Dr Nicole Beurkens
Dr. Nicole Beurkens is the world’s leading holistic child psychologist. She has dedicated her 25 year career to providing parents with simple, effective, research-based strategies that get to the root of children’s attention, anxiety, mood, and behavior challenges so they can reach their highest potential.
She’s built and runs a multi-disciplinary evaluation and treatment clinic, is a best-selling author, published researcher, award-winning therapist, in-demand speaker, international consultant, and experienced mom who is determined to show the world that with healthy foundations in place every child and family can thrive.Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform and check out the Urban Monk Academy here.
Podcast transcript:
Getting right with food with Nicole Beurkens
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back. Or be monk podcast. Dr. Pedram. Shojai talking about food, talking about gut health, talking about mental health in relation with food and gut health. Dr. Nicole Birkins. Dear friend. Lovely human being, uh, was dealing with child psychology and was like, come on. I can’t not have anything to do with food weight and got her degree in nutrition, puts the two together and is getting incredible results.
Why? Because we now understand that’s what works. So look, if you’re eating like crap, it’s hard to talk it out. Enjoy the show.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Dr. Beurkens, great to have you here. I’m excited to have this conversation. Um, I think it’s a big part of the equation, the mindset equation that goes into getting healthy. So welcome.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. So your clinical psychologist, um, have been around the mental health block, and then suddenly you went and got a [00:01:00] degree in nutrition. Right, seems a little cavalier maybe to your, uh, your, your people. Um, but it really changed the way you practiced. So I would love to start off like letting people get to know you by talking about why that would be a necessity.
I.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey and certainly nothing that I ever anticipated. You know, I did traditional PhD training program in clinical psych where you learn all the things about diagnosis and psychological treatment and, you know, working with, uh, partners in psychiatry around medication management and all of those things, and I thought, great.
I’m. Now I’m gonna open my practice and I’m gonna work with kids and young adults and families, and this is what we’re gonna do. And it didn’t take me long to realize that there was a lot more to the picture and to the story of what was [00:02:00] going on for my patients than what I had learned. You know? And I had spent a lot of years in school at that point, and what I quickly started to see is that. You know, kids and adults were coming in for quote unquote mental health issues or behavior problems, right? So diagnosed with A DHD or bipolar, having symptoms of, you know, developmental disabilities or whatever it might be. And yet when I would start asking questions and delving into more about the history of these patients and more about sort of their story and what had gone on, what I was hearing were things like, oh yeah, my child’s never slept through the night. Uh, ever in their life or, you know, I’ve struggled with intermittent constipation and diarrhea for my entire life, or my child has had more ear infections than I can count and has been on antibiotics more days of their life than they’ve been off of them. [00:03:00] Right? Like these kinds of things. And it didn’t take long for me to go, okay, wait a second.
This cannot be a coincidence, right? That kids, that adults are coming in with these issues. For quote unquote brain-based problems, but they’ve got all these physical and medical issues and, and challenges in their history, and that intersected with what was happening on the personal side of my life too.
At that point, I had four young kids. And I was starting to see some of these connections in two of my kids with, um, you know, chronic problems with things like eczema, ear infections, throat infections, um, those types of things, and seeing differences in their development and their behavior. And so it all sort of intersected and I thought. I’m gonna just see what’s out there about this. Let me just, let, let me just see what I can find. And I started delving into the research literature and, and this, this may sound ridiculous to many people in your audience. And also you have to remember, this was like 15, [00:04:00] 16 years ago now. I was actually shocked to find, um.
A body of research literature around all of this, right? Around the connections between what goes on physically in the body and what’s happening in the brain, the connections specifically in kids, you know, papers that had been written, case study reports that had been written about exactly what I was seeing in my clinic, right? Kids with these. Lengthy histories of gut dysfunction, of picky eating issues of infectious issues, and then also subsequent developmental and behavioral issues, um, and the connection between nutrition. And nutrient levels and what was going on in mental health and in brain function. And so then I got kind of mad because I thought, wait a second.
I have spent a significant number of years and a lot of money in graduate training programs. By that point, I had a [00:05:00] master’s degree in education and child development. I had a PhD in clinical psychology. I had done all the things and yet nowhere in my training. Had there been any, um. Education information about these kinds of connections.
And so that really then was the start of me being passionate about understanding more of the connection, understanding the biochemistry, understanding the physiology, understanding the intersection of brain, body health, um, and then of course on the intervention side, what can we do? And so I started really focusing my practice in a more. Holistic way, holistic just meaning like 360, 360 degree way of not just looking at patients through the lens of their, um, mental and behavioral symptoms, but looking at them as entire people and entire brain body systems. Um, for my own personal children, um, for, for the kids and the adults that I was seeing at the clinic. And then, you know, you run into the trickiness of, oh. [00:06:00] We, at least in America, have very specific rules about who’s allowed to talk about things. Like, oh, maybe you should eat more nutrient-dense foods. Like, it sounds ridiculous, but we have rules around that. And as a mental health practitioner, as a doctoral psychologist, talking to patients about those things in relation to their mental health, um, was not okay.
