Overlooked Causes of Depression — Is What You Don’t Know Holding You Back?
Depression can feel like a prison, making relationships, thinking, and even daily activities seem impossible. Nearly everyone has experienced the symptom of depression at one time or another. But what many people forget in the depth of their pain is that depression is at its core — a symptom. It’s a sign that something isn’t working quite right in your brain.
But your brain shouldn’t be your jailer. It takes some detective work to figure out what the causes of depression are in your unique circumstance. But once the cause is found, it can be treated and you can start feeling like yourself again.
Both myself and members of my family have been personally affected by depression, and this personal experience has created an immense curiosity for me to understand why the symptom of depression exists and how it can be overcome.
Watch the video and learn:
- All about the symptoms of depression and its many causes
- Several highly effective but under-appreciated solutions for overcoming depression
- What you can do in the short and long-term to go from the dumps to feelings of triumph!
I’ve taught more than 10,000 clinicians on 5 continents better ways to assess and treat conditions of the brain, including depression. I’m deeply passionate about using personalized systems medicine to care for infinitely unique humans and their infinitely unique brains. From Autism to Alzheimers and every condition in between, this approach has shown remarkable effectiveness partly because it NEVER accepts that one-size-fits-all is appropriate in medicine.
Your symptom of depression is trying to tell you something about your brain. It’s time to listen!
I don’t believe humans are meant to suffer. I believe we’re made to thrive!
Are you ready to take charge of your health? Schedule your free 20-minute discovery call with our New Patient Coordinator to see how you can become a patient at MaxWell Clinic and start your healing journey today.
Unlocking the Mysteries of Depression: A Comprehensive Approach to Brain Healing
Depression is a complex and multifaceted condition that affects millions of people worldwide. Traditionally, it has been approached through a narrow lens, focusing solely on pharmaceutical interventions or talk therapy. However, emerging research suggests that depression is not just a mental health issue but also a manifestation of underlying physiological imbalances and environmental factors. In this article, we will explore a holistic approach to brain healing, encompassing various dimensions of human health and well-being.
Understanding Depression Beyond the Surface
Depression is often viewed as a purely psychological disorder, but recent advancements in neuroscience have revealed its intricate connection to the body’s physiological state. Dr. David Haase, a leading expert in functional medicine, sheds light on the physiological underpinnings of depression in his insightful presentation. According to Dr. Haase, depression can be triggered by a myriad of factors, including inflammation, gut dysfunction, traumatic experiences, and genetic predispositions.
The Role of Inflammation in Depression
One of the key insights provided by Dr. Haase is the link between inflammation and depression. Chronic inflammation, often stemming from factors like gut dysbiosis and stress, can wreak havoc on the brain, leading to a cascade of neuro-inflammatory responses. Elevated levels of inflammatory molecules, such as interleukin beta and interleukin-6, have been implicated in mood disorders, contributing to symptoms like hyper-vigilance, social withdrawal, and disrupted sleep patterns.
Exploring the Gut-Brain Connection
The gut-brain axis, a bidirectional communication system between the gut and the brain, plays a crucial role in mental health. Dr. Haase highlights the significance of gut health in depression, emphasizing the prevalence of leaky gut syndrome and its association with mood disorders. Addressing gut inflammation and restoring microbial balance through interventions like neurofeedback and chelation therapy can yield significant improvements in depressive symptoms.
Trauma and the Subconscious Mind
Early adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have emerged as potent predictors of depression and other mental health conditions later in life. Dr. Haase underscores the importance of addressing trauma and its lingering effects on the subconscious mind. Therapies like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, utilizing compounds like psilocybin and ketamine, show promise in unlocking repressed memories and facilitating emotional healing.
A Comprehensive Approach to Brain Healing
Dr. Haase advocates for a multifaceted approach to brain healing, encompassing various domains of human experience. From optimizing nutrition and lifestyle factors to exploring alternative therapies like therapeutic plasma exchange and acupuncture, the goal is to address the root causes of depression and promote holistic well-being. By adopting a personalized, integrative approach, individuals can embark on a journey towards recovery and vitality.
Empowering Individuals Through Curiosity and Exploration
Central to Dr. Haase’s philosophy is the power of curiosity in healing. By encouraging individuals to explore their symptoms, delve into their past traumas, and embrace alternative modalities of treatment, he empowers them to take charge of their mental health journey. Through a process of self-discovery and self-compassion, individuals can cultivate resilience and regain control over their lives.
Conclusion: Embracing a Holistic Vision of Mental Health
In conclusion, depression is a multifaceted condition that demands a comprehensive approach to healing. Dr. David Haase’s holistic framework offers a roadmap for addressing the underlying causes of depression and restoring balance to the body and mind. By integrating conventional and alternative modalities of treatment, individuals can embark on a transformative journey towards healing and wholeness.
