I'm excited to welcome Dr. Annemarie Barter, a functional medical doctor who is here to speak on the topic of neurotransmitters. These neurochemicals are associated with mood, cravings for sugar and alcohol, food issues like binge eating. She'll share all about the consequences of poor neurotransmitter function, low dopamine, and serotonin depletion, and of course what to do about it. This often overlooked topic can be the key to fine tuning your health.
More about Dr. Annemarie Barter:
Dr. Ann-Marie Barter is on the cutting edge of holistic healthcare. As a functional medicine doctor, she helps people reach their maximum potential through her unique approach she has developed after studying under some of the finest minds in her field. Dr. Barter has always had a mind for high level problem solving and helping with challenging cases. She has 2 offices Colorado in Denver and Longmont called Alternative Family Medicine and Chiropractic where she she works with patients virtually, and she has a podcast called Fearless Health Podcast.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith, and today we welcome Dr. Ann-Marie Barter, a functional medical doctor who is here to speak with us about neurotransmitters. These neurochemicals are associated with mood, cravings for sugar and alcohol, food issues like binge eating, and we’ll hear all about the consequences of poor neurotransmitter function, low dopamine and serotonin depletion, and of course, what to do about it. Let’s get started and welcome Dr. Ann-Marie and, of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome, both of you.
Dr. Barter:
Thank you so much.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, listen, Ann-Marie, thank you for being here. I love honing in on this topic. I really do. Look, I was there. I mean, I had dopamine, serotonin off, didn’t know why. When these two neurotransmitters go off, you think you’re crazy, and a lot of times you are. There’s things we can do about it.
I have to start here, though. This is your thing, focusing on these two neurotransmitters that really direct our life. How’d you end up here? How did this end up to be your area of expertise?
Dr. Barter:
I mean, I think we all end up in an area because of our own personal struggles. For me, I remember being in practice and really seeing that folks would come in, and they say, Doc, I want to get better. I want to get healthier, and I would give them an elimination diet at the time. That’s how I would—that’s how I worked initially in practice and all onboard. They would go home. They’d come back as we do a follow-up check-in.
How are things going? Yeah, I mean, I really want to do the diet. I’m busy. I can’t do it. I can’t stay away from sugar. I really needed to have the process—I feel so depressed. It was just a litany of things.
They would look at me. They would say do you think that this is a willpower issue? I remember initially thinking, yeah, this is a willpower issue because that’s all we knew. That’s all we were taught. You got to do—you got to try harder. You got to work better. You’ve got to be better. We just always think we’re falling short and we’re failing, and then, of course, that perpetuates the cycle.
Then I realized I had that moment, which is I think we’re handed that because we need to help the folks that are in front of us. My commute increased about ten minutes, so it ended up to be about an hour long each way. I was in the car for about two hours, and I remember stopping at Whole Foods and really wanting a chocolate chip cookie every—it was like white on rice. I just could not—I could not stop myself from pulling over and really needing a chocolate chip cookie, and it was the only way that I could make it through the rest of the day. I think I finally understood what the folks around me were talking about.
A long story short, it progressed because I would stop every day, and I would get sugar. The addiction progressed. I remember coming into my office. I’m very passionate about what I do, and I love it. I feel so grateful to be able to do this and to help people better their lives, but I remember one day coming in and sitting in my office being like I can’t. I can’t get up. I’m not motivated. I’m like this sure looks like a dopamine deficiency.
I took a dopamine precursor. Ten minutes later I was like bing, and I was on again. I realized what was finally going on with me. The reason my dopamine had depleted so much was, when I moved, when my commute had increased because I thought the stress was higher, it was actually associated with mold in the house that I was living in.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, exactly, which is what happened to me. Of course, I was like, gosh, I knew all these chemicals were off, but mine ended up to be mercury. I can tell you I see people all over the world that mold, heavy metals, hidden infections, yes, they affect every hormone, including neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Okay, so let’s start there, though. Like you said, I mean, there’s some things we can do here, even take the precursors of some of these things to—especially while we’re looking upstream for the cause to really change—we need to function. All right, let’s start here, dopamine. I mean, some people are going, okay, dopamine. What does it do? Let’s start with what does dopamine do? Then we’ll talk about what symptoms are of low dopamine.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so dopamine is a hedonistic neurotransmitter. This is why people will partake in things that they know are “bad.” You get a dopamine dump, for example, when you will run for 100 miles, or you’ll get a dopamine dump when you do cocaine. You get a dopamine dump a lot of times, but dopamine is running a lot of chemicals in your body. It’s upstream from your adrenal gland. It also shares a pathway with your fight or flight chemicals known as epinephrine and norepinephrine. It basically is a really important neurotransmitter for the adrenal glands, which, ultimately, the adrenal glands are upstream from your hormones, so it’s really, really important and looking at…
Dr. Pompa:
You’re saying dopamine, adrenals, hormones.
