Top Stress Supplements

Stress and what do you do about it? Good days, Medicine Health with Dr. Paul Anderson. That's me, I'm Dr. Paul. And if you're listening live on CTR Radio or we're shooting this over on a live stream to Facebook, welcome. And, uh, we're going to get into this on things to do for stress. And, you know, I, I don't think there's anybody that doesn't feel like your whole life is somewhat stressful, but the last few years have added on a lot for everybody. I know I feel it. And so I wanted to get into some supplements particularly. I know in the past we've done podcasts about how stress works and all that. We'll talk a little bit about that. But supplements are very interesting to people. I get a lot of questions about supplements. And there's, like with everything, there's a good and a bad side to stuff. You got to be careful about some things, some things are quite safe. So we want to just jump in there and start talking about what kind of supplements are going to be the best to help your body deal with stress. Now, one of the things you want to think about is you can go, especially if you go to, you know, a supplement store, or even worse, if you put into, you know, your search bar supplements for stress, you'll get a 8,000 or 8 million things. And so today we're not going to talk about 8,000 things, but I kind of got things broken down into 3 big categories. So there's herbs or botanical medicines, so those are very popular. There's vitamins and minerals, the nutrient end of things, and then there are the fat end of things. And you think of fats, that sounds a little bit weird. Well, we'll explain that coming up. But one of the things that I want to make sure that we talk about is when you get things from either, you know, an herb store, a supplement store, or your doctor or anybody else, not all things are created equal. So you can get an herb that may be helpful to you, but the dose, if you will, is different from, let's say you have tea and that herb is in the tea versus maybe a liquid extract versus maybe pills. And they're all good, they're all available, but how do you know which thing that you need? So the first thing I want to talk about, because this will apply to everything that we're going to go over today as far as supplements, is your tolerance is individual to you. There are literally people who all they need is the tea version of a plant medicine or a very low dose of a nutrient, and it makes a huge difference in their life. There's other people that their metabolism is such that they require large doses of the exact same thing. And you can see this in families. You know, there'd be one person who's, you know, blown out of the water if they have, you know, 3 cups of the tea. Another person doesn't notice anything there, but if they take a liquid extract or pills or whatever, they really feel it, but they have to take a higher dose. So now, as I always say, this is not medical advice. This is health information. You get your medical advice from your healthcare provider, healthcare team. And taking medical advice from people on video apps is usually a dumb idea anyway. So this is just for information. but it should maybe guide you to kind of pare down some of the information that you get, especially if you're looking online. So the first thing I want to talk about was something that many people, if not most people, have heard of with respect to maybe calming down and stress and all that, and that's the plant chamomile. And so from, you know, days gone by, even in, you know, the American frontier, chamomile tea grows, you know, on the plains and all, all over the place in the US anyway. Very, very popular. Chamomile has a tradition of, you know, kind of being a calming herb. Now, if I, I kind of have one of those slow type metabolisms or whatever it is that's wrong with me where I take a lot of stuff. If I drink chamomile tea, it's nice and I love the tea just for the tea, but it's not going to calm me down that much. If I take a chamomile extract, say whether it's a fluid extract extract where they really concentrate it, there's like a lot of plant in there, or pills, I might feel that. So you kind of have to start out with, you know, the idea of how are you usually when— with your sensitivity to things. If you're that kind of person where, you know, a little bit of a medicine goes a very long way, or the opposite where a lot of medicine gets you a little bit of effect, it's probably how it's going to be with things like nutrients or herbs, botanicals, etc. But chamomile is a great place Yeah. It's a great place to start because just as a background, it tastes good. Not all herbs taste good. And it's the kind of thing you can incorporate into your lifestyle where you could drink it as a tea. One of the things that I've done in the past is taken in, especially during the summer, you know, it's warm and you want to make some tea and cool it down, taken and mixed a few herbs that had good taste combos that went together and made a batch of that and kind of drank it all day long. Well, you know, you're going to drink fluids anyway, so tea is one way to go. But I've also talked to patients where they've said, well, you know, I tried drinking chamomile tea or some other tea and it didn't really change how I felt. It didn't change my anxiety or my stress or any of that stuff. Well, that's not unusual. And, you know, tea only is going to get you so far. Now, I will say, for people on the sensitive end of the spectrum, that might be all they need. Literally, I've had people where they started to, you know, drink a tea mix or maybe a particular herb tea through the day, and it just took them down a notch and they felt better, they felt more centered. So there's no particular reason I started with chamomile other than most people have heard of it. It's on the spectrum of plant medicine, so botanicals or herbs, whatever you want to call it. Chamomile is almost universally safe, almost at any dose. So unless you're allergic to chamomile flowers, you're probably pretty safe with chamomile. Now there's always person who's going to be allergic or not tolerate it. But that's a big thing, you know, in the, in the nutrients we talk about them, you already have those nutrients in your body. So unless you do something really strange with them