Notes from Dr. Ehrlich’s 2nd Seminar Jan. 31st, 2008 in Glendale, AZ
Dr. Steven Ehrlich, NMD, Naturopathic Physician gave us an in-depth look at the Holistic perspective on mental health issues and how Natural Medicine can offer real solutions to people suffering from anxiety, depression, and stress related disorders.
There are simple, yet extremely powerful procedures that anyone can do by themselves to start radically improving their mental health and the mental health of their family!
The Doctor started explaining what stress is and what it creates inside our bodies. When we are under stress our body responds as if a famine hit. The adrenal glands, located above the kidneys make cortisol. Cortisol goes to the liver and the liver uses glycogen to increase blood sugar. He talked about the effects on the pituitary gland, hypothalamus and the adrenal glands. Cortisol actually makes you feel good. You feel high functioning. The problem is if you have constant stress, over a period of time, this hormone starts to break down you glandular system. The body’s response to psychological stress comes in 3 phases.
1. Alarm stage. This can save your life. Fight or flight. Avoid hitting that car, etc. The crises ends, and it is all over. Adrinal glands make 3 hormones geared for the flight or fight situation. They are cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. DHEA is produced by the adrenals but not in direct response to stress. Prolonged stress can damage the adrenal glands and affect their ability to manufacture DHEA. DHEA is a feel good hormone and it opens up the wind pipes and helps the lungs expand. This is also used in asthma sprays.
2. Adaptation. Your body adapts to a constant stream of stress related circumstances. This can throw off your natural glandular rhythms.
3. You body is worn out. The hormones created by the constant stress have no where to go. If cortisol is there, progesterone has no where to go. Cortisol and progesterone have the same receptors. An example is, in women, the body protects itself from getting pregnant during a famine.
The doctor talked about nature’s arsenal to coping with stress. Glycine is one magic bullet he said. It is the most common amino acid found in many foods. It is sweet, no carbs, and makes you feel safe. He didn’t want to talk about dosages and get too far off track, but mentioned you can mix this in food or drinks but it doesn’t dissolve very well.
Tyrosine is for people burned out by stress who need a mood/energy lift. It has been used by people who are grieving and people with ADD. If you are already nervous and stressed out too much, tyrosine may make you more anxious.
Dr. Ehrlich talked about receptors for our nerve cells. You need serotonin to create the connection. Serotonin is manufactured naturally in the body but some people aren’t getting enough. This condition can affect your mood and how you think. Think: Loloft commercial. Zoloft basically jams the serotonin into place. The natural route is tripdiphan which leads to 5HTP, which leads to serotonin, then too melatonin (the sleeping hormone). He mentioned that you can easily find 5HTP in health stores.
The botanicals that offer a calming affect are found in green tea, and
ashwagandha
an Asia Indian medicinal plant. This plant grows very deep in the earth, deeper than alfalfa plants, and it makes you feel grounded. He mentioned that Shaklee offers a couple of sleeping/relaxation products which contain these plants.
Contact us for more information about how to obtain Shaklee products! We are Shaklee Independent Distributors and supply Shaklee products to folks in the USA, Canada, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Mexico too!
Dr. Ehrlich then talked about tyrosine, next step is dopa, then dopamine. He mentioned that the B vitamins are co-factors.
The B vitamins
hook everything up and make the hormones work for us.
St. Johns Wort works as a calming agent and is an anti-viral and detoxifies the liver, too. Be careful with St. John's Wort, though. It can interfere with the other medications like saw pimento (or prostate medicine) and thyroid medicine.
It was getting late so the doctor touched on the subject of Psychological detoxification. Examples are acupuncture for mental health and addiction, and the Emotional Freedom Technique. There is a lot about EFT on the Internet. It seemed that no one in the group knew about EFT, so I stood up and acknowledged that this technique seems strange but it helped me avoid a huge migraine headache a couple of years ago. This is what happened: I was traveling at the time and didn’t have my migraine medication with me. An EFT certified coach happened to be around and worked with me for an hour. We worked through the blindness, the fear of an oncoming headache, and the nausea. I was fine after that. Normally, the head ache would have lasted several hours. It usually ends after I throw up. Then I would be sick and drained for the rest of that day and the next day.
The doctor gave us a hand out describing a type of meditation that people can do first thing in the morning called the morning pages. You start by writing down anything that comes into your mind and fill 3 pages. This exercise helps clear your mind and allow creativity to flow. It is also supposed to clear writers block. I tried this just this morning and realized I complained a lot about my hand and arm hurting and my fingers cramping. Ha! I just have trouble hand writing. It did seem to clear my mind.
To narrow this down, the two powerful procedures that people can do by themselves to start improving their mental health is to look at nature’s arsenal to reduce stress and practice psychological detoxification with acupuncture and/or try meditation.
