Transcription
Hello everyone. I am Dan Kalish, and I am here to talk about attention, focus, and memory problems at our health chat sessions for today. Common problems I see in my practice every day. And you know, we have conditions like ADD, ADHD. We want to look at how stress impacts your brain. What are the things that can trigger these kinds of problems? What symptoms can arise from the exhaustion of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine, which is some of the really important brain chemicals? And then talk a little bit about the link between a broken brain and toxins, and how that damages your brain cells. And I see this in practice all the time where we have this connection between environmental toxin exposure and your brain not working that well. Matter of fact, I have patients, you know, two or three patients today that have that exact problem.
So, a little bit about me. If you're new to these Kalish Health Chats, I'm, I've been in functional medicine for a long time, 25, 30 years. I work with the Institute for Functional Medicine. I've done a little bit of research with the Mayo Clinic. I do a lot of curriculum development, a lot of training of doctors, and I've gotten kind of old. So now, and it says the bullet point says IFM certified practitioner, which is true. I passed that exam, and that was a hard exam. With over 25 years of experience, that means I don't really want to tell you how long it's been because it's been a long time. We have this wonderful health coach named Jennifer. And if you want to work with us, it's a great combination. She's really smart and really nice, and she'll do a free 15-minute session with you to see if you're a good fit. Certified health coach, and she's extremely knowledgeable, extremely thoughtful person. And if that works, then, you know, you can sign up and do some lab tests and start to fix things. So you can just go to uh, the uh, Kalish Consult and do that. Or you can just go to the Kalish website and and you can sign up for a free consult there too. It's Kalish Wellness, and just click on the start here button. Uh oh, here, I'm sorry. Click on the schedule your free consultation button here, and then you can do that. Okay, Jennifer, I'll get you set up.
So for today, I want to focus on just some basic understanding about how the brain chemistry thing works. And we're going to kind of take one track here and go down the track of dopamine and concentration and memory and obsessive thoughts and that that sort of one aspect of brain function. But important to note that you can have a deficiency that leads to these problems, neurotransmitter or brain chemical deficiency because you're stressed. And who isn't stressed right now? Right? The whole world is stressed right now, literally. Because you don't eat that well, you know, another problem. Because you have digestive problems, maybe drug depletion from recreational drugs like speed or cocaine, from prescription drugs like antidepressants or any anxiety drugs. A lot of things can create a deficiency. We can test and replace the deficiencies. That's about as easy as it gets in my job. Okay, very easy.
There's a second problem that can occur where there's damage to these neurons. So the damage is causing the attention and focus and memory problems. The damage is causing the ADD, ADHD. And there's two ways that the, you know, brain cells can get damaged. Either from neurotoxins, you know, that are chemicals or heavy metals that damage the brain, or from physical trauma. And then there are a lot of people, probably more than half the people that I do lab tests on, who have a genetic dysfunction. There's a, something just wrong with their brain the day they were born. They don't make these chemicals at the right rate. So no matter how they eat, or how they meditate and de-stress, and how good their gut is, and how much they exercise, you know, they're just up against a pretty tough place because they don't have the genes in place to make the brain chemicals. And you can see all of this on the labs. You can see if someone's deficient, if there's damage from toxins or from trauma, or if there's a genetic factor that's driving it. Okay.
And then what are the things that happen as a result of all this? People gain weight, they get tired, they have anxiety, panic attacks, they have insomnia, they just hurt everywhere. There's just body pain everywhere. They get diagnosed as having restless leg syndrome, they have migraines. There's all kinds of different versions of this. But most people end up overweight and tired. I mean, pretty much everybody that I talked to, every single patient, probably in the last couple years, it's like, yeah, what's going on? Well, I feel like I'm a little overweight and I'm pretty tired.
So, um, I'm sorry, I'm going to skip the trip to Fan because we're going to save that for another day. But I want to go here. Uh, here we go. So the chemicals that we're actually talking about are represented here: dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Okay. And if these chemicals are at a good level, you're going to be happy. You're going to be out there on your mountain bike or kayaking, not on the couch watching, you know, TV or just reading or just, you know, like kind of slightly depressed and inactive. So these are energizing chemicals. These are chemicals that want us to get out and, you know, work, or get out and play, or get out and go see a movie, or get out and do things. They're action-oriented chem. And thus, when these chemicals are low, we tend to sit around a lot. We tend to get fat. We tend to be really tired. We tend to think a lot, obsessive thoughts over and over again, sometimes even a compulsive thought like, uh, did I turn the stove off? And you go back and you check, and is the stove turned off? You check it again and again and again. Okay. And sometimes it's just like overthinking, like you're just your mind is going a million miles an hour, and you just can't ratchet it down. And it's very hard to focus and concentrate and have really clear, crisp memory when these brain chemicals are low. And you can deplete them again, how? From chronic stress, from, you know, drug use, prescription or recreational drugs. You can deplete them from head trauma, or what most insidious, probably factors now are environmental toxin exposure, uh, combined with genetics.