And so I. Decided to go back and get an additional master’s of science degree in nutrition and get board certified in, um, nutrition so that I could practice in that way. Because by that point I didn’t know how else to practice. I couldn’t, it’s like once I saw this, I couldn’t go back to just diagnosing and treating patients through the lens of behavioral medicine.
I, I, I only at that point was interested in looking at the full picture of what was going on for patients and being able to talk about all of these pieces. And so that really was the journey for [00:07:00] me of what brought me into the world of functional medicine, integrative health, nutrition, and I think that. It is becoming a bit more common. It’s of course, the direction that the entire field needs, um, to move. We’re, we’re getting there. There’s a lot more awareness about this today than there was even five years ago. And so I feel good about being on the forefront of those conversations and pushing that forward.
But, but the reality is, um, that we still very much. Think about this separation of brain and body as medicine and mental health, which in and of itself fundamentally is a problem because health is health. Mental health is physical health. Physical health is mental health. And so until we really are willing and able to. Um, conceive of all of this in a more integrative and actually more accurate and research-based way, we’re gonna continue to have these divisions that ultimately mean that [00:08:00] people don’t get the type of care that they need, and people can’t achieve full vitality mentally, physically, spiritually, because we’re still looking at them in such a siloed way when it comes to diagnosis and treatment.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. And that compartmentalization, um, is, it’s an artificial structure, right? It’s how we train, it’s how we learn, it’s how we walk to building A versus building B on campus. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s convenient, but it’s not true. Right. And so you’re, look, you’re a rare bird, right? Like there are not that many people who can sit on both sides of that fence and really look at that.
And so I. We have a number of, you know, thousands and thousands of people watching us right now, right? Who are health enthusiasts who’ve probably developed some level of orthorexia because of all the information out there who’ve also probably been, you know, [00:09:00] mansplained their health to who have been, you know, you know, products of a system.
Um, and may or may not know. The actual root cause of some of their mental health issues. So
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Yeah.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I would love to kind of dig that up a little bit in terms of what are some of the common mental health, you know, DSM codes, if you will, that in your experience, right? We’re not diagnosing or treating anything here, but in your experience, 0.2, nutritional deficiency, a toxicity A something, right?
That
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, there’s nothing that a person might be experiencing symptom wise or, or be diagnosed with on the mental health side of things that isn’t. Intricately connected to what’s going on with their body function and physical health. That’s just the reality now. What are some of the most commonly diagnosed mental health kinds of things these days?
Well, on the adult side, we’ve got [00:10:00] depression. I. We’ve got anxiety. In fact, major depressive disorder is the most common disabling condition. It’s the most common condition that people go on disability for literally. Um, so depression, anxiety. But we’ve got, you know, increases in all kinds of cognitive kinds of things.
You know, people at younger and younger ages starting to experience symptoms of things like dementia and cognitive change. That’s becoming more common, and we’ve seen an uptick also. People being diagnosed with what we would consider more serious mental health issues. Things like bipolar disorder, things like suicidality, things like, um, you know, schizophrenia and psychotic kinds of conditions. So tho those are some of the pieces on the adult side, on the child side, um, obviously we’ve seen a massive increase in A DHD, you know, now to where we’ve got, depending on. Um, you know, the studies that you look at, 10 to 12% of American school-aged children [00:11:00] diagnosed and or medicated for A DHD. We’ve seen rampant, um, increases in diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder of things, and it’s not just. Those tho those are the, the, the sort of terms or the diagnoses that are most popular. But we’re seeing a massive increase in kids with things like learning disabilities, epilepsy, um, you know, again, more serious, um, you know, conditions like, uh, childhood bipolar, like schizophrenia and psychosis in kids.
So, you know, we’re seeing an increase in all these things. And, and the reality is that if your mind is not functioning. As you would expect it to or as it should be, there is something. More to look at there beyond just what’s happening in the mind or the brain. And I’m not suggesting that all of these things are solely rooted in physiological issues, but it’s both, right?
So there’s, you know, commonly now there’s a much [00:12:00] bigger, um, recognition of an interest in trauma. For example, and understanding the role of childhood trauma and how that impacts our brain functioning and our mental health as we get older, that those are really important things to think about and consider on the psychological side of things.
And what we also know is that those exact same traumas create a cascade of physiological. Issues that are also part of the picture. What is the number one thing that we’re seeing across the board in the research right now on physiological underpinnings of mental health, um, diagnoses? It’s chronic inflammation. So we think of, especially in the integrated and functional medicine world, oh, chronic, you know, inflammation is at the root of disease. Well, yes, that goes for brain-based conditions and diseases as well. We have a wealth of research now showing that chronic inflammation is absolutely a foundational part of the picture in [00:13:00] every type of depression we have. Great data now showing that chronic inflammation that food intolerances and sensitivities are at the root of a lot of what we see in the more serious conditions of things like psychosis and schizophrenia. You know, I, I think those are some of the interesting. Places where this has started to take hold.
This idea that, oh, maybe there are physiological, you know, things going on. Because in psychology and psychiatry, we don’t have good solutions for the more serious kinds of conditions. Schizophrenia being a great example. So that’s sort of been an area where researchers have been looking at for the last decade or two, like, what else is going on here?
