Supplements and Herbs For Anxiety and Insomnia

Hi, everybody. I'm so happy to see you. It is Friday. It's the end of the week, and I wanted to give you a little bit of a tip and some support to go into the weekend. We've been talking a lot in my content about what to do for anxiety, and we've been digging in quite a a bit on anxiety strategies in terms of getting to the root cause. And today I want to give you a suggestion of what you can do if the anxiety is really getting to the best of you. And it's hard to do the work and hard to get into the counseling aspect of it. Sometimes you just need some extra support. And so I thought that we would do something that I used to do when I was in kindergarten class, and it's called show and tell. I don't know if any of the rest of you did show and tell, but it was like the highlight of the week for me when I got to do some show and tell on something special that I had. And I thought, what would be better than doing some show and tell on things that I have in my medicine cabinet that can help with anxiety, sleep, wellness, all of that good stuff? So I'm going to show you that today, and then Haley will have some tips on how you can procure those things on your own, if they would be helpful for you. Of course. Make sure to talk to your doctor before adding or removing anything to your protocol. But these are the things that I often recommend to my patients, and I use them myself. So one of the first things is talking about sleep and what do I use for sleep. As you know, I'm an anxiety warrior. I have come so far, my anxiety. I'm on the other side of the canyon, and I'm so much better. And there's these great nutrients that have been really helpful, and one of which are nutrients that support what's called the GABA bridge. The GABA bridge. It forms a metaphorical bridge between if you take a pharmaceutical like a benzo, that really increases your GABA, and then what your body is naturally storing. And so a lot of people have joined our warriors group, and they talk about how do I come down on my benzodiazepines, or what can I do to increase gaba? And there's some pretty great nutrients for that. One is inositol. Inositol comes in capsules and powder forms. I personally like to use it in a powder form. I put it in something called my happy sleepy powder, which it makes sense to me to purchase them as singles. And then add things in one at a time. So Inositol is an amino acid. It helps your body make GABA and it's very well tolerated by most individuals. And, and the way that it can be dosed is you can take a scoop. And so it usually comes with a little scoop in here. I don't see one in my little guy. But it's a white powder and it's kind of hard to see because the window's over blowing it. But it comes as a white powder. And you could put a scoop of the Inositol into a big cup of water or you can put it in your jug of water that you're going to drink all day long and you can either sit it throughout the day to support you and help keep your anxiety lower, or you can take a higher dose going to bed. Usually when I'm having my patients who are really anxious and they're trying to get their GABA stores up is I'll have them do 12 grams into a big thing of water and sip on that all day. If the anxiety is really acute and really sharp, then you can do 12 grams all at once. And again, I like to put it in water. And so in terms of brands, I like to stay with physician grade brands. Number one is you know where the product is coming from, you know that what it says is what it actually is. And I try to discourage people to purchase things off of Amazon and ebay because anybody with an Internet account and a label printer can put powder in a capsule and sell it to you under the name of something else. And so I recommend getting all of your products, your medicine products from, from an actual retailer, like a physician grade retailer. And so again, we've been talking about Inositol, we're talking about things that can be helpful to make a GABA bridge so that you have more GABA to reduce anxiety, promote sleep. Inositol is something I love for that. I love getting it in the powdered form so that you have a lot more control over how much you try. Usually when people are starting Inositol, I'll have them start low, maybe 400 milligrams and then work their way up and you can take upwards of 12 grams. So this is something I always have on hand. So if I have an extra stim day and I'm like really busy and a little bit frazzled, then this is one of my favorite go tos. So that's in my medicine cabinet. I also love to use herbs. I think herbs can Be freaking fabulous for sleep. And so we have botanical liquids and a lot of plants. You have to actually process them in certain ways to pull out the active ingredients to make them work really well. And so I'll often put together formulas of liquid extracts of herbs. And so different herbs that I like to use would be like kava kava. And kava kava increases gaba. And the other cool thing about kava kava is it will decrease your anxiety without decreasing your mental sharpness. And so I was introduced to kava kava in middle school, and we had phlebotomy class, and we were all very nervous about practicing taking blood out of our classmates. And so, you know, you'd be sitting there with your arm out, and your classmate would be coming at you with a needle, and their hands are shaking