What is Functional Medicine?

“An integrative, biology-based approach that promotes healing and wellness by focusing on the bio-chemically unique aspects of each patient, and then using individually tailored interventions to restore balance. This approach focuses on understanding the fundamental physiological processes, the environmental inputs and the genetic predispositions that influence health and disease. The interventions aim to address the root causes.”

In the case of Functional Medicine Psychiatry, such interventions are aimed at promoting healing and wellness for those with brain symptoms such as depression, anxiety, mood swings, fatigue, brain fog, hyperactivity, cognitive impairment, social communication deficits and/or psychosis.

In this episode I’ll discuss:

* The advantages and disadvantages of mainstream medicine

* Characteristics of many who seek out functional medicine

* Benefits of functional medicine

* Risks of functional medicine

* How these risks can be mitigated by functional medicine physicians and those seeking this type of treatment

Mentioned in this episode - A Thousand Miles - How I Became a Holistic Psychiatrist

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, visit:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.com

or on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

Psychiatric symptoms normally are not caused by a specific gene. Instead, certain genes, or rather genetic variants, raise our vulnerability to developing depression, anxiety, mood swings, brain fog, hyperactivity, angry outbursts and psychosis

In this newsletter, I hope to demystify the various ways this can happen.

I’ll discuss:

* The relationship between genes and the proteins they code for

* The role of methylation and oxidative stress in gene expression

* The types of proteins that are especially important in brain health

* Examples of variants that can impact neurotransmitter functioning and thus symptoms

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, visit:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.com

or on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

In this episode, I’ll address:

* Common obstacles to starting a meditation practice

* The uniting thread of all forms of meditation

* The types of meditation and how to pick one for you

* The gifts of meditation including and beyond the mental and physical health benefits

* How to begin

“We don’t sit in meditation to become good mediators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.” Pema Chödrön

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, visit:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.com

or on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

I look forward to the day when lowering exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) will be right up there with other basic health recommendations, such as getting adequate sleep and exercise, managing stress and limiting or avoiding sugar. In the meantime, I’ll try, in this episode, to convince you of why lowering exposure is a good idea. 

I’ll discuss:

* Symptoms associated with EMF exposure.

* How EMF appears to impact the brain.

* Factors that increase our vulnerability to the effects of EMF.

* Ways to lower that vulnerability.

When I use “EMF,” I’m referring to the more concerning types - radio-frequencies, magnetic and electric fields and dirty electricity.  For simplicity, I’ll be talking about these collectively, though much of the emerging research is on radio-frequencies (cell phones, WiFi, SMART or wireless technology).  

This newsletter can found at:

https://courtneysnydermd.substack.com/p/emf-and-the-brain

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com

or on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

As with toxins, EMF (a “toxicant”) can impact the brain in a number of ways. It contributes to inflammation, oxidative stress, disruption of the micro-biome, and interferes with our innate electricity. Anything we do to decrease it will benefit our health.

EMF exists on a spectrum, which includes UV light, the visible spectrum, and infrared among other types. Most of the interventions discussed will relate to radio frequencies (RF), which are rabidly increasing around us.

Completely eliminating exposure to EMF is not possible. In this episode, I’ll walk through a checklist to help you assess and already start to lower your own exposure. This is not an all or none endeavor. Some will find a couple of ways that have the biggest impact for them and others will want or need to go deeper into the list. You might find it helpful to print this off the checklist and mark the situations that apply to your circumstances and even rank your priorities.

This newsletter can found at:

https://courtneysnydermd.substack.com/p/how-we-can-assess-and-lower-our-emf

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com or

on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

In this episode, I won’t focus on any specific health choices. We all know what they generally are for us at this time in our life or in our healing process. Instead, I’ll be introducing mental shifts that can help us get off the roller coaster and step onto a path of sustainable self-care. Self pampering can be a part of self-care, but the type of self-care I’m referring to is much bigger than that.

