sleep. That's essentially what's supposed to be happening.

But if we are inside, we aren't looking at the light. We're not setting that clock and we are shortchanging and frankly confusing our bio rhythms, our circadian rhythms.

We've locked ourselves in doors under artificial light and then we're baffled that our energy and our sleep are a wreck. Sunrise and sunlight is one of the oldest signals that your body knows.

Give it to yourself. So what does our culture do with that instruction? Well, we override it aggressively. And the honest truth is most of us start with the socially acceptable stuff.

The giant coffees, the energy drinks, to caffeine all day long to whip a tired body into keeping up drinks and pills. that flatly force the body into wakefulness and activity, whether it wants to or not.

And here's the thing about forcing a tired body to run. It doesn't create energy. There is no energy in that drink or that pill. it just cracks the whip on reserves you didn't have to spare and pushes the to spend what it was desperately trying to save.

These things come with real dependence and real cardiovascular strain and real impact on your body's ability to handle stress. Caffeine is the favorite drug of American society.

Over 80% of us rely on it every single day. And I'm not a guy who says you should never take caffeine. I use caffeine, I used it before working out, use it for long drives.

Probably use more than I should because I don't always take my own advice on sleep. but I have found and I've learned and followed this instruction that my body has given me that I shouldn't be doing this everyday.

When I do it everyday, I become a slave to it, essentially. I no longer feel okay when I don't have it. And I know many people listening, maybe you, are in the same boat.

But what I find and have found over the years is that if I do it a few times a week, it's very helpful. Especially if i do like before I record a podcast with some L-theanine.

I've talked about that before. gives me a little bit of mental alertness, some focus, and I'm okay with that. But the day in, day out grind of caffeine just pushing the adrenals harder and harder, whipping them until they can't go anymore.

It's not how the body is meant to behave, it is not it was designed. So what does it get you over time? It gets you weaker and more tired and nothing has been fixed.

Now I want to take it a step further though, because we keep talking about the body demanding rest. And I think we have to be honest about what's actually draining the tank in the first place for most people.

Sometimes it is just not enough sleep. It can just be that sometimes it has diet or rather a poor diet. But I think the biggest one that probably the majority of us are working through is chronic stress.

And I'm not talking about like anxiety necessarily, although anxiety can be part of that. I don't experience anxiety for the most part, but I definitely experienced chronic stressed.

What's interesting is it's mostly in my case, self-inflicted. It just said, I love what I do. Concerts I love travel. I Love working on new formulas sometimes late at night.

And so with all of that and opening a new location and having a website and doing not one but two podcasts every week and formulating new products and trying to run the family business and all the other things, most of which I've heaped upon myself, there is a lot of stress.

And I would anticipate that you can relate to that. Of course there are some that is not heaps upon us by ourselves, but on us, by our world, our environment, friends, family, bosses, co-workers, children, spouses, whatever it is.

It's not that just ran a marathon It's just chronic stress. In our world, a massive, underestimated piece of that is also the screen in your hand. This little guy right here, this is my iPhone.

It's a little bigger than my hand. Well, I have the biggest hands, but I do have biggest iPhone. And yeah, it's, uh, It is a trap and it is with me all the time.

Yours probably is too. What happens with your iPhone is… extremely problematic in many, many cases. Let's walk through it. I think you already know this.

Most of us know, but I'm hoping I can shed some new light on it when you're stressed. Your body dumps cortisol and adrenaline and puts you into fight or flight mode.

You know about that. It's a survival tool and it's meant to fire for just a few minutes and shut off. But chronic stress means the switch never gets turned off It's always on red alert.

Your marinating and stress hormones around the clock and running that alarm system continuously burns through your energy reserves even when you're sitting perfectly still.

That's why you can do almost nothing all day in many cases and still feel completely wrung out. The exhaustion is real and it is biological. Now layer the screens on top of that because they're pouring gas on the fire.

