Tag: anxiety

  • A New Favorite Herb: Lemon Balm

    If you haven’t yet discovered lemon balm, let me introduce you to your new favorite herb. There are so many wonderful uses for lemon balm! Lemon balm is a powerful herb that can combat viruses in the body and powerfully reduce anxiety. Use lemon balm in the garden, for cleaning, and as a tasty addition to numerous recipes.

    Lemon Balm Benefits

    Heart palpitations, nervous tension, insomnia, and hyperactivity are all classic indications for lemon balm and these combined describe what some people experience when their thyroid becomes overactive, such as in Grave’s disease. In fact, lemon balm, bugleweed (Lycopus spp.) and motherwort (Leonorus cardiacus) is a classic western formula for a hyperactive thyroid. 

    Lemon balm is a member of the mint family and, like other mints, it has complicated energetics. Thermally it has been classified as both warming and cooling. This is explained partly by understanding different perspectives within the major living herbal traditions today. 

    Lemon balm has a sour taste. In Ayurveda sour is classified as hot and wet while in Traditional Chinese Medicine sour is thought to be cooling and moistening. In western herbalism sour is generally thought to be cooling. 

    Matthew Wood explains: 

    “Lemon balm has a sour taste, as its name indicates – it is one of the few sour mints. Like most sour plants, it is cooling and sedative. It combines this property with the typical nerve-calming powers of the mint family to make a strong, but safe and simple sedative. These powers are much more marked when the plant is tinctured fresh. A tincture of fresh melissa should be on the shelf in every household as a general sedative.”

    Lemon Balm been used as a mild emmenagogue to promote late menstruation as well as relieve menstrual cramping. 

    How to Identify The Lemon Balm Plant

    As mentioned, lemon balm is in the mint family and has many attributes or identifying features common to this family.
    It has square stems and leaves are in an opposite branching pattern.
    Lemon balm flowers are white and have the classic “lipped” look of the mint family. It typically flowers from June to September.
    This is a perennial plant that is easy to grow. Watch out! It will spread readily in your garden.
    If you crush a leaf in your fingers you’ll be introduced to the wonderful lemon scent of lemon balm. In the past it was considered a “strewing herb,” which is an herb hung in the rafters or strewed on the ground to emanate a pleasant scent.

  • Food Affects How You Feel

    Harvard Health affirms that food affects how you feel. Your diet matters SO MUCH MORE than you think. 

    Beat anxiety and depression by eating eating more fruits and vegetables!

    “Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, mediate moods, and inhibit pain. Since about 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gastrointestinal tract, and your gastrointestinal tract is lined with a hundred million nerve cells, or neurons, it makes sense that the inner workings of your digestive system don’t just help you digest food, but also guide your emotions. What’s more, the function of these neurons — and the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin — is highly influenced by the billions of “good” bacteria that make up your intestinal microbiome.”

    Start paying attention to how eating different foods makes you feel — not just in the moment, but the next day. Try eating a “clean” diet for two to three weeks — that means cutting out all processed foods and sugar. Add fermented foods like kimchi, miso, sauerkraut, pickles, or kombucha. You also might want to try going dairy-free — and some people even feel that they feel better when their diets are grain-free. See how you feel. Then slowly introduce foods back into your diet, one by one, and see how you feel.

    When my patients “go clean,” they cannot believe how much better they feel both physically and emotionally, and how much worse they then feel when they reintroduce the foods that are known to enhance inflammation. Give it a try!

    Make sure these fruits and vegetables are free from glyphosate and the Roundup product.

    Scientific studies have also discovered that glyphosate is an endocrine distruptor and can cause mental instability and mood disorders. 

    Tryptophan is an α-amino acid that is used in the biosynthesis of proteins.  Tryptophan is an essential amino acid in humans, meaning that the body cannot synthesize it: it must be obtained from the diet through plant and animal sources that include grains, nuts, oats, wheat, and eggs (list not exhaustive). Tryptophan is also a precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin and the hormone melatonin.  Tryptophan deficiency can lead to lower serotonin levels. This can result in mood disorders, such as depression.

    Serotonin also impacts every part of your body, from your emotions to your motor skills. Serotonin is considered a natural mood stabilizer. It’s the neurotransmitter that helps with sleeping, eating, and digesting.

