Nico was an anxious man in his early fifties.
“I’ve always been sort of nervous,” he told me on our first visit. “But lately, every little thing seems to make me jump.”
More than mood was worrying Nico. He couldn’t remember common terms that were frequently used in his profession. He had to read an ordinary business memo three or four times just to make sense of it. He had begun to forget the names of people he had known for years—even people in his family, such as the cousins with whom he spent every major holiday.
“I keep thinking ‘Alzheimer’s,’” Nico told me in a low voice, as though he was afraid even to say the word out loud. “It doesn’t run in my family, and I just never thought.… But what else could it be?”
Nico was also weighed down by depression. Although he had never been a particularly cheerful man, he had always found deep meaning in his wife and children.
He saw himself in a long line of fathers, helping to ease the path for the next generation as his own beloved father had done for him. “My family is everything to me,” he told me. “And I always thought I was a good father. But…” His voice trailed off.
Bit by bit, Nico shared the rest of his story. During his late forties he had begun to be plagued by huge, painful doubts about his life. He wasn’t sure whether he had been a good father.
He no longer got pleasure from having dinner with his family, or taking his son to a ball game, or going on a walk with his daughter. “Everything that used to make me happy just leaves me cold,” he said finally. “I just sort of feel like, what’s the use…”
As Nico told me his story, I had the strong sense of a powerful downward spiral, almost as though Nico was being sucked under the surface of a stormy lake. First, he had felt dispirited and hopeless.
Then, his anxiety—which had plagued him since adolescence—became more intense. When his mind and memory seemed to fail him, his anxiety skyrocketed, even as his depression grew in severity.
After running a full workup on Nico, I was able to assure him that I did not see any structural problems with his brain or his condition. “Everything that’s going on with you now, we can reverse,” I assured him. Nico was skeptical—but desperate. He agreed to follow my recommendations.
And indeed, the Whole Brain Protocol plus the right prescription for supplementary thyroid hormone made a huge difference in Nico’s mental state.
His anxiety didn’t disappear—it was too much a part of his temperament for that—but it subsided to a manageable state.
His depression evaporated, leaving him the same quiet but fundamentally happy man he had been before. His cognitive function returned to normal and, perhaps, even improved. At our last visit, Nico told me he was thinking more clearly and sharply than ever before.
“I feel like I just became a different person there for a while,” he told me, echoing the words that so many of my patients have said to me over the years.
“Like I just stopped being myself—like I got separated from myself and couldn’t find my way back. And then…” He paused, thinking about all the changes he had made in the past few months. “And then,” he concluded simply, “I found my way.”
When Nico first came to me, his symptoms had become intense and painful—so much so that he was finally motivated to seek treatment. But I know many people who are struggling with lesser versions of the same symptoms—people who for years manage with low-grade brain dysfunction.
Whether their symptoms include depression, anxiety, brain fog, memory issues, feeling less sharp than they used to be, or some combination thereof, the root causes are all the same: Their brain is not working at 100 percent capacity. Many factors—including poor diet, over-the-counter and prescription medications, too much toxic exposure, stress, and painful childhood experiences—combine to trigger a multitude of symptoms.
SYMPTOMS OF POOR BRAIN FUNCTION
While conventional medicine tends to view each of these symptoms as a separate issue, I see them all as symptoms of poor brain function—a generally unhealthy brain ecology.
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Brain fog: vagueness, inability to think clearly
• Memory issues, “senior moments”
• Listlessness, lack of motivation
• Difficulty with focus, attention wanders
• Difficulty “shifting gears” intellectually, finding it hard to switch focus
• Difficulty making intellectual connections, retrieving words, manipulating concepts
• Difficulty accomplishing tasks, meeting deadlines, juggling projects as you once could
• Difficulty “shifting gears” emotionally, feeling “stuck” in one emotion even when the situation changes
• A “graying” of your worldview; the sense that your life or the world in general has simply become bleaker
• Difficulties learning and/or processing information
• Irritability and exaggerated responses to stress; unable to tolerate noise, the sound of a crying baby, or other stressors
• Sleep issues; fatigue; waking up more tired than when you went to bed
Sometimes these symptoms rise to the level of an actual medical diagnosis. In those cases, my patients were told that they have some type of depression or some version of anxiety, or perhaps even some version of dementia.
Other patients simply felt tired, anxious, sad, hopeless, helpless, or “blue,” while also struggling with brain fog—not being able to think clearly, remember readily, or focus adequately. Brain fog also includes becoming easily confused, easily distracted, and generally feeling as though you just can’t think straight, as well as mental fatigue and irritability.
All too often, they were told, “What you have is nothing—you’re just getting older.” Or, “You just need a vacation.” Or, “What do you expect—life is stressful!”
With or without a diagnosis, my patients rarely got remedies that really helped them. Some MD might prescribe an antidepressant or antianxiety medication, or perhaps some alternative practitioner suggested an herb or supplement.
Almost never, though, did they get a genuine remedy: an approach that restored their brain function to its optimal level.
Is this your story, too? Have you been given a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression with a treatment that helps you—but only partly, or only temporarily? Or perhaps you just feel lousy—tired, foggy, less than your best. Have you already been to several doctors and tried several treatments, or are you just beginning to realize that something might be wrong?
Either way, I want to encourage you to shift your focus. Rather than looking for a specific diagnosis—anxiety, depression, brain fog—I want you to think of your brain as a whole:
• When your brain functions well, you think clearly and feel great.
• When your brain functions badly, you have trouble thinking and feel lousy.
I know that sounds simple, but it really is all you need to know. That, and the solution:
• If your brain is functioning at less than its best, the Whole Brain Protocol can help restore optimal function.