So we’ve got actually great data on things like. Gluten sensitivity and intolerance as it relates to psychosis and schizophrenia. We’ve got great data now on nutrition in general. You know, there’s wonderful, um, people now pushing forward this [00:14:00] narrative about things like, uh, glucose dysregulation and how that impacts brain function and how that can end up in this cascade of physical issues that then can lead to diagnoses like.
Psychosis, like bipolar, like schizophrenia, like depression, like intractable anxiety. Um, and the same on the kid side of things. You know, we’ve got great data on things like microbiome changes, you know, early on, even during the birth process and how that influences. The developing brain and how that then influences behavior and what ends up being diagnosed as, you know, A DHD and, and autism and those kinds of things.
So really at this point, for someone to still hold onto the idea. That these types of diagnoses are completely unrelated to what’s going on with someone’s physical health. [00:15:00] Um, that just doesn’t hold water anymore. Um, and I think one of the biggest areas that we see for adults, and probably a lot of people listening can relate to this, we’ve seen exponential increases in diag in medical diagnosis of irritable bowel. Disorder or idiopathic, you know, IBS kinds of issues. What do we see? Increase right along with a diagnosis of IBS. Diagnosis of depression, diagnosis of anxiety, those things go hand in hand. And it’s because you’ve got the same underlying issues, right? You’ve got chronic inflammation, you’ve got inability to absorb nutrients while um, you’ve got leaky gut, you’ve got major microbiome shifts.
And so what you experience on the physical side are those pieces that we call irritable bowel. Syndrome, but what you experience on the brain or the mental side of it are the things that people complain of, like brain fog, like, I can’t focus, I can’t get things done. I’m feeling really [00:16:00] anxious. My mood is low.
Those things go hand in hand. And so I think it is really important for people to start to see the connections there and understand for themselves. You may have seen multiple different practitioners and being. Uh, have been given multiple different diagnoses on the physical and the mental health side of things, but the underpinnings of this stuff are very, very, very much the same.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Let’s talk about the gut lining. Um,
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Hmm
Dr Pedram Shojai: my audience doesn’t know how much you actually know about this. She’s a real expert in the microbiome and the. Underlying inflammation that you’re talking about here. You know, people hear about, oh my, you know, happy Gut, you know, happy body, all these types of things.
And so, you know, Hippocrates said this a long time ago, and you know, it’s ancient wisdom, but the science behind it is really new. It’s really profound. And when we start talking about what is happening. [00:17:00] The, you know, single cell layer that is either in your body or outta your body, breaks the wall and either lights up an alarm or tells everything you’re okay.
Seems to be
resonating and reflecting on a physiological and psychological level as you’re alluding to. Let’s get a little one more round deeper into that, because I think it’s important for everyone to understand.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: I think so too. And you know, all of the information that’s out there now on social media and websites and all of that, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. Right? On the one hand, I think it’s wonderful that we all have access to an incredible amount of, um, just knowledge and information and science. Uh, on the flip side of that, that can also be incredibly overwhelming and it can be difficult to. Be able to put those pieces together and difficult even to know what’s true and what’s right. Um, and so it’s this double-edged sword. And, and I think especially for [00:18:00] people who are really immersed in the world of health and wellness, really like sort of on a journey to heal themselves from whatever they have going on.
There is a risk I think, of becoming so. Immersed in it that you can no longer see the forest for the trees and it can create its own level of anxiety, right? Like, oh, I’ve got, you know, leaky gut and, and food and challenges, like all of these things to think about. And that in and of itself, um, does not support healing, right?
So I think it is important to, to look at what science actually tells us about what’s going on here. And I think, um, the simplest way to think about it is that. We call our gut the second brain for a really important reason, and that is that our gut houses, this community, this ecosystem of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, um, [00:19:00] that actually outnumber our human cells and are critically important for. Sending messages to the rest of our body, including our brain. We as humans like to believe that we have these big brains. We’ve got these big prefrontal cortexes. Look how smart and evolved we are. And yet what the research tells us is that a significant amount of what goes on up here in this big brain, in this cortex of ours is actually controlled by the signaling of what’s going on with.
All of these microbes in our gut. There’s this constant communication both directions between our brain and these microorganisms in our gut. And so when we talk about it’s important to have a happy gut, what we’re talking about is it’s important to keep this community of microorganisms healthy and diverse and functioning well because [00:20:00] when. That microbiome gets out of balance. We start to have all kinds of signaling issues. It’s like the talk, the communication between the brain and the gut goes all wonky, right? It’s like, oh wait, we’re speaking a different language now. We don’t understand each other. Things are going sideways. And that’s what happens when our microbiome gets disrupted, when we get too many of the unhelpful. Microbes in there and not enough of the helpful ones. And so how does that happen? Well, fundamentally, that can get out of balance by a lot of basic things that we’re doing in our life. You know, the diet that we’re eating, whether we’re moving our bodies or not, whether we’re getting good sleep, the physical environment that we live in.
All of those things impact that balance of microorganisms, which then impacts how. Those microbes are able to talk to our brain and how we’re able to regulate everything from mood [00:21:00] and anxiety level to being able to think clearly and process information. Um, even to to things like to being able to fall asleep, to being able to feel motivated for things.
