What’s Fueling Our Mental Health Crisis and How Can We Fix it? With Dr. Jaquel Patterson - Transcript
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The the benefits of, like, sauna and how that showed to decrease ERP levels and also in studies that they did in Europe, for men that there was, like, decreased chance of, like, things like schizophrenia.
Dr. Mark Hyman
For That's crazy. Wait. You just wanna stop there. You said take a sick, a sonic, and help reduce psychiatric symptoms and even schizophrenia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could everyone via my personal practice. There's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, You, if you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my member community, hymen hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Welcome to The Doctor's Farmacy. I'm doctor Mark Hyman. That's Farmacy would have a place for conversations that matter. And if you've struggled with mental health issues, if you know anybody who has, which is pretty much everybody in America that has had or has experience someone in their family or friend who's had mental illness, you're gonna need to listen to this podcast because it's with the pioneering physician, doctor Jacquel Patterson who spent a lot of time diving into why there are so many problems with mental health in America. And what are the root cause How do we think about things differently?
She's been published in in many journals. She's a well known speaker. She's had 16 years of clinical experience. She's on the board of the American Academy Environmental Medicine. She's a certified functional medicine practitioner.
She's got her MBA, and she's just so focused on trying to make the world a better place by getting patients the help they need through the right approaches of functional medicine. So I hope you love this podcast. Dive right in. Welcome to Doctor's Pharmacy Gicel. It's great to have you.
And I'm I'm so excited about our discussion because it's gonna address one of the biggest crises we're facing today. Which is an explosion in mental illness and the explosion of crisis in mental health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And
Dr. Mark Hyman
we're seeing dramatically rising rates of depression, anxiety, ADD, bipolar disease, suicide rates. I mean, just All the numbers are going through the roof. And the question is really what is going on out there and how do we deal with this differently? Because our traditional approaches in psychiatry really have not adically dealt with with the crisis in mental health. And despite better medications and lots of medications, I mean, I think you had your medications with your leading category of drug sales.
Or maybe the second, actually. I think it's the second, actually, after statins. We're we're not making a lot of progress. People don't really get much better for these drugs. The the data on the effectiveness of them is is sort of not that impressive.
Sometimes often no better than a placebo. For some people, they can be effective, but that that's really missing the very fundamental idea about what's causing this. You know, I I and I remember learning about psychiatric disease in medical school and, you know, basically, we're really good classifying people according to symptoms. What are the symptoms that indicate your depression or ADHD or anxiety or OCD or OCD or whatever it is, bipolar disease, And the they were just descriptive, but they didn't tell you anything about the cause or or the mechanism. And then it's kinda been a black box, right, because basically the joke is a neurologist.
Pay no attention to the mind and psychiatrist pay no attention to the brain. But brain dysfunction, it doesn't show up like other parts of dysfunction in our body. If we have arthritis because our joints are inflamed, well, we get a swollen joint and it hurts. But when our brains damaged or inflamed, which we were talking about, it doesn't show up as pain in the brain. It shows up as psychiatric symptoms.
Yes. And so we kinda misappropriate meaning to these diseases, which we have seen to skyrocket in the last decade or 2 or even, you know, it's just I I wrote a book Ultra Mind solution 15 years ago and it was a lot then and it's getting worse and worse. It's like it's getting worse. It's like watching a slow moving tsunami. And and I remember reading a a book when I was in college called Matt civilization by a French philosopher called Michelle Fuco, and he was very good at describing the historical context of mental illness throughout the age You know, it was, you know, visitation by god or possession by demons or, you know, evil humors or whatever thing, or maybe it's your, like, in euro, you know, and if it's complex or Freud or whatever the kind of latest version of the story was about psych psychiatric illness.
And the truth is it kind of mostly missed the mark about what's really going on, because we see things. Then we put labels on them, but we don't really think about the cause. And what what I'd love to talk to you about today is is your experience as a clinician, in the in the trenches seeing people with a whole array of mental illnesses that you've been able to sort of unpack through the lens of functional medicine rather than the old model, name the disease, and give the person a drug for that disease. Right? And And so I'm curious how you started getting into as a as a practicing clinician.
What got you into this idea that we should be thinking differently about psychiatric illness?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Well, I act as a natural like physician practicing for over, you know, 15 or 16 years. And one of the things Lyme disease was something I struggled with myself, also other family members and treating patients with that. I started seeing a much larger growth of individuals with symptoms of anxiety and depression and mood changes. Yeah. And It really forced me as a clinician and and and and people practicing in the space and functional medicine space.
We're getting to the underlying cause. The to find out why, you know, what are the reasons? What are the causative agents? And so, for many of my patients at that time that were struggling with it, I would see as I worked on the or worked on inflammation or immune tolerance, their symptoms or mental health symptoms went, you know, significantly improved or they were able to get off medication, or it was no longer an issue. And so that's why I kinda went back, did additional 2 years of training in functional medicine, also in addition to ADHD, and there's so many factors that we don't look at, you know, environmental factors outside of things like genetics, because people often blame it on genetics or have a family history, which is definitely a contributing factor, but there are a lot of other factors outside of that, including infections, including, you know, trauma, including, even like TBIs and things like that.
I'll see if my patients had traumatic brain injury. Will be significantly worse if there's also history of multiple concussions. So just we wanna look at that full picture and, there's more than just neuroinflammation, but it's a huge factor that a lot of, physicians don't look at in their workup when they're working with the patient with mental health issues.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Mia's That's really interesting because I I had the same experience. You know, you you came at this who treating patients with Lyme disease and infections, which are inflammatory diseases, And basically by treating the body, their brains got better.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I I had the same experience when I was treating, you know, patients years ago. I started to see I was treating their gut or their allergies or their some other inflammatory problem and using the principles of functional medicine to restore balance in the body and their psychiatrics in get better, whether it was, things even like psychosis or ADHD or depression or anxiety or OCD or bipolar disease. And I was like, This is really crazy because this doesn't this isn't anything I ever read in a textbook. Like, I I when I wrote that book 15 years ago, I'd it wasn't like a big thing back then. I'm talking about the microbiome or nutritional psychiatry or metabolic psychiatry or microbiome psychiatry.
Now it's it's out there in these major academic centers, and we've had many of the researchers from these centers on the podcast. No one linked to their their podcast in the show notes. But it's it's been sort of a a revolution. And the problem is most people suffering out there don't know this. And so love to sort of unpack a little bit about what are the causes of this sort of rise in mental illness and and what can we do about it?
Like, where where do we start to think do we think start to think about the causes? What are the reasons you mentioned neuroinflammation? What is that? How does it work? And what causes it?
And you know, is that the only thing that's driving this crisis? And so help us understand that.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Anxiety, depression, mental health disorders have been, you know, on the rise, but after COVID, the pandemic, increase significantly, especially for adolescents and young adults, where you'll see, for example, 1 out of 3 individual some point in the life have have struggled with anxiety. For depression, for adults, it's about around 10%. But when you look at adolescence, it's around 15% for depression and almost 30% for anxiety, and also the leading cause of death, is suicide. For that that age too. So I think there's so it's multifaceted loneliness, isolation, technology, social media, those things that we do which affect the, you know, the neurotransmitters, like dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine, which affect your reward system, etcetera, but also infections, they have shown that, after, COVID, some of the individuals that actually had COVID initiated potential initiating factor for autoimmune conditions.
Like type 1 diabetes actually was one of the ones, lupus MS. So there had been increases you can see in autoimmune conditions as well since 2020. So there's definitely a
Dr. Mark Hyman
COVID related autoimmune
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
disease. So you have, like, inflammation, I say is, like, the first step, and there's immune tolerance or immune, dysregulation, then followed by psychiatric conditions. So if you look at autoimmune conditions, or individuals with chronic disease conditions like type 2 diabetes, they're much more likely to have higher rates of mental health issues. And there's even studies that have shown like higher levels of this enzyme called C reactive protein, which is part of an inflammatory protein that usually goes up initially, with inflammation that high levels of CRP as a as a child increases, like, significantly risks of at Jafrania.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
leader in life. And so that is, chronic inflammation as a child is going to also increase your risk for mental health disorders.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's really quite amazing when you think about the fact that psychiatrists never looked at the brain. And now psychiatric medicine is starting to look brain. And and doing even brain biopsies on people who've died who had certain conditions like autism or schizophrenia or looking at spinal fluid and And what they're seeing is literally these brains on fire.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And if
Dr. Mark Hyman
you look at every single brain disease, pretty much, you know, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, if you look at the brains, they're literally inflamed. Like, you'd have a swollen joint or a sore throat. Yeah. And and so in in traditional psychiatry, there's really no treatment for it. I don't wanna, like, take Advil.
Is that gonna work? Probably not. Right? There are actually even studies I've seen using biologics like TNF alpha blockers, which are basically massively expensive, extremely powerful immune suppressing medication that have significant side effects. And they're talking about using that for depression as opposed to figuring out what the upstream causes are.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. Why is the inflammation happening in the first place?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Traditional medicine. It's like, okay. Well, it's inflammation in the brain. Okay. Got that.
But let's figure out what drugs you can use to shut it off. Let's do chemo drugs. Let's do steroids. Let's do biologics. Let's do Advair.
Like, it ain't gonna work because, you know, one of the fundamental rules of functional medicines, if you're standing on takes a lot of aspirin, make it feel better. Take out the attack. Remove the cost. Right? And so from your perspective, what are the fundamental causes of this acceleration in brain inflammation?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and let's start to unpack some of those and get into how we how we can start to diagnose them and how we can start to treat them.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So chronic and actions are 1. So, area of focus for main practices, Lyme disease, and tick borne diseases. Those have been heavily connected also even to other conditions like pans and pandas that children will have, which causes acute inflammation of the brain. Neuropsychiatric. It's called pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome.
And that can be initiated from an infection like strep or walking pneumonia, where the body is actually inflamed and attacking attacking itself, but triggered more towards the brain. So what happens is you have, in your body, you have what's called the blood brain barrier, and that keeps things in and out for the most part. We keep most of the things out. There might be like a couple 1 or 2% that can get, leakage of solutes, etcetera, that'll go through the brain. Then after that, what happens is you have these what's called microglia.
There's it's part of the, CNS is called the glial cells. And microglia gets activated. And what microglia yes. For the brain. And microglia acts like I say it's like a cleaner.
So it's coming in to help clean out, you know, any inflammation debris. And so if it's highly activated where you're seeing, someone where the microglia is more active. There's more work it's doing to actually clean up these inflammatory mediators and what ones that are triggered, for anxiety and impression are things like, interleukins like IL6, IL 1, TNF, tumor necrosis factor, those will also go up when there's chronic brain inflammation. So those are cytokines. Those are cytokines.
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Cytokines storm from COVID. These are these are bodies, immune messengers that they're good when there's something acute like an infection.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. If you
Dr. Mark Hyman
wanna fight and you wanna bring inflammation to you, but they're not good if they're chronic.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. And so you'll look at, like, IL 6 which, precedes CRP, which I mentioned earlier, and that was shown to be highly ev elevated for individuals like post COVID, long, you know, long COVID or have had, you know, chronic issues. So that one and has been definitely connected with really any chronic disease condition and especially things like depression. It's one of the reasons why there's been tons of studies on things like turmeric, curcumin to help with depression. In fact, one recent study had showed, having curcumin in your diet.
So I know you do a lot on food and diet that It increases up four and a half times of, like, stress resilience Yeah. Of just having that in your daily diet. And that's because of inflammation, and we're continuing to be, like, an inflamed society based on environmental burning, plastics, toxins, metals, like mercury and leg will increase up inflammation, actual trauma to the brain, chronic disease, which influences circulation, blood flow, etcetera. Infections, like I mentioned. So many different a positive agents of it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. You know, like, I'm I'm generally a very happy person, and I've always been happy. And, I remember when I was very sick with poisoning and then Lyme disease in obesity. You know, I I felt physiologically depressed and and cognitively impaired. And it was interesting to me because I kinda knew, like, my higher self knew.
I wasn't depressed. I wasn't psychologically depressed, but there was some process going on in my body that was affecting my brain. Mhmm. And literally causing my me to have a broken brain. And and we see this so much in our patients.
And you mentioned a few things like latent infections and ticks. It could be viruses. It could be your microbiome Mhmm. The out of balance and dysbiosis. You mentioned environmental toxins.
Like, I had the mercury that definitely causes the anxiety and insomnia depression, it could be diet and inflammatory. You're talking about anti inflammatory effects of curcumin, but there's, an American diet we're eating, which is primarily processed food or ultra processed food to be more specific, which is about 60% of our diet that's driving systemic inflammation in the body. So We see a lot of the reasons why we're we're getting this increase in in in psychiatric illness. And yet, the the people who most need help are not really getting the answers.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So how do you how do you start to approach someone who comes in with because because you're you're obviously seeing a lot of Lyme patients, but are people coming to you just for psychiatric stuff?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. Yes. We have a lot for solely, anxiety, and depression. Also ADHD, we see a lot of children for that because often parents are looking at what else can I do before I have to put them on medication? So It's
Dr. Mark Hyman
like 13% of kids are on medication.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's very, very high. And and you look at, like, when you just mentioned diet, diet, they've had studies on, flavonoids, which are in, more colorful colorful, like citrus fruits, berries, things like that. They've shown increases in just having that amount has helped with anxiety and depression. So when you look at things also like ADHD, anxiety, mental health, there sometimes is the, we first have to work on, like, what is their actual food and diet like? You know, because that's the basic because if they are deficient in minerals like iron, magnesium, zinc, those 3 are heavily connected with, like, how your, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine focus,
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
All of those factors. So those are are huge things to first also initially look at.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so it's not just the things that are driving inflammation, like, you know, inflammatory foods like sugar
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
and
Dr. Mark Hyman
processed food, not just toxins, not just infections, not just the microbiome, but it's also what we're missing.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. No. No.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I I I just, as you were talking about this case of ADHD, you know, I had a low kid I treated who just lived on junk food. He had all these allergies and all these other health issues, gut issues, headaches, anxiety, you know, irritable bowel, I mean, just the whole gamut of different things, asthma. It's not me. Everything. But he had really bad ADHD and, you know, but he when we looked at his diet, he was eating pretty much all processed food and that number of vegetable on-site.
And so he was massively deficient in, you know, all sorts of missions, particularly as you mentioned, like zinc, and magnesium, as as well as some of the b vitamins, which are important in mood health. Can you talk about, you know, the role of some of these nutrients? Because I think, you know, we don't realize this, but 90 plus percent of Americans are deficient in 1 or more nutrients at an optimal at the minimum level
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
To prevent an efficiency disease, not the optimal level we want for help. So what what I might say is how much, you know, vitamin d. Do you need to not get rickets? Probably 30 units? How much you need for optimal health?
Maybe 3000. Right?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. And they and there are tons. So, like, you look at iron. I've seen a lot of people's changes in their blood work with like ferritin and iron levels, which increases the blood flow to the brain. So, of course, you're also gonna be tired of having brain fog, etcetera.
So nutrients are hugely important. Magnesium, when we look at it, most of the population is something like over half or more than half. I think it's like 80%. Are deficient in magnesium because we're not getting it from the soil, but b vitamins when you look at things like B6, B12, folate, those are all connected nutrient really important for mental health and also they also help to feed the adrenal glands and thyroid. So and they get depleted when you're more stressed.
So the more stress we are, the more b vitamins we're gonna consume. And the only way you're getting that is from either diet or, nutritional, you know, by nutritional by nutritional supplementation as well. So that is kind of one of the first starts I have with, patients and also many of those many medications that's what usually the first to get impacted are the is b vitamins. Yeah. Well, the people don't realize that.