hey there good evening everybody good evening um well I see we’ve got um uh quite a
few participants coming in tonight um uh it was really it was really
touching this week I had so many people come up and say hey I’m coming to your webinar and
um and uh We’ve you know people that all actually gave
some of their own ideas about what should be included which I love which I absolutely loved because
um I have a little saying in that uh we are smarter than me
of that I’m certain and especially when we start to engage such a remarkably
huge topic like depression um you know that’s really that’s really
a big deal right so we’re giving this a few minutes before we officially get started so I can see people are just
kind of coming into the uh the waiting room here and
so if you see me sweating it’s not because I’m nervous but probably some air conditioning problems at the clinic
today in my office so I am I’m getting a lot of Awesome
good good maybe sauna therapy going on for me you know you gotta when life
gives you lemons you know what you just got to make the best of it so so
um all right so how about we get started um I want to say well I’m Dr David Haase I’m
founder of the Maxwell clinic and tonight we’re going to talk about depression and just kind of dive into it
and we’ll have time for questions afterwards I’m going to go through the way to think about this because
depression is so overwhelming it is so profound of
a dysfunction that occurs in the lives of so many people everybody on this call has either
experienced depression or absolutely knows someone intimately who has
and and the the life limitation that occurs the the Deep constriction that
that happens the pulling back from Life the not caring the not engaging the just
profound despair that can happen with depression um must be taken seriously and must be
approached with huge amounts of compassion so if you’re on this call because you have suffered or a loved one
has suffered I want to say I have compassion for you and I also have respect for you with regard to diving in
and looking for what could be um additional options to to move forward
and how could I better understand this challenge uh so to move forward so
now uh my little my background I grew up on a farm in South Dakota um from there I came to Vanderbilt to
medical school and up to the Mayo Clinic for residency um I got very interested in holistic
medicine early on so it was in that domain back in the 90s I was one of the
first uh individuals who were certified as a certified nutritional specialist
um I was early in at the in super functional medicine where I continue to be faculty founded Maxwell clinic in
2003 and board certified at neurofeedback in
integrative medicine and an apheresis so I have a broad range of views and it
may seem funny me giving a talk on depression I’m not a psychiatrist but I’ve taught
um thousands of doctors about depression and the underlying mechanisms of that
and um it never ceases to Humble me I love this quote by Hippocrates and it
says you know from the brain and the Brain alone rise our Pleasures Joys laughters and
just as well as our sorrows pains and griefs it’s the brain and I have during that
all these travels of trying to figure out what creates Health what is what are underlying causes of illness and and how
do we help people thrive I have to say I have become more and more entranced with the brain and recognize that brain
health is human health and depression is
a remarkable occurrence I don’t want to ask this question for you
is depression rational how does that question even make you
feel right like when somebody’s suffering so deeply is are in that pit
where that doesn’t have a bottom of just grayness blackness
oh it gets me pretty emotional even saying it because it’s a terrible place to be
and but is depression rational does it make sense
maybe a different question is depression useful could it be useful well there are
many ways to start thinking about this symptom that occurs and and let’s recognize that depression is used that
term is used in a couple of different ways it’s used as a diagnosis you know that happened only about 20 30 years ago
and somebody has diagnosed with like major depressive disorder or adjustment disorder with depression
but depression is also you know an emotion you know a an experience that
people have even if they don’t carry a diagnosis and it’s um and it’s different
for everybody it’s kind of a different flavor of this profound withdrawal sadness and
um an apathy a change in behaviors you know if you go to the DSM-5 there’s kind of a Chinese menu you have to hit five
of these nine particular symptoms and then you get the diagnosis of major depressive disorder and
um but why would we have it and I think that it’s very interesting for us to step back and ask that does
depression serve a purpose and um if we think about when we may become
depressed we will learn through this talk that it often occurs when we are
inflamed when we are having when we have a threat that has no seeming out Outlook
or escape from and it also occurs when we need to disengage from the the the
causes of that depression it’s a in it’s a protective mechanism and if if we can
give ourselves some Grace and give ourselves some just
compassion and and really bring curiosity into this space all kinds of things can happen and
this symptom of depression can become one of the most potent forces for you
experiencing a joy and a productivity and a contribution in life that you’ve
never had before so I’d invite you to give a little part of your mind to the idea that maybe depression is a symptom
that has some meaning to it it is Meaningful and it can lead to a more
meaningful Life as we start to address these issues depression is a defense it’s it’s a rut
you know a rut that our brain can get into it is a calling to deeply rest it’s
a manifestation of our brain it’s it’s the the flaw in love you know if if we
didn’t love we couldn’t become depressed I don’t think I think that there is this deep connection between
um you know the fact that there is tragedy that that we that this as
Confucius said life is suffering I assumes the Buddha said life is suffering um and and how do we then deal with that
um so you know I you know if we look at it with a conventional approach is you know
how have we addressed depression we’ve kind of treated it as something that needs to be fought
um and so we have anti-depressants depressants and so there are many
different flavors of these we started with the first the maois and then the tricyclic antidepressants and then the
ssris ssnris and a whole host of them um and we’ve now had many studies come
out to show that they really aren’t that helpful certainly in the long term they may be you know in short
term they may be some helpful but they also increase the rates of suicidality in many individuals the um increasingly
psychiatrists are abandoning many of these antidepressants and recognizing
that there’s not the benefit there that we once thought there was and and getting on some of these antidepressants
um you made that while the benefit may go away uh the side effects from trying
to withdraw off of those medications May certainly always stay with you until you
finally get off and and um and those symptoms of withdrawal can be really
profound especially from medications such as effexor and
um I think that that is something we have to be aware of what is the true risk of benefit analysis you know when
you go see a doctor and they diagnose depression you know they’re worried about you they care about you and they
don’t want you to go commit suicide and they want your life to be good so let me give you an antidepressant and and maybe
it helps in the short term but it doesn’t help in the long term and the other challenge is we’ve learned that many of these medications are not
just antidepressants they’re anti-emotives it’s another discussion I had with one of our patients and they