All of those things that we associate that are happening up here in our brain, our mood, our anxiety, our focus, our actually. Um, there’s a lot of signaling going on and communication going on from our gut that allows the brain to function properly. So when this gut gets out of balance, when this microbiome shifts, this is where we get these problems. And when we talk about leaky gut. What we’re really talking about there is, um, sort of a breaking down of that fortress, as you’d mentioned. You know, the gut is supposed to be this self sealed, like it’s, it’s like Vegas. What happens in the gut is supposed to stay in the gut. It is not supposed to go elsewhere in the body for a lot of important reasons, mainly because. The gut is responsible for breaking down our [00:22:00] food, for getting rid of, and eliminating things that do not belong in the rest of our body, and for making sure that when things are absorbed and make it out into the body, that they’re broken down into the little pieces of information that the body can use appropriately. So when that system is sealed off and working well. Great. Everything’s happy. We’ve got this. Well-balanced microbiome. It’s keeping the gut sealed off. We eat our food, our gut breaks it down. Well. All those little pieces of nutritional information get out into the body the way they’re supposed to. Our brain feels and functions well, our body feels and functions well. But when these pieces start to break down. When the microbiome gets imbalanced, maybe because we are, you know, eating foods that are not supportive of a healthy microbiome. Lots of sugar, lots of unhealthy fats. We’re not moving, our bodies we’re not sleeping. So now the microbes in our gut are out of whack. Now that starts a cascade of things where we get [00:23:00] this whole breakdown in the system. And from a leaky gut standpoint, I think this is important for people to understand. ’cause I think they go, you know, leaky gut, well what exactly does that mean? Like, are things actually leaking through my gut? And really they are the, the wall of our gut is supposed to be these tight. Um, these cells that are tight, tight, tight together, they’re called tight junctions and these endothelial cells, endothelial cells, line, um, everything in our body, all of our blood vessels, all of our organs, and they’re supposed to be nice and tight together and that keeps everything in the gut that’s supposed to stay in and everything out that’s supposed to stay out. But when our microbiome gets disrupted. We start to get this inflammation, and inflammation is just puffing up of things. It’s like things get inflamed. You think about a cut on your hand. It’s like, oh, it gets red, it gets hot, it gets puffy. Well, that’s our immune system’s response to that. When these cells lining the gut get inflamed, they get puffy.
And guess what happens when they get puffy? Then they’re [00:24:00] not sealed tightly together and things can leak out. So a simple example would maybe be a longer chain, a longer protein chain in some food that you’re eating that is only supposed to get out into your bloodstream once it’s been broken down into all the little pieces. But now because these cells are inflamed and this wall is leaking, these longer protein chains get out. Oh dear. Now those are in the bloodstream. Those are not supposed to be there. Your body doing what it’s supposed to do. ’cause your body’s really smart. Goes. Yikes, those are not supposed to be there. We need to send the immune system in to take care of that. So the immune system comes in and tries to deal with that. And when this is happening day in and day out, now we’ve got an immune system that is overactivated. This is where we see things like autoimmune disorder. The immune system then gets confused, it gets overwhelmed, and, and then that has an impact on the brain. These things leaking out into the [00:25:00] bloodstream and getting to the brain that do not belong there, that is also a problem. So really what we start to see when the gut starts to go haywire here is total dysregulation throughout the body. All of our body systems get confused because. The right pieces of information aren’t getting to the right places in the right way, and that’s really what’s happening At a most simple level, when we’re developing or or experiencing symptoms on the physical side of things, or we’re experiencing symptoms on the mental or brain side of things, it comes down to our body systems are confused.
The right information isn’t getting to the right places at the right times. And so of course we’re going to have symptoms and, and that I think is the piece for people to understand, especially on the mental health side, where there is still a tremendous amount of stigma about there being like some sort of personal failing if you’re experiencing [00:26:00] symptoms of anxiety or depression or whatever it might be. But here’s what I say to people. Your brain is doing exactly what we would expect it to do. Under these circumstances, you are having a very normal reaction to an abnormal set of circumstances, and in the case of leaky gut or microbiome issues, your brain is. Responding in exactly the way we would expect it to respond when you’ve got this disruption happening and all this information not going the way that it’s supposed to go. In the case of something maybe really stressful in your life, maybe you’ve just endured like a psychologically really stressful or problematic experience or period of time. Well, your brain’s doing exactly what we would expect it to do under those circumstances. And so I think this is all part of helping people conceptualize of this in a different way.
Brains and [00:27:00] bodies are really wise, and when we’re experiencing problems on the physical side or on the mental health side, it is simply a red flag. It’s a call to action. It’s a, oh my brain’s doing. What I would expect it to do under these abnormal circumstances, and instead of just saying, well, I’m broken, or, well, now I’ve got this diagnosis, there’s nothing that can be done.
We go, okay, what do I need to look at? And address further downstream that will help my brain be able to start to respond as I would expect it to under better, healthier circumstances. And that’s, that’s really, I mean, I guess I, I probably, um, wandered away from the question of leaky gut, but I think that to me is really important message of how all this is connected.
Dr Pedram Shojai: There’s an element to this that I think. Brings true for most people. And you know, if a fire alarm goes off, you don’t go smash the fire alarm [00:28:00] and go back to bed, right? You look for you, you know, it’s, you fall the smoke, you go find the fire. And so what you’re alluding to here is this, you know, leaky gut is sending this, you know, this LPS we’re creating this endotoxemia, which we could talk about or not, which, you know, 50% chronic disease is.