Yeah. I mean, people don't realize that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You're right. Like, you people don't realize know, oh, don't don't take this vitamin if you're on this drug, but it's actually also true the opposite. If you're on a lot of medication, you're losing a lot of
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. So you need something to augment it. So you become deficient in those things that often help particularly with the mitochondria, like b vitamins.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And and you, you know, here at the annual international conference and functional medicine here in Las Vegas and, you're giving a talk soon, which is really about the interplay of of immune function and psychiatric health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and in there, you talk about this, not just sort of at a high level, but you talk about some of the real specific mechanisms that are underlying this. And I love to sort of get into some of the science and the biology around this because you mentioned magnesium, for example, but You know, a lot of the the inflammatory things that we're doing that we mentioned affect this part of the brain that is something called an NMDA receptor. Mhmm. Which is stimulated in in ways that can be overstimulated to actually cause psychiatric symptoms. Mhmm.
And also there's be linked to dementia and so forth. But but for example, magnesium plays a role in regulating this.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And MDA receptors. When you look at even vitamin d, vitamin d has shown that people that are with have autoimmune conditions or chronic disease conditions, the lower their vitamin d levels are lower than 40, the worsening of, like, the actual symptoms, like, the their symptoms are more more pronounced. And so, n n m d a, we look at things like because it can affect, GABA, and I mean, glutamate glutamate and GABA in terms of altering what that balance is. And glutamate will be more of an excitatory neurotransmitter.
So that's gonna cause mood changes, irritability, a lot of, variability in the mood itself. That's why
Dr. Mark Hyman
we have MSG. You get the MSG headaches and
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
brain fog. Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's monoclonal glutamate. And GABA is basically another neurotransmitter that's kinda like volume in the brain. Right?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. And it's like an inhibitory neurotransmitter. And so it's interesting when you look at inflammation especially for things like schizophrenia and depression, markers that are actually anti inflammatory, like IL-ten, for example, go down And then the markers that are more in pro inflammatory, like IL 6 will go up. And so those, like, IL 10 is actually connected to dopamine which is related to depression and mood. Also, GABA, there's a change where GABA will go down, which actually helps to support anxiety and to make you feel better.
And so you'll see this kind of shifting where it's like more glutamate and things that are more triggering, to the brain and and inflamed versus things that are kinda more calming like a dopamine or a GABA.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So we're basically taking in too many things that are driving brain inflammation, and we're not doing the things that help reduce brain inflammation. Or a diet or lifestyle or exercise or, you know
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The balance is completely off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And and and and and and, you know, it's it's it's really heartbreaking because you and I see this in our practices that it's not like we can cure all mental illness from all patients from all things, but this model of functional medicine psychiatry is actually a profoundly effective model for treating mental health issues. If people understood what to do. And and we've had Christopher Palmer on the podcast who's talked about brain energy and the metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunctions underlying gastric disease and treating schizophrenia with a ketogenic diet. These are highly anti inflammatory approaches.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so, you know, What have you seen clinically in your practice when you start to apply this? What are the kinds of things you're discovering? What are the tests you're doing to help identify these problems? One of the treatments you're starting to kind of apply to help people with with this problem, neuroinflammation?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Well, there's a lot of different tests. So one thing I say is through the conventional you are gonna look at the inflammatory markers. Like I mentioned, CRP, IL 6, you might wanna look at ESR, some just basic core inflammatory markers because oftentimes someone with mental health issue, they're not running. They're not looking at information as it relates they might run it for a different reason, but they're not necessarily looking at it. Press it
Dr. Mark Hyman
if you get a B Twelve and invited
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
me. Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Thyroid, you know.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And so you wanna look at those other nutrients, like RBC zinc, RBC magnesium, all of the, corn nutrients that you can do. We also I also do urinary tests or specialty urinary tests to test for the neurotransmitters. So I look at at that. I also look at other factors that can contribute that people don't necessarily think of like histamine and allergies.
Like, I I was in us when you asked, that question. I start seeing a a group of a lot of kids that would come in every time the season changed. And, histamine worsening psychiatric systems. And if you look at it, histamine actually crosses, in files a circadian rhythm. So it's a little bit, typically worse in the morning and then later in the evening, histamine is also an excitatory neurotransmitter.
So people don't think of it like that. And so you'll see, like, all these mood changes, increase anxiety. And for many of those patients, I might just say, hey, get on antihistamine or, you know, natural ones would be things like corsetins, stinging nettles. And so that will actually help because they become less inflamed.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you'll see, like, when someone is having, I when I put them on an antihistamine during that time and some general anti inflammatories, everything kinda cools out So that's also, like, looking at things like that or mold environmental factors mold suppresses the immune function, increases of histamine. It causes brain fog and folk is it can cause mood changes. So there are so many
Dr. Mark Hyman
pieces environmentally.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. Me as well. I I also had like you. Oh my god. So I'm I'm laughing when you were speaking because I'm like, I've had all of those two lines.
Babesia and Babesia is one as well as Bartnell that affects a neurological symptom. So it's symptom. So at that time, when I had it when I was in school, I was, like, completely drenched I actually was wearing I didn't even realize for, like, a year and a half, like, all dark colors because I would be completely soaked, but it was on one side. And so I was told Interesting. What a lot of my patients are told the patients that you've seen is is it's in your head.
You're just anxious. And I can was like, but I'm I'm having this happen when I'm just going to the grocery store and things where I'm not
Dr. Mark Hyman
anxious.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I'm not actually it should be anxious or stressed out. And so that's the story. Which work
Dr. Mark Hyman
can be being anxiety producing.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then you start having more. So that was the one thing that when I first start working with patients and and also learning about Lyme disease that a lot of them see about at least 7 to 9 doctors or many of the patients that come to see functional medicine tires before they actually get treated and diagnosed. And so I was one of them dealing with these symptoms that especially with women in particular will get kind of written off of your you have a lot going on. You have a lot on your plate, which we do. But what else could it be besides just pure stress and anxiety.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it's it's it's it's sometimes important to dig. And, you know, you you it's not like Everybody with depression is the same cause for everybody with ADD is the same cause. And we'd label people, and then we think they're all the same. Right?
You have depression, anxiety, AD, bipolar OCD, whatever it is, schizophrenia. These are just labels that have nothing to do with the underlying cause, which can be many things. Right? And and so, you know, you mentioned a lot of them, you know, in your talk around infections. We talked about toxins, poor diet, stress, trauma, and and, even aging itself, and it can actually drive inflammation in the body.
So all these things can be actually tested for and diagnosed and treated. And what kind of clinical, outcomes are you seeing when you're trying to treat a patient? Maybe you can share some cases. To sort of make it more real for people. Because I think it's abstract a little bit.
I mean, okay, inflammation. And we'll talk about what information does the brain. Maybe we could just share a little a little bit about the cases that you think are relevant to illustrate this connection.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I've definitely had patients where they're, especially my patients with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. And they've gotten sick or an infection like COVID, and you'll see their CRP levels go up high, their ferritin levels go up, which can go up as an acute inflammatory And with that, you'll see, like, rheumatoid factor increase significantly, or they got another infection, like I mentioned, like, Lyme disease and all of a sudden, in their A and A or their titers will go up. So I've had many patients where we've worked with, you know, like that situation where when we've worked on the in the inflammation when we worked on the infections, I'll actually see it where their antibodies, like, are no longer positive. Where rheumatoid factor is no longer showing. Or the ANA is like at 1, you know, 40 versus like 12 60, which is a marker for autoimmune condition.
So what you'll see is like and and that's often something in conventional medicine. They'll say that's gonna be the same for the rest of the life. Right? You don't you
Dr. Mark Hyman
don't ever check
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
once you have a lot of pain a lot. You know? You'll see like Hashimoto's and their number is 500. And they're like, well, it's always gonna be positive. Well, then why did I get my patient to go below a 100?
There was something we were working on that was causing triggering of inflammation. So we started testing our office because people were coming back during, COVID with, like, wait, I just treated. You've been well. I haven't seen you in a long time. All of the same symptoms were getting, like, reactivated.
Like, I remember one of my patients had Lyme disease, completely fine hadn't seen for a year and a half. After COVID had, you know, Bell's palsy, all of the symptoms they had from, like, a year and a half or 2 years ago. And so we just had to put them either either back on the protocol as well as, like, immune modulation. You could just see the numbers all cleared out. So I I I'm looking at it as a what are the things that are triggering up inflammation which are making these things that are, like, underlying actually get worse?
And and then looking at that in its its entirety and making sure because you can also go down one rabbit hole, like making sure you don't even in the space of functional medicine, you're looking at No. Everything's lime. Not everything's mold. Not every yeah. Like, how are you making sure to be open to, other causes?
Because I've even had one of my interesting cases, a patient with RA, wasn't treated. It didn't get get worked up for tick borne diseases. Worked on that, Ari got better had was well hadn't seen for a period of time. And, all of a sudden, all the symptoms came back. And my question to her was, what happened?
What's changed in your life? Like, what has happened? And sure enough, it was like a loss of a family member. But that person didn't connect that that would cause inflammation. Yeah.
And so my recommendation was, well, I'm not gonna recommend anything you need to see a therapist. And sure enough, the person after a month had said they they reached out and said, Doctor Patterson, I don't know if it's just me, but, like, all of my symptoms are gone.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And so I'm like, yes. Stress and, you know, uh-uh, something like that can actually completely trigger up all of those symptoms you had before, but there's this kind of disconnection between that we don't really play pay as much respect as we have on, like, stress and inflammation. Yeah. How cortisol, how that actually can impact the whole inflammatory response as well. Yeah.
I mean,
Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's a really important point because, you know, stress, either exacerbates causes, like, 95% of all illnesses. And and it and and, you know, whatever is going on, it's gonna it's gonna magnify it and and increase your inflammatory state.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, you know, in your talk, you really went deep into understanding how neurotransmitters the brain messenger chemicals get dysregulated
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
By various insults. And all the things we talked about, you know, poor diet, stress, toxins, allergens, microbiome, you know, infections, viral infections, Lyme disease, whatever. Right? There's a common mechanisms that those all result in. That drive an inflammatory state in the brain.
And you mentioned looking at some of the biomarkers like IL-six and C reactive protein, and these are tests we can do through a radio laboratory test. Which, by the way, I'm gonna check very, very doctor, but but you talk about actually when this state of inflammation is going on in the brain, what's actually happening? How how to neurotransmitters get affected, you know, what's happening with with the the brain that causes all these psychiatric symptoms.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you'll actually see altering of, for example, NMDA receptors being impacted, which can cause that issue with glutamate. And then there's this altered. You should have an altered balance of, for example, GABA, which is more relaxing, an inhibitory neurotransmitter versus glutamate is triggering. So if you're having those ratios change, you're going more into a state that's excitatory, which is gonna cause anxiety to pressure Yep. You'll also see some of those protective, cytokines like IL-ten, which are gonna help with inflammation will go down because you're gonna have more of the pro inflammation.
And that is actually one of the big factors feeding into things like dopamine which make you feel good. And dopamine is one of the ones that can go lower for somebody that's depressed.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And when you're inflamed, your dopamine score.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. It'll go lower as those inflammatory markers increase up. So it kind of a chain shifts the whole balance. So we need we need a little bit of each one. So it's not always tell people it's like, we do want a little bit, you know, we do want some food to me.
We want we want those things, but it's it's what that balances and what happens is with inflammation, it changes, not only causing the direct damage to the area of the body, but also changing that the neurotransmitter, the ratios, which will put you more in a state that is gonna be more in balanced.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think we know you we end up causing trouble with the overproduction of excitatory neurotransmitters that stimulate pathways like you mentioned in New York or the lack of of neurotransmitters that help us with mood like dopamine or or serotonin. Right?
And and, you know, one of the tests we do in functional medicine is called an organic urine test, which seems like a crazy thing to do is check your urine if you're having psychiatric issues. But in in my patients is one of the most important tests that I do, and it's something we used to do only for people with inherited metabolic disorders. And you can get it at a lap, but it's it's really about the more subtle changes that occur in the biomarkers that relate to what's going on in your body. And and, you know, one of the one of the things we see is an increase in kynuric acid. Which is this sort of a marker of a
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Pathway that increases up in terms of inflammation and is also a marker looked at when we're looking at neuroinflammation. And it changes trip to fan. And these are all precursors for things like serotonin. So coronin pathways also marker to of, concern when it comes to neuroinflammation.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I see, like, a that sort of assigned to be 6 to functional efficiency. And that is B6 is required to convert tryptophan from your diet into 5 hydroxytryptophan into serotonin. And then when that's not worked or when there's inflammation, it also blocks an enzyme. Can you talk about that enzyme, the idea of enzyme?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. So so it blocks the enzyme that's gonna help with, it's causing more of the increased metabolism to, like you said, in terms of the 5 HIA, in terms of, serotonin. So it's gonna impact that pathway directly, which is going to be increasing up inflammation. But then again, the ones that are helping with things like anxiety, are now getting blunted or impacted negatively where it's actually interfering with the production of it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And one of the biomarkers we see on the organic acids is quinolineic acid. A lot of big words I know out there, but this is a biomarker you can check-in your urine that indicates that that the serotonin is getting shunted down a different pathway. Which then leads to more anxiety, more depression, and you're getting this byproduct, which is highly inflammatory in of itself. And it's it's a toxic kind of metabolite in the brain, and you can see it in the urine. And I can tell when my patient's brains are inflamed, they have high levels of this, whether it's a neurodegenerative disease, or there's ADD or autism or or depression.
And so, you know, we can start to understand the biochemistry of this and the neurobiology of this in ways that allow us to actually directly intervene with therapies that can fix these problems.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Right? In the coronary pathways, like, kind of the precursor to all of those ones that you just discussed. And so also the great thing with, like, the OT test, which you mentioned, there's also a section that tests for catecholamines and those are all connected with norepinephrine epinephrine and checks for, like, HVA and all of those pieces in terms of, your dopamine and also even like fatty acid metabolism because we know, fatty acids help to drop down CRP, which we're talking about with inflammation. And so if you don't have a good balance of omega 3, omega 6, omega 9, you're gonna be, again, more proinflamed, you know, pro inflamed, which also is gonna negatively impact your mental state. So and your physical body obviously, but there's been tons of studies on just omegas as well just for the mental health.
And part of it is that down regulation of, decreasing of, the CRP level.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, you know, one of the things that I I have been reading about, which I find fascinating, and it sort of kinda kinda comports what we're seeing in our society, which is just this increase in dysregulated social behavior, right, aggression, divisiveness, friends can't talk to each other anymore. Families are breaking up over political issues. There's just whatever's going on. There's just some something happening where our social cohesion is breaking down. I mean, I think most Americans pretty middle of the road and are not on the extremes, but the extremes are what we see and hear about.
But there is still a level of a real device in this in our side and a real level of, like, increased in aggression and school shootings and violence. And now, so, I mean, we see it every day that we become almost immune to these stories, which, you know, if you ever had had won, it would have been a big deal. And we didn't have this when I was growing up. It wasn't like every day or every week. There's there's a new shooting in some school.
And and the the level of of just the oppositional behavior and anger and hostility. And, I mean, It's it's, like, I, you know, I have a social media account. I just, like, somebody's gonna put stuff up that's sort of benign, and he goes, like, a litany of hatred. And I'm like, what is going on out there? And why are people acting like part of, you know, they can hide behind their social media handle or whatever, but I I do think there's something fundamental happening to the brain.
And I I've mentioned this before in the podcast, but And when I was writing my book about the food system and the way our food was affecting us, I I wrote a lot about the social aspects of it. And particularly, so studies that I came across around prisoners who when fed a healthy diet would decrease their violent crime in prisons by 56%, and I think a multivitamin reduced it by 80%. And in juvenile detention centers, when kids were fed healthy diets versus the crab, that they were eating. The violent crime went down by 97%. The recent restraints went down by 75% suicide, which you mentioned, went down a 100% in an age group of teenage boys, which is the 3rd leading cause of death.