were like wow I can’t believe how much more Vivid and vibrant my life is yes I
have periods of sadness but I have periods of joy and happiness and and desire and drive and my orgasms are back
you know so um I think we just need to be really
curious about well maybe a better approach would be to think of how did this come to be so the other treatments
for depression like cognitive behavioral therapy psycho psychotherapy
with medication I’ll talk about a different form of psychotherapy ketamine-assisted Psychotherapy later which we are really excited about at
Maxwell clinic and then there’s many different types of brain stimulation therapies like electroconvulsive therapy
or deep brain stimulation or magnetic stimulation but again and in many ways
these are just putting things into the brain to use like electricity or magnetism as a drug to make a shift for
a short period of time without maybe finding and addressing the underlying cause
Okay so so depression and anxiety are
heterogeneous what a heterogeneous means it means that it is uh one is not like
the other and we know that um for any individual that is experiencing depression their symptoms
are different um and they may carry different diagnoses uh with same as depressed
moods such as bipolar disorder or seasonal affective disorder or major depressive disorder or PMS
and and not only so there’s not there’s many other causes they can be nutritional psychological inflammatory
um behavioral and so it’s not a one-size-fits-all problem and so we need
a systems biology approach and I want to talk to you about this what what are some other things you could think about
if you or somebody else that you love is is afflicted by depression or really really any other
neurologic symptom is this is it a memory problem or a tensional issue or
um problem with anxiety there are many commonalities when I’m going to talk about across most of the
brain health um Expressions that we have so a really important idea here is that
our brains our brains are biased anybody you know does anybody you know
have a bias maybe maybe it would be a political bias
or a religious bias or a food bias or a bias about which football team is the
best or a bias about you know what type of medical treatment that they want to have or don’t want to have or believe in
yeah you know humans we’re human largely because of our bias that’s part of what
makes us individual and we got to have a bias from learning we went through our
life and something made sense to us or gave us pleasure or kept us away from
pain in some ways and our brain thought I want to remember that let’s wire that
in let’s let’s wire in that thing that kept us from pain or let’s wire that
thing in that got us more pleasure or more attention
uh and and so uh so this is just the way it is and and we know that humans are
biased creatures and and is is once we recognize it then we can be curious about our own bias and and still have it
as a strength because you know every clinician if you go see an acupuncturist you know their their bias is acupuncture
and they’re going to see your body through the lens of acupuncture and that’s going to be their bias but they
may have some really great things to bring to it if they or um but but if you
if that acupuncture doesn’t realize that that’s their bias and they think wow everything can be treated with
acupuncture they’re going to miss some things and they’re going to have patients that walk in their door that
really can’t be treated that way or are not going to get the results that one would have hoped and and listen we
receive referrals from acupuncturists on some wonderful people so I don’t don’t hear don’t hear me hear me um supporting
all of these potential Therapies but if you don’t recognize your bias
your brain now becomes your Jailer and if you’re already depressed you already feel like you’re beset and closed in on
and now you only can think about the options that you already know you are
stuck and so one of the most important things that I hope to bring across here is that by bringing curiosity to whatever
condition you have whatever symptom is there you actually have this remarkable opportunity to make your brain your ally
not your jailer and and and that’s really profound
um this is one of my favorite books range and why why generalists uh Triumph
in a specialized World it turns out that you know we’ve gotten so good at specialization and carving people up
into little pieces and more and more people knowing less more and more about less and less those are the Specialists
the ultra Specialists that it turns out that now pulling together the the best
parts of those Ultra Specialists into a new generalism is really what is leading
the charge and and we’re very proud to be in that in that charge and so what we’re going to talk to you about is a a
discernment right how do you how do you start to discern what may be going on in
your life um and be able to recover your by get past your own bias
and and I call this the essential brain healing you’re going to see that I have a I have I don’t think it’s a medical
condition it could be a psychiatric condition but I’m a pathological alliterator
and so you’re going to see the letter s come up here a lot and so if you think about why a person
might be depressed many people first go to story like well you know what’s your
do you have stinking thinking um you know what’s your belief about the world you know do you do you just
believe the world’s a bad place do you believe that you’re persecuted that
you’re the victim about everything you know and and what’s really amazing is that Psychotherapy Works cognitive
behavioral therapy works in these cases and and you can start giving yourself a
better story and that better story is going to start wiring a different pattern in your brain and can lead to
changes in your mood what about your setting well setting has
to do with your work-life balance or your family of origin issues what are
your uh deep deeply held beliefs about the world um one of the deeply held beliefs that’s
really close to depression is something called learned helplessness this is a terrible terrible experiment these poor
little puppies were put in a cage and a light would come on and and the the
floor would would shock and uh and then they could hop over to the other side
and get relief from that shock and um and so as soon as the shock Wick happened boom they’d pop over and they
get away from the shock and those puppies were happy as could be didn’t matter if they got shocked every once in a while they they were just resilient
and got through however if that light went on and the shock happened and then they jumped over the other side and
there’s still another shock there and then they went over and there’s nothing they could do to escape that shock there
wasn’t anything that they could do to um get away from that shock then pretty
soon they just laid down and started to accept the shock and this was a component of learned helplessness
and we all have that and we’ve many of us have experienced that in our life where we’re in a situation and we have
felt trapped for so long that now we really only think well this is just my
lot in life I’m stuck here there’s there’s no other hope for me this is
just the way it’s always going to be and we develop a learned helplessness and and
and I want to tell you you can get out okay you can get out and if you’re
suffering and you’re going like man I’m just putting up with this because it is the way life is always going to be
um recognize that us we as humans we can transcend learn helplessness in a way
that these poor little puppies can’t and um that’s so just being curious and
engaging can give us new opportunities to get out all right let’s get another s so your strings of DNA so a lot is given
to genetics oh you know I’m I I have a I’m genetically predisposed to depression or I genetically have