Dr. Barter:
Yes, mm-hmm, right. A lot of people will just run this pathway into the ground. This is your Type A focused person that is I’m on it. These are the people that are like, oh, I’ll do the group project. I’ll do it all. I’ll do everything. They have higher than normal levels of dopamine, and they push through this until they break. They’re exhausted, and they can’t run that dopamine pathway anymore. They don’t know why they can’t focus, and then they don’t know why they have lack of motivation.
Dopamine is in every system of our body. They all have dopamine receptors, so dopamine is huge. It’s just such an important neurotransmitter that does a lot of things I think that we don’t even know yet because it hasn’t been heavily studied, but it’s a huge reason we crave sugar.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly, all right, so you got a lot of people’s attention right now. You just answered part of the next question. What are some of the symptoms of low dopamine? You even went into some of the causative factor of low dopamine, and I can say a lot of people are—they’re a little downstream going, gosh, my adrenals are shot. My adrenals are shot. In fact, this could be a higher level dopamine problem. Are there other symptoms of low dopamine, sugar cravings being one?
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so sugar cravings are huge. Caffeine cravings are a pretty big dopamine deficiency. Something that I will generally see, someone will feel worthless. They’ll feel a lack of motivation. They’ll put tasks off. They don’t feel rested after long hours of sleep. A lot of times the symptoms of ADD, ADHD, not being able to focus, squirrel, that kind of behavior is associated with lower dopamine symptoms.
What I can hear folks saying is, well, I mean, I just like coffee. I mean, I don’t have a dopamine depletion. I just really like coffee. You don’t have to have all the symptoms, and you don’t have to feel hopeless and worthless to have a dopamine deficiency. If you were once really upbeat, really motivated and now you feel a little bit more like Eeyore, guess what? Your dopamine levels have actually depleted. On the testing that I run, I would say about 90% of people have a dopamine depletion.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow! That’s a huge number. I mean, I could—I guess, again, people would say so many people have adrenal fatigue, thyroid problems, but dopamine could be the upstream causative factor. Okay, well, then that leads right into causes. I mean, okay, you said Type A personalities, people doing too much. You even said mold. Are there other causative factors? Ann, I want to know how you feel mold or neurotoxins because that’s my area of expertise, how that causes dopamine depletion.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so on a lot of the molds that we see, for example, in water damaged buildings—when I say mold, a lot of people are like, oh, well, I mean, I did see something growing on the side of my shower. I’m not talking about that, guys. Yeah, that’s mildew, and that could be a problem. More what I’m talking about is black mold growing up a drywall.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and you don’t see it, typically.
Dr. Barter:
You don’t see it, or my other favorite misconception about this is but my house is so clean. People have equated that they are a dirty person and that—or dirty people only have mold. That is absolutely 100% untrue. Mold directly depletes dopamine. It’s one of the things that it goes after because it causes a lot of inflammation in the brain because the neurotransmitters are made in the brain, and then they’re stored in the gut. Ultimately, it depends on how the mold is getting into you system. If you’re breathing it in, we have a pathway to the brain creating inflammation. If we are eating the mold because that can happen—and there was a crazy study that I want to just cover.
There was, gosh, I think there were—it was a couple different states. It was done by the World Health Organization, maybe six different states where this food was shipped in, and all of these kids started getting sick. They were breakfast burritos. The World Health Organization started piecing it apart to say, okay, what was added into these foods to make these kids so sick? Was it salmonella? When you’re thinking about nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, the immediate first thought is, wow, it had to be bacterial.
I mean, that would’ve been my thought, food poisoning of some sort. Anyway, they pieced it apart, and they said, okay, the fillings of a lot of these different places came from different sources. Some had eggs. Some didn’t. Okay, so the thing that they found in common was the tortillas. The tortillas were what were found in common, and they actually found that it had a mold on the tortilla that was making 50% from an acute exposure of these kids sick having diarrhea and nausea.
Mold is a living tissue. It’s living, and so you don’t eat just mold. I think a lot of people think, oh, I was exposed to mold. It’s dead. That can live in your gastrointestinal tract, so if that lives, then think about how that’s competing with the neurotransmitters that are stored there. Are you going to be able to make those? Are you going to have happy gut bacteria to be able to make those? Directly, mold creates that inflammation that ends up going after that and creates a toxic byproduct.