And that's just simply cleaning up the diet, which is moving them from an inflammatory to an anti inflammatory diet. So I have this theory which is that a lot of our our our social disruption right now is is really related to some level of neuroinflammation. And when I was sort of reviewing your work, you you you were talking a lot about the the the what happens to the adult in the room, which is sort of the person you know, knows we shouldn't go punch somebody in the nose, right, that we want to
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
charge you.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The adult in the room gets disconnected from the ancient limbic reptile brain. And there's this weird disconnection that happens where the adult is gone. And so where the it's like we call it the amygdala hijack, which is the hijack of our of our behavior and our thoughts by this ancient part where rain, which is all about survival, fight or flight. Right? So can you talk about the science around this phenomena that we're seeing around neuroinflammation affecting the connection between the kind of grown up mature person who's supposed to not conduct themselves socially.
And in life with the ancient part of our brain that just, you know, would kill anybody or do on a super shit
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
or something.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So how what is the science behind that? Can you unpack?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And and also the trauma, like, when you look at kids with with they said have shown the trauma from all these events, like, that you were talking about. There's just long term we don't even know yet. Longer term issues with things like anxiety and depression. As a result of the trauma that's that's happening during that time. Exactly.
There's there's there's complete changes. So we have what's called the prefrontal cortex, that develops for kids up until, you know, twenty six years of age. We have what's called the amygdala.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We That's why they the car rental companies don't rent cars to anybody over under 25.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Because of that very because they know
Dr. Mark Hyman
that brains not fully developed. The the grown up in the room is not in the car.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's not. Gonna be the one driving. Right? Yeah. So, we have the hippocampus, which is like for memory.
And those actually both take a hit for anxiety and depression, which make sense because you look when somebody has, like, significant depression or anxiety, you'll you'll see, like, a lot of memory issues, like flightiness for people or anxiety, brain fog, forgetfulness,
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, they don't even call it pseudo dementia. Mhmm. People get older.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They get sued or dementia. Exactly. And and, actually, even the risk of dementia's higher for people with mental health issues as well because likely because of the neuroinflammation. So you'll see, like, those areas amygdala is more connected with, like, anxiety, and that's what controls emotions and that piece with, like, the nine year old driving the bus versus, you know, the adult driving the bus. And so if you're constantly getting taxed with that in everyday day to day trauma, that is gonna be more dysregulated.
I mean, they've had studies that show women passing, like, in terms of being anxious during pregnancy, having an impact on their their their babies that are born of the baby child having more anxiety and things like that. So the development of the, the the prefrontal cortex, which is like impulse impulses can develop up until 26 years of age. Other areas of the brain that get affected and migna like I mentioned, hippocampus and other centers that help to regulate, like, our emotion. So if there's constant, inflammation on on those areas or constant stress, which causes the dysregulation of cortisol levels, those will all, will could potentially impact it impact those those long term too as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you think do you think, like, my theory is right that a lot of the social discord is happening as a result of brain inflammation that's caused by all the factors we talked about. Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I mean, they have tons of studies on technologies impact on dopamine and that every time you have, like, hit, like, even a ring on your cell phone or, you know, like, when you get
Dr. Mark Hyman
your text. Applications.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
You get a dopamine hit for that. Yeah. So one of the pieces is the more and more you have it, the more of a reserve, like, you're having less your bodies constantly needing to push out dopamine for everything with technology. One example I had, it was great because I did a a urinary test and, I was trying to get the person. I I was actually working with someone that I didn't No was a big gamer.
And so, we did the test. And at the evening, the cortisol was, like, was the same that you would have in the morning to wake your cortisol should be higher in the morning to wake up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm low at night.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then I said, what were we and I knew right away. I'm like, were you playing, like, video games? And she looked and was like, How did how did you know him? Like, this number, there's just a lot of, like, hyperactivity. Her dopamine levels were high, norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol was through the roof.
So of course, she's gonna have sleep issues, which she was having. So you'll see that too. I mean, a lot of young people that are also in technology staying up till late at night, as you know, and it interrupts their sleep. And if they're not getting good quality sleep, of course, they're not gonna be able to focus in class. Of course, they're not gonna be able to emotionally regulate as well.
So all of those things have these, like, kind of added effects that can cause, cause issues, but definitely technology with dopamine, and and as much as the parent can work with reducing it in small bits. I don't try to say stop completely. I say let's cut 15 minutes, you know, at a time. So it doesn't seem as significant, but, that's what the great thing about test are because you can act she see and show and demonstrate. And then it's easier to get people to say, oh, okay.
This is why.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so, I mean, I I had a nephew who is this super addicted gamer and, you know, just didn't have a life other than gaming. And and and long story short, he lived with me for a while, and I took it all the way. Literally just hit it. And it it was literally like watching someone go through heroin withdrawal. Oh, yeah.
But he went ballistic. And I was like, wow. This is like a highly addictive thing. So I I think that, and and he had ADHD, and it just made it worse. You know, it made it a lot worse.
And I think I think we we have this incredible moment happening in the field of psychiatry where we're beginning to understand the brain in mental health, not just the mind. And and, you know, talk therapy can be helpful. Sometimes psychiatric medication can be helpful, but it's a pretty limited toolset. Yeah. And now we have a whole new set of tools.
So when you when you see sort of someone come in and and, you know, they could have anything or anything from schizophrenia, to bipolar disease, to depression. There's a process you go through to try to figure things out. You know, like like you know, because depression is not a pros act deficiency. Right? Exactly.
And and, you know, it's kinda how we treat it. Right? We we we we I call it the naming, blaming, and taming game. This came from my mentor, Sid Baker, he says we we named the the disease by the symptoms. And then we blame the name for the cause.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then
Dr. Mark Hyman
we tame it with a drug. So we say, oh, the reason you're hopeless and helpless and have an interest in life and don't can't sleep and have an interest in sex and Norman appetite and you feel sad and you wanna cry all the time is because you're depressed. That's what's causing your symptoms. Well, no. That's just a name that we give to people who share those symptoms.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Mhmm.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The cause could be you're eating gluten, and that's causing brain inflammation or you had a been having a bad die and had reflux because you 20 fried foods and end up on an acid blocker for 10 years, which depletes your beach valve and zinc and magnesium. Or because you maybe have no vitamin d, and that causes depression. Mhmm.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And you're looking to see, like, where does it land? I always say that for autoimmune conditions, it's like, To me, it's all the same thing. There's different names.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
You know, but it's, like, where does it, I say, like, land? And then that's why people have, like, 3 autoimmune conditions? And I'm like, is it really
Dr. Mark Hyman
3 different
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
ones, or is their their system just attacking itself? And it's finding very weirdness. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right. Like, It's like Aspen trees, you know, like, they all look like separate trees, but they're all one underneath.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Still the same. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so that's kinda how how most diseases are. They're not comorbidities. They're not things that that just happened to be randomly showing up. I'm like, you know, this this, you know, kid that I was mentioned before at ADD had, like, 12 different diagnoses. Like, and was on 7 different medications and was seeing 5 or 6 or different specialists.
And and no one asked, how are all these things connected? Mhmm. Like, are these Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And when did it start and how did it start and things like that?
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, the beauty is then we can start to actually think differently about how to approach these problems and start to think about the common the common root causes and how to, 1, do the diagnostic evaluation, which can pick a lot of these things up, and also the the treatment strategies. And it can be something simple. You know, like I mentioned with depression, well, I mean, it can be a B Vitamin deficiency. And I was, writing my book, and I think I was talking to somebody on the phone about it whenever And he heard me when we're talking. He was like, I was fixing my TV in my office, and he had it happen to be working when he was there.
And he's like, oh, yeah. This isn't what you're saying. And, you know, I was really severely depressed. And And then I took, you know, these b vitamins, like these 6, folding b 12, and it went away. And and and actually, Methylfolate or Deflin is actually a a prescription drug, quote, drug, which is a activated for a folate that psychiatrists use for treating depression.
Yes. But it's all, like, kind of this, like, one thing at a time. It's, like, sell the drug model. Uh-huh. It's not really a holistic view of the body as a system.
So so what, Doctor Johnson, when when someone comes to UCU and they're suffering from whether it's depression or whether it's more PTSD or maybe they're having some psychotic kind of borderline issues or bipolar. Where do you start? And then how do you kinda find the things that are driving the problem? And then what what are the sort of steps you take to help resolve that?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I think my most important thing is to also meet people, like, where they're at. So initially, I just
Dr. Mark Hyman
want people to do what I wanna do.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I know how
Dr. Mark Hyman
to get you better.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would be
Dr. Mark Hyman
what I say. You don't get to choose.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would make life a lot easier. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty, actually convincing because like I said, look, let's try this for 10 days.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That's that's what I say. I'm like, let's try removing this food a week and see how you feel and then people come back and they're like, oh, yeah. It worked. Yeah. So I think the one thing when people see, like, naturopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors, they're gonna get tons of lab work done initially.
That's always really important to me in the assessment because I'm gonna look at environmental factors, like I mentioned, like, metal led, you mentioned when you were saying about, juvenile delinquency of, like, changing food, there are studies that even show There's a higher rates of schizophrenia, after the age of fourteen, being, or schizophrenia, actually juvenile delinquency in schizophrenia if they've drink drink from, like, private well water and poor water. So even when you go talking about food, it's like, what is the quality of their water? What is their environment by way pollution. I've had, children that we've
Dr. Mark Hyman
had. Parasites who.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Even parasites where they've had ADHD and then they found that there was a lot of mold in their bedroom and they removed that in all the kids' symptoms are gone, or I've had even adults that were exhausted. And then when I did the assessment, I find out they drink 4 ounce a water. And I'm like, okay. If you try to drink water and they come back, they're like, I feel completely new.
Like, how's your body eliminating toxins? So that's what I meaning people or the app because there could be just basic things that people aren't even aware of. Yeah. But typically with assessments gonna include, like, their medals gonna include things like you said, like, oh, test. I'm gonna look at other infections, organic acid, tests I'm gonna look at.
And especially if someone's like, that rule of, like, ever since of, like, I got sick at this time. And then ever since then, this happened for women, a lot of times, hormones. So, like, after they have a beep, after they have a kid, you'll see those hormones drop down, which hormones actually are like estrogen, can be if it's in a high amount more pro inflammatory and testosterone, more anti inflammatory. So you'll see when there's a shift of that or, the cycle or perimenopause, autoimmune conditions will go up too. So I'm looking to see, like, what that pattern is of, like, when it she became dysregulated and and getting as much like laboratory assessment, but, like, really having deep in-depth conversations of their
Dr. Mark Hyman
you can, you know, oh, yeah. I I was fine until I moved in that house. Exactly. Tell me about that house. Well, you know, it was okay, but it was a little damp basement or had, like, I I think we had mold in the bathroom.
Something, and you get you get these clues. And I think, you know, truthfulness, and we sort of ignore most of those clues. Like, you know, your psychiatrist didn't ask about mold or how to a new age or, you know, frame.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Or were you inflamed? Or
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. No. That's true. And I, you know, I think you mentioned lab testing. You know, I cofounded a company called Functional Health.
And we do a full panel of lab testing. And we look at a lot of things that do affect psychiatric health from your nutritional levels of vitamin D of evaluation of the B vitamins for homocysteine and and methylonic acid, which are ways they're looking at beach valve, folate, and B6. We look at red cell magnesium. We look zinc. We look at also other factors like metabolic health, insulin resistance, which can affect depression.
Look at sex hormones can affect mood. We look
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
at 100%.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Heavy metals. So we we gotta really and we look at inflammation. You know, we've just kind of mind blowing to me, but in our population, we've done, 5,000,000 biomarkers on over 40,000 people and 46% have high CRPs. 30 30 percent. Have high A and A.
67% have a nutritional deficiency, whether it's iron, like you mentioned, or homocysteine problems, or magnesium or omega threes. We look at all these things as part of a a fundamental panel to see what's going on. And it's amazing if you start to things, people get better. And sometimes you have to go deeper. Right?
It's not always just cleaning up your diet and, and and eliminating inflammatory foods and adding a a number nutrients that you may be helpful for your brain or nutrient deficient in. It may also be like, okay. Well, I gotta deal with the heavy metals. So I gotta deal with Lyme disease. We gotta deal with the obesity.
I gotta deal with mold. And those those are things that we don't really deal well with well with traditional medicine, but if you're seeing a functional medicine doctor, you know, they can see you in your practice in kid. They come to our our center in the in Lenox, Massachusetts, the ultra wellness center, and we deal with all these chronic complex issues. And we deal with the the the sort of the the crises in in mental health. And I I I, you know, I did a documentary series years ago called the broken brain.
And it's really about, you know, how most of our brains are not working properly. And we don't really have a great way to deal with brain disorders because our whole thinking has been completely wrong.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And focus and I mean, I have so many, like, I feel like over half of my patients, you asked about brain fog or focus. It's like more than half of them have an issue. It's this Yeah. Like, of the activity with their brain and managing everything that they're doing and rates of what ADHD going up and anxiety, is it truly that, or is it, you know, we're just doing too much as this is, you know, as a society. Yeah.
Part of what I talked about in the presentation giving for I FM too were the other things out side of, like, even diet is, like, the the the benefits of, like, sauna and how that showed to decrease ERP levels and also in studies that they did in Europe for men that there was, like, decreased chance of, like, things like schizophrenia, forest bathing, forest bathing, actually. You just wanna stop there.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You just said take a sick of sauna. I can help reduce psychiatric symptoms and even schizophrenia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Skizophrenia. Yeah. And this this was a study of men at large for, like, decades.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And, they showed that there were lower rates of things like schizophrenia. If you look at, also it decreases CRP levels, which keep talking about with inflammation, you also look at, like, forest bathing. There was a study in Japan to show that the CRP levels went down significantly with more forest bathing and and lasted for a period of time. So these are all the things that you can get people to do in small steps that just shows there's that lack of, connection like loneliness, I think, is a huge factor, and that's one of the biggest things we're always trying to work at in our office. Even with anxiety, they've shown the most effective is doing that with group therapy, like treatment.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Totally. Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Plus therapy. I think it it takes a community, but it's like you doing things to attach yourself from technology, like, you know, ground grounding, sauna, those things, but then also your community of people around you to be able to support you as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think that's really important. And I think, you know, dealing with the the things like exercise and social connection and detoxification, saunas, which regulate your autonomic nervous system, being nature. These are all therapies. Right?
And and they can and they can be really effective, but but, you know, sometimes people have, you know, stuff going on. That that you can do all those things that it may not completely get better. And I I I experienced that. I mean, I I had a lot of brain issues when I had mercury poisoning, and that was my mid thirties, and I cognitively was so impaired. I I couldn't focus.
Think remember I was at the end of a sentence, I went from like, listening to 30 patient stories a day and and not taking any notes to be able to dictate all their charts and remember everything I did and to basically not really be able to be able
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
to Which is scary, especially in
Dr. Mark Hyman
the back. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I and I could feel the the brain dysfunction. And and I've had mold toxicity, and I've had Lyme disease, and I think the incentives cause residual things.
And I
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Sabrina's that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I'm all like, I'm always learning, and I'm always learning myself and experimenting. And I I do pretty well. I've written, like, you know, I'm 20 books in 20 years and do a lot of stuff, but I still, you know, had didn't feel like my brain was back to a 100%. And so I did I did a test, which is actually from Germany when they look at your cellular levels of toxins, which is something that's hard to do because toxins are not obviously, for those listening, easy to measure in the blood because they're often stored in the fat. And so we can measure the fatty membranes and what's in the cells.
And I have, like, mole toxins and pesticides and lots of heavy metals and, you know, dysfunctional, a lot of dysfunctional pathways that related to this and oxidative stress. And I because I could feel myself, like, somebody just point out, like, my this, like, my brain would just I hit the wall, and and I knew it was physiological. But I and I even with all the stuff I do, I wasn't able to sort of fully crack that. Mhmm. And I recently did a protocol, which has been around for a long time, but a modified version called the PK protocol, which you probably know about, which is essentially using the to replace your cell membranes that are toxic with newer healthy substrate for the membrane, which is phospho choline.
It's basically a kind of a fatty compound. And I did, like, a whole bunch of IVs of it. And I redid my test after, and I was, like, dramatically down on all the toxins. And my brain has come back online in a way that I didn't realize I was still affected. You know?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. That's one of my favorite ones, fasasylcholine, because it just protects the the brain, but it's there's tons of studies on it for dementia. Yeah. And also for, and also for ADHD and the and the fa I usually like the phospholipid blends with, like, phosphatilastarian, which actually also helps regulate cortisol levels. So I'll oftentimes do it nighttime.
