wo ultimate human hey guys welcome to the ultimate human podcast I'm human biologist Gary Brea your host for the ultimate human podcast where we go down the road of everything biohacking longevity anti-aging wellness and everything that makes human beings ultimate human beings today I'm going to talk about anxiety because there's a lot of inquiries that come through our social media channels and through our Clinic chain that talk about anxiety what is it how can we treat it non pharmaceutically what are some of the scientific principles and some of the better scientific evidence that talk about ways to treat anxiety in a nonpharmacological way so I really want to spend a few minutes uh talking to those of you who have either suffered from anxiety or maybe you know somebody who suffered from anxiety estimates are as high as 45% of the population at some point will suffer from anxiety and 33% of the population is chronic anxiety suffers so this is a major issue and anxiety is really a complex emotion because it's usually defined as a fear of the future uh something happening in the future that is very likely not to happen that most likely has never happened or may never happen but the actual lack of that event occurred ing does not prevent that person from becoming anxious or developing anxiety so if you've ever known someone who suffered from anxiety or you've suffered from anxiety yourself I want you to go back and I want you to think about whether or not your anxiety fits the these three characteristics because if it does it's very likely something that is not happening to you it's something that's happening within you right and very often we have a tendency to think that disease and pathology and and all kinds of mental illness or things that are actually happening to us but the truth is very often they're happening within us meaning there are nutrient deficiencies in the human body that cause the expression of conditions like anxiety if you've ever suffered from or know someone who suffered from anxiety see if it fits these three characteristics number one have you had it on and off throughout your entire lifetime that's your first indication that it actually might be coming from a very common gene mutation called MTHFR I'm not going to tell you what the nickname is for this Gene but it is one of the most common gene mutations in the world and by gene mutations I don't mean that something's wrong with you just remember that there's not a single compound known to mankind not one that enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in without exception everything that enters our body is converted into the usable form I always use the example that we pull crude oil out of of the ground but you can't put crude oil into your gas tank right crude oil has to be converted into gasoline for the car to understand that fuel source well human beings are no different when we put vitamins minerals amino acids nutrients of any kind into the human body they're not used in the format that we put them in they are converted through a process called methylation into the usable form if you can't make this conversion you have a deficiency and very often it's this deficiency that leads to some of the most common ailments that human beings and Mankind suffer from so back to anxiety um the first question is have you suffered from anxiety on and off throughout your entire lifetime generally that answer is yes and then secondly can you always point to the specific trigger that causes it very often we can be on the vacation of a lifetime with the people we love the most in a place that we're very familiar with and we can just be overwhelmed with anxiety we can wake up in the morning feel feeling anxiety driving home from work on an otherwise innocuous day and be overwhelmed with anxiety that form of anxiety is not coming from a cluster of symptoms it's not coming from your outside environment it's coming from your physiology and the third thing is if you've actually tried anti-anxiety medications did they work and very often that answer is no people will say it just made me feel like a zombie and the reason why you feel like a zombie is because again this is not coming from your outside environment so have you had it on on and off your entire lifetime uh can you point to the specific trigger that causes it and have anti-anxiety medications work for you and if those answers are consistent with what I just said then you very likely want to get a test for this gene mutation called MTHFR what it does is it converts folic acid and folate into the form that the body can use called methylfolate and this is really important you may have heard of bioavailable vitamins you know we we put vitamin C and vitamin D3 and all kinds of amino acids into the body but it really doesn't matter what we ingest it matters what becomes bioavailable what the body can use so if your body is not capable of converting folate and all of its derivatives folic acid which I'll get to in a second into the usable form your body has a deficiency and when you have this deficiency you get the expression of things like depression anxiety ADD ADHD OCD manic depression bipolar all kinds of conditions that are actually not psychiatric conditions happening to you they are psychiatric conditions happening within you let's go back for a second and talk about how the human brain works so we can understand anxiety I mean first of all as sophisticated as we'd like to think