of nerves. Kava kava was introduced to us medical students, and it was like a lifesaver. We felt really sharp, really crisp, really clear, and the anxiety went down. So I like to put kava kava in my anxiety blends. It helps with sleep. It also helps with anxiety. And it can be really helpful for those physical symptoms of restlessness and tremors and all those things that come with anxiety without making you feel dull, like a benzodiazepine, like Xanax or Ativin, they're going to make you feel slow, and they can also cause depression, and kava won't do that. I want to pause and say hi to all my lovelies that are on the group. I see Kristen on here. Hey, sister. It's so good to see you here. Jared. Hello, my love. And Haley is here. I'm happy to see all of you guys. And we're talking about what's in my medicine cabinet. We've been doing a lot of work together on getting to the root cause of anxiety and difficulty sleeping. And sometimes we just need a little bit of extra support. And as we're going into the weekend, I'm showing you a little show and tell of what I have in my medicine cabinet. So if you go back, we'll have this recorded. I just talked about inositol. We just talked about kava kava. And I'm going to tell you a couple more herbs that I like to mix together. Herbs like to be mixed with their friends. If you go and you look at the wilderness, you can find all sorts of different kinds of plants growing together, Right? You're going to see different varieties of flowers and grasses and trees. Plants love to grow with their companions. And oftentimes I find that they work better when they're used with their companion herbs. And so I like to mix kava kava with other herbal friends before we move on to the other herbal friends. One tip is, you know that your kava kava is a good brand. And a good form of kava kava is if it tingles a little bit on your tongue. The tingling on the tongue are the actual active constituents. And those are the ones that are going to help give you the relaxing, the slowing of the anxiety, nervous system response. And so that's a cool tip about kava. Another plant that I like to put together in a size sleeping blend may be hops. And hops is a plant that actually relaxes the muscles, it relaxes the physical body. And so if you hold on to a lot of anxiety and stress, and if you're having a hard time relaxing your physical body, we have kava for the mental piece to keep you nice and sharp and to slow the anxiety down. And then you can mix in with hops, which is totally relaxing. And then I love to add to my tinctures, I add valerian to tinctures. Research shows that valerian is not only helpful for initiation of sleep, but valerian is really useful for people who frequently wake up from sleep or they wake too early. And so over time, valerian actually will become more and more effective at actually re regulating your sleep so that you can fall asleep more easily and stay asleep. And the other cool thing about these plants and valerian in particular, is you should not feel hungover in the morning, which is not something that benzodiazepines can say. They make you feel hungover, it can make you feel depressed. They're incredibly habit forming. And why use that if we can use herbs instead and then we have a plant called passiflora. I love Passiflora. Passiflora increases gaba. It's anti anxiety. It actually lifts the mood. It can be a mild antidepressant. It tastes really sweet. And passiflora comes from a very beautiful flower that's found in nature. And Passiflora can be very gentle. I use it with kids and adults. The elderly does well with Passiflora and it's just generally relaxing. My favorite way to use passiflora is in what's called a glycerite. In children, glycerites are much more appropriate because they have the alcohol taken out of it and it's much more sweet and yummy tasting. So you can get a passive fluoric glycerite and put that in a cup of tea or juice. And it's really generally well tolerated by most people. But when I'm making my sleepy tincture, I put everything all together because I don't want to be like going through a bunch of bottles and taking it all separately. And so this tincture blend that I made, it has kava kava, valerian hops, passiflora. And then we need to add what's called a driver herb. A driver herb basically takes everybody, puts them in the car and then sends them on their way. And we want to prescribe a driver herb based on someone's constitution. And this is where the cool magic of Ayurveda and individualization comes into play. If someone is generally really chilly, glycyrrhiza may not be as good. Glycyrrhiza is better for people who tend to be like hot in bed, like women who are going through menopause or someone who gets hot flashes or during your period. Glycyrrhiza could be good for that because it's cooling versus something that I like to put in here would be like a little bit of ginger. Ginger is anti inflammatory. It's great for the gut. It's a driver. So we want to put all of our herb friends together, put a driver in there and then this can work really well. One thing I do tell people is with herbs is sometimes you'll get that quick effect like kava kava, that'll kick in in 15 minutes and you'll feel significantly better. But they also get better over time. So use your herbal tinctures for six weeks minimum before you decide whether or not it's going to be great