depression um and yeah there are a lot of genes that are associated with depression certainly the serotonin transport genes
MTHFR um there there’s a whole host of them you know that we can check for and and
then you can start thinking about targeted therapies um but it’s really remarkable because we
get when we get to check these genetic patterns in a lot of of people we have quite a few patients that come in with
maybe really horrible genetics when it comes to depression but no depression so
there is very much a nature and nurture there is an environment genetic interplay that’s going on among all of
these things so your genetics do not define you your genetics do not confine
you um but but they may very well be the the key to helping healing Move Along faster
one gene that gets a lot of press is something called the methyl MTHFR I mean
I laugh about it because I was teaching about MTHFR back in 2003 and uh it got
so popular it almost became like a cult you know people are going like well I have the MTHFR Gene so I you know I have
depression and I have all these other things and and they start blaming all kinds of things on MTHFR and um MTHFR is
just one gene in a very complex cycle of a process called methylation methylation
is just sticking an extra carbon atom on another molecule but we do that a lot in
the body for all kinds of reasons and and what’s important to know is that this system there is a system of genes a
system of enzymes that does this and and this system is always going all the time and there are backup systems on backup
systems and they they have a lot of interplay in the body so reducing things
down to one gene is almost never really helpful oh excuse me it’s not almost
never sufficient can be helpful the mitochondria wow there’s a huge
interplay between our body’s ability to make energy which is what we do in our mitochondria and depression there’s a
lot of evidence that the more depressed somebody is the more deletions they have in their mitochondrial DNA there’s
increased rates of depression in people with mitochondrial disorders and I like to ask this question of patients you
know if you had energy would your depression clear fatigue and fatigue and depression man
they’re like peas and carrots and it’s really important to say if this is a mitochondrial issue for you let’s start
going down that pathway understanding how your body makes energy what can we do to address that right
now um how about your style of life and um your style of life has to do with your
behaviors how are you engaging in the world so for instance physical activity is an amazing treatment for depression I
mean it arguably is one of the best physical activity alone can treat mild
to moderate depression symptoms um and the more uh activity the the less
depression that goes on there’s a huge amount of data that’s here hydration you want your style of life
with regard to the the foods you eat are you eating foods that are inflammatory eating low Quality Foods what’s
happening with your sleep patterns are you going to sleep at night are you you’re giving yourself that opportunity
those that’s tightly tied to depression and what’s the chicken what’s the egg
those are good questions but but there are ways out how about symptoms so
I I put this s in here for my Psychiatry friends because you know how they look
at the brain how their biased towards the brain and each one of these s’s are a bias that usually one specialist has
towards a brain and they have the bias of symptoms okay do you have lack of
lack of interest in things and due to your lost interest in sex in other words they’re eating Behavior changed and do
you have thoughts of suicide and do you have a low motivation do you have increased feelings as helplessness or
sadness and if you have a certain number of those then you get a diagnosis if you
have a diagnosis you often get a drug and now you’re down the pharmaceutical pathway and and that’s how we treat
depression from a symptom-based standpoint spark this is actually where the whole s
thing came from because spark was one of the major S’s and this idea
um is is the does the brain run on spark on the electricity in the brain or does
it run on the soup the the biochemistry which we’ll get to next and the spark is the electrical
activity in the brain and one of my oh gosh just one of my
heroes in the world is um Donald Hebb and Donald Hebb was a psychiatrist
psychologist way back in the 1950s and he said neurons that fire together wire
together and this was before we had electron microscopes good enough to see but there was actually no connection
between neurons the synapses didn’t exist so but he had figured out that
yeah the more a neuron fires together the more it wires together whatever we
do repeatedly our brain gets better at doing whatever you know so whatever action you take you’re better at taking
that action again whatever moral choice you make you are more likely to make
that type of a moral choice again your actions
um create your life so if you’re really not pleased with where your life is start taking different actions start
nurturing different thoughts because because your brain is plastic it can change neurons that fire together wire
together um now and the brain is this massive electrical organ that’s how it works
it’s electricity it’s so cool and but the whole brain is is firing all the
time this this whole thing oh you only use 10 of your brain well yeah because there’s certain areas are lit up and
other areas are calmed down and but it’s going in this three-dimensional electrical
um rhythmic pattern and this is what then causes the output of your thoughts
your feelings your emotions really impressive and and this electricity doesn’t just go willy-nilly it’s very
clearly organized around Networks when you come to the clinic you’ll see some
beautiful art up in our reception area there are diffuser tensor Imaging uh
photographs that show the networks in very high detail love these photos they’re so gloriously beautiful to see
the brain and and how uh how it is wired so intricately together
and certain emotions and certain brain functions are localized to specific
Networks so when we do things like brain mapping so we can put a cap on the head
we can measure the electricity in the brain and and then we can create a map
and green in in this mapping structure um is kind of your average normal and
things that go towards the red side there’s more of that brain wave of that that particular type of brain wave in
that particular part of the brain than in normal individual would have and then
if it’s because you see blue on the brain map that means there’s less of that particular brain wave in that part
of the brain for an average individual and just to be clear there are no normal brains we we have databases of
individuals that are high performing and healthy and have not had head injuries and have good intelligence and that’s
what we compare an individual patient’s brain to but this is useful because
there are some electrical patterns uh that have familial Tendencies and this is an asymmetry of
this brain wave called Alpha and and this is something that with neurofeedback we can start to train the
brain to be in Balance one side with the other and we’ve been able to help several cases of very recalcitant
depression for individuals that have this this type of electrical pattern so
if if you haven’t ever thought about the spark in your brain and and where
you know if you understand what it’s about and where it’s coming from and uh it would be good to get it looked into
um and then I said the other one the other big S the spark and soup this big controversy that started out and and
um and I kind of laughed about it I went well there’s a lot of other s’s out there and that’s where this came to be so what is this soup so if you think
about it this is your brain that if you take a brain and cut it open and let all
the insides ooze out um that’s that’s your soup your neurotransmitters your inflammatory
