The Dr. Hyman Show - Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Functional Medicine Deep Dive: Stop Brain Stress With Your Vagus

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. My team and I are so excited to offer you a 7 Day Free trial of the Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast.  For 7 days, you get access to all this and more entirely for free!  It's so easy to sign up. Just go click the Try Free button on the Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast page in Apple Podcast.   In this teaser episode, you’ll hear a preview of our latest Dr. Hyman+ Functional Medicine Deep Dive on stopping stress with your vagus with Dr. Titus Chiu.  Want to hear the full episode? Subscribe now. With your 7 day free trial to Apple Podcast, you’ll gain access to audio versions of: - Ad-Free Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast episodes - Exclusive monthly Functional Medicine Deep Dives - Monthly Ask Mark Anything Episodes  - Bonus audio content exclusive to Dr. Hyman+ Trying to decide if the Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast is right for you?  Email my team at [e-mail] with any questions you have.   Please note, Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast does not include access to the Dr. Hyman+ site and only includes Dr. Hyman+ in audio content.

Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to offer you a seven-day free trial of my revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus. For seven days you get special access to all the private content included in Dr. Hyman Plus entirely free. It's so easy to sign up. Just go to Apple Podcast on your phone and click try free button on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. You'll get exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes and functional medicine deep dives where a practitioner dives into topics like heart health, muscle health, insulin resistance, and more to help you understand the root cause of specific ailments and walk you through the steps to improve your health today. You'll also get access to all my Ask Mark Anything Q&As where

I answer the community's biggest health and wellness questions. Because I'm so sure you're going to love this platform, I'm offering you free access to all of this content for seven days and a teaser of my brand new Functional Medicine medicine deep dive episode diving deep into one of the most important topics in health. Head on over to the Doctors Pharmacy podcast on Apple Podcast and sign up for your free trial right now. Okay, here we go. It wasn't my body that needed healing, it was my brain and nervous system. I took a deeper dive into the world of neurology. I dove even deeper, spent years further researching the nervous system. And I'm so grateful that I did because I discovered these new novel and natural ways of unlocking

the healing power of my nervous system that wasn't being talked about definitely in the mainstream, but even in some natural medicine circles. And so in particular, I discovered these secrets buried deep within my nervous system that when I was able to access, I was able to trigger that healing response. And I kept continuing to experiment and try different things specific to my brain and my nervous system. And I was finally able to break through that vicious brain stress cycle and truly heal my brain at a deep, deep level. And I shared it with my patients and clients and they began to heal as well. And so after 15 years in private practice, 14 years teaching other doctors and working with thousands of amazing patients over the years, my experiences as a functional neurologist, speaker, professor, and educator, and concussion survivor, I learned a few principles,

shortcuts, and secrets along the way and put together a step-by-step clinically proven process to heal the brain naturally. And I was able to share with millions of people around the world. And I'm going to be sharing with you one of the most powerful ones in this talk. Are you ready to learn more? Before we do, there's one key concept that I really need you to understand. Get this right and you boost your resilience against stress, unlock the healing potential of your brain, and live your life to the fullest. But if you get this wrong, you'll stay stuck in that vicious brain stress cycle, worsening of your brain symptoms, and possible further degeneration of your brain. Here it is.

Your brain is unique. Not only does it require healthy nutrients, a clean diet, supplements, and good lifestyle practices, your brain also needs activation, stimulation, and brain training. And so when you can uncover the weak links in your nervous system and strengthen them through personalized brain training exercises supported by a clean diet, targeted personalized supplements, as well as lifestyle practices practices you can finally break that vicious brain stress cycle and get off the roller coaster of ups and downs and unlock the hidden potential that's within your brain and nervous system when you're able to do that true healing is possible i was able to do it thousands of my patients and clients and students over the