for you. And then as I said earlier with the inositol, always talk to your naturopath or your physician before adding any plants or changing your protocol because we really want to make sure that you get the best results and individualization of your protocol will get you the best results. Trisha, my love. Hello Robert. It's nice to see you on here. We can get you access to all anything and everything. If that would be helpful for you. You could just simply give us a call at the office or you can send us an email@officeealthforlifegr.com but you could also get access to these at your local health food store. I love to support local and so you might pop into like a sprouts or a fresh thyme somewhere like that. They have a lot of these products. I know inositol is really quite easy to find. But we could also get you access to anything that you need. But this is just the beginning. Are you ready? So we've been talking about for you people, my lovely warriors who just joined is we've been talking about how in a lot of these lives, I've been working with you on getting to the root cause of anxiety, getting to the root cause of insomnia and stress. And as the weekend is coming along, I was thinking, like, sometimes you just need a little bit of extra support. So I was doing a show and tell with what's in my medicine cabinet. And so this is herbal tincture that I love to use. And then we also have the inositol, which we talked about, so you could go back and watch this. And this is like, I have, like, a huge bag here. I don't know if we're gonna get through it all, but a couple of other things. My other favorite is theanine. Theanine is an amino acid, and this is really good if your anxiety is characterized by racing thoughts. I remember the perfect example when I became friends with theanine is I had drank a full giant delicious latte, and I was revved. My heart was racing, my thoughts were racing. I was starting to feel anxious. I didn't like it. I didn't want to feel that way. And I knew it was the coffee. But sometimes when our bodies are acting anxious, our brains are looking for reasons for that, and it can go beyond what's logical. Right? So this is when I discovered theanine. So theanine is an amino acid in the brain, and its particular magic is in decreasing the racing thoughts and the feelings of anxiety. It helps me so much as sleep. In fact, I have this, like, little sleepy kit that I put together, and I put theanine in every single day because I like theanine. It helps me just kind of decompress from the day, relaxes me. And the way to dose theanine is really individually dependent. Sometimes if I've had a 10 out of 10 stressful day, I might take 600 milligrams of theanine. But generally speaking, 1 to 200 milligrams is perfect for people who are within, like, 15 years old to, you know, 95 years old. So I love theanine. And Joshua just commented on that's why he takes theanine before drinking coffee, because it's like a really nice balancer so that you can have the benefits of coffee without feeling anxious and having the racing thoughts and feelings nervous. So I always, whenever I Travel. I put my theanine in here. I make sure I have some extra theanine just in case. This stuff is really helpful for me. And it's also part of the Happy Sleepy powder. So we've gone over inositol and theanine. And so another couple of things before we run out of time here together. I'm going to talk to you about just general wellness and two formulas that I have no affiliation with, but I just like to use them. And so I, I'll tell you about them, but just know, like, I have no affiliation with these companies, nothing like that, but two supplements for sleep and general wellness. So number one, my favorite sleep supplement that I take when I'm traveling or if I have jet lag and I need to sleep, or if, you know, I just need a little bit of extra support with sleeping is I Love Sleep Formula by Gaia. Earlier, we were talking about the magic of tinctures, and some of us don't have that access to formulating tinctures. And if you're traveling abroad, maybe you don't want to bring a bunch of liquid. And so having encapsulated herbs can be really helpful and really good. And so this one has the passion flower that we were talking about. It's got the kava kava we were talking about. It's got the valerian we were talking about. It has the hops, and then it has a couple of other different herbs that I think are really wonderful. And generally speaking, one to three of these before bed can be really helpful. So here's the label. Again, I have no affiliation with Gaia, but I do really respect and appreciate their products. And I like sleep formula. I think it works really quite nicely. And so that's one product. And then my husband, he has this favorite product and asked me to tell you guys about it. It's called EcoSleep and it's by Eco Nugenix. And this has a little bit of thick theanine, it's got some magnolia, and it's got Zisyphus. Babes, we need to talk about Zisyphus when we get together next time. So I really like this one. It's got a little bit of calcium and magnesium. And so a sign that you might benefit from magnesium is if you have anxiety, if you have insomnia, and if you have sore muscles, like, do any of you get muscle tension, like soreness, like, you feel like, oh, I got a stomach stretch or rub out my muscles, that might be an indicator that you