Every ping, every notification, Every scroll through the bad news, ever comparison trap on social media, and every political post that you disagree with or agree with.

every divisive thing that your brain reads each one as a little stressor and fires off another small bit of the same stress response. all day long. You are keeping your nervous system in a low-grade state of alarm from the moment you pick up the phone in the morning.

On top of the stress hits that you're getting over and over, you've also got the dopamine loop training your brain to crave the next hit. Even though sometimes, and I would dare say most of time, that hit doesn't necessarily feel good.

The brain has a reward system and oftentimes it rewards us with things that it thinks we want. even though consciously, we would rather not have them.

Subconsciously, the brain is looking for that next hit, that neck stressor. And because of the constant dopamine hit the, constant loop, real life feels flat by comparison.

And then there's the blue light at night sabotaging the very sleep we just said is your master repair switch. It is genuinely one of the most efficient energy draining machines ever invented.

And we carry it everywhere and feed it for hours a day. On top of all that, most of us use our phones, TVs, and other entertainment as avoidance tools, avoiding things that we don't want to do.

Sometimes simple things like the dishes, or making dinner, other times complex things like trying to figure out your freaking taxes or whatever it is.

And then what happens? Well, we feel even more stressed when we are behind on the things that we avoided. It is a chronic self-perpetuating loop, but we have the power to stop it.

If there is always something in your ear though, always, something your face, where can you find and where can you hear the inspiration from within? Now again, I struggle in this area too.

Interestingly enough, i probably spend less time with entertainment than the majority of people. I almost never watch TV. And I don't know, how do I put this?

I want to make this sound like I've figured this out because I have not. but I do listen to a lot of music. I listen a to podcasts. Often times the podcasts are educational.

Sometimes they're entertaining and educational, those are my favorite kind of podcasts, I hope this is one of those podcasts but it's still noise. It's interference and what I'm learning to do because of My new friend, Dr.

Roger McFillen, I'll link to his show description in this show, episode 671 of the Vitality Radio podcast. And thanks to my lovely wife, who is now leading the way in the area, am finding myself less with an earbud in my ear, less music on or a podcast on, Not never, in fact, not most of the time, but less of a time and actually listening in the silence.

The other day I drove home 45 minutes with nothing on. Have you tried that? Have done that, it's interesting. It's where your mind goes and it is interesting how you can discover things in those moments.

And I found that to be quite powerful recently and I intend to do a lot more of it. So I'll make a stand here that no stimulant and no supplement that I could sell you is going to resolve this problem on its own.

If you are exhausted, you have to look honestly at your stress and your screens because that may be the whole ball game in your case. Guard your nervous system and like I said your sleep like it matters because it does put the phone down real boundaries real breaks a Genuine stretch in the evening with no screen at all get quiet get outside Put your feet in the dirt.

Let your body come out of fight or flight and actually rest. Because as long as that alarm is blaring, your tank drains faster than anything you can pour into it.

You cannot supplement your way out a life that never lets your nervous system stand down. And this one, the screen thing in particular has become pretty obvious to me lately as I watch my kids, my younger kids who are in junior high and high school, and my older kids who are all adults now, or at least by age, according to their driver's license, my kids complain about being tired constantly, pretty much all of them, low energy, dragging, no gas in the tank.

And I've been thinking about that a lot. In fact, Jen and I had a conversation the other day that led to a conversion with two of my adult children. And we thought about it pretty hard because I remember having energy to burn when I was their age, 20, 22 years old.

That's supposed to be the seasonal life where you've got the most energy you'll ever have. So what changed? I think a huge part of the answer. is that little glowing rectangle.

Their generation is plugged in in a way mine never was. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the most screen saturated generation in history is also the mostly exhausted.

I actually sat down the other day, like I said, with my wife, our kids, not lecturing, but just talking them through this, walking them though what all that screen time might actually be doing to their energy.