years were able to do it, and I know the same is possible for you. Your brain is capable of so much more than you can ever imagine. In order to learn how to break that vicious brain stress cycle, though, we'll first need to take a closer look at stress. There's no doubt about it. Stress, it's a killer. Virtually all the diseases of modern society are linked to stress. In this article, this review article, when physicians counsel about stress results of a national study, the authors concluded that the prevalence of stress in their practices and their private care practice was very high. Up to 80% of all visits had some type of stress-related component, and they found that over the past five years, 44% of Americans had reported some increase in psychological stress. Now, this was back in 2013 when, at least in my opinion, the world was still

relatively sane. So I'd imagine if they did a survey today, those numbers would probably be even higher. The interesting thing is, though, we need stress, right? We need stress to give us the motivation to get out of bed and step up to life's challenges to handle the stresses that we encounter every single day. But the problem is when stress gets out of hand from trauma, whether from a concussion or even mental, emotional traumas, or perhaps just chronic stresses over time building up, leading to stress and stressed out nervous systems. Or even gut inflammation or body inflammation could lead to physical types of stresses. Regardless of the trigger, when stress becomes rampant, chronic, and unmanaged, then you can fall prey to all the brain damaging effects

of stress hormones going wild. And so research shows there's all these really negative effects that stress has on our bodies. It can weaken our immune system, destroy your gut lining and gut function, strain your heart, can mess with your hormones, tank your sex drive, increase pain and migraines, also cause you to pack on belly fat. Can you relate to some, if not all of that? Then if so, stress might be very well impacting and harming your body. Now that's stressful in and of itself, but more concerning to me is the damage that stress has on your brain. Because like I mentioned before, your brain is your most sacred and precious organ. And if things go unchecked, you don't typically get better. And so chronic stress in the research

has been linked with serious conditions such as multiple sclerosis or prolonged recovery from a traumatic brain injury or concussion recovery, leaky brain, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and much, much more. And so the damaging of brain stress, like the effects that brain stress has on your brain and nervous system, research has shown that it can actually shrink the physical volume of your brain. The actual size of your brain can be shrunk by stress. Stress can also trigger brain inflammation, what we call neuroinflammation within your nervous system, can lead to things what's known as leaky brain, a breach of your blood-brain barrier, and then increasing your risk for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, dementia, and much,

much more. And even if you don't have or develop those more serious neurodegenerative conditions, it's also about your quality of life right now. With stress, you can end up having these nagging brain symptoms like brain fog and brain fatigue, insomnia. If you have had a concussion, maybe you have a prolonged concussion recovery like I did. Maybe you experience anxiety or depression, memory issues, cognitive decline, and more. So the question is, how is stress harming your brain? And the interesting thing is when you dive into the research, and I see this in my practice all the time with my patients and private clients, the impacts, the harmful effects that stress has on your brain can be very specific. So in this review article,

the authors looked at how stress affects your hippocampus. So let me share this with you right now. I want to take a little bit of break and talk about, introduce you to the hippocampus. And rather your brain. So here is a model of your brain. And this is what we call the outer covering, which is known as the neocortex. And one of the major areas of your nervous system

is known as your temporal lobe. This area helps us process sound. So for example, as you're listening to me right now, you can hear me and understand what I'm saying. That is if you have an intact temporal lobe that is working well. Now, what I'm going to do is that's the outer covering called the neocortex. I'm going to flip that around and show you the inside, the inside portion of your brain and the inside portion of your temporal lobe right here. This is what we call your hippocampus. Now your hippocampus is a very important structure because it's in charge of memory. It's important when it comes to learning as well as managing your stress. Now let's get back to the

article here now that we have a bit of background. So in this research article, the authors looked at how stress impacted the hippocampus. Again, the region of your nervous system related to memory, learning, and your ability to handle stressors. And this is what they found. They found that uncontrollable stress has been recognized to influence the hippocampus at various levels of analysis. Structurally, studies have shown that stress changes neuronal morphology, suppresses neuronal proliferation, and reduces hippocampal volume what does that mean stress can break specific regions of your brain including this area called your hippocampus and actually not only disrupt the communication happening within your brain cells leading to