molecules your mitochondria your um everything that the biology that
makes the brain work and you know for a long time we’ve said oh depression is a biochemical imbalance uh you have you
have a chemical imbalance going on so we need to give you another chemical to balance that out but isn’t it
interesting that oftentimes is like oh that bounced it out but then it went a little too far and now we need to put
something else on this side to balance it back out again because there’s some side effects and oh now we’re in balance
in another way and yeah and it’s the chemical imbalance idea is just
ridiculously overly simplistic um it instead our brains are really a
network um saw my TED Talk for some years ago I talked about a tensegrity structure and
and this would be a much better if I was going to look at a chemical imbalance I would look at it in three dimensions of
everything connected to everything else but your soup your soup
um and the neurotransmitters there are actually a part that could make a difference for you
um at in the history for functional medicine I teach the biochemical Pathways of neurotransmitter production
and and this is where we see individual amino acids interact with particular
enzymes in the context of certain nutrients and cofactors that either make
the neurotransmitters we want or make molecules of inflammation and oxidation
and it does this for serotonin which we see on the screen right now Sam e is
very important for for depression but it also does it uh it uses some of this
very same Machinery to make dopamine and dopamine is is not just important as a
pleasure neurotransmitter but it’s very important for learning because
yeah it’s interesting if you’re we’re out humans in the wild the things that would give us pleasure are usually the
things that would help us survive our modern world has really uh done a number
on us because the things that are pleasurable don’t necessarily always correlate to our survival so in the old
days when something is pleasurable and our brain wired in to say hey get more of that right I’m starving you just ate
some berries off of a bush that gives a big surge of dopamine and makes you almost
obsessed to get more and more of those berries because they’re only in season for a little while but now we have
supermarkets and we have coca-colas and we have all kinds of ways to over
indulge on things that will raise our dopamine including pharmaceutical and recreational drugs
so yeah it’s challenging to be a human now so if we add in inflammation it’s
actually going to change this biochemical pathway and it’s going to change the kind of molecules that get
make and the kind of effects that happen and so I show you this little tiny piece
of a massive metabolic map to encourage you again to have
compassion on yourself there’s so many reasons that depression can occur and if
what you’ve done so far hasn’t helped don’t give up hope don’t give up hope take a deep breaths be curious and and
start thinking about maybe which ass did you not have you not engaged yet or what would be something that you’re like yeah
I’ve been really better look into that and and one of the major things that deals with our soup is our brain gut
access right so um there is a big two-way communication there are nerves that go from the brain
to the gut and chemicals that go from the brain to the gut and likewise there’s nerves that go from the gut to the brain and chemicals that go from the
gut to the brain it’s a two-way street and we we’re very clear now that Parkinson’s disease almost certainly
begins as a result of gut based metabolites
so what about depression I want to show you that this crazy study so they took a
look at the the byproducts of bacteria um and this is called lipopolysaccharide
and and uh lipopolysaccharide is in these gut-based bacteria if you have a leaky
gut um and those bacteria get into your bloodstream somehow and get to your brain the researchers want to know well
what happens what happens with mood and what happens with your level of energy and and how well you want to interact in
the world and so they did the study so they were rounded up who else medical students
you know if you don’t have a lab rat you know where do you go and they did an
amazing interesting study they actually gave these humans this IV endotoxin you
know which was this component of the wall of bacteria that is the most
inflammatory substance known uh that that affects Mankind and and they in
they did a double-blind randomized trial and they measured the amount of
cytokines and those are inflammatory messaging molecules they measured their scales of like how much depression do
they have how much fatigue do they have how much did their social interest go down how much do they go like I don’t want to be around those people and they
also measured the the glucose metabolism of the brain and what happened oh my gosh so fast within three hours within
three hours of injecting these folks their depression scores jumped up their
fatigue scores jumped up their social interest you know their desire to be in the world and interacting with people
went down but notice there’s a lot of individual variability you know there’s not rules with
depression or fatigue or anxiety you know each human is is unique you know
sir Oliver um uh um William Sir William Osler really
uh the grandfather of modern medicine said that it’s much more important to
know the person who has a disease than the disease the person has
that he was talking about personalized systems medicine originally that’s that’s what good
medicine is is taking this one miraculous patient this one unique being
and and being curious what’s going on
as opposed to just labeling them and then you know name it blame it and tame
it or treat it and treat it um so anyway this um
and so when you get this this uh endotoxin put in the brain it causes
this neuro-inflammatory sensitization on the bottom here you see interleukin beta interleukin-6 T and F Alpha these are
molecules of inflammation and they go up and they affect two very important brains the dorsal anterior cingulate and
the insular cortex and we can see this when we do electrical brain mapping and
and what it does when you get inflamed it creates hyper vigilance people who are inflamed are on edge they are
anticipating adversity their sensitivity to pain goes up they start getting
socially anxious and then you start getting disruption in sleep and chronic pain depressed mood social withdrawal
and long-term long-term if you conically chronically stays inflamed and stressed
you get more susceptibility to infection and inflammation and you get inflammatory diseases accelerated aging
this is a big deal this is why you have to pay attention to the symptom of depression it it’s
it’s a marker of things that aren’t good so and and the study was shown that they
actually did biopsies of people’s brains that had depression and what occurred um
they were able to show that individuals of chronic depression their brains were stained with essentially rust
um this is oxidative stress in this exact area that I just showed you was
involved when people have endotoxin injected into them when their gut is
leaky when they are inflamed when they are under stress it actually damages the brain and
there’s now uh good evidence to though that mood disorders may be the early manifestation of underlying processes
which later you know manifests as neurodegenerative disorders so
addressing this now if you instead say hmm that depression
is my friend it is letting me know that I have to deal with something underneath this uh to protect me to protect me long
term um that’s a very powerful shift I want to tell you about a patient this
is a lovely 35 year old woman and I gotta tell you I was going through and looking for slides for my presentation
tonight this is a patient I saw 14 15 years ago
now and I I can’t wait I got I’m going to look her up tomorrow and see how things are going because it’s a