Since I talk about this a lot, I will get calls, and people are like I heard you talk. I have neurotransmitter deficiency. I’m like, all right, let’s run the test. No, I have it. I just want you to treat me. No, we need to run the test because I—whenever someone pushes for it, I know that something else has to be there. What we tend to see is we see high levels of brain inflammation that make it appear like they have dopamine deficiency or neurotransmitter deficiency generally coming from mold. Mold also, if it doesn’t drop it necessarily—black mold will drop dopamine levels, but if it doesn’t, it makes you feel like you have low dopamine. Mold really covers a lot there.
The other thing that I think is so important to look at is gut. Gut infections are critical to look at. Since neurotransmitters are stored there, if you don’t have the proper gut microbiome, you’re not going to be able to house these, basically, neurochemicals. You’re going to get depleted. What else is going to go on? If you don’t have the right gut microbiome, guess what? You’re not going to be absorbing your micronutrients that you actually need for the precursors of dopamine, which are also going to lead to nutritional deficiencies.
I get asked a lot do you just go in—so for example, some of the cofactors for dopamine, we think of B Vitamins. We think of magnesium. We think of some of these other things that are really important to run the pathway, and then we also think about at the juncture of the pathway we need SAM-e as well potentially to run this pathway. Looking at this, folks are like, well, don’t you just give B Vitamins or don’t you just give that first? I don’t because I find most people will have an H. pylori infection, a hidden H. pylori infection. I also find that a lot of my folks cannot get enough iron a lot of times, so I see a lot of iron depleted folks as well as B Vitamins. I find if I give that initially I feed the H. pylori infection, especially if it’s new, and I create a stronger H. pylori infection that is tougher for me to get rid of. I think you have to look at the microbiome and also what’s going on with those nutrient deficiencies, so that’s something else that I think is important to look at.
I covered a lot there. I don’t know if you have any—if you want to stop me before I go on.
Dr. Pompa:
This is a lot to unfold. You started into the precursors, some of the things that we can take. You were saying, okay, great, B Vitamins, SAM-e, which these are things that help methylation as well. Methylation is depleted by stress of any type: physical, chemical, or emotional. That’s another connection where these neurotoxins, emotional, stress, will deplete dopamine. The gut, a lot of it’s stored there, made there. The precursors are made in the gut, even for dopamine, so the gut plays a connection.
Okay, you started to say where you started. You started by saying infections like H. pylori sometimes need to be dealt with first before you even give the precursors. Do you want to expand upon that? If I was someone listening or watching, I’d be like, okay, well, number one, how do I know if I have H. pylori or any other infection that would interfere? What’s Step 1, 2, and 3?
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so what I like to do initially when someone comes in is I run a stool panel. I run what’s called a PCR test, and that being said, previous stool testing was, okay, let’s look under a microscope. Is there a parasite? No. Okay, you don’t have a parasite. That means that on that stool test at that time you actually had to see whatever infection. Now what we have that has now become the gold standard of literature which I think is so amazing and I think it’s finally going to take hold, which is great, is we are looking for byproducts of these pathogens or DNA. We donate some of these critters, and then we can know if they’re in your gut.
My first step is to run a stool test, and in about 60% of people, there is actually an H. pylori infection. I know you talk about thyroid a lot. It’s been linked because H. pylori is going to change, for example, your PH in your stomach, and H. pylori is nasty. When it really grows out of control, it can create ulcers. It can also create stomach cancer, but the first thing that it does is our stomach is a major line of defense into the rest of our body. If you go out to dinner and someone’s been back there doing who knows what with your food and it’s been sitting out for a while, the meats been mishandled. Let’s say some bacteria grew on it or there was a parasitic infection in your sushi. I don’t know, or a parasite in your sushi. Whatever the case may be, your stomach should have enough acidity to be able to get rid of those critters, and so it should be this wonderful line of defense.
If you have an H. pylori infection, it makes you more alkaline. Then your new friends can set up shop. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you.
Dr. Pompa:
No, I mean, then you have multiple infections that start to take hold. What are some of your favorite ways to treat H. pylori?
Dr. Barter:
It depends. I have a really hard time getting rid of it. I have to dose high, and I have to rotate herbs. I use mastic gum a lot, and I will use it pretty high. I will rotate in an Apex herb called H-PLR, so I’ll rotate that in as well. Then I will stop the replication of it. Generally, what we find is that we have—with an H. pylori infection that I found on stool tests, I also find that I have a high generally staph, strep, and bacillus infection as well as opportunistic, and so these guys have been in a small intestine.
I basically do something called SIBO support, which is oregano. It’s got Oregon grape, turmeric, and ginger, which we’ve also seen in the literature stops the replication of H. pylori, and then I also use pancreatic enzymes to dissolve the biofilm layer. It takes me a little bit of time to get rid of it, generally about three months to completely get it gone, but people’s symptoms are generally gone within a month.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s the strategy? I don’t know if you’re familiar with bacteria phage. Phage, these things are like little Martians. I mean, literally, they act like viruses in that they—they’ll go in a specific phage to attack specific bacteria. Right now there’s not an H. pylori phage yet. I’m sure there are. We just haven’t isolated them, but you can use E. coli phage. E. coli’s so powerful in the gut, and everyone has some level of it. Just like H. pylori, when it raises up, it causes a lot of mischief, but if you lower E. coli, you raise up a lot of bacteria. By lowering E. coli, all these other guys have an opportunity to come out that attack H. pylori, so there’s another strategy.