or it's a form your body doesn't like of the nutrient, nutrients usually are pretty well tolerated. Plants are from outside of our body. And so we need to think about, you know, if we're going to take something for the first time, and again, get some healthcare advice on this. Don't take my word for it. But if we're going to take something from the outside that grows in the plant world, you know, you probably want to try it first. You know, don't buy a $100 bottle of something, uh, and, you know, take 2 pills and find out that you have an allergic reaction to it or something. So tea is another kind of nice way to try stuff out too. You can try— there's a lot of herbal teas. And if you have it available in your area, there's a lot of bulk tea shops and they'll, they'll make you mixes or they'll let you, you know, take a few to try and you can make some tea. If it works out, great. Uh, if you have some kind of reaction, then you don't have to waste money on something that's not working. But chamomile is one of those things that's— it's a nice base. It's nice, as I said, because it doesn't taste bad. It's kind of nice. You can put it in with your, you know, daily warm drinks that you have or cold drinks. Um, but chamomile has a very mellow sort of a chemistry. And so it goes in and it has these sort of very minimal changes it tends to make with people, so much so that we use it a lot with little children and even babies to help. I've done chamomile infusions in babies' baths, kind of calm them down. It actually works pretty well that way. And again, don't give your kids anything that your, you know, pediatrician doesn't know about. But chamomile is kind of universal in that respect. If you're thinking about plants and stress, one of the things to think about is, well, okay, so you— and you can go back on the podcast and look at the old deep dives into stress and stress hormones, all this stuff. But the bottom line is we want to remember, without stress, we're dead. You know, we don't have a life without stress. But what happens is, is our body is intended through, you know, its evolutionary processes to have this kind of yin and yang around stress where there's a plus and a minus. And your body has all these internal counter-regulatory mechanisms where when you get stressed from, you know, the war that's going on, or you get stressed from the pandemic, or you get stressed from your job or your family or whatever, your body responds and hopefully kind of takes some of the shock of the stress. And then later there should be a compensatory time where your body recharges. If you recall, or if you don't, it's no problem. It's when we have constant stressing of the system and we don't have any recovery time that we feel kind of the evil or the bad stress, and that's the kind that we really don't want, and that's of course the kind most of us, if you're watching currently in 2022 I guess it is, you know, most people are feeling a lot of stress, and that's because we, you know, we're at the tail end of a pandemic, there's a lot of unknowns around, you know, that bug and maybe new bugs coming down the pike, we, you know, are probably less than impressed with the kind of overall ability of all of us to respond in a non-stressful manner, which didn't exist through the pandemic. And then we, you know, there's wars going on, there's all kinds of stuff. So stress is there. Modern times, our ability to recharge from stress has become a big problem. And unless you intentionally try and do that, you can just roll from one day to the next to the next, one stress to the next, next. and your body never has that compensatory time. And it's literally like when you're pushing on the positive end of the spectrum and the stress is coming in and you're dealing with it, if you never have a negative end of the spectrum to calm that down and recharge the system, system gets tired. Okay, so when we talk about nutrients or fats, those are going to work with your biological processes to help with the stress response. The plant medicines are more complex molecules. So for example, if you look at a simple molecule like vitamin B3 or vitamin B1 or some B5, these things that we'll talk about with stress, they're pretty straightforward little molecules. And they go and they do very particular things, usually with enzyme systems in our nervous system and elsewhere. You look at plant molecules, and they can be very cumbersome in a very elegant sort of way. And it's that cumbersome nature of the plant molecules that allows them to get in your body and interact on a couple of different levels. So we talk about chamomile, or we're going to talk about other herbs coming up here. You get an herb into your body, and the herb may go in one part of the body and help to be an antioxidant. Okay, a lot of the polyphenols in plants are really good antioxidants. And as we're going to find out, stress becomes a pro-oxidant situation in your body. So antioxidants can help there. But then that same plant molecule, or you may metabolize the plant into a couple of molecules, might go to your brain and actually bind somewhere that kind of calms your brain down, like physically calms your brain down, which is kind of cool. Okay. So speaking of that, next plant again, There's no order here. I don't love one plant more than the other or anything like that. But another one people have heard a lot about is valerian. Okay, valerian's a plant. It's usually the root part that is made into a medicine, a botanical medicine or whatever. So if you're taking it as a, you know, capsule or something, it's probably valerian root that's ground up or dried or an extract. Now you might say, why don't I see as much— like, I see a lot of chamomile tea, even commercial product. Why don't I see a lot of valerian tea, right? Well, because valerian tastes kind of like wet socks or something. It's, it's not a great taste, that valerian. Now, if you're looking at chamomile as being sort of a gentle, you know, easygoing sort of medicine herb, valerian is a lot less easygoing. It hits a lot harder. You notice it quicker with a lower dose. So you— and there are people that do drink it as a tea or take it as like an extract or a tincture, but it doesn't taste very good. So it's not the kind of thing that, you know, most people are going to be