Why do you think you're tired all the time? And we had this conversation. And we discussed a lot of things, we discuss diet, discussed movement, We discussed entertainment through the phone, through TV, the iPad and all these things.

And if your kids are exhausted, are tired, and they're getting enough sleep, which now we're in the school year again. And sometimes that's really tough because the way the stupid school system is set up is designed to give your kids not enough.

But if they are exhausted when they get enough, this is a conversation I believe you should have with them. Now, this is where I want to be careful because low energy is not just low-energy.

It can be different for different people, but persistent bone-deep fatigue that doesn't lift can absolutely be your body flagging something real. Can be thyroid, can blood sugar, nutrient depletion, chronic infection, hormones, and that deserves a real look by yourself and possibly with the help of a good functional medicine practitioner.

not just resting through it. But there are so many things that you can do short of that to determine if it's a bigger problem for you than it actually is.

Because if you're getting good sleep, if are supplementing the key things, that need to be supplemented. If you are eating well and you exercising and your exhausted, then we need address probably something else.

The first thing would be stress. The second thing would be looking at, you know, possible blood work and things like that. But the support side of this follows the whole theme of these symptoms series.

The goal is not to find a natural version of the stimulant, not a green tea or Cola nut or something like that, not to whip the tired horse with an herb instead of a drug.

The goal is to give your body what it actually needs to produce energy and handle stress so it can do the repair and come back online on its own. That's a completely different thing.

It's not stimulating the body, it's working with the. Body and minerals like magnesium, which we all think of for sleep and stress is act are actually critical for energy production.

Your body burns through a ton of magnesium when you're under stress. And if you get enough magnesium your body does have more energy to burn the B vitamins.

These are what your cells use to actually make more. Energy. Adaptogenic herbs, things like Ashwagandha, rhodiola. can be extremely helpful. These help your body handle stress with more resilience rather than flogging it into overdrive.

You're not overriding the signal with these types of things, you're just supporting the machinery. And there's one that I, almost nobody ever thinks about, that it has become so obvious to me that, I share it on the show from time to time, maybe you've heard me talk about it, your digestion.

Think about digesting a meal is one of the most energy expensive jobs that your that heavy need a nap feeling after you eat. If you have that, that's real.

And it's your body diverting a big chunk of its resources to break down that meal. Now, if your digestion is running well, That's a quick, efficient process.

You bounce back. But if you're digestion underperforming, and if not making enough of your own enzymes, If food is sitting there half broken down and fermenting then digestion becomes a constant grinding energy drain.

And you can tell by if you feel tired after a meal, if they're gassy or bloated or constipated, or deal with diarrhea, any kind of IBS symptom, Any of that going on is going to drain your body.

It's very, very important. So before you eat, get out of fight or flight. Do not do things that put you into fight-or-flight during the meal. Have tough conversations, watch the news, scroll on your phone.

Even watching a potentially stressful drama on TV during dinner, whatever it is, any of those things are a no-no when you're eating. Give your body the rest and digest that it deserves and support it with digestive enzymes.

One of my vital five, especially if you are dealing with these issues. Segment number two. Before we get into the mind, one more physical one, and it's a quick, practical one.

Water retention. That puffy, heavy, swollen feeling you wake up with. Your ring's tight, your ankles are thick, the scale is higher than you expected it to be.

You didn't just gain four pounds of fat, but maybe you're holding four lbs of water, that kind of thing. Your body is very good at managing fluid. It knows how to do it.

Its doing it constantly balancing water and minerals with real precision. So when it starts holding on to water, that's usually a response to something.

And the most common something by a mile is a mineral imbalance problem. it believes it's too low in something, oftentimes too long potassium, sometimes too lone magnesium, and sometimes to high in sodium by comparison with potassium.

But you can be too on sodium and also retain water. Essentially what your body's doing and this is a really kind of dumbed down way of thinking about it, but it pretty much on target is it saying, well, I'm gonna hold on to the water because that's where the minerals are and I am not getting enough of these minerals.

