We have many clients—male and female—who have prob-lems with low energy, depression, and insomnia. These add to the list of epidemics in our culture that we didn’t see twenty-five years ago. What makes it even more alarming is that we see it in children, too.

There are roughly eight million children taking psych medications for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). There’s no doubt that these children and adults may be symptomatic and unhealthy, but diagnosing anyone with a psychiatric disorder and prescribing mindaltering drugs like Ritalin or Adderal is not the solution. Medications may bring apparent relief, but it’s only temporary—these drugs will damage the brain and nervous system in the long run.¹ Many people come into our practice with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and brain fog, and we measure neurotransmitter levels in these cases. These neurotransmitters include serotonin, dopamine, GABA, glutamate, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, and symptomatic patients always have levels that are far below the optimal standards. Even when they have been given prescription psych medications by their doctor, their levels remain low because the drugs do not correct the underlying cause. These medications don’t correct the deficiency—they poison the nerves so they are not able to regulate in a normal manner.

For example, the class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) ,like Prozac, artificially increase levels of serotonin. Under normal circumstances, when one nerve communicates with another, it shoots a serotonin molecule across a synapse. The molecule then hits the second nerve, and it reacts. The original nerve then uses suction to reel the serotonin back in. SSRIs essentially poison the suction of the first nerve, so it can’t reuptake the serotonin—it sits in the synapse and bombards the second nerve cell membrane until it loses sensitivity. The nerve cell membrane is overwhelmed and damaged—the structure changes over time, and it becomes numb.² Subsequently, the symptoms are sup-pressed, but the underlying problem—which often times is nutritional—is never truly addressed.

These drugs are dangerous because they can randomly affect many nerve cells, and severe side effects have been reported including suicide, mania, and psychotic homicidal behavior. Sometimes psychiatric medications send people over the edge—they become violent and kill someone, or they commit suicide. In fact, it has been documented that many of the mass murderers of the past thirty years had been under psychiatric care, and had SSRIs or other psych drugs in their bloodstreams at the time of their rampages.³

We help patients wean off these medications by repairing the inflamed intestines (where 90 percent of serotonin is made) through dietary changes, removal of toxic yeast, bacteria and parasites, and targeted nutrition including essential amino acids to heal the membrane. Once we begin this process, the body begins producing neurotransmitters as it should. We temporarily give them amino acid precursors so the body can make its own serotonin, GABA, or dopamine. In most cases, we measure neurotransmitter levels again six to nine months later, and they have come into normal range. Once those levels are normal, patients can wean off their medication with-out drastic side effects. This approach is effective because we address the root of the problem; we don’t just put up a window dressing in the form of a drug.

PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSES

Psychiatry is an industry that has no objective proof of its diagnoses. Psychiatrists don’t conduct lab tests to confirm their findings, they don’t measure neurotransmitter levels, and they don’t image the brain to look for structural changes that may be affecting its function. Due to the subjective nature of this industry, three different psychiatrists can have three different “diagnoses” for one patient.

I believe that psychiatry perpetrates fraud on innocent human beings. Clinical studies have proven that exercise is as effective as any drug for treating depression,⁴ yet psychiatrists swear by their Bible of “diseases,” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This is an extensive list of psychiatric diagnoses with diagnostic codes, so that insurance companies can be billed properly. The tome is nine hundred-forty-three pages long and lists three hundred-seventy-four mental “disorders.” This manual is the engine that drives a $330 billion industry, and it’s used to enforce psychiatric drugging, seize your children, and even take away your most precious freedoms. Psychiatrists literally sit in a room and make up diagnoses of mental conditions. Then they vote on them, and just like that, we have a new, codeable “mental” disease.⁵ Some of these made up diseases include math anxiety disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and trichotillomania disorder (twisting your hair until it falls out).

I wish I was joking about all of this but, sadly, I am not. I advise you to beware, because psychiatry can hurt you. They have abandoned the old practice of lending a sympathetic ear to the grieved or distressed, and traded it for drugs and electroshock therapy—it turns people into zombies, and that is not the type of help or care that we need.

Now, there are doctors outside the circle of traditional psychiatry who will do objective testing on the brain. One such method is a single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) scan, which can view circulation patterns of the brain. A SPECT scan allows doctors to see old trauma that may have been too minor to be recognized at the time of an injury, and can also indicate the presence of environmental mold, toxins, and even Lyme disease.⁶ This practice can actually lead to a true revelation of the patient’s condition, so that the underlying problem can be resolved.