thinking, God, I'd love to hit on some valerian all day here. So that's why usually you get it like in capsules. Okay. Now there are, uh, there are different types of capsules, different, you know, extracts and all that. We'll talk about standardizing and all and not standardizing. But if you look at like chamomile on one end of the spectrum and then valerian on the other end of the spectrum, It's sort of like if chamomile's like a 2 out of 10 as far as its ability to get in you and help with the calming, valerian's like an 8 out of 10. A lot of people will kind of take them together, you know. So that's another thing I want to do as we talk about the plant medicines especially, is kind of rate them for you. So, you know, you're, you're going to be taking a lot of chamomile to calm down unless you're super sensitive, whereas you can take a lot less valerian. Now, with any plant, with anything, but with any plant, there are people who are allergic or sensitive to these plants. So this is where I'm saying, you know, try some first, get medical advice first, then try it before you buy a whole bunch of it. Because there are people, you know, it's rare. Most people with valerian, they feel calmer, they sleep better, they feel, you know, kind of more level. But there are some people get paradoxical reactions. So the valerian's supposed to calm them down. and it kind of speeds them up. That's very rare, but it can happen. There are some people who are just sensitive, like their digestive system doesn't do well with it. There are some people rarely who are allergic to certain plants. So that can happen too. But another strategy people will use sometimes is, let's say that they really— they're concerned and they don't want to take a real strong anti-anxiety or stress type herb, calming herb, during the day, you know, until they know how it feels. A lot of people will do like a 2 or 3 out of 10 herb during the day, like, you know, drinking the chamomile tea all day long or taking some chamomile. And then when they get home, you know, before dinner they might have some valerian, and then after dinner they might, you know, kind of load it up in the evening until you sort of get a feel for it. Now, valerian for most people is not going to make you unable to, you know, operate heavy equipment or any of that. Stuff. But you do, you know, it is stronger. You do want to kind of feel that. Now one that's interesting to me, and it's, there's commercial over-the-counter products with this in it, so you may have heard of it now, is lavender. So lavender extract, again, don't go and get something not made for oral use. So don't get like lavender oil and drink it or something like that. that dumb idea. But there is a lavender extract that's actually been in research studies looking at anxiety and stress response and all that with lavender extract. And there's some over-the-counter, as I said, you know, things that are certainly in supplement stores, but now you can kind of see lavender's worked its way into the, you know, the grocery store herb aisle and stuff. Lavender can be very good at helping to kind of calm calm the ship down, kind of balance things out. And one of the ways that you can kind of look at these plant medicines and herbs is whether it's, you know, valerian with a bigger punch or chamomile, they're very gentle, or lavender, kind of— I look at that as a kind of middle-of-the-road guy. Um, they are there to help you not only feel better, feel more calm, take things better, but also then what that should do is facilitate you getting in there and doing some of the calming you know, non-medicated work. So like, you know, centering or meditation or prayer, whatever it is that you do in that realm, sitting quietly, exercise, you know, those things that help to recharge your system. Well, if the plant medicines can calm you down enough so that then you can deal with things and go do that, that's win-win. Now there's another group of plants that Are, um, in, in the plant medicine world they call them adaptogens. And so adapt is in that word, and their job is to kind of, uh, level the ship out. So if things are too high, it kind of brings it down. If they're too low, it kind of brings it up. So they're really there to, you know, kind of round out your nervous system response. One of my favorite plant medicines for this, which is very popular and it's in a lot of formulas and stuff, is ashwagandha. So it's often thought of as an Ayurvedic herb. It's very common now even in North America, etc. But ashwagandha is one of those that kind of balances things out. So people will use it for kind of background stress support because it's considered— and this is a simplification— but it's considered to help your peripheral stress system a lot, like your adrenal glands that make your corticoids and your Fight or flight hormones and stuff. So a lot of people will take like ashwagandha, and I would always tell a patient before they would take it, well, try it obviously, but try it in the morning first. If it makes you tired, take it at nighttime. If it gives you energy, take it in the morning. It literally is adaptogens. Whatever your body kind of wherever the weak link is, it'll send you in that direction. What I tend to notice with people with these adaptogenic substances is if you've really burned the candle at both ends and that— you remember that yin and yang, so the plus of stress and the minus of recharging— if you haven't been doing any recharging, a lot of these adaptogenic herbs will kind of force the issue and make you tired, like it's time to rest because your body knows it's needing this rest. So that's totally cool. Just, you know, play into what the plant is telling you to do, basically. So many people will feel more energized when they take it because their adrenals actually are working, and so they can take it with their breakfast, no problem. But if you take it and then you just want to take a nap, I wouldn't do that unless you have nothing better to do, and I would take it in the evening. And then what people find is if the adaptogen tends to push them towards, say, more rest, After a while, they'll sleep better, and then it may sort of go back to the midline, and it may not be a big issue to take it at night or in the morning. But that's another thing with these