I’ll have Ashley put—there’s a product. It’s called EC. It’s straight up bacteria phage, so you can rid some of these other really complicated, hard to get rid of infections just by lowering E. coli.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, I was going to say the other thing that I’ve see more recently too in the literature is lactobacillus and bifido species actually keep it at a lower level. What I’ve seen is, if someone can just do one thing, a lot of times their symptoms will calm down just by doing the lactobacillus, and you actually will get rid of the factors that are a lot more toxic, the virulence factors with it, which I thought is really quite cool. Anyway, yeah, cool, I like that.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re right. You have to rotate killers. Mastic gum I think is a great place to start, but you rotate because, bacteria, they’re clever.
Dr. Barter:
They are clever.
Dr. Pompa:
You have to [00:22:58] ways. One of the things I do is month one, month two, month three, to your point, three months and changing things along the way.
Dr. Barter:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
You can even use killers like just simple [NEEM], which is an antibacterial, good for SIBO and other things. Just like SIBO, you have these very smart bacteria that hide in biofilms, and you have to break that down. H. pylori is similar. Okay, so here we go. Once we’re treating that, then we step into giving these precursors. Again, just in review, some B Vitamins, as you mentioned. SAM-e you mentioned. I thought you mentioned another one. What was it?
Dr. Barter:
I think I said magnesium, and I don’t know if I mentioned copper. I don’t think I mentioned copper yet either, but copper’s another one.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah. Okay, copper, I didn’t know that. Okay, copper obviously has its role. Copper can also become toxic, so you have to be a little bit careful with that. It happened to me. Okay, so the precursors, is there a product you like that contain all the precursors, or you put them together?
Dr. Barter:
I actually test individually. Just to your point about copper, I’ve actually not seen people generally copper deficient, and so I’m really careful about giving any sort of metals as it relates to copper, iron, for example. That is so toxic in the system, so I’m really careful with that. It really depends on what someone has on testing. If I’m using a multi-product like a liquid, I’ll use Quicksilver’s B, which is a multitude of different B’s if I see them really deficient. A lot of folks are just deficient in just a couple, and so I don’t like to push the pathway too much. I’ll give them individually, and then I’ll give a low dose of all of them to methylate.
I am so careful with SAM-e. They have to have a low functioning—what’s called a COMT gene in order for me to give it, and I watch it. SAM-e is a prescription med in most other countries. It’s very, very heavily regulated. If I see somebody that has a low functioning COMT gene—and let me just give you who this person is just so you have an idea. This person is driven. They’re A Type personality, just like what I’ve talked about before. They are the person that was always in charge on group projects. They did the whole group project themselves. They don’t know when to stop, and they don’t know how to turn it off until they burn out.
With this one, what I like to do to treat this first is I use magnesium and leafy greens first to try to treat and make sure their B Vitamins are good. If it doesn’t work, I monitor SAM-e. I literally give SAM-e for the first week every other day; the second week, twice that week; the third week, once, and then I wean them. I’m really, really cautious, and I monitor their symptoms. I see them quite frequently when I’m doing the SAM-e piece. If they get weepy, if they get upset, then I know that I have over methylated them in a big way or if their personality changes. I just want them to be more effective and not anxious. That’s when I would use SAM-e, but be careful with it.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:26:42] too. The methylation cycle, I mean, there’s—I think there’s 18 different places where it can go wrong. When you support the whole cycle, you get less of those reactions. You’re right. By just giving SAM-e, you can throw the cycle off so many other places, but if you support it with the whole cycle and SAM-e is one of the things in there, then it seems to balance it. You can get away with SAM-e when you balance the whole thing. It’s very complicated cycle. When you look at it, you go, oh, my gosh. People for methylation are just taking B12 and folic acid. It can do the same thing. It can make people worse for multiple reasons.
Dr. Barter.
It does. It does.
Dr. Pompa:
It does, but when you support it all, it’s like—I don’t know. It’s like, if they don’t need it, if the cycle doesn’t need it, it would be shuffled off. When you force the cycle in one direction, man, it can cause a lot [00:27:37].