It's pretty simple actually. in many, many cases. And what I found over the years with hundreds of people is we give them electrolytes, and there's a bunch of different ways you can do that.

You can endure drops, which are just a really simple electrolyte that you add to your water from our friends at Trace Minerals here in Utah, you could do just ingredients, electrolyse, relight, there are a whole bunch different options.

But you get the electrolyts in, all of a sudden, the water goes away in some cases, but in the The world of pharmaceuticals, we're not worried about deficiencies.

We're worried And these work in the sense that they force your kidneys to dump water fast, but look at the cost because it's the same pattern from pretty much this whole series.

When we talk about these drugs, these trucks force the fluid out without ever addressing why the body was holding it. And on the way out, they strip minerals with it, flush potassium and magnesium right out of you.

The very minerals who's imbalance and shortage was often driving the retention in first place. And this drives me batty when it comes to heart disease.

So many people with high blood pressure or heart diseases are put on things like Lasix to keep the water out, which then reduces the electrolytes which are critical for proper heart rhythm, for nourishing the heart and the cardiovascular system itself.

And I believe they make the hard weaker, not stronger. But of course they do because that's what pharmacy usually does. It covers up a symptom and often take times makes the root cause even worse.

Lasix is a perfect example of that. We talked about PPIs an episode ago. Same thing. So let's talk about working with the body instead of overriding the because this is one where you have to really do a little bit of experimentation, but it's not much.

The first thing you've got to do, if you haven't already done it, I would anticipate so many people listening to the show already have is switch from table salt to real salt.

And I'm going to tell you this. This is my take on it. Real salt, Celtic salt Himalayan salt whole salt From the earth, I don't care what lead safe mama or whatever her name is on Instagram is saying about these things.

I just don' I really, really don'. I believe that whole salt from the Earth is how we're supposed to get our salt. i believe the real salt, from Redmond, Utah is phenomenal stuff. I've been using it since I was a boy.i'm still here 54 years old and doing fine.

I'll take a real organic salt from the earth, along with a few heavy metals, and this is gonna be concerning for some people listening, over a stripped salt that's just pure sodium.

every single day of the week. It's my take, you can decide how you feel, but it's so critical. And then clean water, really clean, water reverse osmosis, well water if you know it is clean or distilled water.

Those are the two things that you can change that have nothing to do with the supplement that I think will improve your health and improve this issue.

But the heart of it is electrolytes. We always have to be taking magnesium. Always, always, is the Vital 5. It's the number one of the vital five. Is the one supplement and I tell everybody if you're only going to take one thing, take magnesium bisglycinate because it critical to so many different processes 300 enzymatic processes 800 biological processes almost all of us are deficient in it almost All of this are stressed out and higher stress leads to lower magnesium.

You have to be on magnesium I just simply believe that that is the case across the board and while it is now one of the most popular supplements in the world There's still the vast majority of Americans not using it and it makes a difference.

It makes the difference in the sleep and the stress that we just talked about. it Makes a different in mental health that were about to talk about, it make a differences in water retention that where currently talking about and makes difference just about every single symptom that was talked in this series.

And then it's a question of what else do you need electrolyte wise? I talked indoor drops, a really simple water additive drop, drop about 30 or 40 drops per day.

mixed in with your water, makes your more hydrating, and in almost always every case will just balance things. You don't usually have water retention if you're using door drops.

So that's a simple one, fairly inexpensive, really easy to do. If you prefer a flavored electrolyte product, then like I say, the just ingredients, three to one potassium to sodium, good ratio for people who aren't sweating a lot.

and who are getting plenty of salt, but oftentimes not plenty magnesium. But you may want to flip flop that something like relight. If you are athletic, if you sweat a lot, you can go 800 milligrams of sodium and 400 milligrams a potassium.