I personally love to take as I wake up ready to go. Like, my brain is sharp and I'm ready to go. But it's, yeah, because I think it drops to cortisol, but it also has that effect on your your brain, your memory, supportive, that people tend to feel better when they get up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so so what I'm I meant to share with that story is that, you know, it's an ongoing process to figure out the levels at which we're all affected because, you know, we do live in a world with a lot of toxins. We live in a world with crappy diet. We live in a world with a lot stress. We live in a world of things that destroy microbiome.
We live in a world with where we have, things like mold or tick infections or late infections, long COVID. All of that there's a huge role in dysregulating our brain function. So this is kind of a really a a whole new era in in psychiatry. It's a whole renaissance going on. I mean, I I was wondering if you saw it, there's a whole series of articles in the economist recently, which isn't, you know, not a medical not a medical journal.
Things. But the whole thing was on psych. Hi, and the Revolution of psychiatry and how maybe we should be looking in the body to fix the brain. And that that was the subtitle of my book, how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first. Right?
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And I and I see a lot of openness now too in the psychiatric conventionally trained of looking at the diet, the food, the lifestyle, and then also what those medications can have impacted, like, by way of we talk, you know, nutrient deficient sees or are there particular things nutrients that are missing? Yeah. So it's it's going to be, and as we see the rates of mental health issues continue to rise, there's gotta be a lot more level of awareness of, like, what are all the other positive factors besides just genetic. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. And then then genes play a role. Right? They can set up to Sage. And I think maybe part of what we're seeing with the mental health crisis is partly epigenetic.
So epigenetics, right, are are the ways in which our genes are expressed or controlled. So can you share some of your understanding about how epigenetics might affect us. You mentioned, you know, kids born to women who are stressed, whether it was a Holocaust victim survivor or or a 911 Mhmm. Survivor who was pregnant at the time and their babies have all kinds of dysregulated stress response receptors that are genes that get kinda switched on that are not good for us.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so can you talk about how that may be playing a role in terms of, you know, the sort of degradation of our mental health that's a society and how the IP genetics might play a role in that.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And and it it definitely doesn't even when you look at things like, you know, autoimmune conditions, they're multiple infections, especially with the genetic predisposition family members with autoimmune conditions, like myself, there's gonna be a higher risk factor for having autoimmune condition. So I always say, like, those genetic steps, those information shows you that that could be a possible concern for you risk factor, but then the concern is, like, then what do you actually do for that? Like, what are the things you're removing by way of, you know, being aware of, you know, plastics, being aware of, like, environmental exposures. Like, what are the things?
For me, like, my family have family history of, autoimmune conditions, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis for me. I know having infections might be problematic for turning something on. I'd say. So what are those things that we know, potentially are risk factors? And then what do we do to help to augment, what, you know, what connected with and how do we actually decrease it as much as we possibly can.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And so and there and there are there's not just epigenetics, which is which is how genes are regulated. Which definitely affected by, you know, for example, what happens to her mother and uterus was was she stressed when she had a bad bad diet with her toxins exposure. Mhmm. You know, the all those things can affect you.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They get passed down.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that that can manifest, you know, later on in life in the child or even the grandkid. You're also talking about certain genes. So there are there are genes that that do affect your risk of mental illness that we can pass. In fact, dopamine receptors, it affect cortisol receptors. It because everything in your body is made from your genes.
Right? All your receptors, all your tissues, all the proteins. That's what your genes do. And so when when you have certain at risk genes and you put them in the wrong environment, genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And and there's tons of tests now that even tests for neuro inflammation, like anti dopamine mean, like, in terms of antibodies, to, particular markers that can cause inflammation in the brain too. So those are all gonna be helpful risk factors to know, okay, I'm, you know, leaning towards this. What do I do to actually, actually help to to support it fully?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so what what are the foundational principles of, you know, diet, lifestyle, supplementation that can work for a lot of people? It's not it's not gonna personalized, but I'd like to sort of just like, what's your foundational sort of neuropsychiatric Mhmm. Brain health approach?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Okay. So typically, well, I'm always looking at what lifestyle things we can do. One of the things that's really important to me is, like, I always say it's, like, what brings you joy. So I think, yeah, what actually brings you joy, because a lot of people stop doing those things. Oh, yeah.
Okay. Well, yeah, maybe maybe I should do an an add to the claim or disclaimer of what brings you doing that's healthy. So So I find a lot of people stop doing, like, they love to dance, or they love to hike, and they stop doing all those things that, you know, that they have anxiety and depression. It's like, you need to do more of that. Yeah.
And so those things get lost because we live in a busy world. And so some of the thing in terms of the approach is like, how do I get people back to doing some of the things they love to before because then you're happier. Your neurotransmitters are are better. Dopamine, endorphins, everything if you're doing something that you actively feel better. So I look at that or that that you really that brings you joy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The vitamin J deficiency.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Vitamin J. Exacto, I like that. So, so we have that then obviously exercise, but I try to get people just walking. There's tons of studies that shown walking is just as effective if you're consistent. So I I try to go in baby steps of looking at all those things.
And then with food, really looking at things that are more, like, color, as money more plant based foods that you can have as possible. Don't try to initially remove a lot of things, because I I don't initially. Maybe doctor hyman probably is stricter on that because first, they try to More more harder. So, like, you
Dr. Mark Hyman
wanna get better. You gotta
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
difficult for I try to get them to do more adopt better behaviors and then start removing those things that are like really bad. Let let's remove one thing at a time. So I do that. And then when it when I I definitely do the lab assessment and blood work, but the other thing that's helpful is like things like amino acids, amino acid powder, amino acid blends, those are often the precursors to many of the neurotransmitters. So we look at tyrosine, which is, connected with dopamine, north, and then the pathways, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine.
So I'll look at that. I'll look at tryptophan. So an amino acid, but as as supplemental, like Because
Dr. Mark Hyman
you feel like you're eating a protein, they're getting all the amino but
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
they're not oftentimes. And then especially kids, because they just don't eat as well, they might not get enough from their sources. So I'll often look at amino acids, is kind of a beginning, function. I look at a lot of, like, core minerals, like magnesium, zinc, slim. And you do have to be careful with balancing zinc though in copper.
And so I check for that too because a lot of people just take zinc year round. And so you wanna look at that because that can affect the mental state as well. So those are some of the initial things. And then oftentimes I'm looking at other things like adaptogens, or things that can overlap. I mentioned turmeric.
So I might use turmeric because they're also inflamed, but that also helps with depression. Ginger, I can incorporate that in their food. Ginger's connected with helping with GABA, which we talked about earlier, to help improve mood, but also ginger not only helps with digestion, it also helps with inflammation as well. So I always try to look as a practitioner you're working with anybody's working with. Like, are they looking at, yeah, are there are things that we can also cover 2 or 3 things at the same time?
I'm looking at their gut microbiome. Oftentimes, it will do a stool test. And there tends to be issues with that. Chronic as people, chronic diseases have lower levels of things like lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. And particular ones are more protective with, anxiety and mental health issues.
Raminus is one that's connected lactobacillus raminus. Lactobacillus plantarum. So I'll look at those in a stool test, but I also try to and you get that all from, like, fermented foods and eating well. Yeah. But most of us can't get enough, so we might have to do things like a probiotic.
So you really wanna look at that whole piece, but then also going backwards to see, like, when did it begin? Was it after they were sick, had a lot of digestive issues? Because you'll see increases of anxiety and depression also for people with diabetes. It's like much higher with inflammatory bowel disorders, like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. So again, if the rate is higher, then you have to think there is some relation to the gut.
Yeah. They got in mental health.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because you have IPD, but you're
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The other way. Yeah. The other way around.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think that's true. Even Harold La Valle. I remember reading a paper years ago, and I think it was in renewing the journal where they talked about, you know, the rethinking of psychiatric illness that was related to irritable bowel. We just think that people when I when I went to medical schools, like, if you have your old ballots, because it's all in your head.
You know, it's not not real disease.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's on a real disease. And you're
Dr. Mark Hyman
just anxious and stressed. So take a little value. And we used to give us stuff called Librium, which is like basically valium. And and it turns out that it's the abnormal bacteria and the leaky gut and the inflammation that's feeding back to the brain from the gut imbalances of the bacteria and leaky gut that's driving the brain inflammation. It's probably one of the biggest factors
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Yeah. And they also regulate some of the bacteria, like I mentioned, lactobasil ceraminesis is also helping with, like, things like GABA and those And so there's definitely a huge connection there. And most individuals with either chronic disease conditions or mental health conditions will have an impact a 100% on their gut microbiome.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, you know, we we talk a lot about probiotics, but now there's a whole field of psychobiotics. Which are probiotics that affect brain health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That are more particular. Yes. And they they've been studied with, like, mice and and such. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Can you talk about this whole field of psychobotics? Is it legit or, like, Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
There's definitely been studies, Ramenas and Plantarium are 2 of the ones. They have been studied where they had done studies with mice and they actually for depression to an anxiety. I don't know exactly how they decided what it could qualify for a depressed mice, but Hold on. And so, basically, they
Dr. Mark Hyman
exchange that bacteria just like how they were doing with the
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
fecal microbiota. Transplants and they found that those those mice were actually, like, not depressed or not anxious, but then the ones that they gave it to were more anxious or depressed. So there is definitely some sub some subspecies, different strains that have been studied to help with, mental health state as well that actually can potentially improve it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And you you you you talk a lot about the, you know, the sort of even in schizophrenia, how there's, you know, just like, yeah, psychosis. And I think, you know, we don't think of, wow, autism or psych psychosis being connected to the gut bacteria, but it it often can be I remember I had a kid with autism. It was pretty severe autism, and we've looked at a stool test, and he had giardia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Oh, wow.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Which is a, you know, a pretty significant parasite that causes malabsorption and nutritional deficiencies and inflammation. And And I basically just treated his parasite with a drug, the laggle, and the kids autism got him better. Yeah. Wow. That was crazy.
And it doesn't mean all kids with autism have this thing. It just these are just, you know, common ways the body has to say out. So, like, there's not that many ways the body has to say out Mhmm. Right? Depression and anxiety psychosis, you know, the ADD, when he was like, you know, these are things that that there's a pretty finite set of problems that can occur.
But from a very almost infinite variety of different
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Of reason. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Reasons. Right. And so that's why psychiatry has to really shift. And and think one of the fields that's really emerging around this is metabolic psychiatry and mitochondrial health and psychiatry. And Suzanne Go has been on the podcast.
Talked a lot about the role of mitochondria and autism. And a lot of mitochondrial deficiency and these are dysfunction. These kids, Chris Palmer, who's been on the podcast also talked about from his book, Brain Energy. They're all poor metabolic health and is actually using ketogenic diets to treat mental health issues. Wonder what your perspective is on that, and they were he's using it for schizophrenia, bipolar disease.
What what's your perspective on on
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They have had studies. I saw ketogenic and more so for actually Safrania in terms of a ketogenic diet being more, supportive for that because of the the body fueling, basically especially with the mitochondria piece that you that you mentioned in the right way, there's also what's called, like, the mind diet is another one that's very similar to Mediterranean diet probably has the most studies for mental health, and it includes, like, when you look at Mediterranean more like higher levels of acromancia, which is one that now has been shown for, like, cognitive support and tons of benefits of of that particular strain. So,
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that reminds you, produces GABA. Mhmm. Exactly.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So,
Dr. Mark Hyman
basically, like, you don't wanna take a neurotransmitter supplement, you take a probiotic or you feed that probiotic with polyphenols, and then you'll you'll get naturally occurring beneficial.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Or GABA. Yes. And then when I often test people, they're often deficient in, like, a acromancy or they don't have enough Bacillus and all of those things that are actually protective for them. So we look to, you know, see how we're we're actually gonna like, fully augment that. And then how do we get to the state where they're managing it as much as they can through diet?
And we don't have to do as much by supplementation.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That means just an extraordinary moment to be in this field of psychiatry. Any any other exciting stories you wanna share about some cases that that got better? From using
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
that? Yeah. I think, the I tend to work with a lot of children with, with pans and pandas and also that have kind of coupled with like ADHD, etcetera. And so it's just been, You know, many patients where the the parent, when a child has pans or panda, what happens is there's an acuity of symptoms. So overnight, the parent, I remember one of my first cases, the parents said, my daughter went in to go take a shower, and she came back and she was a different kid.
They started getting scared of eating, that they're gonna choke on their food. They start having a lot of issues at nighttime, OCD, significant anxiety, and even getting pulled out of school. So my then reward is to be able to see now, having these children within, like, a few months being able to get them back you know, to school or I've had, kids that have been, like, out of college for a year because of their illness with, you know, tick borne diseases. And now they're like, they're fully back in in one kid I just saw the other day. She's going into a nursing program.
And I'm like, wow. That's, you know, amazing to see. And these are individuals that would have fallen through. Yeah. You know, fallen through the cracks and just told to get on psychiatric med and may have tried it.
And there's no vent. They haven't changed. So I get a lot of stories, especially with the the parent because overnight, it changes the whole family dynamic. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, the kids respond so well too. It's quite amazing. I mean, grown is really hard, but Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Kids it's instant. It's really amazing. I like
Dr. Mark Hyman
to have a basic overall healthy sort of substrate, basically. I am reminded me of a kid I had with pandas, which is this pediatric associated neuro inflammatory disease
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
that
Dr. Mark Hyman
causes OCD and horrible behaviors
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
in the kids. Potentially. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Really scary for the parents. And, this kid had, you know, positive strep antibodies and inflammation. And I said, well, geez, you know, it's not you can't just throw any botics at it because it may not really work. But actually, I recommend an intravenous ozone for this kit Oh. Which is kind of a little out of left field, but I really understood the role of those under decreasing information and and being a powerful German side, and this kid completely got better.
And it was amazing, you know, and, like, and for good, you know. So I think there's so many people suffering out there with a whole array of mental health issues whether it's just sort of, you know, low grade depression or anxiety or more severe depression or more severe mental illnesses, like bipolar disease or OCD or pandas or autism or or schizophrenia or psychosis or a whole range of things that now we're sort of beginning to finally understand and and I think we're getting too closer to what the truth is. It's not I
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
agree. Even like infections that that, you know, controversial, like, after COVID, it's like, oh, you can still have long term symptoms. Because with Lyme disease, for example, was told after you got antibiotics, you're good to go. But when you look at it, there's what's called post treatment, Lyme disease about up to 30% can continue to have symptoms, especially like arthritic, and joint pain and those types of symptoms. So I think there's now become greater awareness of like, oh, these little micro assaults or infections can cause different areas of impact on the body, including mental health issues.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So Well, I mean, you're you're you're, such a pioneer. You're doing such great work in this field. I think, people need to know more about your work. They can find you on your website Mhmm. Women in lime.com.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
My practice is Fairfield Family Health in Connecticut. And, we're also having a summit shortly. It's called lime heal hers.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And the reason we did that was because one of the things that's important to me was to have represented different faces. And we wanted to have it where it was all women because that Yeah. Yeah. They never do that, you know, for for events. So We did, a whole lineup of different topics.
So check that out because we're having another, summit in in August. So we definitely look at that as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you also have a book women in lime.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. Women in lime. I have a couple of books. Women in lime, and then the other one was on long COVID and what to do. It's actually a great book because it's a small short book that I did with, another doctor, my office, Doctor Midea.
And so that's a great one. And I'm pretty active on Instagram natural pathic dot physician where I try to post that information to.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, thank you so much, for what you do, Doctor. Paterson. This has been an amazing conversation. I hope it's been helpful for people listening because people struggling out I mean, mental health is, you know, obesity and mental health are the 2 biggest things facing us, and they're, by the way, they're not unrelated. So, I'm I'm excited to keep learning from you.