our brains are they're really not you know what the brain cares about the brain cares about survival and the brain is actually very Primal and very often it does not know the difference between between perception and reality so what do I mean by this I mean that if if you drove home tonight for example and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife that's a very real threat you would have a fight ORF flight response your brain would flood with something called catac colomines Fight or Flight neurotransmitters what would happen is your pupils would dilate your heart rate would increase your extremities would flood with blood you're actually having a fear response but you could also be laying in bed in your condo building I'm on the 27th floor of a condo in Miami right now but you could be laying back there in that bed and you could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark and the chance of a shark getting out of that ocean and coming up that elevator and getting you in your bed are zero but you can have the exact same response so once we understand that the brain can play tricks on us that we can actually feel the presence of a fear without a fear we start to understand the Genesis of anxiety one of the worst things that you can do to somebody that has anxiety is try to reason them out of an anxiety attack right by telling them there's no reason for them to feel this way there's nothing for them to be afraid of why do they choose to feel like this why do they um why do they choose to to have this kind of attitude nothing like that will will be effective it will it will really really upset them it's almost like you're downplaying that very visceral fear that they have when someone is afraid of heights and they're standing at the edge of a 30th floor balcony all the reasoning in the world about how safe that balcony is or how strong the handrail is is not going to work and it's no different than trying to reason somebody out of having an anxiety attack so when we talk about neurotransmitters that lead to anxiety what are we talking about well very often we're talking about a category of neurotransmitters called catac colomines and these neurotransmitters are involved in the fight ORF flight response dopamine um epinephrine norepinephrine we also call them adrenaline uh you probably know them as adrenaline so we know that adrenaline is a fight ORF flight neurotransmitter but can it be released in a in a scenario where there's no presence of a fear and the answer for that is yes so if you have this gene mutation Mt HFR which is very easy to check for it's a cheek swab there are thousands of companies that do it our company does it you do not have to use our Gene test you can use any number of Gene tests that are on the market but you essentially take a cheek swab a a Q-tip you put it in your mouth you send it into a lab they they get back to you and they say yes you are positive for MTHFR or you're not positive for MTHFR there's also two subal which I'll get to in a minute and if you have this genetic mutation then there's a lot of clinical evidence that's supplementing with something called methyl folate specifically five- methylfolate and another amino acid called Sam s adenos methionine can be very very effective at treating anxiety and even effective at treating depression because remember if we cannot degrade these catacol amines they build up and as they build up you get the presence of a fear without actually having a fear one of the studies that I'm going to put into the uh links below uh was recently P published in uh the Journal of integrated medicine and it found that um one of the best studies on non pharmaceutical inventions for treating uh depression and anxiety was an analysis of Sam e this amino acid and something called methylfolate remember that our body is going to convert folic acid or folate into this usable form called methylfolate but if you're one of the 44% of the population that can't make this conversion then you have a deficiency and it could be this deficiency that's leading to your anxiety so there are certain foods that actually have a positive effect on this cruciferous vegetables dark green leafy vegetables Whole Foods nonprocessed foods can actually provide the folate that your body needs in order to properly regulate these catacol amines you know there's such a spike in ADD ADHD OCD manic depression bipolar and all kinds of learning disabilities especially in young children um in the US now and a lot of it is related to our food supply being deficient in these raw materials so if you're one of those people that suffered from anxiety you haven't been able to find a solution you've had it on and off throughout your entire lifetime uh you can't point to the specific trigger that causes it and anti-anxiety medications haven't worked methylfolate and Samy may just be for you I'm not a physician I'm not licensed to practice medicine I'm going to put this study into the link below you can actually read the dosage requirements um for these it's based on weight um and severity of symptoms these are over-the-counter supplements that you can that you can get on your own I would suggest that you consult your physician before you do it but it actually pointed out that four of five uh patients that enrolled in this clinical study actually saw very positive outcomes just from supplementing with these two nutrients I hope you find this helpful because it's just science