More than 60 million Americans are affected by mental health issues every year. While the conventional medicine approach focuses on balancing neurotransmitters in the brain through medication, the Functional Medicine approach is to look for the root cause. There’s a saying in Functional Medicine, “fire in the gut, fire in the brain.” If you have inflammation, or dysbiosis in the gut, then it’s going to produce an inflammatory response that in turn affects the brain.
On today’s Broken Brain Podcast, I talk to Dr. Achina Stein who shares her story of discovering Functional Medicine while searching for answers to her son’s mental health crisis. He suffered from acute depression and suicidal ideation. He was stabilized on three medications and was “out of the woods” in terms of safety, but he wasn’t the same as before the episode. He was still suffering from some debilitating symptoms and had side effects from the medication. Dr. Stein and I discuss the Functional Medicine approach to addressing depression and other mental health disorders. We also talk about the connection between autoimmune conditions and gut health.
For more on Dr. Achina Stein visit her website https://fxnmind.com/. You can find her book, What If It’s Not Depression? at https://www.achinasteindo.com/.
For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at (302) 200-5643 or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit.
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