What are some tips for living with neurotransmitter imbalance?
We're here to talk about that today.
I'm Dr. Carrie Lam. This is Dr. Michael Lam.
Neurotransmitter imbalance, you might have it, you might not know that you're having it,
but these are just general tips that are good for anyone to even prevent neurotransmitter imbalance.
The first one is to minimize intake of caffeine or other types of stimulants.
The reason why is when you drink coffee or tea,
it really fires those neurotransmitters and if you continue to drink and drink it
and have that caffeine intake, the neurotransmitter
would just go overboard and you might not have the inhibitory neurotransmitters to calm yourself down.
Yeah. Of course, if you have been taking coffee for a long time,
you don't want to go cold turkey because you can have a trigger,
what is called a withdrawal or rebound reaction, so you want to go slow.
That's just one tip but always be careful.
Yeah, but tea, for example,
also has the similar effect although tea's caffeine
content is about half of that of coffee.
What you can do is to drink decaffeinated coffee which is about five milligrams
per serving or decaffeinated green tea which is even better.
It has one or two milligrams versus about 45 milligrams.
These are things that you can do to kind of slowly titrate yourself down.
There are also other recommendations
like eating food sources that are higher in amino acids and Vitamin Bs.
Yeah. These historically has been good to modulate
people who are kind of in the low end of the spectrum, meaning
they have a tendency to be more the blues,
more feeling down mood that's why the B's excitatory stimulants
in their intrinsic properties and same thing with amino acid.
They are acidic in nature,
but for people with Adrenal Fatigue, you have to be careful
because if your body is not strong, these can actually trigger adrenal crashes.
Right, and the other idea about amino acids and Vitamin Bs,
those are the building blocks for the neurotransmitters
and that's why you need those compounds to make the neurotransmitters.
Yes. There's a lot of environmental toxins, whether it's mercury, lead, cadmium.
These are minerals and extraordinary compounds that does not belong in the body.
Even things like herbs,
glandulas, ashwagandha, green tea. We talked about earlier, maca,
rhodiola, ginseng. Any time you put things in the body that's excitatory,
you have a tendency to cause these imbalances to happen.
Yes, so you kind of also want to stay away from excess stimulation,
sensory stimulation, light stimulation or even chronic stress that's just going around you,
that's all stimulation that might over-fire the neurotransmitters in your body.
Yeah. We have people that come
and some would complain, 展hy I walk into a room with fluorescent light and I get a headache?
I put a cellphone next to my head and even when I don't touch it, I feel a headache.
Well, what is really going on? Part of it is the vibration from the electromagnetic field,
but part of it is that it triggers
the neurotransmitters to be off-balanced.
It's much more complex than just what people say,
We don't know what's going on. We do know what's going on
and in some severe cases where the neurotransmitter become imbalanced
as we are finding out now in high school for example,
there's an alarming increase in sudden death from cardiac arrhythmia.
Well, what is really going on?
We know there's lots of cell towers around.
These are all kind of circumstantial,
but if you have a body that is already weak and already sensitive
and it's already prone to excitation
and you put that physiological construct in an environment
where you exaggerate those response, it is the recipe for problems.
Yeah, so be careful where you're around.
Yeah, so that's why for people who
for example, if you have Adrenal Fatigue, we always recommend
that you sleep in a perfectly dark room, 100 percent,
so that you have increased melatonin production at night to keep the neurosensory level down.
You remove all the plugs from the wall, at least 10 feet away,
even plugs to lights that may not be plugged in, they're still drawing electricity.
Anytime there's vibration, this can happen.
Of course you can ground
the body too. These are getting into more electromagnetic field issues,
but they are connected to neurotransmitters
ultimately because the neurotransmitters is what causes the physiological response from the head.
Right. That's good about how you can help your environment,
but how you can also help make your neurotransmitters is fish oil, Omega-3s
because your neurotransmitters are all made out of fat also
so you need the good types of fat from the fresh-water fish or the ocean fish.
Mindfulness and yoga and breathing are always very important
in calming your mind down, finding a focus for your day and not being over excited every day.
Very good. I'm Dr. Lam and this is Dr. Carrie
here, empowering you to take control of your health.