AMINO ACIDS AND THE CONNECTION TO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

The vast majority of molecules in the brain and nervous system are made from amino acids. Growth hormone from the pituitary gland, dopamine from the substantia nigra area of the brain, and the aforementioned neurotransmitters, serotonin, GABA, epinephrine, nor-epinephrine, and glutamate are all amino acid based. If there are amino acid deficiencies in the brain, as well as cofactor deficiencies of Vitamin B6 and magnesium, then there can’t be adequate production of these protein molecules. If you add in mold, environmental toxins, or infections such as Lyme, mycoplasma, and other bugs, the brain can’t operate normally—people can suffer from all sorts of maladies like anxiety and depression, balance issues and vertigo, and poor sleep. Contrary to popular belief, most of these conditions are medical or nutritional—they are not psychological. That is why psychiatry has such dismal success: it assumes that every-one has a drug deficiency and does not take into account external emotional factors or physical illnesses. It offers one misguided solution, rather than addressing what is truly wrong.

It’s important to understand that when people don’t “feel right,” their neurotransmitters are out of whack, and it’s most likely because their intestinal flora is out of balance, and they are deficient in key nutrients like essential amino acids. Instead of seeing a psychiatrist, they should get help from a nutritional practitioner who is knowledgeable in such matters. It’s true that many issues and situations in life feel like a downward spiral, but taking a drug to numb the symptoms is not the solution—you must find and treat the root cause of the problem. A combination of correct nutritional therapy and effective practical help can alleviate the condition or challenge that has put one into an emotional or spiritual upheaval.

WOMEN AND DEPRESSION

I observed a group of women some years ago who suffered from a triad of symptoms: depression, fatigue, and sleeplessness. Each of them had been on medication long term to block the production of stomach acid, like Nexium, Tagamet, Pepcid, Zantac, or others. I discovered that each woman’s blood level of the essential amino acid, tryptophan, was very low.

The usual medical approach to treat women who have this triad of fatigue, insomnia, and depression is to give them prescriptions for Ambien, Trazadone, or Xanax for sleep; Prozac or another SSRI for the depression; and Adderall or another amphetamine for fatigue. And of course, they are to continue taking the acid blocker that caused their problems in the first place.

So, what exactly was going on with these women? Since you’re this far into the book, I’m sure you’ve got the sequence figured out:

1. Stomach acid-blocking medications blocked the digestion of dietary proteins and the absorption of minerals, like magnesium.
2. Dietary proteins are the source of tryptophan, but since digestion was compromised, tryptophan and other amino acids were not well absorbed. Therefore, their blood levels of tryptophan were low, leading to low levels in the cells.
3. Magnesium and vitamin B6 are needed to make tryptophan into proteins, but they also require stomach acid. Blocking the acid further compromised protein synthesis.
4. Tryptophan is the parent molecule for niacin. Inadequate tryptophan means inadequate niacin, so the cells couldn’t make energy. This led to the women having fatigue.
5. Tryptophan is also the parent molecule for melatonin. Since there was inadequate melatonin in their bodies, they couldn’t sleep well.
6. Tryptophan is also the parent molecule for serotonin. Low serotonin meant that the ladies were apt to suffer from depression and other mood problems.

These women were fatigued, sleepless, and depressed due to the long-term use of drugs that blocked stomach acid. This was not entirely their own doing—their doc-tors had dutifully renewed their prescriptions despite the warning in the Physician’s Desk Reference that these drugs were for short term use only. This observation led to a very simple solution: We gave them stomach acid supplements containing pancreatic enzymes so they could digest proteins, weaned them off their acid blockers, and gave them essential amino acids with extra tryptophan, B6, B complex, and magnesium. Their fatigue, depression, and sleeplessness all resolved within a few months time. Good detective work combined with nutritional medicine can solve health problems—it’s modern medicine at its best!

References:

The following is adapted from The Search for the Perfect Protein, chapter 10.

At our clinic, the LifeWorks Wellness Center, we have many clients—male and female—who have problems with low energy, depression, and insomnia. With these patients, we’ll measure neurotransmitter levels, which include serotonin, dopamine, GABA, glutamate, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. The results tell the same story:

Symptomatic patients have neurotransmitter levels far below the optimal standards.

Even when patients have been given prescription psych medications by their doctor, their levels remain low because the drugs do not correct the underlying cause.

What is the underlying cause, and why are the typically-prescribed medications so ineffective? That’s what we’ll explore in this article. My hope is that you’ll come away with a better understanding of why you might be suffering and what to do about it.

Amino Acids Are Key to Your Nervous System

To understand why people suffer from low energy, insomnia, and depression, you first have to start by understanding the brain and the nervous system. You see, the vast majority of molecules in the brain and nervous system are made from amino acids.

Growth hormone, dopamine, and the aforementioned neurotransmitters are all amino acid based. If there are amino acid deficiencies in the brain, there can’t be adequate production of these protein molecules. That’s not the only issue, though.

If you add in mold, environmental toxins, or infections such as Lyme, mycoplasma, and other bugs, the brain can’t operate normally. People suffer from all sorts of maladies like anxiety and depression, balance issues and vertigo, and poor sleep.