Three people who’ve influenced my thinking on this topic and who are referenced in this episode are:

* Jason Seib - Self care and mindfulness coach, author of Body Beliefs and creator of the (dis)Comfort Zone Workshop

* James Clear - Author of Atomic Habits, An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

* Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener - Positive psychologist, author and speaker

In this episodes I discuss the following mental shifts and give examples:

* Shifting Our Why - Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation

* Shifting Our Identify

* Shifting Our Values

* Shifting Our Relationship to Our Feelings

* “Widening Our Comfort Zone” - (To borrow the phrase from Jason Seib)

* Removing Obstacles

* Increasing Obstacles

* Shifting From Goal to Process

* Shifting From Radical to Incremental Changes

* Accountability

To receive the weekly Holistic Psychiatry Newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com or

on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

The last newsletter, I addressed how our hormonal stress response can trigger mast cells and microglial cells, thereby interfering with neuronal communication in the brain and causing symptoms. Such symptoms can include brain fog, fatigue, depression, anxiety, mood swings and, for some, hallucinations.

We live in a world that is increasingly inflammatory - more toxins, more insults to our microbiome, and more insults to our sense of self from marketing and media. Add to this the reality that many things that lower our stress response and thus inflammation, are being diminished - less human connection, less silence, solitude, stillness and time in the natural world. But, we have choices. Supporting our brain and well-being is really about getting back to the basics of our humanity and getting back to the things most of us long to do anyway.

We can approach the below list with an openness to ideas (of which one or two may resonate) ...or we can approach it like a to-do list - one that reinforces the notion that we need to fix ourselves to be worthy. My hope is the former. We’re already worthy and deserving of feeling healthy.

This list will generally move in the direction of what I think most of us can benefit from (1-3), additional considerations that may be helpful for those with brain symptoms (4-7) and, lastly, I’ve included tools for those who are dealing with very high immune reactivity and/or mast cell activation syndrome (8-10). This list will not be complete. Perhaps you’ll share what is helpful for you.

To receive the newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week, subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com or

on Substack at:

https://www.courtneysnydermd.substack.com

Medical Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

In this episode, I’ll break down the key players in brain inflammation, how these players work together, and how they can ultimately disrupt neuronal communication.  I’ll discuss:

* The beneficial role of inflammation.

* The bridge between the brain and immune system - mast cells & microglial cells.

* The bridge between the immune system and our hormonal stress response - Corticotropin Releasing Hormone (CRH).

* How head injury, toxicity, problematic microbes, and emotional and psychological stress contribute to brain inflammation.

With this groundwork laid, in an upcoming newsletter, I’ll discuss the many ways we can lower inflammation in the brain.

To receive the newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week,

subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com or

on Substack:

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

Whether it’s an older child with frequent tantrums, or an adult who easily loses their temper, I think of angry outbursts as a symptom with underlying root causes.   While there may be triggers, someone’s inability to regulate their emotions, in my experience, suggests a biochemical and/or inflammatory driver.  In this episode, I’ll discuss:

* An important difference between angry outbursts and other symptoms.

* The impact on the neuro-physiology of others.

* Reasons this behavior may be enabled by others.

* Associated diagnoses.

* The four most common underlying physiologic factors that I see in my practice that appear to drive angry outburst.

* What the presence or absence of remorse after a tantrum can tell us about underlying physiologic drivers.

To receive the newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week,

subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com or

on Substack:

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

Though we are wired for connection, we’re also separate human beings.  How we navigate these two realities can make all the difference in the quality of our relationships and our lives.  Our relationships can be with the family we grew up in, our friendships, romantic relationships, partnerships, marriage and the families we create. 

In this newsletter, using Murray Bowen, MD’s Family Systems Theory, I’ll discuss:

* The tension that exists in couples and families because of the need to be together, but also to be separate.

* What being out of balance can look like in a “system.”

* What this can look like for us individually.

* How we can move towards more balance in our relationships.

We don’t need to be in a relationship to be impacted by these forces.  We all carry within us expectations of togetherness and separateness from the families we grew up in.  Our parents carried their own norms based on their families of origin. Through our repeated experiences, our neuronal pathways are reinforced. They can impact how comforting or threatening togetherness feels and how comforting or threatening separateness feels.

To receive the newsletter (text and audio) in your mailbox each week,

subscribe at: https://www.courtneysnydermd.com

or on Substack:

Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.