Um, it’s suggested that, you know, 50% of chronic disease coming from this.
And so the body is feeling this invasion, endotoxemia, internal toxins, internal poisoning. So deep inside without language or a way to communicate,
your body is feeling unsafe. I am under attack. There’s stuff coming in. And so does that anxiety?
Does that look like insomnia? Does that look depression? And so it, it wobbles. And because we don’t know how to interpret the internal discomfort, it sounds like a lot of these psychological psychiatric conditions [00:29:00] can start to emanate and grow from kind of an underlying, um, fear, right? Of not feeling safe, not feeling well.
And, and that to me, um, really helps me put it into perspective of saying, okay, where’s the fire? Where’s the fire? Where do we go?
So, so many people listening here have been already inside the traditional medical system and you know, they didn’t see someone like you. They saw. The two people, right? You got your, your doctor, you got your, your, your head doctor.
And so people get drugs thrown at them. People are already taking SSRIs. People are already taking specific things and they’re like, okay, that sounds great, but I’m taking this thing. So how does one start to back out of the treatments that they’re on once they start to heal the underlying condition?
Dr Nicole Beurkens: [00:30:00] Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great question and I just, you know, wanna be clear that. Psychiatric medications can play an important role in the therapy process for some people at various times. And that story has been widely overblown. And we know now that these medications are widely overused because to your point, they really are a bandaid. Um, and bandaids are sometimes important. But a bandaid alone without addressing what’s really going on underneath there is not gonna get people where they wanna go. And that’s why we have, and the data is clear about this, such a high percentage of people who go on these kinds of medications, and they may feel a bit better initially, but over time. They don’t or, or they don’t experience any benefit or they experience problems. And so we know that [00:31:00] these drugs are not in and of themselves the solution to what’s going on here. So then we say, oh, well this is why it’s important for people to do therapy. You know, psychological therapy, um, along with their medications. Yes, psychological therapy is incredibly beneficial. And we also have the data that clearly shows that that alone for most people is not the solution. So then we’re left with saying, okay. If going to therapy every week and taking your SSRI medication isn’t getting most people where they wanna go, then what else is going on here?
Right? And this is the part of then looking at where are the alarm bells? And this is why a really good integrative practitioner will ask the questions, not just about what you’re experiencing from a brain or an emotional standpoint, but what you’re experiencing physically. How is your sleep? What’s your lifestyle? Um, what was your history of, you know, childhood illnesses? [00:32:00] How often, you know, do you experience, um, you know, colds and flus? You get those more than the average person. What’s your, what’s your eating like? What’s your digestion like? Um, these are important things because. We need to look at these more root level issues to understand and, and actually move beyond just the bandaid kind of approach. And to your point, once people are already on these kinds of medications or treatment plans, here’s where it does get tricky because in the world of mental health practitioners are taught how to put people on. But not how to get them off. And the reason for that is a very, very well crafted story from the pharmaceutical industry intersecting with the world of medicine around. These are permanent diagnoses. These are permanent chemical [00:33:00] imbalances that if you have this, you will need to stay on these drugs for the rest of your life. Now, there is not data to support that. There never has been, and I think it’s really important for people to be clear about that. Is there data to suggest that these medications help some people?
Some of the time, absolutely. But we do not have a good understanding of why they help some people and not others of, you know why People respond certain ways and not others and there is no evidence to suggest. Someone who gets one of these diagnoses, therefore requires a lifetime of being on these medications. And so I think that’s really important because people will go into their primary care office with pretty generic complaints around like. My mood and motivation just aren’t what they used to be, or I’m feeling more anxious and without even asking what’s going on in their life. Or is this a normal response to an abnormal situation?[00:34:00]
They get handed a prescription for a Prozac or a Zoloft or a Lexapro and are told, well, you have a chemical imbalance and you need to take this. Um, and, and it’s just, it’s not a completely. Um, truthful or accurate, you know, story. And so I think that’s important. And even for people who do find these medications helpful, guess what?
The data shows people who do benefit from these drugs actually get more benefit by addressing the underlying issues. If you are making sure that for example, your Omega-3 fatty acid levels are where they need to be, that your B vitamin levels are optimized, that you’re eating a nutrient rich diet, that you are getting good sleep and good exercise, guess what happens to your response to that medication?
You get a better response at a lower dose. Well, that’s wonderful. So even for people who medications are working for, there is a major benefit. To addressing these underlying issues and [00:35:00] for people who are saying, wow, I never had the opportunity to address the underlying stuff, I wanna do that now. Um, but I’m on the medication.
The good news is you can start looking into and addressing these underlying foundations, even while being on the medicine. And what you can find is, as you address, if you have things like, you know, food intolerances or. Microbiome issues or infectious issues or whatever it may be that’s going on as you’re repairing and addressing those things, you can then work with knowledgeable practitioners to help you then see how you can wean off of. Medications to see if you still need them to see if the other supports are working as well. It’s, it’s a process and it’s very individualized, but I think it’s very important for people to understand, especially if you have been given diagnosis, given medication treatment, and are not getting. The response to those treatments that [00:36:00] you would want or, or expect.