herbs. Just because a plant has a, you know, kind of a reputation, chemically speaking, for, you know, being a daytime, you know, help your energy plant, if your body is really worn out, it may push you into daytime, let's sleep a lot sort of a plant. So ashwagandha is a big one. there. Now, of the plants— and I've used, you know, thousands and thousands of doses of ashwagandha with patients in, you know, recovery and, uh, you know, tuning up their stress response, all this stuff— about 1 out of 100 to 300 people— so not very common, but about 1 to 100 people— will actually have a sensitivity or allergy to the family that ashwagandha is in. So that's another reason to do a test with it because I've had people where they need the chemical activity that ashwagandha does, but they can't handle the plant. Okay, so that can happen. And there's different levels of that sort of reaction. One level is frank allergy. Obviously, you don't take anything you're allergic to. You can look the plant up and see who its relatives are, and if you're super allergic to the family, Just don't take it. Okay. But the other thing is you can have a GI tract reaction. You can have any number of other reactions. So ashwagandha is a good one, you know, unless it bugs you. But like I say, it's gotten its way into over-the-counter stress products. So you see ashwagandha, starts with an A, in a lot of like adrenal support or even sleep support or other things like that. Well, who is another one that you often see go along with valerian as sort of a co-herb? Passionflower. So passiflora or passionflower is a, a big kind of calming herb. It's not quite as potent as valerian, and a lot of times you see a valerian-passionflower mixture like in capsules. Uh, passionflower doesn't taste nearly as bad as valerian does, so you could make a tea out of it. You might see some tea with it, but it's usually in capsules or maybe a liquid extract. But passionflower, and this sort of brings up a point, herbal formulas are in many cases better balanced out. So sometimes you'll see an over-the-counter product that's got maybe something like a valerian and a passionflower and then maybe one other or two other herbs in it. That's because usually an herbalist has looked at it and looked at trying to balance the chemical activities of the herbs I'm not really talking about a lot, uh, or there's be a couple herbs that cross over into the world of Chinese medicine because that's a whole other thing. But in Chinese medicine, if you go see a Chinese medicine practitioner, normally they're going to, you know, take your case and get all this information, but they're going to look at your constitution and the herbal formula you get will be customized for you. So like I say, it's going to supportive in certain areas, you know, and then maybe, uh, you know, tonic in other areas and balanced in other areas. So that's, that's why sometimes you see herbs put together the way that they are. So what other things might help me with my stress? Well, another one that's more of a, you know, 8 out of 10, packs a bigger punch, you've probably heard of, is kava. And it's sometimes called kava kava, but kava Um, common herb. Uh, people in, you know, Polynesia, it's propagated. You know, they'll, they'll chew it up and eat it and do all this stuff. Nowadays there's kava bars where you can go and drink kava. Um, so there's all kinds of stuff with kava. Now kava is, like I said, hits a little harder. So if you're really, you know, uh, stressed out and anxious and all that, kava, valerian, those guys, you'll notice them faster. You do want, you know, just like with valerian, with kava, there are certain people that just don't react well to kava. And so you want to kind of, you know, again, test things out. If you've had a kind of a bad experience, there's a couple of directions that can go. If you got a stomach problem, like you got nauseated or even threw up or something from an herb, A lot of times that's not that you were allergic to it. That's because maybe it should be taken with some food or a lot of fluid or something. Because think about it, especially you take like a dry capsule of an herb that gets down to your stomach, the capsule hits the acid in your stomach, opens up, your stomach's got nothing in it. Now you've got all this powder going on the stomach lining and it'll actually cause your stomach to spasm. So if, if it was a gut reaction, maybe drink a lot of water with it or take it with some food. If you got itchy, if you got an allergic type reaction, don't take it anymore. Okay, that's, that's a different type of a thing. But kava is a good one there. Now there's other herbs that depending on how they're dosed and other things can be very helpful either from this adaptogenic kind of help the body deal with the stress or maybe even supportive and tonic So there's a kind of ginseng called Siberian ginseng called eleuthero or Eleutherococcus. That's very commonly put into formulas, again, to balance the formula out. But eleuthero is a really good adaptogenic type herb. My experience is similar to ashwagandha in that for some people, it like, it lifts them up and they feel more energy and less stress. That's great, then take it during the day. For some people, eleuthero, because they're so burned out, it makes them, you know, feel tired and they want to go to sleep, great, take it in the evening. But eleuthero is another real common one that you see. Now, another herbal product that we've had whole programs about are cannabinoids. And with cannabinoids, because I don't know where you are, there legal for medical and recreational uses in the state of Washington where I am, but in most all of the states, the cannabidiol, the CBD version, is legal as a supplement, and of course, that's like a ping-pong ball that goes back and forth because the government really would like their hands, you know, in that pie too, but CBD is is very possible to get. Now, cannabidiol, so you think about, well, that comes from cannabinoids, okay? If you take whole plant cannabis, the part that people think about often is the THC, the tetrahydrocannabinol, and that certainly is the part that produces more of the, you know, classic marijuana-type signs and symptoms and feelings. So medically speaking, for example, we use THC extract with somebody