Using Supplements During Benzodiazepine Withdrawal

Hi there. The conversation today is about benzodiazepine tapering and withdrawal and supplementation. And this is one of the most common questions I'm asked is, is it okay to supplement to support GABA when I'm tapering down or if I'm in withdrawal from benzodiazepines? There's a lot of controversy on this topic and I wanted to clear up why. I suggest to my clients using amino acids and different nutrients to help with benzo tapering and withdrawal. And the main concerns really comes from Dr. Ashton. And I respect Dr. Ashton. I use that method in helping my clients taper down on benzodiazepines. One of the biggest benefits of it is that it advises switching, switching from shorter acting benzos like Xanax or Ativan to a longer acting benzodiazepine like diazepam. And Dr. Ashton raises four main concerns with replacing benzodiazepines with other GABA promoting supplements. And so I'm going to go through each of these four concerns and then I'm going to actually respond or kind of provide a counter suggestion for these from my perspective. And a really important thing to keep in mind is that this information was written by Dr. Ashton in April of 2011. And it's been over a decade since that time. And a lot of research and development, especially into complementary and alternative medicine has come out since this time. And so this maybe have written from a time and place and perspective where we just simply didn't have the access to the information that we do now. And so perhaps in this conversation I will bring up some information that maybe Dr. Ashton didn't have. And of course, as I'm saying this, you know, it's an ever evolving process and the most important thing is to talk with your doctor about what's best for you and making sure that it's tailored to your individual needs. Because for some people, using a GABA bridge is life saving. It can make withdrawal and tapering smooth much easier. It can speed up the process for some people, but maybe for others it's either ineffective or it can make your symptoms worse. I see that uncommonly, but it can happen, especially with benzodiazepines because they have such a strong impact on the central and peripheral nervous system that adding anything to your protocol can cause that delicate balance that your body's trying to achieve to go off kilter. So just keep those in mind. And so let's dive into some of the concerns that Dr. Ashton presented. I'll read through all of them and Then we'll go in and I'll provide some counter suggestions. So the first one is the concern that you're not actually resolving the issue of the brain and body making insufficient GABA by just providing GABA in a different form. So that's the first concern. The second that Dr. Ashton felt that there was no nutritional supplement evidence, that it wasn't efficacious, there wasn't any research saying that it would be useful for people, so why do it? The third is that it was purported that excessive doses of some GABA promoting supplements can be toxic. And yes, we're going to address that. And then they also said that there isn't any evidence that benzodiazepine withdrawal causes vitamin, mineral and other deficiencies and no one should take supplements without clear evidence of a deficiency. So those are the key arguments that are presented that often leads to this conversation and this concern. So let's go through each one. So the first one is you're not actually resolving the issue of your brain and body making insufficient GABA by just giving it supplemental gaba. And so the response to that is that while some supplements can be palliative, meaning they don't solve the problem. There are ways to use supplements, amino acids and nutrients that aren't palliative. It's about how we use it and why we use it. So if you have headaches and you take aspirin to reduce the inflammation, to help your headache, you could palliate it also by taking white willow bark to reduce inflammation and reduce the headache. But let's say that the pain is caused by inflammation in your gut. You ate a bunch of sugar and cupcakes. Taking a probiotic also happens to be, depending on the strain and the research behind it, it can be anti inflammatory, it can reduce pain like aspirin or white willow bark. But they can also address the root cause by putting bugs back in your gut that are anti inflammatory to crowd out those sugar craving ones. Right. So it's about how we use it and why we use it. And so we use amino acids that have the ability to increase GABA levels. Amino acids like glycine, taurine, theanine, inositol. And we are working to relieve symptoms, but also to address the root of symptoms. So for example, benzodiazepines, they have been shown to be damaging to the brain. Research has shown that inositol, amino acid, it increases gaba. Yes, but it also increases neuroplasticity in the brain. Inositol helps the brain to heal theanine another amino acid, does increase gaba. Yes, it works similarly in its GABA increasing effects like the benzodiazepine, but it also helps with decreasing inflammation. Specifically, it decreases salivary immunoglobulin A, so it's reducing inflammation. And inflammation is a key symptom of why we feel so lousy. Withdrawing from benzos is because benzos are by nature anti inflammatory and part of the withdrawal is a spike in inflammation. And so theanine can reduce inflammation while increasing gaba. We also know that benzo withdrawal causes dysfunction in the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. It's called your HPA access. And we know that theanine can restore normal function and rhythm to your HPA access. It reduces your symptoms of stress. So yes, theanine can increase gaba. It is a useful GABA bridge, but it also has been shown in the clinical research to balance your hypothalamic pituitary access. And these are all from studies in 2018. I am endeavoring to include them. It doesn't look like Facebook will. Let me make the links clickable, but just let us know in the comments and I can send you the direct links. So that's the first one. The second one is she claims that there's no evidence that nutritional supplements are helpful in benzodiazepine withdrawal and that's just not true. We've seen that nutrients like inositol, glutathione, theanine, CBD have been shown in the clinical research to be effective alternatives to benzos and can be helpful creating GABA bridge. When we're withdrawing through benzos, they reduce anxiety, they reduce inflammation, they reduce stress hormone, they increase gaba, they increase