Dr. Barter:
I think you can do that short term, but you have to watch them. If you don’t watch them, then things really start to get out of balance. The SAM-e I think is the biggest—what I have seen, it’s the biggest one that really—you cannot stay in the—that’s just been my opinion.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, so that’s good advice. All right, so let’s move to serotonin because that’s another big one. Again, with all the people, the gut problems, we know that there are certain peptides in the gut, amino acids in the gut that make serotonin, so we know gut problems lead to serotonin. Let’s start. What is the function of serotonin in our bodies? What happens when it’s off?
Dr. Barter:
Serotonin I think is most known to be a mood regulator. Another really important function of serotonin is to move food through the gut. It works with something called peristalsis of the gut, and that’s how we just slowly move food through. Serotonin is just all about making us feel happy and joyful and connected, and so there are a lot of ways to increase, actually, serotonin. We’ll get into that in just a minute, but serotonin is I think a really important neurochemical. It’s the one we hear the most about.
The things that I think are interesting that most people don’t know about serotonin is low serotonin can be associated with fibromyalgia. The increase in your pain in your body is a lot more. The other thing I think is interesting is OCD is another one with serotonin issues, imbalances. I think it’s super interesting to see that, and with high serotonin, something else that I found really interesting is shyness. Extreme fear of being disliked and shyness is high serotonin levels. Serotonin is I think most important, mood, and I think that that’s what we see with the traditional type of depression, or somebody doesn’t like those hobbies that they once liked. They don’t feel connected to their family or to their loved ones like they once did. It’s that traditional you want to sit on the couch and eat bonbons. You just feel like you’re losing your interest in life, but a lot of times it’s just much slower.
The other thing that’s really important for serotonin in the body is hormone regulation. One of the biggest things is if a woman has PMS or PMDD. Either that is right before her period or also the entire month before. Actually, that can be associated with low serotonin levels, so that’s going to actually regulate that hormone system for women. Serotonin also has a lot of important functions in the body. It also regulates our eating.
We’ll get into a couple studies with this if you want to, but one of the things that we see in the rat studies is that rats like to eat more when it’s dark outside, so they tend to eat more. They tend to overeat when it’s dark outside. Serotonin is stimulated by light, and so that’s why people get a lot more depressed in the winter months. They have a condition called SAD or seasonal affective disorder in the winter months because they’re not seeing that sunlight. That sunlight isn’t hitting their eyes, and they’re not making the serotonin. One great way to make some of these neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine is food and binge eating. You can get into some of the eating dysregulation with that, which is actually quite common.
One of the saddest things I’ve seen with that has been binge eating is associated with both low serotonin and dopamine and some other neurochemicals. What ends up happening is the only time these folks that are in a binge feel normal is when they’re actually binging. That is the only time their neurochemicals are actually at a normal level where most people are experiencing, and so they have to be in a binge, which is just tragic. It’s tragic.
Dr. Pompa:
Keep going back to the head because you just want to feel normal, and you feel your best at that. Therefore, it creates that. That’s interesting. I mean, can sunlight then be part of the strategy?
Dr. Barter:
Sunlight should be part of the strategy with both serotonin and dopamine. It should be really—it really should be because both of those are important for creating those neurochemicals.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, obviously, the gut plays a big role here because the shikimate pathway where you make the [00:32:57] to serotonin, and I think because of chronic gut issues, because of toxicity issues, we have a world—I don’t know the percentage of people on these drugs called serotonin uptake inhibitor, which raise your serotonin levels at the cost of your [00:33:17] even further. I mean, how many people are on these drugs? Matter of fact, many people listening right now don’t even probably know they’re on one of those drugs. What are some of those drugs, and how do people come off of them? Can we just do some of these natural things? We’re going to get into solution. What are some of the drugs that people will be like, oh, my gosh, I’m on one of those?
Dr. Barter:
Oh, my gosh, I am not even going to be able to come up with all the names of the—the big one is Zoloft is the biggest one, and then they’ve got a lot of side note names, which is just not my jam.
Dr. Pompa:
If you’re on some type of antidepressant or something for mood or anxiety, most likely you’re probably on a serotonin uptake inhibitor, which that can be a long-term issue.
Dr. Barter:
That’s almost always a first line of defense when you have some sort of mood disorder. Before they get into Wellbutrin, antipsychotics, etc., it tends to be the first line of defense. Yeah, the biggest thing that I see with those is people just don’t actually—they might feel happy for a time, or it might get them through a time, but they never feel happy. They’re flat. What you see is they never get sad, super sad about anything, but they never feel super happy. The thing that most people don’t know about SSRIs is the slang term for them is that they basically don’t raise your serotonin levels. People seem to think that. When I talk to patients, I’m like, no, just something is going to sit in the—in, basically, the reuptake. You just have that same level of serotonin floating around, so you’re never really fixing that pathway. You’re just putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, so you’re never really going to be happy. You’re just going to be flat.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, yeah, and that’s hence the name serotonin uptake inhibitor but in the uptake, the reabsorption, recreation of it. Again, we’re saying we know better. The long-term consequences to that—and I’m not telling anyone to come off their medication. I just want to educate people that this is why these things don’t work long term. All right, so let’s give some solutions, sun being one of them. I think a lot of the things that work for dopamine obviously work here, but are there some different strategies we need to have?