Contrary to popular belief, most of these conditions are medical or nutritional, not psychological. That’s why psychiatry has such dismal success: it assumes everyone has a drug deficiency and does not take into account external emotional factors or physical illnesses. Their misguided solutions don’t address what is truly wrong.

It’s important to understand that when people don’t “feel right,” their neurotransmitters are out of whack, and it’s most likely because their intestinal flora is out of balance, and they are deficient in key nutrients like essential amino acids.

Instead of seeing a psychiatrist, they should get help from a nutritional practitioner who is knowledgeable in such matters. You must find and treat the root cause of the problem. A combination of correct nutritional therapy and effective practical help can alleviate the condition or challenge instead of numbing it with psych medication.

Why Psych Medications Aren’t Effective

Speaking of psych medications, let’s look at how they often do more harm than good.

As an example, let’s look at the class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), like Prozac, that artificially increase levels of serotonin. Normally, when one nerve communicates with another, it shoots a serotonin molecule across a synapse. The molecule then hits the second nerve, and it reacts. The original nerve then uses suction to reel the serotonin back in. SSRIs like Prozac essentially poison the suction of the first nerve, so it can’t reuptake the serotonin—it sits in the synapse and bombards the second nerve cell membrane until it loses sensitivity.

The nerve cell membrane is overwhelmed and damaged—the structure changes over time, and it becomes numb. Subsequently, the symptoms are suppressed, but the underlying problem—which often times is nutritional—is never truly addressed.

These drugs are dangerous because they can randomly affect many nerve cells, and severe side effects have been reported including suicide, mania, and psychotic homicidal behavior. Sometimes psychiatric medications send people over the edge.

They become violent and kill someone, or they commit suicide. In fact, many of the mass murderers of the past thirty years had been under psychiatric care, and had SSRIs or other psych drugs in their bloodstreams at the time of their rampages.

A More Holistic Approach

In patients with low neurotransmitter levels, we don’t bombard their bodies with harmful medications. We begin by repairing the inflamed intestines (where 90% of serotonin is made) through dietary changes, removal of toxic yeast, bacteria and parasites, and targeted nutrition including essential amino acids to heal the membrane.

To show you how this works, here’s a story from a few years ago at our practice.

I observed a group of women who all suffered from depression, fatigue, and sleeplessness. Each of them had been on medication long term to block the production of stomach acid, like Nexium, Tagamet, Pepcid, Zantac, or others. I discovered that each woman’s blood level of the essential amino acid, tryptophan, was very low.

The usual medical approach to treat these conditions is with Ambien, Trazodone, or Xanax for sleep; Prozac or another SSRI for the depression; and Adderall or another amphetamine for fatigue. Then you have to factor in the acid blocker, as well.

So, what exactly was going on with these women? Here’s what we discovered:

Stomach acid-blocking medications blocked the digestion of dietary proteins and the absorption of minerals, like magnesium. Dietary proteins are the source of tryptophan, but since digestion was compromised, tryptophan and other amino acids were not well absorbed. Their blood levels of tryptophan were low, leading to low levels in the cells.

Magnesium and vitamin B6 are needed to make tryptophan into proteins, but they also require stomach acid. Blocking the acid further compromised protein synthesis.

Tryptophan is the parent molecule for niacin. Inadequate tryptophan means inadequate niacin, so the cells couldn’t make energy. This led to the women having fatigue.

Tryptophan is also the parent molecule for melatonin.

Since there was inadequate melatonin in their bodies, they couldn’t sleep well. Tryptophan is also the parent molecule for serotonin. Low serotonin meant that the ladies were apt to suffer from depression and other mood problems.

These women were fatigued, sleepless, and depressed due to the long-term use of drugs that blocked stomach acid. This was not entirely their own doing—their doctors had renewed prescriptions for drugs that were for short term use only.

This observation led to a very simple solution: We gave them stomach acid supplements containing pancreatic enzymes so they could digest proteins, weaned them off their acid blockers, and gave them essential amino acids with extra tryptophan, B6, B complex, and magnesium. Their fatigue, depression, and sleeplessness all resolved within a few months’ time. Good detective work combined with nutritional medicine can solve health problems—it’s modern medicine at its best!

For more advice on treating the root cause of conditions like fatigue, depression, and insomnia, you can find The Search for the Perfect Protein on Amazon.

For the #1 Essential Amino Acid supplement that 99% utilized by the body to create new protein look HERE.

Dr. David Minkoff is board certified in pediatrics and served as codirector of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Palomar Medical Center in San Diego, California. With his wife, Sue, he cofounded LifeWorks Wellness Center in 1997, and in 2000, he cofounded BodyHealth, a nutrition company that offers a unique range of dietary supplements to the public and medical practitioners. A forty-two-time IRONMAN finisher, Dr. Minkoff is passionate about fitness and continues to train on a regular basis. He and his wife reside in Clearwater, Florida.