    Glyphosate works in plants by disrupting the plants shikimate pathway.  The shikimate pathway is involved with the synthesis of the essential amino acids, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan.  When we consume Roundup treated plants, we do not get the needed amino acids like tryptophan necessary for the synthesis of serotonin.

    Another interesting point about glyphosate is that because of its chelating (binding and removing) abilities, it also reduces calcium and magnesium levels.

    From the Harvard Health Blog:

    Think about it. Your brain is always “on.” It takes care of your thoughts and movements, your breathing and heartbeat, your senses — it works hard 24/7, even while you’re asleep. This means your brain requires a constant supply of fuel. That “fuel” comes from the foods you eat — and what’s in that fuel makes all the difference. Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.

    Like an expensive car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress — the “waste” (free radicals) produced when the body uses oxygen, which can damage cells.

    Unfortunately, just like an expensive car, your brain can be damaged if you ingest anything other than premium fuel. If substances from “low-premium” fuel (such as what you get from processed or refined foods) get to the brain, it has little ability to get rid of them. Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to worsening your body’s regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function — and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.

    It makes sense. If your brain is deprived of good-quality nutrition, or if free radicals or damaging inflammatory cells are circulating within the brain’s enclosed space, further contributing to brain tissue injury, consequences are to be expected. What’s interesting is that for many years, the medical field did not fully acknowledge the connection between mood and food.

    Today, fortunately, the burgeoning field of nutritional psychiatry is finding there are many consequences and correlations between not only what you eat, how you feel, and how you ultimately behave, but also the kinds of bacteria that live in your gut.

    How the foods you eat affect how you feel read more here http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626.

    For more information on this topic, please see: Nutritional medicine as mainstream in psychiatry, Sarris J, et al. Lancet Psychiatry. 2015

    The field of Nutritional Psychiatry is relatively new, however there are observational data regarding the association between diet quality and mental health across countries, cultures and age groups – depression in particular. Here are links to some systematic reviews and meta-analyses:

    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/99/1/181.long
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23720230
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4167107/

    There are also now two interventions suggesting that dietary improvement can prevent depression:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848350/
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050338/

    Diet during early life is also linked to mental health outcomes in children (very important from public health perspective):

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24074470
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25524365 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23541912

    Extensive animal data show that dietary manipulation affects brain plasticity and there are now data from humans to suggest the same:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4563885/

    Finally, while there are yet to be published RCTs testing dietary improvement as a treatment strategy for depression, the first of these is underway and results will be published within six months:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3636120/

  • Vaccines linked to OCD, Anorexia, ADHD and Major Depressive Disorders

    Vaccines linked to OCD, Anorexia, ADHD and Major Depressive Disorders

    Scientist found a strong correlation between vaccines and developing a brain disorder such as OCD, anorexia, ADHD, and major depressive disorders. SOURCE

    It is no question that the subject of vaccines is profoundly controversial. On both sides of the argument exist truths and lies that can hinder the ability of some to make rational decisions.

    For the last 50 years, the world has taken a front row seat to the phenomenological occurrences of the rise of brain disorders such as Autism, ADHD, and major depressive disorders. Anecdotally speaking, parents all over the globe have reported that one day their children were normal and growing healthily, and the next, after having gotten their vaccinations, they get Autism, or ADHD, for example.

    While science and the government continue to maintain there’s no causal relation between the vaccines and the disorders, parents, multiple studies, and other countries have reported otherwise. Now, it seems, some very brave and unabashed scientists have been able to show a correlation of what many have known for quite some time.

    It has also been proven that CDC scientists destroyed data that showed a correlation between vaccines and autism in children.

    Researchers at Pennsylvania State and Yale University sought to examine, “whether antecedent vaccinations are associated with increased incidence of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia nervosa (AN), anxiety disorder, chronic tic disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder in a national sample of privately insured children.”

    Controlling for broken bones and open wounds (control means to use commonly occurring instances as a contrast method), the researchers concluded that someone who’d received the Flu vaccine within the last year “were also associated with incident diagnoses of AN, OCD, and an anxiety disorder.” These findings greatly expand the common understandings that vaccines are related to Autism and now include the other three brain-based illnesses.