beautiful story this is even just the first part it was a 35 year old woman and oh my gosh she was just flat affects
she presented with major depressive disorder she had had previous treatments including electroconvulsive therapy
three times Prozac Zoloft Celexa Wellbutrin Paxil Effexor Geodon Cymbalta
Seroquel Xanax Klonopin Adderall Nuvigil provigil we did an evaluation for a biochemistry
did a brain map turns out she had a really high level of lead um we um started doing
um neurofeedback and actually chelation we worked on her gut to decrease her
inflammation in her gut um and and really within about a month she said hey I really have marked
improvement in my symptoms I’m I’m actually more aware my mood is starting to improve
um still had good days and some bad days by about nine months later she was markedly better family Dynamics were
changing she’s not on any medications at all a family Dynamics changed because they she said quote they don’t get to
play the same roles you know it’s kind of an earthquake for some people because when somebody gets better in his family
sometimes it’s very disruptive right because everybody’s used to them kind of being the victim or being the you know
working their life around that sick person maybe even giving themselves identity that they’re that sick person’s
friend and that person’s well there’s interesting how often that there’s resistance to that
um and and she wasn’t feeling much better by a year later feeling good despite some really horrible family
tragedies that happened she was stepping out on her own career doing something away from her family business which she
had been in and then she came in then she came in three months later and she was 18 weeks along with pregnancy and
this is a woman who never believed she could a get pregnant B never believed
that she would be a good mother never thought that this was something that would be her a lot in life she really believed
she was going to die die alone you know with this deep desire to have children and voila
um and now I actually know she has had a second child a wonderful oh in a marriage uh yeah
I just want to say people can heal and what we see on this brain map this on the left side we see this you know
really profound red area here um I’m not going to go into it but let
me just say that green is average normal and and what we got to see over the
course of approximately 40 treatments a remarkable change in her brain map in
the brain electrical pattern that was present and um and that correlated with
an incredible long-term symptom resolution and a return to Vitality some neurofeedback is amazing this was kind
of a soup and Spark plus a little bit of story plus some setting we looked at her
strings of DNA um and we had to take some real time to get her off of pharmaceuticals so now
what’s my last what’s my last s or I think kind of my last is the subconscious now trauma is something
that we have really overlooked tremendously in the medical world early adverse childhood experiences are one of
the greatest predictors of a late life mortality uh actually dying of a COPD of
incarceration being put into prison of suicide if you’ve had a rough childhood
oh my God you need you need a hug and you need more than a hug because we just got to take that seriously and you you
wait you come up early in life and you have this need for security you had this
need to be held and cared for and instead you were thrust into adversity
and needing to please everybody around you so that you could be safe you
couldn’t learn how to regulate your emotions oh my gosh it’s a big deal and
Trauma trauma is especially when it happens so young in life it really rests
pretty deep in the subconscious sometimes it when trauma happens before we have the ability to make word words
it is stored in a pre-verbal state we are unable to communicate with words
what’s going on and that’s becomes a very difficult thing if you’re going to try and get better
and so uh there are therapies like EMDR that can be helpful here but what I want to introduce you to is psybocybin so
psilocybin is a compound and extract from magic mushrooms and so this is not
legal in the states for therapy as of yet a couple of cities have now legalized the legalized its use but I
learned from this from Roland Griffis I was running a uh a conference for about 2 000 Physicians it was a the name of
the conference was a systems medicine approach to pain stress and addiction and and I had him come on as one of our
major speakers he runs the Johns Hopkins Center for psilocybin research they’ve
been studying magic mushrooms and the effects of them for over 20 years in a highly controlled circumstance and if
they come up with some amazing stuff so this is um kind of how it happens people ingest
these psychoactive mushrooms these psychedelic mushrooms and then there is
a uh trained counselors that sit with them as they chill out on a couch and
what happens in their brain when they take a psychedelic um this is what happens so the usual
going through life brings on the left your Placebo is um you’ve got a certain amount you
imagine all those big circles on the outside that is your kind of the pubs of
your brain the major uh groups of neurons and then the lines in between signify how dense is the electrical
connection between those groups of big groups of neurons and what happens when
an individuals take psilocybin is wow does the brain become connected a lot of things that weren’t able to connect
before can connect for a period of time and you can break through boundaries with regard to your perceptions and
understandings in life and and that has had some really remarkable effects their data shows that
one month after a session the greater the dose um the larger the positive mood changes
that happen and um it it’s interesting that even just one treatment
um uh there’s large effect sizes that’s six months uh more love and open-heartedness inner peace positive
emotions inspiration and decreased anger when they looked at individuals with
major depressive disorder and they gave him a single dose of psilocybin voila
five weeks later um 94 of them said they had increased
personal well-being or life satisfaction and 14 months later 83 percent of them
still said that they had some effect Now isn’t that remarkable if you think of that these are individuals these are
cancer patients now in this particular study that had depression coming into the study and they saw what was the
clinically significant Improvement that occurred well a low dose compared to a high dose 92 percent of them had
clinically significant Improvement um and six months later 79 percent but
and but remission to actual normal sixty percent got to normal and 71 got to high
dose now um You can the pharmaceutical industry has an interesting relationship here
because there’s tons of companies that are looking at commercializing this but
um the the changes with a psychedelic approach um uh have you know it it’s not a
chronic medication right the goal is not to put you on something and keep you on it now the challenge is psilocybin is
not available it’s not legal it’s a schedule one drug there’s not no way we um you know medically recommend it
um because if we can’t legally do that yet um but ketamine is so ketamine is has
psychedelic effects ketamine it can be transformative and we actually have a
ketamine Psychotherapy practice now at Maxwell Clinic we’re
very excited about and saw something amazing happening even today in the clinic which is really beautiful
um what is ketamine ketamine is an anesthetic and and ketamine has been used for many many years
um and as an anesthetic it’s very safe doesn’t cause respiratory depression
it has um and it has the effect of of opening
one of an individual to their subconscious um and giving them an availability to
work through things that uh they can’t get to through usual Psychotherapy and