worsening of brain function and brain symptoms, but actually shrink, like I said before, actually shrink the size of your brain. In this case, it's specific to your hippocampus, right? So you can see here, when we talk about brain health, we want to look at nice, plump, juicy areas of your brain. And you can see over to the right here, this shriveled atrophy brain. And yes, this person definitely had symptoms, right? Especially if their hippocampus was involved, they had issues with memory. They probably had issues with learning new things or recalling things that they had learned just, you know, a day, two or a week ago. In addition to that, they probably had a lot of issues handling and

managing stress because that's all the functions of the hippocampus. And when those areas become damaged, that could be the root cause for many different symptoms. And like I said, the point is it can be very specific how stress impacts your brain and nervous system. It's not just necessarily a global thing. It could be very specific leading to root causes and symptoms. And it's not just localized to your hippocampus. Now, the reason why this is so important to understand, because those different regions of the brain that we're talking about here, for example, the hippocampus and these other ones listed on the slide here for you, those are the root causes for all brain symptoms, right? All brain symptoms can be

localized to different regions of the nervous system. So as an example, if you have a problem of the hippocampus, you can experience things like memory issues, just like I talked about. But in addition to that, there's these other areas, like for example, the prefrontal cortex, which sits at the front of your frontal lobe, right behind your forehead. We'll actually talk about this later on in our talk today. But if you have issues with the prefrontal cortex, that can be the root cause for your brain fog, focus, and memory. And another very common one I see with my patients and clients is the brainstem. If the areas of the brainstem are either underactive or overactive, you can experience things like

gut symptoms, stress, and maybe insomnia or poor sleep, and on and on. The vestibular system, when my patients or clients have issues with that, and I actually had that in my journey healing my brain, you can experience things like balance issues, dizziness, vertigo, sometimes even anxiety that no matter how many supplements you take or how much you change your diet, you just can't get to the root of it. It could be rooted because it's in your vestibular system. And the point is, brain stress isn't just this subjective kind of vague thing that happens to your brain and body, you can actually have very specific damaging effects on different regions of your brain, then triggering the root cause for the brain symptoms that you might be experiencing. And why is that so important to understand? It's because these weak links in

your nervous system and the physical structures of your brain are the root causes, like I mentioned, for all brain symptoms. And so when you can pinpoint the root cause, where exactly in your brain the weak links are, the physical reasons why you have the brain symptoms that you do, and then you're able to strengthen those weak links through personalized brain training exercises that are supported by diet supplements and lifestyle practices, you can rewire your brain, strengthen your nervous system and get your life back. Again, I was able to do it. Many of my patients and clients were able to do it. And so was Mary. Mary was a client of mine that I worked with who's a healthy middle-aged woman. And she really prided herself on her positivity, her intelligence, and her sharp mind.

She was a very smart cookie. She was actually the director of a global health institute. So had a lot of responsibilities and took a lot of mental energy. But she was doing really well with it. And she also, since she was tied into this, and she was so passionate about health and wellness, she had very healthy habits. She had a really healthy diet, practiced really good lifestyle practices and rituals, and even meditated on a consistent basis. But after chronic stresses in her life, especially after the pandemic, all the stresses that came with it, with her work life, with travel, with things shifting, and her having more difficulty juggling her personal and work life, she began to experience these minor nagging brain symptoms, like brain fog.

She started having some trouble with focus, felt a bit more scatterbrained than usual. Her memory is getting a little bit worse. She even started to develop digestive symptoms. Her sleep was off. And overall, she's just feeling kind of stressed and anxious, but it was still pretty minor and she was able to manage. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad-free podcast episodes, plus Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly functional deep dive episodes, I guess that's why we call it Dr. Hyman Plus,

then head on over to The Doctor's Pharmacy on Apple Podcasts and sign up for your seven-day free trial. Thank you.