I wrote here about the relationship between the microbiome and mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. But the connection between the gut and the brain goes much deeper than that. In fact, it appears that imbalance in the microbiome may actually be a causative factor in various types of neurodevelopmental [...]
About 50% of women experience “baby blues,” or a brief period of mild depression for a few days to a few weeks after giving birth. But 10-20% will suffer more severe postpartum depression. Every pregnant woman has very high levels of hormones (estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and oxytocin) when pregnant, and [...]
There are a number of reasons why tea is good for you: the antioxidant content is incredible, for instance, and it decreases risk of stroke, diabetes, cholesterol, obesity, hypertension, and even depression. But it also contains an excellent nootropic (substance that enhances cognition): L-Theanine. L-Theanine’s Biochemical Cousins Protein (one of the [...]
Most of us think of progesterone only as a sex hormone. However, like its parent hormone pregnenolone, progesterone has been well studied for its neuroprotective effects. Progesterone and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Most of the studies with respect to TBI involve administration of progesterone within 6 hours of the original [...]
Pregnenolone is a steroid hormone produced from cholesterol, and it’s the parent of the rest of your sex and adrenal hormones (DHEA, cortisol, aldosterone, estradiol, estrone, estriol, progesterone, and testosterone). Because it’s the parent of all of them, it tends to have a balancing effect on both pathways. Mostly it gets [...]
Neurophysiology 101 Dopamine is perhaps best known as the “pleasure” neurotransmitter, because it’s the currency used in the nucleus accumbens, or the part of the brain known as “the pleasure center.” It’s also one of the catecholamine neurotransmitters: its progeny are norepinephrine and epinephrine (better known as adrenaline). Together and [...]
There’s a big connection between your neurotransmitters and your immune system—particularly what are known as inflammatory cytokines: signaling molecules released by the immune system that trigger actions of other cells towards healing. Here’s how it works. First: What Inflammation Is Inflammation is what happens when you body gets damaged. This [...]
The average length of time that a rat can tread water before giving up and drowning is 15 minutes, or so Johns Hopkins researcher Curt Paul Richter found in the 1950s. But if the rat gets rescued just before drowning, dried off and given a rest, the next time around [...]
This week I'm honored to be able to share a guest post on the physical impact toxic thought from Dr. Caroline Leaf! I've read her books (I highly recommend "Who Switched Off Your Brain?", which you can purchase here), and have followed her blog for some time now. An abbreviated [...]
I see it over and over again: a patient presents with crushing fatigue, anxiety (sometimes panic attacks), insomnia, joint pain, back pain, depression (sometimes mood swings), and general malaise — the gamut of symptoms, basically — and we chase them with one physical treatment after another. They get a little [...]