neuroplasticity, they can make a really positive impact. Her third concern was excessive doses of GABA promotion ingredients can be toxic. And yes, that's absolutely true. And that's why you need a doctor on board, is you don't want to just go to the health food store and eat all of the supplements. Yes, theanine can be helpful, but you don't want to just uninhibitedly chow through all of the theanine. You want to have a doctor on board. And while it's quite difficult to overdose on a lot of these amino acids, some people can and you must individualize it with a doctor. And because I'm not your doctor, I can't give you specifics on how to dose your amino acids, but there is research on how they've dosed them in the studies, and a lot of those are linked in my Happy Sleepy Powder page. Okay, so she also claims there is no evidence that benzodiazepine withdrawal or use causes vitamin, mineral and other deficiencies. And that's also just not true. We've seen in the Pharmacist Resource for Clinical Excellence, the American Academy of Family Physicians research coming out of University of Michigan that nutrients are depleted by certain medications. And benzodiazepines do deplete your brain of specific building blocks. And so we want to replenish those building blocks. It can make a huge difference in how you feel. And, you know, the argument that Dr. Ashton also says is no one should take supplements without clear evidence of a specific deficiency. But if you shouldn't take anything if you don't have a deficiency, I think that's just an opinion. And I don't agree with that opinion. Lots of people want to go beyond the bare minimum and pursue optimal. I don't want my liver functioning at the bare minimum. I don't want to wait till it gets one point into the problem zone and then address it. And if I don't have a chocolate deficiency, I want to eat chocolate anyway. Maybe I don't have an aspirin deficiency and I want to take an aspirin. Or if I don't have a turmeric deficiency, maybe I have signs of inflammation, like I have itchy skin. And maybe I don't have a turmeric deficiency, but taking turmeric can help my itchy skin. Right. This puts a lot of faith in what deficiency means and our research into testing and it takes a lot of the conversation out about optimization, individualization. What if somebody struggles with issues methylating or somebody else struggles with issues detoxifying? Or maybe another person has a lot of trauma or they have a lot of oxidative buildup. Where are we taking that into consideration so it doesn't look at supply and demand in the body? So those are the main reasons why there's arguments against creating a GABA bridge and using amino acids and herbs and things to help with benzodiazepine withdrawal and tapering. And I want to give you three reasons why you might consider actually using these sorts of supports in your protocol. And one is that benzodiazepines are chemically altered to get free through your blood brain barrier. Your brain has the blood brain barrier, which is very picky in particular about what it will let through. And this is good. This is protective. And so when the companies were making benzodiazepines, they had to alter substances so that they could get through the blood brain barrier. And they interact with your brain, they interact with your gut, they change hormone levels, they change your gut flora. Your gut flora communicate to your vagus nerve which communicates to your brain. Like these benzodiazepines are changing your brain, but they're changing your body. And taking them away doesn't necessarily put your body on the right track. You have to put your body on the right track. You have to restore balance. And this may include taking amino acids to help your body heal the brain. It may take probiotics to help establish a more healthy beneficial flora. That's why you want to do testing. And taking these nutrients can be helpful. And when we reduce our GABA by reducing the dosage of our medications is sometimes for some people the drops are just too fast. They don't make them in chemically small enough increments where you don't have withdrawal. And so some people, they're liquid diluting their medicines or they're going to a compounding pharmacist and they're taking the smallest to the smallest to the smallest drop and then they're diluting that. And that can be very dangerous if you don't do it correctly. And just simply using amino acids to kind of fill in some of those gaps between what your body is compensating for and the drop can make life changing differences. And then the last is that benzo withdrawal is inflammatory. And if we combine that with a standard American diet disaster in our gut, it can be an obstacle to cure. And so repairing the brain, repairing the body, repairing the hypothalamic pituitary axis will help you get better. And so depending on what your body needs, your protocol will be very different. And so if you have 10 people and you're in the benzo buddies group and you share this and there's 10 people, they're all 10 going to need a different protocol because their bodies are metabolically different, they came into using benzos differently, they have different diets, they have different family systems, it's all got to be individualized. And so when somebody comes out saying don't use any supplements to support this process, it just doesn't make sense when generalized to everybody. So talk with your doctor, get the information. And if you try it and you feel better, pay attention to how you're feeling because your body's going to give you the information that it needs. So this has been. Dr. Nicole this is not a substitute for medical care. It's not a substitute for counseling. I'm here to provide you education and a lot of these statements are based in clinical research but they are also my opinion and so make sure that you don't believe everything anybody says but do your own research, do your own digging. I love answering questions and so keep them coming. I'm here to support you and you can reach us by just leaving a comment on the video or just starting a conversation and we've got your back. I promise you that. A lot of the questions I get we get repeats of the same kinds of questions. So if you're wondering something, chances are somebody else is wondering it too. All right. It's good to see you. And also I have a ton of free resources so if you haven't checked out my into anxiety resources they're on my website Dr.nicolecane.com under the button that says free gifts and so be sure to check those out. All right. It was nice to see you. Take care.