So two to one sodium potassium ratio, and you just have to figure it out. There's two sides to this coin. Basically, If your cramping, Or if you are holding water, it's probably mineral imbalance, electrolyte imbalance.

And you just have to play with the doses a little bit. Try something higher in potassium for a while. That's the most likely thing, assuming you're already doing magnesium.

and then maybe try something higher in sodium. And on your workout days, you might take one different than on non-workout days. You might relight when you're sweating up a storm in the gym or out on the bike or running or climbing or whatever you are doing and you may do something more simple that's higher than potassium like the just ingredients electrolytes or the great naturally electrolyte or powder vitamins electrolytes.

A lot of good options higher on potassium that you can do as well. I do that. I'd do a combination. And I've found what works for me. Everything works just fine because I figured out the balance and you can figure it out as well.

Okay. The last one, and this is the one that I'm the most concerned about. As I said before, this has depression and anxiety. And of course it's near and dear to my heart.

Not just because my lovely wife was stuck in this for 30 plus years before I met her, but because. I see so many other people stuck. In this and it is so much.

what all I can say from the outside looking in feels like a prison. Depression and anxiety and the drugs that are used to alleviate it are easily the biggest concern that I have during this series.

We just talked to Dr. Roger McFillen, board certified clinical psychologist and one of the most thoughtful, courageous critics of psychiatric medication model out there.

That's episode 671. If this segment lights something up in you, go listen to that one next, because I think it's absolutely fantastic. I also have Dr.

Stephanie Rimka, who I've already recorded a show with. We're going to separate those out a little bit because they're related but different. If THIS is a topic that's important to you do not miss the Stephanie rimka show.

But let me give you the piece that is the most direct and the more important. And we talk about it a little bit with Dr. McPhillen, but it matters for the context of this episode.

For decades, we were all told the same story. Depression and anxiety are caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain, low serotonin, And these drugs, the SSRIs, correct that imbalance, Prozax, Zoloft, and so on.

That was the whole justification. It's what your doctor was told. What he then told you, what the commercials told, you what most people still believe right now today in 2026. And here's the problem.

In 2022, four years ago, a major review out of University College London went through all the entire body of evidence for that serotonin theory pooling together all of the major studies and what they found is that there is no consistent evidence not even a little bit that depression is caused by low seratonin or chemical imbalance at all.

The foundation of this story we were sold turned out not to be true at This isn't a fringe blog. This was one of the most talked about papers in the history of psychiatry.

And even the Royal College of Psychiatrists had quietly walked back the chemical imbalance language before it came out. These are the people that have been pushing it for decades.

What's the big picture? Millions of people were put on a drug for life. in many cases to fix an imbalance that the evidence can't even show ever existed in the first place period.

And that's 2022. But I've been talking about this since 2014 when Newsweek put out an 11 page article on this topic saying the serotonin theory ain't holding up.

We've known this for well over a decade. A lot of people believed it even before that. In fact, I think the Newsweek article was actually 2012. I could be wrong on that, but it's been a long time.

We'd known it. They've lied about it, they've continued to medicate. And here's the thing, and this could ruffle feathers, But it is the truth. And it is a truth that I absolutely believe and that has been scientifically proven.

While these drugs can make you feel quote unquote less depressed because well, they call them antidepressants. There's a couple of things we know. First, They work almost equally well as a placebo.

So in many cases, It is just the placebo effect that makes you better. That's the first thing. And that is true. We know that it's true because we have the studies to back it up.

But beyond that, they can make you feel less depressed because they CAN numb you out. This is what happens in the majority of cases. It's what happened with my wife.

The problem is when you're in it, lot of people don't realize it. What Jen told me when she finally kicked those drugs, which you have to do very slowly, very methodically, and very carefully, what she did is that she had not felt this clear in decades.