Whatever your diagnosis—or whether you even have a diagnosis—the Whole Brain Protocol can help end your symptoms, allowing you to rediscover a whole new world of vitality and health.
SYMPTOMS OF PROBLEMS WITH THE WHOLE BRAIN
The symptoms of a Whole Brain imbalance can be far-reaching. For example, the old medicine views brain and gut symptoms as completely separate. Suppose a patient comes in with “brain symptoms”: brain fog, depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, hopelessness, listlessness, a hair-trigger temper, slowed reactions, and the like. Typically, doctors would try to diagnose these problems from the neck up. If the patient also had symptoms of the gut and microbiome, such as bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, and/or nausea, these would traditionally be viewed as evidence of a completely separate problem. But they are all manifestations of the same problem: dysfunction in the Whole Brain.
Psychological: anxiety; brain fog; depression; memory issues; problems with concentration, focus, and motivation; and a whole host of brain issues that defy conventional diagnosis
Digestive: acid reflux, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Hormonal: adrenal dysfunction, lowered sex drive or sexual function, menstrual/menopause issues, thyroid imbalance
Immune: autoimmune conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome, Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis
Neurological: ADHD, Alzheimer’s/dementia, autism
Other symptoms: difficulty handling stress, fatigue, irritability, sleep issues
WHAT THE WHOLE BRAIN PROTOCOL CAN HELP YOU ACHIEVE
• Buoyant, optimistic mood
• Calmness, reduced anxiety
• Clear thinking
• Improved memory and recall
• Reduced brain inflammation
• Improved brain plasticity: more dendrites (nerve cells), better connections among brain cells
• Healthy gut function: no constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, nausea, indigestion
• No acid reflux, heartburn, or GERD
• Improved microbiome: diverse, flourishing
• Easier to attain a healthy weight
• An improvement in autoimmune conditions
• An overwhelming sense of vitality
• Overall improvement in health: reduced allergies, improved immune function, glowing skin and hair
• Overcoming the deepest causes of disease; supporting the deepest sources of health
The Whole Brain Protocol works for all your different symptoms because all those different symptoms have one underlying root cause: poor brain function. Our goal is always to improve overall brain function.
What About Medications?
The question of medications can be a difficult one. If your condition is severe enough, you may indeed need medications to ease your symptoms. Certainly, once you have begun taking medications, you can’t simply stop taking them.
This goes for antidepressants, antianxiety medication, and stimulants, such as Adderall. Any type of brain-altering medication requires careful supervision even to reduce your dose, let alone to stop taking it entirely.
However, in the vast majority of cases, if you follow the Whole Brain Protocol long enough, you are likely to be able to avoid taking medications, to reduce your dose, or to wean yourself off any medications that you are taking now. (Again, always work with your health-care provider to do this—do not attempt to alter or eliminate doses by yourself!)
I know you may have been told that you have “bad genes” that cause a “thing” called depression, anxiety, or dementia. This is absolutely not true.
As you will see throughout this book, your genes do not condemn you to a particular condition (though they may sometimes contribute to that condition). And depression, anxiety, dementia, and other brain dysfunctions are not a “thing”—they are a series of processes within your body, processes that can be redirected and transformed through the Whole Brain Protocol.
Here’s your takeaway:
• Following the Whole Brain Protocol may enable you to avoid taking medications if you haven’t yet started them, and it may enable you to reduce your dose or stop taking medications altogether if you have started them.
• Always work with your health-care provider to reduce or eliminate brain-altering medications.
TOO MUCH AMMONIA: A MAJOR CAUSE OF BRAIN FOG
When your gut bacteria are not functioning as they should, they often produce too much ammonia, which in the wrong quantities can be toxic to your brain. One of the most common causes of brain fog is too much ammonia, which can lead to symptoms so severe that y patients—like Nico—begin to fear they have Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.
Excess ammonia can also lead to depression.
Clearing up the gut and microbiome issues lessens the production of ammonia, and in most cases, the symptoms disappear. In Your Whole Brain Protocol, the overall recommendations will help mitigate against your body’s overproduction of ammonia. I’ve also included some targeted suggestions for people suffering from severe brain fog and/or memory issues.
Boosting Your Brain to 100 Percent
Like many of my patients, Nico had multiple symptoms that seemed to evade a single diagnosis. He was anxious, depressed, and losing brain function—conditions that I often see in my patients but that conventional medicine does not always recognize as related.
Imagine if Nico had sought conventional treatment for his many problems. He would likely have been given one or more medications to address his different symptoms—anxiety, depression, memory issues, a slowing down of thought.
Each of those medications would have been accompanied by a panoply of side effects. And none of them would have addressed the root cause of the problem: diminished brain function.
Conventional medicine seeks a diagnosis. What I seek, by contrast, is an improvement in function. Once we can get your brain working at its best, you’re going to think clearly and feel terrific.
The Whole Brain Protocol is designed to boost brain function by addressing the underlying causes of dysfunction—the underlying reasons that your brain is not working at its best. Most of the time, brain dysfunction is related to problems in the gut and the microbiome. So healing your gut and creating a healthy microbiome are our number one priorities. When your gut and microbiome are working in an optimal way, your brain will be, too.
This is why I’m so optimistic about your prospects on the Whole Brain Protocol. I’m betting that no one has ever addressed gut and microbiome function for you before—or if they have, they haven’t done so in the comprehensive way that I offer in this book. This new approach is why thousands of my patients become able to think clearly and feel terrific, in a way that their previous one or two or half-dozen doctors could not help them achieve.
To see why the Whole Brain Protocol works, we need whole new ways of looking at brain health.
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