need magnesium. Magnesium is one of the number one sources of food for our muscles. And then if I get out for you, a giant biochemistry chart. And it looks at all of the different pathways, the Krebs cycle, the Calvin cycle, all of these cycles. Magnesium is dotted in all over the place. We need magnesium for our cells to work, for our brains to work. It's amazing. And so signs that you're depleted of magnesium could be sore muscles, anxiety, depression, things like that. And so taking magnesium is helpful. So I like that the ego sleep has this thrown in there, but I have a magnesium in my refrigerator and I'll take that before bed sometimes, especially if I've had a hard workout and I just need extra support. Jared, I love that you're nerding out because this is like my favorite stuff to talk about. I'm trying to get it all in without talking forever. So thanks for nerding out with me, my loves. So just general wellness before we go is I have phosphatidylserine and this is another thing that I put in my nighttime sleepy kit. I don't like getting them all out everyday babes. And so to keep myself accountable, I'll just throw them all in here and then on every Sunday I'll refill it so that I remember what I'm supposed to be taking. I love phosphatidylserin for a couple reasons. One is that the anxiety insomnia process. We want to think about what's happening with your gaba, but we also want to think about what's happening with your cortisol. And I have a couple of questions on the post about the forms of magnesium that I recommend. My favorite babes for anxiety is magnesium L threonate T H R E O N A T E Life Extension has a really good one and it's a pretty inexpensive form. And I like that one because it goes actually through the blood brain barrier and supports the brain in terms of anxiety. And yeah, so magnesium L threonate for anxiety and insomnia is like the best. So I wanted to make sure I answered that for you. The phosphatidylserine is really good because I was talking about in terms of if you have really high anxiety and high insomnia, we want to think about gaba, but we also want to think about cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that your adrenal glands release during high amounts of stress. And we can actually measure the cortisol in your blood, in your saliva and in your urine in order to see, number one is Your body producing adequate amounts of cortisol, and is it producing it at the right times? I find often that people who've been under a huge amount of stress, that have had trauma, who've had anxiety and insomnia for long periods of time, have a reverse cortisol pattern. So it's supposed to spike in the morning to wake you up and get you going. And then it should go down throughout the day so that you could go to sleep at night. And a lot of trauma warriors have a low amount of cortisol in the morning and high amounts of cortisol at night. And that's where phosphatidylserine comes into place. Again, no affiliation with this company. This is Jaro. I like this one. It's PS100. It's phosphatidylserine, 100 milligrams. And it's important to dose appropriately based on lab testing. So you can get the labs actually run by your doctor or you could get a specialty lab. We give you guys access to that if you want to have this tested. But it's really better to have it tested four times. One is right when you wake up to make sure it's spiking. You want to have one in the afternoon at a random time to make sure it's coming down, one at bedtime. And then if you wake up in the middle of the night, we should test your cortisol then, too, to make sure that cortisol isn't the culprit waking you up. And then we can decide at what time of day do we need to be modifying and retraining your nervous system to produce the cortisol? So I take this every night. Phosphatidylserine is really good for reducing your cortisol when it's too high. And then this stuff is great for brain health, longevity, cognitive function. So if you deal with brain fog, poor memory, any of those side effects that can come from anxiety or depression, this stuff is really good for that. And I've been taking this for quite a long time, and I really, really like it. And yes, any of these tests, you could call the office and we'll have them run for you. And you could also check out my website. I have a couple of tests up there. So if you go to www.Dr.nicolecane.com, i think it's cart or shopping cart. Forgive me, I don't have it pulled up, my loves. But there should be a button on my website. And then you might actually be able to find some of Those on there, otherwise just call the office. So the last thing I want to show you before we jump off and have fabulous weekends together is you want to take a really good multivitamin. Because we're going to be asking your brain and your body to do quite a lot of work. And it's kind of like if I'm asking you to drive your car, baby, you got to put gas in the tank, you got to get a battery in there and have battery juice, like all of those things. And so your body needs building blocks to work. And we have found that in our current society and our agriculture that it's really hard to get the same amount of nutrients in food from today as opposed to 50 years ago. So eating a really rich diet will protect you and give you a lot of nutrients. But sometimes when our bodies are under higher demand because of