especially in the realm of trauma this can be really profound so what what
happens in individuals what are the effects well in what the landmark study of IV ketamine which is what we do in
the clinic um 70 of patients with treatment resistant Depression had a response now
these are individuals that have not been have not been responding to Conventional
therapies and they had a pretty remarkable response of the remission of
depression um and one you know and usually it’s going given you know one infusion is
given um you know one to two days a week for a couple of weeks or three weeks the
dosing strategy really depends upon the individual how long this lasts it really depends
upon how much repeated dosing you do at the beginning it’s it’s very clear that getting 10 sessions is better than six
um in the literature um some people symptoms can return but but what’s also interesting is the
relationship to those symptoms changes where you’re going oh uh I’m not oppressed by those feelings and those
symptoms any longer but I can have an opportunity to be um I’m not oppressed by them but I can
work through them and um in our Clinic you know there’s many places people go and just get ketamine
um they kind of sit in a chair and somebody gives them a dose and then they walk out and they kind of have their own little experience and we have a
wonderful psychotherapist uh Anna that is
um remarkable and we have a process this is really ketamine assisted Psychotherapy
um and and that that Psychotherapy compartment component really helps with durability now why would something like
giving this you know anesthetic agent to an individual and having them have a
psychedelic or mind-opening or many people have an experience like they see
God you know that they have a deep sense of of of of love and trust and other
people have to go through their dark things it’s it’s um something to talk about with Anna
there’s that we actually have um a free um uh you know you can actually set up a
free consultation with her to to understand uh what to do or if that’s ketamine would be something for you
um well how does it work well synaptogenesis it turns out that when you do something like ketamine or psychedelics it really turns on the
brain and it starts making neuroplasticity happen more connectivity that occurs in the brain and that’s
profound um so uh who would it be for people like 18 years and older uh people with
treatment resistant depression PTSD individuals anxiety or you know
like OCD or social anxiety disorders very good studies and suicidality with
treating it for acute societality um it’s also helpful in Breaking people
out of substance use disorders for exploring Consciousness you know it’s like improving quality of life is
something I think is the next area that will be explored and then the other
interest sync part is breaking the cycle of chronic pain so neuropathic pain
things like fibromyalgia chronic regional pain syndrome Phantom limb pain
cancer pain migraines ketamine can break that cycle and because get this pain is
an emotion just like depression is an emotion pain is actually an emotion in the brain it’s there to protect us but
maybe sometimes we learn that pattern when we no longer need the protection
ketamine can help break that cycle so um you know with psychedelics
um it’s it’s important to know that how one engages this
um the psychedelics actually means comes from psyche and delos or or the mind and
soul to show the mind and soul um the the the dosing is not really
affected you know correlated with weight um you can have uh very you can have
various levels of resistance you may be consciously resisting or unconsciously resisting so this is very much
individualized therapy um we we really focus on providing a
saint a set you know so um how do you come to the medicine how
are you what are you thinking about are you curious are you open we put an emphasis on having a beginner’s mind
um going like well okay I’ve been stuck all right I’m I’m open to anything let’s let’s see what happens and and then we
provide a safe setting so we a lot of emphasis is placed on you’re feeling comfortable and you know we’re very
experienced in this realm and have um uh have been
and this is a safe and environment with trained nurses and psychotherapists and such to work with you
um anyway it’s a the subjective experience of psychedelics has a lot to do with how people work and and what’s
happening is actually a rewiring of this area we call the default mode Network the default mode network is that area of
your brain that is always answering the questions who am I where am I and how am I and when we get this area stuck man we
are stuck and um so to be able to break that cycle can be really profound
so these are the essential brain healing and
um there’s there are our story our setting our strings of DNA our style of
life our symptoms our spark our super subconscious all of these are areas that we should look into if a brain disorder
or a brain challenge is what we need to deal with but it doesn’t end there because I have more S’s and you
self-talk is important the stream of chi kind of a shout out to my acupuncture friends
spirituality very important shrinkage if your brain is atrophying that’s a
problem chronic infections and septicity um uh sweet
um sweet stress and sex hormones are very important structure is there
hydrocephalus is there as old stroke smack is there an old head injury present supplements what kind of
nutrients are missing that could be helped step squips steps skips and swims
you know how much exercise or activity are you doing self-defense do you have an autoimmune process that’s going on
and the screen door do you have leaky gut now um and smoke is like mitochondrial
oxidative stress and yes I have more I literally have another 30. and so at
Maxwell Clinic we teach our docs about our clinicians about this systems
medicine approach to brain health and and how can we make a decision to help
steer you in the most likely effective place and and have a wise utilization of
your limited resources because we all have limited resources we all have limited resources of time money energy
effort hurt and and our job is to help give you some wisdom and discernment
about what can help um so all of those things together I’m just going to say that
um you know we’re doing a lot of work with a therapeutic plasma Exchange in the treatment of dementia and so many of
those things that we just touched on before with these multiple s’s live in your plasma and what’s been fascinating
is the mice that get plasma exchange um get happier and we’ve actually seen this in our some
of our patients that have gone through the process regenerative plasma exchange for the treatment of Dementia or for the
Improvement of neurodegenerative disease or uh for biohacking to you know to
improve longevity they too have had some changes in mood which has been very
interesting to observe not the first therapy I would think of but um it was something I just thought I’d mention
because um if you clean if you clean the blood it’s essentially like living a clean
life you know uh only a lot more potent and a lot more quickly in a lot shorter
period of time um I wrote a book um curiosity heals the human because I
try to put together a bunch of questions to enable the creation Health From the Inside Out you may want to check it out
so remember your essential brain healing that your brain is designed to have bias
and could you or someone you love be stuck in that bias is there something
that’s holding you back and it would do better for you to just be curious don’t
know what that answer is for you there’s a whole bunch of therapies that have evidence for treating depression but I
didn’t want to give you you know it I can give you a whole list because Sammy is helpful CoQ10 is helpful
um uh you know gosh we can just go down a huge long list of individual things that can be helpful and that just