And, I hope everybody checks out your work and, keep up the good work.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The the benefits of, like, sauna and how that showed to decrease ERP levels and also in studies that they did in Europe, for men that there was, like, decreased chance of, like, things like schizophrenia.
Dr. Mark Hyman
For That's crazy. Wait. You just wanna stop there. You said take a sick, a sonic, and help reduce psychiatric symptoms and even schizophrenia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could everyone via my personal practice. There's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, You, if you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my member community, hymen hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Welcome to The Doctor's Farmacy. I'm doctor Mark Hyman. That's Farmacy would have a place for conversations that matter. And if you've struggled with mental health issues, if you know anybody who has, which is pretty much everybody in America that has had or has experience someone in their family or friend who's had mental illness, you're gonna need to listen to this podcast because it's with the pioneering physician, doctor Jacquel Patterson who spent a lot of time diving into why there are so many problems with mental health in America. And what are the root cause How do we think about things differently?
She's been published in in many journals. She's a well known speaker. She's had 16 years of clinical experience. She's on the board of the American Academy Environmental Medicine. She's a certified functional medicine practitioner.
She's got her MBA, and she's just so focused on trying to make the world a better place by getting patients the help they need through the right approaches of functional medicine. So I hope you love this podcast. Dive right in. Welcome to Doctor's Pharmacy Gicel. It's great to have you.
And I'm I'm so excited about our discussion because it's gonna address one of the biggest crises we're facing today. Which is an explosion in mental illness and the explosion of crisis in mental health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And
Dr. Mark Hyman
we're seeing dramatically rising rates of depression, anxiety, ADD, bipolar disease, suicide rates. I mean, just All the numbers are going through the roof. And the question is really what is going on out there and how do we deal with this differently? Because our traditional approaches in psychiatry really have not adically dealt with with the crisis in mental health. And despite better medications and lots of medications, I mean, I think you had your medications with your leading category of drug sales.
Or maybe the second, actually. I think it's the second, actually, after statins. We're we're not making a lot of progress. People don't really get much better for these drugs. The the data on the effectiveness of them is is sort of not that impressive.
Sometimes often no better than a placebo. For some people, they can be effective, but that that's really missing the very fundamental idea about what's causing this. You know, I I and I remember learning about psychiatric disease in medical school and, you know, basically, we're really good classifying people according to symptoms. What are the symptoms that indicate your depression or ADHD or anxiety or OCD or OCD or whatever it is, bipolar disease, And the they were just descriptive, but they didn't tell you anything about the cause or or the mechanism. And then it's kinda been a black box, right, because basically the joke is a neurologist.
Pay no attention to the mind and psychiatrist pay no attention to the brain. But brain dysfunction, it doesn't show up like other parts of dysfunction in our body. If we have arthritis because our joints are inflamed, well, we get a swollen joint and it hurts. But when our brains damaged or inflamed, which we were talking about, it doesn't show up as pain in the brain. It shows up as psychiatric symptoms.
Yes. And so we kinda misappropriate meaning to these diseases, which we have seen to skyrocket in the last decade or 2 or even, you know, it's just I I wrote a book Ultra Mind solution 15 years ago and it was a lot then and it's getting worse and worse. It's like it's getting worse. It's like watching a slow moving tsunami. And and I remember reading a a book when I was in college called Matt civilization by a French philosopher called Michelle Fuco, and he was very good at describing the historical context of mental illness throughout the age You know, it was, you know, visitation by god or possession by demons or, you know, evil humors or whatever thing, or maybe it's your, like, in euro, you know, and if it's complex or Freud or whatever the kind of latest version of the story was about psych psychiatric illness.
And the truth is it kind of mostly missed the mark about what's really going on, because we see things. Then we put labels on them, but we don't really think about the cause. And what what I'd love to talk to you about today is is your experience as a clinician, in the in the trenches seeing people with a whole array of mental illnesses that you've been able to sort of unpack through the lens of functional medicine rather than the old model, name the disease, and give the person a drug for that disease. Right? And And so I'm curious how you started getting into as a as a practicing clinician.
What got you into this idea that we should be thinking differently about psychiatric illness?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Well, I act as a natural like physician practicing for over, you know, 15 or 16 years. And one of the things Lyme disease was something I struggled with myself, also other family members and treating patients with that. I started seeing a much larger growth of individuals with symptoms of anxiety and depression and mood changes. Yeah. And It really forced me as a clinician and and and and people practicing in the space and functional medicine space.
We're getting to the underlying cause. The to find out why, you know, what are the reasons? What are the causative agents? And so, for many of my patients at that time that were struggling with it, I would see as I worked on the or worked on inflammation or immune tolerance, their symptoms or mental health symptoms went, you know, significantly improved or they were able to get off medication, or it was no longer an issue. And so that's why I kinda went back, did additional 2 years of training in functional medicine, also in addition to ADHD, and there's so many factors that we don't look at, you know, environmental factors outside of things like genetics, because people often blame it on genetics or have a family history, which is definitely a contributing factor, but there are a lot of other factors outside of that, including infections, including, you know, trauma, including, even like TBIs and things like that.
I'll see if my patients had traumatic brain injury. Will be significantly worse if there's also history of multiple concussions. So just we wanna look at that full picture and, there's more than just neuroinflammation, but it's a huge factor that a lot of, physicians don't look at in their workup when they're working with the patient with mental health issues.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Mia's That's really interesting because I I had the same experience. You know, you you came at this who treating patients with Lyme disease and infections, which are inflammatory diseases, And basically by treating the body, their brains got better.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I I had the same experience when I was treating, you know, patients years ago. I started to see I was treating their gut or their allergies or their some other inflammatory problem and using the principles of functional medicine to restore balance in the body and their psychiatrics in get better, whether it was, things even like psychosis or ADHD or depression or anxiety or OCD or bipolar disease. And I was like, This is really crazy because this doesn't this isn't anything I ever read in a textbook. Like, I I when I wrote that book 15 years ago, I'd it wasn't like a big thing back then. I'm talking about the microbiome or nutritional psychiatry or metabolic psychiatry or microbiome psychiatry.
Now it's it's out there in these major academic centers, and we've had many of the researchers from these centers on the podcast. No one linked to their their podcast in the show notes. But it's it's been sort of a a revolution. And the problem is most people suffering out there don't know this. And so love to sort of unpack a little bit about what are the causes of this sort of rise in mental illness and and what can we do about it?
Like, where where do we start to think do we think start to think about the causes? What are the reasons you mentioned neuroinflammation? What is that? How does it work? And what causes it?
And you know, is that the only thing that's driving this crisis? And so help us understand that.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Anxiety, depression, mental health disorders have been, you know, on the rise, but after COVID, the pandemic, increase significantly, especially for adolescents and young adults, where you'll see, for example, 1 out of 3 individual some point in the life have have struggled with anxiety. For depression, for adults, it's about around 10%. But when you look at adolescence, it's around 15% for depression and almost 30% for anxiety, and also the leading cause of death, is suicide. For that that age too. So I think there's so it's multifaceted loneliness, isolation, technology, social media, those things that we do which affect the, you know, the neurotransmitters, like dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine, which affect your reward system, etcetera, but also infections, they have shown that, after, COVID, some of the individuals that actually had COVID initiated potential initiating factor for autoimmune conditions.
Like type 1 diabetes actually was one of the ones, lupus MS. So there had been increases you can see in autoimmune conditions as well since 2020. So there's definitely a
Dr. Mark Hyman
COVID related autoimmune
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
disease. So you have, like, inflammation, I say is, like, the first step, and there's immune tolerance or immune, dysregulation, then followed by psychiatric conditions. So if you look at autoimmune conditions, or individuals with chronic disease conditions like type 2 diabetes, they're much more likely to have higher rates of mental health issues. And there's even studies that have shown like higher levels of this enzyme called C reactive protein, which is part of an inflammatory protein that usually goes up initially, with inflammation that high levels of CRP as a as a child increases, like, significantly risks of at Jafrania.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
leader in life. And so that is, chronic inflammation as a child is going to also increase your risk for mental health disorders.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's really quite amazing when you think about the fact that psychiatrists never looked at the brain. And now psychiatric medicine is starting to look brain. And and doing even brain biopsies on people who've died who had certain conditions like autism or schizophrenia or looking at spinal fluid and And what they're seeing is literally these brains on fire.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And if
Dr. Mark Hyman
you look at every single brain disease, pretty much, you know, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, if you look at the brains, they're literally inflamed. Like, you'd have a swollen joint or a sore throat. Yeah. And and so in in traditional psychiatry, there's really no treatment for it. I don't wanna, like, take Advil.
Is that gonna work? Probably not. Right? There are actually even studies I've seen using biologics like TNF alpha blockers, which are basically massively expensive, extremely powerful immune suppressing medication that have significant side effects. And they're talking about using that for depression as opposed to figuring out what the upstream causes are.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. Why is the inflammation happening in the first place?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Traditional medicine. It's like, okay. Well, it's inflammation in the brain. Okay. Got that.
But let's figure out what drugs you can use to shut it off. Let's do chemo drugs. Let's do steroids. Let's do biologics. Let's do Advair.
Like, it ain't gonna work because, you know, one of the fundamental rules of functional medicines, if you're standing on takes a lot of aspirin, make it feel better. Take out the attack. Remove the cost. Right? And so from your perspective, what are the fundamental causes of this acceleration in brain inflammation?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and let's start to unpack some of those and get into how we how we can start to diagnose them and how we can start to treat them.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So chronic and actions are 1. So, area of focus for main practices, Lyme disease, and tick borne diseases. Those have been heavily connected also even to other conditions like pans and pandas that children will have, which causes acute inflammation of the brain. Neuropsychiatric. It's called pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome.
And that can be initiated from an infection like strep or walking pneumonia, where the body is actually inflamed and attacking attacking itself, but triggered more towards the brain. So what happens is you have, in your body, you have what's called the blood brain barrier, and that keeps things in and out for the most part. We keep most of the things out. There might be like a couple 1 or 2% that can get, leakage of solutes, etcetera, that'll go through the brain. Then after that, what happens is you have these what's called microglia.
There's it's part of the, CNS is called the glial cells. And microglia gets activated. And what microglia yes. For the brain. And microglia acts like I say it's like a cleaner.
So it's coming in to help clean out, you know, any inflammation debris. And so if it's highly activated where you're seeing, someone where the microglia is more active. There's more work it's doing to actually clean up these inflammatory mediators and what ones that are triggered, for anxiety and impression are things like, interleukins like IL6, IL 1, TNF, tumor necrosis factor, those will also go up when there's chronic brain inflammation. So those are cytokines. Those are cytokines.
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Cytokines storm from COVID. These are these are bodies, immune messengers that they're good when there's something acute like an infection.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. If you
Dr. Mark Hyman
wanna fight and you wanna bring inflammation to you, but they're not good if they're chronic.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. And so you'll look at, like, IL 6 which, precedes CRP, which I mentioned earlier, and that was shown to be highly ev elevated for individuals like post COVID, long, you know, long COVID or have had, you know, chronic issues. So that one and has been definitely connected with really any chronic disease condition and especially things like depression. It's one of the reasons why there's been tons of studies on things like turmeric, curcumin to help with depression. In fact, one recent study had showed, having curcumin in your diet.
So I know you do a lot on food and diet that It increases up four and a half times of, like, stress resilience Yeah. Of just having that in your daily diet. And that's because of inflammation, and we're continuing to be, like, an inflamed society based on environmental burning, plastics, toxins, metals, like mercury and leg will increase up inflammation, actual trauma to the brain, chronic disease, which influences circulation, blood flow, etcetera. Infections, like I mentioned. So many different a positive agents of it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. You know, like, I'm I'm generally a very happy person, and I've always been happy. And, I remember when I was very sick with poisoning and then Lyme disease in obesity. You know, I I felt physiologically depressed and and cognitively impaired. And it was interesting to me because I kinda knew, like, my higher self knew.
I wasn't depressed. I wasn't psychologically depressed, but there was some process going on in my body that was affecting my brain. Mhmm. And literally causing my me to have a broken brain. And and we see this so much in our patients.
And you mentioned a few things like latent infections and ticks. It could be viruses. It could be your microbiome Mhmm. The out of balance and dysbiosis. You mentioned environmental toxins.
Like, I had the mercury that definitely causes the anxiety and insomnia depression, it could be diet and inflammatory. You're talking about anti inflammatory effects of curcumin, but there's, an American diet we're eating, which is primarily processed food or ultra processed food to be more specific, which is about 60% of our diet that's driving systemic inflammation in the body. So We see a lot of the reasons why we're we're getting this increase in in in psychiatric illness. And yet, the the people who most need help are not really getting the answers.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So how do you how do you start to approach someone who comes in with because because you're you're obviously seeing a lot of Lyme patients, but are people coming to you just for psychiatric stuff?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. Yes. We have a lot for solely, anxiety, and depression. Also ADHD, we see a lot of children for that because often parents are looking at what else can I do before I have to put them on medication? So It's
Dr. Mark Hyman
like 13% of kids are on medication.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's very, very high. And and you look at, like, when you just mentioned diet, diet, they've had studies on, flavonoids, which are in, more colorful colorful, like citrus fruits, berries, things like that. They've shown increases in just having that amount has helped with anxiety and depression. So when you look at things also like ADHD, anxiety, mental health, there sometimes is the, we first have to work on, like, what is their actual food and diet like? You know, because that's the basic because if they are deficient in minerals like iron, magnesium, zinc, those 3 are heavily connected with, like, how your, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine focus,
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
All of those factors. So those are are huge things to first also initially look at.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so it's not just the things that are driving inflammation, like, you know, inflammatory foods like sugar
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
and
Dr. Mark Hyman
processed food, not just toxins, not just infections, not just the microbiome, but it's also what we're missing.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. No. No.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I I I just, as you were talking about this case of ADHD, you know, I had a low kid I treated who just lived on junk food. He had all these allergies and all these other health issues, gut issues, headaches, anxiety, you know, irritable bowel, I mean, just the whole gamut of different things, asthma. It's not me. Everything. But he had really bad ADHD and, you know, but he when we looked at his diet, he was eating pretty much all processed food and that number of vegetable on-site.
And so he was massively deficient in, you know, all sorts of missions, particularly as you mentioned, like zinc, and magnesium, as as well as some of the b vitamins, which are important in mood health. Can you talk about, you know, the role of some of these nutrients? Because I think, you know, we don't realize this, but 90 plus percent of Americans are deficient in 1 or more nutrients at an optimal at the minimum level
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
To prevent an efficiency disease, not the optimal level we want for help. So what what I might say is how much, you know, vitamin d. Do you need to not get rickets? Probably 30 units? How much you need for optimal health?
Maybe 3000. Right?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. And they and there are tons. So, like, you look at iron. I've seen a lot of people's changes in their blood work with like ferritin and iron levels, which increases the blood flow to the brain. So, of course, you're also gonna be tired of having brain fog, etcetera.
So nutrients are hugely important. Magnesium, when we look at it, most of the population is something like over half or more than half. I think it's like 80%. Are deficient in magnesium because we're not getting it from the soil, but b vitamins when you look at things like B6, B12, folate, those are all connected nutrient really important for mental health and also they also help to feed the adrenal glands and thyroid. So and they get depleted when you're more stressed.
So the more stress we are, the more b vitamins we're gonna consume. And the only way you're getting that is from either diet or, nutritional, you know, by nutritional by nutritional supplementation as well. So that is kind of one of the first starts I have with, patients and also many of those many medications that's what usually the first to get impacted are the is b vitamins. Yeah. Well, the people don't realize that.
Yeah. I mean, people don't realize that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You're right. Like, you people don't realize know, oh, don't don't take this vitamin if you're on this drug, but it's actually also true the opposite. If you're on a lot of medication, you're losing a lot of
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. So you need something to augment it. So you become deficient in those things that often help particularly with the mitochondria, like b vitamins.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And and you, you know, here at the annual international conference and functional medicine here in Las Vegas and, you're giving a talk soon, which is really about the interplay of of immune function and psychiatric health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and in there, you talk about this, not just sort of at a high level, but you talk about some of the real specific mechanisms that are underlying this. And I love to sort of get into some of the science and the biology around this because you mentioned magnesium, for example, but You know, a lot of the the inflammatory things that we're doing that we mentioned affect this part of the brain that is something called an NMDA receptor. Mhmm. Which is stimulated in in ways that can be overstimulated to actually cause psychiatric symptoms. Mhmm.