Don’t, don’t just accept the answer that, well, this is as good as it gets, or, well, you’re just treatment resistant. You’re not a responder to it. That’s all we can do. There are so many additional things, um, that can be done both with and without medications in the toolbox.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Some of the biggest swings I’ve seen, and I’ve always been in integrative medicine, um, practices. So I get to see, you know, the, the cool stuff, people working together and collaborating. Um, and some of the stuff originally was very shocking where. You know, so you were talking about SSRIs and people are trying to kind of, um, re-uptake this.
And, and you look at the, the food story and how tryptophan just does not absorb th is, you know, it’s not coming through the soil, not coming through the plant. So where are you getting your trytophan? And so it’s not Prozac deficiency.
So having been around the block on, um, the integrative medicine side, I get to see, you know, uh, doctors collaborating and playing. And one of the things that always shocked me was the [00:37:00] food system and its role in this, like you had mentioned SSRIs and the serotonin reuptake is, you know, this whole class of drugs is, you know, we’re gonna recycle this thing and you’re gonna feel better.
But the question is, where, where is the serotonin? The tryptophans not coming through the plants because the GMO crops block it at the root level. And so I’ve seen people who just change their diets away from GMOs and go to organic and just clean up their nutrition. Suddenly feel like the lights came back on.
Right. Um, obviously it’s not everybody. There’s major psychiatric issues and all that, but just let’s talk about the role of nutrients and nutrition versus empty calories and how people are feeding these brains and these bodies that need these things.
All this, talk about the gut. I just want to take a second. And introduce you to a course called the gut check action plan. That we recorded with the godfather functional medicine himself, Dr. Jeff bland, [00:38:00] a multi-module easy to follow course that helps you heal your gut. All of this starts in the gut inflammation starts in the gut, anxiety and depression come from gut dysbiosis. So we felt it was incredibly important to put the tools you need to heal your body and get vitality. Back to the interview.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: It that, it’s really interesting to consider that, and I think this is a, a part of what’s at the root of why a lot of people don’t experience benefit with those types of medications is SSRIs are designed to keep serotonin in. The system in the bloodstream longer, but that only is helpful if you have enough to begin with and, and to be able to make enough serotonin.
There’s several things that need to happen there. Number one, you need to be taking in the building blocks of these neurotransmitters through your food, primarily proteins, which a lot [00:39:00] of people are not getting enough of. Especially, you know, in the US we’ve got people eating very, um, simple carb. Heavy diets, um, and not enough protein.
And guess what? The building blocks of neurotransmitters are. Amino acids. Where do amino acids come from? They come from proteins. So if we don’t have enough of these building blocks in our diet. Your brain and your body can’t make the neurotransmitters. And so you can take a medication that you know helps prevent their re-uptake to leave them circulating longer, but you need to have enough of the building blocks to make the neurotransmitters to begin with.
So this is where nutrition plays a big role. This is also where we hear about this microbiome story coming back into play, because guess where? A lot of, um, the precursors for neurotransmitters and neurotransmitters themselves are made is in the gut via the microbiome. These microbes are incredibly important for producing things that [00:40:00] not only allow for the manufacturing of neurotransmitters, but actually can produce these neurotransmitters themselves. Um, GABA and serotonin are great examples of that, and so this is where if you’ve got a. You know, a, a nutrient poor diet, and you have a dysregulated unhealthy gut microbiome. You have the perfect setup. To have brain-based issues because you simply don’t have the right things in place to be able to make the neurotransmitters that your brain relies on to function. And so we’ve got to address these more root level issues. We have to be asking people what they’re eating. You know, I can share, um, one of the most classic examples that I’ve seen in practice over 25 years are young people. Usually it’s, you know, older teens, young adults who will come in and they and their parents will, you [00:41:00] know, talk about how over the last, you know, six months, nine months, they’ve experienced a rapid deterioration in their mood. Uh, you know, so now they’re, they’re quite depressed, maybe even suicidal. Um, they are having severe anxiety. They’re, you know, all, all of these things. And it wasn’t present prior, or they didn’t, you know, see, see this happening prior. And one of the first questions I ask is, tell me about how you’re eating, and then tell me about changes that you’ve made recently and without fail, um, I will get, you know, within, in a, in a given month of seeing patients, I’ll get, you know, at least one or two with this exact story.
Who will be like, well, I started a vegetarian diet, or even more significantly, I decided to become vegan. Six months ago, a year ago now I’m not gonna get into the debate of how people should eat. I think there are times and places for all different ways of eating, [00:42:00] and I think that’s a very personal choice. However, when we’re having this conversation about mental health and neurotransmitters, I. Young people or anybody who suddenly shifts to a vegan diet and generally speaking, is not doing that in a very informed nutrient rich way. Not making sure that they’re eating enough proteins, they’re eating all the processed, you know, vegetarian and vegan foods that are out there now, which are not rich in nutrients and certainly don’t have good amino acid profiles.
So what do we then see as the fallout of that over. Three months, six months, nine months, we see brains that aren’t able to function as well because they’re not getting the B vitamins that they need. They’re not getting the amino acids that they need because they’re not getting the proteins that they need, and that begins to have a cascading effect physically.