overwhelms people and instead the point is what works for you what’s going on
within your loved one’s life how can you address this from a causation standpoint
and and and use and recognize and and even embrace the suffering that is
depression because it is there to help save you potentially from something far
worse down the road um uh you know we’re here to help and so this is the website for Maxwell Clinic
it’s our telephone number uh we’d love to be of service to you so I know we got a bunch of questions here and
um and so um uh if there’s other questions I would encourage you to put them in the the
chat bar so um so first of all um okay so great presentation oh my gosh
where do I start okay that was exactly the ant that was
exactly the thing I was curious about right um well the first thing to do is to start with curiosity and and I bet you
went through that s model and I’m going to kind of go back here to this multiple s thing uh and see if I can yeah there
we go I bet there’s things you’ve tried many people come to us and they said man I’ve had
I’m really struggling with depression well have you gone through counseling one of our first questions so if you
worked with a counselor have you engaged this have you explored your conscious mind you what you already know because
that can be amazingly transformative for people uh Brian Hooper is a counselor that’s in our office he is an amazing
spiritual psychotherapist that actually is a Lutheran Minister that also has been trained in Psychotherapy remarkable
helping people kind of ferret out this meaning and purpose in their life and start to dig through that
um but some people come in they’ve had tons of accounts like oh my gosh have they had hundreds of hours of counseling
in therapists and that that’s not so I would not say let’s not keep going there
that would not be a good use of your resources and they come in and say wow yeah it all started when I had a head
injury um okay well let’s get a brain map and let’s strongly consider neurofeedback that can be amazingly transformative for
people with head injuries traumatic brain injury um uh if that individual has it’s just a
big familial problem well family could mean there’s a problem in the the genes or the family environment right so where
are you um how about your subconscious have you considered that there was early life
trauma maybe you know there is but you just go like man I’m not going there I
don’t know how to go there I can’t conceptualize it and if if you’re plagued with just way more hyper
vigilance than the average person I’m it’s a good bet that you have some
trauma going on and you’ve been dealing you’re been dealing with trying to
continue to avoid that traumatic thing the rest of your life even though you’re now you’re a you’re a grown ass adult
right you know now you know probably the the thing that happened is no longer
worth fearing but your brain has set up that pattern uh waiting for the next
shoe to drop well ketamine can be really amazing for helping with that and we’re good we’re starting to pair ketamine
with neurofeedback in in very selected patients and for particular reasons
um so I think that’s useful soup I mean is there a big gut issue going on do you
have abdominal do you have gut symptoms but have you actually been checked for increased intestinal permeability or
what we’d call leaky gut you know I mean where are you um where does that happen
yeah I mean what’s going on with you how about your nourishment oh my gosh the standard American diet is just awful but
even people who think they’re eating well aren’t sorry you know we do a lot of
nutritional testing and it’s amazing how bad it comes out for people who think
they’re nailing it what about mold yeah and the number of people who are like man I was doing just
great and then I moved to this different house and and I just everything went down for me after that uh you know we
were had a massive flood in Nashville and Clarksville in 2010 here and um there’s a lot of homes that still
have mold or that have acquired new mold we recognize that’s actually a cause of neurodegeneration now but depression can
be an early symptom of that how about um so do you get my point it’s it’s when
were you last well and and then once you really go yeah that was really well here
and then I would ask a question well then what happened and then so start being curious and if
you don’t have the answers we’d love to help you you know we’d love to dig in and partner with you our our goal at
Maxwell is to really walk alongside of patients as they are going through this challenge of
suffering whatever those symptoms may be that are there suffering so
okay another question um Can a traumatic situation cause inflammation by itself wow what a great
question and the answer is yes trauma alone can cause inflammation and and how
why is that it’s called the conserved transcriptional response to adversity
yeah it’s a real thing and and so early man actually all
mammals if a mammal is threatened and go like oh my gosh I’m about I’m being hunted
um the immune system shifts to a higher inflammatory State and then so the body
starts making more antibodies uh so if that animal gets bit by a predator then
um the immune system and escapes and the immune system is ready to start making antibodies for those invading bacteria
and then that helps the the animal survive but unfortunately well
unfortunately we’re not dealing with saber-toothed tigers around the corner for us but instead humans we’re under
con instant threat because our threat now has transitioned into social isolation to
social media to the kind of things that we do and our belief systems that we’re
not enough or that we are are persecuted on a regular basis that we are you know
our belief systems can create trauma just in and of themselves or they we can be threatened we can actually have
something really traumatic happen and that’s going to turn on the conserved a
transcriptional response to adversity now so that’s great it builds up the immune system initially and but it
creates inflammation long term if it’s on it inhibits other parts of the immune
system so viruses get to replicate more and Cancers are not
um uh cancers are not uh surveyed well
and so our immune system part of our immune system that finds and addresses and kills cancer
isn’t as able to do that so um yeah so stress makes a really big
deal so um well anyway I want to say thank you to everybody um thanks for the questions uh thanks
for being here thanks for being part of the answer um if you’re here and you’re curious there are people in your life that your
curiosity is blessing is is giving them New Hope and opportunity so please
spread the word I don’t believe humans are meant to suffer just don’t I think we’re we’re made to
thrive we’re made to heal and if we are suffering take that seriously and and start asking
why and who knows you might find the answer and that’s worth it so much love to you
uh it’s Dr David Haase thanks real quick
This blog provides general information and discussions about health and related subjects. The information and other content provided in this blog, website or in any linked materials are not intended and should not be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This blog does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other professional health care advice, diagnosis or treatment. We cannot diagnose conditions, provide second opinions or make specific treatment recommendations through this blog or website.
If you or any other person has a medical concern, you should consult with your health care provider or seek other professional medical treatment immediately. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something that you have read on this blog, website or in any linked materials. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please call 911 or call for emergency medical help on the nearest telephone immediately.