She didn't remember the last time she felt clear. Well, they put her on these things when was 13 years old. No wonder she didn t remember. And how much did that numbing effect numb her capacity for inspiration, for intuition, For joy, happiness, because when I met her, she was neither a joyful or a happy person, or frankly, particularly inspired at all.

What she WAS, was an incredible human being trapped under a bunch of lies and a batch of pharmaceuticals that did not help her. So if it isn't a serotonin deficiency, what's actually going on?

Well, it's a signal. Low mood, depression, anxiety, It's your body and your brain telling you something is genuinely wrong and needs to be addressed. There's always a reason for it.

Dr. McFillin got into this with us on episode 671 and it's important. There's always a reason, there's a root cause and its never a chemical imbalance.

It simply isn't. Now it can be a deficiency, it could be wrecked microbiome like what Jen dealt with from very young mass quantities of antibiotics wrecking her microbiomes, It can MTHFR, we'll talk about that in just a minute.

It can be poor diet. It could be high levels of chronic stress, like we already talked about. We talked about a dear friend of mine, a wonderful human being, one of the most gentle souls you'd ever care to meet who lost her son recently.

And after two weeks of losing her sun, people are asking her if she needs to be on an antidepressant. That's criminal in my book. We don't need to numb the pain of life every single time it happens.

The pain life teaches us. It strengthens us, the challenges that we face. are the best opportunity for us to grow and to become what I believe we're all meant to be, great, amazing, productive, giving, loving, charitable human beings.

These pharmaceuticals paint over the warning light while the deficiency or the root cause is still sitting right there. And if it was a car and the check engine light came on, which coincidentally happened in my car on the way to record this episode, maybe not so coincidently, what do I do?

Not only is the Check Engine light on but it's shuddering a little bit when I accelerate. That's a real problem, especially for a care with 125, 30,000 miles on it.

It's 12 years old. I really like that car though. So what am I gonna do? Well, tomorrow morning I'm taking it to the shop because that's the warning light.

And if I keep pushing it, what's going to happen? So, What do you do, if you're dealing with depression and anxiety, whether you are on a pharmaceutical for it or not?

You can look at root cause, you can try to assess when did this happen and why did it happen? And why am I still in it? Is there trauma? Probably, often.

So there is work that can be done for that. I personally am not as big a fan of traditional talk therapy. Um, I haven't seen a lot of success with it in my life, um, with people I love and even with myself and marital things that, where we've done that type of therapy, but cognitive behavioral therapy I believe in and true mindset work, not just rah rah, rah stuff, but actually working through what's going on in your subconscious mind.

I think there's incredible power in that. So we can look there. We can also look at just mental health is a physical problem because believe it or not, the brain is part of your body.

It's a biological problem. So we have to look at the microbiome. We have. Look at deficiencies. Are we low in magnesium? Are low and B vitamins, are we in fatty acids that nourish the brain?

Is there a reason why people go on a ketogenic diet and oftentimes kick their antidepressants? And I'm not saying a Ketogenic diets, the best diet for you.

It may be in some cases, especially in the short term, it can be incredible. But what does a ketogenic diet do? It feeds the brain a load of fat that it needs because believe it or not, fat head is not a derogatory comment.

We want a fathead, we want to head full of cholesterol. we wanna headful of EPA and DHA, fatty acids, omega-3s, things like that. And we need that to nourish our neurotransmitters.

To nourished our neurons. to nourish the brain itself. It's critical. So we look at those things. There's a reason why probiotics, omega-3, magnesium, and a great multivitamin and enzymes are in my vital five, because all of them play a role in brain health in their own way.

And a healthy brain, to a large degree, equals a health body. But we have to recognize some of the things that are working against us. And one thing that I think is working is against about half of Americans is MTHFR.

So let's talk about this because I learned firsthand with Jen what this means and I've seen it over and over again since. First, what we actually know about this because I want you to see the mechanism before I give you my opinion on it because my opinions is, I think, pretty dead on based on the evidence that we have, but not totally proven just yet.