in recommending it medically. And we'll have them use that in the evening and at bedtime to help replace anxiety medicine, stuff like that. It's very strong. Cannabidiol is another metabolite that's in the plant that can be extracted. And it can be extracted from hemp too. And that's where most of the cannabidiol in the US comes from is hemp. So there's— the cannabis family is large and hemp is one part of the family that's legal. So if you have a marijuana plant, that is, you know, depending on where you are, either legal or illegal. But if you take hemp, there's almost no THC in there. There's a lot of CBD and other cannabinoids, the Cs. So that's where they extract the CBD. What I will say is cannabinoids, and if you're already using them, you already know this, but if you're not, you need to be thoughtful about this. As a plant medicine, Cannabidiol is very, very good. We use it a lot with our autoimmune patients, cancer patients, etc., because you can dose it. You don't really get, you know, there's no central nervous system like high effect or any of that, although if you take enough heavy extracts you can feel it in your brain, but it's not that much and what most people can handle. So cannabidiol is, in my experience with it clinically, more of— more in the realm of the adaptogen. So kind of helps your body to get back to the middle. It can be very calming. There are some people it helps with chronic pain, and most people find that it does help with their sleep as well. So you want to keep that in mind that if you're using an over-the-counter, say, CBD product, If you're— if, if your body is not used to cannabinoids of any kind, whether it's marijuana or CBD or, you know, THC extract or whatever, if it's not used to that, start small because your body will have no tolerance and recognition. So there are these, uh, you know, CBD comes in different delivery formats, even gummy bears now, right? So start with a low dose if you're or what we call cannabis naive, and work up and see what it takes. Now, with CBD, because there's generally not any sort of brain effect, like doesn't tend to make you tired or high or any of that stuff, we would often divide the dose of CBD up in sort of a morning and evening dosing. With real chronically ill people or people with advanced cancer, sometimes we give it to them 3 or 4 times through the day. But it's hard if you're, you know, if you're out and you're not terribly chronically ill, it's hard to remember multiple doses. So you can start with a little dose, you know, morning and evening and kind of see how it goes. Some people take more in the evening because they feel it helps them sleep better. And again, remember, a big part of not recovering from stress is partly we're hitting the stress 24/7 and we're not recharging. Another part is part of the recharge is getting appropriate sleep. And it turns out that there's a lot of drugs that we give people for sleep that have this dichotomy, and it's a problem. And that is that the drug will make you unconscious, so you believe you're sleeping really well, but it also doesn't put you into the right type of sleep patterns to give you restorative sleep. So drugs are a little tricky in that way where, yes, we can knock you out, but that not being unconscious doesn't always mean good sleep. So CBD, for many people, really helps with sleep rhythms. And as I said, it's more of like an adaptogen. And I think it's very useful in that respect if you want to use it. Some people are very uncomfortable using any cannabinoids, and that's fine. And then there's some people that have had you know, bad reactions like you can with any plant medicine, then don't, uh, don't take it. Don't use it. There's, there's zillions of plants out there. Um, I know that, you know, on internet radio this goes all over the world, and one reason I'm picking these particular plant medicines to talk about is they're commonly either grown or used in North America where I am. But I've also traveled to many places around the world, and for instance, when I was in Korea, uh, there, there's a branch of Korean medicine called traditional Korean medicine that uses very, you know, Korean-oriented herbal preparations and things of that nature. As we've talked about with Chinese medicine, it's a whole different group of herbs and lexicon for putting those herbs together, and that works really well. In India and that part of the world, Ayurveda is a very big influence. And like I said, we have some Ayurvedic herbs that we use kind of crossing over, but Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, traditional Korean medicine, other traditions tended to use more of this balancing approach with herbs. So one of the things, you know, I always say, well, don't take medical advice from people on video apps, and here I'm on a video app telling you about medicine. When it comes to plant medicines, the one thing I usually tell people is, number one, if you can work with somebody, you know, let's say you're not in North America, work with somebody who does the traditional medicine of wherever you're at, because they're going to not only know the plants, they're going to have a lot of experience using them. The other thing is, if you can find a healthcare provider who has training specifically in what we call botanical medicine or herbal medicine, that really helps too. Because, you know, for example, with the type of medicine that I practice, I am trained in sort of the standard, you know, I can give you a drug for X, Y, or Z, comfortable with that. I also had extra training on, you know, botanical medicine, so I can do that if I need to, or if I need to mix and match, I can do that. But a lot of my colleagues, you know, who don't have specific training in botanicals, um, or herbal medicine, they're not really going to be able to guide you very well. So if you really want to get into herbal medicine, especially if you have a more complex complex case, you want it balanced. In North America, I would recommend working either with a North American herbalist— those people are available— naturopathic doctors, any Chinese medicine provider generally, who, you know, acupuncturists or doctor of oriental medicine, etc. They're going to, of course, do that type of herbal medicine. And then in North America also, there's a lot