And also there's be linked to dementia and so forth. But but for example, magnesium plays a role in regulating this.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And MDA receptors. When you look at even vitamin d, vitamin d has shown that people that are with have autoimmune conditions or chronic disease conditions, the lower their vitamin d levels are lower than 40, the worsening of, like, the actual symptoms, like, the their symptoms are more more pronounced. And so, n n m d a, we look at things like because it can affect, GABA, and I mean, glutamate glutamate and GABA in terms of altering what that balance is. And glutamate will be more of an excitatory neurotransmitter.
So that's gonna cause mood changes, irritability, a lot of, variability in the mood itself. That's why
Dr. Mark Hyman
we have MSG. You get the MSG headaches and
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
brain fog. Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's monoclonal glutamate. And GABA is basically another neurotransmitter that's kinda like volume in the brain. Right?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. And it's like an inhibitory neurotransmitter. And so it's interesting when you look at inflammation especially for things like schizophrenia and depression, markers that are actually anti inflammatory, like IL-ten, for example, go down And then the markers that are more in pro inflammatory, like IL 6 will go up. And so those, like, IL 10 is actually connected to dopamine which is related to depression and mood. Also, GABA, there's a change where GABA will go down, which actually helps to support anxiety and to make you feel better.
And so you'll see this kind of shifting where it's like more glutamate and things that are more triggering, to the brain and and inflamed versus things that are kinda more calming like a dopamine or a GABA.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So we're basically taking in too many things that are driving brain inflammation, and we're not doing the things that help reduce brain inflammation. Or a diet or lifestyle or exercise or, you know
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The balance is completely off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And and and and and and, you know, it's it's it's really heartbreaking because you and I see this in our practices that it's not like we can cure all mental illness from all patients from all things, but this model of functional medicine psychiatry is actually a profoundly effective model for treating mental health issues. If people understood what to do. And and we've had Christopher Palmer on the podcast who's talked about brain energy and the metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunctions underlying gastric disease and treating schizophrenia with a ketogenic diet. These are highly anti inflammatory approaches.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so, you know, What have you seen clinically in your practice when you start to apply this? What are the kinds of things you're discovering? What are the tests you're doing to help identify these problems? One of the treatments you're starting to kind of apply to help people with with this problem, neuroinflammation?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Well, there's a lot of different tests. So one thing I say is through the conventional you are gonna look at the inflammatory markers. Like I mentioned, CRP, IL 6, you might wanna look at ESR, some just basic core inflammatory markers because oftentimes someone with mental health issue, they're not running. They're not looking at information as it relates they might run it for a different reason, but they're not necessarily looking at it. Press it
Dr. Mark Hyman
if you get a B Twelve and invited
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
me. Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Thyroid, you know.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And so you wanna look at those other nutrients, like RBC zinc, RBC magnesium, all of the, corn nutrients that you can do. We also I also do urinary tests or specialty urinary tests to test for the neurotransmitters. So I look at at that. I also look at other factors that can contribute that people don't necessarily think of like histamine and allergies.
Like, I I was in us when you asked, that question. I start seeing a a group of a lot of kids that would come in every time the season changed. And, histamine worsening psychiatric systems. And if you look at it, histamine actually crosses, in files a circadian rhythm. So it's a little bit, typically worse in the morning and then later in the evening, histamine is also an excitatory neurotransmitter.
So people don't think of it like that. And so you'll see, like, all these mood changes, increase anxiety. And for many of those patients, I might just say, hey, get on antihistamine or, you know, natural ones would be things like corsetins, stinging nettles. And so that will actually help because they become less inflamed.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you'll see, like, when someone is having, I when I put them on an antihistamine during that time and some general anti inflammatories, everything kinda cools out So that's also, like, looking at things like that or mold environmental factors mold suppresses the immune function, increases of histamine. It causes brain fog and folk is it can cause mood changes. So there are so many
Dr. Mark Hyman
pieces environmentally.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. Me as well. I I also had like you. Oh my god. So I'm I'm laughing when you were speaking because I'm like, I've had all of those two lines.
Babesia and Babesia is one as well as Bartnell that affects a neurological symptom. So it's symptom. So at that time, when I had it when I was in school, I was, like, completely drenched I actually was wearing I didn't even realize for, like, a year and a half, like, all dark colors because I would be completely soaked, but it was on one side. And so I was told Interesting. What a lot of my patients are told the patients that you've seen is is it's in your head.
You're just anxious. And I can was like, but I'm I'm having this happen when I'm just going to the grocery store and things where I'm not
Dr. Mark Hyman
anxious.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I'm not actually it should be anxious or stressed out. And so that's the story. Which work
Dr. Mark Hyman
can be being anxiety producing.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then you start having more. So that was the one thing that when I first start working with patients and and also learning about Lyme disease that a lot of them see about at least 7 to 9 doctors or many of the patients that come to see functional medicine tires before they actually get treated and diagnosed. And so I was one of them dealing with these symptoms that especially with women in particular will get kind of written off of your you have a lot going on. You have a lot on your plate, which we do. But what else could it be besides just pure stress and anxiety.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it's it's it's it's sometimes important to dig. And, you know, you you it's not like Everybody with depression is the same cause for everybody with ADD is the same cause. And we'd label people, and then we think they're all the same. Right?
You have depression, anxiety, AD, bipolar OCD, whatever it is, schizophrenia. These are just labels that have nothing to do with the underlying cause, which can be many things. Right? And and so, you know, you mentioned a lot of them, you know, in your talk around infections. We talked about toxins, poor diet, stress, trauma, and and, even aging itself, and it can actually drive inflammation in the body.
So all these things can be actually tested for and diagnosed and treated. And what kind of clinical, outcomes are you seeing when you're trying to treat a patient? Maybe you can share some cases. To sort of make it more real for people. Because I think it's abstract a little bit.
I mean, okay, inflammation. And we'll talk about what information does the brain. Maybe we could just share a little a little bit about the cases that you think are relevant to illustrate this connection.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I've definitely had patients where they're, especially my patients with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. And they've gotten sick or an infection like COVID, and you'll see their CRP levels go up high, their ferritin levels go up, which can go up as an acute inflammatory And with that, you'll see, like, rheumatoid factor increase significantly, or they got another infection, like I mentioned, like, Lyme disease and all of a sudden, in their A and A or their titers will go up. So I've had many patients where we've worked with, you know, like that situation where when we've worked on the in the inflammation when we worked on the infections, I'll actually see it where their antibodies, like, are no longer positive. Where rheumatoid factor is no longer showing. Or the ANA is like at 1, you know, 40 versus like 12 60, which is a marker for autoimmune condition.
So what you'll see is like and and that's often something in conventional medicine. They'll say that's gonna be the same for the rest of the life. Right? You don't you
Dr. Mark Hyman
don't ever check
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
once you have a lot of pain a lot. You know? You'll see like Hashimoto's and their number is 500. And they're like, well, it's always gonna be positive. Well, then why did I get my patient to go below a 100?
There was something we were working on that was causing triggering of inflammation. So we started testing our office because people were coming back during, COVID with, like, wait, I just treated. You've been well. I haven't seen you in a long time. All of the same symptoms were getting, like, reactivated.
Like, I remember one of my patients had Lyme disease, completely fine hadn't seen for a year and a half. After COVID had, you know, Bell's palsy, all of the symptoms they had from, like, a year and a half or 2 years ago. And so we just had to put them either either back on the protocol as well as, like, immune modulation. You could just see the numbers all cleared out. So I I I'm looking at it as a what are the things that are triggering up inflammation which are making these things that are, like, underlying actually get worse?
And and then looking at that in its its entirety and making sure because you can also go down one rabbit hole, like making sure you don't even in the space of functional medicine, you're looking at No. Everything's lime. Not everything's mold. Not every yeah. Like, how are you making sure to be open to, other causes?
Because I've even had one of my interesting cases, a patient with RA, wasn't treated. It didn't get get worked up for tick borne diseases. Worked on that, Ari got better had was well hadn't seen for a period of time. And, all of a sudden, all the symptoms came back. And my question to her was, what happened?
What's changed in your life? Like, what has happened? And sure enough, it was like a loss of a family member. But that person didn't connect that that would cause inflammation. Yeah.
And so my recommendation was, well, I'm not gonna recommend anything you need to see a therapist. And sure enough, the person after a month had said they they reached out and said, Doctor Patterson, I don't know if it's just me, but, like, all of my symptoms are gone.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And so I'm like, yes. Stress and, you know, uh-uh, something like that can actually completely trigger up all of those symptoms you had before, but there's this kind of disconnection between that we don't really play pay as much respect as we have on, like, stress and inflammation. Yeah. How cortisol, how that actually can impact the whole inflammatory response as well. Yeah.
I mean,
Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's a really important point because, you know, stress, either exacerbates causes, like, 95% of all illnesses. And and it and and, you know, whatever is going on, it's gonna it's gonna magnify it and and increase your inflammatory state.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, you know, in your talk, you really went deep into understanding how neurotransmitters the brain messenger chemicals get dysregulated
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
By various insults. And all the things we talked about, you know, poor diet, stress, toxins, allergens, microbiome, you know, infections, viral infections, Lyme disease, whatever. Right? There's a common mechanisms that those all result in. That drive an inflammatory state in the brain.
And you mentioned looking at some of the biomarkers like IL-six and C reactive protein, and these are tests we can do through a radio laboratory test. Which, by the way, I'm gonna check very, very doctor, but but you talk about actually when this state of inflammation is going on in the brain, what's actually happening? How how to neurotransmitters get affected, you know, what's happening with with the the brain that causes all these psychiatric symptoms.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So you'll actually see altering of, for example, NMDA receptors being impacted, which can cause that issue with glutamate. And then there's this altered. You should have an altered balance of, for example, GABA, which is more relaxing, an inhibitory neurotransmitter versus glutamate is triggering. So if you're having those ratios change, you're going more into a state that's excitatory, which is gonna cause anxiety to pressure Yep. You'll also see some of those protective, cytokines like IL-ten, which are gonna help with inflammation will go down because you're gonna have more of the pro inflammation.
And that is actually one of the big factors feeding into things like dopamine which make you feel good. And dopamine is one of the ones that can go lower for somebody that's depressed.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And when you're inflamed, your dopamine score.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. It'll go lower as those inflammatory markers increase up. So it kind of a chain shifts the whole balance. So we need we need a little bit of each one. So it's not always tell people it's like, we do want a little bit, you know, we do want some food to me.
We want we want those things, but it's it's what that balances and what happens is with inflammation, it changes, not only causing the direct damage to the area of the body, but also changing that the neurotransmitter, the ratios, which will put you more in a state that is gonna be more in balanced.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think we know you we end up causing trouble with the overproduction of excitatory neurotransmitters that stimulate pathways like you mentioned in New York or the lack of of neurotransmitters that help us with mood like dopamine or or serotonin. Right?
And and, you know, one of the tests we do in functional medicine is called an organic urine test, which seems like a crazy thing to do is check your urine if you're having psychiatric issues. But in in my patients is one of the most important tests that I do, and it's something we used to do only for people with inherited metabolic disorders. And you can get it at a lap, but it's it's really about the more subtle changes that occur in the biomarkers that relate to what's going on in your body. And and, you know, one of the one of the things we see is an increase in kynuric acid. Which is this sort of a marker of a
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Pathway that increases up in terms of inflammation and is also a marker looked at when we're looking at neuroinflammation. And it changes trip to fan. And these are all precursors for things like serotonin. So coronin pathways also marker to of, concern when it comes to neuroinflammation.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I see, like, a that sort of assigned to be 6 to functional efficiency. And that is B6 is required to convert tryptophan from your diet into 5 hydroxytryptophan into serotonin. And then when that's not worked or when there's inflammation, it also blocks an enzyme. Can you talk about that enzyme, the idea of enzyme?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. So so it blocks the enzyme that's gonna help with, it's causing more of the increased metabolism to, like you said, in terms of the 5 HIA, in terms of, serotonin. So it's gonna impact that pathway directly, which is going to be increasing up inflammation. But then again, the ones that are helping with things like anxiety, are now getting blunted or impacted negatively where it's actually interfering with the production of it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And one of the biomarkers we see on the organic acids is quinolineic acid. A lot of big words I know out there, but this is a biomarker you can check-in your urine that indicates that that the serotonin is getting shunted down a different pathway. Which then leads to more anxiety, more depression, and you're getting this byproduct, which is highly inflammatory in of itself. And it's it's a toxic kind of metabolite in the brain, and you can see it in the urine. And I can tell when my patient's brains are inflamed, they have high levels of this, whether it's a neurodegenerative disease, or there's ADD or autism or or depression.
And so, you know, we can start to understand the biochemistry of this and the neurobiology of this in ways that allow us to actually directly intervene with therapies that can fix these problems.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Right? In the coronary pathways, like, kind of the precursor to all of those ones that you just discussed. And so also the great thing with, like, the OT test, which you mentioned, there's also a section that tests for catecholamines and those are all connected with norepinephrine epinephrine and checks for, like, HVA and all of those pieces in terms of, your dopamine and also even like fatty acid metabolism because we know, fatty acids help to drop down CRP, which we're talking about with inflammation. And so if you don't have a good balance of omega 3, omega 6, omega 9, you're gonna be, again, more proinflamed, you know, pro inflamed, which also is gonna negatively impact your mental state. So and your physical body obviously, but there's been tons of studies on just omegas as well just for the mental health.
And part of it is that down regulation of, decreasing of, the CRP level.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, you know, one of the things that I I have been reading about, which I find fascinating, and it sort of kinda kinda comports what we're seeing in our society, which is just this increase in dysregulated social behavior, right, aggression, divisiveness, friends can't talk to each other anymore. Families are breaking up over political issues. There's just whatever's going on. There's just some something happening where our social cohesion is breaking down. I mean, I think most Americans pretty middle of the road and are not on the extremes, but the extremes are what we see and hear about.
But there is still a level of a real device in this in our side and a real level of, like, increased in aggression and school shootings and violence. And now, so, I mean, we see it every day that we become almost immune to these stories, which, you know, if you ever had had won, it would have been a big deal. And we didn't have this when I was growing up. It wasn't like every day or every week. There's there's a new shooting in some school.
And and the the level of of just the oppositional behavior and anger and hostility. And, I mean, It's it's, like, I, you know, I have a social media account. I just, like, somebody's gonna put stuff up that's sort of benign, and he goes, like, a litany of hatred. And I'm like, what is going on out there? And why are people acting like part of, you know, they can hide behind their social media handle or whatever, but I I do think there's something fundamental happening to the brain.
And I I've mentioned this before in the podcast, but And when I was writing my book about the food system and the way our food was affecting us, I I wrote a lot about the social aspects of it. And particularly, so studies that I came across around prisoners who when fed a healthy diet would decrease their violent crime in prisons by 56%, and I think a multivitamin reduced it by 80%. And in juvenile detention centers, when kids were fed healthy diets versus the crab, that they were eating. The violent crime went down by 97%. The recent restraints went down by 75% suicide, which you mentioned, went down a 100% in an age group of teenage boys, which is the 3rd leading cause of death.
And that's just simply cleaning up the diet, which is moving them from an inflammatory to an anti inflammatory diet. So I have this theory which is that a lot of our our our social disruption right now is is really related to some level of neuroinflammation. And when I was sort of reviewing your work, you you you were talking a lot about the the the what happens to the adult in the room, which is sort of the person you know, knows we shouldn't go punch somebody in the nose, right, that we want to
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
charge you.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The adult in the room gets disconnected from the ancient limbic reptile brain. And there's this weird disconnection that happens where the adult is gone. And so where the it's like we call it the amygdala hijack, which is the hijack of our of our behavior and our thoughts by this ancient part where rain, which is all about survival, fight or flight. Right? So can you talk about the science around this phenomena that we're seeing around neuroinflammation affecting the connection between the kind of grown up mature person who's supposed to not conduct themselves socially.