Folic acid, the synthetic form called folic acid is not the same thing as folate. It's found in enriched flour, it's founded in rich rice, fortified foods, breakfast cereal, almost every bread on the market, most cheap vitamins or multivitamins have it.

A lot of cheap electrolyte supplements or B complexes or things like that will have, its everywhere. And if you've got MTHFR, one of those variants, which if don't have Genetic testing, I think, is really worth it, especially if you're dealing with mental health issues, chronic mental issues.

I mean, you need the genetic picture. And soon I'm going to be able to actually help you with that. We'll have an option for you here at Vitality Nutrition, because I really think it's a really critical thing.

But we won't talk about that now because that's not here yet, but it will be soon. Your body has the capacity with MTHFR to take a little bit of folic acid and convert it.

There's an enzyme kind of a bottleneck, and it can handle a bit at a time, sometimes as much as 200 micrograms, but not much more. And fortified processed food blows right past that number without you even trying.

So the excess folic acid that your body can't convert doesn't just vanish, it builds up circulating in your blood in this unconverted form. Researchers actually have a name for this.

It's called unmetabolized folate acid. And there's real published concern that this buildup competes with the active methylfolate at the very sites your brain needs it.

So it's essentially blocking the good stuff, crowding it out. And here's the piece that matters most for a lot of you. If you have the MTHFR gene variation, and about half of us do in America.

you're already not good at conversion to begin with. So the pileup is worse for you and it's associated in the research with exactly the things we're talking about today, cognitive and psychiatric issues, mood and anxiety specifically.

Now here's where I separate what we know from what I think we and what believe because I wanna be clear which is which. The science on precisely how harmful this buildup They're still working that out.

There's a body of research raising a big red flag though. That question is still open, but I've seen so much of this that I'm already converted to the fact that this is a serious mental health problem for a large group of human beings, especially here in America.

In my opinion. forms through the mechanism and from what I have watched happen in real people, including my lovely wife, for someone who can't process it well, synthetic folic acid is a significant burden on the body.

I've come to look at it as almost like a toxin. I sometimes call it that, even though it's technically a vitamin, a synthetic one, but technically of item, something piling up in a form that the body was never designed to handle, sitting in the bloodstream, getting in way of the real thing, and that's not the textbook position exactly.

It's my position. But it is a position that I've seen play out in so many different people, including Jen. So the story with Jen, if you don't know it, this part of the Story with Jenn, and we have a show on MTHFR you can check out, we'll link it in the show description, is that she was doing much better with her mood.

She had been anxious and depressed for most of her life from the time she at least 13 years old, probably younger. And she thought she was going to be stuck like that forever.

She started supplementing and nourishing her gut and nursing her brain. And, she started doing much, much better. Then she, started eating a little bit more cleanly, more organic, things like, that she.

Started doing mindset work. He started believing she didn't have to, be mentally ill as they called her. that she was no longer broken as she thought she, was and she doing much better.

She went from way up and down, classic bipolar type symptomology, even though I refused to believe that, she ever had bipolar because I think that's mostly BS in terms of not symptom, but these criteria, as we talked about with Dr.

McFillen in episode 671, are mostly made up. And that's just the truth. But she went from up and down, up, and, down to not great all the time, but more stable than she'd ever been.

And then she decided to just ditch grains and she didn't decide to do it for mental health. She decided decided do because she was in pain and was worried about the inflammatory effect.

And we realized within just a couple of weeks that her mood was balanced more than it had ever been. That she had never experienced and certainly than I had experienced since I met her.

And we put two and two together and it equaled folic acid because she was already taking full eight and she already taken methyl B12. In fact, probably more than she actually needed to take we found.

And as we tweak things around, we've found a happy place for her on those. But what was interesting was I had believed And I think rightfully so that she was deficient in these things because of my belief that, she probably was dealing with MTHFR, even though we didn't have a testing to back it up.