of traditional North American healing practitioners that use, you know, endogenous local plants, and a lot of them come from either the, you know, First Nations, Native American type traditions, etc. So that, like I was saying, every— there's no place you can go in the world where there's not a resident herbal tradition, even if it's got 100 or 200 years of medicine layered on top of it. it, it's in there somewhere. So if you're going to mess around with a lot of plant medicines, find somebody to help guide you there. Um, but generally, you know, unless there's an allergy or something, very safe. Now, as we kind of transition, because I did promise to talk about other stuff, I do want to say a couple— there's a couple of kind of universal things. So if you have a supplement, uh, or a liquid extract or whatever, remember that thing about empty stomachs and supplements. So take all your supplements with food unless told otherwise by the healthcare provider or your guide or whoever's doing this with you. And the reason I say that is while sometimes the absorption slows down a little bit if you take it with food, it also is no fun if you take a supplement and then you throw up and you have that association now with that supplement. So it's just better start out, take it while you're eating, and then you can branch out and, you know, explore, uh, taking things on an empty stomach later. So that, that goes for vitamins, minerals, herbs, whatever. Okay, now what about nutrients? And, and why did you say nutrients are a little bit different? Well, again, if you look at these big structures that are— that come in plant medicines, they're complex. They, uh, they have a lot of different chemistry to them. They can level out, uh, you know, oxidation, which helps out a lot. Less oxidized your, you know, your brain is, the better it feels. They can bind to receptors and do all this stuff. Nutrients often are helper molecules that help, for instance, the enzymes that operate our neurotransmitters. And neurotransmitter balance is kind of where it's at for how your brain's feeling. And stress messes with the way your brain's feeling. So a lot of nutrients are there to help the enzyme take you from the brain trying to make a neurotransmitter to actually making it. So a lot of things like your B vitamins and your minerals, especially your trace minerals and B vitamins together, aren't a big part of the binding of the neurotransmitter that makes you feel better and more calm. But without them, the enzyme slows down that makes that neurotransmitter. So when we talk about like B vitamins and certain minerals and stuff like that, that's their biggest role. Now, are they also involved in other parts of making these neurotransmitters or maybe the action after the neurotransmitter binds? Sure, they're there. But their biggest role is as what we call enzyme cofactors. So If I have, uh, for example, I have, um, the amino acid tryptophan in my brain, right? Most people have heard tryptophan helps to make serotonin and a bunch of other things, by the way. Well, if I don't have enough of the B vitamins that turn on the enzymes to make my tryptophan metabolize into things like serotonin, I will have slow enzyme activity. So enzyme won't stop, it'll slow down. So I've literally seen people where we didn't have to give them any tryptophan or, you know, precursor things. We just gave them the nutrients to help those enzymes, and they started to feel calmer, feel better, sleep better, just because the system was fed and the enzymes work better. So a lot of your B vitamins, minerals, other stuff like that are really targeting those intermediate steps, which are super important. And, you know, we've talked about this a lot, but B vitamins are water soluble, so What I eat today or take in today is gone, you know, pretty much tomorrow. We store a little bit, but not much. So people will often say, well, there's, you know, B vitamins are good for stress. Well, there's something with B vitamins you got to remember. B vitamins are a family and they do different things. So I've had people say, well, I react badly to B vitamins. Well, first you got to find out what that is. A lot of times the reaction is that they feel nauseated when they take B vitamins. Well, again, B vitamins on an empty stomach can be nauseating, but a real common reaction is people get kind of amped up and nervous when they take certain B vitamins. And if you're trying to help with stress, that's not the direction you want to go. So you want to keep in mind that there are some B vitamins that feed into pathways in the brain that are very excitatory. So a lot of times, like vitamin B12 and folates, okay, they tend to be talked about together. They feed into a lot of the enzyme systems that help you convert and make the more excitatory chemistry in your brain, which is great if you're fatigued and all that stuff. But if you take them right before bed, you may have trouble sleeping. sleeping. Or if people say, man, I took this active B complex and I was jittery all this, like I had a pot of coffee. Well, that's because probably the active Bs, there was a lot of like the B12 folate helping out these processes that make your more excitatory chemicals. But on the other hand, there are B vitamins that are used specifically to help kind of level the ship and calm things down. So 2 of them, and they're, they're numbered together. A lot of B vitamins have a number. So vitamin B5 and B6, pantothenic acid and pyridoxine, 2 Ps. Um, B5 and B6 together are often used as— they'll call it like adrenal support or whatever, kind of like the adaptogens of the B vitamins. And they can work that way, but B5 and B6 can be used as, uh, to help the stress response for a couple reasons, a couple of big reasons and a lot of little reasons. One is that vitamin B5 is involved in this process called acetylation, and, um, it, it can help your brain actually get rid of excitatory chemicals that are building up. So B5 is kind of good at calming things down. It's also used up a lot by the adrenal glands, your peripheral stress response, B6 is involved in almost all of the elimination pathways for your excitatory chemicals. Well, guess when you release the most excitatory chemicals? That's when you're under stress all the time. So what'll happen is there's a