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so something really interesting about serotonin that I think is pretty interesting was they studied fasting with serotonin. What they found was they looked at Ramadan Day 1, Day 19, and Day 29 in this particular study. On Day 1, they measured serotonin levels. Day 19, they realized that the serotonin levels were quite a bit higher than on Day 1. Then on Day 29 they were higher than they were on Day 19, so fasting is actually very powerful for serotonin.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. I did write a book, Beyond Fasting, so I didn’t want to—but I’m like, if she doesn’t say it, I’m going to talk about [00:36:51].
Dr. Barter:
There is a study on that one, so I thought that that was a really neat study where they found serotonin levels were so much higher above baseline and above where they started 29 days after. Another really important thing for serotonin—go ahead, sorry.
Dr. Pompa:
I mentioned that this weekend about that that it’s the reason of—there’s a premise called hormesis. Hormesis is, basically, you get a reaction from a stress, and if you overly stress, it becomes a negative reaction. Fasting is it has a hormetic effect on the gut bacteria, so you have this incredible surge is one way that we actually—I teach doctors to fix the gut is we add this hormesis, this stress to the gut via fasting, change the microbiome, change the production of many different neurotransmitters, even hormones in the body so a stress-like fasting, pretty cool.
Dr. Barter:
It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, I think that that’s just such a goal on that. I think some of the other things that are really important, diet is important. Foods that are rich in tryptophan I can—that are huge for that. We’re looking at there’s certain fruits, vegetables, and proteins in nuts and seeds that will do that, and I can send you that in the show notes so I’m not reading a list of that. Exercise is also really important for increasing serotonin levels, so that’s another good strategy as well. Skipping the sugar is really, really important.
What I talked about before—and I do want to get into a study that affects both serotonin and dopamine. One of the major things that we see is there was a study done by Nestlé, and so they looked at serotonin and dopamine in this study. They wanted to compare two factors, a sedintary lifestyle and also the new—the foods hitting the shelves and what people were eating. What they looked at is, in 1998, 11,000 new foods hit the grocery store shelves, and so I can just tell you that there are not that may varieties of apples and chicken and bananas. What was hitting the shelves? It’s going to be foods that are laced with sugar.
What ended up happening was they started to realize the buying power of putting sugar in these foods so that you had a great experience. Oh, my gosh, when I had that ketchup, I felt so great. That salad dressing was so amazing, and it’s laced in foods that you would not think it’s laced in. What ends up happening with that is people want to go back, and they want to buy for another buying experience, which—and what I say is—I quote a Guns N’ Roses song. “I used to do a little but a little wouldn’t do. So the little got more and more.” When, oh, wow, I had a great experience with that ketchup or I had a great experience with that cookie, now it becomes two. Now it becomes three. Now it becomes four to get the same sugar rush or the same dopamine and serotonin dump that you got once. Then suddenly you’re in a sea of Twinkies, and you have wrappers floating away, and you’re passed out. We know that glucose increases our amount of specifically dopamine, specifically a dopamine dump over 50%, 50% above baseline.
The other thing that I think is also—that drives this home is there was a—they took two groups of rats, control group and then another group that was the studied group. They measured their dopamine levels. This is back a little bit more to dopamine and sugar. They made them fast for 12 hours, and they released them. The group that had the rat chow, their dopamine levels were fine. Then the other group that had a sucrose solution or a sugar solution, they chose the sugar solution first every single time, and their levels, they went from 37 ml of this solution to 100 and I think 15 over a 30-day period. Each day they had to have a little bit more, so you start to be in a binge. Serotonin and dopamine actually increase in that binge, but you need more to get the same effect and to feel good again. Just like in a binge and somebody that has an eating disorder with a binge, they have to continue to binge to feel normal, so please don’t use that as a strategy. I know you feel good initially, but it is not sustainable. Skipping sugar is really, really important for serotonin and dopamine levels.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s one that probably I’m going to depress a lot of people with this one right here. You’re going to have a serotonin hit and a dopamine hit right here. The negative hit is social media has become the new sugar, meaning dopamine hits. I’m going to check my Facebook, dopamine hit. I’m going to check my email, dopamine hit, dopamine hit. I mean, it does the same thing. I mean, they’re literally calling them dopamine hits. It’s hard to beat that today.