So the way that we protect our brains, in the most important way that we protect our brains, is through something called glutathione. And you can measure glutathione. If glutathione levels are low, then you're going to have a buildup of things like mercury and other neurotoxins. Glutathione is made from these simple amino acids: glycine, cysteine, and glutamate. And we test for these amino acids. And if the levels are low, then the glutathione production is going to be low, and you're going to be kind of, uh, you know, what do you call it, susceptible to having problems.
So there was a pandemic in 1918, which most of you have probably heard about, called the Spanish Flu. And one of the kind of interesting outcomes of that pandemic was this disease that occurred in people after the pandemic sort of passed through, and they had a problem, let's document in this article here, with their brains. Okay. And this some complicated discussion here about what it really was, and they called it, um, and what the names were of it. But the key point is that due to this viral infection, one of the aftermaths of this viral infection in 1918 were that certain portions of the brain, in a very small percentage of people, were damaged. And there's a movie about this, if you've never seen that's pretty good movie. Robert De Niro and, uh, Robin Williams, kind of a strange combination of actors, but it's a really good film. And it describes the story of this real neurologist. It's a Hollywood movie talking about Oliver Sacks. And Robin Williams plays Oliver Sacks. And what the real Oliver Sacks figured out in real life is that these people that had suffered from this brain, this, uh, Spanish Flu induced brain damage, had problems with their, uh, L-DOPA production. And when they gave them L-DOPA, and you see this in the movie, they came back to life. Now, the happy story didn't last very long. It didn't work for very long. But for a short period of time, these people were kind of perked up. But it's a great example, kind of a timely example, of toxin-induced neuron damage. Okay. It could be toxins related to a flu, or toxins related to heavy metals, or toxins related to chemicals. And when we test people, which we do every day in my clinic, we find that a large percentage of us, almost all of us, have heavy metals and chemicals in our system that are by nature neurotoxic. Meaning, one of the things that mercury, or arsenic, or lead, or aluminum, or benzene, or toluene will do is get right into your brain and start trashing your neurotransmitters. So this is a common, common problem. And the damage is right to the brain cells themselves. And then when they're damaged, they don't really work very well. It's just like a wire that's not conducting its signals very effectively.
And so what happens when this dopamine part of the brain gets damaged? People start to eat a lot of food. They get really tired. They get depressed. Their mood problems start. They have attention, focus, and concentration problems. This can happen in children as well, especially the genetic version of this. You'll see in kids a lot, 5, 10, 15-year-old children will have these dopamine-related problems. Not so much from neurotoxins all the time because they're younger, they usually don't have as much of an accumulation of neurotoxins, but more so from the genetic variation on this. Okay.
So the things that you can do on your own is to not get overly toxic, right? Wherever you can, and however you can, to remove the incoming load of toxins. Basic stuff. Drinking green vegetable juice instead of eating some potato chips, they have a bunch of chemicals in them now. Using skincare products and cleaning products for your home that are not toxic. Getting an air filter for your home is probably the single most important thing you could do because a lot of these substances that we get into our bodies are inhaled. We breathe them in. You know, obviously, you can eat organic food, it's not sprayed with a bunch of pesticides. So there's a lot of things you can do on your own to reduce the load of toxins. Chief among them, I would say, if you're feeling like you wanted to get inspired here, get an air filter for your house, have clean air, and get a water water filter so you drink plenty of fresh water. Uh, those two things, and they're, they're both kind of expensive. I don't know, spend $200 to $500 for a good air filter, and probably $200 to $500 bucks for a good water filter. But they last for years and years and years, and now more than worth it in terms of, you know, the toxins that they'll help remove.
And then the other thing you can do besides juicing, vegetable juicing, which I like to do and it's a great way to stay healthy, is to get an infrared sauna and just flush the toxins out through your infrared sauna. And I bought one, I don't know, maybe four years ago now. I don't use it every day, but I use it a lot. You know, I used to use it every day for a long time. And, um, it's really great. It's, it just feels so good, and you just basically sweat out all these environmental toxins. And again, it's an investment. You know, I spent like $3,000 bucks on it. But, um, I've probably used it, you know, two, three times a week on average for four years. So, you know, it ends up being something, and it's, you know, probably last for another 10 or 15 years. So it's another way you can invest in trying to do something at home that you know can really make a difference in getting taught, in terms of getting toxins out. Okay.
And then, uh, juicing, you know, doing vegetable juices is a huge, huge detox process. You know, uh, trick from the old naturopaths that works still to this day. So removing the incoming load of toxins, restoring your system, flushing out the existing toxins, plenty of water, obviously. And then, you know, you can do liver support supplements and whatnot. Okay. And again, we've got Jennifer available if you guys are interested in talking to a health coach, you want to learn more about how all this stuff works. And I want to show you an example of a lab so you can see what this is really like. Sorry, I thought I had it queued up, but I didn't. And, you know, the more I do these tests as the years roll by, the more important they are. And you can't really figure this stuff out unless you have some labs. No matter how much experience you have in this field, you know, you just can't. It's too complicated. Here we go.