And in life with the ancient part of our brain that just, you know, would kill anybody or do on a super shit
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
or something.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So how what is the science behind that? Can you unpack?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And and also the trauma, like, when you look at kids with with they said have shown the trauma from all these events, like, that you were talking about. There's just long term we don't even know yet. Longer term issues with things like anxiety and depression. As a result of the trauma that's that's happening during that time. Exactly.
There's there's there's complete changes. So we have what's called the prefrontal cortex, that develops for kids up until, you know, twenty six years of age. We have what's called the amygdala.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We That's why they the car rental companies don't rent cars to anybody over under 25.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Because of that very because they know
Dr. Mark Hyman
that brains not fully developed. The the grown up in the room is not in the car.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's not. Gonna be the one driving. Right? Yeah. So, we have the hippocampus, which is like for memory.
And those actually both take a hit for anxiety and depression, which make sense because you look when somebody has, like, significant depression or anxiety, you'll you'll see, like, a lot of memory issues, like flightiness for people or anxiety, brain fog, forgetfulness,
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, they don't even call it pseudo dementia. Mhmm. People get older.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They get sued or dementia. Exactly. And and, actually, even the risk of dementia's higher for people with mental health issues as well because likely because of the neuroinflammation. So you'll see, like, those areas amygdala is more connected with, like, anxiety, and that's what controls emotions and that piece with, like, the nine year old driving the bus versus, you know, the adult driving the bus. And so if you're constantly getting taxed with that in everyday day to day trauma, that is gonna be more dysregulated.
I mean, they've had studies that show women passing, like, in terms of being anxious during pregnancy, having an impact on their their their babies that are born of the baby child having more anxiety and things like that. So the development of the, the the prefrontal cortex, which is like impulse impulses can develop up until 26 years of age. Other areas of the brain that get affected and migna like I mentioned, hippocampus and other centers that help to regulate, like, our emotion. So if there's constant, inflammation on on those areas or constant stress, which causes the dysregulation of cortisol levels, those will all, will could potentially impact it impact those those long term too as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you think do you think, like, my theory is right that a lot of the social discord is happening as a result of brain inflammation that's caused by all the factors we talked about. Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I mean, they have tons of studies on technologies impact on dopamine and that every time you have, like, hit, like, even a ring on your cell phone or, you know, like, when you get
Dr. Mark Hyman
your text. Applications.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
You get a dopamine hit for that. Yeah. So one of the pieces is the more and more you have it, the more of a reserve, like, you're having less your bodies constantly needing to push out dopamine for everything with technology. One example I had, it was great because I did a a urinary test and, I was trying to get the person. I I was actually working with someone that I didn't No was a big gamer.
And so, we did the test. And at the evening, the cortisol was, like, was the same that you would have in the morning to wake your cortisol should be higher in the morning to wake up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm low at night.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then I said, what were we and I knew right away. I'm like, were you playing, like, video games? And she looked and was like, How did how did you know him? Like, this number, there's just a lot of, like, hyperactivity. Her dopamine levels were high, norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol was through the roof.
So of course, she's gonna have sleep issues, which she was having. So you'll see that too. I mean, a lot of young people that are also in technology staying up till late at night, as you know, and it interrupts their sleep. And if they're not getting good quality sleep, of course, they're not gonna be able to focus in class. Of course, they're not gonna be able to emotionally regulate as well.
So all of those things have these, like, kind of added effects that can cause, cause issues, but definitely technology with dopamine, and and as much as the parent can work with reducing it in small bits. I don't try to say stop completely. I say let's cut 15 minutes, you know, at a time. So it doesn't seem as significant, but, that's what the great thing about test are because you can act she see and show and demonstrate. And then it's easier to get people to say, oh, okay.
This is why.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so, I mean, I I had a nephew who is this super addicted gamer and, you know, just didn't have a life other than gaming. And and and long story short, he lived with me for a while, and I took it all the way. Literally just hit it. And it it was literally like watching someone go through heroin withdrawal. Oh, yeah.
But he went ballistic. And I was like, wow. This is like a highly addictive thing. So I I think that, and and he had ADHD, and it just made it worse. You know, it made it a lot worse.
And I think I think we we have this incredible moment happening in the field of psychiatry where we're beginning to understand the brain in mental health, not just the mind. And and, you know, talk therapy can be helpful. Sometimes psychiatric medication can be helpful, but it's a pretty limited toolset. Yeah. And now we have a whole new set of tools.
So when you when you see sort of someone come in and and, you know, they could have anything or anything from schizophrenia, to bipolar disease, to depression. There's a process you go through to try to figure things out. You know, like like you know, because depression is not a pros act deficiency. Right? Exactly.
And and, you know, it's kinda how we treat it. Right? We we we we I call it the naming, blaming, and taming game. This came from my mentor, Sid Baker, he says we we named the the disease by the symptoms. And then we blame the name for the cause.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And then
Dr. Mark Hyman
we tame it with a drug. So we say, oh, the reason you're hopeless and helpless and have an interest in life and don't can't sleep and have an interest in sex and Norman appetite and you feel sad and you wanna cry all the time is because you're depressed. That's what's causing your symptoms. Well, no. That's just a name that we give to people who share those symptoms.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Mhmm.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The cause could be you're eating gluten, and that's causing brain inflammation or you had a been having a bad die and had reflux because you 20 fried foods and end up on an acid blocker for 10 years, which depletes your beach valve and zinc and magnesium. Or because you maybe have no vitamin d, and that causes depression. Mhmm.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And you're looking to see, like, where does it land? I always say that for autoimmune conditions, it's like, To me, it's all the same thing. There's different names.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
You know, but it's, like, where does it, I say, like, land? And then that's why people have, like, 3 autoimmune conditions? And I'm like, is it really
Dr. Mark Hyman
3 different
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
ones, or is their their system just attacking itself? And it's finding very weirdness. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right. Like, It's like Aspen trees, you know, like, they all look like separate trees, but they're all one underneath.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Still the same. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so that's kinda how how most diseases are. They're not comorbidities. They're not things that that just happened to be randomly showing up. I'm like, you know, this this, you know, kid that I was mentioned before at ADD had, like, 12 different diagnoses. Like, and was on 7 different medications and was seeing 5 or 6 or different specialists.
And and no one asked, how are all these things connected? Mhmm. Like, are these Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And when did it start and how did it start and things like that?
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, the beauty is then we can start to actually think differently about how to approach these problems and start to think about the common the common root causes and how to, 1, do the diagnostic evaluation, which can pick a lot of these things up, and also the the treatment strategies. And it can be something simple. You know, like I mentioned with depression, well, I mean, it can be a B Vitamin deficiency. And I was, writing my book, and I think I was talking to somebody on the phone about it whenever And he heard me when we're talking. He was like, I was fixing my TV in my office, and he had it happen to be working when he was there.
And he's like, oh, yeah. This isn't what you're saying. And, you know, I was really severely depressed. And And then I took, you know, these b vitamins, like these 6, folding b 12, and it went away. And and and actually, Methylfolate or Deflin is actually a a prescription drug, quote, drug, which is a activated for a folate that psychiatrists use for treating depression.
Yes. But it's all, like, kind of this, like, one thing at a time. It's, like, sell the drug model. Uh-huh. It's not really a holistic view of the body as a system.
So so what, Doctor Johnson, when when someone comes to UCU and they're suffering from whether it's depression or whether it's more PTSD or maybe they're having some psychotic kind of borderline issues or bipolar. Where do you start? And then how do you kinda find the things that are driving the problem? And then what what are the sort of steps you take to help resolve that?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I think my most important thing is to also meet people, like, where they're at. So initially, I just
Dr. Mark Hyman
want people to do what I wanna do.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
I know how
Dr. Mark Hyman
to get you better.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would be
Dr. Mark Hyman
what I say. You don't get to choose.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That would make life a lot easier. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty, actually convincing because like I said, look, let's try this for 10 days.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That's that's what I say. I'm like, let's try removing this food a week and see how you feel and then people come back and they're like, oh, yeah. It worked. Yeah. So I think the one thing when people see, like, naturopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors, they're gonna get tons of lab work done initially.
That's always really important to me in the assessment because I'm gonna look at environmental factors, like I mentioned, like, metal led, you mentioned when you were saying about, juvenile delinquency of, like, changing food, there are studies that even show There's a higher rates of schizophrenia, after the age of fourteen, being, or schizophrenia, actually juvenile delinquency in schizophrenia if they've drink drink from, like, private well water and poor water. So even when you go talking about food, it's like, what is the quality of their water? What is their environment by way pollution. I've had, children that we've
Dr. Mark Hyman
had. Parasites who.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Even parasites where they've had ADHD and then they found that there was a lot of mold in their bedroom and they removed that in all the kids' symptoms are gone, or I've had even adults that were exhausted. And then when I did the assessment, I find out they drink 4 ounce a water. And I'm like, okay. If you try to drink water and they come back, they're like, I feel completely new.
Like, how's your body eliminating toxins? So that's what I meaning people or the app because there could be just basic things that people aren't even aware of. Yeah. But typically with assessments gonna include, like, their medals gonna include things like you said, like, oh, test. I'm gonna look at other infections, organic acid, tests I'm gonna look at.
And especially if someone's like, that rule of, like, ever since of, like, I got sick at this time. And then ever since then, this happened for women, a lot of times, hormones. So, like, after they have a beep, after they have a kid, you'll see those hormones drop down, which hormones actually are like estrogen, can be if it's in a high amount more pro inflammatory and testosterone, more anti inflammatory. So you'll see when there's a shift of that or, the cycle or perimenopause, autoimmune conditions will go up too. So I'm looking to see, like, what that pattern is of, like, when it she became dysregulated and and getting as much like laboratory assessment, but, like, really having deep in-depth conversations of their
Dr. Mark Hyman
you can, you know, oh, yeah. I I was fine until I moved in that house. Exactly. Tell me about that house. Well, you know, it was okay, but it was a little damp basement or had, like, I I think we had mold in the bathroom.
Something, and you get you get these clues. And I think, you know, truthfulness, and we sort of ignore most of those clues. Like, you know, your psychiatrist didn't ask about mold or how to a new age or, you know, frame.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Or were you inflamed? Or
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. No. That's true. And I, you know, I think you mentioned lab testing. You know, I cofounded a company called Functional Health.
And we do a full panel of lab testing. And we look at a lot of things that do affect psychiatric health from your nutritional levels of vitamin D of evaluation of the B vitamins for homocysteine and and methylonic acid, which are ways they're looking at beach valve, folate, and B6. We look at red cell magnesium. We look zinc. We look at also other factors like metabolic health, insulin resistance, which can affect depression.
Look at sex hormones can affect mood. We look
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
at 100%.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Heavy metals. So we we gotta really and we look at inflammation. You know, we've just kind of mind blowing to me, but in our population, we've done, 5,000,000 biomarkers on over 40,000 people and 46% have high CRPs. 30 30 percent. Have high A and A.
67% have a nutritional deficiency, whether it's iron, like you mentioned, or homocysteine problems, or magnesium or omega threes. We look at all these things as part of a a fundamental panel to see what's going on. And it's amazing if you start to things, people get better. And sometimes you have to go deeper. Right?
It's not always just cleaning up your diet and, and and eliminating inflammatory foods and adding a a number nutrients that you may be helpful for your brain or nutrient deficient in. It may also be like, okay. Well, I gotta deal with the heavy metals. So I gotta deal with Lyme disease. We gotta deal with the obesity.
I gotta deal with mold. And those those are things that we don't really deal well with well with traditional medicine, but if you're seeing a functional medicine doctor, you know, they can see you in your practice in kid. They come to our our center in the in Lenox, Massachusetts, the ultra wellness center, and we deal with all these chronic complex issues. And we deal with the the the sort of the the crises in in mental health. And I I I, you know, I did a documentary series years ago called the broken brain.
And it's really about, you know, how most of our brains are not working properly. And we don't really have a great way to deal with brain disorders because our whole thinking has been completely wrong.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And focus and I mean, I have so many, like, I feel like over half of my patients, you asked about brain fog or focus. It's like more than half of them have an issue. It's this Yeah. Like, of the activity with their brain and managing everything that they're doing and rates of what ADHD going up and anxiety, is it truly that, or is it, you know, we're just doing too much as this is, you know, as a society. Yeah.
Part of what I talked about in the presentation giving for I FM too were the other things out side of, like, even diet is, like, the the the benefits of, like, sauna and how that showed to decrease ERP levels and also in studies that they did in Europe for men that there was, like, decreased chance of, like, things like schizophrenia, forest bathing, forest bathing, actually. You just wanna stop there.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You just said take a sick of sauna. I can help reduce psychiatric symptoms and even schizophrenia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Skizophrenia. Yeah. And this this was a study of men at large for, like, decades.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And, they showed that there were lower rates of things like schizophrenia. If you look at, also it decreases CRP levels, which keep talking about with inflammation, you also look at, like, forest bathing. There was a study in Japan to show that the CRP levels went down significantly with more forest bathing and and lasted for a period of time. So these are all the things that you can get people to do in small steps that just shows there's that lack of, connection like loneliness, I think, is a huge factor, and that's one of the biggest things we're always trying to work at in our office. Even with anxiety, they've shown the most effective is doing that with group therapy, like treatment.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Totally. Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Plus therapy. I think it it takes a community, but it's like you doing things to attach yourself from technology, like, you know, ground grounding, sauna, those things, but then also your community of people around you to be able to support you as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think that's really important. And I think, you know, dealing with the the things like exercise and social connection and detoxification, saunas, which regulate your autonomic nervous system, being nature. These are all therapies. Right?
And and they can and they can be really effective, but but, you know, sometimes people have, you know, stuff going on. That that you can do all those things that it may not completely get better. And I I I experienced that. I mean, I I had a lot of brain issues when I had mercury poisoning, and that was my mid thirties, and I cognitively was so impaired. I I couldn't focus.
Think remember I was at the end of a sentence, I went from like, listening to 30 patient stories a day and and not taking any notes to be able to dictate all their charts and remember everything I did and to basically not really be able to be able
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
to Which is scary, especially in
Dr. Mark Hyman
the back. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I and I could feel the the brain dysfunction. And and I've had mold toxicity, and I've had Lyme disease, and I think the incentives cause residual things.
And I
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Sabrina's that.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I'm all like, I'm always learning, and I'm always learning myself and experimenting. And I I do pretty well. I've written, like, you know, I'm 20 books in 20 years and do a lot of stuff, but I still, you know, had didn't feel like my brain was back to a 100%. And so I did I did a test, which is actually from Germany when they look at your cellular levels of toxins, which is something that's hard to do because toxins are not obviously, for those listening, easy to measure in the blood because they're often stored in the fat. And so we can measure the fatty membranes and what's in the cells.
And I have, like, mole toxins and pesticides and lots of heavy metals and, you know, dysfunctional, a lot of dysfunctional pathways that related to this and oxidative stress. And I because I could feel myself, like, somebody just point out, like, my this, like, my brain would just I hit the wall, and and I knew it was physiological. But I and I even with all the stuff I do, I wasn't able to sort of fully crack that. Mhmm. And I recently did a protocol, which has been around for a long time, but a modified version called the PK protocol, which you probably know about, which is essentially using the to replace your cell membranes that are toxic with newer healthy substrate for the membrane, which is phospho choline.
It's basically a kind of a fatty compound. And I did, like, a whole bunch of IVs of it. And I redid my test after, and I was, like, dramatically down on all the toxins. And my brain has come back online in a way that I didn't realize I was still affected. You know?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. That's one of my favorite ones, fasasylcholine, because it just protects the the brain, but it's there's tons of studies on it for dementia. Yeah. And also for, and also for ADHD and the and the fa I usually like the phospholipid blends with, like, phosphatilastarian, which actually also helps regulate cortisol levels. So I'll oftentimes do it nighttime.