But I had not gotten to the point of saying, well, the problem is less about supplementing these and more about detoxing from the thing that gets in the way of all of it, the folic acid.

And when she eliminated the folic acid, it resolved the rest. All of the work that she'd done up to that point got her to a certain point, but her chronic pain left and her low mood left, and our anxiety left completely.

Not just a little better, not even a lot better. Just gone. And now she's just fine. She doesn't have any of that stuff. Does she get a little anxious when we've got a bunch of people coming over for dinner and the house is a mess?

Yeah, she is human. she not a numbed out human, She's a nourished human and she does just find. And it's been so beautiful to watch because now What I see and what she sees in herself and What she is teaching me now as she reads and digs deeper and deeper It's just how powerful we can be when we are fully nourished When we don't have these roadblocks in the way these toxins Pull like acid in her case, maybe not so much in my case And what can happen when we turn things off a little bit, open our ears, and open up our minds and our hearts to the inspiration that we're all here to receive.

I personally believe. So yeah, with her, it was magnesium, probiotics, Omega-3s, I recommend all of those things. There's a big reason why I have the vital five and the single biggest reason if I had to point one finger at one thing is your mental health.

I don't talk about it that way a lot and maybe I should, but those five things matter. magnesium, omega-3s, the really great multivitamin with great B vitamins in it, digestive enzymes, and probiotics, especially spores that help to nourish the entire gut microbiome and help fix leaky gut and things like that.

So, what are we doing with symptoms? Are we seeing them as the check engine light? Are we noticing the shutter like I did on the way to do this show in my 12 year old car with 130,000 miles on it?

We've all, I don't know how old you are. I'm 54. Most of us listening to this Show are not kids. We may be a lot younger than me or a little older than Me. I don' know.

Think I've got a pretty wide range of people that listen here. But when the check engine light goes on, it is your body's Computer, essentially, doing what your car's computer does, saying, hey, there's something going on in here.

I'm trying to help you out before it gets a lot worse, before you're stranded out on the road at midnight in a rainstorm because you didn't pay attention to the warning signs.

If we're covering up the warnings signs with pharmaceuticals, we are in essence placing a piece of tape over that check engine light and saying shut up to our body and do as you're told.

And then we keep pushing the gas and hoping we don't break down. These symptoms are our friends and sometimes they hurt and some times they're incredibly uncomfortable and sometime they are debilitating and somtimes they frustrating.

And I have experienced plenty of symptoms in my life. I've seen people get a lot more than I had. And people have a little less than me. We all have our story.

But what I know and what i believe with all my heart is that your body is doing everything that it can to tell you what you need to know to fix the problems that its experiencing.

many of which, unfortunately, have been self-inflicted and many which are inflicted upon us by the environment we live in, the stressful world we are living in and so on and on.

I hope this series has been helpful. I have done 1500-ish episodes of Vitality Radio since I started 19 years ago. Almost 700 of them are up online. And I keep finding things to talk about and different ways to.

What would be really helpful for me if you love this show is help me make it better. Comment on YouTube, comment on Spotify, send messages on the, join the Facebook listeners community.

I almost never talked about it. It's always linked in the show. Some great stuff in there, some great people in their, um, feedback, share it, like it all the things.

But really, tell me what you think. If this show is serving you, let me know it's serving, you but if it could serve you better, Let me how. I wanna make this as good as I possibly can for as many people as possibly I can.

Thank you so much. Listen to your symptoms. Let's not numb them out. Lets let our body be our friend and take care of us because that is what it is designed to do.

My name is Jared St. Clair and this has been Vitality Radio. Thanks for listening to the Vitaly Radio podcast. If this episode helped you, follow the show, share it with someone and explore trusted education and resources at vitalitynutrition.com.

See you next time. Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Vitality Radio. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only.

This podcast has not been evaluated by the FDA. Thank you.