stress, trauma, medications, infections like Lyme, chronic diseases like lupus or multiple sclerosis, our body needs more support. And so taking a physician grade vitamin can be really helpful. When you're looking for a vitamin, there's a couple of things that you want to pay attention to. And one is the quality of the nutrients. And I can give you guys some information on that. In our warriors group, I'll actually put in a handout on how to select a good multivitamin. I also have some favorites, but sometimes shopping local is really good, right? And so being empowered to be able to look at the list of like, okay, this is a good form of B12. This is a really cheap form, pharmaceutical form of B12. This is A fake B12 made in a lab. So I'll give you in the warriors group access to this handout that I made. But you want to make sure, number one, that it's good quality nutrients because we don't want cheap, unabsorbable garbage nutrients in there. And then number two is, is it an appropriate dose? Because otherwise it's like a squirt bottle of water in a forest fire. My loves. You need to have the right amount sometimes. I've read literature, there's a study on vitamin E in particular, where the researchers are like, vitamin E is ineffective, it doesn't do anything. But then when you looked at the actual study metrics, they were using a pharma, they were using a fake maid one, they made it in the lab and they were using a teeny tiny non therapeutic dose. And so we want to make sure that you're getting the right forms and the right dosages. And then we want to make sure the third Thing is that there aren't any weird additives and things in it that don't make any sense because you don't want to be taking in a bunch of stuff. This is going to be a problem for your body later. So we've been talking today about how you've been doing the seven day challenge. If you haven't heard of that, by the way, go into our anxiety Freedom warriors group. I have an anxiety Freedom challenge. Seven days, two tips. Every single day you're going to get a workbook, videos, it's all free, no pressure. It's just me loving on you. We've been talking about how a lot of my warriors were doing that book together and that how as the weekend's coming that sometimes we just need a little extra support. And I thought what would be more fun than doing a show and tell in Dr. Cain's medicine cabinet? And so we've been going over anxiety and supplements for sleep. And we also talked about herbs, we talked about tinctures, we talked about encapsulated tinctures, we talked about magnesium forms, we talked about the GABA bridge in amino acids. So if you missed this video, go back and check it out. And then the last piece that we were talking about was just general wellness. And I have another, I have one of these for just my general wellness supplements I take in the morning and then I have the sleepy ones. And so being really intentional and helping yourself, remember, like, okay, this is what I want to take and this is when and this is why you're going to get better results with consistency. And so I hope that this has been incredibly helpful for you. I could nerd out. Like Jared said, I could nerd out about this from hours on end. But I want to make sure that I give you guys time to listen and go about your day. I really appreciate shopping local, so try to avoid Amazon and ebay retailers because we just don't know what you're getting. And so shop local or if you need anything, I'm happy to get it for you. Any testing we can do. The main test that we talked about today is cortisol. And so if the there's anything that I can do to support you in getting more information, I will. And then also Haley and I are going to work on getting that supplement buying guide up in the warriors group so that you can have that information as you go forth. And so I hope you have a great weekend. I'm here for you. I love you, I honor you. And if you haven't already, check out the seven Day Challenge. And then, babes, this coming Wednesday, we have a webinar. I'm going to probably do a little live introducing you to it. And then I have a webinar for Somatographic imagery and you should check it out. It is so good and it actually will help us get into the physical body and what the body is doing when it's producing anxiety because sometimes it's beyond our thoughts and our thoughts are like, I don't know why I feel this way. It's really frustrating for me. My body is acting incredibly anxious and I can't stop it. And that's what somatographic is. Imagery is going to help you with. And so just to remind a couple of the questions where as we asked about the magnesium brand, that magnesium l threonate is the form that you're looking for. And really any brand seems to be pretty good. You want to go for 400 milligrams? I did mention life extension. I have no affiliation with them, but they seem to have really good prices, great quality, and tons of research behind it. So if you have any other questions, leave them in the comments and Haley and I will do our best to respond to them. But otherwise, you guys are warriors. I honor you. And I will be back for our Somatographic imagery webinar on Wednesday and I'll be in the group between now and then honoring you, supporting you, answering your questions and cheering you on. This has been Dr. Nicole Cain. To learn more about me, go to www.d r n I c o l e c a I n. Com. Bye babes.