supply and demand thing where if I'm hitting the stress all the time, we can get used to it, but inside our body is producing producing, you know, fight-or-flight chemistry and all this other stuff. Well, you got to get rid of it too. So just like, remember I said there's making the neurochemistry, there's enzymes involved in the production, there's also enzymes involved in the elimination. And we've literally had people where their production side worked really well and they're stressed out all the time, and their elimination side burned up all of its B vitamin cofactors, so they just felt like, you know, literally amped up all time. So B5 and B6 are often used together. Now you want to remember that the B vitamins usually go with minerals. B6 always runs around with magnesium, and people use magnesium to calm down. Well, B6 and magnesium go together just like peas and carrots. Works really great. And again, you know, get medical advice before you take any of this stuff. But this is why you'll often see like a adrenal support or a stress support supplement, and it may have other B vitamins, but there'll be maybe a lot of B5 and B6 in there. And, and that's largely why they're there. Another one that goes with that sort of in the middle of the road is vitamin C. Now vitamin C doesn't do as much of the cofactor business, you know, where it's helping enzymes. Does, does it in different ways. But vitamin C is, is used in extreme quantities by your adrenal glands, the peripheral stress center in your body. And, and And there's related gland material to your adrenal glands, and they love vitamin C. Vitamin C is also water soluble. So what I take in today, I either use or I urinate out. And so vitamin C is extremely under demand under stress. Well, if you think about it, and we've talked about this, like with people getting sick with COVID and other stuff like that, if you're fight— fighting, fighting, fighting off the bugs around you and all that, and you're feeling pretty good, and then finally, you know, the final bug gets you or whatever, you've used up a lot of these water-soluble nutrients, especially vitamin C, goes way down. Well, vitamin C helps with a number of things. One is it helps with oxidation, keeping it down. Remember I said that's less oxidation, happier brain. Another thing that it does is it actually helps in the production of some of your stress chemistry. So it's used up a lot there. And it also helps in other places to help kind of calm down some of the excitatory chemicals that can be released. Now, we don't think of vitamin C in that way, you know, sort of as a stress vitamin, but actually it does a lot of things. And, you know, we could, we could really go in a deep rabbit hole about vitamin C and all it does there. But just keep in mind, kind of like your B vitamins, vitamin C is water soluble. It, it goes very well with B5 and B6 in the stress response and all of that business. And you'll often see vitamin C along with these sort of support formulas. Um, what I do usually recommend to people is not to freestyle too much. So don't, don't just get like a lot of one vitamin and take it, because the B vitamins tend to run together in parallel pathways. So if I take a whole bunch of one and I make that pathway go fast, it will make the parallel pathways go faster. And if I don't take those other B vitamins, they'll get deficient. So usually as a base we do like a B complex on top of, you know, let's say you're taking a multi, take extra B complex and then work your way up. Now if you already know that you get amped up from, you know, methyl B12 and folate and stuff like that, you can now get B vitamins that don't have B12 and folate. There's a product, no commercial attachment, but it's called B- And it was developed— if you just search B- supplement, you'll find it. It was developed specifically for those sensitive people. Now, you may have also heard about using things like amino acids. So amino acids, we talk about tryptophan making serotonin. First thing we want to think about with amino acids is they're They're also a water-soluble structure. They're a little more cumbersome than some vitamins, but we do store them up in our nervous system and other places. Our liver stores them up, our brain stores a lot of amino acids, and muscles, etc. So when we're thinking about that, I'll just— I'm not going to go through all the amino acids you could use, but I'm going to talk about the ones you've probably heard about the most. So we'll start with one that we talked about earlier, and that's tryptophan, or 5-HTP as a common supplement, which is just one step down metabolically from tryptophan. So the thing you want to keep in mind is if I'm giving an amino acid, I'm doing something usually on this, on the making, the synthetic side. That means that the enzymes are going to have to work harder. So we've had people where they're taking like a tryptophan or 5-HTP or whatever, and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. And we give them the B vitamins that help with the conversion of the tryptophan, 5-HTP down to serotonin and melatonin and stuff, and suddenly it starts to work. So this is where I was saying you, you sometimes have to balance these things out. So you'll see sometimes like in supplement stores or maybe online, you know, a calming or antidepressant or anti-anxiety formula, and it might have like tryptophan or 5-HTP, but then you might also see some of the other B vitamins in it. Well, that's the reason that they're in that formula is to support the enzymes that are moving the, you know, the amino acid down the trail there. Again, you know, not medical advice. You get your advice from somebody who's trained. But 5-HTP, tryptophan, they're over the counter. A lot of people use them, and a lot of people that aren't getting results, either they don't need it or they don't have enough B vitamins to back it up. But tryptophan and 5-HTP kind of go tryptophan first, then 5-HTP, then downstream it becomes serotonin, downstream further it becomes melatonin. melatonin. So it tends to be more on the leveling and calming side of things. So if that is an area that, you know, your doctor thinks needs some addressing, great, you can get into that. There's other ones, like, if you think about the, you know, the supporting cast, right? So