To treat mood and mind, look to the body. Nutritional status, hormone balance, food sensitivities, toxins and digestive function influence not only mood and memory but also bone & brain health, sleep quality and immunity.

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The idea that afflictions such as anxiety and autism, ADHD and Alzheimer's, can be effectively treated, not by administering psychoactive medication, but by investigating and repairing the body's most basic biochemistry & physiology is resisted by most conventionally trained clinicians.

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The brain, though, is not magically disconnected from the rest of the body. And if pressed to explain something like Wernicke's encephalopathy or streptococcal associated pediatric autoimmune neuropsych disorders, even the most Cartesian of clinicians would struggle to argue otherwise.

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How can the biology of the brain not be affected by the biology of the body? Stripped of our cultural programming, we understand this almost intuitively. It's the medical specialties and insurance reimbursement codes that want us to chop our bodies up into discrete, disconnected bits.

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So not only might your joint pains, skin rash, irritable bowel, and depression, like a spider's marvelously woven web, be all interconnected; but it could also be that the only way to lifelong good health is by seeing and honoring the proverbial "Big Picture."

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Consider just a few of these examples of what are, even today, considered to be unconventional approaches to illnesses claimed by psychiatry:

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• A 53-year old man who had struggled since his university days with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. As it often the case, when the first drug he was prescribed didn't work, a second was added. When that didn't work, the doses were increased. When the results were unsatisfactory, a third drug was added. But even 3 drugs didn't really help, and the side effects mounted. And he just felt lousy. Where and how did he finally find relief? After discovering a B vitamin insufficiency: supplemental (methylated) B12, folate and B6 left him feeling normal for the first time in thirty years. And he continues to feel great to this day. 

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• A 3-year old boy. He was placed on all kinds of terrible medicines for behavioral problems. Again, they helped a little, but only a little. And the side effects grew increasingly worrisome to his parents. What ended up helping him and getting him off the drugs? Balancing his blood sugar and addressing a bacterial overgrowth (the metabolic products of which affect the brain— and in his case— behavior) in his gut.

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• A 23-year old woman who reported lifelong anxiety and depression. It magically lifted after identifying & removing foods she was reacting to.

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• A 73-year old man diagnosed with dementia. He lived in The Villages where a 79-year old woman had died suddenly from brain bleeding after she signed up for an amyloid-clearing drug (Leqembi) trial when she first noticed she was forgetting words and misplacing her keys. (She wanted to be pro-active, her daughter explained.) He did not want that to happen to him, so he decided to hunt down doctors who were suspicious of or even hostile to the (fraudulent) focus on amyloid. Lucky for him, his problem turned out to be mercury— methylmercury, from fish— and within 2 months he had his faculties back. (Mercury from dental amalgams, inorganic mercury, has an even greater affinity for the brain (and kidneys) and typically takes a longer to address.)

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The list could go on almost infinitely, but just 2 more.

The son of an acupuncture client across the Delaware River from Philadelphia who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Turns out he had high levels of cadmium (from inhaling metals dust where he worked, possibly compounded by a pack a day cigarette habit) and a sensitivity to casomorphin.

Or the man with crippling depression to the point of suicidal thoughts. When his nutrition was fixed (both his essential fatty acids and amino acids— necessary substrates for making neurotransmitters— were low), the dark thoughts lifted. The celebrated author working on a musical adaptation of his best-selling novel, spooked by dizzy spells & memory loss that were interfering with his work. Turned out his high-dose (80 mg daily) Lipitor, a need for methylation support, and a gut dysbiosis were to blame. Four years later, his completed musical production is due to open at the Goodman!

The fact that each of these people required a different intervention to return to optimal health is both what makes this approach so confounding to conventionally trained physicians and so exciting for the rest of us!

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If the brain is in the body, and the body systems are struggling, the brain will struggle too. With this new, liberating way of seeing & thinking, "psychiatric illnesses" can now be understood & addressed as symptoms of more systematic biochemical and metabolic problems which we can treat at the bodily level— and without drugs.

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