Dr. Barter:
You see these things that are tragic. You see somebody that doesn’t get enough social media likes, and they jump off a bridge because the side effects of low dopamine. This whole generation has low dopamine, worthlessness and hopelessness. What’s a perfect cocktail for suicide?
Dr. Pompa:
Again, it’s burning the pathway, I mean, dopamine hit, dopamine. Whether it’s cocaine, sugar, or social media, after a period of time, dopamine hit, driving sympathetic—you’re left in this low position to the point of now I don’t get the drug, so to speak. Now I’m jumping off a bridge. I’m committing suicide, which we’re hearing today. I mean, how do we even combat that? I mean, you’re giving great things here, but if that’s a cause, what the heck do we do about it?
Dr. Barter:
I think they need to get under care. I mean, I think that that’s the biggest thing. If you’re in a position—you’re like I’m worthless. I’m hopeless. You need to get under care, and you actually need to go through these things to be checking, hey, what were my exposures? Pony up for the lab test because that’s really important. Hey, what does my stool sample look like?
The bottom line is is that we can give you things to support these levels. That’s just one strategy in an overall wellness picture, so you really need to be fixing the underlying cause of what’s causing you to be deficient. Was it that you mother ate a ton of sugar when she was pregnant with you and that created a sugar addiction? Okay, great, well, then we can do strategies to help that, but you have all these other things that are contributing to that.
Dr. Pompa:
I know you’re doing a webinar on this. We’ll announce when and where or how to get there. We’ll make sure that the link is for that here. Obviously, you’re exploring this much further in the topic on the webinar. Look, I mean, this is a big deal when you look at today’s lifestyle. We’re looking at people avoiding the sun because they’re afraid. We’re looking at sugar in everything, even when you shop at Whole Foods. To your point, products sell. I’m sure artificial sweeteners play a role here because that is a neurotoxin or cytotoxin, I’m sorry, of the nerve system, so we’re talking about gut problems galore because of glyphosate and other chemicals. That plays into these chemicals. I mean, it’s like, oh, my gosh, Dr. Ann, I don’t even know what to—again, where do we start?
Dr. Barter:
Then we talk about nutritional deficiencies. The funny thing to me is this. On my intake paperwork, I have people list the medications that they’re on. Do you know what people don’t consider a medication is birth control? Birth control is considered not a medication. I don’t know why, but it’s a huge nutrient deficiency. It depletes your nutrients in such a big way. Again, we see a lot of this on birth control that—and so I think that that’s another thing, and so many young people are on that. People don’t even realize that that’s depleting your nutrients.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, wow. Yeah, so all right, let’s back up.
Dr. Barter:
I know. We can go on and on, can’t we? It could be this, and it could be that.
Dr. Pompa:
I feel my viewer right now going, oh, my gosh. It’s like, okay, where do I start? If we had to say, okay, start with these three things, it’s like maybe there’s six in the sense of maybe it’s avoid these three and do these three. Let’s do that. Let’s pick them. We’ve mentioned probably 20 on each side. Let’s do the avoid these three, do these three, and let’s tell people start there. Listen, go to Dr. Ann’s webinar. Then if you start these three things, then you can expand from there, okay, three avoids and three dos.
Dr. Barter:
I think really avoiding sugar is just—number one is I think the biggest thing.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the trouble with that. I don’t want to poke holes in it.
Dr. Barter:
Are you poking holes in my theory?
Dr. Pompa:
I agree with you, though. Let’s be clear. I know the problem, though. The people with this problem, low dopamine, low serotonin, they’re the ones that are like, okay, easier said than done. It’s like that is my drug. What’s the strategy to help them avoid sugar I guess [00:47:23]?
Dr. Barter:
We have two supplements that’ll help you if you’re desperate. One is called Mood Relief, and that’s going to help your serotonin. It also helps your GABA system, which we didn’t talk about. Then the other one that we have is Sugar Cravings Support, and that one helps dopamine and serotonin. Both of those two would…
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll put the links for those below. Okay, you gave them something. That was good. That’s a hard one. It’s number two now. Sugar is number one.
Dr. Barter:
I think, the second one, I really like fasting. I think fasting is very, very powerful.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a do. That’s on the do list. We’re still on the…
Dr. Barter:
Oh, I’m sorry. We’re on the don’t. Okay, how about a do and a don’t? We got a do and a don’t.
Dr. Pompa:
One to do and one not to do.
Dr. Barter:
Okay, yeah, good. All right, on the don’t list, I think I would go ahead and try to reduce your technology time, so really start to slowly reduce the—so if you check your phone, put limits on how much you’re checking.