But where we tend to see that show up very significantly early on in that process is in their brain function. And so I think that’s just one [00:43:00] example that illustrates how nutrition and how the nutrients that we’re taking in from food, how the quality of our food is intersecting with how our brains are functioning. I, I wanna be a little cautious around this because you mentioned the term orthorexia early on in the conversation. And I do think that this is also, you know, a, a, a part of what we need to talk about here, that. It can be alarming or anxiety provoking for people to go down this path of thinking about the food that they’re eating and their nutrition in relation to their physical and mental health. And if we let the pendulum swing too far the other way, we can become very rigid and extremist around quote unquote healthy eating to the point where our focus on healthy eating becomes really unhealthy. Right? So in general, as with most things in life. We wanna avoid the extremes we wanna avoid. Being negligent about our diet and just eating [00:44:00] whatever, and, you know, all kinds of sugars and simple carbs and processed foods and not thinking that that matters.
We don’t wanna be at that extreme. But we also don’t wanna be at the other extreme of saying, oh my gosh, I have to be hypervigilant about every piece of food that goes in my body and everything that I eat needs to be, um, organic and nutrient rich. And, and I, you know, that also. Is an unhealthy way of approaching food. Really what our brains and bodies need is for us to find a good, healthy medium, um, a good balance where we’re not rigid and scared about food, but we also are wise and knowledgeable about. The nutritional building blocks that our body needs to function. So it doesn’t mean that you can’t ever have, you know, the chips or, or a cookie, um, doesn’t mean that you need to live off of, you know, just leafy greens and, uh, you know, organic grass fed, um, you know, meat. [00:45:00] But it does mean that we need to be aware and especially if we or someone in our family is starting to develop symptoms that we need to. Be willing to look at the role that the food that we’re eating, the lifestyle that we’re living, that those things are playing. So I just, you know, I like to be cautious about that because I think going too far to one extreme or the other, ends up being unhelpful for people.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I became kind of brutally aware of. How much health information was being pushed out there, um, that was oftentimes conflicting, oftentimes untethered
and, uh, nerve wracking to my audience, right? Everyone’s got an opinion.
You gotta do this. And everyone talks with conviction telling you, you know, I,
I’m telling you, you do this, and it really is disempowering. It really, you know, can create orthorexia, uh, to your point. And it also isn’t helping. Right. And I think most of the [00:46:00] docs I’ve talked to in the are like, look, you gotta relax, right?
We talk about the vagus nerve, we can talk about CNS activation, we can about all other stuff that comes with, with stress the nervous system. Um, but I wanna, because of your particular sweet spot of brilliance and the time that we have left, um. There’s studies that have been slam dunk studies that have been out there for, you know, decades at this point, showing that just exercise is one of the best interventions for mild to moderate depression and you know, so just the role of movement, I think I.
Cannot be overemphasized. And because you’re an expert sitting between all these places, can you please help the audience understand that, you know, it’s not just the food, it’s also the sleep. It’s also the movement. It’s also, you know, it’s the lifestyle.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Right. It it is. It’s, look, you. If only human beings were simple enough that any one thing was [00:47:00] gonna be the solution to all things. Right? I mean, we’re just too complex of beings for that to be true. So nutrition’s one part of it. Absolutely. Um, but you’re not going to be able to pull one lever alone and think that that’s going to change things.
It, this is the. This is the art of sort of holistically managing our lives in ways that support our body function. So eating and nutrition and, you know, supplements are a piece of it, but all these other lifestyle pieces and, and why is movement so important? And you’re right, study after study shows us that, whether we’re talking about mental health or we’re talking about physical health, moving our body, and I tend to use the word movement instead of exercise.
Exercise kind of like, you know, can. Um, make the hair stand up on the back of many people’s necks, like, oh, I don’t talk to you about exercise, so we, we just need to be moving our bodies. And, and why? Well, for several [00:48:00] reasons. At a foundational level, movement is important for good oxygenation, and it is supportive of reducing inflammation. And there is actually a very specific, um, molecular reason why exercise is so supportive of inflammation reduction and just of supporting brain and body function. And that’s because exercise or movement helps increase, um, what’s called our nitric oxide levels in our brain and our body and nitric oxide. Is a really important signaling molecule that on a very basic level, allows all of the blood vessels in our body to relax and expand to vasodilate. And what does that do? Well, that allows for optimal blood flow. When our blood vessels are all tight and constricted, we’re not getting good blood flow, and that creates a lot of issues.
But when we have this vasodilation. When we’re [00:49:00] moving our body, when we’re exercising and we have more nitric oxide than in our system, that causes those blood vessels to expand, to relax, which allows for better blood flow. And guess what happens when we have better blood flow? Well, we’re getting oxygen. To all the parts of our body, including our brain that it needs to get to, which is really important. It’s also allowing for all of the nutrients and the other molecules and things that need to get to where they need to go in the body. It allows them to get there. So blood flow is critically important for everything with health, critically important, not just for cardiovascular health, which is what most people think.