    The study used private insurance claims information as their means of collecting the data. “Using claims data, we compared the prior year’s occurrence of vaccinations in children and adolescents aged 6–15 years with the above neuropsychiatric disorders that were newly diagnosed between January 2002 and December 2007,” the study writes.

    Moreover, the correlations were not limited to the Flu vaccine either. According to the published study found in the Journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, “Several other associations were also significant with HRs greater than 1.40 (hepatitis A with OCD and AN; hepatitis B with AN,” meaning the hepatitis vaccines are also implicated in causing brain disorders.

    As with most research studies, the researchers stop short of claiming the vaccinations cause the all too common brain disorders. “This pilot epidemiologic analysis implies that the onset of some neuropsychiatric disorders may be temporally related to prior vaccinations in a subset of individuals,” they write adding the, “findings warrant further investigation, but do not prove a causal role of antecedent infections or vaccinations in the pathoetiology of these conditions.”

    The researchers also warn against the public deciding not to vaccinate their children. “Given the modest magnitude of these findings in contrast to the clear public health benefits of the timely administration of vaccines in preventing mortality and morbidity in childhood infectious diseases, we encourage families to maintain vaccination schedules according to CDC guidelines,” they conclude.

    While we have everyone from attorneys to biologists, to political scientists who write for the Free Thought Project, none of us are doctors, so we do not make recommendations about what you and your family should do in regards to vaccination. That being said, the drug makers have an incentive for you not to see this information which means it will not be reported on in the mainstream media as their advertising dollars are tied directly to these companies. So, we find that it is our duty to spread this information and with your help sharing it, we can have a massive effect.

    This article (Not Just Austim, Major Yale Study Shows Vaccines Tied To Multiple Brain Disorders) by Jack Burns is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheFreeThoughtProject.com.
  • Neurotoxins in Vaccines Associated with OCD, Anorexia and Anxiety Disorders

    Neurotoxins in Vaccines Associated with OCD, Anorexia and Anxiety Disorders

    Nancy:
    Wonder why you didn’t feel right after your employer made flu shots a mandatory condition of employment?

    “Influenza vaccinations during the prior 3, 6, and 12 months were also associated with incident diagnoses of AN, OCD, and an anxiety disorder.”

    Background: The onset of certain brain-related autoimmune and inflammatory disorders has been found to be temporally associated with the antecedent administration of various vaccines. This study examines whether antecedent vaccinations are associated with increased incidence of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia nervosa (AN), anxiety disorder, chronic tic disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder in a national sample of privately insured children.

    Methods: Using claims data, we compared the prior year’s occurrence of vaccinations in children and adolescents aged 6–15 years with the above neuropsychiatric disorders that were newly diagnosed between January 2002 and December 2007, as well as two control conditions, broken bones and open wounds. Subjects were matched with controls according to age, gender, geographical area, and seasonality. Conditional logistic regression models were used to determine the association of prior vaccinations with each condition.

    Results: Subjects with newly diagnosed AN were more likely than controls to have had any vaccination in the previous 3 months [hazard ratio (HR) 1.80, 95% confidence interval 1.21–2.68]. Influenza vaccinations during the prior 3, 6, and 12 months were also associated with incident diagnoses of AN, OCD, and an anxiety disorder. Several other associations were also significant with HRs greater than 1.40 (hepatitis A with OCD and AN; hepatitis B with AN; and meningitis with AN and chronic tic disorder).

    Conclusion: This pilot epidemiologic analysis implies that the onset of some neuro psychiatric disorders may be temporally related to prior vaccinations in a subset of individuals. These findings warrant further investigation, but do not prove a causal role of antecedent infections or vaccinations in the pathoetiology of these conditions. Given the modest magnitude of these findings in contrast to the clear public health benefits of the timely administration of vaccines in preventing mortality and morbidity in childhood infectious diseases, we encourage families to maintain vaccination schedules according to CDC guidelines.

    Read the complete study posted at Psychiatry, 19 January 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00003


    Copyright: © 2017 Leslie, Kobre, Richmand, Aktan Guloksuz and Leckman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.