So I just want you, and you should know these basic things. You shouldn't, I mean, interpreting these takes decades to learn. But you should be able to at least, you know, know that these exist and be able to ask for them. If you don't come in and see us, uh, in my telehealth clinic, then, you know, try to find another doctor that understands this stuff. You know. So when we're looking at a lab and we're thinking about the, uh, chemical dopamine, and and the chemical epinephrine and norepinephrine, they're all made from the same amino acid. So these are a whole bunch of amino acids here. This is from an ion panel. We run this on most new patients. And there it is, sitting right there. Tyrosine is the amino acid that you make these brain chemicals from. So if tyrosine is low, you're going to have a problem. Phenylalanine is how you make tyrosine. So if phenylalanine is low, you're going to have a problem. In fact, I had a patient this morning who had low phenylalanine and low tyrosine. So what did I do? I put her on phenylalanine, and I put her on tyrosine. And guess what? In like a month, she's gonna be better. This is not, you know, my personal opinion. It would be like if you took a tomato seed and you put it in the ground and you watered it every day, it would turn into a tomato plant, right? If you give somebody the nutrients that they need to make a chemical, they're going to make the chemical. Um, it's like baking bread. I mean, you just, nothing else can happen, right? You put the bread in the oven, you turn the oven on, it's going to work. Okay. So that's one marker.
And then you also really want to know these toxic elements because that's what we're talking about is bad, right? Aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead. We had somebody today who had, oh, he had, let me think, yeah, it was arsenic high arsenic and high lead. This one individual earlier today that was an interesting case. Anyway, so those are the kinds of chemical, I mean, kind of metals, heavy metals that will get into the brain and cause the damage that we're talking about.
And then I'm just going to show you one or two other markers. The way that we protect our brains from this stuff happening in the first place is by having cell membranes that try to keep bad things out. And so we can also measure omega-3 fatty acids. You can see this one is low right here. Eicosapentaenoic acid, that is also known as EPA. So if you're low in EPA, or this particular omega-3 fish oil, your cell membranes are going to be weak, and then stuff gets right through, and that is not a good thing. Okay. So that's another way you can protect yourself. If you need them, you should take omega-3s. If you don't test that you need them, probably shouldn't bother taking them.
And then like the heart and soul of how you find low dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine is right here. These two markers are quite important. One's called homovanillate, and the other is called vanillylmandelate. Low homovanillate means low dopamine. Low vanillylmandelate means low epinephrine, norepinephrine. So again, it's not a personal opinion thing. I'm not wondering when you got this bomb or not. If this is low, you're low in dopamine. We give you tyrosine, the dopamine comes up. Nothing else can happen. There's not a lot of subtlety in all this. Okay.
And then in terms of neurotoxins and glutathione, this marker here called sulfate. If it's low, the person is going to have low glutathione. So what does low glutathione mean? That translates into, I can't protect my brain, right? Low glutathione, low sulfate means I can't protect my brain. So then what happens? Dopamine levels start to fall apart, right? And this combination of, I can't protect my brain, there's neurotoxins in there damaging the brain cells, dopamine levels are going up and down and crashing and whatnot, that's what I call a broken brain. And that is not something that you want to have to struggle with for too long.
So let me just show you one more time this diagram here, except what we were just talking about. So you can measure tyrosine on the lab, you can measure phenylalanine on the lab. If they're low, we give them. You can measure homovanillate and vanillylmandelate, which are the breakdown products of dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Why would all this happen? Because of inflammation, because of neurotoxins, because of gut problems, and also because of genetic issues. There's some people who have G, you know, just the genes that they were born with don't allow them to make the right amount of dopamine. So right off the bat, they're in trouble, even if they eat really well and all these other things are happening. You could have neurotoxins damaging the dopamine. You could have a diet that you're just not eating the right nutrients to not make the right amount of dopamine. So again, you can have a depletion problem, you could have a physical damage problem from a toxin, right? Or you could have a genetic issue. All of which lead to the exact same consequence. The lab tests help you differentiate all this and are really quite remarkable in so many ways. I've really, I guess I've devoted my life to this. I don't know how, somehow 30 years just flew by. But yeah, it's kind of sad to say, I've devoted my life to these labs, and I feel like I'm really peaking now in terms of understanding them.
If you're interested in getting a test, if you want to just talk to somebody about the testing, you can schedule a free consult with our board-certified health coach. Just go to our website, KalishWellness, and you can sign up. And if the way the process works is, you talk to Jennifer. If it's a good match, you like what she has to say, you really want to do some testing, you can schedule a full hour consultation with Jennifer, talk about all the labs, get your labs ordered. As soon as the labs come back, I'll get on the phone with you. All this is done through the phone, and I'll talk to you about your lab results and I'll set up a comprehensive program to get your brain working. And then usually we do follow-ups every couple of months to make sure that you stay on track. And, um, yeah, it's an exciting time to be able to do this work, and we can really be impactful. If you feel like you're suffering from these problems, you know, feel free to reach out. Okay, that's our health chat for today. I'll catch up with you guys the next one of these. Bye for now.