David Foreman, the Natural Pharmacist, speaks about natural solutions for depression and anxiety with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

0:52  My intro on depression and anxiety and how such patients are treated with drugs that modulate neurotransmitters like serotonin, despite the fact that there’s never been a successful human study linking low serotonin levels with depression. I also talked about how difficult it is to get off these drugs once you have been taking them. 

8:50  I asked David what should patients do who are suffering some mild depression?  David responded that they should use his four pillars of health program encompassing diet, exercise, spirituality and supplements that you can find in his Pillars of Health Heart Disease book.   

10:54  David recommended that someone with mild depression should contact a Functional Medicine practitioner like one of us to help explore some of the underlying causes of depression by looking at diet and lifestyle. Alcohol is a depressant for the nervous system and should be avoided. You need to feed your brain by avoiding refined, sugary, starchy foods and eating more fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, lean cuts of meat, and wild salmon for the omega threes for your nervous system. 

13:51  From a Functional Medicine perspective, rather than treating depression, depression is just a symptom and we need to find out what the underlying cause including nutritional deficiencies, lack of exercise, if you have a lot of inflammation, then your brain will be inflammed. You need to look at hormone imbalances and the gut, considering the gut/brain connection. 

21:16  David mentioned three herbs that can help with depression and anxiety: 1. Zembrin from South Africa, which comes from a cactus, helps you relax and calm down and also help your concentration and focus, 2. Rhodiola, which is an adaptogenic herb that helps to balance your system, 3. Passion flower, that helps with sleep.

 

   

David Foreman, the Herbal Pharmacist, is available for speaking engagements and can be contacted through his website,   http://herbalpharmacist.com/  and you can email him directly and he will respond.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

Podcast Transcripts

This is Doctor Ben Weitz with the Rational Wellness Podcast, bringing you the cutting-edge information on health and nutrition, from the latest scientific research and by interviewing the top experts in the field. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on iTunes and YouTube, and sign up for my free eBook on my website by going to drweitz.com. Let’s get started on your road to better health.

 

Dr. Weitz:                            Good morning Rational Wellness Podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. For those of you who enjoy this podcast, please go to iTunes and leave us your ratings and review so more people can find out about the Rational Wellness Podcast. Our topic for today is depression and anxiety, what to do about it. For depression in the United States it’s very common if you go to see your doctor that he’s going to prescribe a medication like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, like Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro,

Dr. Steven Lin talks about the Dental Diet with Dr. Ben Weitz. 

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast] 

 

Podcast Highlights

2:05  Dr. Lin explains how he got interested in nutrition as a dentist.  He was becoming a little disillusioned with his dental practice when he was finding that dental disease was so common and he found kids with malformed jaws that didn’t fit their teeth and severe tooth decay and adults with gum disease that required extracting some many of their teeth. He took some time off from his practice and did some travelling and came across Weston A. Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which explained that dental disease is being caused by the modern diet.  He documented people who were in hunter/gatherer societies on islands or in remote forests who were not being impacted by the modern lifestyle and who were not eating the modern diet, who had no tooth decay, no crooked teeth, and no wisdom teeth extraction. Dr. Lin wants to help the dental profession move forward into the Functional Medicine perspective.

4:55  Dr. Lin explains how the modern diet impacts the growth of the jaw and this leads to a jaw that is not big enough to fit 32 teeth, which is why you end up with crooked teeth and having to have your wisdom teeth removed. When we eat a whole foods diet and chew a lot, with a diet that includes the nutrients that balance calcium in the body, and we breathe through our nose instead of our mouth, this stimulates the jaw to grow properly. In fact, throughout our lives, every meal contributes to how our jaw and our teeth are formed. 

9:45  I asked Dr. Lin about why we commonly have to have our wisdom teeth removed and we don’t think twice about it?  He explained that if the hand was not properly formed and we had to have a finger removed, we would be upset about this, but we don’t think twice about having your teeth pulled out. One of the biggest epidemics on the planet is that our jaws aren’t developing properly from children not eating right and chewing properly and not breathing right. We can intervene with a Functional Medicine model. 