Oh, blood flow, right? Oh, heart health. Right. You know, oh, I don’t wanna, you know, have a heart attack. Well, right. But blood flow is also really important for all these other things that we’re talking about, because if you’re not optimizing blood flow, you’re not getting any of those things where they need [00:50:00] to go. You can’t have a healthy sealed up, well-functioning gut and microbiome without good blood flow. You can’t have a brain that is able to think and feel and operate properly without healthy blood flow. You can’t have any organ system that is operating the way that needs to without healthy blood flow. So to me, while there’s no, there’s no magic wand, there’s no silver bullet for anything. When it comes to human health and wellness, there are certain foundations that become important and there are certain levers that we can pull that help a whole lot of other things. And nitric oxide is one of those levers, and that is a big piece of why your. Medical doctor, your mental health practitioner will tell you that it’s important to exercise and move your body because it’s supporting those nitric oxide levels, [00:51:00] which then helps support all these other things.
Dr Pedram Shojai: That’s also a full circle. Go back to diet because you need the dietary nitrates and the nitrites and the things that help with that system. So foods that are high in that, um, would be.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Yeah. Absolutely. So foods that are high in nitrates are things like arugula, bok choy, celery, spinach, beets, all of the kinds of foods that we think about in a quote unquote healthy diet. If you think about what are the diets that are most often recommended to people, the Mediterranean diet as an example, why are those kinds of diets helpful?
It’s because they are very, very rich in nitrates and those nitrates. Then we consume them. The microbiome in our mouth converts those nitrates to nitrite. We swallow that into our stomach, gets turned into nitric oxide. So these kinds of nutrient rich, nitrate rich diets, the reason they’re so often [00:52:00] recommended to people across the spectrum of symptoms and ages and issues is because the more. We can be taking in nitrates, whether it’s through the food that we’re eating or through supplementation. The more optimized our nitric oxide levels are gonna be when we’ve got optimal nitric oxide levels, the better our blood flow is gonna be. And when we’ve got good, healthy blood flow, it allows everything else in the brain and body to function better.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So to sum up a fascinating journey, you need a healthy gut. You need to bring down the inflammation of the gut, gut lining. I. You need the right nutrients, you need the right movement, you need the right precursors. There’s a lot of elements there, right? And that, and that in and of itself can stress people out.
But at the same time, it’s like that’s just daily living. That’s daily habit stacking. So I, I’m assuming you have a pep talk that you give your [00:53:00] clients when you start making these interventions that love for you to share here in our last minute or two together.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: I think it can feel overwhelming, but the flip side of that, it’s incredibly empowering. To know that there are all these things that you can do that can make a difference in your mental health, in your physical health, um, for your family’s mental and physical health. So instead of looking at all of the things and sort of getting deer in the headless and going, I can’t do all of that, guess what?
You don’t need to. You just need to start with one. You start with the one single next step, and that might be different for you than it would be for me. Figure out what it is. Is it gonna be, you know, I’m gonna walk for five minutes. Is it, you know, I’m gonna get to bed 10 minutes earlier. Is it, oh, I’m gonna, you know, eat more leafy greens, um, a few times a week. Um, I’m going [00:54:00] to, you know, I. Make some swaps for the snacks that I have in my house. Uh, I’m gonna go see a practitioner to get some information on what I need to do for X, y, or Z thing. You don’t need to do all of it. And in fact, if you try to do all of it all at once, you’re gonna end up worse off because you’re gonna be, I.
Overwhelmed, which is gonna create more stress. More stress creates more inflammation. More inflammation and stress are the enemy of healing. So you’re better off saying, what’s the one next step I can take? And then you get that implemented and then you get feeling good about that. And you go, okay, great.
Now what’s the one next step I can take? And that’s how you start to successfully layer this in, especially. If you are a parent or you, you know, have a family that you’re in the home with, you can’t just, um, change everything all at once. And so you just start looking at what’s the one next thing I can do, and know that each step that you take is making a difference for you physically. It’s [00:55:00] helping you feel more confident and more empowered that you’re making the changes, and when you feel more confident and more positive about what you’re doing, that in and of itself on an emotional level has a tremendous impact on reducing physical inflammation, reducing the burden of chronic disease, reducing leaky gut.
So this is all a cycle, the better we’re doing with our mindset and how we’re feeling about things up here. And the more action steps we’re taking practically in our lives, in the realm of, you know, diet and, and exercise and lifestyle. It all works together, but stress is the enemy here. And so you just stay out of overwhelm and you say, what feels doable to me?
And you take that step and you start there.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Dr. Nicole Beurkens. What a pleasure. Thank you so much for your contribution and I really appreciate your time here.
Dr Nicole Beurkens: Thanks for having me.
Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did love Nicole, just [00:56:00] great human being, doing great work. That’s what I like to see. Good people doing good stuff. So we are going full steam ahead on bringing more guts solutions you’re way over here at the urban monk academy.
Why? I just think that the gut is such a highly leveraged place to make people feel better. And once you do, you get a little more energy, you start making better decisions. Life just gets better when you have more vitality. Check out the gut healing masterclass. Just go to the urban monk.com. Everything’s in the academy, but you can get them all a cart.
You can get them all together, but get yourself the help that you need, because I promise you when your gut is doing better, you are doing better. We’ll see in the next show.
Thanks for watching.www.theurbanmonk.com