like the B vitamins are there to go help the enzymes do their job. Really. They don't do the job of the enzyme, they help it. Was a super important amino, uh, and it's used a lot. A lot of people think about it like with, um, you know, uh, you know, workout powders and stuff like that, but it's really used by your nerve— it's used by your whole body. Your nervous system loves it. It's called taurine. Well, the reason that taurine really does what it does is It, it is a supporting cast member that is crucial to the way every cell in your body works, but especially nervous system cells and muscle, which is why you often see it in workout powders. Um, taurine is there. It's called— chemically they call it an osmolite, but all that means is it's a gatekeeper at your cell membranes so that when the electrolytes need to go in the cell or other electrolytes need to go outside the cell, cell, those gates open up. They're taurine dependent. And what you can do is you can literally help your electrolyte movement, uh, move more smoothly by increasing your taurine levels. Also, people who have been, uh, chronically ill or just acutely ill for a short but intense period of time usually get taurine deficient. Taurine's universally helpful in that respect. And it's like I said, it's a supporting cast member. It's not famous for doing one thing or the other, but it allows all the other guys to work. Now, why would this, you know, electrolytes moving back and forth be important? Well, if you think of it from the muscle end of the business, so why they maybe put in sports powders and stuff like that, if you're using your skeletal muscle a lot, the movement of my skeletal muscle when I work out or run or whatever increases the amount of electrolytes moving back and forth. Speed goes up. goes up. Well, if my taurine starts to run down, the electrolytes can't quite get in and out like they should. And then the chemistry of my muscle activity, I, you know, I hit my peak faster. Well, in your brain, it's the same thing, only it's not muscles working, it's nerve cells. Nerve cells in your brain and your peripheral nervous system for stress burn up the, uh, the primary electrolytes— calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. And, uh, Taurine is required to get those guys moving back and forth across your nerve cells. So when you're under stress and you're hitting the stress every day, 24/7, you're not recovering. It gets harder to recover when you can't get your electrolytes moving the way that they're supposed to. And the brain uses a lot, a lot of this stuff, a lot of taurine. Another one that is, uh, not a supporting cast member, it's, it's a main player that you see in a lot of like calm, calm you down formulas, sleep formulas, stuff like that, is glycine with the G, G-L-Y-C-I-N-E. And glycine in most people goes into the nervous system and it binds to the calming receptor sites. So it helps to calm your brain. Taurine helps with this as well. But glycine's used a lot. Glycine actually tastes kind of sweet. So a lot of people, uh, let's say you're doing the, you know, the, uh, traditional thing of some chamomile tea in the evening. We'd have people put a spoonful of glycine powder in their chamomile tea because it's kind of sweet, and they would drink that and they would help them go into sleep at night. Like every other thing though, you really want to, uh, test glycine. Don't, don't go buy a keg of it and then find out you react to it, because there's a percentage of people whose brains— there's other things glycine does. And some people just genetically do the more excitatory glycine things with glycine. So we've, we've seen people where they took a lot of glycine thinking it was gonna knock 'em out and they didn't sleep that night. So start with a little dose, try a little bit out, don't buy a whole bunch. If it helps you calm down, that's 90% of people. 10% of people glycine makes you a little hyper. Don't, don't take it. Well, in the last little moments we have left, I just want to mention a couple of fats. And we might do another program on fats because they're so interesting. But you'll see like phospholipids, that's what the lining of your cells is made out of. So phosph— like phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, see those a lot. Those are fatty things that actually help repair those membranes that are passing all those electrolytes back and forth. Vitamin D, D. I'll put some links in on— when we put over on YouTube. Vitamin D is very helpful with stress response. Vitamin E, it's very helpful with stress response. Um, but we are going to get the electronic hook here very, very soon. Uh, so let's take a look. All right, so in closing, stress— there's a lot of natural things you can do to help it. You want to remember, today we talked about interventions like herbal things and vitamins and minerals and amino acids and a little bit about the fats. You always want to remember that those nutrient things or herbal things or whatever should be there to back you up, help kind of backfill the effects of chronic stress and all of that. But then the other side is the hygienic side, the sort of rest and recovery things. So you've got to do things— hopefully the herbs and the vitamins help you— but you've got to do things so that you get into good sleeping patterns, you're sleeping enough, you're doing things during the day or once a day or whatever to center yourself and kind of disengage yourself from all of the stress that's going on. And the hope is then that the herbal or vitamin mineral or amino acid or lipid or all combination of external things you put in make your body feel better so that it can actually go and you can do things like sleep better and do your centering or your meditation or your prayer or whatever it is you do there, and maybe get a little exercise and stuff. And that will overall help you get some of this hyper-stress that we've all been under back under control. All right, well, I'm Dr. Paul Anderson from Medicine Health. If you're on YouTube or CTR or anywhere else, like, share, subscribe. We're on all the pod burners, so you can go there and do that too if want to see me on YouTube. But the only place I will put the links, if I mention links, is on YouTube in the description box. All right, we'll see you next week.