10:50  Dr. Lin explains that breathing through your nose with a closed mouth and your tongue pushed to the roof of your mouth is the proper way to breathe and this allows the most efficient flow of oxygen and which mixes with nitric oxide in the nose. Mouth breathing, which most people do, delivers oxygen less efficiently and stunts the growth of the mouth. This also leads to snoring and can result in sleep apnea. 

15:50  Dr. Lin says that Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS) is on the spectrum of sleep apnea and what happens is that when you don’t have the jaws to support the volume of airway we’re used to so they end up with Respiratory Effort Arousal Efforts and they put the brain into sympathetic mode. They also tend to grind their teeth.  These people need to be taught to nose breathe.

18:50  We are more prone to tooth decay because most of us don’t get enough fat soluble vitamins, A, D and K2, which are important for the internal immune system withing the teeth.

20:18  Tooth decay also results from a disruption of the oral microbiome, which partially results from using mouth washes and tooth paste that contain antibiotics that kill bacteria in the mouth. Gum disease also results from an imbalance of the bacteria in the mouth and the gut, which then leads to destruction of the gums and the underlying bones in the mouth.  You don’t want to kill all the bacteria in the mouth.

25:39  Tooth paste with probiotics. Oil pulling is an ancient Ayrevedic tradition.  Eating is really the most important thing you can do for you oral health. 

28:07  Plaque is actually a good thing as long as you have the right bacteria in your mouth.

Improving your posture is an anti-aging strategy with Dr. Steven Weiniger, who is interviewed by Dr. Ben Weitz. 

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast] 

 

Podcast Highlights

3:49  Dr. Weiniger talks about some of the negative consequences of poor or weak posture, including neck and back pain.

8:32  The key to posture is taking a picture of yourself and drawing lines and measuring how you stack up. Then make some changes and next year take another picture and see if you have changed. 

9:22  The invention of the smart phone on top of the computer now has led to about 90% of people in the US having weak, folded posture being bent over with rounded shoulders and forwards head.  This is an epidemic in our society that is getting worse. 

10:22  I pointed out that the more time people spend on social media, the more lonely they get, which increases their risk of chronic diseases and early death. 

13:00  We talked about Dr. Weiniger’s PostureZone app that allows you to take a picture and measure where their head, torso and pelvis is in space over where they are standing. Those are the four posture zones and the Posturezone app lets you measure the degrees of deviation from vertical of the poor posture zone.  This app both lets people become aware of their posture and allows professionals to measure posture and generate reports showing changes over time before and after treatment. 

23:20 Dr. Weiniger explained how we go about constructing an exercise program to improve posture with his strong posture protocols. He also mentioned that chiropractic manipulation is very important in helping to improve posture, as is proper nutrition.

 

Dr. Steven Weiniger is a Doctor of Chiropractic with a specialty in posture analysis and correction. Dr. Weiniger is an author, speaker, and internationally recognized posture expert  https://www.bodyzone.com/posture-expert/  Dr. Weiniger has written Stand Taller Live Longer: An Anti-Aging Strategy available through Barnes and Noble  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stand-taller-live-longer-steven-weiniger/1009154991?ean=9780979713606  and Posture Principles-–5 Principles of Posture. 

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

Podcast Transcripts

Dr. Weitz:            This is Dr. Ben Weitz, with the Rational Wellness Podcast, bringing you the cutting edge information on health and nutrition from the latest scientific research and by interviewing the top experts in the field. Please subscribe to Rational Wellness podcast on iTunes and YouTube, and sign up for my free ebook on my website by going to drweitz.com. Let’s get started on your road to better health.

                           Hey Rational Wellness podcasters, thank you so much for joining me again today. We’re going to talk about posture again and it’s such an important topic because it affects so many factors in our overall health. And as a chiropractor, I constantly see patients every day who come into the office and they say, “Doc, why does my back hurt? Why does my neck hurt? I didn’t lift anything, I didn’t do anything.” And so,