Dr. Pompa:
Take off your notifications. Go in your thing because ding, Facebook. It’s the slot machine, dopamine hit. It’s like ding, ding, ding. It’s like when you hear the ding and the notification, boom, that’s the dopamine hit right there.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, so my strategy, I don’t have Facebook installed on my phone. I actually have to go to the app, which is kind of clunky. Then the second thing is I don’t have any notifications, and if I do anything on my phone, I have time limits. If I have anything that’s time wasting, I have a total of—I think it’s 15 minutes a day and that’s it.
Dr. Pompa:
You gave them a solution, third one.
Dr. Barter:
Positive, let’s see here.
Dr. Pompa:
The second positive if that’s where we’re going, okay, negative—okay, what’s the second solution? Fasting was the first, and now we’re at the second. These are the things we should be doing, precursors.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, I think precursors are good. We have a methylation B Vitamin support that is pretty safe. It’s good. It’s going to methylate. It’s going to help, and so a lot of that is going to help to run the pathways. Most people are having trouble with their methylation pathway across the board. I can’t see anybody that I’ve—I can’t say that I’ve seen anybody ever that I’ve run a test on and been like every single one of your methylation markers looks great.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ll put a product that some of my viewers—MORS, MORS is great for that.
Dr. Barter:
Perfect.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, last one of the avoid side.
Dr. Barter:
You only allow me to have so many. Caffeine is a good one to give up.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow! That’s a big one. You’re hitting on all the hard ones. My viewers really love you now, caffeine. Here’s the thing, maybe it’s even starting with the level of caffeine. I mean, I can’t even believe how much coffee and caffeine people take multiple ways throughout the day.
Dr. Barter:
Yeah, sorry, you cut out for just a second, missed you there.
Dr. Pompa:
I was saying how much caffeine people are taking in is extraordinary.
Dr. Barter:
I think so, and I think if you can just get it back to one cup of coffee maybe in the morning instead of having it all day long is a really good strategy.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree.
Dr. Barter:
To start to reduce so that you’re not constantly burning out that pathway.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve read studies that say one cup of coffee in the morning has a lot of benefits, and I always tell people test your coffee anyway. If you take glucose right before and 30 minutes after, if your glucose is spiking off the chart, okay, coffee’s bad for you. Pick tea. Do something else. Try coffee a different way but one cup a day. When people start doing caffeine throughout the day, you’re headed for neurotransmitter trouble, hormonal trouble, adrenal trouble. I mean, the list goes on.
Okay, so there’s the three things and now the final positive. This is what you should do. We had fasting. We had methylation and the third to do.
Dr. Barter:
Meditation is powerful. Meditation increases your ability for both serotonin and dopamine to absorb them into the receptor 65%.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow! Okay, so that’s a big one, exactly. One of the problems here is that these are the people who you said are ADD, don’t want to sit still. How do you do it? How do we get them—give them some advice.
Dr. Barter:
What I did because I was like can I—I mean, I’m that person. I get it. Can I check my email while I’m at—how can I multitask this? I totally feel your pain out there. For me, what I realized was—one of the things that I feel like I struggled with was if I don’t feel good at it I don’t tend to do it. I didn’t feel like I was accomplishing anything meditating, and that’s the honest truth.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, me too.
Dr. Barter:
What I did was I got HeartMath, and I have no affiliation with HeartMath. They have a sensor on your ear that basically measures when you’re just off in la-la land thinking about all the ten billion things that you have to do that day, and it makes you come back. You can see this. Hey, you’re not in high coherence. You’re really focusing on something else. You’re not present. That’s what I needed to really come back to that space, so that’s what I did.
Dr. Pompa:
Good, okay, so we have the three things to avoid, the three things to do. You gave tips along the way. Ann-Marie, we couldn’t ask for more than that.
Dr. Barter:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
I do think they should check out your webinar, obviously. We’ll put that link below but, yeah, great topic. This is a massive problem. As you stated, what, 90% of the population could be dopamine, serotonin deficient, and that, in fact, changes your life not good. You think you’re crazy, and you just might be.
Dr. Barter:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, thanks for being here.
I want to give thanks to one of our sponsors, CytoDefend. Look, in a time like this, I think that our immune system and keeping our immune system up right now is more important than ever. I can also tell you that I pay attention to the things that keep my immune system on par and healthy. So glad that CytoDefend is one of our sponsors here on CellTV, and it’s a product that I use, my family uses. Hopefully, you’ll check it out, and by the way, you can check it out with the link right here below. If you want to try a free bottle, you can actually get a free bottle. Just pay the shipping, and I think you’ll reorder after that. Check it out.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDefend product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit freeimmunity.com. Again, that’s freeimmunity.com.
That’s it for this week. The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only and are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you would like to purchase some of the supplements mentioned on this show, please visit the site asseenonchtv.com, and use the code CHTV15 for 15% off. Again, that’s asseenonchtv.com. Use the code CHTV15 for 15% off. As always, thanks for listening.