I personally love to take as I wake up ready to go. Like, my brain is sharp and I'm ready to go. But it's, yeah, because I think it drops to cortisol, but it also has that effect on your your brain, your memory, supportive, that people tend to feel better when they get up.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so so what I'm I meant to share with that story is that, you know, it's an ongoing process to figure out the levels at which we're all affected because, you know, we do live in a world with a lot of toxins. We live in a world with crappy diet. We live in a world with a lot stress. We live in a world of things that destroy microbiome.
We live in a world with where we have, things like mold or tick infections or late infections, long COVID. All of that there's a huge role in dysregulating our brain function. So this is kind of a really a a whole new era in in psychiatry. It's a whole renaissance going on. I mean, I I was wondering if you saw it, there's a whole series of articles in the economist recently, which isn't, you know, not a medical not a medical journal.
Things. But the whole thing was on psych. Hi, and the Revolution of psychiatry and how maybe we should be looking in the body to fix the brain. And that that was the subtitle of my book, how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first. Right?
Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And I and I see a lot of openness now too in the psychiatric conventionally trained of looking at the diet, the food, the lifestyle, and then also what those medications can have impacted, like, by way of we talk, you know, nutrient deficient sees or are there particular things nutrients that are missing? Yeah. So it's it's going to be, and as we see the rates of mental health issues continue to rise, there's gotta be a lot more level of awareness of, like, what are all the other positive factors besides just genetic. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. And then then genes play a role. Right? They can set up to Sage. And I think maybe part of what we're seeing with the mental health crisis is partly epigenetic.
So epigenetics, right, are are the ways in which our genes are expressed or controlled. So can you share some of your understanding about how epigenetics might affect us. You mentioned, you know, kids born to women who are stressed, whether it was a Holocaust victim survivor or or a 911 Mhmm. Survivor who was pregnant at the time and their babies have all kinds of dysregulated stress response receptors that are genes that get kinda switched on that are not good for us.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so can you talk about how that may be playing a role in terms of, you know, the sort of degradation of our mental health that's a society and how the IP genetics might play a role in that.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yeah. And and it it definitely doesn't even when you look at things like, you know, autoimmune conditions, they're multiple infections, especially with the genetic predisposition family members with autoimmune conditions, like myself, there's gonna be a higher risk factor for having autoimmune condition. So I always say, like, those genetic steps, those information shows you that that could be a possible concern for you risk factor, but then the concern is, like, then what do you actually do for that? Like, what are the things you're removing by way of, you know, being aware of, you know, plastics, being aware of, like, environmental exposures. Like, what are the things?
For me, like, my family have family history of, autoimmune conditions, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis for me. I know having infections might be problematic for turning something on. I'd say. So what are those things that we know, potentially are risk factors? And then what do we do to help to augment, what, you know, what connected with and how do we actually decrease it as much as we possibly can.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And so and there and there are there's not just epigenetics, which is which is how genes are regulated. Which definitely affected by, you know, for example, what happens to her mother and uterus was was she stressed when she had a bad bad diet with her toxins exposure. Mhmm. You know, the all those things can affect you.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They get passed down.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that that can manifest, you know, later on in life in the child or even the grandkid. You're also talking about certain genes. So there are there are genes that that do affect your risk of mental illness that we can pass. In fact, dopamine receptors, it affect cortisol receptors. It because everything in your body is made from your genes.
Right? All your receptors, all your tissues, all the proteins. That's what your genes do. And so when when you have certain at risk genes and you put them in the wrong environment, genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And and there's tons of tests now that even tests for neuro inflammation, like anti dopamine mean, like, in terms of antibodies, to, particular markers that can cause inflammation in the brain too. So those are all gonna be helpful risk factors to know, okay, I'm, you know, leaning towards this. What do I do to actually, actually help to to support it fully?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so what what are the foundational principles of, you know, diet, lifestyle, supplementation that can work for a lot of people? It's not it's not gonna personalized, but I'd like to sort of just like, what's your foundational sort of neuropsychiatric Mhmm. Brain health approach?
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Okay. So typically, well, I'm always looking at what lifestyle things we can do. One of the things that's really important to me is, like, I always say it's, like, what brings you joy. So I think, yeah, what actually brings you joy, because a lot of people stop doing those things. Oh, yeah.
Okay. Well, yeah, maybe maybe I should do an an add to the claim or disclaimer of what brings you doing that's healthy. So So I find a lot of people stop doing, like, they love to dance, or they love to hike, and they stop doing all those things that, you know, that they have anxiety and depression. It's like, you need to do more of that. Yeah.
And so those things get lost because we live in a busy world. And so some of the thing in terms of the approach is like, how do I get people back to doing some of the things they love to before because then you're happier. Your neurotransmitters are are better. Dopamine, endorphins, everything if you're doing something that you actively feel better. So I look at that or that that you really that brings you joy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The vitamin J deficiency.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Vitamin J. Exacto, I like that. So, so we have that then obviously exercise, but I try to get people just walking. There's tons of studies that shown walking is just as effective if you're consistent. So I I try to go in baby steps of looking at all those things.
And then with food, really looking at things that are more, like, color, as money more plant based foods that you can have as possible. Don't try to initially remove a lot of things, because I I don't initially. Maybe doctor hyman probably is stricter on that because first, they try to More more harder. So, like, you
Dr. Mark Hyman
wanna get better. You gotta
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
difficult for I try to get them to do more adopt better behaviors and then start removing those things that are like really bad. Let let's remove one thing at a time. So I do that. And then when it when I I definitely do the lab assessment and blood work, but the other thing that's helpful is like things like amino acids, amino acid powder, amino acid blends, those are often the precursors to many of the neurotransmitters. So we look at tyrosine, which is, connected with dopamine, north, and then the pathways, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine.
So I'll look at that. I'll look at tryptophan. So an amino acid, but as as supplemental, like Because
Dr. Mark Hyman
you feel like you're eating a protein, they're getting all the amino but
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
they're not oftentimes. And then especially kids, because they just don't eat as well, they might not get enough from their sources. So I'll often look at amino acids, is kind of a beginning, function. I look at a lot of, like, core minerals, like magnesium, zinc, slim. And you do have to be careful with balancing zinc though in copper.
And so I check for that too because a lot of people just take zinc year round. And so you wanna look at that because that can affect the mental state as well. So those are some of the initial things. And then oftentimes I'm looking at other things like adaptogens, or things that can overlap. I mentioned turmeric.
So I might use turmeric because they're also inflamed, but that also helps with depression. Ginger, I can incorporate that in their food. Ginger's connected with helping with GABA, which we talked about earlier, to help improve mood, but also ginger not only helps with digestion, it also helps with inflammation as well. So I always try to look as a practitioner you're working with anybody's working with. Like, are they looking at, yeah, are there are things that we can also cover 2 or 3 things at the same time?
I'm looking at their gut microbiome. Oftentimes, it will do a stool test. And there tends to be issues with that. Chronic as people, chronic diseases have lower levels of things like lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. And particular ones are more protective with, anxiety and mental health issues.
Raminus is one that's connected lactobacillus raminus. Lactobacillus plantarum. So I'll look at those in a stool test, but I also try to and you get that all from, like, fermented foods and eating well. Yeah. But most of us can't get enough, so we might have to do things like a probiotic.
So you really wanna look at that whole piece, but then also going backwards to see, like, when did it begin? Was it after they were sick, had a lot of digestive issues? Because you'll see increases of anxiety and depression also for people with diabetes. It's like much higher with inflammatory bowel disorders, like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. So again, if the rate is higher, then you have to think there is some relation to the gut.
Yeah. They got in mental health.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because you have IPD, but you're
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
The other way. Yeah. The other way around.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think that's true. Even Harold La Valle. I remember reading a paper years ago, and I think it was in renewing the journal where they talked about, you know, the rethinking of psychiatric illness that was related to irritable bowel. We just think that people when I when I went to medical schools, like, if you have your old ballots, because it's all in your head.
You know, it's not not real disease.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
It's on a real disease. And you're
Dr. Mark Hyman
just anxious and stressed. So take a little value. And we used to give us stuff called Librium, which is like basically valium. And and it turns out that it's the abnormal bacteria and the leaky gut and the inflammation that's feeding back to the brain from the gut imbalances of the bacteria and leaky gut that's driving the brain inflammation. It's probably one of the biggest factors
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Exactly. Yeah. And they also regulate some of the bacteria, like I mentioned, lactobasil ceraminesis is also helping with, like, things like GABA and those And so there's definitely a huge connection there. And most individuals with either chronic disease conditions or mental health conditions will have an impact a 100% on their gut microbiome.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, you know, we we talk a lot about probiotics, but now there's a whole field of psychobiotics. Which are probiotics that affect brain health.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
That are more particular. Yes. And they they've been studied with, like, mice and and such. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Can you talk about this whole field of psychobotics? Is it legit or, like, Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
There's definitely been studies, Ramenas and Plantarium are 2 of the ones. They have been studied where they had done studies with mice and they actually for depression to an anxiety. I don't know exactly how they decided what it could qualify for a depressed mice, but Hold on. And so, basically, they
Dr. Mark Hyman
exchange that bacteria just like how they were doing with the
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
fecal microbiota. Transplants and they found that those those mice were actually, like, not depressed or not anxious, but then the ones that they gave it to were more anxious or depressed. So there is definitely some sub some subspecies, different strains that have been studied to help with, mental health state as well that actually can potentially improve it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And you you you you talk a lot about the, you know, the sort of even in schizophrenia, how there's, you know, just like, yeah, psychosis. And I think, you know, we don't think of, wow, autism or psych psychosis being connected to the gut bacteria, but it it often can be I remember I had a kid with autism. It was pretty severe autism, and we've looked at a stool test, and he had giardia.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Oh, wow.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Which is a, you know, a pretty significant parasite that causes malabsorption and nutritional deficiencies and inflammation. And And I basically just treated his parasite with a drug, the laggle, and the kids autism got him better. Yeah. Wow. That was crazy.
And it doesn't mean all kids with autism have this thing. It just these are just, you know, common ways the body has to say out. So, like, there's not that many ways the body has to say out Mhmm. Right? Depression and anxiety psychosis, you know, the ADD, when he was like, you know, these are things that that there's a pretty finite set of problems that can occur.
But from a very almost infinite variety of different
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Of reason. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Reasons. Right. And so that's why psychiatry has to really shift. And and think one of the fields that's really emerging around this is metabolic psychiatry and mitochondrial health and psychiatry. And Suzanne Go has been on the podcast.
Talked a lot about the role of mitochondria and autism. And a lot of mitochondrial deficiency and these are dysfunction. These kids, Chris Palmer, who's been on the podcast also talked about from his book, Brain Energy. They're all poor metabolic health and is actually using ketogenic diets to treat mental health issues. Wonder what your perspective is on that, and they were he's using it for schizophrenia, bipolar disease.
What what's your perspective on on
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
They have had studies. I saw ketogenic and more so for actually Safrania in terms of a ketogenic diet being more, supportive for that because of the the body fueling, basically especially with the mitochondria piece that you that you mentioned in the right way, there's also what's called, like, the mind diet is another one that's very similar to Mediterranean diet probably has the most studies for mental health, and it includes, like, when you look at Mediterranean more like higher levels of acromancia, which is one that now has been shown for, like, cognitive support and tons of benefits of of that particular strain. So,
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that reminds you, produces GABA. Mhmm. Exactly.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
So,
Dr. Mark Hyman
basically, like, you don't wanna take a neurotransmitter supplement, you take a probiotic or you feed that probiotic with polyphenols, and then you'll you'll get naturally occurring beneficial.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Or GABA. Yes. And then when I often test people, they're often deficient in, like, a acromancy or they don't have enough Bacillus and all of those things that are actually protective for them. So we look to, you know, see how we're we're actually gonna like, fully augment that. And then how do we get to the state where they're managing it as much as they can through diet?
And we don't have to do as much by supplementation.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That means just an extraordinary moment to be in this field of psychiatry. Any any other exciting stories you wanna share about some cases that that got better? From using
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
that? Yeah. I think, the I tend to work with a lot of children with, with pans and pandas and also that have kind of coupled with like ADHD, etcetera. And so it's just been, You know, many patients where the the parent, when a child has pans or panda, what happens is there's an acuity of symptoms. So overnight, the parent, I remember one of my first cases, the parents said, my daughter went in to go take a shower, and she came back and she was a different kid.
They started getting scared of eating, that they're gonna choke on their food. They start having a lot of issues at nighttime, OCD, significant anxiety, and even getting pulled out of school. So my then reward is to be able to see now, having these children within, like, a few months being able to get them back you know, to school or I've had, kids that have been, like, out of college for a year because of their illness with, you know, tick borne diseases. And now they're like, they're fully back in in one kid I just saw the other day. She's going into a nursing program.
And I'm like, wow. That's, you know, amazing to see. And these are individuals that would have fallen through. Yeah. You know, fallen through the cracks and just told to get on psychiatric med and may have tried it.
And there's no vent. They haven't changed. So I get a lot of stories, especially with the the parent because overnight, it changes the whole family dynamic. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, the kids respond so well too. It's quite amazing. I mean, grown is really hard, but Yeah.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Kids it's instant. It's really amazing. I like
Dr. Mark Hyman
to have a basic overall healthy sort of substrate, basically. I am reminded me of a kid I had with pandas, which is this pediatric associated neuro inflammatory disease
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
that
Dr. Mark Hyman
causes OCD and horrible behaviors
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
in the kids. Potentially. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Really scary for the parents. And, this kid had, you know, positive strep antibodies and inflammation. And I said, well, geez, you know, it's not you can't just throw any botics at it because it may not really work. But actually, I recommend an intravenous ozone for this kit Oh. Which is kind of a little out of left field, but I really understood the role of those under decreasing information and and being a powerful German side, and this kid completely got better.
And it was amazing, you know, and, like, and for good, you know. So I think there's so many people suffering out there with a whole array of mental health issues whether it's just sort of, you know, low grade depression or anxiety or more severe depression or more severe mental illnesses, like bipolar disease or OCD or pandas or autism or or schizophrenia or psychosis or a whole range of things that now we're sort of beginning to finally understand and and I think we're getting too closer to what the truth is. It's not I
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
agree. Even like infections that that, you know, controversial, like, after COVID, it's like, oh, you can still have long term symptoms. Because with Lyme disease, for example, was told after you got antibiotics, you're good to go. But when you look at it, there's what's called post treatment, Lyme disease about up to 30% can continue to have symptoms, especially like arthritic, and joint pain and those types of symptoms. So I think there's now become greater awareness of like, oh, these little micro assaults or infections can cause different areas of impact on the body, including mental health issues.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So Well, I mean, you're you're you're, such a pioneer. You're doing such great work in this field. I think, people need to know more about your work. They can find you on your website Mhmm. Women in lime.com.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
My practice is Fairfield Family Health in Connecticut. And, we're also having a summit shortly. It's called lime heal hers.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
And the reason we did that was because one of the things that's important to me was to have represented different faces. And we wanted to have it where it was all women because that Yeah. Yeah. They never do that, you know, for for events. So We did, a whole lineup of different topics.
So check that out because we're having another, summit in in August. So we definitely look at that as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you also have a book women in lime.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Yes. Women in lime. I have a couple of books. Women in lime, and then the other one was on long COVID and what to do. It's actually a great book because it's a small short book that I did with, another doctor, my office, Doctor Midea.
And so that's a great one. And I'm pretty active on Instagram natural pathic dot physician where I try to post that information to.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, thank you so much, for what you do, Doctor. Paterson. This has been an amazing conversation. I hope it's been helpful for people listening because people struggling out I mean, mental health is, you know, obesity and mental health are the 2 biggest things facing us, and they're, by the way, they're not unrelated. So, I'm I'm excited to keep learning from you.
And, I hope everybody checks out your work and, keep up the good work.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson
Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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